Fascinating book, not well known, dissects naziism pre WW-II. The book was banned and the author exiled. Why is "Slaughterhouse 5" not in this list?

Seriously. Most cars are overdimensioned, with toy-cars, excuse me, sports-cars as the ludicrous summum of waaaaay too much horsepowers to be of any practical use. Yet those toys are celebrated as the summum of engineering. This is not only a waste of materials and fuel, more than just loud, it's also responsable for many deaths by accidents and pollution. What use is a car that can drive 400 km/h (Bugatti Veyron, the most ludicrous car ever designed) when 130 km/h is the maximum speed? It is simply a case of "mine is bigger than yours", a dangerous, wasteful pissing match.

All three in fact. The use of antibiotics in animal husbandry is a significant factor in creating resistant pathogens, too. One that is forgotten about, but of a much larger scale than human (ab)use of these pharmaceuticals.

In another way, this is pretty much the same question. Computers nowadays purport to serve the user, but often serve others first, either openly or covertly, by installing malware, surveilance software and botnets. There have been plenty of incidents where private data has been made available to third parties without the users consent or even knowledge. There is no reason to think this would be different when using a robot. So, apart from uncanny valley, i would need a substantial amount of trust in the manufacturer and/or operator of said robot to allow one into my house, especially if it's equipped with sound and/or video sensors.

My Favorite ''What''?

One who threatens violence admits he's lost the argument. That doesn't help the bloggers, but still...

Ignore them. Using this patent (IANAL, but still) they could sue anyone using the net. Even using a protocol over a (par of) UART(s) could be a reason. If they can't be ignored, hire an IP-lawyer and counter-sue for damages (reputation, legal costs, lost revenue, etc).

The more interesting subject for speculation is to consider what it means for science if the Higgs-boson is _not_ found. Science out of the window? Money down the drain? I don't think so. After all, part of those 10 billion gave us the internet as we know it.

I work for Cowboy Neal training pinguins to defenestrate suits whilst pelting them with apples.

... I wanted to kill myself, but then again, throwing myself in front of a bus isn't carbon neutral. What's the carbon-footprint of a handgun? A rope? A bridge, calulated per jumper? Aaaarrgggh.... Damned if i do and damned if i don't I guess i'll just hold my breath... (...and no, i'm _not_ being all that serious...)

Gaston Lagaffe.

Finally, someone making sense! Who else can invent, create and use a new musical instrument annex WMD? M'Enfin?!

Ok. Along with Sony, Samsung is now on my personal purchase blacklist. I just don't get it, do these guys think they'll get away with stuff like that? Have the marketing&management clowns that came up with and approved of this crap even considered what this does to the firms credibility? Have they an IQ that exceeds their shoesize? (rethorical question).

Methinks the inventors have dramatically underestimated a) the learning capabilities of 2-to-5-year-olds b) the social intelligence of same, b) the destructive potential of same, and dramatically overestimated a) the everyday authority these toys will have in the eyes of 2-to-five year olds b) the electronics ability to differentiate between c) the willingness and/or ability of parent to feed toy with the behaviors mentioned. In short, this is a disaster waiting to happen. Woe to the parent that relies on one of these contraptions.

The fun thing is that i've found at least three bugs in their example code other than the ones MITRE intended to illustrate. The most glaring of which would prevent the code from even getting compiled. http://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/805.html void host_lookup(char *user_supplied_addr){
struct hostent *hp;
in_addr_t *addr;
char hostname[64];
in_addr_t inet_addr(const char *cp);
/*routine that ensures user_supplied_addr is in
the right format for conversion */
validate_addr_form(user_supplied_addr);
addr = inet_addr(user_supplied_addr);
hp = gethostbyaddr( addr, sizeof(struct in_addr), AF_INET);
strcpy(&hostname, hp->h_name);
}
The final strcpy will not work, since the first parameter is a pointer-to-pointer-to-char, instead of pointer-to-char.