Apart from maintaining cross-system compatibility (and/or preventing a peculiar form of psychological lock-in by training your users to not understand foreign interfaces), there are certain realities that just make the interface conform to a particular standard. For instance;

1. Rectangles. We've often dreamt of 3D interfaces and interfaces with crazy geometries, but rectangles are just superior - they scale, tessellate, and can be programmed simply (you need only four coordinates - either X*Y,W*H or X1,X2:Y1,Y2), and rendered easily. Windows don't just have to tessellate with other windows, but also with their contents! Circular interfaces might be novel, but they make very poor use of available space (they don't tessellate with their contents or other windows), are harder to program and render, and require the window contents to be a certain shape and position (ie, don't scale well). Not only that, but even the devices dictate rectangles. If you had a totally circular interface, you'd need a circular screen for it. Which means a circular computer (or rectangular sabot, which is a bad option for portables). And circular devices don't pack or port so well. As for 3D - it looks great, but until we have 3D screens AND peripherals to interact with them without getting gorilla arm, we have to use simulated 3D, which is cumbersome, computationally expensive and has no inherent usability advantages (besides the fact that humans can think in 3D easily).
    
2. Windows. A computer, by definition, is multi-purpose. You need some way to pare the functionality out of the computer. Now, modern computers are far, far too complex for any one entity to be able to supply the entire gamut of functionality, from kernel all the way to kid's games (and even if they could, democracy and capitalism have shown us that competition means better products). Enter third-parties. Now, how do you divvy up the workload? The only realistic way is to make each each third party supply one piece of functionality - viz, applications. Ah, but now you want your application to "play nice" with the other applications, since functionalities might compliment one another (eg, web browser + music player + text editor). So, all the application designers have to code to some standard implemented by the system designer ("don't worry about decorating or positioning your window Mr. Application Designer, we'll take care of that"). This benefits all parties - application vendors don't have to keep reinventing the wheel, system designers can make their product more consistent and therefore more attractive to the end user, who enjoy said consistency. And what is a window if not a system-designed container which controls the geometry of each application (so as not to conflict with other applications), and decorates it with various user overrides?
    
3. Menus. Well, you need some way to start and control applications. Now, you could use a number of things; hotkeys, desktop icons, contextual, or sidebars.
   • Hotkeys. Hotkey environments exist, but they're not popular, because of the massively steep learning curve.
   • Desktop Icons. Desktop icons are nice, but they're inaccessible once you have an application obscuring them (plus, you'd need to constantly spawn and remove desktop icons based on system status - eg, task management).
   • Contextual. Contextual menus (a la fluxbox) are good, but they have a small learning curve (ever seen a new fluxbox user exclaim "how the hell do I do anything on this damn thing?"?), PLUS they're inaccessible once applications are running (they're contextual, so once you're off the desktop, your menu reflects your application).
   • Sidebars. Sidebars are good - they're obvious ("What does "start" do? Oh, it opens a menu for starting things!"), they're always accessible - they're clearly the best choice for most people (disclaimer: I prefer hotkeys, but I'm not your average computer user).

   Now, where do you put a sidebar? Well, unless you want it to get in the way of applications and interrupt workflow, you put it somewhere discrete - ie, to the side.

Your circular spoke idea is interesting, but it wouldn't work as a primary or default menu. Having said that, I'd be interested in seeing it as an optional hotkey-triggered overlay at the centre of the screen - perhaps you can have two (either as two different circles, or as concentric circles). Maybe if it dynamically "grew" (radial increase) to accommodate menu expansions, that'd be neat. If I weren't so busy/lazy, I'd write a compiz plugin (hopefully someone less lazy/busy will read your idea and pick up the slack ;)).

Cyberax (705495) posted:

Nope. It's religion. Every religion breeds extremism. So the blame's well placed.

