Hi! Since you're new, let me welcome you to Ubuntu. Ubuntu has never had a login-enabled root account, and the use of one his highly discouraged four various security concerns. You should use "sudo" to run individual commands, or "sudo -s" if you need a root shell.
Two people share an opinion you don't like, and therefore it's astroturfing? Interesting. What do you think the odds are that the people who insist that the number one reason to own a car is for the love of driving and that the government is trying to take their fun away are astroturfing as well?
Why do you think you wouldn't be able to go where you want, when you want Wroth am autonomous car? That's the primary reason to use one instead of mass transit.
That's a nice theory, but take into consideration that the army has autonomous vehicles right now that drive offroad constantly. Yes, it's complex, but that kind of terrain really is much easier to deal with than human drivers who behave erratically at high speeds.
"Static" in autonomous vehicle terms means that an object is not moving with respect to the world around it: trees, rocks, barriers, and so on. That is as opposed to "dynamic" obstacles that move with respect to the world, like cars and pedestrians.
So you can try to quibble over semantics if you want, but the fact is that the former class of objects are far easier to plan around than the latter.
But society and business depend on the mass NOT obeying the law. We get to work on time because we cheat.
No, we get to work on time because we leave with enough time to get there. Maybe if you have to speed and drive recklessly to make it to work, you should just leave five minutes earlier?
How long would it take you to do anything if you could not depend on the timing from route selection and speed? You would not be able to project the future.
The irony here is that autonomous cars will be able to tell you fairly accurately how long it will take to get anywhere based on the possible routes and current traffic conditions. So, if your car says it'll take 27 minutes to get to work but you don't leave until you only have 15 minutes left because you're sure you can make it... that's your own fault.
Do you really want to sit staring out the window for the entire trip? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
At this point I'm not sure if you're trolling or not. That's what people currently do -- just stare out of the window in front of them for hours every day, trying not to run into another person. Can you not think of anything else you could do with that time if you didn't have to keep your eyes on the road? Maybe read a book, catch up on the news, or play a video game?
What's even more dangerous is 3000 lbs of metal controlled by a computer programmed by ego maniacs with the arrogance to assume their heuristic model accurately interprets the reality of free-range driving. A human is slow compared to a computer, but is far better at preemption and situational awareness.
The irony here, of course, is that you're the one assuming the programmers making these systems are egomaniacs who don't take any exceptional cases into account and never test for them.
What does being "far better at preemption" even mean? If a human can interpret a cue to react in a particular way, a computer can be programmed to recognize that cue, too. And suggesting that humans are better at situation awareness? Crazy talk. A car with a couple of LIDAR units knows exactly how far it is from everything in a hundred meter radius (or more) around it, within a cm or two. It has no blind spots, it doesn't care about lighting conditions, it's not fooled by optical illusions, and it's not limited to the visible spectrum.
Then we have deliberate attacks on the network they'll use. Finally, we have deliberate kill switches/overrides/tracking demanded by authorities, public and private
They don't need to use networks, and they're as likely to have kill switches/overrides/tracking demanded by the authorities as your current car does. In other words, because of the mass push back there would be against it, not likely at all. Because of the extreme expense, the only reason auto manufactures would do that is if they were legally required -- and if somehow it gets pushed into legislation, have no fear that every car will be required to have it, not just the autonomous ones.
That's a bit of a contrived example that is rather light on details. The vast majority of cars today don't even come with a drive-by-wire system installed, let alone one that's remotely accessible, and if you install your own, well, that's all on you.
I suppose it's theoretically possible that autonomous car manufacturers will be naive enough to make their drive-by-wire systems remotely accessible, but right now I don't see any reason to assume they will.
I didn't assume that, and that has nothing to do with your original assertion that a robot car would be somehow worse than navigating rural roads than you are.
Why do you think that a vehicle that can see in 360 degrees around it in the visible spectrum, infrared spectrum, and LIDAR -- including underneath itself -- and knows exactly where it is within a few millimeters would be worse at navigating between obstacles than you are?
If anything, static obstacles are the easy part. Predicting what crazy human drivers are going to do is hard.
Agreed, just like how we need to stop using vaccines so they don't produce drug-resistant strains of smallpox or measles. It's better to just wash your hands regularly.
