If you are trying to blah blah blah *you are part of the problem*.
Oh good grief. My point was about ignoring the terms of a contract that you are presented with, know are legally binding, are knowingly take action signifying consent. The person to whom I was replying stated that was their attitude to all software, including where he's required to give explicit consent to terms presented to him before use, not just shrink-wrapped EULAs.
There are problems with EULAs, and contracts to which you don't know you're agreeing should never be allowed to stand up in court, but a person who says "I know this software is presenting terms of a contract and I'm going to click the button that I knows signifies acceptance without reading the contract, and pretend that somehow that means I'm not accepting them" is being ridiculous.
I do the same thing - when I buy a house, I never read the terms of the mortgage contract. I just sign on the "give me a house" line. So I'm not bound by the terms of the mortgage since I signed under a duress. It was just what I had to do to buy a house.
Well then it seems the couple has suffered real financial harm. Hopefully they can quantify this and collect damages. I hate the sue-happy culture of the US these days, but this case demonstrates exactly what lawsuits are for.
There's no way the company can claim ignorance due to the facts: -The transaction was never completed, so the contract didn't apply -The contract at the time (that didn't apply anyway) didn't include the clause about reviews -The person attempting to purchase the item, and who would have been bound by the contract (but wasn't) wasn't the person who wrote the review
These are all facts that were plain at the time of the company's action; so in other words, they knowingly filed a false credit claim based on a non-existent clause in a contract that didn't apply to someone with whom they didn't do business anyway.
Our prisons are already full, so I think the appropriate penalty would be massive fines against the company, and all legal and executive personnel involved in this action, and if that can't be accurately determined, all legal and executive personnel.
Interesting... but I'd expect someone doing the same business all the time to have a "standard contract" as a starting point anyway at least, and said person is free to refuse business to anyone who doesn't want to accept the standard contract. It may not be friendly, but it's their right.
Your idea makes more sense for someone who does fewer sales, where each sale is not expected to occur in a particularly timely fashion, and there's time for things like negotiating whatever terms may be applicable. But in the reality of internet sales, it's not practical.
Or maybe you're suggesting this type of sale shouldn't involve contracts at all, which is not an entirely ridiculous idea...
I hear that if you go into the boys' room, close your eyes, turn around 3 times while saying "Hosts file" each time, when you open your eyes and look in the mirror, "127.0.0.1" will be written across your forehead in blood, and a randomly-bolded and italicized screed will appear all over the walls.
As long as you satisfy all of the natural instincts that your cat has that she would otherwise satisfy for herself outside, then it's fine to keep a cat indoors. Otherwise, it's not very humane and it sounds a little selfish on your part.
Close - what matters most for "responsible cat ownership" is whether your cat is happy and healthy. Cats that venture outdoors can certainly find happiness there, but it's a tremendous health risk for all the reasons people mention. The thing is, "satisfaction of instincts" can be detrimental to any creature, depending on the instinct and the circumstance.
For instance, my cat has a profound instinctive desire to maul my wife. This is extremely detrimental both to the cat's chances of survival and the happiness of everyone who lives under my roof.
And time to recoup costs is irrelevant, if you produce garbage then you may never recoup the costs, if you produce something good you might recoup your costs in hours.
I said "generally," meaning "applicable to producers of art that people want" as opposed to schlock; the intent is to prevent the situation where copyright doesn't do any producer (or even just the most successful) any good.
As for 5, 7, 10, 14, or whatever years: I'm trying to think of a form or medium that would be negatively impacted by a short term. Perhaps books: it's already notoriously difficult to make it as an author, even if skilled, and knowing that you could expect a maximum of 5 years of revenue from book sales may have a detrimental effect on literature.
I also think that a too-short term for some mediums may provide a perverse incentive for consumers not to buy. If I know a book, movie, or computer game is going to be in the public domain in only 5 years, I'll just wait it out until I can get a free copy. There would be so much recent material in the public domain already that many would be content to consume the culture from 5 years ago at no cost, and no revenue for producers, so I think you'd want a minimum length that accounts for this. 10-15 years seems like it would cover it, as the zeitgeist generally moves faster than that.
also lead to mass layoff and unemployment and be the direct cause of the next great depression.
