You often tell jokes that rely on fairly advanced math, science or economics. Have there been any jokes you scrapped because you thought they were *too* advanced for your audience?
The lack of a prescriptive body for English is a historical accident, the same way the United Kingdom doesn't have a constitution, just a shitload of case law, treaties and statutes. For quite some time, Norman French was the language of government - naturally, the government did not try to regulate the grammar of a language they never spoke. After that, it was a populist thing - trying to formalize English would cause backlash at your supposed elitism. There was a brief window where a prescriptive body could have been formed, but soon enough there were too many far-flung colonies (and then former colonies) to do so effectively. Now you can't get a single prescriptive body at all, because the British will never bow to an American body, the Americans will never bow to a British body, and there's enough foreign speakers that they could arguably form their own prescriptive body and make it stick to everyone but the biggest two.
It also fails to note how prescriptive bodies often fail when they try to dictate usage, instead of formalizing actual usage. The French Academy, for instance, insists that the proper word for email is "courrier electronique". Informally, most French just use "email" or "mel", and the Quebecois managed to standardize "courriel". It's a bit of a joke, really, how little authority the French Academy actually has to dictate French.
Prescriptivism is fundamentally unworkable for languages in general use. The best prescriptive bodies do not dictate language, but formalize existing practices, and standardize where inconsistent. They may title themselves prescriptive bodies, and may sometimes try to dictate usage themselves (and usually fail), but at heart they are not prescriptivist.
There's a continuum of sorts between gas giant planets and dwarf stars, with a few notable points where you could draw the distinction. They all come from the same general start - a cloud of interstellar gas collapses into a spherical object. Depending on how big it is, you can get different objects.
First you have gas giants, no fusion at all. This would be your Jupiter and Saturn type planets. Jupiter is actually about as big, volume-wise, as a gas giant can get. Add more mass, and it starts getting denser rather than bigger. At 13 Jupiter masses, you have enough gravitational pressure to fuse deuterium. This is what most astronomers define as a brown dwarf star, but others, and apparently you, consider it to still be a planet. Previous terminology included "substar", which I would not be opposed to. Deuterium isn't particularly common, so these objects glow very dimly, as far as stars go. At 65 Jupiter masses, you can start fusing lithium as well. This is one way to distinguish brown dwarfs from other stars - red dwarfs and yellow dwarfs, like our sun, consume their starting lithium very quickly, and so the presence of lithium spectra indicates a brown dwarf. At around 80 Jupiter masses, it starts fusing hydrogen, becoming a red dwarf, like Proxima Centauri. Still very dim, but at this point it's undeniably a star. At around 750 Jupiter masses, the star develops a more complex internal structure, and becomes a yellow dwarf, such as Sol.
So where do you draw the line? Anywhere you want, but most astronomers settled on the simplest one: if it's undergoing fusion, it's a star, if it isn't, it's a planet.
Ever since I heard the "dehydrated water" joke, I thought it would be a brilliant name for a water-purification powder, like the stuff you use while camping.
Instant water, just add water - but the water you add doesn't have to be clean, and the water you get is drinkable. Memorable brand if nothing else.
Their Bill of Rights is very broad, covered in Chapter 2 of their constitution. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer in any country, and this was my first time even reading their constitution, but it seems pretty obvious that it won't allow censorship of the internet.
Section 16: "Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, which includes [...] freedom to receive or impart information or ideas"
Section 32: "Everyone has the right of access to any information held by the state; and any information that is held by another person and that is required for the exercise or protection of any rights"
Depending on implementation, if might also breach Section 14: "Everyone has the right to privacy, which includes the right not to have [...] the privacy of their communications infringed"... I kinda want this bill of rights in my own country. Gotta say, it looks pretty nice.
Okay - but what USB host controller provides only one port? Every USB 3.1 controller I found provides two ports each, and even if that wasn't the case, an integrated USB hub would be easily usable.
Oh, I'm not even in the MacBook Pro's target market, let alone the Air's. My current laptop's power brick weighs more than the Air, and I'm just fine with that so long as it has enough compute power for me.
However, there are plenty of Air competitors now. Pretty much anything classified as an "Ultrabook". Most of them are fairly decent.
