Wait, wait. Hear him out. I mean, how cool would it be to assassinate a major political figure, and have him drop a +12 Halberd of Illumination? Or George Bush takes down Saddam Hussein, and nets himself a few million in gold... wait, never mind. That's the way it works already.:)
You know, I didn't really read anything into the parent post that said "piss-poor attitude." Just frustration about, well, people like me.
See, it's really a game about dominance. The person calling will--beyond simply being frustrated about things being broken--feel insecure about having to ask for help. It may also express itself as a "don't expect me to believe you're actually competent to help me, you $8.50/hr phone monkey" attitude.
In short, many times people try and act more knowledgeable than they really are, and it causes problems.
On the other hand, the guy on the phone is probably so sick of the "don't tell me to reboot my router, punk" attitude. In short, he/she gets insecure as well. Two insecure people trying to demonstrate themselves dominant over the other. It's a recipe for disaster. I've been on both sides of tech support (DirecTV phone monkey), and it isn't pretty.
The fact is, whatever your level of competence, calling in with an attitude wastes your time as well as that of the tech. Trust me, if the guy has been there a while, he's been burned plenty of times by guys who hung themselves by faking it, then turned around and blamed the tech for it.
So the best case scenario is that the tech is just trying to save you from yourself. Next down the list, he's trying to cover his own butt. Either way, you can't call in expecting that the tech will risk being fired by playing it by ear.
Even if you know computers, and the tech doesn't, the tech knows the system. He knows the system sucks, in fact he's probably more thoroughly disgusted with it than you are. But be nice to him, and he may be able to get you what you want.
Okay, my first impression was, this sounds like a nifty idea. But it has an ungodly number of downsides.
First, it's obviously a form of online gambling, which is already controversial because it opens up all sorts of jurisdictional questions.
Now, with classic forms of gambling (blackjack, roulette, female mud wrestling), it's very clear exactly what the rules are. It's easy to calculate the odds of winning or losing in any particular situation. To a limited extent, it's even possible to document if the game is rigged. But with this new game, what are the odds of having a critter drop Real Gem X? Only the people running the server actually know.
A couple of their points are very obviously wrong. For example:
"The key is that most anti-gambling laws prohibit playing games of chance for money. Governments do not consider gold currency systems like Pecunix to be money."
This makes about as much sense as saying that we can't regulate Vegas because the participants first exchange their money for poker chips. If you spend $10 to buy 1000 Pecuni-bucks, and lose it all, you've really gambled away $10. If you double it and convert it back into cash, then it's the same as gambling the cash. I doubt the Feds will see a distinction.
Having said all that, I think this should be explored further. It seems like an idea like this would be better exploited by the gambling industry than by current MMORPG companies. They already know the ins and outs of both the financial and legal aspects of such a venture.
It also seems like this would be a perfect testbed for various digital cash systems. Or a game like this could be the basis of a black market economy. But whatever the system was used for, security would have to be absolutely rock solid.
In the minds of the day trading junkies who are obviously enamored with the idea that SCO can claim ownership over all Linux, each of these announcements constitutes an additional potential revenue stream. That's the reason SCO continues pumping out the press releases.
"Oooh! Soon they'll be gettin' money from the gub'mint! Put me in for another hundred shares!" Fools, money, kiss each other goodbye.
SCO has been getting fairly positive coverage from the Deseret News. Today, they ran a story that basically regurgitates their party line.
A couple of interesting tidbits from the story:
"Red Hat thinks that we should show them every line of infringing code so they can make changes and go forward with a complete disregard for our business rights," [McBride] said[...]"
IOW, the Linux community shouldn't be allowed to correct the infringement, but should instead be forced to pay royalties to SCO until the end of time.
Also, it says that the suit against IBM isn't going to trial until April 2005.