Hey, now, this is Slashdot; I'm sure, with our collective intellect, we could come up with a rationale explaining how media piracy is directly responsible for smallpox and the Holocaust.
If only people hadn't distributed illegal copies of Hitler's paintings...
If only unauthorized back-alley publishers distributing illegal copies of books hadn't used paper carrying the smallpox virus...
My own personal idea is that copyright/patents should only last like 5-7 years, then everything is in public domain. This way the old guard could still keep plugging on to a degree.
Although I agree that the current copyright term is ridiculously long, effectively preventing any work from being open to the culture that created it, I think 5-7 years may be a little short. I've wondered about an automatic 14 year term for all works (like current automatic copyright), plus a 14-year extension for $$$$, for 28 years max. These numbers are based on an older copyright term, but are still basically arbitrary. You want to strike a balance between culture having free access to art in a timely manner, and protecting the ability of the artists to profit from their work. How long is too long? How long is long enough?
I would guess that the minimum length should be generally long enough for a producer of art to recoup the costs of production, but this may vary considerably by medium. GTA V made its budget back in what, 12 hours?
That's true. We should make sure we teach them the principles of justice, the value of honest labor, and the benefits of arts to culture and society. Then let them make an informed decision.
Why is anyone surprised laser sintering is more than capable of this? This is nothing more than tech demo clickbait; anyone following the capabilities of SLS already knew this was well within the realm of possibility. Just nowhere close to the realm of practicality from a fiscal perspective.
Also, it's a waste of weight and money to do it this way. SLS should be used for key parts, but the rest should be normal 3D printed plastic (like a Glock).
And as we all know, 100% of Slashdot readers are well versed in laser sintering techniques and capabilities.
The article explains why - as a demonstration of some of the ways this process is superior to machining. I'm a nerd, it's news to me, and it matters in the context of the potential for 3d printing to change significant aspects of society, and yes, firearm availability is significant.
If you're a straight male (such as me) how does homosexuality or homosexual people actually affect you? Well they dont, if you're straight and dont like gays it's extremely easy to avoid them.
Unless you're a cake decorator or wedding photographer, in which case you can go to jail for trying to avoid them.
BTW, you shouldn't separate the art from the creator because to do so removes a lot of the meaning from the work. Its like saying we should never consider why an artist painted what they did and only accept that they did paint it.
That's an interesting point, however what does Ender's Game have to do with homosexuality? Not every facet of the creator is relevant to every artwork he produces. I read Ender's Game in total ignorance of anything whatsoever about the author, and found the book interesting and entertaining regardless. I experience all sorts of visual arts without knowing the context of the artist's production of the work, and they aren't devoid of meaning or value because of that.
If you are against homosexuality then you are as much a bigot as if you are against miscegenation.
Pray tell, why should we give any quarter to bigots? Is there any reason whatsoever that we should respect their beliefs and admit them into decent society?
Ironically, the definition of bigot is "a person who is intolerant of any ideas other than his or her own, esp on religion, politics, or race", which would seem to describe someone who refuses to admit others into decent society based on their religious beliefs.
I could just as easily say "If you are against pedophilia then you are as much a bigot as if you are against homosexuality," but would it be true? What's your infallible source for acceptable sexual proclivities? You act as if the morality of homosexuality is settled, as if a body of moral beliefs was disproved somewhere along the way, and anyone who doesn't subscribe to your set of moral beliefs is evil, which makes you just as much of a fundamentalist as the homophobes.
The answer to your question is that a decent society NEEDS to admit people of differing beliefs, otherwise you're left with the tyranny of witch hunts and similar ideological persecution, and is no longer decent pretty much by definition.
The problem with changes to marriage are that because they're enforced by government, they affect everybody.
As for the actual topic of paying for art by artists you deplore, I can only point out that Hollywood has always been full of deplorable assholes, and you shouldn't let that keep you from supporting genuinely good art - just counter the artists' offensive advocacy with your own - especially since in this case movie ticket sales aren't actually lining Card's pockets.
1) If the concept of higher gas taxes to pay for infrastructure (really just meeting previous tax revenues) is such taboo that your politicians are unable to sell the need for infrastructure to the public, you need better politicians.
2) Newer cars are getting better mileage than old cars, but in general larger cars that in general cause more damage to roads are going to pay more toward these taxes than the smaller ones. Corollary: this also functions as a tax incentive to use more fuel-efficient vehicles, which is a good thing, right?
