If I was an Oregon citizen I would simply point out that sure, the laws are copyrighted, whatever... *I* am the owner of that copyright along with all other citizens of Oregon. So I can make as many copies as I want.

TOBY:

Oh, but I did. See comment #45.

ARKIZZLE,

Actually my comment originally started out with "I can definitely understand where the vi haters are coming from..."

It certainly is a complicated beast to start with.

Still, since it is something you can avoid fairly easily... hating it seems like a waste of time.

You were joking. I get it. I smiled when you condemned it the first time.

The funny thing about vi is, if you don't want to use it, guess what, you don't have to! There's pico, nano, emacs, whateverthefuck.

It's not like IE6 where you have no choice but to deal with its broken implementation of HTML and CSS. Burning hatred and vituperation towards IE6 makes sense for this reason.

Spouting death towards vi just makes you sound like a big fat baby who hates anything that the big fat baby is too impatient or stupid to figure out.

UNLESS somebody starts the argument by telling you that YOUR editor sucks first. Then, please, flame away.

vi/vim does have a ridiculous learning curve.... but I have yet to find a faster way to jump into some files to make little edits. Sometimes I wish all editors had a keyboard mode like vim.

Isn't there a middle ground here, also, between doing everything in Notepad and doing everything in Dreamweaver? I use the text editor TextMate, which means I have snippets, tab completion, keyboard shortcuts, etc. that do tons of work for me. I don't have to type out every CSS rule or HTML tag by hand -- but still it isn't a WYSIWYG at all.

I'm weary of the CSS and HTML produced by third party software, but I guess I should give the direct-code-editing options of DW3 a chance before I bash it. I like TextMate because ultimately all the shortcuts that write bits of CSS and HTML for me were created or customized BY ME to produce the exact code that I WANT.

In Minneapolis a Critical Mass participant was arrested for allegedly assaulting an officer. He was acquitted because cell phone video evidence contradicted police officer testimony. The videos did not show him assaulting or threatening any of the officers.

The two most disturbing things from the trial were A) that the police officers had such poor recollection of the events and 2) their excuse for escalating their presence and amount of force at the Critical Mass event: they said they heard there might be some Republican National Convention protesters showing up who might want to damage some property.

The fundamental problem with FifthE1ement's argument is that we're capturing these people, depriving them of any due process, and holding and torturing them indefinitely. We have caught and subsequently released innocent people, some of who have said they were tortured, and we undoubtedly still have some innocent people held.

FifthE1ement says that even if we can save one life, torturing is worth it.

I say, even if we torture one single innocent individual, torturing wasn't worth it.

What's critically important is that it MUST NOT be legal to torture. Once you make it legal, people will do it just because they can. People will use it more often.

The CIA and other agencies of my and other governments do illegal shit all the time... because they feel they HAVE to. In the USA there's the Presidential pardon. If a CIA agent felt they absolutely had to torture somebody, and they get caught... even if the courts hand down a guilty verdict, Bush could always say, you know what, this agent didn't have any other choice.

But once you make torture legal, it will be used all the time.

And with the above being true, isn't it AWFULLY questionable that they made such an effort to legalize it?

He should "untoon" Hewie, Dooey, and Louie from Duck Tales!

Oh wait... that's right... no need:

http://images.google.com/images?q=howard+the+duck

I saw a fairly decent Ecto-1 on the streets of Minneapolis last week. Not sure what the story is there.

Sad... I can't do the one I want to. Grandma just died. :-/

Coming soon to an NSA mission near you!

I dunno when it was that I met you, but it sure seems like I did?

My condolences to all the people who were her friends and family, from a random stranger.

What a dumb ass... everybody knows if you get caught breaking the law you say, "It's a matter of national security. I'm fighting terrorists." And/or, "I do not recall."

"Area 51" is never going to work.

Oh Craig,

Your attitude is no different than the attitude of Americans that you so obviously loathe. "Why won't somebody ELSE do something?" Those Americans who even care about the current situation don't act because they a) don't think it will matter b) think somebody else is already acting for them and/or 3) haven't realized they should act, but instead whine about how nobody else is acting.

If you really cared you could be protesting for your own government (where ever it is that you live) to do something useful like call for the arrest and trial of Bush et al for war crimes, or at least go public with the fact that he's not welcome around for state dinners anymore.

I don't see any of our "allies" in the world holding us accountable. Perhaps their citizens aren't demanding it?

So, just sit back and lay your blame on the American people for all of this. That's the easy, lazy thing to do, isn't it? How American of you.