During the Black Plague, the disease was spread by the fleas which rats carried. Back then, people blamed (amongst other things) rats. These days, however, we (correctly) blame the fleas for being the actual carrier. See,

• Not every rat is necessarily a danger
• The rat is not directly carrying the disease
• There are other means of infection besides rats

Where am I going with this? Surprise! This is an analogy for religion/extremism. Religion/rats may be a common carrier of extremism/fleas+plague, but it's not technically correct to blame rats/religion. Congratulations, you think as those you have disdain for (medieval-ers are a subset of religious folk)! Paradox!

If that explanation didn't sway you, try this -

Nope. It's ________ . Every ________ breeds extremism. So the blame's well placed.
Nope. It's politics . Every political alignment breeds extremism. So the blame's well placed.
Nope. It's sports teams. Every sports team breeds extremism. So the blame's well placed.
Nope. It's text editors. Every text editor breeds extremism. So the blame's well placed.
Nope. It's skub . Every jar of skub breeds extremism. So the blame's well placed.

See how easy it is? I'm sorry if that screws with your pre-conceived notions, but the fact is that religion is merely a manifestation of the problem, not the problem itself.

Anonymous Coward posted:

And religion easily provides the most convenient excuse to do so. Prohibitions against killing obviously don't work. Rational arguments are useless against someone who claims that god has spoken to him because he has it on higher authority than anyone else. Religion goes well with the uneducated because it teaches people to take things on faith - once you get people to swallow that, you can pretty much tell them anything.

No other system comes close. Education is the best way for some immunity against religions and quasi-religious cults (see the comment on Stalinism elsewhere). I'm close to defining religion as any system that doesn't put humans first.

Bang, hit the nail on the head. If I hadn't posted here, I'd mod this up (though if I hadn't posted, you wouldn't have replied, so it's self-defeating prophecy). Yes, the largest problem with religion is it's almost tailor-made for exploitation. You could try crafting another system of exploitation, but it would end up being another incarnation of religion (see: Cults of Personality, which operate exactly as exploitative religions do). The mind-boggling irony is that although the vast majority of modern mainstream religions preach peace, they seem to have been twisted into weapons of hate. If I made bets, I'd bet that the promise of peace is the "bait" and the hatred is the "switch". But I digress.

There's an obvious difference here. The Christians persecute others to spread their religion. Atheists persecute others for other reasons. In this case, it was to spread political ideas rather than religious ones. Religion is a direct cause of many murders while atheism cannot be blamed for it because there's nothing in the ideology about committing murder in the name of any superstition.

... Unbelievable. You come within a hair's breadth of the astonishingly-obvious-yet-no-one-sees-it fact that the problem is not religion, it is extremism, of which religion is only a subset (though when I say subset I should say intersection, since at least one religious person doesn't want to go on a killing rampage). Yet you suddenly take a 90 degree turn and start rambling about how religion encourages murdering, even though it's explicitly banned in many (perhaps most) major religion and is only justified by twisting the words and intents of said religion (which is easy if your audience are uneducated peons, as they were during the Crusades/Inquisition).

Besides which, this should have rang alarm bells:

Atheists persecute others for other reasons

Quite frankly, I don't care if they're persecuting others to spread religion, spread ideology, or to sell chocolates. I don't care what they call themselves. The whole damn problem is the persecution. The reason, by comparison, is unimportant and interchangeable - that's the whole friggin' idea behind Skub vs anti-Skub.

I'm not GP, but this really bugs me:

So you're argument is pretty much bunk. Rich people don't pay as much taxes as the poor or middle class right now, and my proposal is not to keep to the status qou. The opposite in fact.

So, you've basically said

1. We are in System A, which has problem X
2. I propose System B
3. System B is not the same as System A, therefore System B does not have problem X

Really, this kind of black-and-white "not A therefore B" extremism (which is really a large family of bad arguments) is perhaps the biggest generator of problems in our democratic/capitalistic (ie, the masses decide) society. To wit:

I don't see why we need to punish the successful.

