One reason that transistor count matters is that it allows you to make some comparison regarding the efficiency of the processor. If the previous claim of 2 billion transistors were correct the efficiency of BD compared to Intels SB would have been horrible (almost twice the transistor count and significantly lower performance in most benchmarks). On the other hand if the new 1.2 billion figure is correct it means instead that the transistor density is quite bad (since the die size is still the same) and of course power consumption and performance in benchmarks is still much lower than Intel's SB chips. It does give a glimmer of hope for AMD though, so far as the basic architecture of BD goes and might mean that advancements at GloFo in their process technology might make it competitive in the future (which is better than AMD having to pull a completely new architecture out of their hat). This whole thing reeks of damage control though, and people have suggested that both numbers are "correct" but just represent different ways of counting the transistors. I just hope AMD can recover and start offering some true competition to Intel because the price of their 6-core SB-E chips is ludicrous.

Any site that really requires strong security (such as banks) should run a suite of standard password cracking programs (including ones using lists of passwords that have come out of large leaks, such as the Sony ones) over all their user passwords at regular intervals and notify users if their password is considered weak (i.e. found by the tools). Sure, it won't help with people that just don't care (if you use "password" as your password you are clearly under no delusion that it is secure) but I'm sure frequently people just don't realize that their password is terrible (or maybe just compromised in a leak).

Sure, throw a bunch of money at technology R&D and you get nice shiny things out. The problem is, if you invest all that space exploration R&D money straight into Earth-centric engineering and technology research you get a far better bang for your buck in terms of real, usable products. Now I'm a huge fan of space exploration for the scientific value of the research and because it inspires people to be involved in science but the neat little spin-off products are just a bonus, not the main reason for doing it. Not even remotely.

I agree that the big studios are just rehashing the same ideas (and often badly at that) but there is plenty of innovation coming from indie developers and mod makers in the community. Look at DotA, which started as a simple UMS map in Starcraft, got ported to Warcraft 3 and has managed to spawn an entire new genre. Or in the indie space we have games like Minecraft and Terraria that are forging the way for yet another new genre of games where the player has the freedom to rebuild/shape his entire game world. That's where I'm betting we will see some really interesting and fun games appear in the future, some more sandboxy like Minecraft and some more like real games (similar to Terraria).

For the big studios it is simply to risky to invest in new (unproven) ideas when they have to recoup millions in development costs. But once a concept is proven in the mod or indie space the big studios will eventually pick it up and polish it. Again, look at DotA, a small mod project, and now we have Heroes of Newerth, League of Legends and DotA2 all competing in that space. Once the concept was considered proven big studios decided to invest in it.

I just really wished that they would stop forcing console UIs on to the PC versions of games. Just watched a video review of Dungeon Siege 3 today and the whole UI looked like a big console-port clusterfuck. Is it really too much to ask that you have separate UI implementations for the console and PC versions of games? Really?

Where are you getting this information? 5 of the 6 reactors at Fukushima Daiichi use low-enriched uranium fuel and one uses MOX, none of them use thorium.

Thorium is another great solution, especially because it is so abundant. However, the huge advantage of the TerraPower design is that it burns existing nuclear waste, making it very cheap (nobody wants the waste) and solves one of the biggest problems with all those existing reactors (what to do with the waste).