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Are intelligent machines transforming life as we know it? Or is A.I. yet another overhyped, self-serving fantasy by deluded scientists and technocrats talking mostly to one another, foisting their ill-conceived, poorly-engineered creations on an unsuspecting public?

Jon, have you ever heard of the term false dichotomy? I submit that your articles would be far more interesting (and rational) if you read up on it.

The discussion has rarely been better framed..

I beg to differ. See the above link for details as to why this premise is .. flawed.

Never confuse the ownership of physical property with "intellectual" property. When people are allowed to own the very ideas you think, they might as well own YOU.

This is, of course, a "straw man" fallacy.

But, to address your point, consider a world in which there was no protection of intellectual property. Let's say it cost $1 million to develop MPEG-4. (I have no idea what it cost. That's just an example.) The people who developed have no protection; if they release their specification, anybody who wants to could develop a product based on it. If they don't release their spec, anybody who wants to could reverse-engineer it. The MPEG-4 Forums loses $1 million.

In that case, who will develop MPEG-5? Hobbyists who do it in their spare time, as opposed to for profit? Maybe. Scientists? Again, maybe. But there have been a lot of innovations in this world, and only a few have come from those kinds of sources.

This shouldn't be a new argument to you; the same one applies to drug companies. Patents on drugs are a good thing because it encourages companies to develop new drugs that improve the quality of life for all.

Post Hoc Ergo Proptor Hoc, anyone?

There was no atomic bomb being close to developed, you can get some accurate information. here

What are you talking about? Salon has made it a staple of their content to deal with technical issues since they started publishing. Salon deals with many different issues, from P2P to penis grabbing to LSD, and they have done most of it extremely well. Just because they do not focus exclusively on technology does not by any stretch of the imagination mean that they cannot write quality reviews of the latest game console.

Here, read this or this. I think it'll help you see more clearly.

What are you talking about? Salon has made it a staple of their content to deal with technical issues since they started publishing. Salon deals with many different issues, from P2P to penis grabbing to LSD, and they have done most of it extremely well. Just because they do not focus exclusively on technology does not by any stretch of the imagination mean that they cannot write quality reviews of the latest game console.

Here, read this or this. I think it'll help you see more clearly.

Maybe some /.ers would be interested, that while of course the "Return to Wolfenstein" storyline is fictional, there is a grain of truth to it.
Heinrich Himmler, Reichsfuehrer SS, was drawn to - if not obsessed with - the mystical and supernatural. While I would have to research this thesis, Himmler may really have believed (Sorry, German) to be an incarnation of Herny the Lion (1133-1189). A fact is, that H. wanted to turn the SS into a quasi religious order, based on germanic mythology.
Maybe the most interesting piece here, is that H. installed the "H-Sonderkommando" (German), which was a well funded research project on witch hunts. Himmler viewed the witch hunts as a kind of early modern holocaust inflicted upon the Germanic race ... At the same time, researchers say, Himmler was hoping to find among the old records "the remains of the heathen, Old Germanic folk culture that one assumed was meant to be wiped out along with the witches." ( Der Spiegel (English)
To find out more about the guys you're shooting in Wolfenstein, read Himmler's Pozen speech.

Apart from this, happy gaming

Alex

Maybe some /.ers would be interested, that while of course the "Return to Wolfenstein" storyline is fictional, there is a grain of truth to it.
Heinrich Himmler, Reichsfuehrer SS, was drawn to - if not obsessed with - the mystical and supernatural. While I would have to research this thesis, Himmler may really have believed (Sorry, German) to be an incarnation of Herny the Lion (1133-1189). A fact is, that H. wanted to turn the SS into a quasi religious order, based on germanic mythology.
Maybe the most interesting piece here, is that H. installed the "H-Sonderkommando" (German), which was a well funded research project on witch hunts. Himmler viewed the witch hunts as a kind of early modern holocaust inflicted upon the Germanic race ... At the same time, researchers say, Himmler was hoping to find among the old records "the remains of the heathen, Old Germanic folk culture that one assumed was meant to be wiped out along with the witches." ( Der Spiegel (English)
To find out more about the guys you're shooting in Wolfenstein, read Himmler's Pozen speech.

