I think you're forgetting about the work Google has been doing for years now with Google Voice transcription, voice search, and the text to speech and back again translation products they have.

If anyone can take on Apple in natural language processing, I think it's Google.

How is this different than the plight of software engineers, hardware engineers, or designers that work outside of the IT industry? How is it different than the legions of R&D folks that are listed as exempt employees?

I'm not saying it should happen. Far from it. But the real battle is that technical professions all over have been moved to exempt status and their employees continue to be forced to work exceedingly long days for 8 hours of pay. It's not the IT guidelines that need reform, it's the ones for all technical professions.

Really, it's not. I do stuff like this every day. It looks pretty normal for a 4-6 layer board with a BGA or two on it. TFA needs to learn about what modern design standards are. It's only complicated if you still lay boards out with ruby tape or a sharpie.

The patent for the device is covered in US patent 7735773. It does indeed appear to be a variant of a Voith Schneider Propeller. The claim for autorotation is interesting, and possibly quite valid, as is the claim about flying close to buildings or vertical surfaces, based on the proposed flow mechanics of the 'turbines' (quotes on purpose). My biggest issue is with the "additional power units" to support high speed cruise, which are not shown, and not well described.

Basically, I'll believe it when I see it fly. Until then, it's a Voith Schneider quadcopter demonstration mule. I'm waiting for a person to be transported.

I don't think people are losing common sense. I think that new technology enables people who never had common sense to try to accomplish things that they wouldn't have even tried before.

His real name was Obi Wan Laden.

The "Wormhole drive" was introduced in series finale of SGA and allowed Atlantis to travel from Pegasus to the Milky Way in seconds - normal hyperspace travel took three weeks.

And yeah, NO SF show has ever addressed the "how do you find a starship in a galaxy" problem (Star Wars, Star Trek, SG, BSG, whatever).

That's because Groening and Cohen and math/science geeks...

Actually, Futurama handled this really well. Just go forward until you loop through the next Big Bang cycle. Then stop moving forward when the new universe it up to the point in its history where the old universe was and where you want to change things. Oops! Missed Hitler; quick, fast forward to the next cycle!

Not to be a total geek, but:

In SGA, the "Pegasus Galaxy" is supposedly about 3 million light-years from the Milky Way Galaxy.
In SGU, the Destiny is supposedly 7 *billion* light-years from Earth, or ~2300x as far.

So the Wormhole Drive would have to run for hours instead of seconds....and as we all know, the dipolarized unobtanium that powers it goes supercritical if used for more than 30 seconds and destroys the universe, so SGU *obviously* couldn't have used that... ;-)

My primary display is 17" running at 1920 x 1080, but that's because my system is a laptop (MacBook Pro). My second display is 23" also running at 1920x1080. And then I use Spaces to set up 9 virtual dual-displays. Does that make it 360"? ;-)

I have an iPhone 3G. I updated my iPhone to iOS 4. Now I have the same proximity sensor issue; I was on a conference call the other day and kept hearing a beep before I realized that my face was pressing the "3" on the keypad. I had to hold the phone like Steve does in order to make it stop ;-).

My favorite part of the NPR article was the sub-headline: "Discover It, Then Blow It Up".

Kinda sums it all, doesn't it?

It's just a glitch in the Matrix.

You can still compile and run FORTRAN programs--in fact, if you run Linux, you might have a FORTRAN compiler installed and not know it (I'm in Windows, so I can't see if I do right now).

Hmm.....let's see:

[rgenter@at41 rgenter]$ f77 --version
GNU Fortran (GCC 3.2 20020903 (Red Hat Linux 8.0 3.2-7)) 3.2 20020903 (Red Hat Linux 8.0 3.2-7)
Copyright (C) 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

GNU Fortran comes with NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
You may redistribute copies of GNU Fortran
under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
For more information about these matters, see the file named COPYING
or type the command `info -f g77 Copying'.
[rgenter@at41 rgenter]$

Yup. FORTRAN, check. :-)