What people might not realize is that because nobody ever calls Congress even just 10 calls to an office about the same subject on the same day is A HUGE ZOMG EMERGENCY to them.

So seriously. Stop throwing your hands up in the air, and pick up the phone. Start at this website:

http://www.house.gov/

Use the tools at the top to find your Representative. Locate the phone number on your Representative's web page under "Contact."

Call the number.

Tell them:

"This is so-and-so from such-and-such town. I feel xyz. Thank you."

I'm willing to be there's a few hundred thousand anti-torture Americans who read this blog in a day. If you all made the phone call, your Congress Critters would poop in their pants. Poop.

Oh yeah like I'm going to believe anything on youtube on April Fool's day. Probably just another Rick Roll anyway!

April Fools!!!

Giant Squids aren't real!

The first of April... also known as "Stay Off the Internet Day"

grumble

Cupcake, the West is much less densely populated than the East. Fewer people, fewer Walmarts.

This assertion that journalism should be fair and balanced completely misses the point. Journalism should report the facts. Period.

If those facts overwhelmingly point to somebody being a schmuck, it isn't the journalist's job to find an equal number of facts pointing to that somebody NOT being a schmuck.

When Bush says we have to grant immunity or the telecoms won't want to cooperate with the government in these surveillance activities to keep us safe, he is knowingly lying to the American people.

Telecoms are legally obligated to assist the government with wiretapping. Telecoms cannot refuse to comply with a warrant or a subpoena. And, I believe the old FISA law requires them to comply with governmental wiretap requests even before a warrant is granted. (Old FISA already allowed for 72 hours of wiretapping before needing to go get a warrant.)

TOM and MADDY have really great explanations for why things are the way they are.

Seems like the only argumentative path that would yield any successful results would be one starting from within their "fact" bubble, or constructed using their "facts."

But ultimately, there's no arguing with an authoritarian power who looks to fit the facts around their decisions rather than the other way around.

Instead you have to remove their power by convincing enough people outside the bubble that they are wrong. And, actually, I forget whose quote this is, but you can't change things by attacking the current model. You have to create a new and better model for people to adopt.

For the uninformed:

1. CIA Director Hayden testified to Congress that the CIA has tortured ("waterboarded") detainees. source

2. President Bush has vetoed a bill that would have banned waterboarding, beating, electrocuting, burning, using dogs, stripping detainees, forcing them to perform or mimic sexual acts. source

For the record, this stuff is already illegal. War crimes and/or aggravated assaults.

So why has Congress responded by trying to pass another law reiterating the illegality of these actions?

So many hipster glasses... I thought Joel Johnson was the dog?

@WINGO

You should check out The Corporation.

Basically, Corporations are granted rights and privileges like a human being, but you can't put them in jail like you can a human being.

And they are required by law to turn a profit. They're required to make the choices that pay off better for their share holders, not the choice that is the most moral.

Basically, a corporation acts almost exactly like a sociopathic human being.

Let me spell this out for everybody.

Notice how cable TV works? Some of the channels are "free." Some of them cost a lot of money. They're all owned by a small handful of companies. Rarely do you see new channels, and channels often engage in censorship, like Discovery Channel's decision to not air "A Taxi to the Darkside."

This is exactly what they want to do to the web. They want to create different pricing for different levels of connectivity.

Huge Media Company X can afford to pay for the higher connection rate for their website servers, and people will be willing to pay a higher cost to connect to it at a high speed.

Tiny Joe Blow Entrepreneur / Tiny Citizen Journalist can't afford to pay for the higher connection rate for their website servers, and people won't be willing to pay a higher cost to connect to it at a high speed.

It will become economically infeasible for the small guy to afford the kind of bandwidth speeds needed to host a serious website. The small guy will have to turn to Huge Media Company in order to get their website hosted with the bandwidth they need.

And guess what? Huge Media Company doesn't want you competing with them or saying anything bad about any of their partners, investors, or advertisers.

This *will* be the end of the Web as we know it.

Say hello to Interactive Cable. Say hello to $250/month for Internet and TV.

1. Does this count as public performance? Royalties?

2. Too bad those RIAA shrinkwrap agreements don't mention that you can't use the music to torture people.

NOEN you can't call it impeachment. Nancy took that off the table.

So, just like if you call torture an "enhanced interrogation technique" she's for it, if we call impeachment an "enhanced oversight technique" she'll be for that, too.

It's all about the words you pick.

