Seriously, didn't the crash at San Fran with the 777 who relied too much on technology that failed teach ANYBODY ANYTHING? When the tech stops working, it's up to the pilot to actually FLY and LAND the plane.

How many people have to die to teach that you can't rely 100% on technology that can and will fail while the plane is still airborne?

I don't say this often, but Oy-veh-gevalt!

The NSA also considers Slashdot to be a terrorist organization.

And they'd be right too, judging from some of the comments I've posted here... oops.

It would have been so much more interesting if Captain Crunch was a Bitcoin zillionaire. Yeah, that wouldn't lead to anything *bad*.

This guy's first mistake was to assume he had any "rights". Is he "Baton Bob LLC"? Only corporate rights are respected by the law. Individual's rights are whatever the police feel like letting you get with at that moment, which is rapidly less and less.

Secondly, this is Atlanta Georgia, the deep south, and this guy is black and probably gay as well -- two strikes against him in the eyes of the police. Georgia is notoriously gun-happy as well, the governor having just recently signed a bill that allows open carry just about everywhere.

Frankly, this guy's lucky he wasn't shot dead on the spot for "resisting arrest". He seems to think we are living in a free country where the people have guaranteed rights. That hasn't been the situation for some time, he'd better get with the program or he'll be assigned to a gulag.

They'd sell a lot more robots, if they looked like beautiful girls. Where is chobits technology already?

Isn't the entire USA a "Constitutional Exempt Zone"?
It sure feels that way.

This is a well-understood technology that has existed since the 1960's -- aside from some materials tech not normally associated with car production, it isn't a big leap to create a vehicle that uses a fuel cell -- heck, they could take an existing Plug-in Prius, pull the battery pack, add-in a fuel cell, and job done.

What *precisely* is making the car this expensive? (I did not RTFA, this *is* Slashdot after all)......

This phone isn't running true Android, it's a port of Android, but using Xenix as the base OS.

For those of you on Slashdot who are not old farts like myself, google "Xenix" to find out what it is. It's part of Microsoft's "Embrace and Extend" policy to use something they own to create a whole new version of an existing popular phone/tablet OS....

And if anyone believe what I'm saying, even for a second, you need to find a BBS for the less naive....

200 pre orders?? Screw that. The Elio has 20,000 pre-orders, and it's not built yet, has a nice low (projected) cost of $6800 and gets 84mpg. And I'd much rather have the Elio than the C-1 (although for a brief moment, I considered the C-1)... But for the long range I need, the Elio fits my requirements better.
http://www.eliomotors.com/

BYD, a Chinese car company, is *supposed* to start selling cars in the USA starting next year as well, of course, every time I read one of those articles, it seems some delay always forced a change of plans.

Tata was also supposed to introduce an American version of the Nano, but my guess is that that's never going to actually happen.

I personally, am hoping the Elio gets off the ground and is a success, not just because it's supposed to be American made, but I'd rather have a car that gets 84MPG, and looks different from everything else on the road. They have 20k reservations already and there's no real car yet, so, clearly the idea is a good one if they can just pull it off without screwing the pooch.

I'm afraid you haven't thought that entirely through yet. CURRENTLY, China's economy depends upon endless American consumption, so tanking the USA's economy by demanding payment would be as bad for China as it would for the USA.

It's kind of like how Donald Trump works -- if you borrow $10k from a bank, and you can't pay it back, you're in trouble. but if you're like Trump and you borrow $100 million from a bank and can't pay it back, the bank is in trouble, so the bank will continue to lend you more and more until you're out of trouble. And allow you to pay it back over decades. Otherwise the bank itself becomes insolvent.

Anyhow; let's assume that China no longer needs a healthy US economy -- they have a large enough middle class that they can afford to consume their own crap, and become a self-sustaining economy no longer dependent upon world trade, like the USA was in the 50's/60's.

So, China demands repayment, even if it destroys the US economy. The US still has a few options, because they are a nuclear power, which can even involve wiping out their debt by wiping out the creditor -- essentially starting world war 3 in order to get out of debt.

But there are other options: For example, when the Chinese middle class reaches the 500 million mark, China may be too expensive to afford itself and will seek to export/offshore manufacturing by that time. Ironically, the USA may be affordable by then, with a large, well-educated, working class in desperate need of jobs.

The Chinese will own the factories, but the stuff will get built in the USA. Which, also ironically, will boost the US's economy and help the USA pay back China. Slowly, over decades, like Trump.

There may be millions of intelligent species out there, but they may be perfectly happy swimming in the ocean all day. Think about it for a minute. There's a potentially second intelligent species here on earth, but we don't give them a moment's thought because they didn't develop an opposable thumb and create tools.

And in hundreds of years, we've never learned to communicate with them on any level that counts. Which makes our chances of every making contact with "aliens" almost impossible.

If they landed in Central Park tomorrow, it might be decades before we could communicate with them because their brains may work in an entirely different way, and we have no frame of reference for communication. They, of course, may have a solution for that, but we sure don't. We're a very, very dumb species when you get right on it.

Lt Saavik: [to Kirk] On the test, sir. Will you tell me what you did? I would really like to know.
Dr Leonard McCoy: Lieutenant, you are looking at the only Starfleet cadet who ever beat the "No-Win" scenario.
Saavik: How?
James Kirk: I reprogrammed the simulation so that it was possible to save the ship.
Saavik: What?!
David: He cheated.
Kirk: Changed the conditions of the test. Got a commendation for original thinking. I don't like to lose.

Would be to get two bots to talk to each other and see where the conversation goes after two minutes -- my guess is that all the code is biased towards tricking actual people in a one-on-one "conversation".

But when a machine converses with another machine, all that code no longer has an effect, and pretty soon the two machines will be essentially babbling *at* each other without actually having a conversation. An outside observer will immediately recognize that both of them are machines.

For example, if they find bleach AND draino under the sink, you're also charged with "Chemical Weapons Possession" if they find candles and matches and charcoal, you have "bomb making materials". The spooks can get you for anything.