Tax is not a "punishment". (In theory) tax should be "We (the government) need money for services that are (arguably) untenable in or unsuited to private enterprise, how are we going to get it?". It's not "Hey, I don't like that guy, let's rob him! *cackle maniacally*". You are again making the "NOT A THEREFORE B" mistake by conflating "tax" with "punishment", because they both fit into the broader category "authorised arbitrated unpleasantness based on behaviour". But just as a motorbike is not an automobile (despite their many similarities), TAX IS NOT A PUNISHMENT, IT IS AN UNFORTUNATE NECESSITY.

I don't see why we need to punish the successful. Especially, those who worked damned hard to get it.

Some people are poor because they deserve to be.

Not every poor person is a lazy bum, and not every rich person is a hard worker. Now whilst I have no specific moral objections to tax in and of itself (I don't like it, but don't find it immoral), you regard it as a "punishment", and therefore imagine that you're "punishing" people simply for being poor - and conversely, rewarding people for being rich. Which would be fine if everyone who was poor deserved it - but for the third time, NOTHING IS THAT BLACK AND WHITE (even you admit there's not 100% correlation). Is it that you have no ethical quarrel with "punishing" people for probably being lazy (in which case, you are a frighteningly heartless person), or do you simply ignore corner cases (ie, another incarnation of the black-and-white mistake)?

As for the actual point you were trying to make about tax reform, I'm not going to enter into that. I'm merely going to point out that

• Reducing the tax rate on luxury items to the same rate as non-luxury non-essentials
• Removing the tax on non-essentials
• removing the tax on income
• Removing the tax on property
• Removing the tax on possessions

means a MUCH smaller tax revenue (unless you plan to simply make the figures your tax proposal extremely high, which will probably create a black market and public outcry). Although many here might support reducing tax and reducing services (and this is an argument I *DEFINITELY* don't want to enter into), no government would never agree to it, in the same way that no employee would ever agree to take a massive pay cut just to make a moral stand (especially when morals are highly subjective - an argument I don't want to enter into because anyone who argues for universal morality is a damned moron, and I have better things to do than argue with morons).

EOTWAWKI

R.E.M. - ItEoTWAWKi(AIFF).mp3

ftfy, ac.

I mean shit, except of the very latest tech(which they don't teach in schools anyways) most things you can just buy a good book on... ok, buy the cheaper one published in India ;)

Perhaps universities are being phased out as the gatekeepers of knowledge; however, that doesn't mean that they're no longer useful.

1. Firstly, universities serve as a respected reference - someone "self-taught" has already ruled themselves out of a massive segment of the market (I don't have figures, but I'd estimate at least 2/3). Many companies have no time, bureaucratic policies or plain old lack-of-knowledge on the part of interviewers which disallows any on-the-spot interview tests that lets the applicant show what they know (remember - anyone can claim to be self-taught and waste interview time when they're not qualified, it's easier from the company's POV to just disregard the lot of them). A university degree easily allows an applicant to (theoretically) show that they're suitably qualified to do the job.
2. Secondly, a university degree guarantees that the person knows all the knowledge they should know - someone self-taught may be smart and eager, but that doesn't guarantee that they know everything they need to know. Without someone qualified to tell them what's required, they only have books to go on (which may miss relevant parts, overstress irrelevances, be incorrectly targeted or simply out-of-date).
3. Thirdly, a university degree is an opportunity for social networking that simply isn't available to the self-taught - you can't deny that (now more than ever) the hardest part is getting your foot in the door.
4. Fourthly, a university has equipment which is not necessarily available to the average person. Some industries like IT are lucky, because all they need in 95% of cases is a $300 desktop and an internet connection - but most, if not all other industries need expensive equipment beyond the reach of the average Joe.
5. Finally, a university degree teaches you to "jump through hoops". Although the corporate hoops are very different to the hoops of academia, the principle is the same. Self-taught people rarely ever learn such hoop-jumping - why bother compiling proper bibliographies when you know your work is your own (and no-one else is there to check it anyway)? Why bother learning the latest industry mantras when your current method produces good results?

