To be precise, the Chevy Volt was originally a Series Hybrid that added a capability to add about 15% of total power output through a direct mechanical connection, because this turned out to be more efficient. So it's a combination between series hybrid and parallel hybrid which makes it a kind of hybrid of hybrids -- a meta-hybrid!

(The Volt could probably run just fine as a series hybrid, with most of its range, power, and efficiency if the direct mechanical linkage were disabled. In contrast, a Prius can run only on electric motors but with a pretty piddling range.)

A series hybrid car with turbine generators would rock! People have proposed additional generator modules for series hybrids which can be added as needed for long trips. Turbine modules could be made small, so that they could recharge your vehicle while parked during the day, though this wouldn't be the most efficient use of the fuel. Conversely, one could add additional turbine modules for specific purposes, like towing cargo or driving on very steep roads. Cars would become configurable!

Just base the machine's emotions on a ruthlessly efficient Sang Froid covering up a tremendous inner pain of loss.

We'd all end up dead, but the world would be run in a ruthlessly efficient fashion, with a techno James Bond theme playing in the background.

My money's on the Maker / DIY crowd! Hopefully, it works better than the Arduino powered Bedazzler.

My physics PhD ex told me about one of her professors. In the 1950's in Nevada, he was working on DoD projects concerning radar. Well, it gets awful cold in the desert at night, and it's still awful cold in the morning. So my ex's professor and the rest of the crew would stand in front of the RADAR set and let the microwaves warm them up.

Clueless, so clueless. Yes, getting some kind of data out of a corporation is easy, and can be done with a flash drive/laptop/etc... Getting data on every single petroleum product trade done by a large multinational in near-realtime is a little bit more demanding and useful. As it so happens, there's a good number of devs with access to the databases, and with the ability to run a daemon which could send the data out over FTP. (It's not that much data, actually.) The disgruntled employee (the right particular one) is the perfect one to pull exactly this off.

Actually, a whole bunch of people I've worked with have worked on apps that route global shipping fleets. Ballast is controlled by a local, non-networked shipboard mechanisms.

Four jobs ago, I used to fire up nmap and scan the internal network, then tell the network admins where the trojans were! (No, I never put them there.)

I thought of this sort of thing in 2004 with some coworkers. The scenario we came up with would be for a disgruntled employee to query trading app databases (unencrypted) and export the data in dribs and drabs using FTP. Outgoing FTP was wide open. The place where we were working (major petroleum multinational) the information could have been used by competitors to make a killing doing commodity trading, possibly even corner a market.

The problem's not the technology. There's always security holes. It's relatively easy to get your hands on something illegally. It's safely making money off of it which is the problem. No way I'd want the kind of heat a major petroleum multinational could hire going after my ass!

Something not understood by Slashdotter! Film at 11.

I'd want such scores for the opposite reason. My doctor Googles everything I tell him about, and concludes I never have anything. He doesn't "suffer from" his patient's Googling. That's how he practices medicine!

It's only a matter of time before we can automatically generate sarcasm. Then websites can have snide comments auto-generated. When that happens, I'd like to see penalties for those attempting clever snark but failing to be smarter than a computer.

Germans will actually fine you for just being stupid. You can actually get fined for running out of gas.

I wonder if Google just absconded with the real value in the chip company?

Shadow of the Colossus was about the experience. Most often, gaming elements in Shadow were used to give an immersive sense of terror and involvement. There are no points in the game. And it most certainly is art. It is not typical. Then again, most TV isn't art worthy of the name either.

The fact that Ebert doesn't cite that game or Eco is telling. Games aren't devoid of art. Roger Ebert's knowledge of games is.