How much do fingerprints change with age? Is this a way of fingerprinting the entire population (that attends school at some point)? It's kind of brilliant. Fingerprint everyone under the auspices of 'attendance monitoring'. Relinquish the database to police when requested ...

Will it take a concerted effort on the part of someone to force the industry to bring down prices eg. One Laptop per Child project?

Could anyone explain why in this day and age of awesome signal processing, hearing aids are still crap? My dad has a pair and they still feedback and are virtually useless in even a lightly crowded room of conversing people.

He's gone to a cool little company: Liquid Robotics - http://liquidr.com/. Check out the careers section and you'll find that only US citizens need apply. Not surprisingly there must be some very interesting DOD applications for the technology. Nothing wrong with that, just a bit disappointing somehow.

From the Codeplex home page:

CodePlex is hosted by Microsoft. Microsoft does not control, review, revise, endorse or distribute the third party projects on this site. Microsoft is hosting the CodePlex site solely as a web storage site as a service to the developer community. For more information, read the CodePlex Terms of Use.

http://www.pythonanywhere.com/

Are they not closer to human physiology ... or is that just BS so nobody feels bad about the god-awful things they do to pigs in the name of science/medecine? But then Korea has a bit of a hate-on for dogs so it makes sense.

How did a such a patently obvious, dumb-ass marketing question like this get posted?

If you have to ask the question, you are not, nor ever were, a 'nerd'.

Interesting discussion on copyright. But what if:

the photos and story are a fabrication. The photographer set it up and concocted the entire scenario to sell the story. So really, the copyright claim is valid since the photographer did do the work. The Daily Mail is reacting since it is trying to cover up the lie it published. If too much scrutiny is drawn to the pictures, then the hoax will become apparent.

Next story: monkeys hack in to cell phone accounts and leave cute messages.

Using viruses (see TFA) to implant the necessary genetic changes to motor neurons, prisoners and other bad people can be 'prepared' for control by authorities ... but then so could we all, without our knowledge or consent ... even at birth.

What is really chilling is the sense that the articles author sees nothing wrong with controlling a brain. Of course it would be hard for him to see past his ego.

From TFA:

"... the free end of the optical fiber is simply inserted into the brain of the live animal when needed, or coupled at the time of experimentation to an implanted optical fiber."

blah blah blah on how this could help humanity and .01% of the world's population with a disability or in need of a prosthetic.

Tamaki is confident that people will get used to the idea once they see how useful it can be: "We believe convenient technology will overcome a feeling of fear."

Justifiable fear. What the fuck is with the Japanese penchant for controlling living things remotely? If the damn \. search was half useful you would find cockroaches and human balance having been controlled remotely. Is there no part of any of these researcher's minds that asks "What will this be used for?" or some sense of self-preservation that thinks, "Hey maybe I might end up being controlled!"

These are without a doubt the most disturbing types of experiments. When the machines take over it will not be via a war a la Skynet. Instead, mankind will simply wake up no longer able to physically do anything but minister to the machines' needs. Billions of minds trapped in bodies no longer under their control. Not assimilated, simply co-opted until no longer needed. No revolution would be possible.

-skynet command- You will now take your life. -\skynet command-

Sometimes it isn't so much that spam is a problem:

http://cthulhuchick.com/296/this-is-why-we-cant-have-nice-things/

Specialists hated his meddling when it challenged them. But specialists often fall in to lock step with incorrect theories for reasons that have more to do with the politics of career advancement rather than good science. (Look at the history of the theory of plate tectonics.) Generalists don't have the vested interest in succumbing to peer pressure that specialists do and so are free to explore whatever avenues of thought they think might be fruitful, free of the worry of achieving prominence in any given field.

How low can you go and still get a decent 3-D representation? And what kind of resolution? Could this be used for surveying difficult terrain?