Additional resolution can be derived from repeated observations from different positions of Earth within the galaxy. I cannot say if this is enough specifically for detection of "shadows," but the linked article does talk about observation of black holes.
It is a possibility - though I have life and obligations here. But, just in case, I always have a valid passport on hand. If the USA suddenly finds itself in position of Yugoslavia, torn apart, I will not be playing a hero. I hope that such a scenario will never happen, though. But it can happen pretty quick if the USD fails and the President activates martial law. I'll be in Canada within 24 hours.
I can be also forced out of the country by non-violent means. For example, if Obamacare fines are high *and* if they are collected. It may simply become financially unwise to stick around. But that decision is not due for several years. The fine in 2014 should be under $100.
Yes, that is true. It had been said by various people that importing best minds from elsewhere hurts the domestic situation. But there are tens of millions of US-based candidates, compared to tens of thousands of imported talent. Do they indeed collide? Mathematically, it does not appear to be possible. Anyone who tries to hire a programmer, for example, will say that it's hard - applicants are mostly clueless about the most basic part of the work that they claim they are able to perform. Those who do know how to write code (like many on LKML) aren't applying for jobs.
Then, returning to the original question, we can say that we are comparing apples and oranges. Less talented Indians stay at home; we only see the good ones here. Fine. But then what to do with those "less talented" US citizens within the USA? They are currently fed by the government; since that's not much, they complement their income however they may - sometimes in illegal manner. Is this the best that this society can offer? Should "haves" build an electric fence and arm themselves to deter those "have nots?" If that's not how "haves" are expected to act, then what should they do to protect themselves? Detroit is only a small Petri dish; the same malady will be spreading, as fewer and fewer jobs remain available (and that, in turn, happens because US products are less competitive because, in turn, they cost too much because, in turn, one worker has to feed ten non-workers.) Is there an exit from this situation, other than to clear the game board and start afresh?
[*] One obvious solution is in isolationism. The problem that we see in the USA is coming from the fact that the old, mature US economy, smothered in red tape, is forced to compete (and fail at that!) with young and aggressive capitalism of newcomers on the world market. Those newcomers make steel for cheap, so US's own steel mills are closed. If you prohibit most of international trade then, necessarily, this will create a lot of jobs domestically - and it will also result in serious drop of wealth because a cheapest car would cost $100K. But that economy would be viable because all subjects of that economy are playing by the same rules.
As bad as it would be if you were used to living in a nice suburb and then ended up in something kind of like Detroit, how much worse would it suck if you were born and raised in Detroit and never acquired the net worth or job skills to be able to viably move somewhere else.
A whole buch of people on Slashdot, including myself, "viably moved" between nations, while not being insanely rich in the first place. An Indian or Chinese citizen faces a far more formidable barrier than a US citizen; and still, there are many Indian and Chinese computer nerds busy at work in US companies. Even an illegal Mexican risks his life by crossing the desert. A citizen of Detroit risks nothing.
Besides, how much money does it take for a poor Detroit resident to grab a bag with spare clothes, say goodbye to his parents, and just walk away if he can't afford even an old car? Leaving Detroit is certainly valuable because he'd be better off just about anywhere else. Most importantly, he leaves his old circle of friends, and habits, and places, behind - those were not good for him, generally.
Another factor in all this, that I'm not positive the upper class really understands: If the middle class goes completely under, it takes the upper class with them, because the upper class's investment income depends ultimately on the consumer spending of everyone else.
The upper class understands this very well. However the plan is to "fundamentally change America" from a free market society, where consumer thinks for himself and votes with his money, into a socialist paradise of mandatory spending. The taxation scheme was already in place. Now Obamacare is plugged in - another piece of HUGE cost. The free market is being converted into something else - into a system where government oversees a bunch of nominally independent companies who, in fact, are all alike and operate under the same set of rules (making their products similar.) This is how the industry of USSR was set up.
Why to bother with all these transformations? Because the USA is not sustainable. The USA lost too many positions on top - of largest industry, of most qualified workforce, of best talent, of best science (that one is still fighting,) the best medicine, and many more. Super high tech areas will hold the longest, but they employ only a tiny percentage of the population. Service industry is the only avenue that is open to the rest - but it is also shrinking, given automation and under the press of reduced income (so instead of a restaurant, a jobless person eats at home.)
If there are no jobs, the mass of unemployed (for all reasons) will be growing. The new balance will be established, with a few managers, a few techies, and with a lot of foreign workforce who telecommutes from their countries. Just look at property taxes - commercial real estate is too expensive; it is certainly not competitive against Chinese facilities. If you have to have so many unemployed, you might just as well put them on a specific program that keeps them alive. Otherwise they will riot, and that wouldn't be good. The intent is to maintain this new configuration as long as possible, and print new USD at ever increasing rate. When the world drops the USD then it gets pretty bad pretty fast. But the US government is an expert in kicking the can down the road. Nobody at the helm is looking at the problem long term - everyone is only measuring political activity in terms at the office.
