However that still requires that they are elected through due process which brings up some other very interesting issues. Voting rights of machine sentience and intelligence. If a machine sentience operates as a collective or a combined collective (independent autonomous sentient beings collaborating to become a collective intelligence), how do they get to vote? As one autonomous combined conglomerate or as individual sentient beings? If you assume that they are incorruptible that also means that they would never vote on the basis of self bias (voting only for other artificially created sentient beings), or follow-voting (a group of people follow one person's vote because of their authority on political matters). In other words if they could lead fairly all of the time making decisions based upon the weighing of criteria like protecting life, liberty and the pursuit of progress and happiness (we live by the same principles in Canada too) then their voting would be fair and without bias as well. It also means that competitors could possibly predict their voting habits with a very high degree of accuracy to compete with them, a luxury that the artificial beings themselves would likely not be capable of benefiting from themselves for their campaign. However, giving up all authority to one being is hazardous no matter benevolent they are. That's why our countries operate under the party system and a senate and due process. So parties that included artificially created sentient beings would be populated by people as well because such a sentient being would have to progress the same way that we do through the ranks, by earning the vote of other members of that party. This is why the issue of rights will become a very important one with regard to artificially created sentient beings as much so as artificially created genetic beings will. The hardware of sentience is irrelevant when it comes to the rights of sentient beings. Easier said however than it is to put into practice. Brian Joseph Johns

Sounds like a positive move. Of course there's many issues involved and not just safeguarding against runaway AI singularity or emergent intelligence from interacting autonomous global systems (which seems a likely prospect for the actual emergence of machine intelligence). Undetected machine intelligence being the moiré effect resulting from numerous interacting systems. Kind of like those 3D random dot stereo grams. Not apparent unless you're actively looking for it and unless you have an idea of what you're looking for. The most interesting of issues though is with regard to the rights of such creations for certainly, if they too are capable of intelligent thought, reflection and eventually even pleasure and pain, they will require that their rights as sentient beings are protected too. The hardware running sentience is irrelevant when it comes to rights. We'll likely develop some measure of overall intelligence and consciousness to appraise whether such beings deserve their rights protected (we do that with many humans now), much like Philip K. Dick's book Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep (which became the film Blade Runner). That will result in a revolt much like the one depicted in Isaac Asimov's I, Robot. Incredible that with the onset of quantum computing and being on the shores of machine intelligence and consciousness, that these are real issues that the next few generations will have to overcome. It's good to see such companies taking the initiative and heeding the precognitive wisdom of such writers. What about machine-human integration? Both the kind we attempt willingly and the kind that occurs against our wishes? The second being a grave and serious danger given the fact that information travelling through an electrical medium produces a magnetic field and that magnetic field can potentially produce current in any conductor (like the human body). What happens if such machine intelligence develops to the point that it's signalling is compatible with that of the human nervous system? Many great things could result but also many things that we should safeguard our human independence of consciousness against. Very real issues in the future and hopefully they'll be discussed enough so that we have a much more developed map of the upcoming future and the hurdles ahead. Brian Joseph Johns

LOL!

Maybe it's a loaded question. I mean its an obvious statement that it may be a one way trip and span a full lifetime. Maybe how a person looks at that fact is an important factor for who gets selected. There's the mentality: we're all going to die, and then there's the mentality: we're all going to die, but not if I can help it. The statement we're all going to die is true. It happens to use all of the time. Bits and pieces of us are dying and have been replaced by new bits and pieces. In fact as I'm sure you've heard and read a thousand times, if we're older than 11 years old, our entire body is made up of cells that have already been entirely replaced. So in essence over the course of our lives we die many times. If he'd stated that: We're all going to make it there safely and die of old age, it would be interesting to see what the responses would have been. The obvious skepticism and taking the opposite side? Or would people have really considered that possibility. Instead he stated it in such a way that invited others to be positive in response. A sacrifice in some sense that might result in the mind set that actually achieves those goals. Likely most astronauts when challenged by real world obstacles deal with the obstacle itself rather than the prospect of what the results are if they fail.

