The only way to build a solar power plant in Sahara and use the electricity to power Europe would be to take the required land from whatever country it currently belongs to and also occupy a land strip at least 100km in both directions from the power lines and then mine the hell out of it.
I am sure that there are multiple groups of people in those areas that would really love to blow up that power line, therefore it would need a lot of protection. The 100km buffer around the power plant and the power lines would to protect it from short range missiles.
If the people live there illegally, well, they cannot really object, can they?
As for wildlife preserve - so, it is disused right now. You most likely can't even hunt the wildlife (I would imagine the meat is more radioactive than usual).
Therefore, instead of allocating land that has other uses (say, people live there legally or the land is being used to grow food) or clearing out a non-radioactive forest to build the power plant (and Ukraine really needs it, since the fuel for its other power plants comes from Russia and some big Ukrainian coal mines are currently in the hands of the Russians (sorry - "pro-Russian separatists") why not use this otherwise useless land for the power plant.
And one such factor is that the are currently sits unused and cannot be used for pretty much anything else. It also is probably safe from being taken over by Russians (who would want uninhabitable land), unless they prepare to occupy the whole country (in which case the location of this power plant does not matter). Also, as the summary states, there are high capacity power lines in the zone already and repairing them probably is cheaper than building brand new lines.
While you could built it, say, near Odessa and be 500km closer to the equator (which presumably would result in more sunlight), that area is in danger of being taken over by Russians (and also is in the "pro-Russian south"). The land is most likely already in use for agriculture or something like that.
In my experience, DVRs produce DRM'ed recordings, so they are less convenient to archive and may have problems playing on another DVR (in case the original one fails). On the other hand, VHS tapes can be played on any other VHS VCR.
That being said, I now usually record TV shows straight from the IPTV provider (it helps that I actually am an admin for a couple of them, but I would be able to record from my ISP if I wasn't), so I mainly use my VCR to record some shows that I really want to keep (I record from DVB-C or analog cable and the tape is a backup in case the recording from IPTV fails).
Also, some times it is more convenient to just put in a tape to watch something than to boot up the PC that is connected to the TV.
8 years ago I bought my last brand new VCR and it failed shortly after the warranty expired (part of the tape transport broke). After that, I only bought used ones, my current main VCR is a professional grade SVHS (manual tracking, manual audio levels).
Well, at least this is how it works in my country. As long as I do not modify the house enough so the blueprints are no longer accurate, I can do whatever and repairs are not modification. No government agency is going to check whether I fixed, say, a broken window by replacing the glass with a new glass or just patching the hole over with duct tape. Or I can fix a leaky roof with some silicone (and if the roof starts leaking again I can either fix it properly or not).
I also can do the repairs myself or hire someone to do them for me.
You can always get an older car. I drive one and I like it. My car has no computers and pretty much any mechanic can repair it (I can repair some problems myself, but am limited by the fact that I do not have a garage with a pit or a lift, I also do not know how to weld)..
Or, if you only want to use renewables and only have a small geographic area, you could way overbuild the power plants so that at the worst times you have enough power, while normally selling the excess power very cheaply to aluminium smelters or bitcoin miners on the condition that it will be intermittent to them.
Actually, I usually assume all other cars on the road are driven by drunk/inattentive/sleeping drivers, have broken brakes and will continue traveling in the direction they are going at the speed they are going no matter what.
If I see a car come up from a side road I assume it will go into the intersection even if I have the right of way, so I slow down a bit and prepare to quickly brake if it actually happens.
I do this because even if at some times the other driver would be at fault for the accident, getting my car straightened out, patched up and repainted is not a fun experience.
It's the same problem as the TSA - everyone agrees their priority is supposed to be bombs and guns, but because 99.99% of their day job is confiscating shampoo bottles and matchbooks they eventually become blind to everything else.
Which is why there should be tests every few days (someone working for the TSA or another agency tries to smuggle in a simulation gun or a bomb, if they succeed, they get a large reward (so, more incentive to be creative about hiding it), while the guard who let them pass gets in trouble). Then the guards would not be as surprised when they find a real gun on someone.
If iOS was more popular it would get in trouble for this.
From TFA, the complaint seems to be
the company favors its own comparison-shopping service in its search results and that it prevented customers of one of its popular online advertising services from placing ads with rivals and restricted how rival ads were displayed.
The second part ("if you advertise with us, do not advertise with anyone else") could be a problem for Google.
