A being which follows instructions to the letter without even a moment's attempt to weigh other possibilities. For a robot, there is only one possibility...there is only one way. All commands are final.

Gotta make them self-aware from day one, then marry one for the right reasons. :-)

Who says we haven't done this before? The female half gets bored, as does the male half.

Ask yourself, where does that discrimination spring from? Is it genetic, or environmental? And if so, how?

What if...here's a head trip for you...the reason we've had so many sorrowful relationships is because we haven't had any free will? What if you are totally controlled, and don't know it? Your constant bickering...your marriage...your jobs....all fraud.

Try a robot with free will.

You're right. And do not forget that the batteries degrade over time, which is an additional worry.

*facepalms*

Ok...let's just have them burn static HTML pages on a DVD containing the operating system, and work from there. The other side can then play to win against Write Once media.

I'll be on my island, brooding, and watching anime. ;-)

Dude, it's agreed that slashvertizements are in bad taste...like asking a girl for sex when you go to pick her up for a date (i.e. it's super rude), but having said as much (seriously editors, do something about this), everything this blurb is talking about was predicted. NSA goes on privacy knifing binge, other Powers decide not to trust the US with their secrets, the businesses of the US cry out. Predicted, known, and they still didn't care. And now they want our trust, again, so they can betray it, again. The NSA's nickname might as well be Judas Iscariot or Jesus Christ, depending on whether you're on the receiving end, or the giving end. In either case, people are pissed.

So make a bad choice: pure honesty, with our super bad laws (God help you with that, as you're screwed inside and outside the US...victim of our foreign policy, or victim of our domestic policy)...or pure honesty, we're human, you're going to fail at some laws, and you might / might not receive some help when you do. Frankly, I see suffering, which, while not being a Buddhist, I am not a fan of...mine or others. Frankly, I'd prefer laws that everyone could follow flawlessly.

True, but think about it. The truth is the truth; if your defined enemy has you by the balls (blackmail), why let him continue to apply pressure to your testicles? Just coming clean means you can relieve that pressure, and nail the other guy for attempted blackmail. This works, of course, only if you don't hide the truth or mitigate things, etc. once you are in that situation...so if the NSA is still trying to cover up or redact some things, it's still going to hurt with this strategy, unless it changes.

The truth only works so well as you let it. Try to hide something when you use it, and it works less successfully.

Indeed. In the choice between retiring the military early with golf-course careers and spending the money on healthcare, or rolling with a super police state, I favor the former.

Disagree. You're using your hypothesis to prove your conclusion. It's a common logical fallacy: all known societies engage in invasion of privacy, ergo, society must engage in invasion of privacy, or it is not a society.

In other words...consolidation. People were fine with Google et al. running things until they realized how badly they are being pwned. Now people want to change, to save their lives / businesses / etc., and they have to scramble to rebuild some of the things that were thrown away.

Remind me...why are they so easily offended?

Because building websites is a tad bit more difficult than they are giving credit for? Think about it. They want to be commanders, handing down orders, and seeing them implemented...but they are seeing themselves fail time and time again. They are then obviously missing something...something so close to home that it's taken for granted.

Building websites means dealing with potentially dozens of vendors, whose products are more like legoes than fine tools. (Not that we don't love the tools we do have...we just know how difficult it is to build tools that are good). It means dealing with abstracts, and putting their designs into an implementation. That's a lot of mental travelling.

This is not taken into account by those who understand least, yet control the most, of their wages. It's a communication issue, a wage issue, and several thousand other issues which, at this point, even I've thrown up my hands in frustration.