That's just it.

What do you do if you GET a phone call? Does it play on your computer speakers for all to hear the results of your "test" at the Dr's office? Headphones? Bluetooth in your ear all day? Is it going through your smartphone? What if the battery is almost dead and you've forgotten your charger? What if it falls out of your pocket into the toilet? What if it forcecloses the phone app because you installed a buggy copy of fruit ninja 12? What if your battery only lasts an hour because of a rogue weather app that won't stay closed?

I think people still need something permanent for POTS calls if it's an office environment, but it's going to get way cheaper and simpler.

Maybe a POTS style receiver attached to the PC via USB or actually into the sound card mic-in and phones-out and the pc app has a speakerphone function.

But it's still something LIKE a traditional phone.

call it the iWheel and make it look all hip and trendy and you might have a chance there.

Just not too hip and trendy or Apple might whine about it and sue you.

I think it would be cool to explore the nitty gritty electro/mechanical aspect of exactly HOW skynet was able to get to the point of "taking over". The Sarah Connor Chronicles was sorta going there towards the end I guess.

Creating AI is one thing, but if it isn't attached to "teh internet" or given legs and hands, it can't do much more than make noise.

Also as smart as an AI might be, it would have to be fed relevant info of some sort to begin building the infrastructure even if it had arms and legs. Probably module one to be added to it's intelligence would be a ravenous information gathering algorithm.

I can only imagine the shaky hands and sweaty brow of the first guy who takes an AI and hooks it up to a drone with real bombs and hits the start button.

How do you know it doesn't exist in some form?

Do you know every black military project? The military has possessed, tested and used tech 40 years before it was released to the public as "new." Yes I know this because I was told so by someone who USED a technology and then saw it released well down the road as a consumer item.

The "theories" that the military is XX number of years ahead of the tech of the rest of the nation are based on fact, XX is the question.

Some form of AI is quite likely being used, in my opinion, either for creating political strategies, battle tactics, or actually guiding unmanned drones. You don't think they really spend $500 for a screwdriver, and $1000 for a toilet seat, do you? (lol)

Pretty much fastest ever? Not quite, see link below. Recovery is very slow by comparison to other recoveries.

http://www.businessinsider.com/charts-economic-recovery-2012-8?op=1

lol I have NPR as the radio station that plays on my clock radio in the morning as my alarm. Either that or country, something annoying.

Psst, hey AC, better check this out...

Incomes are down: http://news.investors.com/092512-626958-household-income-down-82-under-president-obama.aspx

Obamacare regulations for 2013 are going to be less than optimal: http://www.forbes.com/sites/gracemarieturner/2012/10/28/the-avalanche-of-new-obamacare-rules-will-come-in-january-2013/

Obama EPA regulations also sub-optimal: http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/11/04/epas-insanely-ambitious-agenda-if-obama-is-reelected/

Here's another tip- stop getting your news from NPR and MSNBC. that's a left wing fantasy.

When I saw it called the "unit" of computing I thought maybe it was modular so I could snap together a few "units" of them to make it faster, bigger, etc.

Shoot, make it NOT expandable at ALL and simply modular, so more ram, more hd, more proc, etc, just click it together. Have variations, different colors mean more ram or more hard drive. Pair a unit with more ram with a unit with more processor.

Otherwise, whats the point? They've made a nettop with an i3 rather than a atom? Ok...

You are right, of course.

Thanks for the correction.

I am crafting a dunce cap right now and will print out and staple your post to it and walk around today with it on my head, to make sure that everyone else knows what a moron I am.

That, and from what I've been able to tell, the "observers" appear to be wanting to "observe" voter issues (intimidation, discrimination, disenfranchisement) for only one of the two parties, the other party they have no interest in "observing."

Yeah, no red flags there. Why is it that the news doesn't talk about the camo-wearing black panthers with truncheons standing outside polls in the last election? Which party were they observing then?

This just doesn't smell right to me. Why does the UN feel the need to protect just one of the two prominent political parties in this country? If they want to meddle in our election they should help watch for problems on both sides.

You need to use a sandbox - google for sandboxie, read up on it and find out how to set it up to put your bookmarks outside the sandbox, etc.

You need to use a good browser, right now for me that's Chrome.

You need to do the customary tweaks to the browser such as ad-blocking, script blocking, etc. Ghostery seems to do well, chrome also has a noscript clone.

You can make windows accounts with limited privilege.

If you want an active antivirus you can use microsoft security essentials - free.

If you want to pay for something then get the pay version of Malwarebytes - will be active and run all the time. Otherwise the free version is "on-demand."

For myself, I never surf without a sandbox, ever, never without ad and script blocking. and in my opinion (FWIW) when you do that an antivirus is moot.

Also I use web based email, have done for years. Thus no attachments get downloaded automatically, and my email provider seems to do some a/v checking anyway.

Most infections come from drive-by downloads and that pretty much won't happen with adbock and script blocking. Most malware won't even run inside a sandbox anyway!

For good measure configure the windows box and then capture an image. If something gets messed up to any degree just pop on that fresh image and boom, rolling again with no hassles.

Use dropbox to store important documents. So if you have to re-image your documents repopulate automagically. I also use google bookmarks and lastpass.

Excellent idea, for "serious mission critical" applications it would be good to source drives for a RAID array from different channels. Maybe same model/mfg but different vendors...

Otherwise you know they're coming from the same case of drives which came off the same assembly line in a row and had the same guy sneeze on all of them.

It's a nice theory anyway, but do people actually bother to do that? How often do simultaneous failures REALLY happen nowdays?

Maybe for SSDs which are more of a literal "black box" scenario things would be more predictable than with mechanical HDs.

Most?

Since when?

Maybe Red Bull?

The next big thing will obviously be Quantum communications.

https://www.google.com/search?q=quantum+entanglement+record+broken

Instantaneous signalling, unlimited distance, perfect "reception" at all times, inherently secure.

Of course, I would presume our military already has it, (lag would suck for the drone pilot, hmmm?) but hey, I'm talking about something I could get in my future cell phone.