1/5 children in America live in poverty. 2/5 lack adequate nutrition. But let's instead focus on improving the quality of life and longevity of the wealthy!
Starving children are not their target market. Keeping their target market alive longer to buy the stuff the ads they serve are advertising means more profit. It also means the data they collect about those people will be worth more, since data about dead people probably isn't worth anything.
Google's product is people. If they can keep their product around longer, then they can keeping selling it.
I see a major positive side effect of this: If students know that school officials are monitoring their social media accounts, then maybe (at lease the brighter ones) will learn to be a little more conscious of the stupid stuff that they post.
First, I think most of you are misunderstanding "novelty" as it relates to patents, by thinking that whatever invention is patented must be novel TODAY in order to be valid.
You're right as far as what "novel" means, but when most people in this discussion are saying "novel" what they really mean is "non-obvious." Novel means there is no prior art. Non-obvious means that others wouldn't have come up with the solution on their own. So this patent may have been novel, but since a bunch of others came up with the solution all by themselves once they were presented with the problem, that demonstrates that it isn't "non-obvious."
The only thing that matters is that it was novel at the time the patent application was filed. I read the patent at issue here and, at the time the application was filed, the technology was certainly novel. The fact that it has BECOME ubiquitous is irrelevant and immaterial.
Ok, let's start talking in the proper terminology that everybody means, which is "non-obvious." Just because others may not have come up with the solution for a few years doesn't mean the solution was non-obvious at the current state of the art when the patent was filed. One of the Graham factors for determining "objective evidence of nonobviousness" (Supreme Court in Graham et al. v. John Deere Co. of Kansas City et al.) is "long-felt but unsolved needs" - in this case there wasn't a long-felt but unsolved need. So the question is, once the need was felt, was the solution obvious? In this case, it seems hell yes, since everybody else came up with the same solution independent of the patent once the need was felt. That's what makes the patent obvious and therefore invalid.
The fact that it has BECOME ubiquitous is irrelevant and immaterial.
Unless it has become ubiquitous because it's the obvious solution to the problem. Then it is relevant and material to non-obviousness (but not relevant to novelty).
"Well to be fair, New Zealand doesn't have a software industry."
It most certainly does.
I'm assuming what he meant was, "New Zealand doesn't have a large enough software industry for them to have enough lobbying dollars to write the laws."
If anything, a typical TSA agent is ignorant and under-trained.
That's exactly the point. Their job is not think, because then they could be outsmarted. Their job is to follow a set of protocols. If the protocol says, "Stop and detain anybody carrying something that looks like it could be a grenade" then that's what they do, it doesn't matter whether or not they'd know if it was live if they chose to think about it. When you have an organization that bloated, that's just how it works. It's like how the greeter at Wal-Mart doesn't really have any say in product purchasing decisions, even if they can see that people would buy more Pringles if they carried Ranch flavor.
It's not the individual grunts being broken that's the problem. The problem is that the organization is broken.
If you're blasting ~2.4ghz RF from one place to another, what happens when something absorptive gets in the way? If it can charge a smart phone, is it enough energy to burn you if you get in the way, or start a fire if it happens to be going through a nail in your wall?
But the big glaring thing is, at least in the UK, you can be sent to prison for refusing to hand over your encryption keys. And this has happened. People like to talk big, but the prospect of eating porridge with a lot of nasty looking and foul smelling prisoners, does not appeal to most people.
The real question is, what kind of oversight is required in order for them to do that? Can they bust down your door and send you off to a foreign prison without judicial oversight or access to an attorney? Or do they require a search warrant, obtained through proper judicial oversight and requiring adequate probable cause, while granting you access to an attorney the whole way?
Of course in real life "proper" and "adequate" are subjective, but the point is there's a big difference between handing you a search warrant signed by a judge and reading you your rights vs sniffing everything and busting down your door because some stupid algorithm red-flagged you.
What's fucked up is that you can be so clearly and utterly clueless - yet still get modded insightful. The prosecutors didn't suppress evidence - the judge ruled that experts couldn't testify. And that's his bloody job. And reading TFA, I can't say that I think he's entirely in the wrong - because the defense screwed the pooch in the first place. (By not getting a properly qualified expert in the first place, and then by potentially violating the rules of evidence.) Pointing out where the defense screwed up is the prosecutors job, and vice versa.
