Because having the freedom to choose is good.

Disclaimer: I avidly use Steam on OSX, but I'm constantly frustrated with it's buggy state. If the linux client proves to be better over time (with a good offering of games) I'll be upgrading my linux box and going that route.

No, check out Air Rights. I would be careful if a military / police drone was flying high enough above your property, in regards to the OP.

Profit > The Environment

Right, because more government control = less evil and well maintained. Just look at the US's current infrastructure and areas of oversight (e.g. the FCC).

Thanks for sharing. My father read The Hobbit to me when I was about the same age as your son (~5 years old). I absolutely loved it and, when I was older, read LOTR on my own (still remember being mad that Bilbo wasn't the main character anymore), which started a long and interesting journey throughout the fantasy genre.

I'm sure the Harry Potter series would serve as a great starting point as well.

I would argue that placing emphasis only on the Turing test itself is a distraction from the broad field of AI. For example, there is a ton of really cool work coming from various labs ( http://www.ias.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/ , http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~pabbeel/video_highlights.html).

There are many achievements met and progress made, e.g. Peters group's ping pong robot, just not the ones researchers promised many years ago.

We all know it's due to momentary lapse in prayers to the Almighty Jobs.

Check out the Beemer class; it's handy but not exactly pretty. However, you can find some decent templates floating around the net.

One of the best comments on this article so far. Algorithmic development and optimization is not a trivial subset of problems in active robotics research.

You can ask the same of most hobbies. I would assume it's mainly for personal enjoyment.

Well, don't forget about fraud here in the US.

http://www.insurancefraud.org/medicarefraud.htm

http://medicarefraudcenter.org/medicare-fraud-information/9-medicare-fraud-statistics.html

http://www.discriminationattorney.com/medicare-fraud-1854607.html

Think of the children!

It seems that you have to piss off the right people, as Megaupload has demonstrated.

Ethics aside, school sports are highly profitable. Penn State's profit (from football alone) was ~50 million. I think it's safe to say that many D1 schools can fund their sports programs easily (who knows about Penn State's future as they will lose future revenue).

http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/10/news/companies/penn_state_football_scandal/index.htm

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/30/the-most-profitable-colle_n_802810.html#s217317&title=University_of_Texas

Memo to Mark Towle: Na na na na na na na na...