Apart from this, happy gaming

Alex

To a college age budding intellectual, it must surely seem that starving and being shot at is hugely preferrable to a Microsloth McWorld. Thing is, you're already there in your McDorm fomenting acts of McDissent curtesy of the hard-earned McDollars of your McParents. Those who really are starving and/or being shot at might relish the idea of a chance at that which you are so eager to dismiss.

Straw man.

No one is suggesting that starving or being shot at is preferable to corporate abuse of customers and workers. In fact, the suggestion that that is the only alternative to giving globalization a thumbs up is rather ridiculous.

Anti-globalization protests are about labor abuses, environmental abuses, cultural domination, consolidation of markets, and the exploitation of the poor at the hands of the rich. The alternative that protesters are asking for is not anarchy and starvation; it's dignity.

Granted, some of the idiots involved do engage in a little rioting, which Big Media pounces on to ridicule the message. *sigh* It's a shame how some of the protestors act, but their message is no less true.

"But, as per your questions of antisemitism, quotes like this show it to be more prevalent than you'd perhaps like to think."

This does not prove anything. You pick an antisemitic quote, and there you go! Antisemitism is therefore widespread. What a fallacy.

Rogerborg said: Aw, poow wittle sowdier, is oo aww tiwed of the nasty, mean peopwe not bewieving oo?

At least with my university education, I have learned vague concepts like:

*Writing in English
*Writing in complete sentences
*Spelling and Grammar

It's pretty pathetic when you have to resort to an Circumstantial Ad Hominem, Appeal to Belief and Appeal to Ridicule logical fallacies(yet another thing my university taught me) to attempt to make a point.

I appreciate the total lack of evidence that would either implicate most universities or my specific university. (Note: That was called Sarcasm. Repeat after me: Sarcasm)

Rogerborg said: Aw, poow wittle sowdier, is oo aww tiwed of the nasty, mean peopwe not bewieving oo?

At least with my university education, I have learned vague concepts like:

*Writing in English
*Writing in complete sentences
*Spelling and Grammar

It's pretty pathetic when you have to resort to an Circumstantial Ad Hominem, Appeal to Belief and Appeal to Ridicule logical fallacies(yet another thing my university taught me) to attempt to make a point.

I appreciate the total lack of evidence that would either implicate most universities or my specific university. (Note: That was called Sarcasm. Repeat after me: Sarcasm)

Rogerborg said: Aw, poow wittle sowdier, is oo aww tiwed of the nasty, mean peopwe not bewieving oo?

At least with my university education, I have learned vague concepts like:

*Writing in English
*Writing in complete sentences
*Spelling and Grammar

It's pretty pathetic when you have to resort to an Circumstantial Ad Hominem, Appeal to Belief and Appeal to Ridicule logical fallacies(yet another thing my university taught me) to attempt to make a point.

I appreciate the total lack of evidence that would either implicate most universities or my specific university. (Note: That was called Sarcasm. Repeat after me: Sarcasm)

Rogerborg said: Aw, poow wittle sowdier, is oo aww tiwed of the nasty, mean peopwe not bewieving oo?

At least with my university education, I have learned vague concepts like:

*Writing in English
*Writing in complete sentences
*Spelling and Grammar

It's pretty pathetic when you have to resort to an Circumstantial Ad Hominem, Appeal to Belief and Appeal to Ridicule logical fallacies(yet another thing my university taught me) to attempt to make a point.

I appreciate the total lack of evidence that would either implicate most universities or my specific university. (Note: That was called Sarcasm. Repeat after me: Sarcasm)

Jesus Christ. Is there something going on here that I don't know about? Some sort of contest to see who can produce the most overwrought and disproportionate response?

Free clue: this is not the holocaust, this a system to prevent shoplifting. If you are unsure of the difference, allow me to help you out: this is what the holocaust looked like.

See the difference?

There is a good definition here in the Skeptics Dictionary, though there are some funny RL examples here.

Phillip.

You are funny!