The Salt Lake Tribune takes a more pro-community stance in this story. It quotes Bruce Perens as saying, "Let me make it clear how dangerous the SCO license is to customers. If you buy it, you can be sued by each and every copyright holder of GPL software in a Linux system for infringing upon their copyright and violating the terms of their license. That's tens of thousands of potential plaintiffs."
Oh, and Laura DiDio compares Linux developers to a 60's hippie commune. It's a fun read. Could someone please remind me why this woman is qualified to have an opinion on anything?
I agreed with you up to this point, but this is simply nonsense. If I say or write that Bill Gates deserves to have his head cut off, it would be a violent statement, but it is free speech. And Bill Gates can say same about me as well, not that he would care.
Ah, but what if you put up a website calling for the beheading of Bill Gates, along with prominent links to guillotine schematics? Or demanding that he be keelhauled, and putting up information on building clipper ships. Worst of all, you could say he ought to die of a heart attack, and then link to instructions for making a Big Mac.
In such cases, you would obviously be conspiring with the Internet at large in an attempt to cause mortal harm to Bill Gates. A year in federal prison is far too lenient a punishment.
Salt Lake City is only about 40%, making it a veritable den of iniquity. There are some counties in Utah where it's over 95%. 90% of the state legislature, 100% of the State Supreme Court, and--can you believe it--2/3 of the State Alcohol Commission are Mormon.
Now, Novell is located in Provo, where the Mormon population is about 90% (Salt Lakers call it "Happy Valley" (tongue entirely in cheek).
As to your claim that Novell would never push religious literature, even if they were owned by the Church:
1) It was a joke, man. 2) If it were owned by the Church, damn straight they would.
One of the neat things about dealing with practicing Mormons, Muslims and fanatical Dutch Reformed folks is that you don't have to worry about them being drunk.
Reminds me of the standard Utah joke: Why do you always take two Mormons fishing? If you only take one, he'll drink all your beer.
Black leather? Man, if you live south of Minnesota, you're dooming yourself to never wearing shorts during the summer. I can feel the first degree burns from here. No good having a cushy leather interior if you have to put a towel over it before it's safe.:)
First, why does it matter if people don't automatically have instant access to the latest music? Given the vast size of the CD library in question, the newest music is only a small fraction of the total value.
Second, what's to stop Snapster from buying a couple thousand[*] CDs upon initial release. Thus, they would have the right to serve thousands of concurrent users. Once demand drops, they could sell the CDs (or hand them out as dividends). Only one of the CDs actually had to be opened.
Or they could simply go the "don't expect to hear the best album on the track for at least a month" mode. Since there is a huge demand for the music, people will send their CDs in to cash in on that demand (remember, the person donating the CD gets rewarded for its use).
Finally, they could place a "one listen per person per day" cap on a really popular track, then slowly back it off as demand goes down.
At best, you've pointed out a minor inconvenience. Cringley's idea probably has an Achilles heel somewhere, but this obviously isn't it.
* Millions? That's just rubbish. A really popular CD might sell a million in its first week. The idea that there would be even ten thousand people on the service, listening to the same song, is difficult to imagine. If there's a ten minute song on the album, then each copy is serving six listeners an hour.
Doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if the employee should have been keeping the project--the one she spent the last six weeks slaving over--on the server. It doesn't matter if the server and network have five-nines reliability, so there was no excuse for her to store it on the hard drive.
The fact is, she did store it locally, she did lose six weeks of work, and she lost it because some prick admin decided to not even discuss the issue with her before swinging into action.
Now the admin has the unenviable job of convincing both his boss and her boss that she was totally at fault. He'd better be extremely convincing, because his job is now on the line.
The obvious solution to the "crapfest" problem is making it clear that not all CDs are equal in value. If there's a high demand for CD X (more than the current number of copies can supply) then you get more for sending in that CD. If they already have enough of CD Y, then giving them a copy nets you almost nothing.
(I may be misunderstanding the term "OpenContent" - but I take it to mean "providing content, without making money on it").
From the article:
"I define open content as content possible for others to improve and redistribute and/or content that is produced without any consideration of immediate financial reward -- often collectively within a virtual community."