Perhaps it is time for Congress to consider using some "Enhanced Oversight Techniques" on the Vice President?

Regarding Insane Husayn's link, an article by Jonah Goldberg at the National Review, I'd like to point out some of the more dubious quotes:

"But I do not weep that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed spent somewhere between .03 and .06 seconds feeling like he was drowning for every person he allegedly helped murder on 9/11."

Word to note in that sentence: allegedly.

"It’s not a technique that should be used for punishment."

Ok, that's the Scalia argument. That somehow torture is ok if it isn't used as punishment. That it's ok for interrogations.

Have Scalia or Goldberg ever read the Constitution? There's that whole innocent until proven guilty, due process of law thing.

Do Scalia and Goldberg really think that the Constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment doesn't extend to cruel and unusual interrogations?

I think the founding fathers probably assumed that since we were treating suspects as the presumed innocent until their trial by peers, it would go without saying that we wouldn't be cruel or unusually punitive to a presumed innocent human.

Now before the local Neo Con goes off on me: No, I don't think our soldiers should have to stop and hold a trial before they shoot back at bad guys.

However, kidnapping an intelligence target from their home country, flying them to another country, and torturing them... maybe before we even know if we've got the right guy.

To me that *does* seem like a slippery slope, even if Jonah Goldberg doesn't think so.

Microsoft will abandon web standards before they ever really adopted them.

Did the Microsoft software break? Shocking.

Damn, well, go figure. I still want one.

It really bothers me that there's such elegant solutions to the energy problem, and yet I'm sure it will take a crisis for them to be adopted.

Link that isn't boingboing'ed to death:

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/fiore/2006/05/snuggly.html

Yeah PMHPARIS and GUYSMILEY are totally right. God people. It's not like it takes a rocket scientist to figure this stuff out.

Oh wait...

Looks more like the mummified remains of the daily catch of a professional rat catcher.

Living rats getting their tails entangled? Come on.

The imagery of anything flowing like booze through a checkpoint made to catch bombs and guns... doesn't work for me. They just seem so out of touch.

Seems like President Bush failed the troops and American people in Afghanistan, and continues to lie when he includes Afghanistan as an example of spreading Democracy.

Shouldn't he resign?

@JEFF... you've got me worried about you, man. You do realize that all humans share less genetic difference than you share with a chimpanzee? There's not some people that came from educated, peaceful, stock and others than came from barbarian stock. It doesn't work that way. We are all the same.

@JAKE0748... if you look at the countries who still have capital punishment, the list is like: Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, China, United States. And our Western allies are not on the list. That speaks for itself.

As a follow up to this radio program, you're really going to want to listen to "No Place to Hide" which was carried by National Public Radio a couple years ago:

http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/noplacetohide/

A simple Google search reveals the word "marsquatch" goes back to at the very least 2005:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=marsquatch&btnG=Google+Search

Honestly, you people should be fired from the internet.

Oh man... if I could get my parents on Macs... life would be so much easier. My dad hasn't quite gotten over years of FUD.

Why is it that I have an intense urge to pet one of them and make whosagoodboy noises?

t #34

Srry, lt m crrct my sttmnt:

Wth ny lck, th 29 yr ld ws BngBng rdr DDYMS.

I'd love to see authority served up a big old spoonful of its own horrible tasting medicine.

I think we as citizens should push our right to video tape any and all police activity, especially arrests made in public or our own encounters with police. After all, they're making us swallow the surveillance state with shit lines like "if you aren't doing anything wrong then you shouldn't care that we're watching."

If the police aren't doing anything wrong, then they shouldn't care that we're video taping their every action.

Dear SLODO,

I just got a phone call. Your english teacher killed herself today after reading your use of analogy in your comment. She couldn't deal with the unshakeable feeling that she failed you somehow. I'm sorry to be the one to break the news to you.

Sincerely,
me

With any luck, the 29 year old was a Republican driving an SUV with a Bush 04 sticker in the back window.

Dear Danegeld who I want to punch in the mouth for either being a troll or for taking a huge shit on the US Constitution that hundreds of thousands of people have died for,

I think you know where this comment is going.

Sincerely,
me

P.S. Fuck you.

@MORTIS

On communist post-apocalyptic Earth, radioactive mutant grubs dig for YOU!

My first thought was that this is ridiculous, and in an apocalypse situation if you want to risk your own life by not compromising your vegan values you are a fool.

But then I thought a little more.

