It isn't relevant, just like whether or not something is GMO. That is the point.
'GMO' by itself means absolutely nothing other than 'this item has some different genes than other similar items'. Well guess what. Unless you are eating cloned food (like bananas), EVERY item of food has some genetic difference than similar items. You did learn about that in school, right? And aside from the sexual reproduction stuff, there can be further mutations from things like sunlight and gamma rays. The only difference between 'GMO' and 'non-GMO' is that someone INTENTIONALLY modified a SPECIFIC gene to produce a specific result instead of chance modifying genes to produce an unknown result. Exactly WHY is that worthy of a label?
This is exactly the sort of idiocy we have all come to expect from the anti-GMO nuts, You didn't disappoint.
Did you know that onions are poisonous!? How do I know? Because dogs that eat even a very small amount of onion can become seriously ill.
On the other hand, did you know that PCBs are not poisonous!? How do I know? There are bacteria that can eat them.
Oh, wait! Maybe the toxicity of something to ONE organism has nothing to do with the toxicity to a DIFFERENT organism! Nah, can't be.
Are you seriously unaware that EVERY plant, 100% of them, produces multiple pesticides? What other defense to you think plants have against pests? Of course, not every plant produces every pesticide which is why some pests target one plant and other pests target a different plant. Oops, there's that 'toxic to one does not mean toxic to all' thing again.
There are only two possible reasons for mandatory labelling of GMO foods. The first is health. GMO foods already are labelled with all the known health problems they cause (ie none). The other reason is nothing more than pure politics.
People are opposed to labeling because it is pointless. OK, you want to know how your food is produced. Big deal. Why stop at whether or not it is GMO? I want to know what companies produced the tractors that were used in the production of my food. I demand a label! I want to know what nationalities of the people who handle the food are. Label it! I want to know what wages are paid to the workers in the fields. Label it! I want to know who sold the seeds to the farmer. Label it! I could come up with many more examples of stupid things people might 'want to know', each as pointless as knowing if it is GMO.
Only if there is an actual shortage, not a 'pending' shortage. Since airlines are not cancelling flights due to lack of pilots, it is pretty safe to say there is no shortage. If and when there is an actual shortage, THEN it will be a competitive advantage to pay more (and ticket prices will have to rise). Until then, it is a disadvantage to have higher prices.
Because there IS NO shortage. If there was actually a shortage of pilots then flights would have to be cancelled. No cancelled flights due to lack of pilots means no shortage. If it gets to the point when there is an actual shortage, THEN it will be a competitive advantage to pay more. Paying more NOW is a competitive disadvantage.
It doesn't have to make 'much' of a difference, it just has to make ANY difference. For all the whining that people do about cramped seats, bag fees, being treated like cattle, etc, they continue to demonstrate that they will tolerate just about anything to save a buck. So when someone goes to a travel site and puts in their itinerary, MANY people go for the one at the top - the cheapest (even if only by a small amount.) Paying your pilots more than your competition is unlikely to cause many to choose your airline, but costing more than the competition surely will have a negative effect. And if you lose ANY fares, then that means you must raise prices again to cover those lost fares, Rinse and repeat.
If you have a policy that does not include pre-existing conditions (you don't since it is illegal), then the insurer will both do an examination of you and ask your medical history. No need for 'leaked' records. If you lie, that is fraud.
Pay the pilots more and they will find they don't need pilots because nobody is flying on their airline as the tickets cost more. Paying more, training, etc all have a real cost that must be covered by the passengers.
Wait, you don't think your health insurance provider knows your medical history? Do you think they just blindly pay whatever is submitted without knowing what they are paying for and why they are paying it?
I know this is slashdot, but RTFA. It is not just a few samples of pollen and charcoal, it is hundreds of years of pollen and charcoal. And then, right when the Spaniards arrived, there is even heavier charcoal. Then the maize pollen and charcoal disappear and are replaced by grasses and fast growing trees then slower growing trees for 130 years. Then there are traces of people again.