So, I need to contact you and meet in person (or at least call you) before I can go to your website?
Internet existed before Google, also people used telephone books and read classified ads more often. Now, if they want to buy your product, they will enter it in Google and buy from whatever website Google can find. If your website is not there (but your competitor's is) then you have a problem.
If I need to have the exhaust system in my car repaired, I will enter "car exhaust repair in $my_city" into Google and look trough the results (or I may ask one of my friends if he knows anyone good). I will not go to every car mechanic that has an ad near his place of business and ask whether he would be willing to repair my car.
I'd call not noticing a big obstacle such as a tractor trailer is a design flaw. So is deciding that a car will fit on a hole in said obstacle without checking if the height of the hole is enough for the car to pass unharmed.
It should check if the driver is actually paying attention.
For example: at random intervals the car starts to drift very slightly to one side, the driver then has to steer it to keep it away from the lane marking and do so for a couple of minutes. If the car goes over the lane marking, it means the driver is not paying attention, so the autopilot should safely pull the car over and stop.
so, it's myfuckingwebsite.org? Or is it myfuckingwebsite.net? Maybe myfuckingwebsite.eu? No, I think it was thefuckingwebsite.com. Nah, probably anonymouscowardsfuckingwebsite.com. Still no. If only there was a way to find the website by entering "Anonymous Coward's fucking website" or even entering what the site is about and finding the address. You know, something like a telephone book.
Really? If Altavista decided to remove your website from its search results and if Google chose to do the same, which would cause you more damage? Would people decide that Google is a crap search engine and start using another if it does not show your website? Or would they just continue using Google and not visiting your site?
What reaction time would you expect from a guard after seeing something out of the ordinary (after looking for it for half a day)? Would a few seconds be reasonable ("I think something moved way out there, hmm, it may be the enemy, OK, now I see multiple enemy soldiers approaching with their weapons drawn, EVERYONE! WAKE UP! WE GOT COMPANY!")?
What reaction time do you expect from a car driver?
It's not that "people aren't wired that way."
Yes, it is. This is why such tasks (because of the required re-wiring) are so difficult, just like calculating large numbers. On the other hand, picking out faces from visual noise or seeing patterns in randomness ("hey, this cloud is shaped like a cat") is extremely easy for humans.
Humans can do some activity for long periods of time, but the activity has to involve doing something.
When I drive my mechanical car, I have to constantly adjust the steering wheel to keep the car on the road (the road isn't completely straight after all) and gas to keep the speed as needed (the road goes up and down which makes the car slow down or speed up). This creates "something to do" for me, so I can stare at the road for hours.
I also know that if I stop looking at the road, I will quickly end up in a ditch or similar.
Now, let's say the car controls bot speed and direction for me. Now I have to stare at the road, but have nothing to do. This is bad. Having nothing to do makes me bored, I may even fall asleep or find something else to do. After all, the car is driving itself and if I stop looking at the road for a minute I will not end up in a ditch. 99.99% of the time that is.
There are websites that test your reaction. You usually have to wait a few seconds for some part of the screen to change color and click a button as quickly as you can. Normal reaction time is about 210ms. Now, get a test that instead of making you wait for a few seconds, makes you wait 10 or 30 minutes (or an hour) for the color change. What will be your reaction time then?
OH, so if Google would decide to block the website of your company (or the company you work for) from appearing in the results, people would just dump Google so that they can search for your company? Or would they just do business with one of your competitors whose website is not blocked by Google?
Free Market stops working if one seller has too much control over the market, therefore, it is the job of a capitalist government to make sure that this does not happen.
Using anything is a choice - even if the seller has complete monopoly - you can just choose not to buy/use the item. This does not make effective monopolies any less damaging.
What if Microsoft released an update that blocks $your_company website from being accessed at the OS level (no matter what browser you use) and instead redirects them to the same service offered by Microsoft - how many people would dump Windows (after all, there are alternatives) just to be able to access your website?
I would expect "Autopilot" to control the airplane well enough to allow me and the co-pilot to play video games or sleep. The airplane will sound an alarm if there is a problem (or I may notice the turbulence etc). The only problem is that the autopilot will not warn me if I miss the destination airport.
After all, pilots probably do that quite often (those who missed the airport probably weren't doing this for the first time, it's just that they got caught) with no major problems.
Also, Tesla's "autopilot" is probably at the worst combination of human/computer hybrid driving. You do not drive the car, but have to be as alert as if you were driving the car to make a split second decision to take over the control. Humans are not good at that - if I am not driving, I get bored and want to do something else, but if I am doing something else, my reaction time increases by orders of magnitude.