Here's Apple's real problem: the MacBook Air is a better laptop in almost every aspect. * The MacBook Air is significantly cheaper * The MacBook Air is significantly more powerful * The MacBook Air has much better connectivity and usability * The MacBook Air requires no external adapters besides power, the MacBook will likely be used with a video and/or network adapter as well
* The MacBook has a better display * The MacBook is 15% lighter and 25% thinner, but they're practically indistinguishable compared to regular laptops, or even the MacBook Pro
Honestly, what they should have done is this: Make a new MacBook Air using most of the MacBook's features (thinner, USB-C ports for charging/connectivity), make the better display an add-on option (to keep the MBA as the entry-level Mac option), and don't needlessly split your product line.
That's one of the few things Jobs did that I won't argue with - he streamlined the product lineup. When there were multiple computers that fit the same niche, he ditched all but one. The MacBook and MacBook Air now fit the same niche - almost exactly. There is zero reason for them to both exist.
I do like the idea of ditching legacy ports for thinness. I wouldn't need it myself, but I like the idea. But just one USB-C port, period? If it were me, I'd have four USB-C ports, a Mini-DisplayPort or Thunderbolt (or two, even), an audio port, and maybe a Micro-HDMI (since HDMI is way more common than DisplayPort, and you can convert Micro-HDMI to HDMI with a dirt-cheap passive cable). That's more than enough connectivity, but it still uses nothing that would impact your thickness. There's no need to limit it to just one USB port.
I have been developing a game based on the Cube 2 engine, specifically the Red Eclipse fork. The benefits, as I saw it, was that the engine was Zlib-licensed, and most of the game code was re-usable (both Red Eclipse and my game are first-person arena shooters). The downsides were the lack of experience - the code is unfamiliar and sparsely-documented (and in some places downright bad), not many people are familiar with the level editor, and the model import system is not the most artist-friendly.
Currently it's at a proof-of-concept state - it's playable, the core gameplay is there, but it's using Red Eclipse assets that are CC-licensed, not suitable for commercial release, and the few maps are blocky and spartan.
I am seriously considering a switch to Source 2, because I'm much, much more familiar with Hammer and SMDs than with the Cube 2 asset toolchain, and I'm sure some of my Source modding experience will carry over to Source 2. I'm waiting for more details, though, particularly regarding the toolchain. I'd have to redo pretty much everything, but it would likely make for a far better product. Particularly if it ends up being ported to consoles - Red Eclipse lacks gamepad support, and having seen the code, it's not an easy thing to add.
Let's split pirating into two crimes: IP Theft IP Infringement
IP infringement would be commercially using someone's IP as though it were your own. Selling bootleg DVDs, straight-up counterfeiting, plus corporate copyright/patent/trademark infringement. This can be left under the laws currently.
IP theft would be equivalent to regular theft of the same product, for non-commercial personal use. If you have to make it a separate crime, give it penalties on the scale of "five times the retail value of the product" - this should be a misdemeanor, not a felony, crime.
This was such a blatantly anti-customer move that I will never - NEVER - be a Lenovo customer again. They cannot be trusted, and probably can never be trusted again because any "change" could just be a whitewashing campaign, not a real change.
This is simply more evidence that they deserve all the shit they're getting, and more.
Well, there's one simple brute-force solution: create a world government. If one government runs everything, they get automatic jurisdiction over everything, and have one universal set of laws to apply everywhere.
Which, when you think about it, kinda makes sense. It's weird that laws change based on which arbitrary piece of dirt you happen to be standing on.
The measures of how well an economy is working is not "how much money is in the system", but "how much money is moving", and "how much of the economic system does that money reach?". Money that does not move does not do work, and people that do not give and receive money are not part of the economic system.
Consider two hydraulic systems. One has a massive 200L of hydraulic fluid since it leaks so much, but most of it is in a reservoir, and it only produces 10N of work on a small 10cm^2 area. The other has only 1L of hydraulic fluid, but it reaches pressures of 10Pa, doing several kilonewtons of work.
Which one is working better? Obviously the second one.