"Slippery slope" is the name of a logical fallacy. You believe in deliberately making errors in your argument. The reason why "slippery slope" is defined as a logical fallacy is very simple. You cannot reason such an extreme conclusion from such an innocuous premise. You have not demonstrated all of the intervening steps. In particular, you've just pulled out "mix in cloning" out of your ass. Here is a fine definition. And here is another. All of the examples read just like yours. But go ahead. Your foot appears to suit your mouth well.

If you can find an original Pernkopf Anatomy Atlas and compare it with versions currently in print, you'll see that this is exactly what happened.

Here's a more detailed article on the issue. It's a bioethicist's nightmare.

ObPedantry: This isn't begging the question at all.
"Begging the question", otherwise known as circular reasoning, refers to the (fallacious) practice of assuming the truth of conclusion in an argument in the content of the argument.

Here's a reference.

Steve

Nice straw man. Really, it's a good one, if not obvious. Show parents who would like to actually parent as brutal, uneducated, discriminating idiots. Better yet, make 'em rednecks. That's an easy straw man to break down.

Then, post about how we should leave them alone. We should all believe you now, since you've shown us how stupid actual interested parents are.

I believe this is called a "logical fallacy." (More specifically, the straw man fallacy.)

Now that that's out of the way, I've got a question for you regarding this comment: Other than that, leave them alone, and let them discover the good and the bad the way the rest of us did.

The rest of us? Who's that? I suppose I'm not in that group, since my parents actually bothered to tell me about that stuff. Heck, they even told me if I held a firecracker in my hands, it would blow up and hurt A LOT. I think I'll let my daughter discover how HOT that stove can get all by herself. She'll never do that again.

No. Some people have never looked at the actual numbers, or they would know that the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo were definitely more destructive than the damage done to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. More casualties, more area destroyed, more total explosive yield, etc. Here's one sample link.

The article you quoted says 100,000 in Tokyo in March 1945.

I always wondered if the A-boms were as devastating as said to be and after seeing the numbers, I was convinced.

I did my own little research and found this article. (Dresden around 20,000.) Seems the poster of the parent article was more accurate. I've also seen a History Channel documentary about Dresden in the same vein.

Ironically, I am living in Hamburg now because my father survived Nagasaki.

Ugh.

First, I need to start by saying that I agree with your point that it's important to conisder people's arguments for what they are, rather than to reject them out of hand because of who espoused them. In logic/rhetoric, this is called "poisoning the well," where you forego attacking an argument because its proponent makes an easier/more attractive target.

It's kind of a shame, really, because this is one nasty, funky well. Dr. Laura is a bigoted creep who is fond of referring to gays and lesbians as "biological errors," and refers to the practice of homosexuality as destructive. Her justification for doing so isn't rooted in scientific research, but in her personal religious convictions. An example:

Let me just read a bit of this [news story] to you: "The debate over gay rights..." Rights. RIGHTS! RIGHTS? For sexual deviant . . . sexual behavior there are now rights. That's what I'm worried about with the pedophilia and the bestiality and the sadomasochism and the cross-dressing. Is this all going to be "rights" too, to deviant sexual behavior? It's deviant sexual behavior. Why does deviant sexual behavior get rights? Don't understand that to start out with.
- Schlessinger, June 9, 1999.

I don't have a problem with differing points of view. I do have a problem when people take their own personal moral decisions, thinly cloak them under a veil of pseudo-logic, and try to ram them down everyone's throat.

Nordhausen

Some "engineering"...

http://www.intrepidsoftware.com/fallacy/straw.htm

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man .html

http://www.google.com/search?q=straw+man+fallacy

I'm no hardcore Bible-thumper, but you've certainly taken a few passages out of context... read them with the surrounding lines, and you'll get the full picture. 1 Corinthians 7:1-12 in its full context is better understood when one should and should not marry.

More power to you if you can build a strong argument for your case, whatever that might be. I always look forward to intelligent discourse. But you stooped rather low to get your point across.


Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.

My first response to this load of horse puckey is "Oh, please!" My second response is, "Someone mod this guy down!" Maybe Flamebait, or Troll to start with. Is there a category for "Flagrant Factual Misstatement"?