I disagree with the second part of the definition. "Free content" describes such material better. By my definition, "open content" is similar in many ways to "open source." It's not about whether or not you're getting paid to write it, but about what the recipient can do with your work once they've received it.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with what you're doing. In fact, I strongly encourage you to continue. But in order to be truly "open content," you would have to allow both unlimited reproduction and modification. Because the reviews represent your personal opinion, I doubt that it's truly open content, nor do I think that making it open would benefit you.
Now, if you were writing a tutorial on computer hardware, then opening it to the public would allow anyone to improve it, correct errors, add artwork, or just put some general polish on it. But when it comes to your opinion on a specific book, nobody else is qualified to do it better.
Give me a break. This is from the same camp that says "We really don't understand how intelligence works!"
How do you know that your behavior and your self-conception are not products of a constantly updated set of rules coupled to a randomness generator? If this system of rules is so sophisticated that it can give *every* appearance of sentient behavior, then isn't it possible that we work the same way?
I strongly encourage you to read just about anything ever written by Daniel C. Dennett. Even if you don't agree with his conclusions, your ability to cluelessly state that "we just don't work that way" will be severely curtailed. Consciousness Explained is a great start.
Okay, after reading the responses to my earlier post, I have to agree that the reasons I stated aren't sufficient to excuse me from voting. So I'll throw in one more: We return 98% of congressional incumbents to office. A congresscritter is more likely to die in office than voted out.
Mostly, this is because of the way campaign finance works. The only people able to run for office are A) incumbents, and B) multimillionares.
Now, one option is to cast a non-vote by not showing up. Another would be to automatically vote against incumbents, regardless of their quality. Finally, you could vote only for those who have shown strong support for campaign finance reform.
Why is it every time I get involved in the political process, I feel like I need a shower afterwards?
Actually, I refused to vote for either of them. I live in Utah, so there was no way anything I did at the polling place would keep George W. from getting our electoral votes. Anyways, Al Gore is a bit of a freak.
A couple of things about the Turing Test. First, as Alan Turing originally formulated it, it can be applied much more broadly. For example, it could be used to discriminate between a woman and a man pretending to be a woman. Or a nuclear physicist and a Trekkie pretending to be a nuclear physicist. In the latter case, some people wouldn't know enough about physics to administer the test properly. But we're all experts at being human, so this isn't often pointed out.
Also, one problem with the Turing test is that it sets the bar too high. Not only does the computer have to have desires, interests, and memories, it also needs to pretend to be a human being. If you said, for example, "Contestant #3: Are you a computer?" and it said "yes," it failed the test, despite the fact that it might be self-aware. Or if you requested a picture, and it sent you back a picture of row upon row of mainframes, it would fail simply for being honest.
This presents a real limitation to the test, because a machine could be self-aware long before it has a firm understanding of all the things we humans take for granted. I firmly believe that many of the first AIs will fail the Turing test, and hence be improperly classified as non-sentient.
Okay, technically you just denied humanity to the infertile. It's a strong indication that you're being very careless with your definitions.
"Humanness" from an evolutionary perspective is distinct in many ways from "humanness" as a legal or moral perspective.
Let's say that one day, my cat came up to me and said, "If you're not too busy, I would like to discuss my feeding schedule."
Now, I knew already that my cat has desires and interests (mostly relating to its food dish), but now I realize that it has a capacity for language. It used the word "I," which indicates that it has an abstract concept of itself. It recognizes me as an autonomous entity which it wants to engage in an exchange of ideas. In short, the cat has suddenly demonstrated certain attributes which I heretofore associated only with other human beings.
After feeding the cat, I would chat with it a while longer, possibly asking it Turing-style questions to see if my talking cat is just an elaborate practical joke. I discover it has political opinions (and would vote for any candidate with a strong anti-dog platform). It imagines possible outcomes of its actions, and decides between them based on its own desires (shorthand: free will). It wants to live inside, and promises to always use the litter box.
