> First, there is no reason to believe that we can built robots that can reproduce themselves.

What? This is exactly the technology humans are trying to reach! We're already a significant way down this path!!

> Second, there is no evidence that we or anyone else can build intelligent machines, as the original story seems to presuppose.

Nature did it. We can do it.

> Third, biological organisms are so many orders of magnitude more efficient and flexible than machines that it barely makes sense to put them into the same qualitative category "form of life".

This whole conversation is about extrapolating on the cosmic scale. If you look at the path robotics has taken in the last century it does, as pointed out, actually support the premise of this article.

> Hint: A human consumes only about 2.9 kilowatt hours per day, the equivalent of 1-2 light bulbs ...

Not relevant. Once machines are replicating and repairing themselves they'll do exactly what we do and find other sources of energy.

Frankly I agree with you that it's hard to picture Transformers inhabiting the universe, but OP did make a really good point that extrapolation isn't even in the ballpark of refuting this clown. Honestly I'm shocked he didn't come back with that XKCD cartoon.

Isn't it discriminatory to give an employee a pink-slip for being obese?

"the ability to steal gossipy emails from a not-so-great protected computer network [at Sony] is not the same thing as being able to carry out physical, 9/11-style attacks in 18,000 locations simultaneously.

So compromising a not-so-great protected computer network is not the same as compromising a not-so-great protected computer network?

Now all we need is for Anonymous to hack Sony again, replace Sony.com with The Pirate Bay, and put up a torrent of the movie. Then the lulz will be complete.

Nah, that's no good -- we can't have Sony actually do something good; it'd be too out of character.

No, what really needs to happen is that Anonymous should hack Sony a second time, replace the Sony.com website with a copy of The Pirate Bay, and release a torrent of the movie there.

But to not show it because some third-world dictator pitched a fit is a different thing. That truly offends me. We should be showing it precisely because it pisses him off.

Exactly. But since the theaters dun goofed and Sony compounded their incompetence with a double-helping of cowardice, we need to compensate. Clearly, what needs to happen now is for Anonymous to hack Sony again and release the movie to Bittorrent.

It certainly seems to be true that courts in the UK have shied away from questions of whether any given level of consideration is sufficient, favouring a simple finding of whether there was any consideration or not. My intended point was more that while obvious nominal consideration explicitly written into a negotiated contract might reasonably be interpreted as a demonstration of intent to enter into a binding agreement, in this case I'm not sure how well that argument works. In other words, it's not just about whether 1p constitutes consideration, it's about whether that nominal consideration demonstrates an intent to commit to the deal. It would be interesting to hear what any actual lawyers thought about this argument, but sadly it doesn't look like we'll find out here.

information revolution is a disappointment. Jobs get slashed, but there is no increase in the creation of actual wealth or value.

There has been an increase in wealth, but most of it has gone to the top 1%. Trickle-down is not simply not working anymore. Sorry, Republicans, but you have it all wrong. You are applying 1960 economics to the wrong era. Tax the wealthy to fix our rotting infrastructure; then we'll have jobs, consumers, and working roads and pipes.

Is stealing from the Public Domain by turning copyright into some sort of perpetual entitlement morally justifiable? Not really. In the end, someone is going around the rules of society for personal gain.

FTFY.

Since the experimental design involved artificially aging [only] the skin by exposing the mice to tanning, they probably don't know yet.

Thank you, I'm quite flattered by the comparison.

I was thinking Spanish Inquisition, Crusades, vicious fights between Catholics and Protestants, Galileo, etc. True, that's more of a mid-point than a "start".

Christianity "matured". Islam seems to still be in the middle stage.

http://www.splendad.com/ads/sh...

That explains the No Smoking sign the probe found.

Then, on the day after Thanksgiving in 2013, methane readings shot up in Gale Crater and stayed high while Curiosity made three more measurements over the next 60 days.

Right after Thanksgiving? I suspect they did it Gilligan's Island-style and the probe really landed on Earth, in middle America.