Oil-based Middle-Eastern economies are like the first one. They may make a lot of money, but only a few people get that money or its benefits, and the money leaks out of the country almost immediately.
A good economy is like America's, or Germany's (and yes, these economies are relatively good - could be better, but good). The money does pool around the rich, but not nearly as much (most of the "wealth" of the ultra-rich is in assets, not cash), and the trade with foreign countries is mostly balanced. Mostly. And there are very few people who do not participate in the economy - even people on welfare get money, then spend it. They're idle parts in the machine, but still part of the machine.
ISIS thrives because they're getting money in from elsewhere (coughsaudiarabiacough), and getting the cheapest possible people you can.
The problem is that ones of those rules we follow is "go in guns blazing".
You want to stop ISIS? Fix the Middle-East's economy. Give people stable, productive jobs. That alone will slash recruitment simply by giving most of their local recruits a better option, one they currently *do* *not* *have*. Most of the local ISIS recruits are in ISIS simply because it pays. Not well, but better than nothing. Same goes for al-Shabaab and al-Quaeda and Boko Haram and pretty much every terrorist group operating from a third-world country.
You want to make sure ISIS doesn't come back the next time a depression hits? Build schools, staff them - an educated populace won't fall for the simple rhetoric of the mob-leader. Build mosques, staff them with liberal imams, to dilute the message of the bad ones. Build infrastructure so they can actually communicate with the rest of the world. Bring them up to a modern level, just to give them something to lose, if they fall again - most of them see ISIS as a viable cause because they don't really have anything to lose.
A military solution - ANY military solution, up to and including "nuke the entire subcontinent into glass" - is at best temporary. In a good solution, the military will only be used as a stopgap to make it safe enough to implement the real solution.
It's not Beta. It still works, more-or-less. Beta had a comment section that was completely impossible to browse or work with - considering the comments are the only real draw, it's no surprise it was dead on arrival.
This looks like just some styling to make Slashdot look less 2002. Still odd that they don't talk about it, but that's Dice for you. We're no longer the "community", we're the "audience"; we're supposed to just sit there and take it.
Making decisions like this requires consideration of the consequences, which is the very definition of sapience.
If the robot is non-sapient, but simply has a configured list of users who it may or may not serve alcohol, the decision was made by the person who configured it. This would be an acceptable solution, although cumbersome and inflexible. Probably wouldn't work well enough for public bartending, but a robo-butler could work this way.
If the robot is sapient, it would be capable of making such decisions on its own. In fact, you might see robots refuse to serve alcohol at all, claiming moral reasons. On the other hand, you might see libertarian robots refuse to *not* serve someone alcohol, if they value people's right to self-determination. This would also be acceptable, but we are nowhere near this level of AI.
If the robot is non-sapient, but still expected to identify children and alcoholics on its own, problems will result. Detecting children is possible, with some false-positives (it's hard to tell a 20-year-old from a 21-year-old by appearance) and false-negatives (dwarfs/midgets/little people/hobbits/whatever the current PC term is), but how do you detect an alcoholic by their appearance?
The obvious solution for non-sapient robots requiring more flexibility than simple whitelists/blacklists, since alcohol is already a controlled substance, is to have robots require you to present ID for alcohol, and perhaps add a feature to IDs to show "recovering alcoholic, do not give alcohol" if we decide that's something that's important. Then again, we've not felt the need for that yet, with human bartenders, so maybe this whole debate is over something we've already as a society decided isn't an issue.
ASW aircraft are essentially specialized to the point that ALL they can do is ASW, and they do not operate solo. Strategically, you can treat them more as an ASW component of their carrier ship, than as individual participants in the battle.
I'm not going to argue your main points, but as a less partial party I need to raise some points of my own. This is less aimed at you (I'm sure you know everything I'm about to say), and more aimed at the other readers, to give them a more objective viewpoint.
1. The natural counter to a submarine is another submarine. Russia and China may not be able to match us fleet-for-fleet, but assuming they're the aggressors, they'll be able to bring all their force to bear at one point, outnumbering us in the battle but not the war. Do we have half our submarine fleet or more near Taiwan at all times? If not, they can make a reasonable attempt at crossing.