At the moment, yes, but the hardware necessary for autonomy isn't really that expensive compared to the car itself. Especially in the future when we can sell cars that are fully automated and do not need any of the controls that humans use to drive a car -- the steering wheel, pedals, switches, etc. -- I expect they will actually be cheaper than non-autonomous cars.
2. No fun
A matter of opinion, but if you think driving is "fun", you're probably one of the people making roads dangerous. I think it will be more fun to be able to read web sites or play video games while my car is driving me around.
3. Dangerous
Flat-out wrong. Autonomous cars can react much more quickly, precisely, and safely than any human can when confronted with a dangerous situation. The dangerous part will be stupid human drivers who think they can drive recklessly because autonomous cars will react quickly and move out of their way.
4. No one controls when and where I go
This doesn't even make any sense. An autonomous car is not necessarily public transportation (although they will be used for that). You'll still be able to get in your car and go wherever you want, whenever you want.
Well, the problem you're having here is that you're assuming that the people who have been working on autonomous vehicles for over a decade haven't thought of any of the problems you came up with in a few minutes.
Self-driving cars will rely relatively little on GPS, actually. It's far too inaccurate for anything other than general route planning. For close-range pathing and obstacle detection, they'll rely primarily on stereo cameras (just like you do!), LIDAR, and inertia measurement combined with fancy image recognition and space modeling algorithms. In fact, they don't need any network connection at all in order to analyze the world around them in far more detail than you ever could. In order to hack into an autonomous car, you'll have to open up the trunk and plug an ethernet cable into it.
The real problem is developing the algorithms that can take all of that information and do something useful with it, but again, people have been working on that for well over a decade.
"We're going to do business with people who aren't bigots" is extortion? Really? Do you call it blackmail when a person decides not to shop at a Wal-mart where a manager called them a fag?
And corporations stifling speech is still an infringement of speech.
On the other hand, why should a private corporation be obligated to provide you with a platform for your speech? If you run your own web forum, would it be ok for me to fill up your forum with, say, posts advocating White Power, or would it be reasonable to ban me? I shouldn't even need to post the obligatory XKCD comic here.
"Oh torrents are pirate channels!". Really? Updates from Blizzard are all pirated????
Pretty sure nobody said that. If you'd bother looking at the article at all, you'd see that references to specific sites that are known for pirating material are being flagged. Go ahead and talk about Blizzard's updater all you want.
And note that you can be kicked out of Steam for this, whereupon your ENTIRE collection becomes null and void.
What are you talking about? Please show me any indication at all that somebody has been banned from Steam and rendered unable to access any of their games because they tried to talk about torrents.
Yeah Steam has the BEST DRM! In just the same way as firing squad is the best form of murder!
And you make the BEST points, in the same way that Hitler had the best final solution! See, I can also use extreme, irrelevant hyperbole!
In the course of one post you went from being somebody who didn't understand how free speech works to somebody who is using extreme hyperbole to argue against something that didn't even happen. Good job.
People actually want their information stored in Microsoft's proprietary format? I thought that was something done out of ignorance, or because you felt forced to do so.
No, and yes, that's right. I don't know that anybody has said, "Sweet, I love Outlook!" Rather, you use Outlook because you work for somewhere that uses an MS Exchange e-mail server whether you like it or not.
"Very few places" here being slashdot, youtube, reddit, twitter, and pretty much everywhere else on the internet...
You can say anything you want, but you'll probably get modded down and ignored quickly, if not banned.
And even if you don't, you've still got a reputation. Your real identity may not be attached to your posts, but you've still got an identity, and people will at least remember what you say and possibly track down your uses of that identity on other web sites.
Anonymity isn't just a feature on 4chan, it's part of the culture. Nobody can punish you for anything you say, nobody can speak louder than you, and nobody can embarass you because there is nothing linking your identity to your words.
People make a lot of noise about "evil" things being said on 4chan, but that's not quite right. There's a lot of honesty on 4chan. Without any repurcussions, shame, or punishment, everybody can say exactly what they're thinking. They're still thinking it elsewhere -- but they feel like they can vocalize it on 4chan. And there's a lot of interesting, insightful discussion that goes on there, too, especially with regards to subjects that are too taboo or embarassing to discuss in places where you have an identity.
Got any reliable citations for those sources, or is it just the nebulous "some"? I mean, some sources say the NSA has brainwave scanners and can tell what you're thinking from a van outside your house. But those guys are nuts.