3) The other suggestions of odometer readings are spot on. Why the unnecessary waste of new technology and privacy concerns? I hate to be cynical, but is there some business in Oregon that makes these devices that happens to know a politician supporting the issue?
That's all true, and both stimulus/response behavior and free will can be unpredictable. Ultimately, I think the problem with TFA is that even if you can't tell the difference between an actually free agent and a system that has the appearance of free will, the difference is significant.
So you think we have something special that makes us more complex than, say, a dog or a cat? Many animals have been shown to have abstract thought abilities, and we just thought they are less intelligent (in the sense of the ability of reasoning, not if they can remember more things, or calculate faster), actually just did not have the need to evolve a complex spoken language to help them represent those abstract thoughts.
We know some animals have some ability to conceptualize possible realities, but this shouldn't surprise anyone. Sufficiently advanced animal brains work basically the same way ours do - they have memories, neural firing patterns formed by sensory impressions. Dogs and cats dream, so why can't they "imagine" hypotheticals? This is different than being sentient, much less having free will.
Dogs are able to understand human gestures, and can understand certain words/phrases. That implies communication skills that many animals don't have. Then they understand those messages, and act upon them. You could say they do so because they want to. How are your choices free will but not theirs?
Quick, name an animal that has no ability to communicate. Many animals can learn to "understand" forms of human communication, but do you have evidence that it's more than stimulus-response? Of course you can say a dog "chose" to act because it wanted to, but that's not differentiating between stimulus-response and free will. I loved my dogs very much, and can anthropomorphize with the best of 'em, but I saw no evidence that anything they did was more than responding to either conditioning or instinct.
A cat knows it needs to open a door to reach its food. When it wants food, it might come to you for help, or it may try to open the door on its own. Regardless of which action it takes, the cat made a decision, and chose a way to act. It could have chosen otherwise, but it did not. How is that different than your free will?
Again, stimulus/response. The cat is conditioned to pester you for food, or open a door. Which action it takes may be entirely determined by environmental input. To say the cat "chose" is to assert that it has free will, which is begging the question.
The idea that humans have free will is an assertion - the alternative is that we're basically noisy meat robots, acting purely on instinct and psychological or social conditioning. I personally believe that the majority of our "choices" are response to stimulus, (we are animals, after all) but not all. But the noisy meat robot argument is self-defeating, or at least, it renders itself moot, because if we don't actually make choices, then we aren't choosing to have this discussion, I'm not choosing to disagree with you, and no one chooses moral behavior. People either will or won't do things based on their conditioning and instinct, and it's literally pointless to argue about it.
So my reasons for believing in free will are basically religious - I believe in moral reality not derived purely from material existence, and this necessitates the ability to choose the good.
Now, how can we tell whether a given brain (real or artificial) has the capacity for free will, and is exercising it? I have no idea.
It's interesting to note that humans aren't even considered capable of making choices until the age of reason, roughly 7 years old. There's a certain level of cognitive development necessary for this, and it seems to be the case that language is an essential part of the process. It remains to be seen whether other species could acquire sentience after developing sufficient linguistic ability, and whether humans could speed that process. After all, we learn language from older members of our species, and have tried teaching it to other species such as apes and dolphins. I suspect the answer to both questions is yes, but I don't think I'll be around to find out.
With a human intelligence (HI), one cannot ever deconstruct why and how the system makes the decision that it makes. It is "random" in at least the sense of being unpredictable at countless levels involving the whole non-Markovian process of evolution from the very first cell through to the present organism making the decision. Worse, even the human itself doesn't know why it makes the decision it makes, not really. Chocolate or Vanilla ice cream today? "Chocolate because I like chocolate more than vanilla" is ultimately semantically null, because one cannot answer why one likes chocolate more than vanilla, and no matter what set of reasons one cooks up for it the ultimate answer is associated with a subjective response that is a sublime blend of (evolutionarily and experientially) preprogrammed stuff, experience, and the "mood of the moment", utterly unpredictable.