However I don't think we can measure microwaves in sufficient angular resolution for that.
Radio telescopes do exactly that. A DishTV antenna can give you a beam of couple of degrees wide at 10 GHz - and you can hold this antenna in your arms. Larger antennas provide far better resolution.
Wow, Apple should be widely lauded for being able to store each email, including its header, in just one byte!
Even that is awfully wasteful. To store spam wisely you use a counter. If the size of the counter is 64 bits, each individual spam message occupies 64/2^64 bits, or 3.5e-18 bits.
Naturally, all spam will look alike to you, but doesn't it already?
As I said elsewhere, the liability will be taken care of. Otherwise nobody will be able to sell such a car. You can never guarantee that the car will always pick an option that is going to save the day. There may be no such option - if, say, a tractor-trailer jackknifes in front of you, or loses a wheel that proceeds to strike your car; or a tire blows up on your own car, on an icy road. We are dealing with nature here. One more or less clear liability would be for a programming defect that directly led to an accident. However, unlike hardware defects, software can be easily updated by the customer. (Fail to do that, and bear the liability yourself.) This means that every bug will be triggered only once - and eventually you run out of bugs.
A taxicab driver works a long shift, gets tired, and still his business is profitable. Perhaps if the vehicle is not too badly controlled by the computer then it will be safe enough so that the liability will not be a major factor.
He is talking about a script kiddy that takes over control while you are driving it.
Why would a car be connected to a network? And how? Cellular networks are absolutely unusable for the purpose - they are not reliable, and they have terrible latency. If cars need to talk to each other, they will use their own radios, protocols and wireless LANs. You cannot hack into those - especially if cars are not in habit of browsing pr0n sites:-)
That'd be a liability hell for Google and they probably know it.
It will be taken care of on the level of legislatures. Otherwise nobody will be able to sell an autonomous car.
The asshole kid will be sitting on the opposite side of the world.
Those cars won't be communicating over the Internet. It makes no sense. They'd use short distance, high bandwidth, low latency spread spectrum technologies. On top of the media they will run a simple mesh network with low cost of entering and leaving. What does that mean? It means that the only way you can "hack" that local area network is by physically sitting at the roadside and doing nasty things. You can try to jam the RF, however hard it is for a 100 MHz wide spectrum. The cars will simply conclude that the RF is not in the cards today, and they will continue using their own sensors. You can try to pretend to be a car that does bad things on the road... but it will be hard in itself because, if I were to do it, I would sign every message with a hash of car's VIN and the manufacturer's secret key in a tamper-resistant IC, like TPM. How many people would actually want to go to such a great length to earn themselves a prison term? It's like subverting a railway signaling system. Nowadays that kid would get an automatic conviction for terrorism - which, for a change, it may be.
All in all, a reasonably well made system can be very reliable. As I understand, TCAS is like that. How often is it subverted by "the ahole kid who is sitting on the opposite side of the world?" Can you provide even a single example?
The code running hundreds of millions of cars will need to be written to the same level of care as what they used to fly the Space Shuttle. But it won't be. It will be written to the level of "oh, we'll just patch it".
There are certain rules for developing systems that human life depends upon. Medical equipment, avionics, and the Shuttle. How many crashes of the Shuttle can you attribute to failure of a computer?
If they can't get it right for military aircraft that cost $125+ million a pop, what are the chances for your $25,000 hatchback?
The chances for the hatchback are, actually, excellent. Let's count. There are 100 airplanes made, each costs $125M. What is the total value of the deal? $12B. Now, there is a million (just one million!) of hatchbacks made, each costs $25K. What is the value of that deal? $25B. That's why you can easier become a billionaire by inventing a new toothbrush than by inventing a new missile. That airplane costs $125M, but the paperwork for it costs $100M, and you will be waiting, and on the hook, for ten years while the purchase goes through Congress, up and down, up and down, as various interests use you as a pawn in their own disputes. A hatchback? You just go ahead and make it. Elon Musk made one, not being Ford; Fisker made one, not being Ford. And, of course, every Ford of the world makes hatchbacks.
There is another effect: a $125M airplane has more or less $125M of labor that goes into it. The volume is so low that the reuse factor is not playing much of a role. Everything is invented, designed and written specifically for this airplane. However a common car will be operated by the same software as any other car or a truck - you just parametrize the mechanics of the vehicle. The reuse factor is huge. Millions of automated cars can run the same software package.