The protocol is an open standard, and anybody who has looked at OpenSSH's source code has "cracked" it. It's not terribly complex. If you're transmitting over an unencrypted connection or using a compromised cipher or key, anybody can figure out what you're doing.
The real issue (and what you're probably thinking of) is whether the NSA has backdoors in or has cracked different encryption ciphers that are commonly used over SSH. If they have, that's a much more widespread problem than just SSH, because those ciphers are used elsewhere, too (like in HTTPS).
The appeal is that it's the truth. People want to discover the truth about how our world works and how we came to exist in it, and science is how we do that -- and every bit of science we have indicates that evolution is the only plausible explanation for the current diversity of life on Earth.
you're pushing the idea that life has no true purpose and random death means progress
No, we're not, and I think the whole "you can't have meaning without religion!" bit is one of the most insidious lies the Christian church has pushed. Not following the dogma laid out in 2000-year-old books means you can make your own purpose in life. You can decide what gives you meaning and what you consider progress. I promise that if you go to any Humanist gathering, you will see plenty of people who have meaning and purpose without religion. Talk to them a bit, even -- I'll bet they'll be perfectly friendly if you say, "Hey, I'm a Christian but wanted to see what you guys are all about." Learning first-hand what life without religion is like is better than taking your pastor's word for it (after all, do you think maybe he has his own agenda?).
I'd rather bet on a.001% chance that Jesus is Lord than 99.999% chance that life is based on nothing but random chance and death.
Here's the thing, though: there's not a 0.001% chance of that, there's a 0% chance of it. There is zero evidence than any sort of supernatural being exists at all, and it's a huge leap from there to "Christianity is true," with just as much evidence. You are believing it purely because it makes you feel good. That's your choice, but maybe you should find out what the alternative is actually like before dismissing it.
Slashdot Mirror
Hi! Since you're new, let me welcome you to Ubuntu. Ubuntu has never had a login-enabled root account, and the use of one his highly discouraged four various security concerns. You should use "sudo" to run individual commands, or "sudo -s" if you need a root shell.
The "anti-safe search" image search, which filters out all of the things that aren't porn.
Come on, be honest.
I'm highly doubtful, if you have a temper like that when you're on the road.
Two people share an opinion you don't like, and therefore it's astroturfing? Interesting. What do you think the odds are that the people who insist that the number one reason to own a car is for the love of driving and that the government is trying to take their fun away are astroturfing as well?
Why do you think you wouldn't be able to go where you want, when you want Wroth am autonomous car? That's the primary reason to use one instead of mass transit.
That's a nice theory, but take into consideration that the army has autonomous vehicles right now that drive offroad constantly. Yes, it's complex, but that kind of terrain really is much easier to deal with than human drivers who behave erratically at high speeds.
Really nothing is 'static' to a moving vehicle.
"Static" in autonomous vehicle terms means that an object is not moving with respect to the world around it: trees, rocks, barriers, and so on. That is as opposed to "dynamic" obstacles that move with respect to the world, like cars and pedestrians.
So you can try to quibble over semantics if you want, but the fact is that the former class of objects are far easier to plan around than the latter.
But society and business depend on the mass NOT obeying the law. We get to work on time because we cheat.
No, we get to work on time because we leave with enough time to get there. Maybe if you have to speed and drive recklessly to make it to work, you should just leave five minutes earlier?
How long would it take you to do anything if you could not depend on the timing from route selection and speed? You would not be able to project the future.
The irony here is that autonomous cars will be able to tell you fairly accurately how long it will take to get anywhere based on the possible routes and current traffic conditions. So, if your car says it'll take 27 minutes to get to work but you don't leave until you only have 15 minutes left because you're sure you can make it... that's your own fault.
Do you really want to sit staring out the window for the entire trip? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
At this point I'm not sure if you're trolling or not. That's what people currently do -- just stare out of the window in front of them for hours every day, trying not to run into another person. Can you not think of anything else you could do with that time if you didn't have to keep your eyes on the road? Maybe read a book, catch up on the news, or play a video game?
What's even more dangerous is 3000 lbs of metal controlled by a computer programmed by ego maniacs with the arrogance to assume their heuristic model accurately interprets the reality of free-range driving. A human is slow compared to a computer, but is far better at preemption and situational awareness.