And sure, I mean there's always the option of bare handed tackling of wild post-apocalyptic mutant bears, and feasting on their delicious green flesh... but really, after the apocalypse there's not going to be anybody running the livestock yards, or butchering the animals, or any electricity to preserve whatever product existed before the Big Event.

So really -- regardless of whether you eat delicious, delicious meat or you are one of those people leaving more delicious meat for the rest of us -- this article's advice is actually going to be quite important for everyone.

We're all going to want to be aware of the most convenient protein sources. And long-shelf-life beans sounds a lot better than risking a bite from a mutant bear just for a chance at a nice steak.

Although, if you survived the bite, your newly acquired bear-strength would probably be a useful survival tool.

"...which is why I have not bought a CD from a major label since 1992."

Nobody cared about the RIAA or DRM in 1992!

Also... what about DVDs? Don't buy those either?

Can anybody get this American a job in the UK? I like it there. Better beer.

New Year's Resolution: write my Representative and two Senators, asking them to update their lexicon accordingly.

Nicely done, Brits. My perception is that your society and government are less fear based. Am I off base?

Perpetual War is soooooooo 1984. It's 2008 now. Get with the program.

Netscape Gold 3.0 came in a box... in the store. Blew Mosaic out of the water. Netscape 4.x was great for awhile, but stuck around a little too long. Netscape should have been drug out back and shot a long time ago.

Now if we could just see the same RIP headline for Internet Explorer.

IE team, if you are reading: I hate you so much for IE6.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30832

CKD... I agree. 3 options.

Without stating any personal opinion as to who is right or wrong, this will end exactly one of two ways:

1. The US Govt says "ok that's fine, if you're out we don't have to honor the treaties either. we don't recognize your sovereignty. we don't recognize your right to any of this land. you're now just regular US citizens, on Federal land, and we don't recognize your right to secede from the Union." The Lakotas say, "hmmm, I kind of liked it when the Feds at least partially honored our sovereignty." The US Govt is nice enough to reinstate the previous treaties. Everything goes back to exactly how it was.

2. War. Bloodshed. Your land is only sovereign as long as you can defend it. The US isn't going to let you carve out your own nation in its midst without a fight.

Rodents Of Unusual Size? I don't think they exist.

The US House of Representatives recently voted on a Bill that would require the CIA to follow the same interrogation rules as the Army: no more waterboarding, no more torture.

222 of them voted FOR ending CIA torture.
199 of them voted AGAINST ending CIA torture.

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2007/roll1160.xml

Dear fellow American Boing Boing reader,

The US House is one of the two parts of the Legislative Branch of the US Government, whose members are known as idio^H^H^H^H Representatives.

If you live in one of the 50 states, you have a Representative in the House who is elected to represent you.

If you don't vote, then it is your neighbors who voted this person into a public office.

I CAN HAS SPACESHIP / DIS SPACESHIP IT HAS A FLAVR

(the second one is funnier if you watch the video)

Two steps here:

1. Call your elected officials and tell them what you think.
2. Write your favorite artists (or write on their MySpace) and tell them you don't pay for their music to be harassed for how you listen to it.

Bitching about the RIAA on boingboing unfortunately does nothing, except maybe make you feel a little better for having vented.

You've got the information about what they're up to, now act. Your elected officials do not read boingboing, or digg, or your personal blog. Remember that.

Dear Teresa the Moderator,

My really long comment with the all the ---'s in it is the one I wanted to be edited due to my mistake... its number has changed (which is rather confusing to me?). It is now #86.

Here is the correct starting point for my comment... delete anything in that comment above here:

"--

I'd save the monkey and kill the robot, IF there was a way to recover..."

Also... how did a sentence in that comment lose all of its vowels?!

Whoops... revealing mistake. I type up responses in a separate editor for spellcheck and when I wrote #81 I accidentally copy and pasted a bunch of my previous comments. Sorry about the dupe text.

Wish there was an edit/delete option. Mods: You can feel free to delete everything before the final "--" if you want to clean things up... not that I expect you to fix my mess for me.

Sorry everybody.

People ARE equating real organisms with machines, which is exactly what I was speaking to. It happened numerous times in this thread.

I'm not going to sit here and tell you that somebody who tortures a Pleo for fun isn't a sicko. In fact I posed the question, "would a sicko find torturing a Pleo (or an even more convincing replica) satisfying compared to torturing a real organism?" I think that's more interesting than the reaction of a well adjusted person.