Unfortunately, these are [currently] unprovable assertions about a complex process that might turn out to be totally physical and explainable. "Chocolate stimulates the pleasure center of the brain more than vanilla due to a lifetime of changes in palette sensitivity" is a totally possible, non-mysterious answer. One could even imagine an advanced MRI showing the differences in neuron firing. But just because the process is so complex it can't be reverse-engineered, that doesn't mean it's random. Our lack of ability to predict it does not mean it's "unpredictable" in the mathematical sense.
Personally, I believe humans DO have free will - which I understand as the ability to choose an action contrary to the influence of instinct or conditioning. It may be difficult or impossible to know when this choice has been made, and it may be true that it's in fact rarely used, but it is an important philosophical distinction. I don't believe computers, as currently conceived as purely deterministic processors, are capable of free will. Even RNG don't change that - deterministically following a randomly-presented path is still deterministic. I do believe there is something "special" about humans in this regard - I don't think any animals currently have this ability (who knows about aliens - the universe is large).
As for religious implications, I see no conflict between the ideas that the capacity for free will is acquired by means of millennia of evolution of the brain, culminating in sufficient complexity for self-representation and consideration of alternative futures, granting non-deterministic ability; and "God made us that way." From my point of view, "intelligent design" and "natural evolution" are the same thing.
*Sigh*, time-wasting pedantry here, but if you believe you're telling the truth you're not lying. You have to intend to deceive to do that. If you have a recollection of a quote or assertion you saw somewhere, can't find it, but believe it to be true and repeat it, it's not a lie, even if in fact it's untrue. You can be mistaken without being a liar.
I am not too sure users are migrating to tablets "to play games."
You're using quotation marks, but to who is the quote attributed to?
Of course users aren't migrating to tablets for the games. You'd have to be a complete moron to believe otherwise.
The quotes are a textual representation of the air quotes he'd be making if he said that out loud, in contradiction to the hypothetical person who might make that argument. That's to whom he's to quoting to who to. Don't you know you're grammar???
Slashdot Mirror
If you are trying to blah blah blah *you are part of the problem*.
Oh good grief. My point was about ignoring the terms of a contract that you are presented with, know are legally binding, are knowingly take action signifying consent. The person to whom I was replying stated that was their attitude to all software, including where he's required to give explicit consent to terms presented to him before use, not just shrink-wrapped EULAs.
There are problems with EULAs, and contracts to which you don't know you're agreeing should never be allowed to stand up in court, but a person who says "I know this software is presenting terms of a contract and I'm going to click the button that I knows signifies acceptance without reading the contract, and pretend that somehow that means I'm not accepting them" is being ridiculous.
I do the same thing - when I buy a house, I never read the terms of the mortgage contract. I just sign on the "give me a house" line. So I'm not bound by the terms of the mortgage since I signed under a duress. It was just what I had to do to buy a house.
Thanks, Shadowfacts. Now shut up.
So now Kirk yells, "Qa'aa'aa'aa'aa'aa'aa'aa'aa'aa'aa'an!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Well then it seems the couple has suffered real financial harm. Hopefully they can quantify this and collect damages. I hate the sue-happy culture of the US these days, but this case demonstrates exactly what lawsuits are for.
There's no way the company can claim ignorance due to the facts:
-The transaction was never completed, so the contract didn't apply
-The contract at the time (that didn't apply anyway) didn't include the clause about reviews
-The person attempting to purchase the item, and who would have been bound by the contract (but wasn't) wasn't the person who wrote the review
These are all facts that were plain at the time of the company's action; so in other words, they knowingly filed a false credit claim based on a non-existent clause in a contract that didn't apply to someone with whom they didn't do business anyway.
Our prisons are already full, so I think the appropriate penalty would be massive fines against the company, and all legal and executive personnel involved in this action, and if that can't be accurately determined, all legal and executive personnel.
Interesting... but I'd expect someone doing the same business all the time to have a "standard contract" as a starting point anyway at least, and said person is free to refuse business to anyone who doesn't want to accept the standard contract. It may not be friendly, but it's their right.
Your idea makes more sense for someone who does fewer sales, where each sale is not expected to occur in a particularly timely fashion, and there's time for things like negotiating whatever terms may be applicable. But in the reality of internet sales, it's not practical.
Or maybe you're suggesting this type of sale shouldn't involve contracts at all, which is not an entirely ridiculous idea...
