socially constructed concepts, like money, ARE, just like us, an emergent property of the universe.

On a method and process for conveying meaning or emotion via modulation of ambient air pressure (using a computer, of course).

You know, with a synthetic aperture nearly the diameter of the Earth created by fusing time-synched data from telescopes all around the Earth looking in the same direction of sky at the same time.

So I guess Cameron's comment means that they will be putting microphone bugs in every car and every few meters of public space, oh, and all the buildings.

Hey wait a minute, what is THAT?

It's not alarming for people to have different opinions.

What IS alarming is that scientific peer-reviewed information and the expertise of those who have had the intelligence and focus to get top-level credentials in a field of study is not valued higher than the opinion of those who have only casually looked into a matter without any rigour.

I'm sorry, but everyone's opinion, on some specialized factual question amenable to scientific investigation, is not of equal worth.

It is basic civility to listen to everyone's opinion. But opinions should be weighed rationally, according the opinion-stater's probable level of knowledge, demonstrated ability to reason, and freedom from self-interest on the particular topic.

The joke in all this is that what people react to are stories filled with misinformed hyperbole written by the media.

The punchline is that while all the fuss and ridicule are going on among the chattering classes, the legitimate AI researchers keep on plodding inexorably toward increasingly sophisticated and capable AI technology. It has always been thus. Sometimes the misinformed hype and backlash leads to funding boons or busts, but the plodding progress of those actually developing it continues, and the progress gradually speeds up, as discovery assists discovery.

The naysayers are going to be the most surprised when they are laid off by an automated human resources bot because their "knowledge worker" job is being outsourced to the smart cloud.

A.I. is really advancing very rapidly today. You can debate whether it's real or not til the robot dogs http://time.com/3703243/google... come home, but your philosophizing and wishful denialism won't change the reality on the ground, or in the clouds for that matter.

The governor of Hawaii tried a compromise where they would decomission 4 old telescopes, to be able to build this new one.

It was rejected.

My suggestion is, ante up on the compromise. Promise to build the new one on the site of one of the old ones. In other words, don't create any more development on undeveloped land, which seems to be a big part of the what the protestors object to.

And they probably produce these miracle outputs in intense 3 or 4 hour bursts followed by paid sit-on-your-ass mental exhaustion.

Just pushing the location of the the center of the conversation. A standard technique.

At the very least, one should be able to sue (perhaps in class action) for the unauthorized sale and disclosure of such information to 3rd parties.

And if man had been meant to fly, he'd have been given wings. Yeah yeah. Now move aside. My vehicle is set to "assertive" mode.

Depends whether the act defines "Health Information" logically i.e. "Information about your health" or whether it defines it in some silly overspecific way such as "information held about people by the following kinds of agencies and companies".

I haven't read the act, but my guess is it's not defined in the first way alone.

Just sign this crap ton of forms.

Do we need an extra constitutional right to the control of, and knowledge about, personally-identified data collected about us?

Good luck with that I know, given that we're all face-taggable by facebook, google, and the local police department already, not to mention the feds.

Why not replace the download with an error message stating that you need to upgrade to version whatever.

Since they already know which versions of what have critical security flaws.

Too obvious?

Not as good for the bottom line as selling a library flagging tool?