What I am going to argue to the end is this: Everybody who tortures a dog is a sicko. NOT everybody who tortures a Pleo (or the like) is a sicko. The real organism always creates a different set of circumstances than the fake organism because they cannot be equated. And yes, uniqueness WILL be the factor for when we decide we can fairly equate them. Not whether they feel pain. We can just upload a new line of code to a robobrain, and their pain is gone.

I have been celebrating the spirit of this post the entire time I've been commenting. It is an amazing thing that real human emotions can transfer onto anthropomorphized robots. Truly fascinating. But also complex. And you're not always a sociopath if you feel no remorse in abusing one of these robots.

And again, there's the whole philosophical weirdness involved in the fact that a real human programming the mimicry. Somebody has to abuse the thing to ever see that work they put in.

Kids are pretty rough with their toys. I'm guessing the Pleo only cries out because it is fragile enough to break if kids don't mind it.

But what happens when the Pleo's crappy plastic gears start slipping? Or the kid gets a Pleo 2 and is bored with their old Pleo? Has the kid lost humanity because it shuts the old toy off, or throws it away? Has the kid lost humanity if he or she decides to roughhouse the old toy because it has lost value?

If it was a pet dog, and it got old, would a parent let the kid ignore the old dog and just go buy a new one? And let the old dog die a lonely death?

So Nick D... are you saying that any parent who buys their kid a new robodinosaur and lets their kid ignore the old one is teaching their kid to be an unempathetic sociopath?

---

Nick you've got to consider that you'd feel really good saving a human from drowning even if you let 10 crying robohumans die in the process. You wouldn't feel like you've lost some of your humanity. Trust me.

Giving a Pleo a slap... the same rules apply. You can be an empathetic and humane person, and still feel no remorse for that action.

Throw truly unique robohumans that you can't replace into this mix, and remorse comes back into the picture.

---

Robert, there are a lot of those people: they listen to techno and/or industrial and/or "goth" music. Lots of them lead healthy lives, and have nurturing relationships with their families.

What do you want from me Nick? Everybody? I do/can see why you find the video disturbing and why you find people who abuse these machines as disturbing. When did I say I don't understand that?

You just don't seem willing to budge on the fact that right now the Pleo amounts to little more than a toaster with a clever soundtrack, and sometimes, just maybe, it can be "tortured" without the "torturer" being a sociopath, and with it ok to laugh.

And Nick, I was simply pointing out that if you worry about your kid who tortures a Pleo, why shouldn't you be worried that giving that kid a Pleo and then letting them abandon it is teaching them that they can abandon real creatures, too? Why don't the same rules apply? You can't have it both ways.

---

Saying I'm wrong and actually showing I'm wrong with argument are two very different things Tom. pprntly pss y ff, snc y wnt strght fr ttckng my ntllct rthr thn rgng yr wn pnn.

---

Mark, I'm confused. I'd squish an ant to save the planet whether or not my loved one was a robot.

r y jst jmpng n th "sht p wth th hypthtcls, Xpl" bndwgn... r r y ctlly tryng t mk pnt hr?

--

I'd save the monkey and kill the robot, IF there was a way to recover the robot harddrive and/or otherwise create an exact replica, or I reasonably believed that was the case.

If my robofriend isn't reproducible (personality/knowledge/etc included) then it is a unique individual (nevermind atomic differences), which means, as I said, we should start thinking about assigning human rights and privileges at that point.

I would have a really, really hard time killing a monkey. But I'd do it to save the human race... since they'd die anyway if I didn't kill it. I'd save a unique beloved robofriend instead of a monkey if I could never get that robofriend back.

This is no doubt ramping up to stranger versus robot, or human friend versus robot friend.

A toaster can be reproduced exactly (nevermind atomic level differences). A human cannot. Once the robot cannot be reproduced exactly, that's where I draw the line, personally. I'm not saying any of you have to agree with me, but it makes sense for me.

I do have to concede that it is in fact most likely the robot's ability to mimic organic creatures which would cause me to love it / be empathetic towards it in the first place. I would save a monkey and kill a truly unique, one-of-a-kind, can-never-be-made-again toaster... toasters don't have emotions (or pretend to).

BUT(!!!) a robot can cry out and make me empathetic towards it while still being a commodity. $9.99 at the local Robots R Us.

Human vs commodity human mimic... easy choice.

Human vs unique individual human mimic... hard choice.

I'll say it again: I understand the empathy towards Pleo and the antipathy towards its abusers.

What I've been trying to do is show where we draw the line and why. When do you start charging people with robo-abuse?

To me it seems like you can't draw a very solid line until we have robots that surpass our ability to make exact copies of them.