Now you're getting into the technicalities that are some of what makes the system fucked, so you're really making the his case. No, technically, the prosecutors didn't suppress the evidence, they filed motions to the judge asking him to suppress the evidence. The point here is that the prosecutors did initiate it. That's what's fucked up about the system. The prosecutor's job should be to find the truth, the problem is that finding the truth and justice is not their job, the job is to win and to hell with truth or justice, exactly the point the parent was trying to make.
So they decided the first expert wasn't qualified enough, fine, let's assume they're right, but then if the point of the system is to find the truth and not just to win, then why should they be able to prevent the defendant from finding a different person that the judge can agree is an expert? The point of disallowing a last-minute switch is so that the prosecution has time to check the facts. In this case, they already knew the defendant was going to bring in an expert witness, and what the expert was going to testify to, it shouldn't matter if there was a last-minute switch up, they already had time to check the facts, all they should need is enough time to verify the expert's qualifications.
On another note, the prosecutors also tried to prevent the defense from attempting to examine test data replicating the Google Maps search that was created by investigators by claiming national security! Now that really does sound like they were suppressing (or strong-arming the judge to suppress) potentially exculpatory evidence. Through each of these things, it is clear that the prosecutor is neither serving the public nor justice, their only goal is to win, and that is evidence that the system is totally fucked. If the system were not fucked, then the prosecutors would be disbarred for this.
They're not _really_ trying to figure out data about who you are because they don't really care. What they care about are what ads are most likely to affect you. That's a clustering problem not an identification problem. And if those clusters happen to have similarities to a well-defined, named demographic category that just helps humans talk about them.
What is the data broker's market? Advertisers (those who purchase ads), not necessarily the advertiser's customers. Their job isn't to sell the advertiser's product. Their job is to sell ad space to advertisers. So the data brokers marketing success doesn't have to come from actually knowing who their advertiser's potential customers are, they only need to convince their advertiser's that they do. If they happen to get it right sometimes then that's just gravy.
I can see hoe maybe there are special techniques and such for people w/ firewalls or NAT or other such things, but for most of the world's internet users, I dont see how that would be a problem? Cant they just use the relay servers in cases where they WOULD have to bypass/punch a NAT?
Because a massive majority of end-users on home "broadband" connections (at least in the US, where Apple lives) use NAT. Without supporting it you're not supporting your target market. If you're using Facetime on an iDevice, chances are you're using it over home WiFi, so you can pretty much figure that means such a huge majority of the Facetime calls are made with at least one user behind a NAT that it would be pointless to do what you're talking about.
How do you know the patent troll in this case wasn't funded by the NSA to force the very same thing on Apple? By forcing Apple to route all sessions through their already compromised data centers, the ability for the government to monitor the calls is restored, and Apple doesn't have to admit anything.
What makes you think the NSA needs it to go through Apple's data centers in order to monitor/log it? And either way if they're not bothering with the actual content of the call but just who called who when, then that part has always gone through Apple's servers.
Personally, I take comfort in knowing that this will only be used against foreigner's computers, since I am a US citizen. Just like how we were assured the collection of phone data only applied to foreigners. Damn it, why does my CPU usage keep spiking?
Most big budget "defense" projects go over budget, over time, and don't perform to expectations. How well does this actually work (yeah, I know it's a rhetorical question)? Of course, by comparison, it's quite a bit less than the cost of a single B-2 bomber, so maybe its budget isn't large scale enough to underperform?
Why? Facebook's whole business model is based around selling data to advertisers. If it costs more to sue the gov't than what they would be charging the government for that data (maybe they already are) then, from a business perspective, why would they sue them? From a PR perspective, they want push the point that sharing your personal data is just fine, so suing would also be contrary to that goal.
Does Facebook even HAVE data they promise not to share openly?
While I don't think they promise anything, they don't generally share all their data openly. They charge money for it. Sure, on an individual basis you can get a lot of data openly on somebody based on their "public" profile, but you'll need to pay them if you want all of it or want it in bulk.
Obama doesn't seem to understand the restrictions on executive power.
Hell, I'm pro-legalization, but Obama's position does not constitutionally allow him to pick and choose which laws he will and will not enforce. Not that it's ever stopped him.
Actually, law enforcement is the executive branch's job. It was congress's failure to recognize the constitution that was the failure on this one. Can somebody please explain to me why in 1917 it required a constitutional amendment for the federal government to make alcohol illegal, which would show it was recognized that without the 18th amendment, that making alcohol illegal was a violation of the constitution because the federal government didn't have that power, but now the federal government can make marijuana illegal without a constitutional amendment? Whether or not a drug is illegal is supposed to be up to each state, not the federal government.