The irony here, of course, is that you're the one assuming the programmers making these systems are egomaniacs who don't take any exceptional cases into account and never test for them.
What does being "far better at preemption" even mean? If a human can interpret a cue to react in a particular way, a computer can be programmed to recognize that cue, too. And suggesting that humans are better at situation awareness? Crazy talk. A car with a couple of LIDAR units knows exactly how far it is from everything in a hundred meter radius (or more) around it, within a cm or two. It has no blind spots, it doesn't care about lighting conditions, it's not fooled by optical illusions, and it's not limited to the visible spectrum.
Then we have deliberate attacks on the network they'll use. Finally, we have deliberate kill switches/overrides/tracking demanded by authorities, public and private
They don't need to use networks, and they're as likely to have kill switches/overrides/tracking demanded by the authorities as your current car does. In other words, because of the mass push back there would be against it, not likely at all. Because of the extreme expense, the only reason auto manufactures would do that is if they were legally required -- and if somehow it gets pushed into legislation, have no fear that every car will be required to have it, not just the autonomous ones.
As a side note, I just realized you're not even the person I was replying to. So... I'm not sure what your statement had to do with anything I said.
That's a bit of a contrived example that is rather light on details. The vast majority of cars today don't even come with a drive-by-wire system installed, let alone one that's remotely accessible, and if you install your own, well, that's all on you.
I suppose it's theoretically possible that autonomous car manufacturers will be naive enough to make their drive-by-wire systems remotely accessible, but right now I don't see any reason to assume they will.
I didn't assume that, and that has nothing to do with your original assertion that a robot car would be somehow worse than navigating rural roads than you are.
Why do you think that a vehicle that can see in 360 degrees around it in the visible spectrum, infrared spectrum, and LIDAR -- including underneath itself -- and knows exactly where it is within a few millimeters would be worse at navigating between obstacles than you are?
If anything, static obstacles are the easy part. Predicting what crazy human drivers are going to do is hard.
Agreed, just like how we need to stop using vaccines so they don't produce drug-resistant strains of smallpox or measles. It's better to just wash your hands regularly.
1. Too expensive
At the moment, yes, but the hardware necessary for autonomy isn't really that expensive compared to the car itself. Especially in the future when we can sell cars that are fully automated and do not need any of the controls that humans use to drive a car -- the steering wheel, pedals, switches, etc. -- I expect they will actually be cheaper than non-autonomous cars.
2. No fun
A matter of opinion, but if you think driving is "fun", you're probably one of the people making roads dangerous. I think it will be more fun to be able to read web sites or play video games while my car is driving me around.
3. Dangerous
Flat-out wrong. Autonomous cars can react much more quickly, precisely, and safely than any human can when confronted with a dangerous situation. The dangerous part will be stupid human drivers who think they can drive recklessly because autonomous cars will react quickly and move out of their way.
4. No one controls when and where I go
This doesn't even make any sense. An autonomous car is not necessarily public transportation (although they will be used for that). You'll still be able to get in your car and go wherever you want, whenever you want.
Well, the problem you're having here is that you're assuming that the people who have been working on autonomous vehicles for over a decade haven't thought of any of the problems you came up with in a few minutes.
Self-driving cars will rely relatively little on GPS, actually. It's far too inaccurate for anything other than general route planning. For close-range pathing and obstacle detection, they'll rely primarily on stereo cameras (just like you do!), LIDAR, and inertia measurement combined with fancy image recognition and space modeling algorithms. In fact, they don't need any network connection at all in order to analyze the world around them in far more detail than you ever could. In order to hack into an autonomous car, you'll have to open up the trunk and plug an ethernet cable into it.
The real problem is developing the algorithms that can take all of that information and do something useful with it, but again, people have been working on that for well over a decade.
"We're going to do business with people who aren't bigots" is extortion? Really? Do you call it blackmail when a person decides not to shop at a Wal-mart where a manager called them a fag?
Thanks for letting us know that the real problem here is the particular word he used to refer to women, not the policy that discriminates against men.
The earth's internal core is about 6000 C (source), and carbon in diamond form boils at 4027 C (source).
So, yes, diamond is still a known material.
And corporations stifling speech is still an infringement of speech.
On the other hand, why should a private corporation be obligated to provide you with a platform for your speech? If you run your own web forum, would it be ok for me to fill up your forum with, say, posts advocating White Power, or would it be reasonable to ban me? I shouldn't even need to post the obligatory XKCD comic here.