We can even take pain completely out of the equation. What if science creates a conscious intelligence that exists on an array of computers and isn't equipped with sensors, limbs, crying sounds. Would it not be a tragedy to destroy it?

Mark, I'm confused. I'd squish an ant to save the planet whether or not my loved one was a robot.

r y jst jmpng n th "sht p wth th hypthtcls, Xpl" bndwgn... r r y ctlly tryng t mk pnt hr?

Robert, there are a lot of those people: they listen to techno and/or industrial and/or "goth" music. Lots of them lead healthy lives, and have nurturing relationships with their families.

What do you want from me Nick? Everybody? I do/can see why you find the video disturbing and why you find people who abuse these machines as disturbing. When did I say I don't understand that?

You just don't seem willing to budge on the fact that right now the Pleo amounts to little more than a toaster with a clever soundtrack, and sometimes, just maybe, it can be "tortured" without the "torturer" being a sociopath, and with it ok to laugh.

And Nick, I was simply pointing out that if you worry about your kid who tortures a Pleo, why shouldn't you be worried that giving that kid a Pleo and then letting them abandon it is teaching them that they can abandon real creatures, too? Why don't the same rules apply? You can't have it both ways.

Well Tom, sng th wrd spcs ds nt mk y smrt, s y'v shwn.

Y'r rght. My pst wsn't ddrssng th pnts n yr pst. Yr pst wsn't ntrstng t m. 'm nt rqrd by lw t ddrss Tm's pnts.

You know that when I'm talking about uniqueness I'm not talking about atoms. I'm talking about personality, memory, etc. I'm sorry if I didn't use the terminology that makes you feel so superior to me.

In addition, you are twisting the spirit of my arguments on reproducibility. Human twins have different identities. You can't kill one and say you've still got an exact copy. But one radio is just as good as the next radio. I'm not sure why this point isn't clear to you.

I'm saying, once the machines start having identities that cannot be reproduced, that's when we've got the real ethical problem. Why don't you concentrate on arguing with my points rthr thn rgng my chc f wrds frm th nglsh lngg.

Not all hypotheticals are bad. In science there's this thing called a hypothesis. I proposed some tests and hypothesized some of the results. It was a useful exercise in demonstrating that sometimes a human can inflict or observe harm in a robo-creature without being a sociopath.

Clrly 'm tkng y tsd yr cmfrt zn by dfndng th ppl wh fnd btng Pl fnny. Gd.

People ARE equating real organisms with machines, which is exactly what I was speaking to. It happened numerous times in this thread.

I'm not going to sit here and tell you that somebody who tortures a Pleo for fun isn't a sicko. In fact I posed the question, "would a sicko find torturing a Pleo (or an even more convincing replica) satisfying compared to torturing a real organism?" I think that's more interesting than the reaction of a well adjusted person.

What I am going to argue to the end is this: Everybody who tortures a dog is a sicko. NOT everybody who tortures a Pleo (or the like) is a sicko. The real organism always creates a different set of circumstances than the fake organism because they cannot be equated. And yes, uniqueness WILL be the factor for when we decide we can fairly equate them. Not whether they feel pain. We can just upload a new line of code to a robobrain, and their pain is gone.

I have been celebrating the spirit of this post the entire time I've been commenting. It is an amazing thing that real human emotions can transfer onto anthropomorphized robots. Truly fascinating. But also complex. And you're not always a sociopath if you feel no remorse in abusing one of these robots.

And again, there's the whole philosophical weirdness involved in the fact that a real human programming the mimicry. Somebody has to abuse the thing to ever see that work they put in.

Kids are pretty rough with their toys. I'm guessing the Pleo only cries out because it is fragile enough to break if kids don't mind it.

But what happens when the Pleo's crappy plastic gears start slipping? Or the kid gets a Pleo 2 and is bored with their old Pleo? Has the kid lost humanity because it shuts the old toy off, or throws it away? Has the kid lost humanity if he or she decides to roughhouse the old toy because it has lost value?

If it was a pet dog, and it got old, would a parent let the kid ignore the old dog and just go buy a new one? And let the old dog die a lonely death?

So Nick D... are you saying that any parent who buys their kid a new robodinosaur and lets their kid ignore the old one is teaching their kid to be an unempathetic sociopath?

You've got to frame your hypothetical better. Why would I want to kill the ant or the robot? Not to mention I'd kill an ant instead of destroying a piece of electronics every time you gave me this test.