Anyone who thinks that Canada's hate crime laws are draconian and anti-Christian should try to live here for awhile. By the way, sir, the reason our government doesn't take kindly to religious schools with far-fetched ideas is that we actually do, contrary to US accepted practice, actually have some kind of country-wide educational standards (which means no entry exams for college or university, among other things). It's not a question of "what the government [allegedly] wants you to believe," and anyone who says that is a whacko and a liar.

As to our version of the FCC (called the CRTC), well, if you think their version of "censorship" (which also helps to keep people like Ernst Zundel and Wolfgang Droege (see Project Nizkor for more details) from being Canada's answer to Art Bell...among other public liabilities.

On the other hand, we have a public education system that's actually pretty good, and the Air Farce AND This Hour Has 22 Minutes. So I guess living in a horrrible anti-Christian Communist pogrom-laden country like Canada isn't so bad after all...

Listen, I'm sorry you've got an axe to grind

My vote for best teacher has to go to Ken McVay, (now well known for the Nizkor Archives, which became his passion after I was his student.

When I first ran into him he was running the local FidoNet BBS system. I was about 12 at the time. Ken was locally famous for his lack of patience with anyone under 30. I was the sole exception to this rule in the time I knew him. I was running a local Commadore 64 standalone BBS system, and Ken felt that I should move up and become part of FidoNet, and helped, through his part pile and the part piles of people he knew, me put together a pile of parts that it was possible to assemble into a 4.77MHz IBM compat. I was in 7th heaven. Over the years, Ken was responsible for my first exposure to multiuser systems (QNX), unix (Xenix), and became my first employer at his local computer store.

So here's a toast to the Crumudgeon, the most influencial teacher in my life!

--
Remove the rocks to send email

This is precious. Looking at your User Info, I see you're from the British Isles. This is the same place where you have people blowing up buses and launching rockets at police stations and things like that on a regular basis. "Gee, the Protestants are going to march through our neighborhood today! Hey, I know! A little bit of plastique will take care of that!" Yet you have the unmitigated gall to push your way into our country and lecture us on violence?

You crack me up. You probably know fine well that these are Irish Republic terrorist actions. Last time I checked the map, Ireland was a different country from the UK.

Secondly, where do you think the Irish get their guns from? That's right! Land of the free!

Oh, and read this too.

Many people mis-use the expression. Take a look at this page for more info.

"Before spouting off about things of which you know nothing, do some research."

Please do. I'd like to respond to you personally to offer some good research sources, but you posted anonymously so I can't.

One good source that debunks 66 common Holocaust-denier fantasies is the "66 QAR" (questions, answers, replies). It happens to be written by two friends and myself and it's a little old (1996, I think) but it's still very much on-target. Most of the lies you'll hear about the Holocaust are addressed in here.

For information specifically about Auschwitz, I recommend The Holocaust History Project's website, at http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/. Disclaimer: I happen to be the site's webmaster. Please note that we include reproductions of several documents which deal specifically with the annihilation of the Jews at that death camp.

You may want to read and listen to Hitler's own intentions for the Jews, which he and Goebbels made the climax of a 1940 propaganda film so you know it wasn't just something he said off the cuff.

And you'll also want to listen to Heinrich Himmler's description of the final solution, given in a private talk to SS leaders in 1943. Himmler, Hitler's #2 man, describes how the Nazi intentions are being carried out. Luckily for historians, Himmler recorded his speeches, and this tape was one of the few that survived:

"I want to also mention a very difficult subject before you, with complete candor. It should be discussed amongst us, yet nevertheless, we will never speak about it in public. ... I am talking about the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. It is one of those things that is easily said. 'The Jewish people is being exterminated,' every Party member will tell you, 'perfectly clear, it's part of our plans, we're eliminating the Jews, exterminating them, a small matter.' ... We have the moral right, we had the duty to our people to do it, to kill this people who would kill us."

If you're interested in the antisemitic movement to deny the Holocaust, which calls itself Holocaust "revisionism," the best source to start with is Deborah Lipstadt's book Denying the Holocaust. It discusses the origins of such groups as the Institute for Historical Review, which you name; really they're just fancy, pseudoscientific wrappers around the same racism and hate that the world has known since, well, since human beings existed I suppose.

If you have any questions about specific matters, please feel free to email me personally.

