How about having actual butter for the popcorn? I can no longer get the overpriced popcorn at theatres, not just due to the shitty taste of the stuff but because the "popcorn topping" is full of MSG and consistently gives me a migraine headache right around the time we're heading home. It used to be "butter" then "butter flavor" and now they don't even pretend it's that. And guess what? It's not just me that doesn't buy it any more.

Popcorn popped in real vegetable oil, with real butter and salt will give off a smell that will draw tons of people out to get some even at movie theatre prices.

And a TV tuner.

Reading this on my Eee makes me sad. I was hoping for an upgrade soon - like the Eee 1225b perhaps for graphics improvement. But I'd like an 11.5" screen in the same package as the 10.1. Or increasing the size a little may allow a 12" with a tad wider keyboard and that's getting into laptop size range. Those laptops cost quite a bit more but IMHO should not.

The only future I see for TV is when they gain wireless DLNA or some such (Like Apple TV but standardized). Then there's this big screen in the room that anyone can stream stuff too from their phone/whatever. Portable devices then need to be able to encode video for streaming to the big screen so you can use it as a large monitor (with codec dependent latency of course). That's it. All TVs and computer monitors should get this capability in the future. Wired connections should remain available for higher quality and low latency, but TV as display server is the only thing that makes sense IMHO. They'll need to keep tuners for quite a while too.

I would bet the entire "article" was created for LEGO. They're on an advertising blitz because they have competition now.

Sure they have franchises. But the Barbie sets are not made by LEGO. Since the patents expired and the lawsuits have been lost, there's lots of competition. Perhaps this will lead to the availability of large boxes of bricks rather that just trademarked sets...

That's what the black box is for. It records all the interesting sensor data - enough to reconstruct any view you want via CG. The only thing it can't tell you is if anything is already missing prior to the crash like at Reno last year. But I agree, an automated system to record every departure and landing from a couple angles shouldn't be very expensive.

Sure they'll find one. But being the correct distance from a given star doesn't really make it earth-like. Seriously, Mars qualifies as earth-like but it doesn't seem to have life even though the planet next to it does.

Crappy communications.
Poor transportation.
Shortage of water.
And this dude is doing astronomy. WTF?

Dig some tunnels. Set up some infrastructure. Distil some water. Check on the microbes being bred for terraforming. Do something to improve life on mars. We have well equipped astronomers and space telescopes here at home.

Slightly off topic but:

said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.

I'm always amazed that someone whose job includes keeping their mouth shut is always willing to spill the beans. Or do the people who know how to keep a secret work for the higher paying TLAs?

I swear we were all much better off with software rasterizers.

Yay! With many core processors and LLVM-pipe this could be a viable option soon ;-) At least for composite desktops and older 3D apps.

To be honest, I've seen some commercial CAD packages rendering high complexity models at frame rates lower than what ray tracing can do today. So yes, keep software rendering in mind.

Illegal or not, it is certainly immoral and unethical to disrupt funeral services to taunt the survivors. And, BTW - the GOVERNMENT is mandated to respect free speech. Those whose services are being disrupted aren't exactly bound by the same laws as the government is. The obligations are entirely different.

Sure, but they did establish "free speech zones" during some presidential events and rounded up all the opposition and let them "speak" in a particular area. We need one of these zones a few blocks away to keep these idiots away from the funerals. This will either 1) abuse an abusive practice for the public good, or 2) they will sue and WIN thus giving a black eye to free speech zones (unfortunately this would involve them doing something good for once).

They're being sued over the automatic generation of easily removable scaffolding which has weak points created by reducing the exposure time of the resin at those points. If they turn that feature off, they may no longer be infringing. However, I don't know if that will help prevent their demise, since they've already infringed, and the company suing seems to want them gone.

No, they mean violating US law by purchasing export-restricted devices within the US for the sole purpose of taking them outside the US to resell.

Certain cryptography software is legally blocked from export, and as a result any software that includes those crypto features is also restricted. PuTTY is a great example.

And you think the local police patrolling the mall are up on all that?

If the end game is a world where the robots do everything and people can just relax and do their hobbies, there will be a painful transition. Imagine 80 percent unemployment - not because the people aren't educated enough but because they're unnecessary. Adjusting the population level doesn't seem like an answer because you've still got to have extreme skills to be useful during the transition. Then there's the greed factor - how can things function when nobody has to actually do anything? What's the mechanism for allocating resources? What determines how many personal robot servants each person gets? I'm all for this world of 0% involuntary employment, but there are issue with such a world and there are even bigger issues in the transition to such a world.

Paying less taxes by knowingly using loopholes, shell companies and tax havens is immoral.

Doing so in secret may be, but doing it and then standing up and talking about it shines a light on the problem. Can't you just feel all the other CEOs who use these practices just raging about this and wanting Google to STFU? Consider it a government sponsored (through tax loopholes) advertisement for changing the system. Then does it look immoral?