2. Submarines and aircraft basically can't touch each other (specialized ASW aircraft notwithstanding). If the entire Russian Tu-95 fleet flies over the entire US submarine fleet, neither one will do anything to the other. They might not even notice each other. Fleets and aircraft carriers are declining in primacy as aircraft ranges increase. We flew a B-52 combat mission from America to Iraq and back without landing - aircraft carriers, and thus navies in general, are no longer the sole way to project power. If America and Russia finally go to war, the winner will probably be the one who wins the air war, not the one who wins the sea war or land war. (Of course, with nuclear missiles in play in a US-Ru war, the real winner would be China, unless one of us decides to nuke them anyways while we're at it).
3. Consider the effect of naval drones. How many small boats is an aircraft carrier able to fight off? Imagine a USS Cole scenario, except instead of just one suicide boat masquerading as a civilian, it's dozens or even hundreds of suicide drones. You don't need to take my word for how effective these would be, there were Navy wargames for asymmetric warfare that had a "fleet" much like I proposed take out the entire Blue-team fleet, which was basically a full carrier group (the brassholes decided this was "cheating" and ordered the wargames to continue according to a script guaranteeing Blue-team victory) [citation: look up "Millennium Challenge 2002"]. Surface drones may be no threat to our subs, but our subs are similarly no threat to them, and eventually someone will get submarine drones usable. At that point, they're basically just really smart torpedoes with trans-Atlantic range. I'm not sure what the counter for *that* is, except for "not being in the water" (see point 2).
When your main means of detection is listening, yes, it is.
Submarines, when they really don't want to be found, shut down. If diesel-powered, they shut the engine down and run off battery. If nuclear, they run the reactor at as low a power as possible. They turn off as much machinery as possible. They stop the screw and stay still - resting on the surface, or just floating in the middle of the ocean.
Slashdot Mirror
You often tell jokes that rely on fairly advanced math, science or economics. Have there been any jokes you scrapped because you thought they were *too* advanced for your audience?
Well, you've perked my interest.
The lack of a prescriptive body for English is a historical accident, the same way the United Kingdom doesn't have a constitution, just a shitload of case law, treaties and statutes. For quite some time, Norman French was the language of government - naturally, the government did not try to regulate the grammar of a language they never spoke. After that, it was a populist thing - trying to formalize English would cause backlash at your supposed elitism. There was a brief window where a prescriptive body could have been formed, but soon enough there were too many far-flung colonies (and then former colonies) to do so effectively. Now you can't get a single prescriptive body at all, because the British will never bow to an American body, the Americans will never bow to a British body, and there's enough foreign speakers that they could arguably form their own prescriptive body and make it stick to everyone but the biggest two.
It also fails to note how prescriptive bodies often fail when they try to dictate usage, instead of formalizing actual usage. The French Academy, for instance, insists that the proper word for email is "courrier electronique". Informally, most French just use "email" or "mel", and the Quebecois managed to standardize "courriel". It's a bit of a joke, really, how little authority the French Academy actually has to dictate French.
Prescriptivism is fundamentally unworkable for languages in general use. The best prescriptive bodies do not dictate language, but formalize existing practices, and standardize where inconsistent. They may title themselves prescriptive bodies, and may sometimes try to dictate usage themselves (and usually fail), but at heart they are not prescriptivist.
There's a continuum of sorts between gas giant planets and dwarf stars, with a few notable points where you could draw the distinction. They all come from the same general start - a cloud of interstellar gas collapses into a spherical object. Depending on how big it is, you can get different objects.
First you have gas giants, no fusion at all. This would be your Jupiter and Saturn type planets. Jupiter is actually about as big, volume-wise, as a gas giant can get. Add more mass, and it starts getting denser rather than bigger.
At 13 Jupiter masses, you have enough gravitational pressure to fuse deuterium. This is what most astronomers define as a brown dwarf star, but others, and apparently you, consider it to still be a planet. Previous terminology included "substar", which I would not be opposed to. Deuterium isn't particularly common, so these objects glow very dimly, as far as stars go.
At 65 Jupiter masses, you can start fusing lithium as well. This is one way to distinguish brown dwarfs from other stars - red dwarfs and yellow dwarfs, like our sun, consume their starting lithium very quickly, and so the presence of lithium spectra indicates a brown dwarf.
