YES it bloody well HAS stopped me from playing the games I purchased.
Specifically on roadtrips. It's finally someone else's turn to drive, I whip out the laptop to do something. I go to launch a game I haven't played in a while and GUESS WHAT?

No internet connection means no launching.

I hear they're getting better about this. And Valve and Steam are probably the best, least intrusive, most palpitate form on DRM currently out there. And there's some value with being able to download your game library on whatever computer. And they're setting up a system to allow family to borrow games. And their push for Linux is good for the industry. All good stuff.

But don't pretend that the DRM found in steam is painless and doesn't get in people's way. If you're always online, then sure, it probably works great for you.

He can tell you can cook his own cocoa.
He can tell you he could probably fry an egg.
He can tell you he's a virgin.

"He" is a placeholder for both the AI system and the authentic Ukrainian boy. One you consider to be clearly not intelligent. Presumably you consider the flesh and blood human boy to be intelligent.

Because the two are indistinguishable. Or, at least, they're headed that way. The future, it's coming.

Google search is vastly better at finding my slippers than my dog. It's not going to pass any Turing Tests.
Watson is better at trivia then my dog. It's not going to pass any Turing Tests.
Big Blue is better at chess then my dog. It's not going to pass any Turing Tests.

Conversation is not the pinnacle of intelligence. You're chasing after a false notion of human-like hard AI.

So if there were a boy which genuinely had the intellect and communication capabilities of a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy (conversing in English), you would not consider him intelligent?

An interesting aspect of the Turing Test is that it's dependent upon sociological factors. Back in the 60's, like you said, it was assumed that the thing on the other side was a human. But as time goes forward and we get flooded with clever ads, chatbots, brand-dropping honeypot girlfriends, smart cars, automated grocery tellers, and AI in general, we'll be more suspicious of the humanity of EVERYTHING around us.

It'll be harder for AI's to pass the Turing Test as time goes on.

It'll also be harder for us to pass the Turing Test. It's a jarring experience to answer the phone and have the person swear at getting voice-mail.

Whatever, you have to put some sort of time-limit on it just for feasibility of testing.

Pft, you are not some sort of high cleric in charge of spotting bots.

That's an decent point. It's certainly a valid issue to take with any bot that passes a turing test in such a way. You could claim any blank terminal is indistinguishable from a coma patient. Or a gibberish machine is equivalent to the mentally ill.

Let's extend that. The first machines that "legitimately" passes a Turing test will not be super-insightful teaching gurus. They will not be fonts of wisdom. Just as there is a difference between a math teacher and the mentally ill, there is a difference between your typical math teachers and the likes of Einstein, Stephan Hawking, and Feynman. I suspect that AI chatbots will climb that axis incrementally, similar to how robotics have progressed.
The impact of such things is that the supply of simpletons to chat with will explode and the relative value of children and the mentally ill will plummet. And as they get better, the merely moderately intelligent will likewise plummet as only the intelligent are better than whiteCollarOfficeBotv7.4_3(noSextingMod).

There we go. That's the test right there. The "extended conversation" is still variable, and I think 15 minutes is fine. But the "competent human" is refinement that's needed. It's implied in the original Turing test. It's also still rather subjective.

I think it would be deeply insightful if we aired all the dirty laundry of Hoover's FBI dragnet. A lot of it has already been brought to light when... huh... a leftist activist group burglarized a field office and released document to the media about COINTELPRO.

Now, what was exposed was the offical documented record of what happened. Imagine if the actual agents revealed what really went on. Why they did it. What the rational was. Who ordered what.

I imagine there would be a number of similarities between Hoover's dragnet and the NSA's meta-data collection. And all those records from the very mouths of the agents doing the deed would let us see the bullshit for what it really is.

Some people have the ability to learn from history. But only if there's a record of it happening.

Traveller campaign: intercept "time-capsules" bound for Earth-orbit trajectory, discover hottest "blast from the past" media chum weeks-months before the story breaks and secure exclusive rights to the descendent's interview.