Older systems where the human is in control all the time but the computer takes over in an emergency (if the human did not react fast enough) is better IMO. You are in control, so not as bored, but there is a safety net in case your reaction is too slow.
Hopefully your can opener does not ignite, explode or injure you when it fails to open a can. So, it handles exceptions well.
Another example would be handling non-standard network packets. If the process receives a non-standard packet (say, its actual length does not match the length specified in the header), it can ignore it, drop the connection or return an error, but should not return random pieces of server's memory that may include the private key.
In Lithuania you are allowed up to 0.04% BAC, but it is zero for bus, truck drivers and drivers with less than 2 year experience. Also, if you are over the limit and get in an accident, then it is your fault even if it normally wouldn't be (say, you stopped the car at a red light and got rear-ended), and you will be fined as if you caused the accident (and causing an accident while drunk results in a bigger fine and license suspension). This is done to add risk to driving drunk.
The police also conducts frequent raids where they stop all cars that are driving on some road and check the alcohol level of all the drivers.
And yet, the autopilot should have seen the truck approach the intersection, slow down and prepare to stop suddenly in case the truck got in the way of the car.
This is like handling any protocol - your system always has to obey it, but cannot assume that everyone else is obeying it, so the system should not crash, leak private keys or do some other bad things if the remote system decides to send a 10kB TCP packet with a header saying that the length is 2B.
You cannot change the reality to make it better suited for a computer.
Let's say that the truck had the vane (let's say it was required by law - to help computers see the truck better or for fuel efficiency), but it fell off at some point and the driver didn't notice. The computer has to adapt to non-standard situations.
The problem here was that the computer managed to not see a huge truck. A human driver is expected to see a pedestrian (or a manhole without a cover) on the road, and any human who can see those can see a car and especially a truck.
And no sober driver would mistake the trailer of the truck as a "piece of sky on wheels" or "a moving road sign" or "two sets of wheels following the tractor with a huge hole in between, my car can fit in it".
Slashdot Mirror
The only way to build a solar power plant in Sahara and use the electricity to power Europe would be to take the required land from whatever country it currently belongs to and also occupy a land strip at least 100km in both directions from the power lines and then mine the hell out of it.
I am sure that there are multiple groups of people in those areas that would really love to blow up that power line, therefore it would need a lot of protection. The 100km buffer around the power plant and the power lines would to protect it from short range missiles.
If the people live there illegally, well, they cannot really object, can they?
As for wildlife preserve - so, it is disused right now. You most likely can't even hunt the wildlife (I would imagine the meat is more radioactive than usual).
Therefore, instead of allocating land that has other uses (say, people live there legally or the land is being used to grow food) or clearing out a non-radioactive forest to build the power plant (and Ukraine really needs it, since the fuel for its other power plants comes from Russia and some big Ukrainian coal mines are currently in the hands of the Russians (sorry - "pro-Russian separatists") why not use this otherwise useless land for the power plant.
And one such factor is that the are currently sits unused and cannot be used for pretty much anything else. It also is probably safe from being taken over by Russians (who would want uninhabitable land), unless they prepare to occupy the whole country (in which case the location of this power plant does not matter). Also, as the summary states, there are high capacity power lines in the zone already and repairing them probably is cheaper than building brand new lines.
While you could built it, say, near Odessa and be 500km closer to the equator (which presumably would result in more sunlight), that area is in danger of being taken over by Russians (and also is in the "pro-Russian south"). The land is most likely already in use for agriculture or something like that.
In my experience, DVRs produce DRM'ed recordings, so they are less convenient to archive and may have problems playing on another DVR (in case the original one fails). On the other hand, VHS tapes can be played on any other VHS VCR.
That being said, I now usually record TV shows straight from the IPTV provider (it helps that I actually am an admin for a couple of them, but I would be able to record from my ISP if I wasn't), so I mainly use my VCR to record some shows that I really want to keep (I record from DVB-C or analog cable and the tape is a backup in case the recording from IPTV fails).
Also, some times it is more convenient to just put in a tape to watch something than to boot up the PC that is connected to the TV.
8 years ago I bought my last brand new VCR and it failed shortly after the warranty expired (part of the tape transport broke). After that, I only bought used ones, my current main VCR is a professional grade SVHS (manual tracking, manual audio levels).
But doesn't that concern just the land?