"Oh torrents are pirate channels!". Really? Updates from Blizzard are all pirated????
Pretty sure nobody said that. If you'd bother looking at the article at all, you'd see that references to specific sites that are known for pirating material are being flagged. Go ahead and talk about Blizzard's updater all you want.
And note that you can be kicked out of Steam for this, whereupon your ENTIRE collection becomes null and void.
What are you talking about? Please show me any indication at all that somebody has been banned from Steam and rendered unable to access any of their games because they tried to talk about torrents.
Yeah Steam has the BEST DRM! In just the same way as firing squad is the best form of murder!
And you make the BEST points, in the same way that Hitler had the best final solution! See, I can also use extreme, irrelevant hyperbole!
In the course of one post you went from being somebody who didn't understand how free speech works to somebody who is using extreme hyperbole to argue against something that didn't even happen. Good job.
People actually want their information stored in Microsoft's proprietary format? I thought that was something done out of ignorance, or because you felt forced to do so.
No, and yes, that's right. I don't know that anybody has said, "Sweet, I love Outlook!" Rather, you use Outlook because you work for somewhere that uses an MS Exchange e-mail server whether you like it or not.
Anyone else go through this?
Nope. Throwing faster hardware at a problem is much cheaper than having a team of developers spend weeks optimizing a framework or making a new one.
"Very few places" here being slashdot, youtube, reddit, twitter, and pretty much everywhere else on the internet...
You can say anything you want, but you'll probably get modded down and ignored quickly, if not banned.
And even if you don't, you've still got a reputation. Your real identity may not be attached to your posts, but you've still got an identity, and people will at least remember what you say and possibly track down your uses of that identity on other web sites.
Anonymity isn't just a feature on 4chan, it's part of the culture. Nobody can punish you for anything you say, nobody can speak louder than you, and nobody can embarass you because there is nothing linking your identity to your words.
People make a lot of noise about "evil" things being said on 4chan, but that's not quite right. There's a lot of honesty on 4chan. Without any repurcussions, shame, or punishment, everybody can say exactly what they're thinking. They're still thinking it elsewhere -- but they feel like they can vocalize it on 4chan. And there's a lot of interesting, insightful discussion that goes on there, too, especially with regards to subjects that are too taboo or embarassing to discuss in places where you have an identity.
Got any reliable citations for those sources, or is it just the nebulous "some"? I mean, some sources say the NSA has brainwave scanners and can tell what you're thinking from a van outside your house. But those guys are nuts.
The protocol is an open standard, and anybody who has looked at OpenSSH's source code has "cracked" it. It's not terribly complex. If you're transmitting over an unencrypted connection or using a compromised cipher or key, anybody can figure out what you're doing.
The real issue (and what you're probably thinking of) is whether the NSA has backdoors in or has cracked different encryption ciphers that are commonly used over SSH. If they have, that's a much more widespread problem than just SSH, because those ciphers are used elsewhere, too (like in HTTPS).
The appeal is that it's the truth. People want to discover the truth about how our world works and how we came to exist in it, and science is how we do that -- and every bit of science we have indicates that evolution is the only plausible explanation for the current diversity of life on Earth.
you're pushing the idea that life has no true purpose and random death means progress
No, we're not, and I think the whole "you can't have meaning without religion!" bit is one of the most insidious lies the Christian church has pushed. Not following the dogma laid out in 2000-year-old books means you can make your own purpose in life. You can decide what gives you meaning and what you consider progress. I promise that if you go to any Humanist gathering, you will see plenty of people who have meaning and purpose without religion. Talk to them a bit, even -- I'll bet they'll be perfectly friendly if you say, "Hey, I'm a Christian but wanted to see what you guys are all about." Learning first-hand what life without religion is like is better than taking your pastor's word for it (after all, do you think maybe he has his own agenda?).
I'd rather bet on a .001% chance that Jesus is Lord than 99.999% chance that life is based on nothing but random chance and death.
Here's the thing, though: there's not a 0.001% chance of that, there's a 0% chance of it. There is zero evidence than any sort of supernatural being exists at all, and it's a huge leap from there to "Christianity is true," with just as much evidence. You are believing it purely because it makes you feel good. That's your choice, but maybe you should find out what the alternative is actually like before dismissing it.