In my scenario, both cars are in the water, the human girl is asleep but soon to drown, and then 10 robosapiens are crying bloody murder in the other car. We'd all save the quiet human girl.

A better question would be, my previously unbeknownst-to-me robofriend is in one car in the river, and a human stranger is in another. NOW who do I save?

I'd save the human, if there was a way to recover the robot harddrive and/or otherwise create an exact replica, or I reasonably believed that was the case.

If my robofriend isn't reproducible then it is unique, which means, as I said, we should start assigning human rights and privileges at that point. I'd save the familiar figure over the stranger.

There is a huge difference between somebody's daughter (or a soulless human meat machine, as NOEN puts it), and an amazingly accurate metal and plastic machine replica: uniqueness.

When you kill a pet dog, you'll never get that same dog back ever again. When you kill a Pleo, you can go to the store and buy the exact same Pleo.

Sure... as these robots get more advanced their harddrives will start to store data that will effect the AI ... so one machine will behave perhaps even truly uniquely compared to another machine.

But even then you can just copy the fricken harddrive into another one. Point is, you can always make another.

And, how about this: two cars plunge into a river. One has a human girl. One has 10 human girl replicas that are screaming in horror for their robo-lives. Who do you save?

You people are ridiculous.

That said... destroying the unique harddrive of one of these future hypothetical robots... that does seem like it is sure to be a controversial issue. We still kill rats by the million in the name of science, though.

Or... if someday we have a robot that is truly unique and cannot be replicated. THAT should be where we should start applying the same laws we apply to humans or real animals... as appropriate.

Clay, I think you are on to something. It is hard to feel remorse when there are no consequences. And if something is fully reversible, then there really aren't any.

Permanently damaging anything is a different experience from virtually damaging something where you can just reload or hit undo.

I think the Mel Brooks quote is also wise. If the video showed only the Pleo being blown to smithereens with TNT, I'm guessing many more of you would have been amused. There's no moment of suffering in such an extreme death.

And then the whole idea of switching the Pleo around so it likes being beaten... man is that ever a thought experiment.

The fact of the matter is, a Pleo is just a toaster oven with a sound track. If you have a reaction to a Pleo being abused that speaks to the engineers' skills more than anything... and the funny thing is, if nobody abused the thing then nobody would ever get to appreciate the work the engineers put in. And likewise, why did the engineers put that into the product if it wasn't meant to be seen? It's a tree falling in the forest kind of problem.

I think a well adjusted, empathetic person could beat a Pleo to death without any scarring depending on the circumstance.

I wonder, would a psychopath get the same feeling from beating a Pleo to death as they do from beating a dog or human to death? Maybe that's the more interesting question.

Those things are like $350. I'd feel bad smashing a 20" LCD monitor. Bad about the $350 of useful electronics I just broke. LCD's don't even scream in pain.

I have to say, anthropomorphized toys (Furby being the first I ever had experience with) are certainly creepy, but abusing them and seeing their reaction can be a joyful experience if you look at it from the perspective of admiring the level of detail / quality of the AI that the engineers put into it.

Also... Put a kitten in a blender, and I will beat the shit out of you before I call the police on your ass. Put a videogame kitten in a videogame blender, and I will laugh hysterically.

I don't know what that means. I just know it is true.

I have heard anecdotally that bare skin in these environments is covered with a film of sweat that basically makes small bits of hot metal slide/hop off whereas if the small bits of hot metal hit clothing the clothing will catch fire and cause bad burns.

Any steel workers in the crowd?

What does a NYC manhole cover look like? This:

http://newyork.xopl.com/photos/full/sewerindia.jpg
http://newyork.xopl.com/photos/rejects/nycsewers1.jpg

The fact that they all said "Made in India" on them caught my eye while I was visiting. I have a trip blog for the extremely bored:

http://newyork.xopl.com/

I have to also insist that anybody actually trying this disable all outgoing packets. Only allow incoming packets (so viruses can come in). If that isn't possible, then we'll have to leave this idea for the comic realm. (What would be best would be to have no outside connection whatsoever, and to introduce the viruses one by one as you would fish species in a real aquarium.)

Not only would leaving outgoing traffic open mean that your aquarium is trying to infect other people, but the sheer amount of traffic coming out of your aquarium bots would almost certainly get your connection shut off by your ISP.

All that said.... I would pay top dollar if somebody built a turnkey solution for this where you can just download the aquarium and download the various inhabitants, and watch what happens.

I want one.

Kick ass... so when we get our direct-to-brain inputs, we can experience 35 minutes of reality in just 5 minutes of real time!

