Yup. There are some examples of good AI in tv shows. Data and the hubots in Real Humans stand out in my mind.

I remember the scene in The Offspring where Data's daughter Lal was complaining about not being able to feel emotions. While doing an awfully good imitation of anger and frustration...

...laura

It is stealing, though. They retain the copyright. Saying it's not stealing is like saying taking an unlocked bicycle off the street isn't stealing.

You do. Just as I, a Canadian citizen, have the right to enter Canada. I do not have the legal right to enter the United States, but can do so with official permission. Which usually amounts to the Customs agent at the border or airport telling me to have a nice day.

If the government want to be difficult, your citizenship must be verified. Then Customs can give you the once over: yes, you can enter the country, but they want to know what you're bringing with you.

...laura

I ride the bus to work. It's a non-issue. It's the right thing to do. No parking required, let somebody else deal with the traffic. I have a car that I drive on weekends. One day a week I drive to work to remind myself why I take the bus the other four days. The bus takes a little longer than driving, but not enough that I worry about it much. I save up mid-week errands for the day I drive my car.

If I'm going to downtown Vancouver I take the bus. Parking is scarce and expensive. The traffic is impossible. UGH!

...laura

Now if only video ads in general caused epileptic seizures, so we could get them banned too.

Sadly, for me, they only trigger an irresistible desire to close that browser tab.

Sure - I understand a website that is providing interesting content for free has to have advertisement to support it - and I am mostly ok with that - I just wish it was static text and pictures, instead of bloody annoyingly intrusive video ads.

Greed is infinite, and is ultimately about power and control. If it were possible, I am sure there would be those who would own the entire galaxy, if for no other reason that to say it's theirs.

Even now, you have executives that earn multi-million dollar salaries, with super yachts and homes that they use for a fraction of the year. What's the point? There is little additional benefit from having a 100 ft yacht compared to a 200ft yacht, but there is a huge difference in the money you have to have to pay for them.

All those dollars have been paid to a single executive to afford such things has been done so instead of making goods and services cheaper for the customer, or by paying better salaries to the rest of the company's employees.

Executive salaries in the 60s were typically 25x the average salary.
Now they are more than 200x the average salary. More efficient production is not going to change this.

How the hell did the motor manufacturer prevent the flight?

As you say, it's a prototype on loan for testing, and the contract terms explicitly say Siemens get to say what they can and can't do with it.

The Airbus thing is complete bull; they'd have zero interest in preventing a test flight like this, and plenty of professional interest in seeing it fly.

I dont think they will go to a paid subscription model. That would change them from being the only mainstream OS that costs money to the only mainstream OS that charges subscription fees. ms is losing really badly inthe phone/tablet market. Even their console isn't doing too well this time around ( http://www.techradar.com/us/ne... )

I can believe windows 10 will be the last version of windows and it will just be continually patched. ms sees the writing on the wall and when 10 is out they will be pushing their app store hard to get more pc programs into there so they get a 30% cut. All those sales will add up to more than they will ever get from a single customer in a OS sale. The app store will help their struggling phone and tablet line too.

They did the same thing with directx10. It was only available on vista which was new at the time. I think some people managed to hack the installer to install on xp but I never tried it. I jumped from xp to 7 like most people. I wouldn't be surprised if someone works out how to install d12 into 7. Most people will probably just go the easier route and upgrade to 10 to get d12 because it's free anyway.

It's all Greek to me...

...laura

Always ready to jump on a bandwagon, many new buildings in Vancouver are doing the same thing.

Most of our electricity here in B.C. comes from hydroelectric systems, so fossil fuels/emission elsewhere is a non-issue.

...laura

A middle-of-the-road EV like a Nissan Leaf would cover 98% of my driving. I can afford one easily. I could afford a Model S if I put my mind to it. I've even looked in to buying an old banger and converting it myself.

The problem is I have nowhere to plug one in. I live in an apartment building and there is no wiring in the parkade. Nor is there any requirement (or incentive) to retrofit the building. I've talked to the building management, but we've never come up with any answers.

New buildings must have EV support. Old ones don't.

...laura

...you insensitive clod!

That is only for tax purposes, more or less.

It is about rather more, and rather more important rights than that.

Marriage is about people being together, not about the government allowing it or not.

And that is only related to religion if you decide you want it to be.

Probably because Sony's entertainment division didn't want the playstation to be able to easily copy/read files easily over the network because any copying/reading makes "omg piracy!" pop up in their tunnel vision eyes. The ps3 and 4 support DLNA for streaming though which is something at least. DLNA was started by Sony I believe and is a open standard while CIFS is microsoft and a closed standard. SMB was only possible by reverse engineering SMB but microsoft often changes the standard giving *nix distributions a lot of headaches. Sony can make sure the playstation always supports DLNA but it's a lot harder for them to fix SMB when windows changes the standard.