Obviously, the cat--whatever its genetic makeup--has many "human" qualities. Thus, they aren't human qualities at all, but qualities that define some larger set of autonomous beings. No, the cat isn't human. But it should still have the right to vote.
"A machine that looks human" is an android, not a cyborg.
Now, this isn't about us all-powerful humans "bestowing" rights upon other species, any more than the "Vote for Women" movement of the 1920s was about us all-wise males granting those silly girls the chance to play at politics. In reality, it was about us getting over our stupid and baseless preconception that men had some superior capacity to be decision-makers.
In this case, it's about us finally getting over ourselves as a species. We should start recognizing the potential of intelligence in other lifeforms [including artificial ones], and not denying rights to those who wish to improve on their bodies' natural abilities with technology.
Since our valuation of other people is so low, how can we possibly discuss the notion of "rights" for machines?
That's like saying "why do anything about slavery until we can get rid of this anti-Irish sentiment?" Once our society started dealing with the integration of obviously non-white people, bitching people out for being from the wrong chunk of the British Isles wasn't important anymore.
In the same way, I figure that when we have to start dealing with questions about seriously post- or trans-human people, the questions of skin color will magically evaporate.
Your decision to value other species according to their genetic relationship to your own is utter hogwash, for several reasons. Well, actually only one reason, but there are many variations on the theme.
For example, an octopus is genetically further from us than a chipmunk, and also a great deal more intelligent. There is no reason to value the chipmunk more highly. A dolphin is more genetically dissimilar to us than a howler monkey, but it's clear that they function at a far higher cognitive level.
Next, let's look at people. Imagine two people born to the same parents. One of them is healthy, and functioning normally. The other, because of a drug-induced birth defect, was born with nothing above the brain stem. From a strictly genetic standpoint, these two are nearly identical, but clearly one is capable of full participation in society, and the other is not.
The thing is, genes are nothing but a recipe. In our case, it's a recipe for bipeds with dextrous hands and a brain capable of amazing learning and adaptability. If some other recipe--whether a totally dissimilar genetic code or a metal and plastic manufacturing process--is capable of creating a similar mind, then we cannot deny them rights because ours is the One True Recipe. It's just narrow-minded bigotry.
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Wait, wait. Hear him out. I mean, how cool would it be to assassinate a major political figure, and have him drop a +12 Halberd of Illumination? Or George Bush takes down Saddam Hussein, and nets himself a few million in gold... wait, never mind. That's the way it works already. :)
You know, I didn't really read anything into the parent post that said "piss-poor attitude." Just frustration about, well, people like me.
See, it's really a game about dominance. The person calling will--beyond simply being frustrated about things being broken--feel insecure about having to ask for help. It may also express itself as a "don't expect me to believe you're actually competent to help me, you $8.50/hr phone monkey" attitude.
In short, many times people try and act more knowledgeable than they really are, and it causes problems.
On the other hand, the guy on the phone is probably so sick of the "don't tell me to reboot my router, punk" attitude. In short, he/she gets insecure as well. Two insecure people trying to demonstrate themselves dominant over the other. It's a recipe for disaster. I've been on both sides of tech support (DirecTV phone monkey), and it isn't pretty.
The fact is, whatever your level of competence, calling in with an attitude wastes your time as well as that of the tech. Trust me, if the guy has been there a while, he's been burned plenty of times by guys who hung themselves by faking it, then turned around and blamed the tech for it.
So the best case scenario is that the tech is just trying to save you from yourself. Next down the list, he's trying to cover his own butt. Either way, you can't call in expecting that the tech will risk being fired by playing it by ear.
Even if you know computers, and the tech doesn't, the tech knows the system. He knows the system sucks, in fact he's probably more thoroughly disgusted with it than you are. But be nice to him, and he may be able to get you what you want.
First, it's obviously a form of online gambling, which is already controversial because it opens up all sorts of jurisdictional questions.
