I presume you were in favor of nuclear power? That would put you at odds with the vocal left-extremists. I suspect that will change in about a decade. It seems to take around that long for such ideas to bubble-over to one of the extreme sides.

The simplest voucher system is almost precisely what you stated. I'd just add "or home-school", though in a few years I'd bet the home-schooler contingent will reverse curse and shrink since they'll have affordable schools to choose from at their disposal. Any stipulations on it and you create an inherent inequality to the system. The remaining tricky bit is how do you classify a school? I'd say same as any other business.They file their business paperwork to do a specific thing. Creating a "school" that really exists to collect voucher money is fraud and should be prosecuted as such - nothing more, nothing less.

And I fully agree that getting the nutbags into their own schools is a definite bonus.

Google definitely did something stupid. If they made the decision to auto-include everyone with a Gmail account in Buzz because they thought it was the only way to catch up with Facebook and Twitter in a reasonable amount of time then what they did could arguably be considered Evil as well.

Not exactly. Evil requires intent. No "accidental evil" exists. Doing something stupid != being evil. For your scenario to be evil they would have to have *known* what they were doing was evil, which is not even shown. Wrong != Evil either.

For them to include all of the gmail userbase in Buzz by default to be evil it would have to be evil w/o regard to catching up to Facebook or Twitter, and to support your hypothesis the motive would also have to be evil. While you may not have intended it, you asserted that catching Facebook or Twitter quickly is evil. I'm not sure I buy that argument, just as I'm not sure you intended it that way.

I suspect from the limited knowledge I have, that it was a story failure in a complex system. We all know that happens. If you "accidentally" publish something, YOU did that. If it is done for you, that is a different story. In the first case you were being stupid. We also know that you can't protect people from being stupid either. The question in my mind would be what allowed those flaws to get through testing, and how can it be prevented. So by all means have an investigation - to determine if people's data was intentionally exposed. If it was unintentional, they can and should be sued in civil court for *actual damages*. People should pay for their mistakes and make restitution. But punitive measures should be reserved for intentional acts.

Regarding lawmakers, they will ALWAYS pull the "TotC" card because it pre-emptively demonizes anyone that disagrees with them. After all, who would be against the children? We have politicians, not statesmen

The difficulty in implementing an AI that does not have full battlefield awareness such as in StarCraft is the difficulty in AI reconnoitering and pathing. IIRC it was this limitation that drove Blizzard to implement AI omniscience in SC - both the coding difficulty as well as the horsepower available at the time.

As far as accuracy of the AI as in shooters, it seems to me we may finally have a use for "fuzzy math"[1]. Let the AI have perfect knowledge of what it can "see", but have the calculation, or indeed the original data, have a "fuzziness" to it. For shooting accuracy that is a closer approximation of human capabilities. Have a built in random error margin. Sometimes it will be accurate enough, sometimes it won't be. Perhaps for some applications having an AI that can adapt to account for said error (again with the adaptation having a built in fuzziness margin) would be appropriate.

For many applications it seems to me something as simple as approximation can help with this problem. Mathematics tends toward perfection, no "good enough". AI's need "ok, that's good enough" ability.

Another possibility for simple expansion is the time factor. Touched upon by the parent is the reaction time. How quickly the AI responds is often an indication of whether it is an AI. If I am playing SC with human and AI enemies, I can tell which it is by how fast it responds to an attack or a two pronged attack. Provide a built in, random, fuzzy delay time to actions.

Combine these with limiting the parallel cognitive abilities of an AI - make it have to choose which attack to ignore or to split it's attention. Shoot for emergent behavior and you'll likely find a more natural response. Intelligence is not precise calculation, it is making correct for the context choices based on fuzzy and limited knowledge. It involves refining of estimates and calculations, and conflicting goals and options.

For military oriented games such as RTS or FPS AIs, give it the ability to be a hero or a coward. IIRC long ago there was a game called Close Combat that did this. Each individual of a unit could panic, carry out orders, or become the Spartan - one soldier taking down a platoon.

But for overall realism, how good the AI is is moot when you can see the guy behind the wall because his helmet is partially sticking through it. That math seems pretty fuzzy, maybe the codebase is already there? ;)

Sometimes I'd like to win because I got lucky, or lose because the AI got lucky. When everything is highly precise, luck is excluded.

1. Fuzzy as in "1/4 inch + 1/3" is about half an inch".

Oh the political irony.

