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Comment Re:Hasn't this happened a bunch of times? (Score 1) 432

Yes and that's precisely why none of these bots have really passed the Turing test. None of them can carry on an interesting and meaningful conversation on many different subjects in a way humans can.

Please let me know when AI can appropriately handle all of the following situations:

- Jokes
- Riddles
- Insults
- Sarcasm
- Flirting
- Arguments on controversial topics of current interest

And it has to pose as a normal adult in its own native language, not a 13 year-old Ukrainian.

Comment Re:Government must be transparent (Score 1) 55

I'm not saying that the people negotiating have to do all their talk in public because that would be ridiculous. But the terms of the deal have to be made public during the negotiations. When a new law is proposed there are certainly lots of back room deals but you get at least a couple of public readings and, if the law has any significant impact, lots of media attention too (at least here in Europe that's the norm). Where I live, a law adopted in a hurry or in a context of dubious public review would get struck down by the Constitutional Court. A treaty should be no different.

Comment Government must be transparent (Score 4, Insightful) 55

We must force our governments to be more transparent. IMO, it should be a constitutional principle that all law must be negotiated in public. If history has tought us one thing is that secret negotiations lead to horrible results. For example, one of the most despicable treaties in history, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, was the result of such secret negotiations.

Comment Re:ISPs simply need to be regulated (Score 1) 338

Why not get rid of politicians altogether? I mean, 200 years ago it was not feasible to get everyone in one place to pass laws but with today's technology it is actually possible to have direct democracy. That has some problems too but at least it becomes impossible to lobby. If that's too hard then at least make it so that if a petition gets X signatures then a referendum must be held on the question and the results are legally binding. That would go a long way to fix the system.

Submission + - Telescope captures a gravitational echo of the Big Bang

bmahersciwriter writes: Detection of the elusive b-wave, announced today (http://www.nature.com/news/telescope-captures-view-of-gravitational-waves-1.14876), provides the firmest evidence yet of a round of exponential inflation in the universe in the first fractions of a second following the big bang. Einstein predicted the existence of these gravitational waves nearly a century ago (http://www.nature.com/news/all-you-need-to-know-about-gravitational-waves-1.14886) but they've been extremely hard to detect. Now, a telescope in Antarctica called BICEP2 (http://www.nature.com/news/how-astronomers-saw-gravitational-waves-from-the-big-bang-1.14885) was able to pick up the signal by watching the cosmic microwave background, often considered the 'afterglow' of the Big Bang. It is considered a Nobel-worthy discovery.

Comment Re:Shouldn't they start out small first? (Score 4, Informative) 187

It doesn't matter that the donor is dead. The process of cloning involves taking out DNA and inserting it into another cell. All that matters is that enough DNA can be collected for a complete organism. Freezing is completely irrelevant as even human embryos used for in-vitro fertilization are routinely frozen.

Comment Re:Shouldn't they start out small first? (Score 4, Interesting) 187

We have been able to clone several species already. That's not the problem. The problem is that you need a surrogate mother for the embryo and the closest we have is the African elephant, which separated from the mammoth a long time ago. From TFA it seems they are already working on cross-species clones but they are still a long way off.

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