I was going to link to my original comment by this title, but it's been so long that the comment has vanished below /.'s comment event horizon. Anyway, the gist of it was that, since it appears probable that Mars *did* possess the necessary conditions for life sometime in the past, it is *possible* that life continues to exist there, perhaps in some bacterial form. Maybe there are even martian worms ... who knows?

'nuff said.

Now, if Google would only come up with an ad-blocker for those annoying text ads!

A physical characteristic is accessed that has been nonvolitionally obtained from a user, avoiding the inconvenience or unaccountability of voluntarily supplied information.

This is so ... wrong .. that it is hard to know where to start criticizing it. At first I thought it was an April Fool's joke a little too early, but then I clicked through to the patent itself. As a work of brilliant satire poking fun at the whole patenting process, it succeeds -- too bad it's for real! Anyway, here I go:

1) M$ will obtain your data nonvolitionally -- to wit, without your consent! Leaving aside the obvious Constitutional implications of this (5th Amendment violation, for those keeping score), it raises the interesting question: where is this data going to come from? (And: can the source be spoofed?)

2) More ominously, note the following claims:
[0024]It should be appreciated with the benefit of the present disclosure that the physical characteristics that can be conveyed include can include health information pertinent to performance such as blood pressure, heart rate, pulmonary flow rate, weight, body fat index, strength, blood glucose level. These physical characteristics can be chronic conditions such as allergies, disabilities, diseases, etc., that facilitate locating people of similar sensitivities, lifestyle and background.
[0025]In addition, the physical characteristics can include psychological and demographic information such as education level, geographic location, age, sex, intelligence quotient, socioeconomic class, occupation, marital/relationship status, religious belief, political affiliation, etc. Such information can be useful in enhancing social interaction as well as adjusting how an avatar performs in a competitive virtual environment.

Needless to say, such 'physical characteristics' provide a fertile ground for discrimination. For example, imagine the following:

You have been denied access to Fourth Reich because you are a Jewish scum. Your internet address has been logged; your home address has been located; a squad of Storm Troopers will be by shortly to teach you a lesson in respect.

3) No more anonymity. Under this system, Publius -- the collective identity of the Founding Fathers when they were attempting to convince their fellow citizens of the necessity of a new form of government -- would have been ferreted out and they would all have been tossed into British gaols to await their trials for treason.

And let's not forget M$s ultimate goal:

NON-WINDOWS SYSTEM DETECTED.

What if someone sampled the 2-second bit "Bismallah!"* from Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen? I suppose that *technically* it is musical -- Freddie Mercury sing-speaks it in a "G-C-G" progression -- but it is a perfectly good thing for a pious Muslim to say. It is also appropriate because it is often said before beginning a task.

*usually interpreted as "In the name of God!"

I suppose that requiring the ring-tone to be a Qu'ranic verse is probably a good idea -- you know that otherwise everyone would just use "Allahu Akbar"!

And look, it says here I can even donate to "Social Engineers Without Borders". How nice! Thanks a lot, "Googgle"!

"The MPAA is arguing that if they could directly turn those plugs on and off, they could offer more goods to consumers."

s/MPAA/corporate content industry/
s/plugs/packet priority levels/
s/more goods/faster content delivery/

Or the reader could track down the book Dangerous Visions in a used book store and then read it -- and all the other excellent stories therein -- for him/herself.

The free-play model breaks the Hollywood process, which progresses from plot to script to production in a very sequential way. Game development today is more about world-building. There are subplots, but often there's no overarching plot at all. Nor is there necessarily a story arc.

In a certain sense, a "story" is just a cross-section of a "game". But that very act of differentiating a plot from its environment induces the story to appear: characters with motives utilize the gamescape at a 'higher' level, and there's your movie, complete with story.

{Luke: You mean old Ben Ken-Obi?}

Games are imbued with the possibility of drama. Most stories are banal; Hollywood carefully selects out the dramatic stories from the worlds in which they are set. (Hogan: I don't know what you mean, Colonel.} But they are stuck with their old trick: you can merely passively 'identify' with a projected /character; you *pretend* to be the hero. The new trick is enabling the "player" to experience *inside* the story; thus the allure of games, where first person experience is assumed. In a FPS, you *are* the 'hero': that is what Hollywood craves.

But Hollywood has already demonstrated the shortcomings of the *pure* first-person narrative: remember The Blair Witch Project? (Or, for that matter, the cheesy clunkiness of Cloverfield?) Simply incorporating subjectivity into the movie-going experience is not enough: it must be done *artfully*.