At around 80 Jupiter masses, it starts fusing hydrogen, becoming a red dwarf, like Proxima Centauri. Still very dim, but at this point it's undeniably a star.
At around 750 Jupiter masses, the star develops a more complex internal structure, and becomes a yellow dwarf, such as Sol.
So where do you draw the line? Anywhere you want, but most astronomers settled on the simplest one: if it's undergoing fusion, it's a star, if it isn't, it's a planet.
Ever since I heard the "dehydrated water" joke, I thought it would be a brilliant name for a water-purification powder, like the stuff you use while camping.
Instant water, just add water - but the water you add doesn't have to be clean, and the water you get is drinkable. Memorable brand if nothing else.
Their Bill of Rights is very broad, covered in Chapter 2 of their constitution. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer in any country, and this was my first time even reading their constitution, but it seems pretty obvious that it won't allow censorship of the internet.
Section 16: "Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, which includes [...] freedom to receive or impart information or ideas"
Section 32: "Everyone has the right of access to any information held by the state; and any information that is held by another person and that is required for the exercise or protection of any rights"
Depending on implementation, if might also breach Section 14: "Everyone has the right to privacy, which includes the right not to have [...] the privacy of their communications infringed" ... I kinda want this bill of rights in my own country. Gotta say, it looks pretty nice.
Why does a 480p camera need USB 3.1? The chipset already provides a half-dozen USB 3.0 ports and another ten 2.0 ports.
Okay - but what USB host controller provides only one port? Every USB 3.1 controller I found provides two ports each, and even if that wasn't the case, an integrated USB hub would be easily usable.
Oh, I'm not even in the MacBook Pro's target market, let alone the Air's. My current laptop's power brick weighs more than the Air, and I'm just fine with that so long as it has enough compute power for me.
However, there are plenty of Air competitors now. Pretty much anything classified as an "Ultrabook". Most of them are fairly decent.
Here's Apple's real problem: the MacBook Air is a better laptop in almost every aspect.
* The MacBook Air is significantly cheaper
* The MacBook Air is significantly more powerful
* The MacBook Air has much better connectivity and usability
* The MacBook Air requires no external adapters besides power, the MacBook will likely be used with a video and/or network adapter as well
* The MacBook has a better display
* The MacBook is 15% lighter and 25% thinner, but they're practically indistinguishable compared to regular laptops, or even the MacBook Pro
Honestly, what they should have done is this:
Make a new MacBook Air using most of the MacBook's features (thinner, USB-C ports for charging/connectivity), make the better display an add-on option (to keep the MBA as the entry-level Mac option), and don't needlessly split your product line.
That's one of the few things Jobs did that I won't argue with - he streamlined the product lineup. When there were multiple computers that fit the same niche, he ditched all but one. The MacBook and MacBook Air now fit the same niche - almost exactly. There is zero reason for them to both exist.
I do like the idea of ditching legacy ports for thinness. I wouldn't need it myself, but I like the idea. But just one USB-C port, period? If it were me, I'd have four USB-C ports, a Mini-DisplayPort or Thunderbolt (or two, even), an audio port, and maybe a Micro-HDMI (since HDMI is way more common than DisplayPort, and you can convert Micro-HDMI to HDMI with a dirt-cheap passive cable). That's more than enough connectivity, but it still uses nothing that would impact your thickness. There's no need to limit it to just one USB port.
I have been developing a game based on the Cube 2 engine, specifically the Red Eclipse fork. The benefits, as I saw it, was that the engine was Zlib-licensed, and most of the game code was re-usable (both Red Eclipse and my game are first-person arena shooters). The downsides were the lack of experience - the code is unfamiliar and sparsely-documented (and in some places downright bad), not many people are familiar with the level editor, and the model import system is not the most artist-friendly.
Currently it's at a proof-of-concept state - it's playable, the core gameplay is there, but it's using Red Eclipse assets that are CC-licensed, not suitable for commercial release, and the few maps are blocky and spartan.