Socialism/Fascism/Statism/Communism: I'm form the government, and I'm going to help.
Capitalism: Hi, I'm form a business, how can I help?

IMO those calling the second arrogant and insulting are being petty and bigoted. Asking someone if they NEED help is often worse than asking if they would like help or how you can help them. Regardless of the situation if you ask Putin if he NEEDs help he will always say no - no way he would admit to NEEDing help. He *might*, even if highly unlikely admit to wanting help. And the least offensive question is to ask how you can help. That Putin took offense at that is either a fault of translation or nothing less than sheer arrogance.

As a libertarian, I find you Socialist's never ending insistence that non-Socialists are the arrogance- and corruption-mongers hypocritical, self-serving, and demonstrably incorrect. Particularly when in the context of a capitalist offering help versus socialism's mandatory redistribution as alleged help.

If this was Dell offering money to help in the wake of a natural disaster we'd not hear from you. If there was a natural disaster and Dell did not offer help, we'd hear form you. But here we have Dell simply asking how it can help and you people (there are others on this page doing it - Socialist or not), get bent out of shape. Keep going, it merely illustrates the hypocrisy of the failed ideology of mass-Socialism

"This girl is typical of the mainstream, "

No, she isn't. If she is, then the world is terminally screwed.

"Just like with cars, some people are mechanics, some people just change oil and filters and others just drive the car. It's a shame the linux community can't understand the same thing about computers."

There is a distinct difference between understanding and agreeing. You are not saying we should *understand*, but that we should agree - you are just using the word understand incorrectly. To make the illustration clear, I understand why some people are racists, but I do not, as a consequence or otherwise, agree with them.

"why should we blame her if she looked on her computer and *GASP* didn't see Microsoft Word"

Because she somehow "accidentally" clicked through many additional steps to get a non-Microsoft operating system on her computer. No, you don't "accidentally" do that. Then again, taken from another point of view, why should we not point that finger directly at Microsoft. After all, Word/Office does in fact operate on non-MS OSes, but not Linux. That is their choice, not hers. Why should "linux users" be blamed when Microsoft chooses to not make their software available for Linux?

"Is it possible that just maybe, he classes said as a requirement you needed MSWord for the class materials? Maybe there are spreadsheets that are handed out that have tons of formulas and macros in them; is the instructor going to worry about OO macro compatibility."

MSWord doesn't do spreadsheets. But that aside, let us take another PoV again. He shouldn't have to care because spreadsheets should be the same. Yet MS insists on making and keeping theirs non-interoperable. Maybe spreadsheets should be treatable like black boxes. After all, math formulas are math formulas, right? Oh, but this prof is at a *technical* school. He *should* be expected to know and account for such differences, at least he should be if it is a *quality* school. Unless the class is "MS Word" or "MS Excel", it should be vendor agnostic.

Schools are focusing on a single vendor or language and billing it as the broad category. This is wrong. Yes, the prof *should* be better than what you suggest. Mediocrity and false claims are the last thing we need in professors, instructors, or teachers.

And finally, I'm sick of the arrogant "you Linux users are all ignoring the ignorant people" attitude. So what if we/they are? It is an equally valid argument to say the opposite, that people should know how to use things they use. Your continued analogy to "people just drive their car" is false to your claim anyway. People go to classes to learn how to drive the car. You don't just get to fire it up and go. A general purpose computer is nothing until you determine what and how to do something on it. If this woman was going to a driving school that insisted she bring a gasoline powered car, yet she went to a the dealer and insisted on and ordered a diesel powered one, where would you assign the blame when she couldn't fuel up at the school's pump or that the gasoline she put in at the school caused it to not run? Hey, it is clearly the attitude of those who make diesel cars when the rest of the world doesn't want to know what kind of fuel goes in their car they just want to drive it, right?

For all those who think computers, Linux or otherwise, should be so simple that any idiot can walk up, sit down, and use it productively, with no training at all - you can go make one that way. Until you accomplish that, all you have are vague and false platitudes and "comfort theater" - your proclaiming these non-extant virtues serve only to promote a sense of superiority in attitude. Meanwhile, the rest of us are working in reality. We recognize that "one size fits all" is a lie. We recognize that mediocrity is easy, and that handing out gold medals to anyone who tries out for the Olympics is stupid. Some things in life should be a challenge. That some will not succeed is part of life - the game of inches.

Mussolini kept the trains on schedule ...