The federal government HAS claimed power over communications. The FCCs position is that if there are to be net neutrality laws then they must come from CONGRESS. The federal government has not 'abdicated' anything.
I find it funny that you can identify this, and not see how you are guilty of it. You talk about the 'thousands of miles' driven by an SDC 'without incident', but competely ignore the TRILLIONS of miles (yearly) that humans drive without incident. Every SDC proponent always focuses on one thing: the number of accidents humans are in. But they completely ignore the many orders of magnitude more cases where a human PREVENTED an accident. For instance, if a human driver in a residential area sees someone in a yard frantically waving their arms, they will instinctively slow down as there might be a child running toward the street that the driver can not see. Will an SDC recognize that, or will it wait until it sees the child in its path and then slam on the brakes? A human who sees loose items in the back of a truck bouncing about will realize the items could come out, and will give the truck more room. Will an SDC do that?
Your comment about flight is just as wrong. The reason we have commercial airlines has nothing to do with the presence or absence of a 24-hour news cycle (newspapers published several times a day, had 'extra' editions, and covered disasters with as much sensationalism as today). It is because commercial flight had an immediate and obvious benefit, even though it presented some risk. On the other hand, SDCs certainly present some risk (obviously), but present NO immediate benefit to offset that risk. As much as SDC proponents like to present humans driving as some sort of inevitable death, in reality you have a very small chance of being in an accident, and YOU can control even that risk (don't drive drunk, don't text, don't drive recklessly, etc).
Nonsense. What you are completely missing is that every single one of the things you mentioned had an immediate and obvious benefit in MOST cases. So even if there was a non-zero chance of failure, the reward more than made up for the risk. But what is the possible reward for me taking a self-driving car home tonight? There is absolutely NO detectable benefit, but there most certainly is a risk of failure.
Boy, you nailed it! Well written. This sounds like what my wife and I do on weekends - just drive. Amazing what you find (restaurants, shops, etc) when you are just driving around not looking for anything in particular. Only do what someone else entered into a 'database'? What fun is that? Might as well just take the interstate.
The article is about people not trusting self driving cars. So the question is not 'if it is better than a human', it is 'is it better than ME'. Now, maybe if you tend to drink too much at dinner, or if you can't stay off your phone, or if you just have a bad driving record, the answer may well be 'yes, it is better than me'. But for MOST people, the answer is 'no'.
Really? How many 10-15 year old laptops and smartphones are in use? Of the ones that are, how many have been subjected to 10-15 years of baking in the sun, freezing in the cold, vibration, jolts, etc? How many laptops and smart phones have high-current connections that can develop resistance and become very hot?
Driving tests test two things: the driver knows the basic mechanical actions needed to drive, and knows the rules of the road. While SOME of the rest of it comes down to 'responsibility', even more comes down to just BEING HUMAN and the lifetime of experiences that brings.
To give a simple example, a child runs out from between parked cars and is hit by a car. In most cases, the driver of the car will not be held legally responsible. He may feel PERSONALLY responsible however, and a normal human will wish to avoid those feelings, and certainly any normal human wishes to avoid injuring another. So how does a human driver avoid such incidents? Subconsciously, by using his experience: did a ball just roll into the road - a child may be following. Is there someone in the yard frantically waving their arms and maybe yelling? Is there a child on the side of the road beckoning for someone to cross?
So, since we can't rely on human instincts, experience, etc to help prevent accidents, the machines MUST be held to a higher standard OR we must be willing to accept accidents that would not have happened had a human been driving, whether or not the 'driver' is held legally responsible.
Bullshit. The figures show that a self-driving car may be better than the WORST drivers (the drunks, the texters, the reckless drivers). There is no indication that they will be better than or even equal to average drivers.
Slashdot Mirror
It isn't relevant, just like whether or not something is GMO. That is the point.
