Japan's computer-generated grassroots indie pop phenomenon Hatsune Miku makes her US TV debut Wednesday on the David Letterman show.

http://sgcafe.com/2014/09/hats...

Not exactly what the article about, given that Miku is massively crowdsourced, and provides opportunities for musicians, rather than taking away jobs. But a funny coincidence nonetheless.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Playing devil's advocate...

2001 had music over top of space scenes. You can't hear music in space, never mind Dolby surround sound, so this was wrong. I think there was also music playing on ancient Earth, which is before music was invented.

I've also seen subtitled versions of 2001 (and lots of movies praised for their realism). This is wrong. When people speak in real life, glowing words don't magically appear beneath them.

One can argue that these are cinematic conventions that improve people's enjoyment. The music has emotional impact, and the subtitles make it easier to understand what is happening (especially with foreign languages). But then why can't things like space sound effects (which add impact) and visible lasers (which make it easier to see what is happening) also be considered cinematic conventions? It all seems a bit arbitrary to me.

Then send the follow-up mission in the first ship, and then send the colony ship in the faster ship second. The faster colony ship gets there first, and the follow-up ship arrives second. :-P

If your objective is to get as many ships to as many stars as quickly as possible, then there is simply no benefit to waiting for faster ships to be invented.

I've seen that argument many times including in at least one physics journal. I believe it is one of the stupidest arguments ever put forward by scientists.

There are billions of stars in the heavens. So why would you ever send a next generation ship to a star that you've already sent a ship to?! Send your next generation ship to a different star. There are plenty to chose from.

Their plan is to come in at night and steal the real Nimitz, leaving the duplicate in its place

And yes I know, "don't call me Shirley"

The NSA and other US intelligence agencies have gone to insanely extreme lengths to avoid another 9/11 - like monitoring the majority of the world's electronic communications. 9/11 was done using commercial jets as weapons, so surely one of the highest priorities would be tracking every commercial jet that could be used to attack the US or its various military installations, embassies, factories, etc around the globe. Just imagine the shit storm there would be in the halls of power if terrorists pulled off the same trick AGAIN. Nobody in intel would risk that.

So if they are going to all the trouble of monitoring everybody's texts and gmail, surely they know what happened to MH370. It would be utter incompetence for them not to.

So why aren't they saying?

NASA are saying it is not a man-made object or the result of natural phenomena, but rather that it was put there by a probe from another planet!

dun dun dun

Yes and no. By tuning the particles to very specific frequencies they can make the material more transparent than something that scatters light in general.

Screens that scatter general light already exist - a fairly well-known example is a DILAD screen, which uses microscopic bubbles. MIT's screen looks to be significantly more transparent than a DILAD screen. DILADs work best with rear-projection, while MIT's seems geared for front-projection. DILADs are used for advertising displays, trade shows, and - most famously - Hatsune Miku concerts.

This is a nerd site, not a tech site. Non-human intelligence, sentience, and the rights of those possessing it seems like a reasonably nerdy subject to me. Plenty of sci-fi books and shows have examined those themes.

Instead of a battery, perhaps they could power it using a tank of compressed air :-P

The really funny thing is that 00000000 is a potential edge case. There could have been a bug in the system where 00000000 is rejected because it's misinterpreted as a null value. Out of a billion possibilities, they chose the one that might not actually have worked.

Technological civilisation rises,
which eventually causes climate change,
which eventually causes technological civilisation to crumble,
which eventually allows the climate to recover,
which eventually allows technological civilisation to rise again,
etc.

There's your cycle. Study that.

How do we know Snowden wasn't a CIA plant? that the leak wasn't a CIA effort to try and rein in NSA operations, freeing up budgetary funds to go to CIA operations instead. And that this is the CIA working to disavow their man?

Clearly the CIA and NSA need to spend more time spying on each other and their own employees, and leave the rest of us alone.