Jamie McCarthy

"Before spouting off about things of which you know nothing, do some research."

Please do. I'd like to respond to you personally to offer some good research sources, but you posted anonymously so I can't.

One good source that debunks 66 common Holocaust-denier fantasies is the "66 QAR" (questions, answers, replies). It happens to be written by two friends and myself and it's a little old (1996, I think) but it's still very much on-target. Most of the lies you'll hear about the Holocaust are addressed in here.

For information specifically about Auschwitz, I recommend The Holocaust History Project's website, at http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/. Disclaimer: I happen to be the site's webmaster. Please note that we include reproductions of several documents which deal specifically with the annihilation of the Jews at that death camp.

You may want to read and listen to Hitler's own intentions for the Jews, which he and Goebbels made the climax of a 1940 propaganda film so you know it wasn't just something he said off the cuff.

And you'll also want to listen to Heinrich Himmler's description of the final solution, given in a private talk to SS leaders in 1943. Himmler, Hitler's #2 man, describes how the Nazi intentions are being carried out. Luckily for historians, Himmler recorded his speeches, and this tape was one of the few that survived:

"I want to also mention a very difficult subject before you, with complete candor. It should be discussed amongst us, yet nevertheless, we will never speak about it in public. ... I am talking about the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. It is one of those things that is easily said. 'The Jewish people is being exterminated,' every Party member will tell you, 'perfectly clear, it's part of our plans, we're eliminating the Jews, exterminating them, a small matter.' ... We have the moral right, we had the duty to our people to do it, to kill this people who would kill us."

If you're interested in the antisemitic movement to deny the Holocaust, which calls itself Holocaust "revisionism," the best source to start with is Deborah Lipstadt's book Denying the Holocaust. It discusses the origins of such groups as the Institute for Historical Review, which you name; really they're just fancy, pseudoscientific wrappers around the same racism and hate that the world has known since, well, since human beings existed I suppose.

If you have any questions about specific matters, please feel free to email me personally.

Jamie McCarthy

Installation is not ease-of-use, it's ease-of-installation. To compare ease-of-use you have to compare use after installation. It has been pointed out before that including installation when comparing Linux vs MS is a faulty argument unless you're comparing installation of both.

It's also a composition error to project the behavior of the installation program on to the behavior of the program being installed; just because InstallShield does a pretty installation of a bad DOS program won't change how the DOS program behaves.

This is a claim that because Microsoft made money they must be providing the best product at the best price. There is no other evidence provided of the quality of the product or the price. I consider this an Appeal to Common Practice or a Questionable Cause argument.

My obvious counterexample is the growth of the Virus Industries, which rely upon faulty Microsoft products.

This is a claim that because Microsoft made money they must be providing the best product at the best price. There is no other evidence provided of the quality of the product or the price. I consider this an Appeal to Common Practice or a Questionable Cause argument.

My obvious counterexample is the growth of the Virus Industries, which rely upon faulty Microsoft products.

Wow, two separate misuses of "begging the question" on the same day... please follow that link and get it straight once and for all. Thank you.

The Nizkor Project"The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position..... This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself. One might as well expect an attack on a poor drawing of a person to hurt the person."

Stephen's Guide"The author attacks an argument which is different from, and usually weaker than, the opposition's best argument. "

and finally, A Prof's Website"Straw Man occurs when an opponent takes the original argument of his/her adversary and then offers a close imitation, or straw man, version of the original argument; "knocks down" the straw man version of the argument (because the straw man, as its name implies, is a much easier target to hit, undermine, etc.) -- and thereby gives the appearance of having successfully countered/overcome/answered the original argument."

How I do love strawmen, but I'm off to find the wizard, the wonderful wizard of OZ, a wonderful wiz, if ever there iz, the wonderful wizard of Oz.

That is a genetic fallacy. What his grandfather did to support the nazi party has nothing to do with geo w bush. They worked to sell these funds from 1923 to 1942. They may well have known this as a good deal rather than a dealing with a monster. At the time they started issues the nazis claimed to be socialists and not the facist regime they later turned out to be. An investment is about return on money, not about personal politics. Why would you personally invest when you knew it wouldn't work out due to politics?

