Wait... so by pirating i am at risk of being injured or killed? Isn't that the risk of driving a car? That doesn't seem mild for file sharing.... did I miss something?

Does anything involving RMS?

Reading the wikipedia article another user posted, I see they weren't registering domains but rather reserving them for 4 days. I just saw the new whois pointing to network solutions and assumed it was registered.

4 days is better than a year, but still completely evil.

I hate those people. I once stupidly used their site (because it was the first name to pop to mind) to do a whois on a potential domain for a business. The name was simple, my parenters name and my name, and surprisingly not taken. Then I found out why so many people hate these guys. When I did the whois network solutions registered the name I was searching so I now had to either buy that name from them or wait a year for it to be free again. What assholes.

Sucks for the lower downs involved, but I can't help but smile.

Deregulating everything would have worked great if the damn liberals hadn't snuck in all those new regulations. That's what the real problem is. Without the socialist/communist liberals a pinch of free market pixie dust is all it ever takes to overcome the greatest of obstacles. Of course, that pixie dust doesn't work when covered in a plastic condom of "checks" and "safe-guards"

TFA explains how they are modeling it. They are modeling a specific part, the neocortical column, and they are doing it by looking at real brains really closely and trying to create a simulation, neuron by neuron, including what type, position, and how it interacts with the ones next to it.

They say they are able to excite the model and see a reaction.

What I want to know is if the simulated reaction to some stimulus is turning out the same as the reaction of a real human brain to some stimulus as viewed by an MRI or something. That would be cool if it did.

"unreplaceable" is a perfectly cromulent word.

You can make that check out to me... I will see it makes it to the right hands.

I agree with the spirit of that statement, buit the concept as is has flaws.

I think many people, myself included, don't worry every second about securing belongings, but we do worry and secure and not because we are material whores but because it takes time and money to replace things. It's not that the things are so important, but it's that a few seconds to lock things, in the long run, gives me more free time and resources to enjoy life.

In the same vein, it has always bothered me that I sometimes get labeled a materialist because I treat my things well. It's not that I am a materialist, it's that I am a pragmatist. I understand they are just things, but I also understand they are my things.

Exactly. It's even worse to think of a bored beat cop coming to my door, glancing into my house and feeling me out when I open the door, all in the name of him "friendly" "educating" me about my wireless security.

Why not just stop by and give a "friendly" "education" on anything else that isn't illegal and they feel I am doing wrong? LIke, say, "educate" me about my front lawn's landscaping, or say my political veiws.

I don't think I am alone in the slashdot crowd for wanting to cops to stay the f*** away from me until a law is being broken. Is that too much to ask?

There are a lot of jokes as replies, I assume partially because the summary sets them up so well and partially because it is rather dense subject matter. But doesn't this stuff excite you? Years ago a friend and I used to talk about how there should be a way to make computers out of light and we should just try for that, because, well, there isn't much faster. Articles like this mean its closer to reality. Even if it never happens in my life time it still excites me to know we are headed there.

I am sure some physicist is now going to tell me how it's actually better to use some other quantum something for computing and how I don't understand light and subatomic particles/waves/strings/finnegans. I know I don't. I just like the idea of light computers.

Truckers in England would probably say, "My lorry is out of petrol."

I always found English/American 's' use rather arbitrary. Like..

American: Math, English: Maths
American: Sports, English: Sport

...?