We at Qualia Labs are working towards that :). Though we still see it in the context of a very long term goal.

I saw the 15 minutes of footage in 3D on "Avatar Day" and I'm going to go ahead and say it, I'm a believer. There were multiple times my breath was literally taken away because of the 3D. Yes, it's still a little jerky and potentially headache inducing, and no, the CGI isn't truly photo-realistic, but what I experienced in those 15 minutes was gosh darn amazing. That was last friday and I'm still thinking about it.

I'm not familiar with the setup or anything... but are you saying it is certain that a end user can easily create their own local "Battle.net" server to host games with no internet required? And if so, how do you know this functionality is built in? And when I mean built in, I mean that anyone can easily set it up, not that it might be possible but only for a certain subset of hard-core SC-playing ./ users who tinker around with their servers and networking hardware.

And always remember your towel.

Supposedly both (check last paragraph)

I disagree. While the progress of AI algorithms and techniques has been much slower than once anticipated, the real question is what will happen when we can fully, and I mean fully, simulate a human brain. Of course, it's very debatable when that will happen (and some argue never).

Actually, only the "contains fully-featured genie" edition has that feature.

"Fuck you too Realnetworks. You're dead already, but I wouldn't mind seeing you die again." Fixed.

This reminds me a scene I have often thought about from AI where the people in the arena are destroying androids a la Roman Colosseum. Even if you take a Weak AI view (which I do), this is still a disturbing scene. There's nothing actually wrong with the disassembling of a electronic circuits in the least bit (again, taking the Weak AI view), but to tear apart a creature with pleasure that just looks and feels so alive says something about you, and I would say it's not a good thing. And yet on the flip side I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with giving an old computer or copier a good beating in your backyard for the heck of it - even one that didn't give you trouble, just because harmless destruction is fun (think pinata). :)

Nice post, but I think you might have semicolon cancer.

Yes they have. I remember my geol professor talking about trials of this. If I remember correctly, it came down to it that they had no reason to believe that the "small slips" they could produce were really helping. Even worse, they had no way of knowing if they might accidentally cause a full out earthquake by the explosions, which would obviously defeat the purpose (and kill many people).