But there is yet another effect. A military airplane spends not that much time in the air. It is expensive to fly those things, and the number of hours in the air before overhaul is small. This means that very little use data, if any, is fed back to the manufacturer for improvements. Compare to an automated car. With a million of those cars on the road, the manufacturer can have access to tens of millions of hours of actual driving (with permission of the owner. But since the owner is not driving, he doesn't really care.) This information can be used to further improve the software.
I'm looking forward to buying one of those self-driving cars. Sometimes you are too sleepy or too tire
Does it matter that the autonomous car will be continuously recording everything around it, and will retain plenty of that recording to put that kid in jail for attempted murder? Not too many people will dare to even approach such a car with bad intent. I'd build such a car to record everything around it all the time, even when parked:-)
No mechanic would ever assume such liability. As of today, liability of most businesses is limited to monies paid.
I think the insurance companies will gladly support the new cars. This eliminates the least reliable element - the driver. Software can be upgraded on all cars overnight, if need be. But when was the last time when someone in a different state wrapped his car around a tree and you got a free lecture on his specific mistake? Autonomous cars *will* be learning from mistakes of others.
But, I can play ball in your court, too. Fact is, drivers are not often on the road because life requires it. They drive because it's more convenient than taking the bus or train, or because it's infeasable (or they're simply too lazy) to walk or bike. If, god forbid, you lost the ability to drive today, you would not be stuck immobile in your home until you die from hunger.
The bus stop that is nearest to my home is about 3 miles away as crow flies - and that includes about 1,500 feet of height difference. Not every trained, healthy and young bicyclist can make it up the hill. Not every car even - junk cars overheat and die half-way. It is not feasible at all to walk there. If you don't have a car, you'd have to pay dearly for a 5 minute taxi ride up or down the hill. If I will ever find myself unable to drive, I will have to move. This is far from being a unique location - pretty much everyone who is not living in a city is in this boat. Some of my friends live 30 minutes away (driving!) from the nearest town, where the nearest grocery store is, and the nearest post office, and school, and library, and general store, and so on.
Driving, for the vast majority of us, is optional.
Only if you live where alternative transportation exists. I have traveled hundreds of miles on desert highways on the border of CA and NV, where there is nothing but pastures, empty land, and occasional little towns. Without a car you *will* die there, and nobody will even find out (unless IRS wants your Obamacare enrollment:-)
I also bicycle a lot, and love that as well.
I did that when I was much younger. Now I have other priorities in life. They require, ideally, instant transportation from A to B. Lacking that, I accept transportation by car.
Do you get angry at somebody stopping up a lane when they're parallel parking? A utility vehicle parked in a traffic lane working on a power line? A pedestrian with the gall to stop the entire road just so he can get to the other side?
A parking car? No; everyone has to park now and then, even in the road. A utility vehicle? Sorry, but they have to be there, however unpleasant. A pedestrian crossing on a marked crossing? Unpleasant, but he has a right to cross there, and there is obvious need. A pedestrian illegally and dangerously crossing 100 yards away from an intersection? Sure I am angry. I don't want to kill him, and the place is not intended for crossing (so it has no warning signs, lights, or any other hints for a driver to look for pedestrians coming out of bushes.) A self-centered egotist can cause an incident and have people in the cars killed. What he will do if he is untouched? He will run away, leaving a disaster in his wake. Isn't such behavior worthy of being unwelcome?
Yet somehow, if it's a bicycle that you have to go around, he becomes some sub-human vermin who personally has it in for your precise driving time-table.
I will gladly spend time going around a bicycle. What I don't want to do is to kill or injure a rider. However this is a very real possibility in congested conditions of this area. "Going around" some of those recreational, weekend cyclists is a challenge, given that they favor single or two-lane roads where passing is prohibited (and impossible.) A driver has two choices: (a) to stay behind the bicycle for about 20-30 minutes, driving at 3 mph, or (b) illegally cross the solid double yellow line and pass, even though the road is so much winding that you cannot see more than 50 yards ahead, or (c) pass the bicycle while staying on this side of the road, but allowing about 1" of clearance around the bicycle (rocks on one side, the mirror of your car on another.) In that case pray to FSM that the cyclist does not flinch or swerve - that he is likely to do, pedaling up the hill at the top of his strength.
Ultimately, I don't want to hurt the cyclists. The easiest way to do so is to keep them away from cars. Sharing the road just doesn't
But can you really say that you have drained the cup of life or did you barely sip from its rim?
He has enough left in that cup to last him another half a century. Those who "have drained the cup of life" are not among us anymore. Some of them have white bicycles mounted at the roadside, at the spot where they were done with that cup.
It is NOT correct. Other people confirm that - read the comments in your link. Inductance of a wire loop does not depend on external static magnetic field, except in some special designs like YIG oscillators - which is not the case here.