Now, with classic forms of gambling (blackjack, roulette, female mud wrestling), it's very clear exactly what the rules are. It's easy to calculate the odds of winning or losing in any particular situation. To a limited extent, it's even possible to document if the game is rigged. But with this new game, what are the odds of having a critter drop Real Gem X? Only the people running the server actually know.
A couple of their points are very obviously wrong. For example:This makes about as much sense as saying that we can't regulate Vegas because the participants first exchange their money for poker chips. If you spend $10 to buy 1000 Pecuni-bucks, and lose it all, you've really gambled away $10. If you double it and convert it back into cash, then it's the same as gambling the cash. I doubt the Feds will see a distinction.
Having said all that, I think this should be explored further. It seems like an idea like this would be better exploited by the gambling industry than by current MMORPG companies. They already know the ins and outs of both the financial and legal aspects of such a venture.
It also seems like this would be a perfect testbed for various digital cash systems. Or a game like this could be the basis of a black market economy. But whatever the system was used for, security would have to be absolutely rock solid.
In the minds of the day trading junkies who are obviously enamored with the idea that SCO can claim ownership over all Linux, each of these announcements constitutes an additional potential revenue stream. That's the reason SCO continues pumping out the press releases.
"Oooh! Soon they'll be gettin' money from the gub'mint! Put me in for another hundred shares!" Fools, money, kiss each other goodbye.
A couple of interesting tidbits from the story:
IOW, the Linux community shouldn't be allowed to correct the infringement, but should instead be forced to pay royalties to SCO until the end of time.
Also, it says that the suit against IBM isn't going to trial until April 2005.
The Salt Lake Tribune takes a more pro-community stance in this story. It quotes Bruce Perens as saying, "Let me make it clear how dangerous the SCO license is to customers. If you buy it, you can be sued by each and every copyright holder of GPL software in a Linux system for infringing upon their copyright and violating the terms of their license. That's tens of thousands of potential plaintiffs."
Oh, and Laura DiDio compares Linux developers to a 60's hippie commune. It's a fun read. Could someone please remind me why this woman is qualified to have an opinion on anything?
In such cases, you would obviously be conspiring with the Internet at large in an attempt to cause mortal harm to Bill Gates. A year in federal prison is far too lenient a punishment.
Getch'er beta here.
As far as I can tell, it works as well as the Windows version. A little too well, in fact, so I downloaded this helpful little extension.
Once it's installed, go ahead and test it out.
55%? Try 71%. What's your source?
Salt Lake City is only about 40%, making it a veritable den of iniquity. There are some counties in Utah where it's over 95%. 90% of the state legislature, 100% of the State Supreme Court, and--can you believe it--2/3 of the State Alcohol Commission are Mormon.
Now, Novell is located in Provo, where the Mormon population is about 90% (Salt Lakers call it "Happy Valley" (tongue entirely in cheek).
As to your claim that Novell would never push religious literature, even if they were owned by the Church:
1) It was a joke, man.
2) If it were owned by the Church, damn straight they would.
Hey, I live here, I've earned the right.
Obviously, heavy users of file sharing are selected against, because Kazaa is tying up their phone lines.
Black leather? Man, if you live south of Minnesota, you're dooming yourself to never wearing shorts during the summer. I can feel the first degree burns from here. No good having a cushy leather interior if you have to put a towel over it before it's safe. :)
First, why does it matter if people don't automatically have instant access to the latest music? Given the vast size of the CD library in question, the newest music is only a small fraction of the total value.
Second, what's to stop Snapster from buying a couple thousand[*] CDs upon initial release. Thus, they would have the right to serve thousands of concurrent users. Once demand drops, they could sell the CDs (or hand them out as dividends). Only one of the CDs actually had to be opened.
Or they could simply go the "don't expect to hear the best album on the track for at least a month" mode. Since there is a huge demand for the music, people will send their CDs in to cash in on that demand (remember, the person donating the CD gets rewarded for its use).
