The answer is increased productivity, temporary displacement of workers, commoditization of services that were formerly rendered by humans. People go on living. All this FUD about AI is very silly. How does the world still easily support 7B+ people when people seriously talked about the need to depopulate the earth in the 1970â(TM)s? Technological progress in agriculture. How will the world still have jobs for 8-9B+ people when AI has âoetaken overâ? Technological progress to increase the job productivity of every individual human thanks to AI.

My 10 month old son is recovering from a bone marrow transplant. We LIVE in the hospital. We were in a room recently that had a wireless repeater with a bright blue LED. Nothing contributes more to a less sleepful night for a baby (and a parent who sleeps in the room with him) than that single point of annoying light on the ceiling. Seems to me an old school fuse type device that trips when the access point loses power or signal would make more sense than those stupid LED lights.

IIRC: http://www.redwoodsystems.com/products

From the BDA site:

"Companies participating in the Board of Directors are active participants of the format creation and key BDA activities ... The board sets an overall strategy and approves key issues."
(http://www.blu-raydisc.com/en/association/membership/MembershipLevels.html)

From the Apple press release announcing their participation:

"The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) is responsible for establishing format standards and promoting and further developing business opportunities for Blu-ray Disc"
(http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/mar/10blu-ray.html)

It would seem Apple's participation in the BDA is limited to formats and advocacy. Not licensing terms.

"Apple famously refuses to put a Blu-ray drive in its Macs, as Jobs prefers to send people towards iTunes to download their entertainment"

The only explanation we've heard from Apple on the lack of Blu-ray is Jobs saying licensing it from Sony is a "bag of hurt" (http://www.google.com/search?q=jobs+blu-ray+bag+of+hurt). Yet another Sony technology killed by licensing.

... extrapolate social interactions onto non-sentient objects. Would you like me to:

1) Find some friends for you on facebook?
2) Order you some books on interpersonal relationships from Amazon.com?
3) Club CN over the head with a baseball bat, so he'll stop trying to shoehorn 'social' interactions into my goddamn UI.

(And, yes: This is a gross generalization, but not totally untrue.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal

Sancho, either you actually believe such a ridiculous statement, or you sir, are the worst troll I've seen in a while on Slashdot.

I love this! The "science is god" crowd always loves to cry foul when anyone claims that there are fundamental absolutes about morality, existence, and rationality because, well, obviously we don't know everything. But when science fiction *possibilities* (not probabilities, but possibilities - and in this case, rather far-fetched ones) are taken to task, they want to cry foul again. So which is it, atheists/evolutionists/agnostics? Do we have ANY reasonable, rational basis to believe that information CAN be transmitted faster than light? (Cluetrain: The answer is NO!) Do we have any reasonable, rational basis to disprove God's existence either? (Cluetrain: no, you don't... perhaps you can't prove His existence, but you also can't disprove His existence, either, on purely material grounds.) BTW, The General Theory of Relativity *refined* Newton's theories; it didn't blow it away and make it null and void.

Lets double check your logic Dahamma:

Step 1) Pictures are posted
Step 2) Media makes a big deal out of it
Step 3) Less pictures are posted

Somehow, from this process, you assume step 2, despite occurring before step 3, has no causal relation?

Seriously ... I need to stop feeding the trolls.

Do you really think that the CEO and founder of Facebook, didn't know the implications of what is possibly the biggest feature launch so far this year?

Not to mention, setting 'his shit to private' as you so eloquently put it would contradict the mission statement of Facebook.

Anyway ... them's the facts* FWIW ... you can choose to believe what you'd like.

*Why yes, IAAFbE.

Dropbox is a great "access anywhere" secure solution across all major OS platforms, and using KeePass is a great software (as many have already mentioned) for managing all the different passwords you have. Upload KeePass - the executable and the database - to Dropbox, keep your master password verification file that KeePass creates for you on the computers you use and a USB key drive, and you will be very safe and secure, but unhindered by being tied to a particular OS or physical media. When you use dozens of different password-only websites, multiple network logins at work, and your own home computer password apps, it becomes imperative to manage it all in some sane way. The only way to do this for me before was a USB key + TrueCrypt + KeePass, but with Dropbox you eliminate the physical media to be lost accidentally. (And I thought a while back that I HAD lost my USB key, and I literally started freaking out before finding it on my car floor. Switched to Dropbox later that night, and no more freak-out sessions for me.)

Processing 1.0 fill your needs?

I've been saying for years that I need such a contraption on my car!! You bikers have all the fun! :(