The inheritance
Please click on the link to download it. It seems that Mr Megasoft got over the whole atomic watch thing and had children with his girlfriend before vanishing into space on his space yacht. As the kids subsequently discover, their father had been intending to leave his money to a computer called Deep Thought. It ends up in court where the children’s lawyers argue that Mr Megasoft couldn’t leave his money to a computer because it wasn’t alive. Mr Megasoft’s lawyers argue that as a thinking machine, the computer should be given the same rights as organic thinking machines and even ask to be allowed to cross examine the children to see whether they’re thinking beings or merely going to produce programmed responses. They claim that Deep Thought can think and have views for itself. But can they prove it? I don’t see how they could successfully prove such a claim. My laptop sits here on the desk and does what it’s programmed to do (well, at least as far as Vista works properly). It never off...