Consider the first 15 minutes of District 9; talking head vignettes blend naturally into on-the-ground you-are-there action to convincingly bring us into the director's vision. It is our extreme identification with the main character that constructs the movie for us. But, despite his immediacy, knowing *only* what he knows would hamper our comprehension of the movie. (Interestingly, for our discussion, the lead character knows that *he himself* is a character in a 'game' as well: the charade of "consent".) Indeed, it is a plot-driven "accident" which triggers his sudden re-evaluation of that 'game' he's in, and, of course -- and, not incidentally, -- "makes the movie".

A movie is a 'place' you "go"; a game is all of the stories at once: *you* are the /character that cross-sections the mileau with your own unique motive. *You* pull the story out of the world by your stances and attitudes -- then you are no longer playing a game, but experiencing your self-created reality.

Seriously -- that's all you need. How can they turn down your MMORPG with its radical new character class "that speak[s] to a British narrative" and "reflect[s] our cultural particularism" -- AND kicks ass!?!

The real question is: why are Americans incapable of governing themselves? You guys do so many things so brilliantly, yet you can't put together a decent government for anything. ... Other people manage to do this kind of thing through their governments all the time. What is is about Americans that they cannot? ... (and I mean that in a bi-partisan manner.)

As a long-time member of a small -- but dogged -- American political party, I can tell you part of the answer. The "bipartisan" centralist governing coalition is beholden to their primary donors, which are, by and large, corporate entities of one form or another. They, in turn, wish to maintain their status quo control of our governing system; this is a recipe for policy stagnation. Any change -- especially one which brings *other polities* [read 'citizens'] into any sort of power position, with the ability to cause change, would threaten the status quo; therefore, that cannot be allowed to happen. So, in short, the fix is in. The vast amount of money needed to compete in elections restricts the field of players to those willing to kowtow to those with the money: corporate interests.

But: every time the power shifts from one member of the bipartisan coalition to the other, some people 'fall off' in disgust, and end up at one of the 'little parties', which are slowly growing. As well, there are many "independents"; people who find themselves in the middle, but don't identify with either of the two big parties: they either vote in the out-party, or they vote 'for the person': i.e. without consideration of that person's party.

As time goes by, there will eventually be *too many* of these 'independents' and 'little partyists' for the two main parties to adequately absorb; at the same time, the Net will expand the ability of these people to communicate with each other directly. At that point, we will see a fundamental rearrangement of the political system in America. It make take the form of a "moderate' centralist bloc, which persists; or the polity might become split between the two extremist factions; or there might be a rousing free-for-all with a flock of small parties spread across the idea spectrum.

Ironically, the better the situation for political expression (like the latter case cited above), the *worse* for adequate self-government, as politics rushes in. So I guess the answer to your question is "we self-govern badly because, unlike you, we still have a viable and on-going political debate going on." Perhaps you should look at your 'our-government-runs-well' model and ask yourself if that value is the best political good a polity can ask for or achieve.

If you want to follow the "one people, one state, one policy" theory, that is your business. We don't all fall in line --ever-- and, ironically, that is our saving grace. We all love our country, but few of us trust our government -- since it lacks adequate *citizen* representation.

...sometimes people would email back to the uucp daemon thanking it for trying...

I used to have an answering machine message that went: "Hello? [long pause] No, he's not here right now, please leave a message at the beep." You wouldn't believe how many people felt necessary to fill that long hole at the beginning with asking for me. The fact that my reply was consistent with their approach eventually led to my roommate's mother being convinced that she had, in fact, spoken directly to me. (Because she had talked over the message itself, she eventually reached the conclusion that I had hung up on her.) My roommate found the whole thing hilarious.

The whole point of it, however, was to act as a honeypot for telemarketers. It worked. One guy actually waited to leave me a message calling me a f'ing a'hole for wasting his time!

The problem is that human brains can't solve these problems either!

Put up a picture of a small (say 7-15 "towns") traveling salesman problem [NP-hard] and randomly take out some of the routes. Ask the user questions about the incomplete network: For the shortest total distance, what would be the best town for town 4 to connect to? How about town 7?

It's trivial for a human to glance at a map and pick an obvious short distance. A computer wouldn't even know where to start. Of course, this is still subject to the "borrow humans to solve" situation, and *might* be subject to the 'finite set' rule cited by parent, although our technology is good enough for an app -- given the data -- to solve small ones like this (not quickly, however), and hold them for future use. (I don't think many spammers would have such an app interfaced to an inference engine, which is what would be necessary to non-humanly solve this.) Also this solution would violate the ADA, because the blind couldn't use it.

If you want to 3-D it, switch to the knapsack problem, which is also NP-hard: which of these objects can fit into this partially full knapsack? Same objections as above.