There is no invasion and no bloodlust here. Most in the US would rather not be involved, and know we will be damned for isolationism and disregard for human suffering if we do not act and damned for adventurism and disregard for sovereignty if we do.
But "most of the US" doesn't matter. Oil prices have already gone up due to the threat of US invasion, so somebody is already getting richer. If the US strikes, oil prices will go up that much more and somebody will be getting that much richer.
Or do you believe this is really because they used chemical weapons, because chemical weapons are an atrocious war crime? Is using chemical weapons on 100 people that much worse than executing millions of civilians, forcing their children to become child soldiers, forcing those children to kill their own parents, maiming and mutilating civilians, etc? Where has the US been for the victims of those civil wars?
Does anybody actually believe that the people of Syria would be better off if the US invades? Or are the only people that would be better off those that are invested in the oil and "defense" industries?
A state secret is something that needs to be secret in order to protect the lives of the citizens of that state (yeah, I know that's not how the law/precedent words it, but that's the fundamental idea of it). These are not state secrets. These are coverups of illegal activity that are labeled as "state secrets" in order to perpetuate the cover-up and not get power-abusers in trouble.
Imagine owning one of those things for several years. What happens if the damned thing gets stuck? Or a motor burns out that controls the expansion. Or a gear gets stripped...
Then you have to get it towed. Just like you do now when your car has a mechanical failure that prevents you from driving it.
And honestly, how small do you need to make a car? The difference between the expanded and contracted versions was not that great. I'd keep it expanded all the time. Why not. Are you ever going to have that little space? Unlikely.
That would depend on where you live or park. If you live in a rural or suburban area then this probably isn't the car for you. If you live or work in the downtown area of a large city, then this may be great for you. Just because it's not useful for everyone doesn't mean it's not useful for anyone.
I consider it a brave act of defiance on the part of the Guardian, good for them. It won't affect the fact that there's probably stashed copies of this stuff everywhere but the British Authorities wanted the actual hardware, so rather than give it to them they used an angle grinder themselves.
Does it matter who held the hammer over the drives? So the police held the hammer over the head of the guy who took the hammer to the drives. How's that really any different than if the government smashed the drives themselves? The error is more that of semantics than facts.
The act of defiance would have been to make the data available to the public as soon as the police tried to strong arm them. Smashing the drives was an act of compliance, not defiance.
Meanwhile, the agricultural practices Monsanto has promoted have produced 'superweeds' that are also roundup resistant (funny considering how many times Monsanto has sworn that ONLY their GM technique could produce a roundup ready plant).
You're both right, sort of. The "superweeds" you refer to don't have the gene that makes RR plants RR. Roundup (glyphosate) works by inhibiting a particular enzyme, EPSPS. RR plants are different in that instead of producing that particular enzyme, they produce a different one that fulfills the same function, which glyphosate does not inhibit. Superweeds don't produce that different enzyme, they produce the typical EPSPS, except they produce enough of it so that when it's inhibited by glyphosate there's still enough to survive. They got that way through selection pressure, not from getting the gene from GM plants. Of course, there wouldn't have been that selection pressure without dumping tons of roundup on crops, and there wouldn't be dumping lots of roundup on crops if those crops weren't Roundup Ready, so that's why I say you're both sort of right.
This is probably going to be the biggest obstacle in self-driving car adoption in the US (with the assumption that the technology will steadily progress to make it feasible in the near future). Even if it means a fraction of the accidents that currently happen...it's not a matter of safety, it's a matter of liability.
Just as a simple example: There's an accident. The cops are waving cars around the accident, indicating they should drive through a vacant lot. Would a self-driving car understand what to do?
Yes, because the cops would have the equipment to tell the cars how they should reroute themselves. This will also lead to a movie where an inbred hillbilly cannibal hacks the system and reroutes unsuspecting college kids into their backyard to torture and eat.
Slashdot Mirror
...would stink as bad. So all it really is is a cookie that's completely controlled by Google. Well played Google, well played.
1/5 children in America live in poverty. 2/5 lack adequate nutrition. But let's instead focus on improving the quality of life and longevity of the wealthy!
