If there is an energy source in the soil itself, why there isn't an abundant amount of bacteria taking advantage of this. I guess I've come to believe that life will evolve to meet just about any condition, and an energy source seems to be about all it needs. Yet there has been no serious evidence of any type of life currently on mars.

Aren't memories great? My guess is you had the CoCo (TRS Color Computer). Released in 1980. The original models had cassette (if my memory is correct) and a couple years later were offered with disk drive.

Floppies were a great step forward then... now I'm glad we don't have to deal with them. That is the cure of technology... nothing ever remains great.

I am almost positive that the hard card I got was for the Model IV. It is possible that I am confusing it with the Tandy 1000, but I don't think so. I remember getting the "card" which was almost the full length of the case and was heavy enough to kill a water buffalo. Now that i am typing this, I am trying to visualize puting it in the case... maybe it was the 1000 after all.

I'll have to ask my dad if he remembers.... this is really bugging me now :)

TRS-80 Model I with 4K of RAM. I was 6 and the thing came with a wonderfully put together BASIC programming manual. The beauty of the system is that you didn't need a lot of theory (any really) to get started.

10 CLS
20 PRINT "JOE WAS HERE"
30 GOTO 10

This was amazing to me. I ended up writing a few games, some math function and anything else I could do in 4K. Later on I went into programming as a career before turning to the dark side of management.

How does joining one group preclude you from associating with others outside of that group? I serve on the board of a technology group and a chess group.

Second question: If you think joining a high IQ group precludes you from interacting with folks with other skills not measured on an IQ test, then doesn't joining a special interest group also exclude you from really cool people that might excel in areas other than that special group?

Third question: Where did I say IQ isn't a measure of something valuable? I do think it isn't everything.

most of them would end their lives are food or slaves.

Heh.

Congratulations, you caught me on an obvious typo.

Initially curiosity. Over the past couple of years I have found the social interaction to be beneficial.Higher signal to noise ratio in the conversation department. I woldn't want to hand around with smart folk all the time, hence my travels to Slashdot :)

I am a member of a high IQ "society" that discrimatinates against the lowest 99.9% of the general population. Yet, I would do very poorly on this test as my visual processing is poor. I excel in abstract reasoning but do poorly in other areas.

What is intelligence? What is IQ? What is it good for? All good questions.

At some point, science just got too weird. We had this nice model of the universe with atoms, some laws of motion and thermodynamics. The universe was basically a giant billiards match. It made sense. It was easy to explain. Then we get into quantum mechanics and everything is crap shoot. Multiple universes. Particles that behave differently when being observed. Spooky action at a distance.

Let's all pretend the last 80+ years of science didn't happen and we live under Newton's ideas of how everything behaved. Who's in?

You can listen to an NPR piece where the dolphin are interviewed.

Gotta love how libertarians keep blabbing about "fiat currencies" and how the currencies can collapse "at any time". While technically true, currencies collapsed under gold standards, and probably at a rate faster than what you see in today's economy. What folks don't seem to understand is that money has no value in and of itself, but is based on a population's ability to produce goods and services. Whether you use bitcoins, greenbacks, electrons on a hard drive or gold doesn't change this truth.

By definition, money is simply a means of exchange... tying it to an arbitrary material is silly. In the old days, countries manipulated currencies through artificial means and like today when those means run their course, bad things happen.

So, gold, paper or electrons, a country's prosperity is tied to the competence of its government. While this is a scary fact, it is the truth.

I am amazed at how many Slashdotters fell for this story. The part that made it obviously fake was when the patent office rejected an application.Try to be a bit more discerning Slashdot.

Same reason you did. No life and nothing better to do. Thanks for asking.

You realize that this is a non-paid advertisement for Netflix and 'Arrested Development', right? This is in no way news. It is in no way for nerds. The nominal tie-in to "cloud computing" doesn't change that.