I have a mag loop under my driveway. The detector uses the loop as an inductor. When a large piece of ferromagnetic material approaches, the inductance changes, and the frequency of the oscillator follows. That is measured and used to drive the output.
The author of the video does not even know what he is talking about, judging by his phrase "Most motorcycles, scooters, bicycles and small cars don't have enough conductive material to trigger these loops and change the traffic light." Ferrites are not conductive (they are ceramics,) but they are excellent ferromagnetics.
just stick a hard drive magnet on the bike frame low, you will show up as a semi truck to the embedded coils.
This won't work. Cars are not magnets. Static magnets do nothing with the coils. The coils detect ferromagnetics. A small magnet is nothing to them. A small bike, maybe even made from Aluminum, is nearly nothing to them. Even a motorcycle is sometimes not triggering those sensors.
In the USA and Canada if you don't have a car you can only live in select large cities, and still your job opportunities will be seriously limited. You won't even be able to get to many businesses for an interview. A person without a car is, for all practical purposes, crippled. A bicycle could sometimes help, but if you work 10-15 miles away, as freeway goes, you will be losing a lot of your life time to commuting among cars on surface roads.
You can also make your bike visually wider by tying a piece of something light (like a segment of a fishing road) across the bike, with reflectors (or fluorescent flags) on the ends. This will create an impression that your bike is wider than it is really, and the drivers will stay farther away from you. They don't want to scratch up their vehicle's paint by those reflectors. If they do, though, they will instantly know what happened, and they will stop before they get close enough to hit the rider's body. The thin rod will break in the process, but the force will be small enough so that the rider will not be knocked down.
It's not accurate to compare injuries obtained cycling for both sport and commute with injuries obtained while driving for the commute.
That is correct. Players are on the football field by mutual consent, because they want to be there. If they don't want to be on the field they can go to a theater instead. Drivers are on the road because the life requires it (commuting, business, medical calls, etc.) - the drivers have no alternative; if they stay at home they will die from hunger.
The expression "playing in traffic" is very appropriate here. As matter of fact (but not of the law!) most roads are only for motorized vehicles because you want to keep up with traffic. Would a cyclist like it if pedestrians, or tortouses, are allowed to walk in bike lanes? Would a pilot like it if primary flight paths of jet aircraft are randomly cluttered with balloonists who fly there just for fun? The law makes it legal for a cyclist to be on many roads, but it can't make it a good idea. Bicycles, ideally, would be staying away from car roads, and cars would be staying away from bike lanes.
How much pollution came about from the food someone had to sow, grow, deliver to a processor, have it made into food, deliver to the store, you had to cook it and eat in order to bike all those miles?
FTFY. Human food is a very expensive fuel. Even the cyclist's own time spent on eating one extra sandwich is worth more than an ounce of gasoline. Unless, of course, the cyclist has nothing better to do with his life:-)
Many of those people who are willing to splurge on a Tesla are not old, fat robber barons in black hats who have five drivers and seventeen butlers. Those don't care to know what car they are riding in, as long as it is a limo with a mobile office, complete with three satellite phones and a secretary.
Tesla buyers are often young, self-made professionals who have enough money to buy what they want while they are young and healthy enough to enjoy it. Those people do not drop their work just because they have 300K or 500K in the bank, and a Tesla, and a house. Those people, by definition, are busy. While it may be healthy to do fine dining, oftentimes you cannot stop at an eatery for an hour or two. You buy the best of what's available, eat it quickly, and go back on the road.
It will only lure people into using non-free programs distributed through Steam.
It will also allow you to run free programs. I can't imagine that the SteamOS will only run signed executables. So as soon as you finish your clone of GTA V, with even a larger and more detailed world, you should be able to share it for free with everyone. I will definitely download it and say my thanks to you for a lifetime of labor that you spent for my entertainment.
I know that there is a free flight simulator out there that comes with extensive maps, so this is possible. However as soon as the labor that goes into the software becomes nontrivial I see nothing wrong in sending the developers some money, so that they can eat, live, and work on another game. RMS has his vision, and perhaps the formulas that define the software ought to be free... but games require an inordinate amount of handcrafted graphics. Nobody says that maps should be free too - they are not science, they are art.
It would not, for example, get rid of the bank records of his financial transactions with terrorists.
Charities and other money-collecting entities are put on the list of terrorist groups all the time. Who can tell if some charity is on that list? Who will check? How close the match has to be? What if you send money on Jan. 01, and the group is declared terrorist on Jan. 05? Or a year later?
The safest mode of operation is to not send money to anyone.
Slashdot Mirror
For 0,05 arcsec (according to Wikipedia, the best resulution VLA can reach
7 microarcseconds will be achievable today, when the network of telescopes is up and running: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1107/25spektr/
Additional resolution can be derived from repeated observations from different positions of Earth within the galaxy. I cannot say if this is enough specifically for detection of "shadows," but the linked article does talk about observation of black holes.