I hear that if you go into the boys' room, close your eyes, turn around 3 times while saying "Hosts file" each time, when you open your eyes and look in the mirror, "127.0.0.1" will be written across your forehead in blood, and a randomly-bolded and italicized screed will appear all over the walls.
As long as you satisfy all of the natural instincts that your cat has that she would otherwise satisfy for herself outside, then it's fine to keep a cat indoors. Otherwise, it's not very humane and it sounds a little selfish on your part.
Close - what matters most for "responsible cat ownership" is whether your cat is happy and healthy. Cats that venture outdoors can certainly find happiness there, but it's a tremendous health risk for all the reasons people mention. The thing is, "satisfaction of instincts" can be detrimental to any creature, depending on the instinct and the circumstance.
For instance, my cat has a profound instinctive desire to maul my wife. This is extremely detrimental both to the cat's chances of survival and the happiness of everyone who lives under my roof.
And time to recoup costs is irrelevant, if you produce garbage then you may never recoup the costs, if you produce something good you might recoup your costs in hours.
I said "generally," meaning "applicable to producers of art that people want" as opposed to schlock; the intent is to prevent the situation where copyright doesn't do any producer (or even just the most successful) any good.
As for 5, 7, 10, 14, or whatever years: I'm trying to think of a form or medium that would be negatively impacted by a short term. Perhaps books: it's already notoriously difficult to make it as an author, even if skilled, and knowing that you could expect a maximum of 5 years of revenue from book sales may have a detrimental effect on literature.
I also think that a too-short term for some mediums may provide a perverse incentive for consumers not to buy. If I know a book, movie, or computer game is going to be in the public domain in only 5 years, I'll just wait it out until I can get a free copy. There would be so much recent material in the public domain already that many would be content to consume the culture from 5 years ago at no cost, and no revenue for producers, so I think you'd want a minimum length that accounts for this. 10-15 years seems like it would cover it, as the zeitgeist generally moves faster than that.
also lead to mass layoff and unemployment and be the direct cause of the next great depression.
Hey, now, this is Slashdot; I'm sure, with our collective intellect, we could come up with a rationale explaining how media piracy is directly responsible for smallpox and the Holocaust.
If only people hadn't distributed illegal copies of Hitler's paintings...
If only unauthorized back-alley publishers distributing illegal copies of books hadn't used paper carrying the smallpox virus...
My own personal idea is that copyright/patents should only last like 5-7 years, then everything is in public domain. This way the old guard could still keep plugging on to a degree.
Although I agree that the current copyright term is ridiculously long, effectively preventing any work from being open to the culture that created it, I think 5-7 years may be a little short. I've wondered about an automatic 14 year term for all works (like current automatic copyright), plus a 14-year extension for $$$$, for 28 years max. These numbers are based on an older copyright term, but are still basically arbitrary. You want to strike a balance between culture having free access to art in a timely manner, and protecting the ability of the artists to profit from their work. How long is too long? How long is long enough?
I would guess that the minimum length should be generally long enough for a producer of art to recoup the costs of production, but this may vary considerably by medium. GTA V made its budget back in what, 12 hours?
That's true. We should make sure we teach them the principles of justice, the value of honest labor, and the benefits of arts to culture and society. Then let them make an informed decision.
Why is anyone surprised laser sintering is more than capable of this? This is nothing more than tech demo clickbait; anyone following the capabilities of SLS already knew this was well within the realm of possibility. Just nowhere close to the realm of practicality from a fiscal perspective.
Also, it's a waste of weight and money to do it this way. SLS should be used for key parts, but the rest should be normal 3D printed plastic (like a Glock).
And as we all know, 100% of Slashdot readers are well versed in laser sintering techniques and capabilities.
The article explains why - as a demonstration of some of the ways this process is superior to machining. I'm a nerd, it's news to me, and it matters in the context of the potential for 3d printing to change significant aspects of society, and yes, firearm availability is significant.
Sorry, your joke was too subtle for Slashdot today. Including the typical hyphen at the end may have helped.
If you're a straight male (such as me) how does homosexuality or homosexual people actually affect you? Well they dont, if you're straight and dont like gays it's extremely easy to avoid them.
Unless you're a cake decorator or wedding photographer, in which case you can go to jail for trying to avoid them.
