You think they'd tell you if they were creating something "smarter than a human"?

Moreover, you think they'd tell you if they actually created it?

The only evidence that they haven't is, well, the stupidity of the government-- they certainly aren't using the superhuman AIs for actual governance.

When the distribution of wealth isn't just.

I hate when politicians try to shoot the messenger rather than address the message. Sure, it's pretty clearly illegal in the US to distribute this information. However, once Assange made it "public", EVERY SINGLE NEWS ORGANIZATION did the same thing in summarizing what the documents said. They read it, and distributed summaries of the information contained in the documents. Where are the criminal charges for them?

Instead, I want the president of my country to come with answers to questions like:
- When Pakistan is substantially aiding our enemies, and we aren't going to fight Pakistan, how can we win the war?
- When Pakistan is substantially aiding our enemies, why are we giving Pakistan aid money?
- Why are we pursuing the status quo when the status quo isn't working?
- Why would one of our own soldiers give up this information?

I sincerely hope the answer isn't "We need to keep our military forces field-trained, and Afghanistan is the best place to do it. Plus, we need to justify military spending." Or "I don't know, but I don't know how to get out of this war, and no one else does either."

Just like we didn't meaningfully respond to the message that the Muslim world largely dislikes the US for actual reasons (primarily economic) and not just because we don't follow their religion after 9/11. Instead of giving them reasons to like us, we legitimize the hate.

Newsflash: If Apple already knew there was a problem on release day like everyone who reads the internet, who exactly is going to call them and tell them what they already know? Especially when it was well-known that Apple wasn't doing anything to accomodate the problem.

Half a percent means that those people knew

Give the guy a break. He's spent his whole life professionally experiencing art and he doesn't even know what it is yet, and he's supposed to know anything about something he has never experienced?

Because I want to use the software that those developers would write.

I want Google Voice.

I want apps that aren't judged by content. Besides a web browser, of course.

I want apps that legitimately work but might conflict with Apple's business interests.

I want things built on third-party libraries, so each developer doesn't have to re-invent the wheel.

I want to trust companies other than Apple.

I want control over what my property can and can't do, and I don't want to have to do something questionably legal (jailbreaking) to do it.

This is slashdot. If you're asking a logic problem like this, you are probably lying and have never reproduced.

Even if the kill switch were a good idea, I can guarantee you that more damage will be caused by hackers using the switch than the switch will ever prevent in and of itself.

It's almost certainly much easier to hack a back door than bust down a wall.

The weakness here, then, isn't with publicizing the names. It is with your gay friends who are making a poor assumption about all the signers-- most likely, that all people signing it are anti-gay.

The proper response is to educate the public that your decision to sign the petition was to give the topic as a whole a fair airing in public, and that that is a responsible civic action for a citizen.

The stock market is a reasonable estimation of the total value of publically available portions of corporations. In other words, a corporation with 8000 employees but that can only support 6000 employees is an unhealthy corporation which cannot sustain itself. Symptoms of not sustaining its employees (i.e. falling profits, lack of long-term planning, declining value of assets, etc) will drive the stock down. Cutting dead-weight jobs improves the stock market because those companies are now healthier-- they're spending less, and immediate returns still look good.

So the stock market is simply a measure of how well publically traded companies are doing. Healthy companies tend to grow, and growing companies hire people.

The stock market has very much to do with things, it just doesn't create jobs directly. But it's precisely an indicator that things are turning around.

Requisite car analogy: companies are the engine of the economy. The stock market is the RPMs of the engine. RPMs don't tell you how fast you're going, they tell you how hard the engine is working. RPMs aren't your spedometer and shouldn't be treated as such, but they are highly correlated with acceleration and maintaining high speed.

Everyone buys the Ars article on the discrete graphics problem, without considering the fact that Asus' U30JC is a 13.3" laptop with an i3 and discrete Optimus graphics. Also, every netbook with the ION 2 will have the same number of chips, and they'll be put in 12" chassis and smaller. I'm not saying exactly how they do it because I'm not an engineer; but this problem has been solved. Now, the Mini is another story, but they can put a Mac Mini in any form factor they want. If it needs a graphics chip, they can make it bigger.

Apple is also not an independent and wouldn't qualify under its own terms. Their mention of a provider "other than Apple" doesn't prevent Apple from being excluded. If Apple is also restricted from using this data, then they're doing something consistent and not anti-competitive, they are protecting consumers. But if they restrict data that they themselves collect, then they're anti-competitive. Five bucks says they'll be using the hell out of the data they collect.

Not only is the iOS application market a captive market on a particular device; the device itself is a captive market because of cell phone contracts. The real anti-competitive behavior, though, is that the rules have been changing as Apple sees fit. Apple isn't only setting up policies for their App Store; they are changing their policies to be anti-competitive in response to others. They retroactively change the rules so that people don't get the market they signed up for originally (both on the developer side and the user side).

Automobile corporations by necessity pollute the environment in order to produce their product. Selling more product pollutes the environment more. Malice isn't required here-- indifference or obliviousness will suffice.

If you're using MPG as a basis for replacing a car, then you aren't replacing the car for the right reasons. First, you're buying a new car when you don't NEED a new car. Otherwise it would be clearly obvious which one to get rid of, and the MPG wouldn't matter. Which means the corporations (and not the environment) have already won. Second, the pollution in creating a new vehicle, from melting and forming the steel, to the creation of synthetic materials in the cabin, to the electronics-- will probably cause more pollution than any MPG increase. For gas-electric hybrids, the batteries alone create a significant negative environmental impact. Which means that while your personal actual output will go down, the results of your purchase causes pollution to go up. Which means the corporations (and not the environment) have already won. Personal carbon emissions are really just a drop in the bucket of the worldwide problem. Even gaining 1000% efficiency when driving won't swing global warming either way as long as we're willing to dispose of perfectly good cars simply because we want to get to pick a new one.