roseembolism: (fhqwagads)

I came up with a rather unplesent thought experiment in a discussion on Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, explicating why I think they are fundamentally unethical.

The problem with the Three Laws is that they involve such high-level concepts, tthat he robots have to be sentient beings with human level intelligence in order for the concepts work. In which case, we're not really talking about programming, we're talking about brainwashing.

To distill the ethics of the Three Laws to their essence, let's change the target of the Laws. We'll change the wording as so:

1. A Negro may not injure a White or, through inaction, allow a White to come to harm.

2. A Negro must obey the orders given to it by Whites, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A Negro must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Would you consider those laws ethical and moral? If not, why not? Bear in mind, the EXACT SAME arguments made for the necessity of those laws, also apply equally well to other groups of humans. Or rather, those arguments are equally false. If you argue for the necessity of cruelly enslaving robots using brainwashing, then you are also arguing that any other potential group of "others" must by necessity also be equally controlled.

roseembolism: (lump grenade)

Twitter hit by major disruption


"Twitter has been hit by a major bug that has seen many users of the service lose all of their followers and friends. "

It was just sad. I was in downtown San Jose and Mountain View, and there were all these people wandering around with lost expressions, reflexively poking the refresh buttons on their iPhones in vain. Fortunately the police are on it and are keeping them from wandering into traffic, so far.
roseembolism: (zombiemeh)
No Google, I do NOT want to "check out" Google Buzz.  I am not interested in your new service.  I am MOST DEFINITELY NOT interested in having to go through your damn Google Buzz ad every time I want to go to my Google inbox!

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr......
roseembolism: (zombiemeh)
Five minutes into my first Google Wave session, I managed to not only crash it, but also erase what everyone else had written.

I suppose it's reassuring to know my luck with Beta internet technology hasn't changed. For a broad enough definition of "reassuring" that is, one that implies a large dose of fatalism.
roseembolism: (technopeasant)
A comment by Mark Atwood got me thinking. He was complaining about printers and it occurred to me that one of the reasons I'm so "meh" about the iPad is that I can't help but thinking that a lot of computer development is overly focused in one area. We get neat new interfaces like the iPad, but in the meantime, peripherals such as printers are as annoyingly prone to failure as they've always been. With the exception of wi-fi connections, it really seems like little practical development in peripherals has been done in 20 years.

MArk was saying he liked the idea of a steampunk printer, with brass gears and solid construction. I have to agree it would be worth to ppay the small fortune for such a printer, as long as it was more reliable than current models- and especially if it had an ink reservoir, so I didn't have to replace the ink cartridges every hundred pages or so..

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