BillD, who wrote that? Have to go looking sometime! Sounds like a fun Asimov or Bradbury pulp story.

Nah Foolestroupe, cats are just nasty self-obsessed little buggers. Doesn't make them smart.

Another point on the "two-arms-two-legs-and-covered-in-skin" definition of human-ness. Disabled people definitely suffer from the "does he take sugar?" syndrome, where other people assume that their disability is a reflection on their intelligence. I think this is a really telling example of that definition of human-ness. Once a person ceases to fit the full physical definition of a human, this innate check on "same/different" kicks in - and because anything that doesn't look human is automatically considered unintelligent, they start making bad assumptions. Given that, it's almost inevitable that any self-aware software is going to run into the same problems or worse.

Graham.