If you take a broad view, sure, just being rich doesn't inherently harm anyone.

Just like poor people are not harming anyone just by being poor.

That's some classist warfare material right there. The sort of propaganda spread by the slave owners to get their slaves to lick their boots harder.
You could quite equally say that the job is going to exist with or without the leeches feeding off of other people doing actual work.

Right, as long as the employees have the ability to "go elsewhere". If you've never known a wage-slave with no better options then the dead-end job they're in, then you don't know what you're talking about. If you've never known someone who is going to work every day, not for the job or pay, but because without the medical benefits that are tied to the job they or a loved one are going to die, then you don't really know all the finer details that go into setting up and managing a "free society".

Place the power not with the government, megacorporations, or rich men, but rather with the people. The moment that power is removed from the masses, the masses get screwed over.

Vote with your wallets. If you don't like this sort of thing, STOP FUNDING IT.

The Heritage Foundation? Duuuuuuuude. It's a conservative think tank funded by rich men like the Coors heir and the Koch brothers.

You are listening to rich men tell you why you should appreciate rich men.

Except that CEOs can do practically ANYTHING and justify it as "increasing wealth for the share-holders".

Here we go:
1) Fire everyone, sell everything, liquidate like it's 1999. This increases the bottom-line of the company and makes it easy to increase the wealth of the shareholders (effectively removing the risk of not knowing what the stock is worth, do all that liquidation and you have a definite value the stock can be compared against)

2) Go into debt, hire a shit-ton of scientists, designers, artist, whoever to invest in the product so that next year/decade they'll be able to corner the market, bring in more money, and increase wealth for the shareholders.

3) Dodge all taxes as it leaves more money for the shareholders

4) Pay all the taxes as it removes the risk of the government coming in a busting up the company, shattering the wealth of the shareholders.

5) Pissing it all away on hookers and blow. "Hey, I'm a high-powered businessman, I make you the money. Walk away, leave me in charge, and you'll get your quarterly gains (as long as the economy is still booming)."

6) Axing all of the top skill and people with connections in the business. They're just doing lines of blow. It's not like we really need that guy whose mother is running the government regulator, I'm sure she'll be professional. Removing this overhead increases wealth for the shareholders.

All of that happens and in some cases is even the smart thing to do. If you think corporations are somehow LEGALLY REQUIRED to curb-stomp you, then you have no flipping clue what happens in the business world.

Go to Cairo, breath the leaded-gas fume encrusted air, fight off the wandering dogs, dodge traffic, learn that their more important industry is tourism of all things and that it's on shaky grounds with the country undergoing political turmoil, that their whole economy is tanking, that the nation's credit rating is falling, and then reflect on the need to keep laser pointers out of the hands of children.

I mean, I get the sentiment. That some of these kids are going to look into the things and have their vision damaged. And that's sad. And you feel for these kids.

But it's like commenting on a guy's stubbed toe when he's currently bleeding out from a gunshot wound mid-revolution. Because holy shit have you BEEN to Egypt?

It's neutral for the economy.
Wealth is neither created nor destroyed, just merely transferred between entities.

It's good for the economy of the New Yorkers, it's bad for the economy of the New York Government.

The economy is not a zero-sum game and can go up and down. But this right here is a zero-sum transfer. You could argue about where the money is being more productive, in the government's pocket or in the parker's pockets, but that trends into the philosophical.

M-M-M-MONSTER POST!!!!
Of enlightenment and knowledge peering past the veil of ignorance, cutting through the bullshit curtain of marketing, and bringing us along for the ride.
Thank you

Microsoft can't maintain a numbering scheme for more than two versions.
I will bet you solid money that the next version of windows is not marketed as "Windows 9" when it comes out.

They can't even stick to a minor change numbering scheme. The next big update will probably be Windows 8.1 update 1 service pack 1. You know there's some pointy haired boss that goes into a conniption fit when an engineer suggests they release 8.2.

Although, It'd be pretty awesome if they released Windows 9.4 and then had a "throwback" UI change for Windows 9.5