Wow, sucks to be you I guess or rather those of us who would like to have our experiences more immersive and realistic should shut up an never change things. You probably would much rather enjoy the Keystone Cops at 12fps as well. As far as all this crap about 120hz and 240hz framerates looking sooooo bad, this is almost always because there is an algorithm trying interpolate 24fps or 30fps to something higher. The early days of HDTV were especially excruciating when trying to take 480i content to 720p or 180p. If the framerate were high to start with (and no interleaving) there would be no issue. Most (all?) sets with upconverting to 120 or 240 can have it turned off. Please do so and quit whining.

With higher framerates producers could use faster pans which totally suck at 24fps. 3D will also look much better. When scenes are in motion in 3D the lower framerate causes the target image to be different for each eye and the 3D effect breaks down -- sometimes painfully so, this maybe at least one reason so many complain that 3D causes headaches.

Thousands of Exo-planets discovered. Viking’s life detection experiments are being reconsidered. Life has been found to have started very early in Earth’s evolution. Various Extremophiles discovered. For the last twenty years the evidence keeps tipping in favor of extraterrestrial life being more and more likely. That we haven’t yet discovered said life says more about our commitment to doing so than its likely-hood.

Sadly this article will be linked to a thousand times by the ID crowd shouting we need to stop wasting all this money looking for ET and realize how special and God chosen we are.

I’d also add Bayesian analysis sucks when it comes to these all or nothing analysis with such a small sample size. Bayesian analysis can be used to say we have approximately 50-100 years of civilization left. HOWEVER the same analysis 200 years ago would have given roughly the same result. These kinds of statistics mean nothing until you have a large data set that is properly categorized. We don’t even know for certainty our next nearest planetary neighbor is lifeless. Finding life on Mars would sudden explode Bayesian stats to near certainty that life is everywhere.

I do not own a 3D TV (yet), but I have a few strong opinions about 3D.

At sometime in the future I anticipate getting 3D. That said most 3D to date has been bad or unneeded. I could go on for some time about bad 3D, but even good 3D is still deficient at its current frame rate ESPECIALLY with LCD shutter glasses. If you watch fast motion scenes like those in sports with LCD glasses you see the most annoying stutter artifact from both eyes not seeing that same object at the same position in space at the same time. In low motion shots this is less annoying, but even with polarized glasses and seeing two images at the same time 3D seems to exaggerate stuttering. I have heard that the Avatar sequel will use 48 or 60fps 3D. Perhaps we will finally see true 3D nirvana when it arrives (plot not withstanding).

Even without 3D I would love to see frame rates pumped up. Despite what I hear over and over again about a “Movie Feel” at 24fps, I want as close to reality as possible for optimal suspension of disbelief. One fine note about 24fps and the “Movie Feel” there are lots of panning effects movie producers would probably use to enhance movies if the stutter from rapid panning at 24fps didn’t look so God awful.

I'm not sure why you want to shout Fermi Paradox, it is not an answer but a question.

20 years or more ago we could have speculated that planetary systems were rare, thus life had few places to evolve on and that could have been a possible solution to the Fermi Paradox -- finding so many worlds deepens the Fermi Paradox.

Let us hope Fred Saberhagen doesn't have the correct answer to the question with his Berserker series of novels.

So we find one or two possibly Earth like planets. Likely the other KOIs also had many near Earths that we missed. Eventually we might get some bound on the percentage of systems with Earth like planets, but listening at these few KOIs is like like looking under a street lamp for the keys you lost half a block away because the light is better.

With 200-400 Billion suns to survey and most having Planets and probably 10-50% have some planets in its equivalent of the Goldie-Locks zone, then you are far better of getting on with a broad general survey of thousands or millions (or ideally billions) of suns. I fear concentrating on these particular KOIs will dilute more productive SETI searches. I fear the general public is under the assumption that we were lucky to find these near-Earths because they are rare when the opposite is almost certainly true.

100 Billion is likely too low. Based on a survey of close suns using Doppler shift indicated at least 50% had planetary systems of some sort. I think the future will boost this percentage to 90% or better, probably virtually all suns have some kind of orbiting object that could be termed a planet. Depending on where you draw the line on size this makes for probably more than 2 Trillion alien worlds in the Milky Way alone (which is estimated to have 200-400 billion suns).

As for examining Kepler Objects of Interest (KOIs) more closely it seems there is little point to single them out. So what if we know they have planets -- everywhere you could point a radio dish there are planets. I am a big supporter of SETI and this is all good news for SETI, but it doesn't do anything to narrow the search.

As mentioned I did a little Googling for other articles, from PC Magazine

"We have found a way to extend a new lithium-ion battery's charge life by 10 times," said Harold H. Kung, lead author of the paper, in a statement released by the university. "Even after 150 charges, which would be one year or more of operation, the battery is still five times more effective than lithium-ion batteries on the market today."

Which I would interpret as meaning two batteries with the same capacities have vastly different capacities after 150 recharge cycles. 10x would be too huge an increase in charge density to be believed. Keep in mind we are getting lay person summaries in these articles and it is striking that NONE of them mention huge range improvements for this like Automobiles, but do mention things like Charge retention over a week for cell phones which I interpret as meaning better standby charge holding rather than talking on the phone for a week.

Having read the article (*gasp*) as well as a few others it seems these batteries do NOT hold 10x more power. They degrade 10x slower on on drain/recharge cycles and can be charged 10x faster. BUT this is not the same as having 10x more POWER per cycle. Gonna have to wait some more before you get an cheap electric car that can go 500 miles before charging (though charging 10x faster is nice).

DAMN IT Wrong Thread.

3D may not be being adopted has quickly as TV manufactures would like, but I don't think it is going away. This isn't the same once every decade or so gimmick it was. But the camel's nose under the tent won't be movies I think, but rather immersive 3D games with good 3D tracking.

I haven't yet tried Sony's Move system, but couple 3D tracking with a large 3D display and you may have an unbeatable gaming experience. I am also not a Second Lifer or a WoW player, but again 3D seems ideal for when you are not just looking passively at a story being told, but must move about in an environment. 3D Desktops have been predicted for quite sometime, but perhaps you really need true 3D to pull of a 3D Desktop.

Still this may all fall to wayside if someone can get rid of the screen, giving you true mobility in a 3D space. Yes there are VR 3D headsets, but they are clunker than the 3D glasses everyone here is already complaining about and high definition VR headsets are prohibitively expensive. No doubt technology will eventually catch up with how to make a high definition, light weight, untethered, long battery life, unobtrusive, VR headset.

On a related note, more than 3D for passive content, we need higher frame rates. There seems to be some conception that movies must be in 24fps to have a 'movie' feel as opposed to a 'TV' feel. I don't know any TV in full progressive 60fps. Most prime time TV shows are shot on 24fps film. 60fps 1080p would be much more immersive for high motion scenes. Someone needs to shoot some action epic in 60fps or higher and see if the public responds to it. IMAX once sometime ago shot one or two films in 48fps. It was insanely expensive to pull off back then, but now should be a cinch. Oddly almost every one's HDTV is capable of displaying 60fps, but unless you are using it for gaming it probably never use more than half this bandwidth.

(BTW, yes I posted this first in the wrong thread. Sigh....)