Remember that when you say "most people" you mean "most OS researchers".

Anyone else (and maybe they're just idiots who have been mindfucked by the ParcMacWin conspiracy) would agree with Every. To them Windows, MacOS, and the RedHat distro are OS's.

It's funny that we just had a discussion about computer historians, where many people took the attitude that they're either unnecessary or just store obsolete equipment (that's an archivist, not a historian!), when this thread is a perfect example of why we need computer historians.

Sadly, words and language is not a simple formal system, as the usage of it falls into the category of communal consensual reality.

Definitions evolve and competing definitions can coexist. It's fuzzy logic; there are no absolute truth values here. But I'm no semantician; there have been many people who have spent a lot more time and intelligence dealing with the issue than I.

It really does frustrate me how juvenile so much of the discussion is here; and I don't simply mean the "Mac Suxors" comments. I'm also referring to the sloppy rhetoric that people use, employing nearly every logical fallacy under the sun, and there are a lot of them.

The most frustrating thing is that everyone on Slashdot isn't a juvenile; if they were, the juvenile behavior would be not unreasonable.

The extent to which the court defined history was to say that Zundel's defense that the government had not proved in court that the holocaust had occured was not a defense, that the existance of the holocaust is sufficiently well known and generally documented, that the burden of proof rested on Zundel to prove it didn't happen if he wished to defend himself by claiming that the news he published was, in fact true.

All very oversimplified, but no, it's not a crime to believe it didn't happen (although apparantly is in canada to print false news, such as that the holocaust didn't happen), but rather that the assumption in court is, it did. There's some summaries of the case over on nizkor on their page about Zundel

There does have to come a point in law where you just take something as a given and don't have to prove that there's a large country to the south of canada called the united states, or equal silliness.

The extent to which the court defined history was to say that Zundel's defense that the government had not proved in court that the holocaust had occured was not a defense, that the existance of the holocaust is sufficiently well known and generally documented, that the burden of proof rested on Zundel to prove it didn't happen if he wished to defend himself by claiming that the news he published was, in fact true.

All very oversimplified, but no, it's not a crime to believe it didn't happen (although apparantly is in canada to print false news, such as that the holocaust didn't happen), but rather that the assumption in court is, it did. There's some summaries of the case over on nizkor on their page about Zundel

There does have to come a point in law where you just take something as a given and don't have to prove that there's a large country to the south of canada called the united states, or equal silliness.

Censorship is a slippery slope; once you start down it, everything is vulnerable.

Well, everything can be claimed to be a slippery slope to some undesired destination. Mostly though we're able to avoid the undesired consequences if we wish to: in the case of censorship the implementation of antagonistic review bodies and safeguards operating in the public domain should be enough to prevent the destruction of democratic debate providing there are enough people that care about it. There's no way to implement a comprehensive set of rules that will function without superintendence - a constant struggle between interested parties carried out in the public eye is probably the best way to ensure that any abuse that happens is condoned by a large number of people in our society.

One holds it out for the world to see... and ridicule and spit upon and point and laugh and use as an object lesson for your kids

Please check out the definition of ad hominem fallacies. I think you will find that constructing a set of arguments with evidence based in fact about the matter at hand and then using those conclusions to draw inference as to the motivations of the debater in question and the value in further debate with that individual does not constitute a logical fallacy of the type you suggest.

On the other hand, the body of your post made a point, and if you re-read my posting you will find that you and I are in agreement. I was simply saying that before shipping a hardware product is not the time to go testing new business models in firmware distribution. Let them get the darn chip out the door and then chat them up about releasing the source. Of course it will be harmless for them to do so (they have patents on the hardware to take advantage of that source) and Linus will probably be quite happy that way, as he can start blurring the line between Linux and Crusoe by having the kernel modify the instruction set to suit its needs.... Could be fun. Obviously such an effort would require that the Linux kernel developers have a clear idea of how the Crusoe firmware works, and given the distributed nature of Linux development, releasing the source would be the best way to bootstrap this.

You see, I actually did think about what I was posting.

OB off-topic thought: can someone write an HCF instruction for this sucker? ;-)