Well, at least this is how it works in my country. As long as I do not modify the house enough so the blueprints are no longer accurate, I can do whatever and repairs are not modification. No government agency is going to check whether I fixed, say, a broken window by replacing the glass with a new glass or just patching the hole over with duct tape. Or I can fix a leaky roof with some silicone (and if the roof starts leaking again I can either fix it properly or not).
I also can do the repairs myself or hire someone to do them for me.
You can always get an older car. I drive one and I like it. My car has no computers and pretty much any mechanic can repair it (I can repair some problems myself, but am limited by the fact that I do not have a garage with a pit or a lift, I also do not know how to weld)..
Or, if you only want to use renewables and only have a small geographic area, you could way overbuild the power plants so that at the worst times you have enough power, while normally selling the excess power very cheaply to aluminium smelters or bitcoin miners on the condition that it will be intermittent to them.
Actually, I usually assume all other cars on the road are driven by drunk/inattentive/sleeping drivers, have broken brakes and will continue traveling in the direction they are going at the speed they are going no matter what.
If I see a car come up from a side road I assume it will go into the intersection even if I have the right of way, so I slow down a bit and prepare to quickly brake if it actually happens.
I do this because even if at some times the other driver would be at fault for the accident, getting my car straightened out, patched up and repainted is not a fun experience.
It's the same problem as the TSA - everyone agrees their priority is supposed to be bombs and guns, but because 99.99% of their day job is confiscating shampoo bottles and matchbooks they eventually become blind to everything else.
Which is why there should be tests every few days (someone working for the TSA or another agency tries to smuggle in a simulation gun or a bomb, if they succeed, they get a large reward (so, more incentive to be creative about hiding it), while the guard who let them pass gets in trouble). Then the guards would not be as surprised when they find a real gun on someone.
If iOS was more popular it would get in trouble for this.
From TFA, the complaint seems to be
the company favors its own comparison-shopping service in its search results and that it prevented customers of one of its popular online advertising services from placing ads with rivals and restricted how rival ads were displayed.
The second part ("if you advertise with us, do not advertise with anyone else") could be a problem for Google.
So, I need to contact you and meet in person (or at least call you) before I can go to your website?
Internet existed before Google, also people used telephone books and read classified ads more often. Now, if they want to buy your product, they will enter it in Google and buy from whatever website Google can find. If your website is not there (but your competitor's is) then you have a problem.
If I need to have the exhaust system in my car repaired, I will enter "car exhaust repair in $my_city" into Google and look trough the results (or I may ask one of my friends if he knows anyone good). I will not go to every car mechanic that has an ad near his place of business and ask whether he would be willing to repair my car.
I'd call not noticing a big obstacle such as a tractor trailer is a design flaw.
So is deciding that a car will fit on a hole in said obstacle without checking if the height of the hole is enough for the car to pass unharmed.
It should check if the driver is actually paying attention.
For example: at random intervals the car starts to drift very slightly to one side, the driver then has to steer it to keep it away from the lane marking and do so for a couple of minutes. If the car goes over the lane marking, it means the driver is not paying attention, so the autopilot should safely pull the car over and stop.
so, it's myfuckingwebsite.org? Or is it myfuckingwebsite.net? Maybe myfuckingwebsite.eu? No, I think it was thefuckingwebsite.com. Nah, probably anonymouscowardsfuckingwebsite.com. Still no. If only there was a way to find the website by entering "Anonymous Coward's fucking website" or even entering what the site is about and finding the address. You know, something like a telephone book.
Correction, I shouldn't be driving a car with autopilot. I can drive my car just fine, the minor adjustments help to keep my attention on the road.
Your monopoly example is completely irrelevant.
Really? If Altavista decided to remove your website from its search results and if Google chose to do the same, which would cause you more damage? Would people decide that Google is a crap search engine and start using another if it does not show your website? Or would they just continue using Google and not visiting your site?
What reaction time would you expect from a guard after seeing something out of the ordinary (after looking for it for half a day)? Would a few seconds be reasonable ("I think something moved way out there, hmm, it may be the enemy, OK, now I see multiple enemy soldiers approaching with their weapons drawn, EVERYONE! WAKE UP! WE GOT COMPANY!")?
What reaction time do you expect from a car driver?
It's not that "people aren't wired that way."
Yes, it is. This is why such tasks (because of the required re-wiring) are so difficult, just like calculating large numbers. On the other hand, picking out faces from visual noise or seeing patterns in randomness ("hey, this cloud is shaped like a cat") is extremely easy for humans.
