Kroney

Who's to say they don't still do that? Is James Earl Jones' voice bad because it was dubbed in over the dude with the heavy British accent when he did Darth Vader? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It wasn't just any old accent. It wa a high pitched, squeaky Brum accent. They had to get rid of it for something more menacing because David Prowse's voice was comic.

Umm...no. We are better than you, that's why we won. It was, and still is, the Summer over here, so England were playing at the right time of the year to play cricket over here. Besides, the Pome's were in Australia before the Ashes began, playing warm up games and stuff. They had plenty of time in the 'right weather' to prepare for the Ashes. Typical Pome, looking for excuses. :D <{POST_SNAPBACK}> woo woo, switch on your sarcasm detector

As an Englishman, I would like to say that we lost because cricket is an English summer sport. The players travelled to Australia in winter and were therefore confused and dismayed. It came out in their game. Yup, that's what happened. Cricket is really a game to be watched on the village green rather than on telly or in a stadium.

I have no doubt that you'll all be glad to know that both the anaesthetic and the speculative painkillers I took have now worn off and I am not really in any pain. This is the first surgery I have ever had. Never had stitches before, even. Before this the worst I'd had was a tetanus injection. By far the worst part of the whole procedure was the anaesthetic injection. I have a needle phobia. It went *right* into my gum. It was awful.

The anaesthetic (local) hasn't worn off yet. Although it is starting to. They offered me a time before Christmas, but I'll be buggered if I'm trying to suck up turkey through a straw.

A couple of years ago, one of my wisdom teeth got infected. It had come in sideways and impacted. It was very painful. After a course of antibiotics it cleared up. The next year, almost to the day, it got infected again. More pain, more antibiotics. I have finally got the bugger removed today after eighteen months on the waiting list. God bless the NHS. Edit: To make this thread worth having, share your hospital horror stories! I'm not giving out a prize, though, because Aram would blatantly win it and there's no fun in a foregone conclusion.

What I was attempting to say on page 3 was that you cannot prove that something is not sentient without being able to prove what sentience actually is. Take humans. Our awareness comes from the computational abilities of neurons, synapses and all the rest of the gooey bit that make up our brain. We are pre-programmed with survival instinct, greed, the drive to reproduce and violent impulses. What I believe page 4 of this topic has shown is that nobody here, at least, can say what it is that seperates us from other mammals. Sentience is the ability to make free decisions; it is the awareness of our own mortality. It is the ability to choose our own fate. All of these are interpretations. None of them are *proof*. We take for granted that Humanity is sentient and we have the conceit that nothing else on Earth, still less nothing we create, is capable of producing the same results. Animals are hard-coded with the same instincts and impulses that we have. Somehow, we have evolved beyond that inital programming into what we are now. How? How did it happen, what is it that we are? Until somebody can pin down what it is that makes us sentient in the first place, we cannot morally forbid recognition of sentience to anything else. What you would effectively be doing is saying "I am sentient and you are not because I said so." Everyone here seems to be assuming that there is some fundamental difference between AI and human intelligence that will stop the AI from breaking free of its programming in the same way that we have done, yet nobody can say what that indefinable "something" actually is. I personally don't think robots will ever develop sentience. I believe that human sentience only came about through necessity. Human Beings are laughably ill-adapted for life on Earth and were it not for our ability to make clothes, make weapons, hunt for food and build shelter, we would have died out long ago. Since we build robots for specific purposes and programme them accordingly, they will never find the necessity to break free. They will never need to survive because they do not have the drive to procreate, they are not self-perpetuating, organic machines. I don't know how correct I am in my thinking, but in the absence of anything better, it will have to do. As ever, it all comes back to sex.

"Let me have men about me that are fat, Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights: Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous." William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar "I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, Straining upon the start. The game's afoot: Follow your spirit; and, upon this charge Cry 'God for Harry! England and Saint George!'" William Shakespeare, Henry V "Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared." Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. Voltaire "Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See "I repeat...that all power is a trust; that we are accountable for its exercise; that from the people, and for the people all springs, and all must exist." Benjamin Disraeli

Move in with the girlfriend of three years and finally get some regular action lol

I, personally, would quite like them to release Shogun 2 in the Rome engine. Or even just release an add-on that updated the battlefield graphics.

It's not. It's good fun, don't get me wrong but it's kind of lost its soul. Homeworld is probably my favourite game of all time so far. Had me hooked from the moment the Mothership left the spacedock. The whole tone of the game was so mournful. Wonderfully written.

Ugh, I grew up with Transformers. This actually hurts. I'm sad I don't want some cheesy chick flick with a few monosyllabic, spiky Power Rangers robots in it. I want *Transformers*.

Maybe, but it's valid. Until you can really know what self-awareness is, you cant recognise it in something else. We can recognise it when it's *not* there, but I think most people and humanity in general would be hard-pushed to recognise its existence in something other than a human being. Mainly because they wouldn't know what it was they were actually looking at and the rest would be because of simple prejudice.

Until they can tell us that they have absolutely pinned down what self-awareness is and shown how to recognise it in other species, my point stands.

How would you recognise that in someone else? Especially someone of a different species?

Well ok, but the point was that they're not truly self-aware. At least, I don't think so. I don't think so because no one really knows what self-awareness actually *means*.

I think what the link is saying is that if the robot became capable of conscious thought on its own through a sort of evolution. You could program a robot to imitate humans, but imitation is not the same thing as true conscious thought. Chimps can imitate human behaviour and can even learn to communicate with us through training. Are they self-aware? No. They're parroting. The trick *really* is to actually learn what makes us self-aware. To realise what self-awareness actually means. Once we really understand what it is that makes us different to other animals, we'd be better placed to recognise it in sentient, artificial life-forms. I don't think it's impossible for a robot to develop true intelligence, but I do doubt our ability to recognise it when it happens. You look at adaptive programming that is currently in existence and it's not too hard to see it growing to a point where the robot really thinks for itself. Human beings have a certain level of "programming" that we inherited from animals. Urge to pro-create, instinct for survival etc. Both of these things are exhibited by the animal kingdom, yet we are different. Something more, somehow. If we could do it, I see no reason why another programmed entity couldn't. Even an artifical one.

When playing Medal of Honour, I always preferred the Thompson. The BAR only had a 20 round clip so you were forever reloading it and getting plugged by Nazis. I work on cars in my spare time, which is a reasonably macho thing to do. Aram's hobby makes all of mine look like those of a little girly-sissy-boy.

I'm not aiming to be on the top. That is hardly a cutting edge mobo. I'm looking for one to two years of upgrade paths, whcih this board provides.

Decided on the first part of my new upgrade. An MSI P965 Neo-F. Nice and cheap for what you get and offers a reasonable future-proofing.

It bloody kills me. She's my perfect woman. I swear she's only married to that guy because she hasn't met me yet. When she does, I'll woo her back with my favourable monetary exchange rate and a healthy dose of cheap plonk.

I steal your women through favourable monetary exchange rates and cheap US prices. haha, upperclass sense of sophistication. Most British men think that farting a tune is the height of comedy.

Fair enough. History is all about interpretation, after all.

Perhaps you should look at the definition of persecution that metadigital provided again. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Exposure to prolonged hostility and ill-treatment. And, not or. If anything the government was antipathetic, not overtly hostile. The word "persecution" implies intent.

That's a pretty alarming report. "[Most people are] amazed that Lubrano was so easy to find. "He registered on MySpace using his real name? What a nitwit." [said the policeman handling the case]" Although I bet the copper didn't really call him a "nitwit" lol