Starving children are not their target market. Keeping their target market alive longer to buy the stuff the ads they serve are advertising means more profit. It also means the data they collect about those people will be worth more, since data about dead people probably isn't worth anything.
Google's product is people. If they can keep their product around longer, then they can keeping selling it.
I see a major positive side effect of this: If students know that school officials are monitoring their social media accounts, then maybe (at lease the brighter ones) will learn to be a little more conscious of the stupid stuff that they post.
First, I think most of you are misunderstanding "novelty" as it relates to patents, by thinking that whatever invention is patented must be novel TODAY in order to be valid.
You're right as far as what "novel" means, but when most people in this discussion are saying "novel" what they really mean is "non-obvious." Novel means there is no prior art. Non-obvious means that others wouldn't have come up with the solution on their own. So this patent may have been novel, but since a bunch of others came up with the solution all by themselves once they were presented with the problem, that demonstrates that it isn't "non-obvious."
The only thing that matters is that it was novel at the time the patent application was filed. I read the patent at issue here and, at the time the application was filed, the technology was certainly novel. The fact that it has BECOME ubiquitous is irrelevant and immaterial.
Ok, let's start talking in the proper terminology that everybody means, which is "non-obvious." Just because others may not have come up with the solution for a few years doesn't mean the solution was non-obvious at the current state of the art when the patent was filed. One of the Graham factors for determining "objective evidence of nonobviousness" (Supreme Court in Graham et al. v. John Deere Co. of Kansas City et al.) is "long-felt but unsolved needs" - in this case there wasn't a long-felt but unsolved need. So the question is, once the need was felt, was the solution obvious? In this case, it seems hell yes, since everybody else came up with the same solution independent of the patent once the need was felt. That's what makes the patent obvious and therefore invalid.
The fact that it has BECOME ubiquitous is irrelevant and immaterial.
Unless it has become ubiquitous because it's the obvious solution to the problem. Then it is relevant and material to non-obviousness (but not relevant to novelty).
"Well to be fair, New Zealand doesn't have a software industry."
It most certainly does.
I'm assuming what he meant was, "New Zealand doesn't have a large enough software industry for them to have enough lobbying dollars to write the laws."
If anything, a typical TSA agent is ignorant and under-trained.
That's exactly the point. Their job is not think, because then they could be outsmarted. Their job is to follow a set of protocols. If the protocol says, "Stop and detain anybody carrying something that looks like it could be a grenade" then that's what they do, it doesn't matter whether or not they'd know if it was live if they chose to think about it. When you have an organization that bloated, that's just how it works. It's like how the greeter at Wal-Mart doesn't really have any say in product purchasing decisions, even if they can see that people would buy more Pringles if they carried Ranch flavor.
It's not the individual grunts being broken that's the problem. The problem is that the organization is broken.
If you're blasting ~2.4ghz RF from one place to another, what happens when something absorptive gets in the way? If it can charge a smart phone, is it enough energy to burn you if you get in the way, or start a fire if it happens to be going through a nail in your wall?
But the big glaring thing is, at least in the UK, you can be sent to prison for refusing to hand over your encryption keys. And this has happened. People like to talk big, but the prospect of eating porridge with a lot of nasty looking and foul smelling prisoners, does not appeal to most people.
The real question is, what kind of oversight is required in order for them to do that? Can they bust down your door and send you off to a foreign prison without judicial oversight or access to an attorney? Or do they require a search warrant, obtained through proper judicial oversight and requiring adequate probable cause, while granting you access to an attorney the whole way?
Of course in real life "proper" and "adequate" are subjective, but the point is there's a big difference between handing you a search warrant signed by a judge and reading you your rights vs sniffing everything and busting down your door because some stupid algorithm red-flagged you.
What's fucked up is that you can be so clearly and utterly clueless - yet still get modded insightful. The prosecutors didn't suppress evidence - the judge ruled that experts couldn't testify. And that's his bloody job. And reading TFA, I can't say that I think he's entirely in the wrong - because the defense screwed the pooch in the first place. (By not getting a properly qualified expert in the first place, and then by potentially violating the rules of evidence.) Pointing out where the defense screwed up is the prosecutors job, and vice versa.
Now you're getting into the technicalities that are some of what makes the system fucked, so you're really making the his case. No, technically, the prosecutors didn't suppress the evidence, they filed motions to the judge asking him to suppress the evidence. The point here is that the prosecutors did initiate it. That's what's fucked up about the system. The prosecutor's job should be to find the truth, the problem is that finding the truth and justice is not their job, the job is to win and to hell with truth or justice, exactly the point the parent was trying to make.
