While a similar problem, there is an issue of scale. With postal voting there is indeed an individual problem involved with not being able to determine who actually voted. Internet voting on the other hand opens up new problems of mass fraud by individuals or small groups, which presents a very different risk.

It is hard to take someone seriously when the argument seems to be 'my idea is brilliant! but most people are not good enough to implement it!' rather than 'hrm, maybe my idea is not the universal solution and one needs to fit the methodology to the requirements and resources involved?'

What country are you from? This was something specific to catholic groups operating in African nations. They were actively spreading rumors such as condoms being laced with AIDS.

Every time I see calls for harsh anti-piracy initiatives, I picture what would happen if equally harsh rules were put in place for some of the dirty IP tricks or outright theft MPAA members engage in. "Oh, your studio got caught taking a copyrighted screenplay submission, rejecting it, then handing it over to one of your own people again? Sorry, your access to distribution has been cut off and you will not be able to produce movies anymore"

Do not forget another big winner, retrogressive social reformers. The war on drugs has been a powerful tool in keeping racism alive while 'proving' it is all their fault in the first place and that brown people are simply too weak willed to join polite society.

The problem is, drug laws are doing exactly what the designers intended. They were intended to be public weapons against minority groups and immigrants, as well as assist in the political careers of people involved.... of which they have been extremely successful.

Well, I guess this is a nice visceral example against the argument that "only" government can censor people or affect what people say publically.

I am sure that gays who have been beaten to death or blown up, doctor who have been shot, etc, would feel this comparison is not exactly off.

Religious leaders (official and unofficial) tend to pick and choose which parts of OT they claim people need to keep following and which they do not, I guess depending on the political advantages of it.

"Listening" is a relative concept. People are not going to stop having sex, but they can be scared into avoiding condoms, which is what the Catholic Church was doing in some African regions for quite some time.

One does not need to follow all doctorin to be influenced by a subset.

My point is that the problem still exists in Java, and just like other languages there are solutions, but none are complete and all fail if not used.

I also work in the field, I see new research and discoveries every year. Scientists are constantly learning new things from the attempts and we are constantly constructing systems with greater flexibility and capability.

As for 'database with search capability', what do you think human intelligence is in the first place? It is not some magical ability, is a combination of various capabilities interacting with each other, with data storage and retrieval being a significant component.

Depends on your perspective I guess. One of the other major things going on since then has come from the other direction, with a great deal being learned about existing non-human intelligence and how much more complicated and, well, real, than people had believed. So the simple metric of 'does it act like a human' has become a lot fuzzier when actually looked at.

Since it is Amtrak it touches on the deep divide within the nerd community regarding mass transit, which ties heavily into cultural disputes, economic philosophy, and masculine identity. So it crosses on some rather touchy topics.

To be fair, this is a rapidly updating story with various reports having between 0 and 6 deaths depending on when they were written, at least as of this comment.