Finally, they could place a "one listen per person per day" cap on a really popular track, then slowly back it off as demand goes down.
At best, you've pointed out a minor inconvenience. Cringley's idea probably has an Achilles heel somewhere, but this obviously isn't it.
* Millions? That's just rubbish. A really popular CD might sell a million in its first week. The idea that there would be even ten thousand people on the service, listening to the same song, is difficult to imagine. If there's a ten minute song on the album, then each copy is serving six listeners an hour.
Doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if the employee should have been keeping the project--the one she spent the last six weeks slaving over--on the server. It doesn't matter if the server and network have five-nines reliability, so there was no excuse for her to store it on the hard drive.
The fact is, she did store it locally, she did lose six weeks of work, and she lost it because some prick admin decided to not even discuss the issue with her before swinging into action.
Now the admin has the unenviable job of convincing both his boss and her boss that she was totally at fault. He'd better be extremely convincing, because his job is now on the line.
It's not vulnerable to the "I really really swear I own the CD" exploit you describe. You actually have to give Snapster the CD to get credit for it.
Wait a minute... giving a bunch of CDs to Cringley? Sounds like he's sneakily increasing his collection.
The obvious solution to the "crapfest" problem is making it clear that not all CDs are equal in value. If there's a high demand for CD X (more than the current number of copies can supply) then you get more for sending in that CD. If they already have enough of CD Y, then giving them a copy nets you almost nothing.
"I define open content as content possible for others to improve and redistribute and/or content that is produced without any consideration of immediate financial reward -- often collectively within a virtual community."
I disagree with the second part of the definition. "Free content" describes such material better. By my definition, "open content" is similar in many ways to "open source." It's not about whether or not you're getting paid to write it, but about what the recipient can do with your work once they've received it.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with what you're doing. In fact, I strongly encourage you to continue. But in order to be truly "open content," you would have to allow both unlimited reproduction and modification. Because the reviews represent your personal opinion, I doubt that it's truly open content, nor do I think that making it open would benefit you.
Now, if you were writing a tutorial on computer hardware, then opening it to the public would allow anyone to improve it, correct errors, add artwork, or just put some general polish on it. But when it comes to your opinion on a specific book, nobody else is qualified to do it better.
A competent admin would give the user a chance to back up important files before nuking the hard drive. 'nuff said.
How about C:\Program Files\Daikatana? Nobody would look in there.
Obviously, prior to his enhancements, he made a living as a mime. Now he has the miming abilities of ten ordinary men.
This is too terrifying a future. He must be destroyed.
Give me a break. This is from the same camp that says "We really don't understand how intelligence works!"
How do you know that your behavior and your self-conception are not products of a constantly updated set of rules coupled to a randomness generator? If this system of rules is so sophisticated that it can give *every* appearance of sentient behavior, then isn't it possible that we work the same way?
I strongly encourage you to read just about anything ever written by Daniel C. Dennett. Even if you don't agree with his conclusions, your ability to cluelessly state that "we just don't work that way" will be severely curtailed. Consciousness Explained is a great start.
Okay, after reading the responses to my earlier post, I have to agree that the reasons I stated aren't sufficient to excuse me from voting. So I'll throw in one more: We return 98% of congressional incumbents to office. A congresscritter is more likely to die in office than voted out.
Mostly, this is because of the way campaign finance works. The only people able to run for office are A) incumbents, and B) multimillionares.
Now, one option is to cast a non-vote by not showing up. Another would be to automatically vote against incumbents, regardless of their quality. Finally, you could vote only for those who have shown strong support for campaign finance reform.
Why is it every time I get involved in the political process, I feel like I need a shower afterwards?
Actually, I refused to vote for either of them. I live in Utah, so there was no way anything I did at the polling place would keep George W. from getting our electoral votes. Anyways, Al Gore is a bit of a freak.
