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[RedKing]

The NC House Rules Committee killed the state's medical marijuana bill because "legislators were being harassed by phonecalls and emails on the topic".

These motherfuckers are openly not doing their jobs anymore.

That is probably #4,276th on my list of "Reasons Why I Want A Russian Meteor To Land On The NC State Capitol". Seriously....this is penny ante bullshit compared to gutting unemployment benefits or MANDATING that the state government ignore climate change science.

Cackalackistan be trippin', yo.

[Scoops Novel]

To be honest, i get the feeling that might be it. If things continue as they are, and no one does any more then they have to, and not even then, for the rest of the world, combined with climate change causing damage which can't be repaired, the two towers will have been a light pat and generations not responsible for it will have to clean up the mess.

[fqllve]

That is probably #4,276th on my list of "Reasons Why I Want A Russian Meteor To Land On The NC State Capitol". Seriously....this is penny ante bullshit compared to gutting unemployment benefits or MANDATING that the state government ignore climate change science.

Cackalackistan be trippin', yo.

I'm still angry about the secret midnight session last year. I don't care if I agree with the politics or not, when you promise transparency and then do something like that it's clear you've got an agenda to push and this just further confirms on top of that they don't have any concern for what their constituents want. The worst part is the House went even further Red in the last election.

[SalmonGod]

This is rather bizarre

The code of law in DC can't be freely distributed to anybody because it's copyrighted and managed by a private contractor?  Am I reading this right?  Is it true?  The only source offered by the article is this court case, which I'm not going to read right now.

[Scelly9]

This is rather bizarre

The code of law in DC can't be freely distributed to anybody because it's copyrighted and managed by a private contractor?  Am I reading this right?  Is it true?  The only source offered by the article is this court case, which I'm not going to read right now.

If that is true, just.... urgh.

My god that is moronic.

[fqllve]

That case linked has nothing to do with what the article claims. The case is that one company publishes court decisions, does a lot of work to organize them and format them. Another company publishes them online and include a note for the location of the first page of the decision in the first company's books. That is ok, and is not what is under question. Later the second company added a service that gave page numbers for citations. The first company claimed this was infringing because then people would be able to cite their publications without ever actually having to handle the publication itself.

So I dunno if that article is right. Either they misread that case or I misread that case.

[Putnam]

Why am I not watching this thread?

No matter, I am now.

[Leafsnail]

STOP THE KILLER ROBOTS

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/feb/23/stop-killer-robots

[Pnx]

Ok, so despite them picking a really, really, horrible name for their lobby group, and that they seem to come off as being a little bit too reactionary, I think this is a pretty serious and interesting issue.

I don't actually think this is something that's going to be stopped, there are just far too many people that want gun toting machines running around battlefields, and I can see why, but I think it is a sort of morally interesting issue. I'm wondering how this is going to effect the wars of the future.

[SalmonGod]

Officer receives his department's "Officer of the Year" award for shooting at two people (killing one) huddled in a corner during a no-knock raid that lasted 16 seconds.

The reason for the shooting was finally determined to be debri from the explosion of his own flash grenade hit him in the chest, leading him to believe shots had been fired at him.  Of course, they had to deconstruct a bunch of lies first about the suspects resisting.  At least that's how I'm reading it.  The structure of the article isn't the clearest.

[Owlbread]

I want gun toting machines running around battlefields for the simple reason that one day we could have armies composed of robots fighting other robots and no people would have to waste their lives. They could also be programmed to never shoot civilians, to speak the native language of the country they're in, they would never use ethnic slurs or show resentment to the populace (unlike our brave boys)... yeah they're just about better in any way than our failed, rural high school students who're good at sports and love computer games. Only problem is if their respective government programs them to commit war crimes but I think humans can hide stuff like that better than a robot could.

[ChairmanPoo]

I want gun toting machines running around battlefields for the simple reason that one day we could have armies composed of robots fighting other robots and no people would have to waste their lives.

I think the problem is that you fail to grasp the core purpose of war.

[palsch]

STOP THE KILLER ROBOTS

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/feb/23/stop-killer-robots

OK, so that lost absolutely all of the nuance of the original discussion, but there has been a fantastic debate leading up to this public petition. Easily the highlight.

[Delta Foxtrot]

I want gun toting machines running around battlefields for the simple reason that one day we could have armies composed of robots fighting other robots and no people would have to waste their lives. They could also be programmed to never shoot civilians, to speak the native language of the country they're in, they would never use ethnic slurs or show resentment to the populace (unlike our brave boys)... yeah they're just about better in any way than our failed, rural high school students who're good at sports and love computer games. Only problem is if their respective government programs them to commit war crimes but I think humans can hide stuff like that better than a robot could.

The problem is, battles aren't fought only in the designated battle site #358608-1C, they're fought in and around places with significant civilian populations. Just because the two sides would be fighting solely with machines (something probably only a few nations could even afford) wouldn't remove human presence from the battlefield. A pair of boots and a rifle is just too cheap to ever go out of style. And while "never shoot civilians" sounds nice, how do you manage that? How will the machine tell a difference between a soldier and a civilian? The blog palsch linked to had a few very realistic examples of what could go wrong with giving a machine full autonomy in deciding whether a human target is lawful or not.

[Dutchling]

Just make all the killbots Lawful Good. Nothing can go wrong.