... it's Math education that needs to get better!

This seems to be a good starting point :
http://betterexplained.com/
(Something similar to his "intuitive" explanation of the exponential function and of imaginary numbers should be taught in all schools!)

But then, we have to ask ourselves, how can a teacher properly teach (the most important aspect of which is to transmit the passion for learning) a class of 30+ children (or worse, teenagers)?

Or you need a display being able to replicate the whole of a light field, like an hologram.
(I'm talking about *real* holograms here, not fictional Star Wars volumetric display "holograms")

Significant progress has been done in recent years in creating actual holographic displays on which the image can be changed :
(as compared to non-changing holographic "prints" like this one : https://www.youtube.com/watch?... )

http://phys.org/news/2013-06-c...
http://phys.org/news/2015-02-f...
http://phys.org/news/2015-02-h...
(though you'd need a mighty good graphic card to push 45 billion pixels per second?)

That doesn't nearly carry the rage that some people have for having black borders on the side of the screen.
(Thankfully for them it's the smaller UHD-1 that seems to become widespread in consumer screens, rather than the larger 4k, and the 4k source sides will probably just end up being cut on UHD-1 screens, rather than the 4k source being scaled down, which would result in (some) blurriness...)

Harmonic press release (submitted by an AC below) mentions "4k UHD" and "2160p60" (and never 4096x2160), so it's UHD-1, not 4k.
http://harmonicinc.com/news/na...
It's NASA's press release that used a confusing picture... (and the Slashdot summary then re-used the wrong information)

I fear that the power requirements to broadcast a 8Mpx/s signal from Mars towards Earth might be a bit steep?

Except that the NASA page has this picture :
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/defa...

Showing SD, HD, FullHD, and "4k 4096x2160" sizes and "4k is Four Times the resolution of Full HD", which is technically wrong (see my comment below).

4k and UltraHD are not the same format!
http://www.extremetech.com/ext...

(Digital Cinema Initiative) 4k resolution means 4*1024=4096 columns, and generally 2*1080=2160 lines (with a resulting aspect ratio of ~17:9). It has been used for several years in movie projectors.

UHD-1 means 3840x2160 (16:9), which is 4 times the "Full HD" of 1920x1080 (or, as it's often abbreviated, 1080p, with 1080 for the number of lines, and p for progressive, 16:9 ratio implied)
(While there's also UHD-2, which is 4 times UHD-1 at the gigantic 7680x4320.)

Most screens sold as "4k" are in fact only "UHD-1", except some specific ones, generally used for very high-end video editing, now usually advertised as "True 4k" (which includes a larger color gamut, among other things).

There's also an issue that if you run at 4096x2160, 60Hz, 12-bit JPEG2000 colors, the overwhelming majority of HDMI and DisplayPort cables won't be able to carry the signal due to insufficient bandwidth (it would seem that some monitors can use two cables as a workaround).

We've had flying cars for decades now...
They are called "helicopters".

I like this one!

So, how well does this finding fit with the Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...

Well, of course! Don't forget, I'm an extremist after all!

Hey, I never said that if you _were_ part of the USA' "Military-Industrial Complex", you couldn't be a terrorist as well! Don't underestimate their paranoia...

At this point, I think I'm not going to be too far away from the mark by saying that if you're not part of the USA' "Military-Industrial Complex", then you're a terrorist.

BTW, there are many browser plugins that allow you to download youtube videos (and watch as you download), and it's about to be made easy for torrents too (search for "Popcorn Time"). If I'm not mistaken, newsgroups are direct downloads anyway, so they already have this feature.

It's incredible how myopic this article and many comments are...

- World median income is about $100/month. So "most people" probably can't afford a computer, much less a DSL internet connection to their home. They probably can, however, afford a crappy TV and a crappy DVD player.

- I'm not sure that optical disks are necessarily better than flash drives. They can easily scratch or break. Plus, it would seem that BluRays (which would beat flash drives for the data capacity/price) were crippled by their DRM, and we won't be seeing them used as general purpose storage any time soon. And a crappy USB DivX player is even cheaper and more sturdy than a DVD player (probably because of the lack of moving parts).

- The only reason streaming exists, IMHO, is because the content publishers want to control the way that content is being watched and they especially don't want you to share it by yourself. Because otherwise there's no point for streaming, since you can just download the video bits in "chronological" order and watch it as you download it, assuming your bandwidth is sufficient. That's actually what your browser does when "streaming", it's just that you don't get to keep the video file as it's kept in the browser cache. And if your bandwidth is NOT sufficient, then when downloading you just have to wait until the time left to download is equal to the video duration. FYI, a 700MB movie can be downloaded in 90 minutes if you have a bandwidth with and average of 130KB/s. So in theory, even a 56K (28 hours at 7KB/s for 700MB) is going to be faster than snail mail (of course you won't like the film download hogging all the bandwidth, and there's another issue if data transfers are expensive for you).

- Netflix (whether rent-by-mail DVD or streaming) is only available in a few countries, the rent-by-mail DVD system would probably be illegal in many countries (that's probably one reason why Netflix clones haven't popped up in every first world country). Movie streaming services in general suck, even compared to regular DVD rentals, and it just gets laughable when trying to compare the diversity and quality of service of streaming services compared to "pirate" sharing systems.

- I'm willing to bet that the most profitable system for non-scarcity systems like digital distribution is a "pay-what-you-want" system (or at least a system where your average consumer considers the purchase "cheap"). Case in point : Humble Bundle, GoG and Steam. (Oh, and content distributors shouldn't insult our intelligence by trying to sell us a film download for more than a movie ticket.) But of course the MPAA won't release their control because that would be their end, so they are going to go on, kicking and screaming, until they are finally completely irrelevant...