It is a possibility - though I have life and obligations here. But, just in case, I always have a valid passport on hand. If the USA suddenly finds itself in position of Yugoslavia, torn apart, I will not be playing a hero. I hope that such a scenario will never happen, though. But it can happen pretty quick if the USD fails and the President activates martial law. I'll be in Canada within 24 hours.
I can be also forced out of the country by non-violent means. For example, if Obamacare fines are high *and* if they are collected. It may simply become financially unwise to stick around. But that decision is not due for several years. The fine in 2014 should be under $100.
So why did you do a dumb thing like moving to a losing country?
It looked like a good idea back then.
Yes, that is true. It had been said by various people that importing best minds from elsewhere hurts the domestic situation. But there are tens of millions of US-based candidates, compared to tens of thousands of imported talent. Do they indeed collide? Mathematically, it does not appear to be possible. Anyone who tries to hire a programmer, for example, will say that it's hard - applicants are mostly clueless about the most basic part of the work that they claim they are able to perform. Those who do know how to write code (like many on LKML) aren't applying for jobs.
Then, returning to the original question, we can say that we are comparing apples and oranges. Less talented Indians stay at home; we only see the good ones here. Fine. But then what to do with those "less talented" US citizens within the USA? They are currently fed by the government; since that's not much, they complement their income however they may - sometimes in illegal manner. Is this the best that this society can offer? Should "haves" build an electric fence and arm themselves to deter those "have nots?" If that's not how "haves" are expected to act, then what should they do to protect themselves? Detroit is only a small Petri dish; the same malady will be spreading, as fewer and fewer jobs remain available (and that, in turn, happens because US products are less competitive because, in turn, they cost too much because, in turn, one worker has to feed ten non-workers.) Is there an exit from this situation, other than to clear the game board and start afresh?
[*] One obvious solution is in isolationism. The problem that we see in the USA is coming from the fact that the old, mature US economy, smothered in red tape, is forced to compete (and fail at that!) with young and aggressive capitalism of newcomers on the world market. Those newcomers make steel for cheap, so US's own steel mills are closed. If you prohibit most of international trade then, necessarily, this will create a lot of jobs domestically - and it will also result in serious drop of wealth because a cheapest car would cost $100K. But that economy would be viable because all subjects of that economy are playing by the same rules.
As bad as it would be if you were used to living in a nice suburb and then ended up in something kind of like Detroit, how much worse would it suck if you were born and raised in Detroit and never acquired the net worth or job skills to be able to viably move somewhere else.
A whole buch of people on Slashdot, including myself, "viably moved" between nations, while not being insanely rich in the first place. An Indian or Chinese citizen faces a far more formidable barrier than a US citizen; and still, there are many Indian and Chinese computer nerds busy at work in US companies. Even an illegal Mexican risks his life by crossing the desert. A citizen of Detroit risks nothing.
Besides, how much money does it take for a poor Detroit resident to grab a bag with spare clothes, say goodbye to his parents, and just walk away if he can't afford even an old car? Leaving Detroit is certainly valuable because he'd be better off just about anywhere else. Most importantly, he leaves his old circle of friends, and habits, and places, behind - those were not good for him, generally.
Another factor in all this, that I'm not positive the upper class really understands: If the middle class goes completely under, it takes the upper class with them, because the upper class's investment income depends ultimately on the consumer spending of everyone else.
The upper class understands this very well. However the plan is to "fundamentally change America" from a free market society, where consumer thinks for himself and votes with his money, into a socialist paradise of mandatory spending. The taxation scheme was already in place. Now Obamacare is plugged in - another piece of HUGE cost. The free market is being converted into something else - into a system where government oversees a bunch of nominally independent companies who, in fact, are all alike and operate under the same set of rules (making their products similar.) This is how the industry of USSR was set up.
Why to bother with all these transformations? Because the USA is not sustainable. The USA lost too many positions on top - of largest industry, of most qualified workforce, of best talent, of best science (that one is still fighting,) the best medicine, and many more. Super high tech areas will hold the longest, but they employ only a tiny percentage of the population. Service industry is the only avenue that is open to the rest - but it is also shrinking, given automation and under the press of reduced income (so instead of a restaurant, a jobless person eats at home.)
If there are no jobs, the mass of unemployed (for all reasons) will be growing. The new balance will be established, with a few managers, a few techies, and with a lot of foreign workforce who telecommutes from their countries. Just look at property taxes - commercial real estate is too expensive; it is certainly not competitive against Chinese facilities. If you have to have so many unemployed, you might just as well put them on a specific program that keeps them alive. Otherwise they will riot, and that wouldn't be good. The intent is to maintain this new configuration as long as possible, and print new USD at ever increasing rate. When the world drops the USD then it gets pretty bad pretty fast. But the US government is an expert in kicking the can down the road. Nobody at the helm is looking at the problem long term - everyone is only measuring political activity in terms at the office.