BTW, you shouldn't separate the art from the creator because to do so removes a lot of the meaning from the work. Its like saying we should never consider why an artist painted what they did and only accept that they did paint it.
That's an interesting point, however what does Ender's Game have to do with homosexuality? Not every facet of the creator is relevant to every artwork he produces. I read Ender's Game in total ignorance of anything whatsoever about the author, and found the book interesting and entertaining regardless. I experience all sorts of visual arts without knowing the context of the artist's production of the work, and they aren't devoid of meaning or value because of that.
If you are against homosexuality then you are as much a bigot as if you are against miscegenation.
Pray tell, why should we give any quarter to bigots? Is there any reason whatsoever that we should respect their beliefs and admit them into decent society?
Ironically, the definition of bigot is "a person who is intolerant of any ideas other than his or her own, esp on religion, politics, or race", which would seem to describe someone who refuses to admit others into decent society based on their religious beliefs.
I could just as easily say "If you are against pedophilia then you are as much a bigot as if you are against homosexuality," but would it be true? What's your infallible source for acceptable sexual proclivities? You act as if the morality of homosexuality is settled, as if a body of moral beliefs was disproved somewhere along the way, and anyone who doesn't subscribe to your set of moral beliefs is evil, which makes you just as much of a fundamentalist as the homophobes.
The answer to your question is that a decent society NEEDS to admit people of differing beliefs, otherwise you're left with the tyranny of witch hunts and similar ideological persecution, and is no longer decent pretty much by definition.
The problem with changes to marriage are that because they're enforced by government, they affect everybody.
As for the actual topic of paying for art by artists you deplore, I can only point out that Hollywood has always been full of deplorable assholes, and you shouldn't let that keep you from supporting genuinely good art - just counter the artists' offensive advocacy with your own - especially since in this case movie ticket sales aren't actually lining Card's pockets.
Now what we need is for a Surgeon Simulator add-on where you have to play QWOP.
It's not a 'problem of time' &mdash, it's a 'problem of validation' &mdash.
No kidding!
Line 6, Column 30: & did not start a character reference.
Well ain't that like the pot calling the kettle an anonymous coward.
Yes, this exactly. A few things:
1) If the concept of higher gas taxes to pay for infrastructure (really just meeting previous tax revenues) is such taboo that your politicians are unable to sell the need for infrastructure to the public, you need better politicians.
2) Newer cars are getting better mileage than old cars, but in general larger cars that in general cause more damage to roads are going to pay more toward these taxes than the smaller ones. Corollary: this also functions as a tax incentive to use more fuel-efficient vehicles, which is a good thing, right?
3) The other suggestions of odometer readings are spot on. Why the unnecessary waste of new technology and privacy concerns? I hate to be cynical, but is there some business in Oregon that makes these devices that happens to know a politician supporting the issue?
That's all true, and both stimulus/response behavior and free will can be unpredictable. Ultimately, I think the problem with TFA is that even if you can't tell the difference between an actually free agent and a system that has the appearance of free will, the difference is significant.
So you think we have something special that makes us more complex than, say, a dog or a cat? Many animals have been shown to have abstract thought abilities, and we just thought they are less intelligent (in the sense of the ability of reasoning, not if they can remember more things, or calculate faster), actually just did not have the need to evolve a complex spoken language to help them represent those abstract thoughts.
We know some animals have some ability to conceptualize possible realities, but this shouldn't surprise anyone. Sufficiently advanced animal brains work basically the same way ours do - they have memories, neural firing patterns formed by sensory impressions. Dogs and cats dream, so why can't they "imagine" hypotheticals? This is different than being sentient, much less having free will.
Dogs are able to understand human gestures, and can understand certain words/phrases. That implies communication skills that many animals don't have. Then they understand those messages, and act upon them. You could say they do so because they want to. How are your choices free will but not theirs?
Quick, name an animal that has no ability to communicate. Many animals can learn to "understand" forms of human communication, but do you have evidence that it's more than stimulus-response? Of course you can say a dog "chose" to act because it wanted to, but that's not differentiating between stimulus-response and free will. I loved my dogs very much, and can anthropomorphize with the best of 'em, but I saw no evidence that anything they did was more than responding to either conditioning or instinct.
