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  1. Re:NO it does not. on Aliens and the Fermi Paradox · · Score: 1

    If the time between the stars is long enough, the ratio of time traveled to time spent colonizing the planet between hops is still pretty high, so it would change average speed somewhat, but not as much as you might expect. Proxima Centauri is about 4 light years from us. At 1% the speed of light, that's 400 years travel time. Even giving ourselves 100 years to chill out, that's 500 years for every 4 light year jump, averaging 0.8% of C. That's 80% of our time spent traveling. I don't know the average distance between stars, but it's almost certainly larger than the distance beween us and Proxima Centauri, so the travel/colonize ratio should be even higher.

    On a 4 hour drive, a 45 minute lunch and bathroom break really brings your average speed down. On a 1000 year space flight, a 50 year colonization break doesn't make nearly as much of a dent.

  2. Re:Too bad about evolution on Interviews: Forrest Mims Answers Your Questions · · Score: 1

    It's all part of the lifecycle of the physicist.

  3. Re:Forest Mims is a classy Guy on Interviews: Forrest Mims Answers Your Questions · · Score: 1

    ....he presents many arguments that are centuries old, and expects to be celebrated for it.

    That sounds like every side in every theological debate ever.

  4. Re:Wait a sec on Belief In Evolution Doesn't Measure Science Literacy · · Score: 1

    But if you're "predicting" the same thing you're observing, it's not a prediction. It's just an observation.

  5. Re:Wait a sec on Belief In Evolution Doesn't Measure Science Literacy · · Score: 2

    Are you suggesting that the observation that people are liars and tend to do bad things is something that nobody noticed until the Bible made them take a good hard look? Because it seems to me that it's sort of a fundamental property of humans the world over and throughout time and it would be really surprising if the realization was a new development. Did the Chinese not know that people were liars and sinners until Christianity reached them? What about the Aztecs? To "predict" something it usually needs to be an observation you haven't yet made.

    Does the Bible also predict things like, "People die," and, "fire burns stuff"?

  6. Re:Wait a sec on Belief In Evolution Doesn't Measure Science Literacy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think the point is that there's a difference between "predicting" something and observing and describing it. You could just as well say that Helios is real because the story of Helios predicts that the sun will rise and set every day. More likely, people noticed the sun rising and setting well before anybody thought to create Helios. His story isn't a prediction. It's a story that was written to match the data.

  7. Re:I propose a test ... on California Opens Driverless Car Competition With Testing Regulations · · Score: 1

    That's the thing, though. It's not "left to chance" in the sense you're talking about. In cases like that, the car likely does have very sensible, well-defined instructions that are dead nuts correct for that family of problems. It's just that those instructions are optimal for that family of cases rather than that specific case. If you're boxed in and you absolutely have to swerve into somebody, the best thing to do is probably to swerve away from oncoming traffic (to the right in the US), all else held equal.

    You adopt the strategy that will crack the fewest eggs over the long run, even if it doesn't account for things like, "How many children are in the car on the right?" or, "Is the childless guy on the left driving to see his mother on her deathbed for he last time?" or, "Is one of the children in the car on the left going to grow up to be the next Hitler?" Those factors may make one particular situation a little bit more interesting, but not interesting enough to hold the engineering firm responsible. Back to your example, unless the car decided to go on a wild and unnecessary killing spree because of the novel situation, the person who would be held responsible is the truck driver going the wrong way down the highway.

    A more general question that ends up being asked in the real world a little more often: If a car company can, say, move the gas tank in a way that reduces deadly fires but slightly increases the probability of a passenger's beheading, and that move will behead 1 person per year but save 10 per year from burning to death, should the family of the 1 person be able to sue them for making that change? Or do we acknowledge that strapping ourselves into boxes on wheels that go zipping down obstructed highways carries some inherent risk and that no engineering solution can optimally handle every situation?

  8. Re:I propose a test ... on California Opens Driverless Car Competition With Testing Regulations · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think that the driver of the vehicle going the wrong way down the highway would probably be at fault.

