Why not? This has already been done with cold medicine and liquor.

Then who decides who receives these funds, or who is allowed to enter the race?

My first thought was - well at least I am still free to generate an UNattractive cartoon face based on my own image.

I'm not an expert in photography and imaging, but upon reading the Extreme Tech article I wasn't impressed. Their stunning crescendo:

I was surprised they didn't simply go for "you can tell by the pixels."

My thought was malicious prosecution

I said roughly the same thing when the Best Buy CEO was complaining about people using BB as a showroom for the Internet. I thought "You are really complaining that people are coming into your store?" That chump wanted to blame everyone else when people who WANTED to buy something were in his store and left empty handed. That's called opportunity, how do you get to be a CEO without recognizing this? Instead of looking into the top reasons people don't buy in the store, which you mentioned, and doing something about it. I was just in Target the other day looking at TVs and the only employee around was hunched over a laptop off in the corner studiously ignoring everyone. Well I guess an online retailer gets the sale. I wanted a big red button under the TV that I could press if I wanted to buy it. And no I don't want the goddamn Spanish Inquisition about club cards and extended warranties. Those last two are the sort of crap you get when you put stock analysts and accountants in charge of the company.

No no no. We know from "bigger" that it must be greater than 1x. So 'one times bigger' must mean (1 X "bigger" = bigger). So it is just an elaborate way to say 'bigger' just like "on a daily basis" is just an elaborate way to say "daily".

Hey give us regular humans some slack. I think you could accept that "200% increase" and "200% of the original amount" could get conflated thanks to the eternal process of linguistic short-cutting. Now "COULD care less" is totally unacceptable regardless.

I assume by 'the first place in the whole universe to develop life' you mean 'first place to develop intelligent life that is capable of building technology and motivated to advance and explore'. I don't think it is obvious that "humans are the first" is significantly more obvious than the other explanations like they all retreat into virtual worlds, or they all destroy themselves through ecological collapse or nuclear war or nano disassembler gray goo accidents. Or some combination thereof. After all, until we populate the universe with our probes or whatever all we've done is survive some of the pitfalls and the paradox remains unresolved.

Ok, then where is everybody? AKA Fermi Paradox The rare Earth has always been my favored explanation.

Yes I was missing something, study was a good bit more interesting than the summary really conveys. from TFA:

See there is value in testing the obvious.

Am I missing something? "Less input, less activity" seems incredibly obvious. There is value in confirming even the obvious but this seems a bit too far. Plus, the summary is way off since the tested 'virtual world' was nothing of the sort. The Matrix was a full sensory experience, not just a movie.

Not many are saying that punishment isn't warranted. The problem is that the police were involved at all, that's the ridiculous part. Frankly if the police and DA have time to get involved in this sort of thing layoffs are long past due in this district.

Maybe finally a chance to use Tesla's wireless power ideas. At least in a limited area.

I'm not sure "need" is the correct word here. Nobody "needs" a television. Yet I would think you might object if someone came along and decided no one was allowed to have one. I don't have a gun, but I can understand that some people might *want* to have one, either for fun or because it makes them feel safer. There's doesn't have to be an imminent threat for that. And there is no reason why they shouldn't have one as long as they aren't misusing it, same as with cars, industrial solvents, poisons, knives, fertilizers, etc.