I am seriously considering a switch to Source 2, because I'm much, much more familiar with Hammer and SMDs than with the Cube 2 asset toolchain, and I'm sure some of my Source modding experience will carry over to Source 2. I'm waiting for more details, though, particularly regarding the toolchain. I'd have to redo pretty much everything, but it would likely make for a far better product. Particularly if it ends up being ported to consoles - Red Eclipse lacks gamepad support, and having seen the code, it's not an easy thing to add.
Let's split pirating into two crimes:
IP Theft
IP Infringement
IP infringement would be commercially using someone's IP as though it were your own. Selling bootleg DVDs, straight-up counterfeiting, plus corporate copyright/patent/trademark infringement. This can be left under the laws currently.
IP theft would be equivalent to regular theft of the same product, for non-commercial personal use. If you have to make it a separate crime, give it penalties on the scale of "five times the retail value of the product" - this should be a misdemeanor, not a felony, crime.
This was such a blatantly anti-customer move that I will never - NEVER - be a Lenovo customer again. They cannot be trusted, and probably can never be trusted again because any "change" could just be a whitewashing campaign, not a real change.
This is simply more evidence that they deserve all the shit they're getting, and more.
Sure, maybe it's competitive with a bottom-end office desktop, where the most intense thing it has to run is Youtube.
But it's competitive with a $500 desktop, while it costs $1000. It's not hard to get similar performance when you literally double your budget.
I am not the Sith you're looking for. You don't need to see my identification.
Well, there's one simple brute-force solution: create a world government. If one government runs everything, they get automatic jurisdiction over everything, and have one universal set of laws to apply everywhere.
Which, when you think about it, kinda makes sense. It's weird that laws change based on which arbitrary piece of dirt you happen to be standing on.
The measures of how well an economy is working is not "how much money is in the system", but "how much money is moving", and "how much of the economic system does that money reach?". Money that does not move does not do work, and people that do not give and receive money are not part of the economic system.
Consider two hydraulic systems. One has a massive 200L of hydraulic fluid since it leaks so much, but most of it is in a reservoir, and it only produces 10N of work on a small 10cm^2 area. The other has only 1L of hydraulic fluid, but it reaches pressures of 10Pa, doing several kilonewtons of work.
Which one is working better? Obviously the second one.
Oil-based Middle-Eastern economies are like the first one. They may make a lot of money, but only a few people get that money or its benefits, and the money leaks out of the country almost immediately.
A good economy is like America's, or Germany's (and yes, these economies are relatively good - could be better, but good). The money does pool around the rich, but not nearly as much (most of the "wealth" of the ultra-rich is in assets, not cash), and the trade with foreign countries is mostly balanced. Mostly. And there are very few people who do not participate in the economy - even people on welfare get money, then spend it. They're idle parts in the machine, but still part of the machine.
ISIS thrives because they're getting money in from elsewhere (coughsaudiarabiacough), and getting the cheapest possible people you can.
They aren't getting many recruits from Western countries. They're getting *prominent* recruits.
The problem is that ones of those rules we follow is "go in guns blazing".
You want to stop ISIS? Fix the Middle-East's economy. Give people stable, productive jobs. That alone will slash recruitment simply by giving most of their local recruits a better option, one they currently *do* *not* *have*. Most of the local ISIS recruits are in ISIS simply because it pays. Not well, but better than nothing. Same goes for al-Shabaab and al-Quaeda and Boko Haram and pretty much every terrorist group operating from a third-world country.
You want to make sure ISIS doesn't come back the next time a depression hits? Build schools, staff them - an educated populace won't fall for the simple rhetoric of the mob-leader. Build mosques, staff them with liberal imams, to dilute the message of the bad ones. Build infrastructure so they can actually communicate with the rest of the world. Bring them up to a modern level, just to give them something to lose, if they fall again - most of them see ISIS as a viable cause because they don't really have anything to lose.
A military solution - ANY military solution, up to and including "nuke the entire subcontinent into glass" - is at best temporary. In a good solution, the military will only be used as a stopgap to make it safe enough to implement the real solution.
It's not Beta. It still works, more-or-less. Beta had a comment section that was completely impossible to browse or work with - considering the comments are the only real draw, it's no surprise it was dead on arrival.
