for youth... startups with no funding but the possibility of millions of users and being bought out for $19bn is a LOT more attractive than doing something meaningful for a good wage... that's what you do in your free time AFTER you become a billionaire... right?

trying to make artificial intelligence is the worst idea man has come up with, worse than atmoic bombs i dare say... the one limiting factor of humans is that we die... all the information we have gathered must be passed down to the next generation by teaching them all that has been learned previously... artificial intelligence will not have this limitation.

For example, imagine a battlefield between robots and human opponents:

  a human is killed.. immediately all of the training and knowledge up to that point is gone.

any soldier will tell you the difference in survivability between a soldier fresh on the battlefield compared to a seasoned veteran, now compare this to:

a robot soldier is killed, (we must assume that any AI will be networked in some fashion, just like we do now with humans) the previous knowledge, "personality" and situational awareness is transfered to a different "body" and immediately deployed.

it's obvious that humans will only lose information/skills/any technical advantage slowly but steadily with each death, while the AI as a whole will only get better, more efficient and stronger.

the terminator movies are a nice bedtime story but the reality would be much more terminal.

the only positive outcome would be an AI that found human co-existance possible, ala matrix type theology, but any AI would surely see the history of aggression, conquering and oppression of our own selves throughout our past as proof enough that this is inevitably impossible or statistically improbable enough to risk...

eventually if not wiped out or severly hampered by some natural occurance (meteor/ice age/plague) we will bring it down on ourselves with the false hubris we enjoy by being just smart enough to discover concepts and inventions we can never possibly fully understand the implications of or control (e.g grey goo orsuper strains of resistant infectious diseases.)

*imagines the office of the future daily announcements as people climb the ranks*

general staff...
assistant Manager
Manager!
General Manager!
Vice PRESIDENT!!!
!EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT!
!!CEO!!
!!!CHAIRMAN!!!
WICKED SICK,SICK,SICK...

"How long would any business remain in business if it ignored that fact that its competitors were significantly undercutting them on a directly comparable product in the same market?"

the point is, there ARE no competitors able to undercut them... 2 choices do not a "free market" make...

comcast and att already ARE evil, so if it's a choice over who could be evil in the future and who IS evil now, i'll take a chance with the future...

this sounds like an april fools article:
  At the High Court, Mr Miranda claimed his detention under anti-terrorism laws was unlawful .... In his ruling, Lord Justice Laws

so miranda was complaining about his rights and lord justice laws laid down the, um, law...

awesome...

ok drm may suck, online activation might suck, but what doesn't suck is a one place authentication for all blizzard games and the ability to add a security device:

http://www.wowwiki.com/Battle....

that makes it impossible for your account to be stolen or abused, and at the same time allows for unlimited installs (like the steam platform) over the life of the product no matter how many hard drives or mainboards you run through.

i don't like the prices for games, i feel a lot of them are way overpriced, but for the value of never losing a cd key/scratched disc, needing a disc, worrying that your account is hacked, it brings it more in line with what i'm willing to pay.

i've just always been very satisfied with blizz stuff even though WoW now is completely lame (no no NOW it is, it wasnt before)

". Tilikum at SeaWorld. In 2010 he attacked and killed his trainerDawn Brancheau, in his third fatal incident."

tilikum was a killer whale, not a dolphin.

"You have an interesting definition of "past", given that they JUST purged some poor bastard less than a month ago"
while the US "purges" criminals all the time via the death penalty

" continue to hold a US Citizen without charges"
*cough* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...

" and have anywhere from 1% to 5% of their population locked away in gulags for political crimes. "
while the US has the same amount locked away for the same thing, aka the war on drugs.

"Not really. It will collapse sooner or later, with some subtle help from the South, Japan, the US, and perhaps even China as they tire of the antics of their client state."
as will the US with some subtle help from China as they buy our debt and then change currencys.

thought i'd put some contrast up there for ya, seemed fitting.

I call bullshit!!

they obviously altered the performance of the computers by measuring their performance.

i wouldn't run ad blocking add-ons if sites didn't purposely using flashing, brightly colored, mentally aggravating ads that are meant to be as conspicuous as possible.

Look i don't like ads, commercials, billboards, the constant bombardment of corporate marketing pushers trying to influence my every thought and decision and i try to avoid them as much as possible, but i understand the need to funding for sites that run on ad revenue, and i don't mind seeing ads here and there and supporting sites through those ads, but i'm not going to have them shoved down my throat or successfully get my attention through aggravation, it starts with me just blocking them because they are so overtly annoying and disrespectful of the reason im there (to read an article or find information about a subject) and ends with me never visiting their site again...

it's telling that you are fine with activities that require the same sense of adventure and danger, but eschew the ones that give no public admiration.

i guess it makes sense with the way you would ridicule someone who does something for the pure challenge and self betterment of it because that's not enough of a reward for you.

tl:dr you 're an asshole.

" like flying a helicopter to the top of a mountain"

not design, build, learn to operate AND fly... for fucks sake learn to read. and yes climbing a mountain with only ropes and pegs is quite a feat, i don't think i've ever seen a "musclehead" (whatever the hell that is, i assume you mean bodybuilder) accomplish this, it takes more than muscle mass to finese a mountain.

you're right, the poor should pay the same as the rich because there are infinite resources and people are poor only because they are lazy, and let's face it, poor or rich, everyone has access to the same resources and is born into the same exact social and economic strata, so it's a level playing field.

so the west is better off today because their standard of living hasn't reached the poverty of third worlds? seriously?