What about this: Since they're taking photos from multiple 'flashes' of the illuminating laser over time - conceptually - shouldn't the quantum properties of light bending/scattering be visible?

What if we used this to shoot the standard diffraction grating quantum experiment or other examples of strange quantum properties. Would we see frame-to-frame quantum discontinuities based on when the sampling occurred?

Shesh - read it again buddy - there are 10 cores.

Again proving there are 10 types of people in the world, those that understand binary, and those that don't.

I'm using UEFI on my new Sandybridge system right now - and MAN is it nicer. Booting on partitions larger than 2TB is probably one of the biggest wins now that 3TB drives are shipping (CMOS is limited to 2TB boot partitions). The GUI display with ability to use keyboard+mouse right away is very nice. It's also SO overdue that looking at older bios' makes me cringe. Really? Text setup with what looks like old BBS color schemes? Am I setting up by modem still? Sure they had the degrading SATA controller bug, but it's fixed and now and my board hasn't shown any signs of the problem anyway since I'm using the 6gb/s ports (my free cross-shipped replacement board is due any day now anyway).

I agree, but it's getting MUCH more difficult to crack things. The days of some skript kiddie with SoftICE or the like reverse-engineering something are almost, if not already, gone. The latest consoles were hacked by teams of security experts over the courses of months and that time-frame isn't getting much shorter. Some security like Microsoft's elliptical encryption on their media files has never been cracked - only circumvented when you already have the key. I fear that soon there will only be MS/PhD level folks able to break these schemes, and with such a small pool of that kind of talent, they could quickly shut down or make such activities so painful legally they stop. Then things WON'T be cracked anymore. After all, if you're a genius-level computer scientists, do you really want to risk it all to get free movies? There will always be ideological folks, but that' usually not the majority who have mortgages, wives, and kids.

And just like an Apple product - everyone will buy and use anyway.

The cars! The cars! They run on people! They RUN ON PEOPLEEEEEEEEE!!!
Or,
"No no, this corvette doesn't need gas! It runs on the fat of the land!"

And here is the big one. Device drivers! Linux's hardware support is actually very good but it needs a stable binary device driver interface! Oh and "checking before you buy" is not so easy.

Good observation - but I'd argue that if your customer/user even NEEDS to know to check about a 'device driver' then you've completely failed to grasp why Apple wins the customer again and again.
People want/need/deserve computers and operating systems that work FOR them - not the other way around. There's a real, and big shift going on that I hope we as developers are realizing.
We're moving to mobile devices increasingly - the desktop is dying in every metric of sales. Heck, even laptops are beginning to be affected by smart phones, ipads, and netbooks. Desktops will always be needed for content creation, laptops also - but the shares of sales are radically changing. In those new mobile environments, the ones that are really winning are the ones that are providing very simple black boxes that get me on the web, email, and watching videos. The user is even willing to pay *more* for crummy DRM'ed content provided that they get Lady Gaga in a really simple interface and can easily play it. To make these things easier in general for the first-time device user, this means you *constrain* the path of purchase/use so that it is easy to work out. Sure it's not configurable and you're locked into one platform - but nobody cares so long as it looks cool, can easily be done, and works on other things in that line. The fact it won't work on another users platform doesn't become a factor until well AFTER the person has plunked down all the money. Yes, this is crummy - but it's the truth.
Internally, this means we're starting to move back to vertical stacks a la the old 70's Sun/IBM/DEC days. The users of small/mobile devices increasingly want SOLUTIONS not tons of confusing CHOICES that they need to read about/learn about. While choices and options are empirically better - the hidden quality is that people actually value their time/image and the desire NOT to have to learn all kinds of technical details or walk around with stupid looking devices that look like a teenagers tricked out rice rocket. They're willing to pay more NOT to have to know about any of the details.
What we as nerds forget is there is other currency besides features and ideology. There is time and social stigma - and these are much more important to the end user. If you're in a social situation and you want to buy/play a song or show someone a video; if you have to go "here we go! Oh, wait a second. Ummm, lemmie configure this codec, etc..." vs. "Here's this youtube video....lol" What a difference! That second example shows how you just built social currency and valued the users TIME - the first shot down the whole moment, wasted their time, added frustration, and made the person appear foolish to their friends/business associates. I think we often forget this 'soft' factor is FAR more important to the user than most other factors.
And after all - we invented computers to do work FOR us, not that we bend ourselves to their needs. That might have been true back in the day, but there's no excuse for having to think the way the computer wants things anymore. It's a big mental shift - but one we as developers better get used too.

So, when we're done with the high-school pope/Catholic Church/religion bashing that isn't changing either side's opinions - maybe we can get down to some interesting and intelligent discussion.

I find this topic fascinating - and with a modicum of truth behind it. I was listening to 2 different discussions by old people recently - a teacher of 25 years, and a politician who'd been in politics for about 40 years. Among the good things they said about things getting better; they both said some interesting things:
-Young people are far more verbal, opinionated, and insulting when they converse
-The current trend is that we are becoming more polarized and vocal about our differences instead of honestly trying to find compromises. Comporomises being that we don't either get what we want, but are mutually able to agree on something that's a bit good and a bit bad for both of us.