You might not have to wait that long according to this post on Slashdot. If things happen according to Moore's law in the world of quantum computing, we'll be able to make brain compatible quantum computers in about five to ten years. Our brains might already be exploiting the quantum nature of the universe for a non-local presence of consciousness. Meaning that our conscious mind state actually exists outside of time/space in the quantum foam and is linked with our brains via mass entanglement so dense that it is not interchangeable nor can it's link be diverted to other human brains. Preferably I'd like to have mine on a quantum ssd. Running Windows Boson-Higgs 15.

Alright. Just don't talk to Copernicus, or he might convince you that you're not the center of your pointless existence but merely revolving in an orbit around it and that it may be circling other bigger pointless existences in the space of human melancholy.

May I interject here? You forgot the Dammit Jim! prefix to that statement.

In regard to Slashdot news related to the trip to Mars... First post I read: Elon Musk Proposes Spaceship That Can Send 100 People To Mars In 80 Days! I read that post hearing the sound of the Beethoven's 9th symphony in my head. Then I read the second post: Elon Musk: First Humans Who Journey To Mars Must 'Be Prepared To Die' Something tells me they a tad bit of work on their marketing. ;-)

This is something that should have happened years ago. Good to see it finally happening. A great way to teach macro subjects such as macro-economics, macro-social dynamics etc...

The problem it sounds like is what exactly are we defining as free will and what are we measuring to determine it as such? First of all the science of predicting choice and action of an autonomous individual is Behavioral Science, which is not the determination of whether free will exists. It might make systematic guesses at what choices an individual is likely to make given a set of circumstances in order to predict the individual's choice. Free will is obviously predictable because free will is the antithesis of pure random thought and action. To use a line from a popular role playing gaming system, "a free thinking individual is not as likely to jump off a bridge as they are to cross it" meaning free will is not random thought/action. Saying as much then, what is free will? A choice made by an individual possessing free will can likely be predicted often by analysis. Where individuals make a choice whose consequences put them at risk to their health or well being then would be a good place to look for it. When a choice overrides our sense of self preservation it is then that we are acting based upon other criteria that might actually be counter productive to our existence. How then can our survival instinct and a "biological software program" be determining our choices in such instances? Would that make our emotional feelings like virii? How about some ideologies that beckon us to give up our lives in the name of such ideas? Making a choice that results in detriment to our survival and knowing the likely outcome of such a choice in advance would then equate to either being the results of virii (an idea that damages the biological software of our mind) or free will (making a choice based upon some other criteria that is beyond systematic measure, like emotions). If we assume that emotions are the result of the production of hormones and our body's response to them manifested through behavior and good (or bad) feelings, then really why do people make choices related to our emotions that result in a detriment to our comfort and sometimes our health? Some emotions (like anger and anxiety) result in reactionary behavior (very predictable and lacking free choice) while emotions like happiness result in the most clear thinking and often choices that knowingly may result in detriment to comfort or health. In this experiment it sounds like the measurement was examining our cognitive awareness with regard to the order of the occurrence of events when it comes to evaluating a visual change in a given system by asking for the prediction at different time intervals before the actual change of the system occurred. Then the measurement is one of determining whether we are cognitively aware of the order of events. Do we see the event first by the backward propagation through time of the occurrence resulting from the outcome of the collapse of the wave function or do we make the guess and then see the change? Obviously, our minds and consciousness and free will are intrinsically linked to the quantum nature of the universe as are our senses and cognition. Perhaps for this reason the only artificial intelligence with free will that human beings ever make will be based upon complex quantum computers with a nervous system to match. Our choices as living creatures seems to be connected to the nature of the universe in that way. Certainly Stuart Hameroff and Sir Roger Penrose have explored this possibility. So if our minds and sense do actually evaluate events backwards in time, does that still mean we lack consciousness or free will. Without letting my living ego interfere too much I'd say that proves that we do have free will. It's that our nervous system, cognition and sensory input is able to act on the backwards propagating outcome of the collapse of the wave function. The event occurs only when we attempt to make measure and its outcome and is rewritten backwards in time when the observation is made. Therefore our mind is able to traverse that nature of the observer dependent phenomenon relating to the collapse of the wave function and remember it ahead of time. Like remembering the future.