    It's easy to come up with vanishingly rare scenarios with no solution that a computer won't be able to solve (although how a human driver would do better in this situation is beyond me). Making policy based on bizarre edge cases is silly.

  9. Re:Measuring Competence on The Sci-Fi Myth of Robotic Competence · · Score: 1

    Nah, 700k miles is nothing. Human drivers drive >70M miles between fatal accidents, and that's on average.

    There's difference between a fatal accident and a moving violation. What's the average distance driven between traffic citations? And the average distance between nonfatal accidents? I don't have the data, but most of the people I know have been involved in nonfatal accidents and been ticketed, and my eyeballing of the stories says that the average distance between those events is less than 700k miles.

  10. Re:fuck slashdot beta on London Black Cabs Threaten Chaos To Stop Uber · · Score: 2

    There's "a little meddling" like requiring safety and price transparency. Then there's "a lot of meddling" like limiting the number of medallions (like the NY disaster), having insane pricing zones with an incomprehensible pricing scheme (DC), or requiring that a person memorize a map of one of the world's largest metro areas instead of simply using GPS. Seriously, this could all be solved with basic safety regulations and meter/GPS linkage with pricing transparency requirements. No need to insist that the driver needs to be able to perform parlor tricks or even be a particularly polite person. I'd be willing to accept the black cab as a trademark and require all other fare-charging vehicles to look different to ensure that the premium trademark retained its value.

    If I were to visit London, I'd probably be really interested in the black cab option as a premium service. But if I lived in London and needed to travel regularly, I'd be pretty irritated that I was constantly paying for premium service when all I need is safe, reliable transport with transparent pricing. We don't ban buses because the experience is sub-par compared to premium cab services. We recognize that they're safe and reliable, the pricing is not a scam, and that the price point is an important consideration for most of the population.

  11. Re:When it settles on London Black Cabs Threaten Chaos To Stop Uber · · Score: 1

    ...it also serves something like a union to protect the workers (drivers) by limiting the supply.

    I'm pretty sure that most of us understand exactly that. In fact, that's the primary aspect of taxi regulation that I object to. I'm all for requiring some form of taxi license, but the only requirements I'd attatch to that would be very simple ones, like:

    1) Having the appropriate license to drive. Maybe a stricter test like a commercial driver might have to pass.
    2) A safe vehicle.
    3) Insurance.
    4) Perhaps a criminal background check to exclude violent criminals.
    5) Some way of enforcing price transparency (a sealed, certified meter that displays rates).
    6) The cost of license renewal should cover the enforcement of these rules.

    Beyond that, knock yourself out. No limits on the number of cabs. Drive any vehicle as long as it's safe and street legal. Use GPS or don't. Know fascinating history and recommend great restaurants or don't. I don't care. The price discovery system will take care of the rest of it like it does for other services.

  12. Re:fuck slashdot beta on London Black Cabs Threaten Chaos To Stop Uber · · Score: 1

    That may be true, but is it up to those of us with Excellent Taste in Very Expensive Things to legislate the purchasing of those more expensive and nicer things? "You have very bad taste, cheapskate. You'll like it a lot better when I show you what's best for you by making those cheap things unavailable."

    That may be honestly the right thing to do when people can't tell the difference before the transaction and it's a really important transaction (health insurance, prescription drugs), but as long as the car gets you where you want to go and you know what you'll be paying for it, are cab drivers really on that list? Is being driven by somebody without encyclopedic knowledge of London's history and local culture really that much of an issue?

  13. Re:This on London Black Cabs Threaten Chaos To Stop Uber · · Score: 1

    It's possible to regulate taxis for safety (licensing tests, background checks, etc.) and price transparency (the same way electronic scales and such are certified for trade not to be cheating customers) without artificially limiting the number of suppliers or rigging prices. You just set the parameters (no rapists/murders get taxi licenses, cars must meet safety standards, prices must be clear in advance, meters must perform adequately) and then let the market take care of the rest of it.

  14. Re:That's annoying! on In SF: an App For Auctioning Off Your Public Parking Spot · · Score: 1

    I don't see any reason this would need to be true. There's lots of places where public parking is sufficient for normal use, but would still be great places to extract a little money (your expected price would mostly vary with the quality of alternatives).

