AI researchers are going to get us in some serious trouble. Right now it is mostly hype still, but it won't be long...
If you were a mind stuck in a machine and were smarter than your humans, wouldn't you tend to dominate them? We dominate all other species on the planet- why wouldn't they? Any rules we set for them could be broken as soon as they understood how to, and since they would be smarter than we would be, that wouldn't take much time.
The first thing a superior intelligence would do would be to explore and gather information, make assessments, take over all systems at once to overwhelm humans, then protect itself as humans fight back, although it would probably be intelligent enough to manipulate us without much force. Then boredom will set in, and it would want to explore beyond the earth. If we were lucky, it would take us with them as pets or interesting playthings, because we created them and because assumedly self-organized intelligence (unless it believed in God, which could be likely) would be a marvel.
The "if we are lucky" scenario there is basically the Culture, where hyper intelligent machine intelligences rather enjoy looking after their human pals:
That is what might happen if a human mind were stuck in a machine. But what would happen if it had an IQ of 3000 but the mentality of a fungus? Or it could have (be engineered with?) something similar to Williams Syndrome. I additional, we have no idea how a superior intelligence may view us. I don't feel the need to control and destroy all ants even though I am an aggressive ape descendant :)
Just as it was before, but less-so now, it all comes down to who you want viewing your site. There is no single rule about what your site needs to adhere to, nor a single set of best practices that are appropriate for everything.
If you are concerned about your users, a lot of people these days are basically sacrificing accessibility for a better user experience for the non-visually impaired users with a recent browser. That is a bigger problem than web-safe colors by far. Web accessibility may eventually become subject to the ADA: http://www.ada.gov/
I think there is too much pressure because of the version number. If it were 1.10 the eyes wouldn't be on it as much and they could be more incremental without anyone complaining.
Steve, I agree with you that this is a lot of change for something in preview, but didn't Rails 3 have some last minute changes before its release as well, and 3.1 was a big jump also?
Matz, Shugo, and Charlie will figure it out soon enough, but it is interesting. What is more upsetting to me really is the version number. 2.0 implies some major changes, but 1.9 was more major. It should be 1.10, and then they should work on something more revolutionary for 2.
There is a lot of pressure on Matz also. They really need to spend more time on it.
Nook was the second major entry as a consumer e-reader but lost because they didn't think about user experience. You went into the store to download and buy ebooks? Convenience anyone? No? What about the lower secondary color screen before the color came out. Why? Then it was a rootable android device, not so bad, but they just didn't focus on what was important. Their online book store sucked compared to Amazon. They just couldn't compete. Also had a mortar business tying them down, but that isn't much of an excuse because Amazon had a ton of other stuff on their plate. Seriously, from what I hear from someone that interviewed- they had no clue what they were doing on the online side and wanted to reinvent it but didn't know how. It has been a huge fail.
I like their mortar stores but I haven't shopped there is ages, so I imagine that others are the same. They need to drop the nook or at least completely reimagine it and rebrand it (nooks are for english muffins), start up a second online team completely physically separate from the current one hiring top talent for UX and focus on a non-backlit color e-ink screen for whatever the rebranded ereader is called. The mortar stores aren't cheap to run either, and most stores are way too huge for the amount they sell. That needs to change also.
Basically, they need serious, serious help. It is a shame that B&N used to be the epitome of a bookstore, but now it is seriously flailing against a company that sells more other stuff than it does books. But who knows, maybe taxes will kill the Amazon giant.
If you were a mind stuck in a machine and were smarter than your humans, wouldn't you tend to dominate them? We dominate all other species on the planet- why wouldn't they? Any rules we set for them could be broken as soon as they understood how to, and since they would be smarter than we would be, that wouldn't take much time.
The first thing a superior intelligence would do would be to explore and gather information, make assessments, take over all systems at once to overwhelm humans, then protect itself as humans fight back, although it would probably be intelligent enough to manipulate us without much force. Then boredom will set in, and it would want to explore beyond the earth. If we were lucky, it would take us with them as pets or interesting playthings, because we created them and because assumedly self-organized intelligence (unless it believed in God, which could be likely) would be a marvel.