Interesting. In all my desire for more Firefly I'd never considered that it might have meant Castle would have starred someone else. I think Dr. Horrible could have still happened though, as it was happened because of a writers strike.

Still. More Firefly would have been nice. Too bad Joss short Firefly in the head with Serenity. :S

At least we'd like to hope so.

In which case, it's another case of fact follows fiction: The novel Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers follows the development of an AI by self-learning.

Never mind the bollocks though, this is super interesting, regardless.

Does there exist a bank yet that SUPPORTS data access? I know banksimple is coming with theirs, (http://www.banksimple.com/api/), but they are invite only still. That's probably the better solution.

And I have to add, nor do I want them to kill the book. I love my books, I love owning them, I love reading paper books. But e-books have a super leg up when it comes to portability. I can carry the three books and the newspaper I'm reading in 8 ounces, or I can carry a pound and a half of paper.

E-Books still aren't there yet. When an E-Book as as convenient, as cheap, and as trouble free as real books, then we'll see e-books take off. But I think they've still got a way to go. Prices need to come down, the devices themselves need to get better (more durable, longer battery life, cheaper) and the software inside them needs to get much better.

Speaking only from owning a Kindle, the limitations on display imposed by are sometimes infuriating: Limited type choices, no ragged right, an orgamizational system which doesn't scale past 100mb of material, let alone the two gigs that comes onboard, (Why people moan that the kindle is not expandable I'll never understand. Aside from a wikipedia dump, who needs two gigs of text on the go!). PDF Support needs vast improvements (why, god why do you let me zoom, but only to the scales you chose for me... which are always way too wide or ten letters too narrow on academic papers?)

Annotations for academic work are important, and on the impotent keyboard they give you on the kindle, good luck. HIghlighting is slightly better, but still painful.

Having ranted though, I have to say, I still love my kindle, if for no other reason than receiving my news paper every morning electronically, combined with Instapaper for long articles.

The devices have amazing possibility, but until they improve, they won't kill the book.

Hence why no one knows where it came from.

Though if you're not a fan of scatological humour, stay away, far away!

*islands. Islands. Plural. Many islands.

Quite enjoyed J. Maarten Troost's The Sex Lives of Cannibals which takes place on the island of Kiribati. A great beach book.

It's interesting to hear the government making a commitment like this. As the article has the president saying: "One million is 1+1+1 and so on. Every person and every action is important." Too often forgotten methinks. The cynic in me is losing out today; facing extinction of their islands, I can hope enough that they're sincere, and they others will listen.

Haha. Indeed. Almost certainly significantly cheaper than your average satellite, while giving a flexibility not available in satellites.

Out of curiosity, is 60,000 feet high enough to avoid commercial airliner traffic? IE, would these things need to hook into Air Traffic Control?

I thought trademarks were related to the possibility of accidental confusion. If Murdoch thinks the average person will confuse BSkyB and Skype, he must have the most horrendous opinion of the average person!

Nope; Obfuscation isn't enough. Specialized parsers measuring similarity exist:

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/1998/02/10464

While you can't catch everyone, disguise is not enough. (And not a measure of skill either).