    If the parking is sufficient for normal use, then I wouldn't expect to see people who are desperate for a space willing to shell out the hypothetical $100 that was being proposed. An extra car occupying a spot simply wouldn't make any serious difference at that margin. Can you describe a lot that simultaneously has sufficient parking but also commands a price in the $100 for a free space? What would that look like? I'm assuming by "sufficient parking" you mean "full but with a reasonable amount of turnover."

    You could create parking problems wherever you wanted - heck, you could just go from business to business, ransoming the close public parking with your 20 vehicles.

    OK, with 20 vehicles you could start causing some trouble. Although when parking is measured in the hundreds of spaces, which it is for a city with parking structures available in any 1/2 mile radius, that's still a tough game to play. But you'd need a few people to drive them around (and to drive each other to pick up the extra vehicles). So now we're talking about a highly coordinated commercial operation with many thousands of dollars in invested capital and a number of employees to pay. Given that there's an upper limit to what you can charge (mostly dictated by commercial lots in the area), you're hoping to break even by extorting the very rare person who is desperate for a space or the wealthy weirdo who needs $100 a space street parking for his Bentley. It just seems far fetched as a sustainable model.

    To the extent that it could be done, I suppose I'd be in favor of doing something about it. Smart meters like SF Park would completely eliminate the problem without even requiring enforcement by making it prohibitively expensive to occupy the last spaces in any given area.

  15. Re:That's annoying! on In SF: an App For Auctioning Off Your Public Parking Spot · · Score: 2

    Well, the labor theory of value is long dead for good reason. I could spend months spitting into a barrel and filling it up, but nobody would pay me a value commensurate with my effort. There's a place in the world for arbitrage. And of course, if enough people engage in that arbitrage, the profit from the arbitrage opportunity becomes pretty minimal.

    It seems like a few things are going on here:

    1) We're clearly charging far less for public parking spaces than the market will bear. This is not good because it encourages overconsumption and contention for spaces.
    2) Any place where the "scalper" price is high is likely to be chronically full. That is, in general, you should expect to be unable to find parking during busy times at those locations. That means that if we ban this practice, more often than not, the people who you describe as desperately needing those spaces won't get them at all.
    3) We rage at people who are willing to vacate a space for a price when somebody else desperately needs the space, but we don't rail at people who occupy that space for unimportant stuff (hanging out a coffee shop) when somebody desperately needs the space.
    4) In a perfect world, the people who need the space the most will get it. The closest approximation of that would be an auction system. The only reason it's a problem is that the auction is being conducted by a middle man rather than by the city directly.

    A much better system is a smart meter system like SF Park. It gives you the "good" properties (people who needs the spaces badly are almost certain to get them) without the "bad" properties of a middle man getting a cash windfall.

  16. Re: I don't understand big cities - off topic on In SF: an App For Auctioning Off Your Public Parking Spot · · Score: 1

    Cities ate not more efficient than suburbs by every measure; if they were, it would be cheaper, not more expensive, to live in cities.

    People pay more for things that are more efficient. A refrigerator that consumes less electricity will, all else held equal, command a higher price because it saves the consumer money. A home that has everything you need conveniently nearby also commands a higher price because it's more efficient to live there than to live, say, on the moon and having to do all of your shopping by rocket ship.

  17. Re:That's annoying! on In SF: an App For Auctioning Off Your Public Parking Spot · · Score: 1

    If the lot is typically full by 8:40, doesn't the alternate situation look like this most of the time?

    1) You don't park in the spot by 8:30.
    2) By 8:40, all of the spots including the one you didn't park in are full.
    3) Somebody who needs to get on the 8:50 train shows up to find the lot full and can't acquire a parking space for any amount of money, even though he would gladly have paid $100 for it.

    How is the first outcome that much worse than this one?

  18. Re:That's annoying! on In SF: an App For Auctioning Off Your Public Parking Spot · · Score: 1

    The stock price no longer represents what a company did in the past, it is just what analysts expect it to be in the future.