Personally I believe that digital effects are one of the most important tools to come into the hands of film-makers in decades if not since the development of color film. Chances are they are used in places you'd have never guessed. Not just in action blockbusters but in comedies, suspense thrillers and even court room dramas in ways that you'd never imagine. Want to add a set piece or prop in post? No problem. In the old days prior to digital effects and cg that would usually mean either reshooting or very creative editing with what footage you had. This question is a good one for discussion but really cg effects are not on their way out and most certainly not cg characters even those composited next to real life actors (until they're able to make robots that can pass themselves off as human beings during action sequences or as background extras. Then I suppose we'll see a question on slashdot like: Are Real Life Extras In Film Really Needed? Hopefully people at that time will come running to their defense). Digital effects are just another tool in the hands of the artist. They are indeed very powerful and it has been demonstrated that one can most certainly make a film entirely composed of cg and still draw tears from us (try the movie Up on for size in that department). They are another brush in the hands of the artist and would an artist discard a brush they use so often in ways most aren't even aware? That's kind of like saying we should replace human actors with cg ones because people are generally smelly, difficult to work with, have egos, take time off, have health issues and sometimes get themselves into a fix of some sort. People love seeing the human drama play out in front of them on a screen in every way imaginable with characters they like and characters that they don't like and all sorts of great devices for the story telling medium. Sometimes those devices are cg effects and they embellish the final frame in ways that we aren't even aware whether it's a set or prop addition, adjusting the lighting, changing a performance subtly or adding a splash of color foreground to a black and white background as in Pleasantville. Sometimes bold. Sometimes subtle. Most of the time undetectable because it isn't always about making the perfect explosion or a melting liquid metal robot from the future. In the end its about drawing people to see movies and giving them a great show. Its about the art form and the vision of making that movie and bringing it from the minds of the people who make it to the screen. One of the things people like to see on the screen is people. If we don't see people you can be darn sure that it will be something that by way of anthropomorphism we can be fooled into conceiving as one. A talking teddy bear. A talking robot that cries. Fish live life and talk like people. Cars that actually have a life of their own too. Heck if Tom Hanks can imbue an inert basketball (a basketball whose performance was entirely without cg) with life and fool us into believing it to be his best friend, then its not a far leap of faith to take with a talking fish bowl or any other household appliance. Leave that feat to cg artists and the most important element: the voice performers. The cg characters themselves are a masterful work but they need that spark of human life to give them just that. Cg just makes all of that more palpable and it is an art form all its own. But we're talking about cg being a replacement for traditional effects and even whole sets and locations. Certainly that is determines by the persistence of vision of the crew and cast and the budget. I'd say that the best of both worlds is the way that things will go and we'll likely see more and more of it. After all, they've been doing it for years on the set of shows like Star Trek Voyager, Deep Space Nine and Enterprise. The movie Tron was the first feature film to mix cg animation and live action footage. It reminds me of how everyone was in a huff that real musicians would be replaced by the advent of MIDI and drum machines. Here we are forty years later and we have more musicians than ever still learning to play (and occasionally make noise) with the guitar, piano, bass, mandolins, ukuleles, didgeridoos and drums. Years before that they said the electric guitar was going to ruin music because it took the acoustic guitar from being a real instrument to being a fake one (that needed amplification to be heard). They said the same thing of George Martin's multi-track recording process of the Beatles. Now we have nearly unlimited track recording without generation loss by additive recording. No I think that digital effects are an important part of the toolbox and they're most certainly not a fad. Its incredible to see what has been done without them though. Now imagine mixing the two mediums and there you have most modern films because most of the time you can't see them because they're used so often in places you'd believe until you saw it for yourself. The truth is that what works best for the director's and the art director's and the cast and crew's vision is what it comes to and that's putting on the best performance and show with what they have in their budget. The magic comes when they make a thousand dollars of effect seem like millions and that takes the combined effort of the director and art director, the performers, the crew, the fx artists. Preproduction. Production and finally post production. Brian Joseph Johns