Well, provided our brains run at rat-speed or better.

Just wait until they start breaking out the microwave pain rays. Y'all remember those in the news don't you?

Of course this would NEVER happen in the United States.

Of course not.

FNARF... there were two girls laying "dead" on the floor in the Mall of America as a psychology experiement. Not sure when/if they'll publish, but plenty of people stopped to check on them. I realise it wasn't exactly in a Halloween setting.

Also, funny enough, I was sitting on my friend's porch after the Minneapolis Zombie Pub Crawl covered in fake blood. The landlord comes out, sees me, asks if I'm ok... says he doesn't believe me when I say I'm fine and waiting for my friend. It didn't even occur to me that somebody unaware of the Zombie Pub Crawl mind fight a blood soaked person a bit odd. Still... he never called the cops.

@big daddy

"Any time anyone's hacked the actual game, they've gotten punished and banned."

Well, when somebody hacked several million from the ATMs in the virtual world product WorldsAway/Vzones like I was talking about, the problem was they rapidly distributed the funds and inflated the entire virtual world's economy.

When the SysOps realized what had happened, banning the one person wouldn't fix the problem. It was too late.

In the virtual world product known previously as WorldsAway and now as VZones, which has been online for a good 11 years now, somebody found an exploit in the client code that allowed them to withdraw hundreds of millions of tokens (the in-world currency) from the virtual world's ATMs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3CdNgoC0cE

Well said, Graham.

How can people not be angry? Due process of law has been systematically removed in this country.

Federal agents can monitor an American without notifying a court that they are doing so.

Next, federal agents can arrest an American, without charges. They can prevent this person from challenging their detention in court. They can fly this person to a prison in a foreign country.

Finally, federal agents can use a variety of interrogation techniques on this American in order to break them. Until apparently a few days ago this included water boarding, where you feel as though you will drown. Other methods include nudity, sleep depravation, continuous 24/7 loud audio, and so on.

Those who have no problem with this would use the talking point that "we need to do this in order to extract timely information from terrorists in order to potentially save thousands of lives."

What if we do this to an American who is innocent? What if the government makes just one single mistake, and does this to one innocent person? Is it worth it? Is it worth it if it was you? Your brother? Your dad? Your friend? Your sister? Your mother? A stranger?

Is it ok if the American is an immigrant?

Is it ok if it is NOT an American, but the person is still INNOCENT?

How many of you recognize the following statement: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal"

That's from the United States Declaration of Independence. When that was written, the USA did not exist. People from many countries were living on the North American continent in a British colony when that was written. It doesn't say, nor did it mean, "all American Citizens are created equal."

If it isn't acceptable to torture an American Citizen, it is hypocritical and directly contradicts these founding words of the USA to torture foreign nationals.

See next the 8th Amendment to the United States Constitution, in our Bill of Rights:

"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."

If all men as created equal, as the very document that declared us as an independent nation proclaims, then surely all of us deserve protection from cruel and unusual punishment.

If you believe in torture, or if you believe torture is ok so long as it isn't an American the government is torturing, IT IS YOU WHO ARE UNAMERICAN. IT IS YOU WHO ARE UNPATRIOTIC.

Terrorism does not have the power to directly destroy the USA. We're too big. We're too strong. We're too spread out. We have too many resources. Only we can destroy ourselves by letting the terrorists control us. To quote Colin Powell:

"What is the greatest threat facing us now? People will say it's terrorism. But are there any terrorists in the world who can change the American way of life or our political system? No. Can they knock down a building? Yes. Can they kill somebody? Yes. But can they change us? No. Only we can change ourselves."

Why is the government's and the media's message one of fear and failure rather than one of strength, courage, and triumph over evil?

See what John Kerry thinks about all this:

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/09/students-rally-.html

John Kerry is the biggest do-nothing there ever was. He's nothing but talk. Even. Monotone. Unexcited. Talk. Even while police are tasing a student. I'm so done with John Kerry.

Why DID he concede the election?

My country is being turned upside down, and I'm pissed off, too. How do you stay calm after the Nth outrage?

Fine. Remove the kid for being disorderly (read: asking a question), but there's absolutely no reason that he should have been tased. Here's a scrawny little kid, and there were several police officers.

And charging him with inciting a riot? Oh come on. You were at best removing him for disorderly conduct, probably with no charges. Do you really get to charge somebody for actions they never would have made had you not arrested them for no reason in the first place?

imPEACH [rimshot]