77 TB per month is an average bandwidth usage of around 230 Mbps (more if the TB are actually TiB). That's not too bad for someone who has 365 Mbps of nominal bandwidth available.

If Microsoft want to make a home media device for use in people's main living rooms, that's fine. It's actually quite a good idea. But such a device cannot be principally viewed as a games console.

I don't know about the rest of you, but aside from the occasional multiplayer split screen session, I play console games on a dedicated screen, either in a bedroom or computer room. I cannot play a game in a main living room, on a screen which in in demand by others for watching TV, films, or even browsing the internet. It's nice that this device can do so much, but flipping "channels" to whatever everyone else wants to watch is not conducive to the 4-6 hour gaming sessions I would like to have.

Maybe they're going for the complete casual gaming market here, people who will flick over to Angry Birds or whatever. But even the most passé of run-of-the-mill gamers is going to spend an hour or so playing shooters online, and are not going to be inclined to flip over to daytime TV, or browse the web in the middle of their frag session. I just cannot see this working en masse.

Some may call it anti-social, but to me playing video games is closer to reading a book than watching TV; it's principally an individual experience, and the living room is not the place to have it unless you are specifically playing co-op. I don't think Microsoft are serious about the Xbox One as a gaming console. It appears to be principally oriented around completely orthogonal capabilities.

And quite often the antibiotics used in farm animals aren't considered safe for humans.
See also: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130513095030.htm
I also wonder about how the concentrations of arsenic vary throughout the chicken - e.g. if you make pate from the chicken livers do you get a higher or lower dose? I suspect significantly higher.
Some people may also be allergic to the antibiotics or other stuff used and not actually allergic to the meat/vegetable itself.

But what if the AI bunch one day succeed in creating a Strong AI on a conventional computer?

Would different Strong AIs on the same hardware still be considered the same computer?

"Want to know how much my flat is worth and what I paid for it? Did I pay taxes last year, and if so, how much?"

Yes! Finally!

The problem is that Ubuntu touch doesn't support the 1x1 screen resolution. We need the inventor to release the specs so a Mir graphics driver can be written. I've tried an alpha version and personally find the scroll bars tricky, but then that's always been a problem with Unity. This is the problem with Canonical trying to get one OS to work every device.

Phillip.

"it would just force these hypothetical dirty bomb enthusiasts to line the bomb container with lead"

A friend of mine works for a company making detectors for ports.

I said to him "But terrorists will just ship them in in lead-lined boxes", and he told me that that would cause a measurable drop in the background radiation which would trigger suspicions.

So says the 'chicken little' AC. Next year we'll find out if everything the GOP has been claiming for the last 5 years is really true. I believe that they will be proven wrong while millions of Americans who had pre-existing conditions will be able to find coverage at normal cost and many thousands will not lose coverage in the middle of an illness. While many millions more American will find better coverage, many at significant savings than they would have paid previously.

Meanwhile, the medicare cuts made by the ACA (aka Obamacare) which the GOP claimed would kill, have contributed to a 5% savings in Medicare costs which has reduced the budget deficit even more than expected. Every year the Republicans have been claiming that we are at the doorstep of disaster, and seemingly despite their best efforts, it has not happened. The question is when the stop being pessimistic and start claiming 'victory', how do they claim Obamacare was their idea?

How about these aimbots:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Dome
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS

I prefer using shoes. The "barefoot is superior" bunch are silly- just because you run with shoes doesn't mean you have to run the wrong style.

As for the long distance running adaptation, my hypothesis is we might have evolved that not mainly because of persistent hunting but because of war. There's not really much selection pressure for persistent hunting if you are a social animal (like humans and apes) you can hunt very successfully in groups - lions, hyenas, wolves, dogs, apes etc do it.

In contrast war could have produced rather significant selection pressures. In human-human wars, the predator and prey are the same species- whatever big advantage you have is likely to be in the next generation of survivors. Being able to run away from dozens of persistent enemies till you find a hiding place or till the sun sets keeps your genes alive. In contrast being able to sprint at 80kph for a minute when the enemy can also sprint at 80kph for a minute doesn't help much with your survival when there are many enemies. Being able to run long distances to attack an enemy or carry messages is also helpful.

I think we should start with replicas of a paramecium or an amoeba or a white blood cell to 99.99%.

Not a simplified model. An actual replica that behaves in a near identical fashion to the real thing (e.g. if you make a hole in its membrane, you can watch it repair itself etc). If we can't even do that yet why talk about replicating a human brain?

Once we can do single cells, try creatures with tens then hundreds, thousands of neurons and so on.

It may also turn out that some single celled creatures aren't that stupid- and they're as smart as a worm, if not smarter, and it's just that it's impractical to have a single neuron controlling the whole worm - no redundancy, no convenient interfaces.

I once renamed shutdown.exe from the Windows resource kit to DONOTRUN.exe, and sent it in a mail round to the company (in the I love you/Melissa days), warning people in the subject, and message to NOT RUN THE ATTACHED attachment.

People then started coming to me complaining they'd lost work because their computer had shutdown.

It's amazing, it really is.

Not to mention data storage and transmission. That's the thing that's currently causing headaches: petabyte /scratch systems that don't go down when you look at them sideways and then similar systems to hold all that crap you just dumped on /scratch!

If reporters come to understand that the administration came after them on a fishing expedition, which is what this was, they will not be happy.

Reporters are, on the whole, pretty unintelligent and shallow people who write the stories they are told, in the way they are told, by their editors, and who without such direct instruction quickly lapse back into gossip, lattes, and twitter feeds. I doubt most journalists have even heard of this story.

If Holder knew about Breuer's decision not to prosecute any bankers -- he did -- then he should fired for that alone. Unfortunately, Holder is in his position precisely because he did know this, and because he will uphold the law in as dysfunctional a manner as the administration desires.

Sometimes I think the only reason they are getting away with this is because Obama is the President and liberals and progressives are unwilling to challenge him, and conservatives are secretly cheering the whole thing on. But secretly, deep down, I understand that this is all just fallout from September 11th 2001, and that the United States of America will never be able to go back to the way it was.

Which is a big problem for the rest of us.