A cat knows it needs to open a door to reach its food. When it wants food, it might come to you for help, or it may try to open the door on its own. Regardless of which action it takes, the cat made a decision, and chose a way to act. It could have chosen otherwise, but it did not. How is that different than your free will?
Again, stimulus/response. The cat is conditioned to pester you for food, or open a door. Which action it takes may be entirely determined by environmental input. To say the cat "chose" is to assert that it has free will, which is begging the question.
The idea that humans have free will is an assertion - the alternative is that we're basically noisy meat robots, acting purely on instinct and psychological or social conditioning. I personally believe that the majority of our "choices" are response to stimulus, (we are animals, after all) but not all. But the noisy meat robot argument is self-defeating, or at least, it renders itself moot, because if we don't actually make choices, then we aren't choosing to have this discussion, I'm not choosing to disagree with you, and no one chooses moral behavior. People either will or won't do things based on their conditioning and instinct, and it's literally pointless to argue about it.
So my reasons for believing in free will are basically religious - I believe in moral reality not derived purely from material existence, and this necessitates the ability to choose the good.
Now, how can we tell whether a given brain (real or artificial) has the capacity for free will, and is exercising it? I have no idea.
It's interesting to note that humans aren't even considered capable of making choices until the age of reason, roughly 7 years old. There's a certain level of cognitive development necessary for this, and it seems to be the case that language is an essential part of the process. It remains to be seen whether other species could acquire sentience after developing sufficient linguistic ability, and whether humans could speed that process. After all, we learn language from older members of our species, and have tried teaching it to other species such as apes and dolphins. I suspect the answer to both questions is yes, but I don't think I'll be around to find out.
With a human intelligence (HI), one cannot ever deconstruct why and how the system makes the decision that it makes. It is "random" in at least the sense of being unpredictable at countless levels involving the whole non-Markovian process of evolution from the very first cell through to the present organism making the decision. Worse, even the human itself doesn't know why it makes the decision it makes, not really. Chocolate or Vanilla ice cream today? "Chocolate because I like chocolate more than vanilla" is ultimately semantically null, because one cannot answer why one likes chocolate more than vanilla, and no matter what set of reasons one cooks up for it the ultimate answer is associated with a subjective response that is a sublime blend of (evolutionarily and experientially) preprogrammed stuff, experience, and the "mood of the moment", utterly unpredictable.
Unfortunately, these are [currently] unprovable assertions about a complex process that might turn out to be totally physical and explainable. "Chocolate stimulates the pleasure center of the brain more than vanilla due to a lifetime of changes in palette sensitivity" is a totally possible, non-mysterious answer. One could even imagine an advanced MRI showing the differences in neuron firing. But just because the process is so complex it can't be reverse-engineered, that doesn't mean it's random. Our lack of ability to predict it does not mean it's "unpredictable" in the mathematical sense.
Personally, I believe humans DO have free will - which I understand as the ability to choose an action contrary to the influence of instinct or conditioning. It may be difficult or impossible to know when this choice has been made, and it may be true that it's in fact rarely used, but it is an important philosophical distinction. I don't believe computers, as currently conceived as purely deterministic processors, are capable of free will. Even RNG don't change that - deterministically following a randomly-presented path is still deterministic. I do believe there is something "special" about humans in this regard - I don't think any animals currently have this ability (who knows about aliens - the universe is large).
As for religious implications, I see no conflict between the ideas that the capacity for free will is acquired by means of millennia of evolution of the brain, culminating in sufficient complexity for self-representation and consideration of alternative futures, granting non-deterministic ability; and "God made us that way." From my point of view, "intelligent design" and "natural evolution" are the same thing.
*Sigh*, time-wasting pedantry here, but if you believe you're telling the truth you're not lying. You have to intend to deceive to do that. If you have a recollection of a quote or assertion you saw somewhere, can't find it, but believe it to be true and repeat it, it's not a lie, even if in fact it's untrue. You can be mistaken without being a liar.
I am not too sure users are migrating to tablets "to play games."
You're using quotation marks, but to who is the quote attributed to?
Of course users aren't migrating to tablets for the games. You'd have to be a complete moron to believe otherwise.
The quotes are a textual representation of the air quotes he'd be making if he said that out loud, in contradiction to the hypothetical person who might make that argument. That's to whom he's to quoting to who to. Don't you know you're grammar???