Why do reporters think they're better than everyone else? No-one else has access to a high-ranking developer just to hold their hands and walk them through a project when that information is already out there (the other users seem to get along fine, or you wouldn't have heard of the project). Just because you're the modern equivalent of the loud-mouthed town gossip, doesn't make you special. Regardless of what journalist screed (the number of articles I've seen of journalists portraying themselves as fantastic heroes and the amount of journalistic fraternity/nepotism makes me sick) and corporate PR departments (they're using you, duh) say, you're not special. No-one gives a flying fuck about your "deadline". Deadlines are your problem and you should take it up with your boss if it's unworkable. There are millions of bored schoolkids with blogs chomping at the bit to take your place. If you're to stand a chance of staying afloat you have to offer something they won't - quality research (which takes time and effort). Remember that you're here to serve us, and you have more to gain than us*, not the other way around. [/rant]

* You may think that reporters are vital for "The Year Of The Linux Desktop", but I'm not buying it. Firstly, large F/OSS projects like mainstream distros do have many, many press avenues, and yet 2009 still isn't YOTLD. Secondly, YOTLD is an utopia us *nixers want where we get all of the good stuff associated with popularity (better hardware vendor support, mainstream acceptance of F/OSS principles, increased interoperability, richer software library, more developers/code contributors/bug fixers) without any of the bad stuff (malware, brainless users, bigger stakes on the developer Ego Wars, more hardware/software support nightmares, more pressure, more "boring bits" and less coding fun, etc). If YOTLD is delivered by reporters (instead of by technical merit and word-of-mouth), it will be because they dumbed it down, and we'd get mostly disadvantage and only a few of the advantages. Basically, YOTLD is a wet dream where society changes to be more computer literate, and most/all of our current IT nightmares die because everyone's using their brain. This is not as unlikely as you think - nowadays everyone's kid is a techno-wiz. Even if "techno-wiz" only means "I can work the myspace and the msn", the perception of ability alone might be enough to overcome their trepidation of computing, and allow them to try new things (ie, Linux).

First of all, actions do not embody good or evil.

I'd strongly disagree with this. A person is known by their actions. I can confidently describe Stalin or Pol Pot or Hitler as evil, yet I have no way of seeing their intentions (I can infer them from their actions, but there's always a chance I could be wrong in my inference). In your example, you say "what if I swerved" (blah blah blah) - any impartial onlooker would realise you were essentially choice-less (and chose what you regarded as the lesser of two evils), and therefore not vindictive. Or, with the person praying for the blind kid to be hit by a bus - if he does nothing about it, how could you know if he wants it? And if he doesn't believe what he thinks is evil, and no-one else knows, how can you say it's evil?

Here, you can either claim that evil is a moral absolute, or accept that morality is at least somewhat relative, and therefore is decided by consensus (usually societal consensus). I would argue that absolute morality is both impossible and ridiculous. For example, was it evil of cavemen to slaughter animals in a crueller way than we do now, or even evil of them to enjoy the thrill of the hunt (a thrill which is almost certainly responsible for our current existence)? Is the morality of wartime unjustifiable by the morality of peacetime? What about someone with obsessive thoughts (obsessive-compulsive people suffer from horrible thoughts, many of which may be considered "evil", and use compulsion to deal with it)? Furthermore, how can you be certain that your morality is the right morality? Even 100 years ago, society considered itself civilised, yet practised discrimination - and don't claim we don't still discriminate against some people, I'm sure there are thousands of people with paedophilic thoughts/desires who'd disagree if they had the guts to admit their desires.

However, you raise an interesting point. My gut definitely tells me that what all your examples think are evil, but I suspect that it has more to do with recognising the precursor to evil actions than the thoughts themselves being evil in and of themselves. Until they act on it, I wouldn't call their thoughts evil, simply the precursor to evil. I would agree that evil takes a measure of intention, but intention alone is not enough - not only can it not be measured, but in many cases, it's necessary and/or involuntary.