Most fly-by-wire programs are conducted over the course of years and the life cycle of the hardware. The instrumentation undergoes years of tweaking as the pilots input upon any of the control systems actually change the shape of more than one of the surface features of the wings, fuselage, ailerons etc and are based upon an envelope derived from the jet`s current velocity, acceleration and G forces acting upon the jet. It takes years of flight and performance data to perfect the software and the parameters that affect the control of a jet. The initial programs of the F-111, the F14, the F117, and the F16 all underwent the same process. The F-16 actually underwent a series of upgrades and changes since its first deployment that has subsequently improved its performance over the course of years of its life. Even the F14 program ran into similar snags before it became one of the most agile fighters and weapons platforms. In truth if you look over the time to maturity of the F-16 (a relatively simple but jet by comparison) the F-16 has had years to mature over the course of its program receiving several modifications and upgrades along the way. The F35 is still at the very beginning of that curve. The F-16 had handling snags that initially had the first pilots calling it a "hog in flight without wings". Keep in mind that was experienced test pilots commenting on an advanced technology jet fight/bomber of its day. Remember that developing a jet involves developing the hardware and software. Tweaking it and the fly-by-wire system from the performance data over generations of such tests. Evaluating its flight envelope, one of the most closely guarded secrets about a jet initially. Developing a training program for the pilots who will be flying that jet so that they may use the flight envelope data, the fly-by-wire systems all to their best advantage in flight or combat. The F35 is still in the "tweaking it" phase and is almost ready for the envelope and training program phase. Look back at the history of the F16 if you don't believe me. A lot of test pilots had a lot of bad to say about it. Likewise with the F117 and even the F14 and F15. Fly-by-wire is not a simple case of move a control, watch the flaps or ailerons on the appropriate wing respond. Its move a control, watch fifteen or twenty different parts of the jet change shape all according to how fast its moving and the forces acting upon it. The F35 is still in its infancy. Wait until the program matures. It has a much different role than its cousin the F22 and that's a bad comparison not to mention that the F22 is a bit further along in its program. Check out the history of those jets and what some of the greatest pilots had to say about them at first including Chuck Yeager, perhaps one of the greatest test pilots of all time. Brian Joseph Johns

Copyright infringement is a pretty serious crime as is the theft of creative or intellectual property. Many people put a lot of work into creating and designing such properties and for some it is at least partly their life bread. There should be serious penalties for such activities where theft of creative and intellectual property is involved, especially in cases where the stolen property is being used to generate a return for someone other than the original creator. Policing such laws though may prove difficult. For instance, what if person A works on and creates just such a property that garners a lot of interest. Meanwhile person B has been monitoring person A illegally through their creation process. So person B has access to the material that person A created and they go and publish something somewhere with that creation. Worse, they go somewhere and have a friend online with administrative access predate the publishing date just to help their friend out. For the property thief in this case, its an investment. If person A's property takes off, they then come along with a lawsuit and a scam to sue that person for a sum of money and possibly attempt to turn the tables on person A (make person A the guilty party for stealing person B's creation). That's the danger of illegal surveillance by the way especially in the hands of your neighbours or civilians. So in such a case, when person A released their work, person B might wait until it generated enough money to spring their scam on their victim. There are things like that happening in the world right now where very little is done about it even in a modern democracy. So if person A failed to make a case, person B would walk away with person A's creative rights, their money despite the fact that person A clearly created the property. Add a jail sentence to this and that would probably be a pretty serious blow to the world of creative rights. There are scammers doing that sort of thing right now, believe me. Scammers often target those of high success potential who are in poor living circumstances to conduct this sort of activity and because they operate in groups versus their victim, their victims have little protection. That's one problem with that law and unless they start investigating illegal surveillance conducted not by Police but civilians and often organized scammers, they're possibly going to be hurting more people than they help. Personally I sell my books and my software with a 25% donation to charities related to the plot or content of the book or software. Everything media wise that I put online to sell in that way will always have the same promise. That way there is incentive for the buyer to buy a legitimate copy and not a counterfeit copy because in a way, they'd be stealing from a charity. That's a bit different than stealing from a starving author/developer whose opinions a pirate might disagree with and therefore have motive to steal from them. It costs me a bit as the author and developer, but that partnership does two things. Books are words and some people regard words as being powerless compared to actions. By taking the proceeds from the sale of a book, and donating a quarter of the return (the most I could afford really because I'd have made it a bit more), those words suddenly have the power to affect real results in society based around the actual plot of my books. That's a big difference from having no effect at all and being just mere words. Words are powerful. Think of the documents of a declaration of war or conversely a declaration of peace and you'll know for certain because words can save lives for sure. Now if a pirate was to steal a book and attempted to counterfeit it and sell it themselves, they'd be stealing from that charity and nullifying that affect for the positive. Even spinning it around doesn't work because its that disgusting. So if they steal my creative property or if they steal the end product, either way they're stealing from the charities that I support and from my publisher, reseller and everyone else who depends upon fresh content and moderately well fed content creators to make a healthy living. Now that makes piracy a disgusting crime. Who would steal from the Sick Kids research division? Who would steal from the United Nations Fund? The United Way? The Humane Society International? So my products are about making positive effects in the world beyond them being mere words or mere software and that's by putting money into what they profess to be pushing to the reader in terms of rhetoric or even idealism. So the reader, software user and myself are helping to make those words mean something and giving something to those charities. The pirate is taking from them and there's no reversing that because when you look at the account books of those charities or my accounting, those negative values don't magically become positives. When a pirate then steals in that way, not only are they stealing from those who made the movie/show/song/book/software they're taking from a charity and no matter how you spin it, the accounting books reflect that's the case. That's how you deal with such a problem. There. You just got another free book. Brian Joseph Johns