I think this directly reflects the 'troll' effect on much of the internet. I've even seen it in myself. If I can anonymously, or even not anonymously, fling as much vitriol at another person as I want online without worry of much reprisal; I slowly start carrying it into my own real-life interactions. And since I spend a lot of time online, then I start living more with my online persona then my real-life one that is much more apt to listen and not immediately discount.

Now I'm not saying that this is 100% correlation - I'd also argue societal effects such as teaching all kids they must be winners (i.e. compromise is a gray area or a loser position) and that we're increasingly becoming a society of entitlement. But I don't think people here could deny there is carry-over. And what are the ethics of online interaction anymore anyway? Do we have any? Should there be any at all? Lase-faire? Clearly things like the cyber-bullying of a kid by his roommmate to post his gay sex video on the internet which lead to his suicide, or other teenage harrasment on facebook sites is a clear example that there are serious real-world consequences to our online interactions. So, anyone want to discuss this instead?

Remember the old Em:t record label that published a bunch of early electronic music. They're album covers had a picture of some really exotic marine or land life on it. Nice to know they won't be lacking for new album covers - if they ever come back into business...

This is one of the biggest things people forget about with data security and one my professors at school were constantly mindful of. Sure, 2048 bit keys and most modern cryptography is secure right now; but if you have really sensitive data - data about banking accounts, transaction records that your business depends on keeping secret for competitive reasons, voting records, etc - you need that to remain secure for the life-time of the person - or even longer. This is MUCH harder - especially if the advent of quantum computer decryption around the corner. What if all your bank transactions and records for this point up till now became as easily readable as a zip file? What if you live in a country that when the regime changes, those associated with the old regime get 'purged'? Your records are your life in such situations.

Remember, people can be storing up all those encrypted transactions you're sending around - and when the machines are fast enough - unencrypt them years or even decades later to reveal everything you said, did, bought/sold/voted on/etc during those times. This is a perfect example of why you need to take into the account the *lifetime* sensitivity of the data your encrypting, or you could easily face serious consequences.

...it's easy for the author to portray a person in whatever way they choose.

Amen - I hoped that just because someone makes a movie and calls it a 'documentary' that it doesn't mean the folks making it aren't biased. As much as I didn't like Billy Mitchell's banter and seeming lack of maturity/humility - it became painfully obvious what the documentary producers wanted us to take away. Namely, a mild-mannered, underdog family guy from Washington beats a cocky gamer pro. Personally, I was really interested in hearing more from the old lady that was the Q-bert master. :)

While there are some good documentaries out there that do a good job of just trying to present facts (Into Thin Air), Is it just me, or do a lot of the MOST bias groups/individuals choose to use the documentary format as their preferred medium?

I would have voted against anyone that proposed the health care extortion^B plan we had shoved down our throats. Neither the dems or the reps are really fiscally responsible anymore.

We have a medicare/medicade program that is slated to go bankrupt by 2020, and a social security system slated for insolvency around 2030. How in the world do we expect ANOTHER huge spending plan on healthcare to work?

But don't take my word for it - here it is straight from wikipedia: "According to the 2008 report by the board of trustees for Medicare and Social Security, Medicare will spend more than it brings in from taxes this year (2008). The Medicare hospital insurance trust fund will become insolvent by 2019" Citations on the site

Nobody on either side of the isle has the b*lls to stand up to the coming government services collapse that'll be happening in our lifetimes. Welcome to the housing bubble come to the government bubble.

For those that want to poo-poo this concept - witness a small 'fruit' company that came into a market saturated and owned completely by dozens of phone vendors with hundreds of commercial phone releases and entrenched service providers. In 5 years it's become the phone of choice. Why? Not because it's based on a unix software, not because it's open, not because it offers choice/DRM-free content/or any other of these niceties. In fact, it does all of these things WRONG - and STILL completely destroys the rest of the market and companies that have done the nice things. Why? Because - really - 99% of the average users just want to play youtube videos, surf the web, post on facebook and have it all supported by some happy fraternety/sorority kids. They could 100% care less about some tech feature-list of a piece of hardware; they want interwebz, youtube clips, instant access to lady gaga's newest music, cool fart apps, and they want it all from one storefront so they don't have to think about. They'll even pay a higher price for the hardware, software, AND DRM'ed content to get it. They. don't. care. about. the. nerd. stuff.

They buy it because it has learned how to be the coolest kid in high school - and everyone wants to be around them. You can hate those kids as much as you want. You can rant against them because they aren't the smartest or fastest. But they are the coolest and/or most beautiful - so they walk charmed lives. Why does this happen? There are reasons and pricinples - but it does - and it will as long as we have human nature; any you better learn that principle as a software engineer if you want to make your own way or start working for someone who does.

I'm a 15 year software professional and I've learned that the race rarely goes to the most 'empirically correct' answer. What good is a solution if nobody uses it? It's got to be written from the standpoint that it *solves a real problem* your users have - and solves in the way *they want/need it solved*. The second you say "well, they should do it this way because..." you have already failed.