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Since we're in the realm of speculation, perhaps NASA found working (alien) nanobots that are somehow programmed not to turn Earth into grey goo.

Aside from propulsion, which is solved at least for space probes, the great problem of outer-planet exploration is bandwidth. Using a microwave high-gain antenna, the data rate at Saturn is on the order of 10kbits/s and New Horizons would have to cope with 1kbit/s at Pluto. This is incredibly small for instruments capable of taking high resolution pictures.

So the next revolution in space exploration would have to tackle the data problem; optical or near-optical lasers for transmitters and standard photosensors (CCD) for receivers. It is technically possible to use off-the-shelf components, the remaining difficulty being the beam aiming system.

If they toned down the technobabble, Star Trek would be nearly watchable.

Does Sweden have jury trials?

Non-TC languages in current use are largely representational data formats (like HTML, CSS etc), or Excel spreadsheets (using only formulas, without macros) or languages with a closed topological memory space (like Befunge).

A (Universal) Turing Machine is a computation machine that can simulate (virtualize) the operations of any other computation machine, including itself, given enough memory and time.

A Turing-complete language is capable of functionally expressing a Turing machine. That is, given the theoretical construct, can the language encode it? An equivalent framework is lambda calculus. Any Turing machine can be expressed as lambda-expressions and vice-versa.

The physical world analog to the Turing machine is the Universal Constructor, a machine that can construct a duplicate of itself or a functional analog of any other machine that can duplicate itself, given enough time and raw materials.

These concepts are relevant because it's not clear if there is a class of problems not solvable by Turing machines (but solvable by another class of machines). As far as we know, human beings themselves are Turing machines (and constructors) and nothing more.

This is a more detailed account: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/11/security...

In short, private Japanese individuals would no longer be allowed to send packages over 1 pound to the US.

German is the mother tongue of beat.

A civilization reaching the stage of the computational revolution stands on the event horizon of a Singularity; some cultures call it Ascendancy. What it matters is that once that stage is reached, they may disappear altogether, for reasons unknowable to pre-ascended minds.

Likewise, the leaderboard only contains pre-ascended individuals (Paul Graham has a higher karma, but is not listed). From the listing we may assume the ascendancy limit lies somewhere in the vicinity of 50K karma.

Is this correct: "under the Patriot Act, GoDaddy and Verisign would not be allowed to admit involvement if they were requested so by the agencies in charge of the supposed domain seizure"?

Likely scenario: they found ancient life forms in lake Vostok, deep below the Antarctic ice.

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

The simplest way is to just make the thing out of metal. Over 90% of metals (especially so if they're easy to extract) gets recycled. Metal recycling is economical and has been happening before the concept of "recycling" was invented.

Aside from that, did they also make the cars biodegradable? How about natural, locally-produced, hand-grown(hand-mined?) materials?

The education problem is compounded by a lack of competition between schools themselves. Children are assigned to one public school, based on residence. In order to switch schools, you have to switch residence. This, along with unions, have entrenched a mediocre education system.

Sadly, it's possible to patent an "idea" without ever having to produce a working prototype or demonstration.

Also, a link to the particular strip: http://xkcd.com/827/

Apparently, it's an application of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalman_filter

Having your organization on that list means that any members of it, or associates become non-persons (people without rights). It is striking that this is happening in a Western country today.

This is incorrect, as posted here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1946539

There should be a distinction between books that can be read cover-to-cover and "reference bibles".

Also, where is Snowcrash? It surely belongs in that list.

Shouldn't they at least produce a working prototype before they can patent it? There's a long way from idea to actually putting it in practice.

Who would want to pay to look at blokes wanking? It comes free with chatroulette.

Maybe the blokes themselves are paying to have their privates shown?

The salient point being: if your app relies on a subscription model, then pageviews/eyeballs are not very relevant.

Browsing through the webcam list (child safe mode off), every other one appears to be a bloke wanking.

So what's the site's business model?

Back when I started programming VB many years ago, I discovered the following expression:

  ON ERROR RESUME NEXT

Armed with only the help file (no manual), coding felt easy. "An error, you say? Just skip and pretend it never happened"

This is not just about Wikileaks, but all websites deemed objectionable by the government. Remember the original motive behind such laws: protecting children online.

The cables are not necessarily proof.

This is not a new finding, Google is competent enough to realize who is behind such kinds of attacks. That's why they kicked up a big storm (threatening to leave China etc).

No institutional change per se, but a realization that state institutions enjoy too many information protections. These protections are ostensibly in place to further "national security", but are in fact a means to cover up crime.

Julian Assage's demeanor or persona is irrelevant.

Let's wait and see. Besides, whore or not, the world is a better place due to wikileaks.

OK, so generic, policy-based programming is a possible alternative to classic OO. Can you recommend a few free thematic resources?

The link did not make it clear how fossil fuels are subsidized.