More like 34.

This is the problem - there is subset of individual policemen and entire departments that AREN'T courteous or reasonable. They start out hostile and alienating. The interaction also starts out at an a very unequal power level. When you are placed in this sort of situation, it is much harder (and much more important) to finesse it exactly right.

It can be done, such individuals and departments often aren't the sharpest pencils and with a bit of training and fore thought, you can work around them but it's harder. And also recall that not every alleged perp is all that sharp / sober or even interested in defusing the situation.

So play acting these types of confrontation can be extremely effective. Unfortunate, but effective.

'These are not the perps you are looking for .... '

Probably because we've all seen Fifth Element.

Right. If there are a half million Cynaogen mods out there, hell, let's make it a full million, they certainly don't represent "people getting their knickers in a twist". According to Wikipedia, there are something like 7E10 cell phones out there. 1E6 modded phones means absolutely jack.
'

Where's the fun in that?

Yeah, at about 300 pounds, 'embrace and extend' would quickly lead to 'exterminate'.

Come on Microsoft. A 300 pound (roughly 136 kg) American robocop? That's simply too obvious.

No, THE PROBLEM hasn't been solved. THE PROBLEM was "avoid climate change associated catastrophe". That's was their retrospective pointed out. Even had they come up with a 'free' solar panel, it would not have decreased CO2 output enough to avoid the forcings found in current climate models (whether or not you believe in that model is irrelevant for the sake of this discussion).

That is an important distinction. They basically ran the numbers and figured out they could not 'win' this one. But you have to look carefully at the rules of the game they decided to play. It is possible that Google could have developed something that made a bunch of money but in the end, would not save us from the Dante-inspired future envisioned.

We're doomed....

I am curious about your upcoming plans. Are you going to write a sternly worded letter to ESA? Have a hissy fit? Take out a full page ad in The New York Times?

Pay him no mind. He apparently left his critical thinking processes on Azure.

If y'all don't mind, 4Chan is downstairs.

I think you'd be better off sending Bruce Willis and a drill. Pull one of the Shuttles out of retirement, get J.J. Abrams to direct the thing and there is a chance that it would work out.

And that is exactly what this system is supposed to improve upon. By using two complementary technologies, they claim they can reliably transmit high quality data no matter what the weather. What isn't clear from TFA is how much of an improvement in speed or cost this is from plain ol microwaves. The unit shown in nice and compact - smaller than the large dishes used in high capacity microwave links - but TFA doesn't directly compare data speeds (or costs or really anything useful) so it's hard to make much of it.

Actually, that's pretty cool. The bot goes back and forth, kinda like a real worm. It would be interesting to scale this behavior up to several thousand 'neurons' (I'm sure somebody is going to try).

Initially read it as "A Woman's Mind in a Lego Body". Wasn't quite sure where to go from there so I squinted a little bit. Fortunately Timothy saved me from having to explain to my wife just what 'that stupid Slashdot article" is about.

The Singularity is coming. If we can't beat them with quality, we might just try overwhelming them with numbers.

At least the Iranians think this is a valid strategy.