'GMO' by itself means absolutely nothing other than 'this item has some different genes than other similar items'. Well guess what. Unless you are eating cloned food (like bananas), EVERY item of food has some genetic difference than similar items. You did learn about that in school, right? And aside from the sexual reproduction stuff, there can be further mutations from things like sunlight and gamma rays. The only difference between 'GMO' and 'non-GMO' is that someone INTENTIONALLY modified a SPECIFIC gene to produce a specific result instead of chance modifying genes to produce an unknown result. Exactly WHY is that worthy of a label?
This is exactly the sort of idiocy we have all come to expect from the anti-GMO nuts, You didn't disappoint.
Did you know that onions are poisonous!? How do I know? Because dogs that eat even a very small amount of onion can become seriously ill.
On the other hand, did you know that PCBs are not poisonous!? How do I know? There are bacteria that can eat them.
Oh, wait! Maybe the toxicity of something to ONE organism has nothing to do with the toxicity to a DIFFERENT organism! Nah, can't be.
Are you seriously unaware that EVERY plant, 100% of them, produces multiple pesticides? What other defense to you think plants have against pests? Of course, not every plant produces every pesticide which is why some pests target one plant and other pests target a different plant. Oops, there's that 'toxic to one does not mean toxic to all' thing again.
Yeah, what does IBM know about VMs? They've only had VM products for about 50 years.
So use your brain and buy things are marked 'non-GMO' and assume that everything else is GMO. What's the problem?
There are only two possible reasons for mandatory labelling of GMO foods. The first is health. GMO foods already are labelled with all the known health problems they cause (ie none). The other reason is nothing more than pure politics.
People are opposed to labeling because it is pointless. OK, you want to know how your food is produced. Big deal. Why stop at whether or not it is GMO? I want to know what companies produced the tractors that were used in the production of my food. I demand a label! I want to know what nationalities of the people who handle the food are. Label it! I want to know what wages are paid to the workers in the fields. Label it! I want to know who sold the seeds to the farmer. Label it! I could come up with many more examples of stupid things people might 'want to know', each as pointless as knowing if it is GMO.
Only if there is an actual shortage, not a 'pending' shortage. Since airlines are not cancelling flights due to lack of pilots, it is pretty safe to say there is no shortage. If and when there is an actual shortage, THEN it will be a competitive advantage to pay more (and ticket prices will have to rise). Until then, it is a disadvantage to have higher prices.
Because there IS NO shortage. If there was actually a shortage of pilots then flights would have to be cancelled. No cancelled flights due to lack of pilots means no shortage. If it gets to the point when there is an actual shortage, THEN it will be a competitive advantage to pay more. Paying more NOW is a competitive disadvantage.
It doesn't have to make 'much' of a difference, it just has to make ANY difference. For all the whining that people do about cramped seats, bag fees, being treated like cattle, etc, they continue to demonstrate that they will tolerate just about anything to save a buck. So when someone goes to a travel site and puts in their itinerary, MANY people go for the one at the top - the cheapest (even if only by a small amount.) Paying your pilots more than your competition is unlikely to cause many to choose your airline, but costing more than the competition surely will have a negative effect. And if you lose ANY fares, then that means you must raise prices again to cover those lost fares, Rinse and repeat.
If you have a policy that does not include pre-existing conditions (you don't since it is illegal), then the insurer will both do an examination of you and ask your medical history. No need for 'leaked' records. If you lie, that is fraud.
Pay the pilots more and they will find they don't need pilots because nobody is flying on their airline as the tickets cost more. Paying more, training, etc all have a real cost that must be covered by the passengers.
Wait, you don't think your health insurance provider knows your medical history? Do you think they just blindly pay whatever is submitted without knowing what they are paying for and why they are paying it?
I know this is slashdot, but RTFA. It is not just a few samples of pollen and charcoal, it is hundreds of years of pollen and charcoal. And then, right when the Spaniards arrived, there is even heavier charcoal. Then the maize pollen and charcoal disappear and are replaced by grasses and fast growing trees then slower growing trees for 130 years. Then there are traces of people again.