So they decided the first expert wasn't qualified enough, fine, let's assume they're right, but then if the point of the system is to find the truth and not just to win, then why should they be able to prevent the defendant from finding a different person that the judge can agree is an expert? The point of disallowing a last-minute switch is so that the prosecution has time to check the facts. In this case, they already knew the defendant was going to bring in an expert witness, and what the expert was going to testify to, it shouldn't matter if there was a last-minute switch up, they already had time to check the facts, all they should need is enough time to verify the expert's qualifications.
On another note, the prosecutors also tried to prevent the defense from attempting to examine test data replicating the Google Maps search that was created by investigators by claiming national security! Now that really does sound like they were suppressing (or strong-arming the judge to suppress) potentially exculpatory evidence. Through each of these things, it is clear that the prosecutor is neither serving the public nor justice, their only goal is to win, and that is evidence that the system is totally fucked. If the system were not fucked, then the prosecutors would be disbarred for this.
They're not _really_ trying to figure out data about who you are because they don't really care. What they care about are what ads are most likely to affect you. That's a clustering problem not an identification problem. And if those clusters happen to have similarities to a well-defined, named demographic category that just helps humans talk about them.
What is the data broker's market? Advertisers (those who purchase ads), not necessarily the advertiser's customers. Their job isn't to sell the advertiser's product. Their job is to sell ad space to advertisers. So the data brokers marketing success doesn't have to come from actually knowing who their advertiser's potential customers are, they only need to convince their advertiser's that they do. If they happen to get it right sometimes then that's just gravy.
I can see hoe maybe there are special techniques and such for people w/ firewalls or NAT or other such things, but for most of the world's internet users, I dont see how that would be a problem? Cant they just use the relay servers in cases where they WOULD have to bypass/punch a NAT?
Because a massive majority of end-users on home "broadband" connections (at least in the US, where Apple lives) use NAT. Without supporting it you're not supporting your target market. If you're using Facetime on an iDevice, chances are you're using it over home WiFi, so you can pretty much figure that means such a huge majority of the Facetime calls are made with at least one user behind a NAT that it would be pointless to do what you're talking about.
How do you know the patent troll in this case wasn't funded by the NSA to force the very same thing on Apple? By forcing Apple to route all sessions through their already compromised data centers, the ability for the government to monitor the calls is restored, and Apple doesn't have to admit anything.
What makes you think the NSA needs it to go through Apple's data centers in order to monitor/log it? And either way if they're not bothering with the actual content of the call but just who called who when, then that part has always gone through Apple's servers.
Personally, I take comfort in knowing that this will only be used against foreigner's computers, since I am a US citizen. Just like how we were assured the collection of phone data only applied to foreigners. Damn it, why does my CPU usage keep spiking?
Budget documents say the $652 million project...
Most big budget "defense" projects go over budget, over time, and don't perform to expectations. How well does this actually work (yeah, I know it's a rhetorical question)? Of course, by comparison, it's quite a bit less than the cost of a single B-2 bomber, so maybe its budget isn't large scale enough to underperform?
Particularly Wastebook, stand up and do the same.
Why? Facebook's whole business model is based around selling data to advertisers. If it costs more to sue the gov't than what they would be charging the government for that data (maybe they already are) then, from a business perspective, why would they sue them? From a PR perspective, they want push the point that sharing your personal data is just fine, so suing would also be contrary to that goal.
Does Facebook even HAVE data they promise not to share openly?
While I don't think they promise anything, they don't generally share all their data openly. They charge money for it. Sure, on an individual basis you can get a lot of data openly on somebody based on their "public" profile, but you'll need to pay them if you want all of it or want it in bulk.
Obama doesn't seem to understand the restrictions on executive power.
Hell, I'm pro-legalization, but Obama's position does not constitutionally allow him to pick and choose which laws he will and will not enforce. Not that it's ever stopped him.
Actually, law enforcement is the executive branch's job. It was congress's failure to recognize the constitution that was the failure on this one. Can somebody please explain to me why in 1917 it required a constitutional amendment for the federal government to make alcohol illegal, which would show it was recognized that without the 18th amendment, that making alcohol illegal was a violation of the constitution because the federal government didn't have that power, but now the federal government can make marijuana illegal without a constitutional amendment? Whether or not a drug is illegal is supposed to be up to each state, not the federal government.