This work's primary benefit is to get people to think about the nature of evil.

Well that I'd agree with. But I suspect that Bringsjord is fully aware of that. Evil is an important tenet of the human psyche, for better or worse, and AI research could do with insights into the human psyche (which is unfortunately the only sufficiently intelligent thing we have to work with).

I'm sure I'm not the only person on slashdot to own this fine keyboard, with it's double-sized delete key. Although, the escape key is standard sized.

Every single time I post, I get paid.

Well that doesn't surprise me. I bet you get paid by the post - you must account for at least 1/3 of the posts here, M(r/s). Coward!

I don't imagine the main problem is the difficulty of operating a flying vehicle (although that is a significant challenge), I'd imagine the problem is the physics and logistics of the thing. Counteracting the force of gravity (aircraft, spacecraft, etc) for an extended period of time is fine for special circumstances (yes, planes are still a special circumstance - as much as they're taken for granted, the majority of people don't include 'flying' as a daily task), but it's difficult to make that transition. We *can* counteract gravity, but not affordably. We *can* pilot aircraft, but it takes more training than Joe Q Public is prepared to put into it (remember - even with robot cars, the government would almost certainly mandate basic manual override ability for safety). It's like computers - we all know that failureproof computer systems are possible (even for the average schmo, given sufficient training), but instead of being the norm, they are actually extremely rare in this world of unpatched Windows machines, commodity Made In Taiwan hardware, and Click Here To Download Free Porn (Scanner)!". Apathy and ignorance (ie, reality) tend to spit on any perfect setup.

The other major problem is of course with failure tolerance - if a regular car goes wrong, you put your hazards on and pull over. If a flying car goes wrong, you put your hazards on and meet the ground at several thousand negative G-forces. Even if you had a failsafe (parachute, etc) - there's no guarantee you'll land somewhere safe (on top of a group of schoolchildren, in a lake, on the edge of a building, through a house, etc). Even if you took care of these things, the fear would still exist in peoples' minds and it would ultimately be a flop (because no-one would roll-out necessary supporting infrastructure) and/or a regulatory nightmare. (Ironically - a flying car would probably be safer than our extremely dangerous regular cars, as you point out, but people would still have irrational fear). Flying cars are sexy, but until we find a cheap, safe, reliable (and now "green") way of repelling gravity, it's just not practical.

This is exactly because the US are so pro-free-market. As you say, Telstra are obliged (by government regulation) to let anyone place their switches at their exchanges - to a pro-free-market person, this is an appalling travesty of justice. Yet, the results speak for themselves. Even though Australia is so badly placed+spaced for internet connection that it looks like it was intentional (we're a sparsely populated and geographically isolated country, with the bulk of our population occupying a thin strip of coastline from Brisbane to Victoria, plus North Queensland, Tasmania and Perth), in many respects, consumer internet is better than the US's. For most non-rural areas, we have more choice of ISPs, which means faster speeds, better service and more competitive pricing (devil's advocates would point out that we have to deal with broadband caps, comparatively higher prices and shitty latency, but I attribute these to Australia's position and sparsity). In other words, in this case, free market is possible only through regulation. How's that for a piece of irony?

redundant

*Ahem*.

It seems to me that if a bot can check whether or not a person is "acting" human, then it must follow that the bot knows what rules are involved with "acting human". If it understands this, then there's nothing stopping someone from telling the computer to obey those rules itself, which means "AI". The main problem with Artificial Intelligence is that we don't have a complete and fully accurate list of rules for what a human can/will do - in other words, we're unpredictable. And it's not like we can't have computers act unpredictably, it's just that we don't know how to make them act unpredictably in the same way a human would act unpredictably.

So, in other words, even if someone could make this test, it would render itself redundant by design..

"On hearing the announcement that researchers have found a cure for AMD, a spokesman for computing giant Intel said 'It's about bloody time.'".
 
/ducks