The federal government HAS claimed power over communications. The FCCs position is that if there are to be net neutrality laws then they must come from CONGRESS. The federal government has not 'abdicated' anything.
Or, even better, RAIM.
Well IBM z14 has 54 years of instruction set history, is about as un-RISC as you can find with over 1000 instructions, and manages to run at 5.2GHz
I find it funny that you can identify this, and not see how you are guilty of it. You talk about the 'thousands of miles' driven by an SDC 'without incident', but competely ignore the TRILLIONS of miles (yearly) that humans drive without incident. Every SDC proponent always focuses on one thing: the number of accidents humans are in. But they completely ignore the many orders of magnitude more cases where a human PREVENTED an accident. For instance, if a human driver in a residential area sees someone in a yard frantically waving their arms, they will instinctively slow down as there might be a child running toward the street that the driver can not see. Will an SDC recognize that, or will it wait until it sees the child in its path and then slam on the brakes? A human who sees loose items in the back of a truck bouncing about will realize the items could come out, and will give the truck more room. Will an SDC do that?
Your comment about flight is just as wrong. The reason we have commercial airlines has nothing to do with the presence or absence of a 24-hour news cycle (newspapers published several times a day, had 'extra' editions, and covered disasters with as much sensationalism as today). It is because commercial flight had an immediate and obvious benefit, even though it presented some risk. On the other hand, SDCs certainly present some risk (obviously), but present NO immediate benefit to offset that risk. As much as SDC proponents like to present humans driving as some sort of inevitable death, in reality you have a very small chance of being in an accident, and YOU can control even that risk (don't drive drunk, don't text, don't drive recklessly, etc).
Nonsense. What you are completely missing is that every single one of the things you mentioned had an immediate and obvious benefit in MOST cases. So even if there was a non-zero chance of failure, the reward more than made up for the risk. But what is the possible reward for me taking a self-driving car home tonight? There is absolutely NO detectable benefit, but there most certainly is a risk of failure.
Except nobody ever thought that and it never happened. That joke is at least 40 years old.
Boy, you nailed it! Well written. This sounds like what my wife and I do on weekends - just drive. Amazing what you find (restaurants, shops, etc) when you are just driving around not looking for anything in particular. Only do what someone else entered into a 'database'? What fun is that? Might as well just take the interstate.
Not all of us prefer to live as robots doing things pre-programmed from databases.
The article is about people not trusting self driving cars. So the question is not 'if it is better than a human', it is 'is it better than ME'. Now, maybe if you tend to drink too much at dinner, or if you can't stay off your phone, or if you just have a bad driving record, the answer may well be 'yes, it is better than me'. But for MOST people, the answer is 'no'.
Really? How many 10-15 year old laptops and smartphones are in use? Of the ones that are, how many have been subjected to 10-15 years of baking in the sun, freezing in the cold, vibration, jolts, etc? How many laptops and smart phones have high-current connections that can develop resistance and become very hot?
Driving tests test two things: the driver knows the basic mechanical actions needed to drive, and knows the rules of the road. While SOME of the rest of it comes down to 'responsibility', even more comes down to just BEING HUMAN and the lifetime of experiences that brings.
To give a simple example, a child runs out from between parked cars and is hit by a car. In most cases, the driver of the car will not be held legally responsible. He may feel PERSONALLY responsible however, and a normal human will wish to avoid those feelings, and certainly any normal human wishes to avoid injuring another. So how does a human driver avoid such incidents? Subconsciously, by using his experience: did a ball just roll into the road - a child may be following. Is there someone in the yard frantically waving their arms and maybe yelling? Is there a child on the side of the road beckoning for someone to cross?
So, since we can't rely on human instincts, experience, etc to help prevent accidents, the machines MUST be held to a higher standard OR we must be willing to accept accidents that would not have happened had a human been driving, whether or not the 'driver' is held legally responsible.
Bullshit. The figures show that a self-driving car may be better than the WORST drivers (the drunks, the texters, the reckless drivers). There is no indication that they will be better than or even equal to average drivers.