Yes it does matter. If a piece of software does what it is programmed to do, in the direct sense, then it is not AI. If it can learn to respond or act in a manner that is not directly programed to do, then you are seeing whiffs of AI.

As a practical matter it might not matter right now, as a developmental task it certainly does matter.

On the west side of the Oregon State Capitol there is a feature called The Walk of Flags where the flags of all 50 states are displayed. Part of the Missouri flag includes a piece of the Confederate Battle Flag. Note: this is the current flag that now the official flag the State of Missouri. Because people like you have gotten a burr up their asses, there is now a call for the State of Oregon to remove the official Missouri flag. So I ask you, how is this going to promote racial equality?

Shall we remove all confederate items from museums? Shall we rewrite the history books so the civil war never happened? If we remove the confederate flag from everywhere, will that mean slavery never happened? The civil war happened. Slavery happened. Racism happened, and it is still happening. Removing some flags will not advance the goal of eliminating racism.

Instead of quibbling about a flag that some people find offensive, why don't we work to fight actual racism. Lets stop looking the other way when whites are treated differently than other races. Fighting so hard over symbols while we are mostly ignoring the reality of racism in the US seems counterproductive.

OK, I do see the point of removing the flag from statehouses, but historical displays and museums...give me a break. And, yes this is happening, as crazy as this seems.

Maybe it is "social problems", but that doesn't make it any less real. Fukishima, Three Mile Island, Chernoble, and Fermi accidents have all created a widespread mistrust of the nuclear industry's assurances that nuclear power is safe. Realistically, this "social issue" isn't going away just because some engineers wish it would. The nuclear overlords have screwed up big time in the risk management of these facilities, and there likely have been other screw-ups that didn't turn out so badly. It may be mostly a social issue, but it is a problem that isn't going away soon.

Wasn't Carter a nuculer engineer? Why would he outlaw it? I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here, since the President doesn't make laws, congress does.

Laws can be changed. Why hasn't the nuclear industry sought a reversal? You would think it would be at the top of the industry's wish list, since reprocessing is probably the biggest barrier to nuclear power.

I'm not sure what you mean here. "can process nuclear waste"? To the best of my knowledge nearly all of the waste of commercial power reactors is sitting on site in vast pools of water. It hasn't been processed, and I'm not aware of imminent plans to process it. So, really, it seems that there are some problems that are preventing the processing. Maybe in theory we can process it, but in reality it isn't happening. This is still a big barrier to widespread construction of new nuclear plants.

Hypochondriacs buy a lot of homeopathic cures, because it works well on their imaginary ailments. On the plus side, it probably doesn't hurt them either. Unfortunately, even hypochondriacs sometimes get real health problems and fail to get proper health care that could actually help them.

I have a friend who has a serious problem, but refuses to see a practitioner of allopathic medicine. She is trying one quack treatment after another and is not getting better. No amount of facts seem to interfere with her beliefs.

Transport water from where? Seriously, where do you think SoCal can get the water? Please explain how this is simple.

The reason we can't (easily) solve this is really simple. There isn't enough water. If southern California wants to look afar for water they have to look at the Columbia River, which is the nearest river that seems to have abundant water. Believe me, Oregon will put up a big fight if SoCal tries to ram through the kind of infrastructure to move water through Oregon.

All the other water in most of the west is already spoken for. SoCal really has two choices. One, desalinate. Two, get along with the limited water that is available. There aren't any decent other choices.

It isn't partisan bullshit. It is a really big problem with no good choices. SoCal can't just steal water from other users. In the western US water gets used by somebody, and somebody owns just about all the water rights.

But then the Ask Toolbar tried to find a solution to the problem.

It might be real science, but real energy production is still a really long way out. They boast a tenfold improvement in the time that the reaction is contained, but the reality is there has to be another hundredfold improvement to reach the break even point. Then you have to go beyond that to get a surplus. Then you have to scale it all up to get enough energy to bother with.

Really it is just a small step on a long journey that will take many decades, unless they discover some real problems that might take longer.