Obvious nonesense, if not then point to the "control hierarchy" in an ant colony (no, the Queen ant does issue orders to the soldiers and workers).

Right, they're simultaneously laughably incompetent and a serious threat.

That would be the "Grand Ayatollah" mentioned in the post you are replying to.

Ignoring an idle threat is a perfectly valid thing to do, corporations do it every day. Ignoring a demand backed by a court such as a summons, suit, or parking fine, is stupid.

The GP (who claims to be a lawyer) is offering sound advise, If you engage with these extortionists then they have their foot in the door and an opportunity to screw you with your own words. If you feel you must respond then respond with two words, "Sue me". If they are trolls then they certainly won't want to spend money on something as risky as a court case.

Yep, that's the way it's done.

As to the claim "The data, in fact, does not really prove it."', I find that hard to believe without some extraordinary evidence. I don't see any evidence in TFA, just some local politician making good on a populist pledge. As for tourists, I received a traffic fine from the UK after getting back home to Oz after a holiday. I paid it because I had fucked up and it was the RigthThingToDo(TM), not because of the risk of being turned back at Heathrow for outstanding fines next time I visit.

In the UK the stone walls on either side of the road leave no room for caravan mirrors, let alone merging lanes.

- An obscure library bug triggered by a magic string.

- In the latest version.

Agree! Watched it live on TV as a 10yo. :)

However since then there has been a growing stream of "cool" coming from space exploration - mostly cool engineering, discoveries, and Hubble style pictures, where the heroes are off camera.

NASA shot Cassini through gaps in the rings of Saturn, twice! However, if you want to see reckless then watch Armstrong navigate onto the moon in a tinfoil box.

The Tobacco Industry would be delighted to sell you dope, naturally it doesn't want you growing your own dope.

RP is an ideological loon but he is spot on with his drug policy. There's not a snowballs chance in hell he will become anything more than an old man ranting on a street corner, not because he has a sane drug policy but because he has insane economic/foreign policies.

Thing is from what I've seen of RP and his selfish band over the last decade, most of them are against corporate welfare just as much as they are against social welfare, (despite the fact they rarely understand either). Since he is firmly against corporate welfare he will never get the nod from the real fascists within the GOP, he will always be their crazy uncle that lives in the basement.

Oh and BTW, even if RP was a closet fascist, paying "unfair" taxes does not mean you are living in a fascist state, even the most brainwashed RP worshipers understand that much.

Ok, I'll feed you. You're not impressed because (like my wife) you simply don't understand the difficulty of the problem. Watson's Jeopardy answers are in the form of a question and performed in realtime, it is not plugged into a database of questions, it extracts relationships from data via an algorithm (ie: it learns), different from how humans learn, but demonstrably superior to any human in terms of both speed and accuracy.

It's no secret that Ang's long term goal is to own cat videos.

I can think of quite a few successful ones between the Manhattan Project and the LHC

This is a continuation of IBM's "cat brain" (Blue Brain Project), it's got a new name to reflect the fact it's no longer just IBM paying the bills. The reason it has been given taxpayer bucks is because the "cat brain" was very successful from a scientific POV. The main goal of the project has always been medical research, AI is a sub-goal.

IBM's Watson convincingly disproves your hypothesis. Besides this project is based on anatomical correctness, it's a detailed physical model of a real brain for medical research via simulation, nothing random about it. It is hoped that creating such a model will give us new insights in how the brain works in the same way "numerical wind tunnels" have given us new insights into engineering.

My dad retired in the 80's, he was chief (mechanical) engineer at a large firm, computer simulation was just starting to appear in the industry. Today there is not a hope in hell of winning a major engineering contract without it. Computer modeling has revolutionized both industry and science since I left HS in the mid-seventies, there are no signs that revolution is losing momentum, in fact just the opposite.

I haven't read the singularity book, however it seems to me, our species may be heading down the same evolutionary path as ants, in that an ants nest can be considered a single intelligent organism (the Borg, if you prefer). Many people claim that the difference is that ants had no choice, but I doubt humans are totally immune to evolution just because our technology now allows us to air-condition our buildings like ants have been doing for millions of years.

When reading The Stand you really start to notice just how much people cough,sneeze and sniffle.