Maybe it would be better this way. China's making a space station, there's the ISS, and Russia's planning OPSEK and maybe this other new space station... and a handful of corporations planning "space hotels" (okay, only the Bigelow Aerospace one seem realistic so far). I like the idea of international cooperation on the ISS, but on the other hand, I'm thinking maybe competition between different nations and corporations for space stations may spur more innovation in space travel technology and get more people and things up into space.

Sure, maybe AI will surpass us in intelligence, but look at it this way. We're way more intelligent than ants but we let them live and make their nests and do whatever they want anywhere that they aren't in our way. We're not going to go on some global ant extermination campaign and even if we did there's no way we could possibly succeed at it. So we could definitely happily exist as ants in the robot-ruled future.

I wonder if some of the people who refused to help the NPC were simply not too familiar with first-person games and confused about the controls? Moving a cabinet and pulling up a person to safety are things that could require complex interactions with the environment and many of the participants in the test were probably just getting used to walking around.

A simple, basic application of common sense tells anyone reading this article that Slashdot, a predominantly American website, is using the term "West Coast" as shorthand for the western coast of the United States, and the timezone which is shared throughout that coast.

I see this kind of story everywhere these days... existing businesses fear an inevitable change in the market brought on by technology, so they try as hard as they can to shove the genie back in the bottle instead of trying to keep up with the times.

Bugs and bug fixes are part of the territory in software development. Sure, the developer will get paid for time in which they are fixing their own bugs, but it's not like that gives developers an incentive to make buggier code. If your employer thinks that you're wasting too much time and company money fixing bugs that will figure into your hourly wages or salary, and if you're just constantly doing buggy code or your bug fixes keep causing more problems than they fix you'll probably get fired.

Seriously, I am just waiting to give HBO all my money as soon as they offer HBO Go without having to sign up for the TV channel. Why doesn't HBO want my money?

They really shot themselves in the foot with Windows 8. They were trying to make it like a mobile OS, with the whole idea being that their interface is unified across desktop, tablet, phone, etc. But then their Surface tablets bombed and nobody ever really wanted a Windows phone... They failed to make a significant dent on the mobile market which is dominated by Apple and Google. So all they're left with is PC users wondering why their new computer is trying to act like a tablet, and everyone's just immediately going to the good old-fashioned desktop. They definitely need to go for the growing mobile market if they want to survive through the next decade, but at the same time they need to do it in a way that doesn't alienate their PC market.

They are not going to be sending people starting in 2018. The 2018 trip, if it actually happens, will be an unmanned demonstration flight. I'm not sure how realistic the whole idea is but I'll wait to see if they actually do that unmanned trip before getting excited about Mars One.

Maybe this is where they ACTUALLY buried all those cartridges of the Atari ET game.

Haven't tried it myself - but if they actually do nail all the latency, resolution and head tracking issues, then the only unavoidable thing left would be the focal depth issue that all current 3D technologies suffer from (your eyes converge at a different depth than they are focusing on). This will remain a problem until true real-time holography becomes a reality, or at least some kind of advanced eye tracking to dynamically adjust focal depth to the point you're looking directly at, which is probably super-hard to do. I suppose that the headache issue will likely vary by person.

Usually reliable emulators don't come out until about two generations after a console. So by the end of the XBone/PS4 era we should start seeing good 360/PS3 emulators coming out.

I think at that point you turn into Wolverine.

I remember the first VR fad in the 90s... it seemed like such a neat idea. However, the graphics were horrible, frame rates sucked, head tracking was laggy, headsets were bulky, screens were blurry, FOV was too small, and people were still trying to figure out 3D movement control schemes. I've felt that ever since around 2004 we've been ready to give VR another shot, now that we've fixed or have the technology to fix every single one of those problems. And it seems like a lot of different companies are going to be going head-to-head in an attempt to be the ones that bring VR back. Obviously Oculus Rift has the biggest head-start, but there's some promise in the other ones too. The Infiniteye seems to have the FOV advantage. The CastAR seems like it could be an awesome thing of its own (although it's meant more for AR than VR, so it's not in direct competition). I know Sony has a head-mounted display and Valve are planning to bring one out as well. In fact, I think this is what the true next generation of video games is going to be known for, rather than the consoles (though they will likely add support Oculus Rift or make their own headsets if VR turns out to be a thing) If they can get the head-tracking and motion-tracking down without any noticeable lag, then the only real problem remaining is the issue of focus depth for stereo 3D. And that's something that basically CAN'T be resolved without actual real-time holographic technology, which is still probably a few decades away.

For our safety, we should teach robots what types of actions would cause the most amount of bodily harm to a human, and where all our vital organs are located, so they'll have a better idea how to behave safely around us and prevent injury. I see no possible way this could backfire.