There is no invasion and no bloodlust here. Most in the US would rather not be involved, and know we will be damned for isolationism and disregard for human suffering if we do not act and damned for adventurism and disregard for sovereignty if we do.
But "most of the US" doesn't matter. Oil prices have already gone up due to the threat of US invasion, so somebody is already getting richer. If the US strikes, oil prices will go up that much more and somebody will be getting that much richer.
Or do you believe this is really because they used chemical weapons, because chemical weapons are an atrocious war crime? Is using chemical weapons on 100 people that much worse than executing millions of civilians, forcing their children to become child soldiers, forcing those children to kill their own parents, maiming and mutilating civilians, etc? Where has the US been for the victims of those civil wars?
Does anybody actually believe that the people of Syria would be better off if the US invades? Or are the only people that would be better off those that are invested in the oil and "defense" industries?
Next /. poll:
Who are you most afraid of?
-Terrorists
-My government
-The voices in my head
-CowboyNeal
A state secret is something that needs to be secret in order to protect the lives of the citizens of that state (yeah, I know that's not how the law/precedent words it, but that's the fundamental idea of it). These are not state secrets. These are coverups of illegal activity that are labeled as "state secrets" in order to perpetuate the cover-up and not get power-abusers in trouble.
Imagine owning one of those things for several years. What happens if the damned thing gets stuck? Or a motor burns out that controls the expansion. Or a gear gets stripped...
Then you have to get it towed. Just like you do now when your car has a mechanical failure that prevents you from driving it.
And honestly, how small do you need to make a car? The difference between the expanded and contracted versions was not that great. I'd keep it expanded all the time. Why not. Are you ever going to have that little space? Unlikely.
That would depend on where you live or park. If you live in a rural or suburban area then this probably isn't the car for you. If you live or work in the downtown area of a large city, then this may be great for you. Just because it's not useful for everyone doesn't mean it's not useful for anyone.
The value of an education does not reside solely in earnings potential.
It does if you're the student loan lender.
Geebus, the factual errors on these summaries are becoming eye-watering!
The Guardian destroyed the laptop and the hard drive rather than turn them over. Shit, the title of the article has that in it:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/20/nsa-snowden-files-drives-destroyed-london
I consider it a brave act of defiance on the part of the Guardian, good for them. It won't affect the fact that there's probably stashed copies of this stuff everywhere but the British Authorities wanted the actual hardware, so rather than give it to them they used an angle grinder themselves.
Does it matter who held the hammer over the drives? So the police held the hammer over the head of the guy who took the hammer to the drives. How's that really any different than if the government smashed the drives themselves? The error is more that of semantics than facts.
The act of defiance would have been to make the data available to the public as soon as the police tried to strong arm them. Smashing the drives was an act of compliance, not defiance.
Meanwhile, the agricultural practices Monsanto has promoted have produced 'superweeds' that are also roundup resistant (funny considering how many times Monsanto has sworn that ONLY their GM technique could produce a roundup ready plant).
You're both right, sort of. The "superweeds" you refer to don't have the gene that makes RR plants RR. Roundup (glyphosate) works by inhibiting a particular enzyme, EPSPS. RR plants are different in that instead of producing that particular enzyme, they produce a different one that fulfills the same function, which glyphosate does not inhibit. Superweeds don't produce that different enzyme, they produce the typical EPSPS, except they produce enough of it so that when it's inhibited by glyphosate there's still enough to survive. They got that way through selection pressure, not from getting the gene from GM plants. Of course, there wouldn't have been that selection pressure without dumping tons of roundup on crops, and there wouldn't be dumping lots of roundup on crops if those crops weren't Roundup Ready, so that's why I say you're both sort of right.
This is probably going to be the biggest obstacle in self-driving car adoption in the US (with the assumption that the technology will steadily progress to make it feasible in the near future). Even if it means a fraction of the accidents that currently happen...it's not a matter of safety, it's a matter of liability.
Just as a simple example: There's an accident. The cops are waving cars around the accident, indicating they should drive through a vacant lot. Would a self-driving car understand what to do?
Yes, because the cops would have the equipment to tell the cars how they should reroute themselves. This will also lead to a movie where an inbred hillbilly cannibal hacks the system and reroutes unsuspecting college kids into their backyard to torture and eat.