However I don't think we can measure microwaves in sufficient angular resolution for that.
Radio telescopes do exactly that. A DishTV antenna can give you a beam of couple of degrees wide at 10 GHz - and you can hold this antenna in your arms. Larger antennas provide far better resolution.
Wow, Apple should be widely lauded for being able to store each email, including its header, in just one byte!
Even that is awfully wasteful. To store spam wisely you use a counter. If the size of the counter is 64 bits, each individual spam message occupies 64/2^64 bits, or 3.5e-18 bits.
Naturally, all spam will look alike to you, but doesn't it already?
As I said elsewhere, the liability will be taken care of. Otherwise nobody will be able to sell such a car. You can never guarantee that the car will always pick an option that is going to save the day. There may be no such option - if, say, a tractor-trailer jackknifes in front of you, or loses a wheel that proceeds to strike your car; or a tire blows up on your own car, on an icy road. We are dealing with nature here. One more or less clear liability would be for a programming defect that directly led to an accident. However, unlike hardware defects, software can be easily updated by the customer. (Fail to do that, and bear the liability yourself.) This means that every bug will be triggered only once - and eventually you run out of bugs.
A taxicab driver works a long shift, gets tired, and still his business is profitable. Perhaps if the vehicle is not too badly controlled by the computer then it will be safe enough so that the liability will not be a major factor.
He is talking about a script kiddy that takes over control while you are driving it.
Why would a car be connected to a network? And how? Cellular networks are absolutely unusable for the purpose - they are not reliable, and they have terrible latency. If cars need to talk to each other, they will use their own radios, protocols and wireless LANs. You cannot hack into those - especially if cars are not in habit of browsing pr0n sites :-)
That'd be a liability hell for Google and they probably know it.
It will be taken care of on the level of legislatures. Otherwise nobody will be able to sell an autonomous car.
The asshole kid will be sitting on the opposite side of the world.
Those cars won't be communicating over the Internet. It makes no sense. They'd use short distance, high bandwidth, low latency spread spectrum technologies. On top of the media they will run a simple mesh network with low cost of entering and leaving. What does that mean? It means that the only way you can "hack" that local area network is by physically sitting at the roadside and doing nasty things. You can try to jam the RF, however hard it is for a 100 MHz wide spectrum. The cars will simply conclude that the RF is not in the cards today, and they will continue using their own sensors. You can try to pretend to be a car that does bad things on the road... but it will be hard in itself because, if I were to do it, I would sign every message with a hash of car's VIN and the manufacturer's secret key in a tamper-resistant IC, like TPM. How many people would actually want to go to such a great length to earn themselves a prison term? It's like subverting a railway signaling system. Nowadays that kid would get an automatic conviction for terrorism - which, for a change, it may be.
All in all, a reasonably well made system can be very reliable. As I understand, TCAS is like that. How often is it subverted by "the ahole kid who is sitting on the opposite side of the world?" Can you provide even a single example?
The code running hundreds of millions of cars will need to be written to the same level of care as what they used to fly the Space Shuttle. But it won't be. It will be written to the level of "oh, we'll just patch it".
There are certain rules for developing systems that human life depends upon. Medical equipment, avionics, and the Shuttle. How many crashes of the Shuttle can you attribute to failure of a computer?
If they can't get it right for military aircraft that cost $125+ million a pop, what are the chances for your $25,000 hatchback?
The chances for the hatchback are, actually, excellent. Let's count. There are 100 airplanes made, each costs $125M. What is the total value of the deal? $12B. Now, there is a million (just one million!) of hatchbacks made, each costs $25K. What is the value of that deal? $25B. That's why you can easier become a billionaire by inventing a new toothbrush than by inventing a new missile. That airplane costs $125M, but the paperwork for it costs $100M, and you will be waiting, and on the hook, for ten years while the purchase goes through Congress, up and down, up and down, as various interests use you as a pawn in their own disputes. A hatchback? You just go ahead and make it. Elon Musk made one, not being Ford; Fisker made one, not being Ford. And, of course, every Ford of the world makes hatchbacks.
There is another effect: a $125M airplane has more or less $125M of labor that goes into it. The volume is so low that the reuse factor is not playing much of a role. Everything is invented, designed and written specifically for this airplane. However a common car will be operated by the same software as any other car or a truck - you just parametrize the mechanics of the vehicle. The reuse factor is huge. Millions of automated cars can run the same software package.
