I'd tell him to pound sand until he can provide some answers about privacy protections and safeguards preventing the government from illegally spying on its citizens.

I was also interested and did a quick Google search and found a few different results:

Male-to-Female Transsexuals Have Female Neuron Numbers in a Limbic Nucleus

White matter microstructure in female to male transsexuals before cross-sex hormonal treatment. A diffusion tensor imaging study.

It seems as though there are some differences in the brain for transgendered individuals in that areas of their brain are more similar to the gender that they think they are rather than the brain of the gender that typically corresponds with their biological sex. It also appears (at least from these studies) that hormone therapy is not responsible for those changes. There isn't anything to suggest what causes this to occur, so it could be biological or social, but I doubt it would be largely due to social causes as that would seem to imply that people could become far more intelligent simply by acting like a genius. At the same time, I don't think it's genetic (or entirely so) either as it intuitively seems as though being transgendered probably produces a less fit individual as I can't imagine having to cope with your brain telling you that you're in the wrong body for your whole life making life easier, especially if everyone else treats you as though you're insane.

Simon LeVay also published some similar research about 20 years ago that examined differences in the brains of homosexual and heterosexual men, so some of that research might also provide some insight into what might cause the observed differences.

Replying to fix mod. This is a fairly spot on assessment. If 4K weren't 2 syllables I imagine that they would be using something else as well.

Funny you say that, but there was a story from a week or so back that just about amounts to that.

They're not, but when there are an ever increasing number of patents to comb through, it becomes impossible to determine if there are any out there that you violate. Add in a number of inane patents like "X, but on a computer!" and it just becomes cheaper to deal with the legal consequences after the fact. Whether a person thinks software should be able to be patented at all, I think everyone can agree that the system as it is needs an overall.

Although a sample size of one doesn't make for a good study, some of the results that this person has seen can help us gain a better understanding about the product. For example, is it typical that a person consuming 2400 calories will lose weight, even though their body only needs about 75% of that to maintain its weight? That might indicate that the Soylent is not being digested well or that it's have some other effects on the body.

At least this person took the time to document their experience. It's certainly added more to human knowledge than a snarky internet comment.

A high dose of anything will cause negative effects, if not death. You can even kill yourself from drinking too much water. The problem with some drugs is that the lethal dose isn't too far off from the common dose to experience the effect. Things like alcohol and GHB fall into that category, where the lethal dose is less than an order of magnitude than the effective dose, which make them somewhat dangerous.

Hey, if you can't beat 'em, joi^H^H^H sue 'em.

Seriously though, the system needs to be changed. When the only way to play the game involves suing everyone else, there's obviously something wrong that needs fixing. Unfortunately, there're so many other things in this country that are screwed up, that it's hard to put patent reform before fixing health care, ending spying on citizens, stopping discrimination based on orientation, reducing our involvement in foreign conflicts, and a long list of other issues. Then again, perhaps the patent system isn't something that's become so heavily partisan that there's no way to pass legislation related to it.

Also if the surface is curved, the glass won't be pressed up against the surface when set down, which should reduce scratching.

If a company wanted to provide this information without actually explicitly stating it, couldn't they release a more detailed report of their finances, including business expenses incurred as a part of dealing with these requests. If they accounted for each request as a flat rate, it would be possible to glean the information without breaking any laws about publishing how many requests they received.

Similarly, they could be taking an interesting approach with regards to Section 215 requests. Legally they're not allowed to even state that they've received any, so the claim that they've given could be a lie. However, if it isn't, if any future reports omit any mention of the number of Section 215 requests, it would be safe to assume that they have received one.

They're already all really good at finding tax loopholes and dodging around other legal requirements, so I would imagine that even if the government wants to keep this information under wraps that some of these companies will find a way to get that information out.

Most people who would buy a Shield already own a smartphone where they can get that game if they really want it.

Here's an example 3DS game that will be out for the platform soon. There's nothing on Android that's going to compete with that. Not even iOS gets much in the way of larger games, and most of the ones that they do get are ports of old console games. Most of what's available for phones are $.99 apps that are designed to be an easy way to kill ten minutes. There's nothing wrong with that, but we haven't seen very many games that are more sophisticated than that, and most of the ones that have come out are console ports.

And a 50 ft. HDMI cable and wireless mouse/keyboard are even cheaper. Besides, the people who want to game on their TV in the living room likely already have a console. Would they really want to drop another $300 just to be able to stream from their PC assuming that they even have a good gaming PC or an NV graphics card?

There are certainly genres of games where a controller works better, but those types of games usually aren't the popular PC titles that most people play and many of those games aren't released for PC. Of the PC titles listed as supported by Shield, it looks like almost all of them are also available for console and many are FPS games where a keyboard/mouse combination works better. The types of games that would work best on Shield usually aren't ported to the PC and even the Android games for the device are either ports of old console games or available for other Android devices.

The Nvidia Shield is a solution looking for a problem. To use half of the features requires a gaming PC with Nvidia hardware that's already going to provide a better experience for the titles available for it than using a controller. The Android game library is nowhere near large enough to justify a $300 purchase price, especially when most of those games can already be played on your phone. It does a lot of things, but it does them all worse than other solutions making the market for the device rather limited.

With the portable handhelds from Sony and Nintendo you get a much wider library of games that you can take anywhere. Shield's best games require you to have a powerful PC with NVidia hardware and be at home. If you go anywhere with it you're stuck with a handful of Android games which aren't anywhere near the level of what you'll find available on the other handhelds, and if you have an Android phone, you already have something that can play them. Also, if I have a good gaming PC why would I want to stream it to the Shield? Usually mouse and keyboard controls are better than a controller for most games and if I really wanted to use a controller for some reason, I can just buy a USB controller and plug it in. I think you can even use an Xbox 360 or PS3 controller with a PC with a little bit of setup.

The only thing that Shield makes sense for is being able to play on my TV if my PC is really far away from my TV or hooking them up would be inconvenient. That's not worth the cost of entry and the rest of the use cases leave it as an inferior choice. I really can't see many people buying this with the idea that they'll get a lot of value out of it. I think most sales have probably been to gadget lovers who have plenty of disposable income to pick up something that they might not use all that much.

I know that you're using hyperbole for the purpose of humor, but there's no way that they sold as many as five. You need to be at least somewhat reasonable for it to be believable.

It's really as easy as that. If the government funds your research, a minimum requirement should be that it's freely available to anyone who wants it regardless of where else it might be published. It's probably incredibly sad, but I think I probably have more pirated research papers than I do music, movies, or other content. I find it surprising that "free open source" hasn't been widely applied to education in the same way that it has software.

That doesn't matter. Nintendo needs to defend their trademarks, even if it's against some no name developer. If that developer wants to avoid the problem, all he needs to do is not use Nintendo's graphics. There are an endless number of games that are similar to Mario in terms of game play that use their own graphics and other assets. Nintendo doesn't bother with them at all. No one is stopping anyone from making a game that's like Super Mario Bros. just like no one can stop someone else from making accounting software. There's an important difference there that you're missing.