A couple of things about the Turing Test. First, as Alan Turing originally formulated it, it can be applied much more broadly. For example, it could be used to discriminate between a woman and a man pretending to be a woman. Or a nuclear physicist and a Trekkie pretending to be a nuclear physicist. In the latter case, some people wouldn't know enough about physics to administer the test properly. But we're all experts at being human, so this isn't often pointed out.
Also, one problem with the Turing test is that it sets the bar too high. Not only does the computer have to have desires, interests, and memories, it also needs to pretend to be a human being. If you said, for example, "Contestant #3: Are you a computer?" and it said "yes," it failed the test, despite the fact that it might be self-aware. Or if you requested a picture, and it sent you back a picture of row upon row of mainframes, it would fail simply for being honest.
This presents a real limitation to the test, because a machine could be self-aware long before it has a firm understanding of all the things we humans take for granted. I firmly believe that many of the first AIs will fail the Turing test, and hence be improperly classified as non-sentient.
Okay, technically you just denied humanity to the infertile. It's a strong indication that you're being very careless with your definitions.
"Humanness" from an evolutionary perspective is distinct in many ways from "humanness" as a legal or moral perspective.
Let's say that one day, my cat came up to me and said, "If you're not too busy, I would like to discuss my feeding schedule."
Now, I knew already that my cat has desires and interests (mostly relating to its food dish), but now I realize that it has a capacity for language. It used the word "I," which indicates that it has an abstract concept of itself. It recognizes me as an autonomous entity which it wants to engage in an exchange of ideas. In short, the cat has suddenly demonstrated certain attributes which I heretofore associated only with other human beings.
After feeding the cat, I would chat with it a while longer, possibly asking it Turing-style questions to see if my talking cat is just an elaborate practical joke. I discover it has political opinions (and would vote for any candidate with a strong anti-dog platform). It imagines possible outcomes of its actions, and decides between them based on its own desires (shorthand: free will). It wants to live inside, and promises to always use the litter box.
Obviously, the cat--whatever its genetic makeup--has many "human" qualities. Thus, they aren't human qualities at all, but qualities that define some larger set of autonomous beings. No, the cat isn't human. But it should still have the right to vote.
Now, this isn't about us all-powerful humans "bestowing" rights upon other species, any more than the "Vote for Women" movement of the 1920s was about us all-wise males granting those silly girls the chance to play at politics. In reality, it was about us getting over our stupid and baseless preconception that men had some superior capacity to be decision-makers.
In this case, it's about us finally getting over ourselves as a species. We should start recognizing the potential of intelligence in other lifeforms [including artificial ones], and not denying rights to those who wish to improve on their bodies' natural abilities with technology.
That's like saying "why do anything about slavery until we can get rid of this anti-Irish sentiment?" Once our society started dealing with the integration of obviously non-white people, bitching people out for being from the wrong chunk of the British Isles wasn't important anymore.
In the same way, I figure that when we have to start dealing with questions about seriously post- or trans-human people, the questions of skin color will magically evaporate.
Your decision to value other species according to their genetic relationship to your own is utter hogwash, for several reasons. Well, actually only one reason, but there are many variations on the theme.
For example, an octopus is genetically further from us than a chipmunk, and also a great deal more intelligent. There is no reason to value the chipmunk more highly. A dolphin is more genetically dissimilar to us than a howler monkey, but it's clear that they function at a far higher cognitive level.
Next, let's look at people. Imagine two people born to the same parents. One of them is healthy, and functioning normally. The other, because of a drug-induced birth defect, was born with nothing above the brain stem. From a strictly genetic standpoint, these two are nearly identical, but clearly one is capable of full participation in society, and the other is not.
The thing is, genes are nothing but a recipe. In our case, it's a recipe for bipeds with dextrous hands and a brain capable of amazing learning and adaptability. If some other recipe--whether a totally dissimilar genetic code or a metal and plastic manufacturing process--is capable of creating a similar mind, then we cannot deny them rights because ours is the One True Recipe. It's just narrow-minded bigotry.