The guy on controller two has to make sure he correctly presses the button every five seconds that loops a slice of a better, older song.

Why not become a CIA operative and get shot in the head in a Russian airport in a shocking but easily predictable double-cross?

I was a big fan of the Deckard-as-replicant conspiracy theory, but it was confirmed in an interview not too many years ago that that was not the case. Deckard is a human, as dull as that may be.

I still believe in Ridley Scott, even if I'm the only person on god's green earth that liked Prometheus. So Charlize Theron is not an ambi-turner; so what?

Err, you do know what this thread is about right? The FCC regulations that allow exactly this?

Bullshit. The expectation of available anonymity is one of the things that makes the internet work. The only way to ruin your life on the internet is not availing yourself of this.

One day they may welcome you to post under your real name, AC.

Well, if new players can lay fiber now, we might start to see one.

In the definition I proffered in the GP, all of the above scenario's present no difficulty. The brain is, itself, a biological machine anyhow.

Sorry, I had to correct your math. :P

Put another way: aren't humans just robots made of organic material. Are our brains not merely (incredibly elaborate and intricate) FSM's? My then should a self-thinking robot not have as much of a soul as we do?

The Greek word for soul in the N.T. is psyche, I believe. A soul assumes the ability to think, and in mainstream Christian theology is a function of our corporeal existance (for instance, "souls" don't go to heaven until judgement day, when the dead rise from their graves, body and all). It can be argued that, if a soul exists at all, then it must exist for all self-aware entities with physical manifestations.

Depends. If the robot is a Calvanist, he'd say that humans were predestined to design him. Furthermore, by transitivity, the robot is created in the image of God, since man created robots in his own image.

When Slashdot users post from Lynx...

If you have air conditioning and have been malaria-free for any extended stint of your life, you know exactly what it's like.