But there is yet another effect. A military airplane spends not that much time in the air. It is expensive to fly those things, and the number of hours in the air before overhaul is small. This means that very little use data, if any, is fed back to the manufacturer for improvements. Compare to an automated car. With a million of those cars on the road, the manufacturer can have access to tens of millions of hours of actual driving (with permission of the owner. But since the owner is not driving, he doesn't really care.) This information can be used to further improve the software.
I'm looking forward to buying one of those self-driving cars. Sometimes you are too sleepy or too tire
Does it matter that the autonomous car will be continuously recording everything around it, and will retain plenty of that recording to put that kid in jail for attempted murder? Not too many people will dare to even approach such a car with bad intent. I'd build such a car to record everything around it all the time, even when parked :-)
No mechanic would ever assume such liability. As of today, liability of most businesses is limited to monies paid.
I think the insurance companies will gladly support the new cars. This eliminates the least reliable element - the driver. Software can be upgraded on all cars overnight, if need be. But when was the last time when someone in a different state wrapped his car around a tree and you got a free lecture on his specific mistake? Autonomous cars *will* be learning from mistakes of others.
But, I can play ball in your court, too. Fact is, drivers are not often on the road because life requires it. They drive because it's more convenient than taking the bus or train, or because it's infeasable (or they're simply too lazy) to walk or bike. If, god forbid, you lost the ability to drive today, you would not be stuck immobile in your home until you die from hunger.
The bus stop that is nearest to my home is about 3 miles away as crow flies - and that includes about 1,500 feet of height difference. Not every trained, healthy and young bicyclist can make it up the hill. Not every car even - junk cars overheat and die half-way. It is not feasible at all to walk there. If you don't have a car, you'd have to pay dearly for a 5 minute taxi ride up or down the hill. If I will ever find myself unable to drive, I will have to move. This is far from being a unique location - pretty much everyone who is not living in a city is in this boat. Some of my friends live 30 minutes away (driving!) from the nearest town, where the nearest grocery store is, and the nearest post office, and school, and library, and general store, and so on.
Driving, for the vast majority of us, is optional.
Only if you live where alternative transportation exists. I have traveled hundreds of miles on desert highways on the border of CA and NV, where there is nothing but pastures, empty land, and occasional little towns. Without a car you *will* die there, and nobody will even find out (unless IRS wants your Obamacare enrollment :-)
I also bicycle a lot, and love that as well.
I did that when I was much younger. Now I have other priorities in life. They require, ideally, instant transportation from A to B. Lacking that, I accept transportation by car.
Do you get angry at somebody stopping up a lane when they're parallel parking? A utility vehicle parked in a traffic lane working on a power line? A pedestrian with the gall to stop the entire road just so he can get to the other side?
A parking car? No; everyone has to park now and then, even in the road. A utility vehicle? Sorry, but they have to be there, however unpleasant. A pedestrian crossing on a marked crossing? Unpleasant, but he has a right to cross there, and there is obvious need. A pedestrian illegally and dangerously crossing 100 yards away from an intersection? Sure I am angry. I don't want to kill him, and the place is not intended for crossing (so it has no warning signs, lights, or any other hints for a driver to look for pedestrians coming out of bushes.) A self-centered egotist can cause an incident and have people in the cars killed. What he will do if he is untouched? He will run away, leaving a disaster in his wake. Isn't such behavior worthy of being unwelcome?
Yet somehow, if it's a bicycle that you have to go around, he becomes some sub-human vermin who personally has it in for your precise driving time-table.
I will gladly spend time going around a bicycle. What I don't want to do is to kill or injure a rider. However this is a very real possibility in congested conditions of this area. "Going around" some of those recreational, weekend cyclists is a challenge, given that they favor single or two-lane roads where passing is prohibited (and impossible.) A driver has two choices: (a) to stay behind the bicycle for about 20-30 minutes, driving at 3 mph, or (b) illegally cross the solid double yellow line and pass, even though the road is so much winding that you cannot see more than 50 yards ahead, or (c) pass the bicycle while staying on this side of the road, but allowing about 1" of clearance around the bicycle (rocks on one side, the mirror of your car on another.) In that case pray to FSM that the cyclist does not flinch or swerve - that he is likely to do, pedaling up the hill at the top of his strength.
Ultimately, I don't want to hurt the cyclists. The easiest way to do so is to keep them away from cars. Sharing the road just doesn't
In the USA you are not allowed to perform undertaking without an undertaker's license. There are no lorries either, and very few junctions :-)
But can you really say that you have drained the cup of life or did you barely sip from its rim?
He has enough left in that cup to last him another half a century. Those who "have drained the cup of life" are not among us anymore. Some of them have white bicycles mounted at the roadside, at the spot where they were done with that cup.
It is NOT correct. Other people confirm that - read the comments in your link. Inductance of a wire loop does not depend on external static magnetic field, except in some special designs like YIG oscillators - which is not the case here.