Humans can do some activity for long periods of time, but the activity has to involve doing something.
When I drive my mechanical car, I have to constantly adjust the steering wheel to keep the car on the road (the road isn't completely straight after all) and gas to keep the speed as needed (the road goes up and down which makes the car slow down or speed up). This creates "something to do" for me, so I can stare at the road for hours.
I also know that if I stop looking at the road, I will quickly end up in a ditch or similar.
Now, let's say the car controls bot speed and direction for me. Now I have to stare at the road, but have nothing to do. This is bad. Having nothing to do makes me bored, I may even fall asleep or find something else to do. After all, the car is driving itself and if I stop looking at the road for a minute I will not end up in a ditch. 99.99% of the time that is.
There are websites that test your reaction. You usually have to wait a few seconds for some part of the screen to change color and click a button as quickly as you can. Normal reaction time is about 210ms. Now, get a test that instead of making you wait for a few seconds, makes you wait 10 or 30 minutes (or an hour) for the color change. What will be your reaction time then?
OH, so if Google would decide to block the website of your company (or the company you work for) from appearing in the results, people would just dump Google so that they can search for your company? Or would they just do business with one of your competitors whose website is not blocked by Google?
Actually, this is enforced Free Market.
Free Market stops working if one seller has too much control over the market, therefore, it is the job of a capitalist government to make sure that this does not happen.
Using anything is a choice - even if the seller has complete monopoly - you can just choose not to buy/use the item. This does not make effective monopolies any less damaging.
What if Microsoft released an update that blocks $your_company website from being accessed at the OS level (no matter what browser you use) and instead redirects them to the same service offered by Microsoft - how many people would dump Windows (after all, there are alternatives) just to be able to access your website?
I would expect "Autopilot" to control the airplane well enough to allow me and the co-pilot to play video games or sleep. The airplane will sound an alarm if there is a problem (or I may notice the turbulence etc). The only problem is that the autopilot will not warn me if I miss the destination airport.
After all, pilots probably do that quite often (those who missed the airport probably weren't doing this for the first time, it's just that they got caught) with no major problems.
Also, Tesla's "autopilot" is probably at the worst combination of human/computer hybrid driving. You do not drive the car, but have to be as alert as if you were driving the car to make a split second decision to take over the control. Humans are not good at that - if I am not driving, I get bored and want to do something else, but if I am doing something else, my reaction time increases by orders of magnitude.
Older systems where the human is in control all the time but the computer takes over in an emergency (if the human did not react fast enough) is better IMO. You are in control, so not as bored, but there is a safety net in case your reaction is too slow.
Hopefully your can opener does not ignite, explode or injure you when it fails to open a can. So, it handles exceptions well.
Another example would be handling non-standard network packets. If the process receives a non-standard packet (say, its actual length does not match the length specified in the header), it can ignore it, drop the connection or return an error, but should not return random pieces of server's memory that may include the private key.
In Lithuania you are allowed up to 0.04% BAC, but it is zero for bus, truck drivers and drivers with less than 2 year experience. Also, if you are over the limit and get in an accident, then it is your fault even if it normally wouldn't be (say, you stopped the car at a red light and got rear-ended), and you will be fined as if you caused the accident (and causing an accident while drunk results in a bigger fine and license suspension).
This is done to add risk to driving drunk.
The police also conducts frequent raids where they stop all cars that are driving on some road and check the alcohol level of all the drivers.
And yet, the autopilot should have seen the truck approach the intersection, slow down and prepare to stop suddenly in case the truck got in the way of the car.
This is like handling any protocol - your system always has to obey it, but cannot assume that everyone else is obeying it, so the system should not crash, leak private keys or do some other bad things if the remote system decides to send a 10kB TCP packet with a header saying that the length is 2B.
You cannot change the reality to make it better suited for a computer.
Let's say that the truck had the vane (let's say it was required by law - to help computers see the truck better or for fuel efficiency), but it fell off at some point and the driver didn't notice. The computer has to adapt to non-standard situations.
The problem here was that the computer managed to not see a huge truck. A human driver is expected to see a pedestrian (or a manhole without a cover) on the road, and any human who can see those can see a car and especially a truck.
And no sober driver would mistake the trailer of the truck as a "piece of sky on wheels" or "a moving road sign" or "two sets of wheels following the tractor with a huge hole in between, my car can fit in it".