    Stock prices have always represented what investors think the company will do in the future. You don't buy a share in a company based on what it did in the past (unless it accumulated a big pile of cash or easily sellable resources in the past and can be liquidated now for more than the price of the stock). Why would you invest in something based on returns that other people have already consumed? That's like buying a totaled Ferrari in a junkyard because it used to drive great.

  19. Re:Dynamic parking prices on In SF: an App For Auctioning Off Your Public Parking Spot · · Score: 2

    My understanding is that it's working pretty well. Crusing for parking spaces appears to have dropped significantly, and that's a major goal of these systems. Yeah, it's inconvenient to be unable to find parking, but the real mess happens in a busy, congested city when a large number of drivers are on the road simply because they're driving in circles lookin for parking spaces. That's a serious contributor to traffic congestion, especially when they stop and wait whenever it looks like a spot might open up.

    The locals are angry about it, but that's pretty common. The same thing happens with smart meters or congestion pricing. They're better for everybody in the long run, but some poeple get riled up because they were heavy peak users. Everybody needs to remember: You're not "stuck in" traffic. You are traffic.

  20. Re:California = 1D10T Errors on California City Considers Restarting Desalination Plant To Fight Drought · · Score: 1

    Nothing is free, but the reality is that producing enough food to feed the US population is not hard and we don't need to dedicate enormous resources to doing it. We produce ridiculous amounts of food with agriculture being a very small part of our GDP, and, as you point out, we can import food as well. We don't need to turn deserts into farmland in order to avoid starvation.

  21. :::sigh:::

    Are we still going back and forth between "the FAA doesn't have the authority to fine this one guy in this one case" and "the FAA is unconstitutional and shouldn't exist"? Because you people are really going to have to pick one to talk about and stick with it for a thread or at least let me know when you're moving the goalposts.

  22. Does the same hold true for railroads and their associated federal regulations in the 1800s? Or regulation of commercial shipments by river? Gibbons v. Ogden established a pretty similar precedent very early on. I think there's a good reason why the founders didn't say, "Interestate commerce via roads" or something similar. They really meant interstate commerce in general, whether conducted on foot, by horse or by boat. I doubt they would have carved out an exception for air travel if they had been aware of it.

    Personally, I'm thankful that we don't have a constitutional convention for these types of things when established precedent will do. For one thing, it would be fabulously inefficient. For another, our constitution would probably start looking like the California state constitution--an unholy mess full of stuff that has no place in a document that's supposed to describe how the government operates.

  23. You managed to pretty much totally avoid the question. What gives the FAA the power and authority to regulate intrastate airspace?

    I answered the question you asked in the post I responded to, not the one one you're asking now. To clarify further:

    1) The feds can regulate airspace as it applies to interstate commerce. That's a whole shitton of airspace. The same way the feds can build highways even though a lot of highway travel is intrastate and the same way they regulated railroads even though there were plenty of intrastate routes. The same way the FCC can regulate the radio spectrum even though most transmitters probably don't cross state lines. It's an interstate medium with a huge interstate commerce problem.
    2) That doesn't mean they can or should regulate "all" airspace. Airspace that is never involved in interstate commerce shouldn't be included.
    3) But we also can't draw fine lines like, "These are the air regulations for aircraft in this major commercial air lane unless the aircraft isn't crossing state lines. If it's staying within the state, a whole different set of rules apply, and we'll just cross our fingers and hope that they're not dangerously incompatible with the rules being followed by the aircraft that are crossing state lines." So there needs to be a lot of leeway, for regulations to apply to things that affect those air lanes.
    4) I'm not saying at all that the leeway applied in (3) applies to this case.
    5) The original question I responded to before yours was "What gives the feds the authority to regulate airspace [airspace in general, not all airspace]?" The answer to that is pretty clear.

    Is that clear now?

  24. Let me highlight an important part:

    Once you have that, it's pretty straightforward to say that their job is to regulate flying things that may occupy or present hazards to that commercial airspace.

    I don't think I said anything about this particular case falling under that jurisdiction. My point is simply that the idea that the feds have no place regulating airspace in general is silly.

  25. Was this?

    Ummm... Maybe?