I have a mag loop under my driveway. The detector uses the loop as an inductor. When a large piece of ferromagnetic material approaches, the inductance changes, and the frequency of the oscillator follows. That is measured and used to drive the output.
The author of the video does not even know what he is talking about, judging by his phrase "Most motorcycles, scooters, bicycles and small cars don't have enough conductive material to trigger these loops and change the traffic light." Ferrites are not conductive (they are ceramics,) but they are excellent ferromagnetics.
just stick a hard drive magnet on the bike frame low, you will show up as a semi truck to the embedded coils.
This won't work. Cars are not magnets. Static magnets do nothing with the coils. The coils detect ferromagnetics. A small magnet is nothing to them. A small bike, maybe even made from Aluminum, is nearly nothing to them. Even a motorcycle is sometimes not triggering those sensors.
In the USA and Canada if you don't have a car you can only live in select large cities, and still your job opportunities will be seriously limited. You won't even be able to get to many businesses for an interview. A person without a car is, for all practical purposes, crippled. A bicycle could sometimes help, but if you work 10-15 miles away, as freeway goes, you will be losing a lot of your life time to commuting among cars on surface roads.
a freaking flag and bight colors does this
You can also make your bike visually wider by tying a piece of something light (like a segment of a fishing road) across the bike, with reflectors (or fluorescent flags) on the ends. This will create an impression that your bike is wider than it is really, and the drivers will stay farther away from you. They don't want to scratch up their vehicle's paint by those reflectors. If they do, though, they will instantly know what happened, and they will stop before they get close enough to hit the rider's body. The thin rod will break in the process, but the force will be small enough so that the rider will not be knocked down.
It's not accurate to compare injuries obtained cycling for both sport and commute with injuries obtained while driving for the commute.
That is correct. Players are on the football field by mutual consent, because they want to be there. If they don't want to be on the field they can go to a theater instead. Drivers are on the road because the life requires it (commuting, business, medical calls, etc.) - the drivers have no alternative; if they stay at home they will die from hunger.
The expression "playing in traffic" is very appropriate here. As matter of fact (but not of the law!) most roads are only for motorized vehicles because you want to keep up with traffic. Would a cyclist like it if pedestrians, or tortouses, are allowed to walk in bike lanes? Would a pilot like it if primary flight paths of jet aircraft are randomly cluttered with balloonists who fly there just for fun? The law makes it legal for a cyclist to be on many roads, but it can't make it a good idea. Bicycles, ideally, would be staying away from car roads, and cars would be staying away from bike lanes.
How much pollution came about from the food someone had to sow, grow, deliver to a processor, have it made into food, deliver to the store, you had to cook it and eat in order to bike all those miles?
FTFY. Human food is a very expensive fuel. Even the cyclist's own time spent on eating one extra sandwich is worth more than an ounce of gasoline. Unless, of course, the cyclist has nothing better to do with his life :-)
Many of those people who are willing to splurge on a Tesla are not old, fat robber barons in black hats who have five drivers and seventeen butlers. Those don't care to know what car they are riding in, as long as it is a limo with a mobile office, complete with three satellite phones and a secretary.
Tesla buyers are often young, self-made professionals who have enough money to buy what they want while they are young and healthy enough to enjoy it. Those people do not drop their work just because they have 300K or 500K in the bank, and a Tesla, and a house. Those people, by definition, are busy. While it may be healthy to do fine dining, oftentimes you cannot stop at an eatery for an hour or two. You buy the best of what's available, eat it quickly, and go back on the road.
Same with propane. Gases are like that. Time to switch to MK batteries. The only catch is that they are made on Mercury.
It will only lure people into using non-free programs distributed through Steam.
It will also allow you to run free programs. I can't imagine that the SteamOS will only run signed executables. So as soon as you finish your clone of GTA V, with even a larger and more detailed world, you should be able to share it for free with everyone. I will definitely download it and say my thanks to you for a lifetime of labor that you spent for my entertainment.
I know that there is a free flight simulator out there that comes with extensive maps, so this is possible. However as soon as the labor that goes into the software becomes nontrivial I see nothing wrong in sending the developers some money, so that they can eat, live, and work on another game. RMS has his vision, and perhaps the formulas that define the software ought to be free... but games require an inordinate amount of handcrafted graphics. Nobody says that maps should be free too - they are not science, they are art.
It would not, for example, get rid of the bank records of his financial transactions with terrorists.
Charities and other money-collecting entities are put on the list of terrorist groups all the time. Who can tell if some charity is on that list? Who will check? How close the match has to be? What if you send money on Jan. 01, and the group is declared terrorist on Jan. 05? Or a year later?
The safest mode of operation is to not send money to anyone.