This looks like just some styling to make Slashdot look less 2002. Still odd that they don't talk about it, but that's Dice for you. We're no longer the "community", we're the "audience"; we're supposed to just sit there and take it.
I want to see a computer play Mornington Crescent.
Making decisions like this requires consideration of the consequences, which is the very definition of sapience.
If the robot is non-sapient, but simply has a configured list of users who it may or may not serve alcohol, the decision was made by the person who configured it. This would be an acceptable solution, although cumbersome and inflexible. Probably wouldn't work well enough for public bartending, but a robo-butler could work this way.
If the robot is sapient, it would be capable of making such decisions on its own. In fact, you might see robots refuse to serve alcohol at all, claiming moral reasons. On the other hand, you might see libertarian robots refuse to *not* serve someone alcohol, if they value people's right to self-determination. This would also be acceptable, but we are nowhere near this level of AI.
If the robot is non-sapient, but still expected to identify children and alcoholics on its own, problems will result. Detecting children is possible, with some false-positives (it's hard to tell a 20-year-old from a 21-year-old by appearance) and false-negatives (dwarfs/midgets/little people/hobbits/whatever the current PC term is), but how do you detect an alcoholic by their appearance?
The obvious solution for non-sapient robots requiring more flexibility than simple whitelists/blacklists, since alcohol is already a controlled substance, is to have robots require you to present ID for alcohol, and perhaps add a feature to IDs to show "recovering alcoholic, do not give alcohol" if we decide that's something that's important. Then again, we've not felt the need for that yet, with human bartenders, so maybe this whole debate is over something we've already as a society decided isn't an issue.
ASW aircraft are essentially specialized to the point that ALL they can do is ASW, and they do not operate solo. Strategically, you can treat them more as an ASW component of their carrier ship, than as individual participants in the battle.
I'm not going to argue your main points, but as a less partial party I need to raise some points of my own. This is less aimed at you (I'm sure you know everything I'm about to say), and more aimed at the other readers, to give them a more objective viewpoint.
1. The natural counter to a submarine is another submarine. Russia and China may not be able to match us fleet-for-fleet, but assuming they're the aggressors, they'll be able to bring all their force to bear at one point, outnumbering us in the battle but not the war. Do we have half our submarine fleet or more near Taiwan at all times? If not, they can make a reasonable attempt at crossing.
2. Submarines and aircraft basically can't touch each other (specialized ASW aircraft notwithstanding). If the entire Russian Tu-95 fleet flies over the entire US submarine fleet, neither one will do anything to the other. They might not even notice each other. Fleets and aircraft carriers are declining in primacy as aircraft ranges increase. We flew a B-52 combat mission from America to Iraq and back without landing - aircraft carriers, and thus navies in general, are no longer the sole way to project power. If America and Russia finally go to war, the winner will probably be the one who wins the air war, not the one who wins the sea war or land war. (Of course, with nuclear missiles in play in a US-Ru war, the real winner would be China, unless one of us decides to nuke them anyways while we're at it).
3. Consider the effect of naval drones. How many small boats is an aircraft carrier able to fight off? Imagine a USS Cole scenario, except instead of just one suicide boat masquerading as a civilian, it's dozens or even hundreds of suicide drones. You don't need to take my word for how effective these would be, there were Navy wargames for asymmetric warfare that had a "fleet" much like I proposed take out the entire Blue-team fleet, which was basically a full carrier group (the brassholes decided this was "cheating" and ordered the wargames to continue according to a script guaranteeing Blue-team victory) [citation: look up "Millennium Challenge 2002"]. Surface drones may be no threat to our subs, but our subs are similarly no threat to them, and eventually someone will get submarine drones usable. At that point, they're basically just really smart torpedoes with trans-Atlantic range. I'm not sure what the counter for *that* is, except for "not being in the water" (see point 2).
When your main means of detection is listening, yes, it is.
Submarines, when they really don't want to be found, shut down. If diesel-powered, they shut the engine down and run off battery. If nuclear, they run the reactor at as low a power as possible. They turn off as much machinery as possible. They stop the screw and stay still - resting on the surface, or just floating in the middle of the ocean.