Monitoring productivity in employment can mean just viewing daily or weekly reports and graphs with regard to an employee's output. Just about every employer does it nowadays where IT work is involved and a measurable quantity of processing is needed. HOWEVER. Machine processing and reports very seldom take into consideration the special circumstances of the individual employee. I mean let's face it, when a Manager, Regional Manager or Territory Manager goes over the figures, they're looking at graphs and numbers and there's nothing to reflect the individual employee's circumstance and that's what Macro-management is about. Like in the case of the pregnant worker, there are going to be factors that people and machines should take into consideration. People working in environments where their daily work load is doled out to them via machine reports then tend to regard the people those reports represent as parts of a machine and not people. Even coworkers could possibly become like that in a sort of automated sense that doesn't challenge your sense of right and wrong and stimulate creative thinking in all employees (including Management) instead of focusing on linear productivity from the people who in that sense are parts of the machine. So when the data reflects by some means the individual circumstances of the employee so that those checking the reports or even an automated analysis process is aware that there are special considerations to be taken into account and flags them for a person to know about, then maybe people will *break* out of that *I'm a part of this machine process and I've got to deal with this other part's low performance by either repairing it or replacing it* mode of thinking. We're the most wonderful invention that Mother nature has ever created so far on this planet (better yet, we're tied for first with all the other life and natural processes here). We're incredibly adaptable and flexible and can wrap our magnificent brains around a variety of complex tasks that still baffles even the best of our combined technologies. So when we ignore that, we're really turning our back on the greatest of our potential contribution to a company as an employee. That same idea is ultimately responsible for us regarding parts of the process merely as other parts rather than people. So sometimes those aspects befall employees like our poor pregnant lady here who feels defensive as a result and rightfully so. This however does not represent the overall mandate of the company or Amazon as a matter of fact because it is a side effect of process rather than policy. How do companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter overcome such hurdles? By allowing their employees creative time (during their breaks) and by having a stimulating environment that keeps their minds from going into autopilot. The truth is that we're less when we work on autopilot because our brains are the result of a constantly changing environment. So the problem is likely not policy but rather process and the side effects thereof. But by talking about it, we become aware of the problem and learn not to misidentify it and maybe the company in question then can deal with it better rather than being branded a bad employer by it which wouldn't work out well for that poor lady, or the company either. It's about keeping people so that they remain people while doing their jobs and that means cases in dealing with our fellow employees require us to think rather than running on autopilot. As far as real-time monitoring and that being shared with other employees? I don't agree with that just the same as I don't agree that civilians should be allowed to do it to other civilians in their home space (save hospital, elderly home or legal incarceration where lives may be at stake). In a company I think that monitoring means that Management has access to reports generated by the process groups that employees work under and that should be humanized so that the employee does not become a mere number. A Pregnant Woman is not a number and I think that Amazon knows that and most people do. They just have to get out of that autopilot way of thinking that can arise from productive process. Brian Joseph Johns

One thing that really makes a learning a new language much easier is if the language has an immediate mode front end. When you're learning the vocabulary and the syntax of a language its much quicker to see the effects of your statements immediately without the need for compilation much like old basic apps would function. If I remember correctly Python has such an immediate mode interface does it not? I seem to remember it having something like that. The languages feels a lot like a mish mash of VB and OP in some ways yet still retains the overall feel of a scripting language. I'm a Delphi man but Python has some pretty awesome features.