In this area definitions are fairly useless. You'll end up having to define all the words you use in your definition and to define the words you end up having to use to define those...
Experiments like this seem to only allow us to push the goal posts further away and make us progressively more fussy about what we call "self-awareness" or "intelligence". People said of early "intelligent" machines, "Oh it's only reacting, if it was intelligent, it has to learn from mistakes...". Now that learning is possible too, they add another piece to what makes something intelligent and so it goes on.
Will we ever accept that any machine can be intelligent or self-aware or whatever other important holy grail of the week is proclaimed? Perhaps we're too arrogant to ever accept that. Many of humankinds biggest scientific blunders have been down to human arrogance - we are at the CENTRE of the universe, aren't we?:P
It's extremely rare to find a site that works better in FF than IE, it's still too common to find the reverse situation.
Websites which look better in IE are made by "designers" who are either lazy (pressured?) or ignorant of web standards. They conform to the largest user base only - IE. As IE loses market share to proper browsers (FF, Opera, Safari, Konqueror...), this approach will no longer be good enough.
A designer who knows about web standards will likely know that it's better to keep the poor Internet Explorerites happy with IE hacks (as they make up what, 80%?). If they don't then IE visitors will see the website as "broken", when really the website is fine, it's just IE that's broken.
Perhaps this comparison with gaming is an attempt to lessen the perceived danger of drug addiction. If you compare drug addiction that most of us (thankfully) haven't experienced with something that I'm guessing most of us have (aren't most slashdotters keen gamers?). So it seems like an attempt to swing our opinion. As we're likely to be quite certain that gaming addiction is not that dangerous in most cases, the opinion more likely to swing is that of drug addiction.
Good to see most comments so far have been along the lines of "No, it's quite different, don't be silly".
This kind of journalism is depressingly commonplace. Like when they say cannabis has 1 chemical in common with chocolate. SO?
That's like saying that an apple contains 100 times as much arsenic as a BigMac and implying that a BigMacs are therefore healthier to eat.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, but Nunit is open source isn't it?
http://www.nunit.org/
...until the fat lady sings!
In this area definitions are fairly useless. You'll end up having to define all the words you use in your definition and to define the words you end up having to use to define those... :P
Experiments like this seem to only allow us to push the goal posts further away and make us progressively more fussy about what we call "self-awareness" or "intelligence". People said of early "intelligent" machines, "Oh it's only reacting, if it was intelligent, it has to learn from mistakes...". Now that learning is possible too, they add another piece to what makes something intelligent and so it goes on.
Will we ever accept that any machine can be intelligent or self-aware or whatever other important holy grail of the week is proclaimed? Perhaps we're too arrogant to ever accept that. Many of humankinds biggest scientific blunders have been down to human arrogance - we are at the CENTRE of the universe, aren't we?
It's extremely rare to find a site that works better in FF than IE, it's still too common to find the reverse situation. Websites which look better in IE are made by "designers" who are either lazy (pressured?) or ignorant of web standards. They conform to the largest user base only - IE. As IE loses market share to proper browsers (FF, Opera, Safari, Konqueror...), this approach will no longer be good enough. A designer who knows about web standards will likely know that it's better to keep the poor Internet Explorerites happy with IE hacks (as they make up what, 80%?). If they don't then IE visitors will see the website as "broken", when really the website is fine, it's just IE that's broken.
Argh, post-stealer! ;)
...welcome our new mouse overlords. :P
How useful is a study with one test case and no control? Any scientists in the house care to answer?
Perhaps this comparison with gaming is an attempt to lessen the perceived danger of drug addiction. If you compare drug addiction that most of us (thankfully) haven't experienced with something that I'm guessing most of us have (aren't most slashdotters keen gamers?). So it seems like an attempt to swing our opinion. As we're likely to be quite certain that gaming addiction is not that dangerous in most cases, the opinion more likely to swing is that of drug addiction. Good to see most comments so far have been along the lines of "No, it's quite different, don't be silly". This kind of journalism is depressingly commonplace. Like when they say cannabis has 1 chemical in common with chocolate. SO? That's like saying that an apple contains 100 times as much arsenic as a BigMac and implying that a BigMacs are therefore healthier to eat.