there's one that can drive an open-wheeled indycar around Nurburgring in the rain with professional-class lap times
Which doesn't mean driverless cars are much closer to being usable in the real world. Nurburgring, like any race course, consists of a single known path, and you don't have to worry about pedestrians walking across the road without looking.
Considering that children with autism almost always have major digestive issues and will usually see dramatic behavioral improvement by moving to a strict gluten free, casein free diet
You're exaggerating a bit. Digestive issues (and food allergies) are common in autistic people, but not "almost always". Often they're not severe problems either. As for the restricted diet, it does work for some, and it's certainly something worth trying for an autistic person, but it doesn't have any effect on most of them.
absolutely no local variables. it could lead to stack overflows
In which case you shouldn't have function calls or interrupts either. I know recursion and dynamic allocation are to be avoided, but even in the highest rel standards I've never heard of not being able to use local variables. Careful stack use analysis and testing, sure.
All of the new electronic stuff is required for emissions and fuel efficiency.
You don't need things like throttles without a mechanical connection for that. The emissions and fuel efficiency is handled by the engine and transmission controllers. You might need to automatically move the throttle plate a little for idle, but that's about it. They were doing stuff like that long before some genius had the idea of getting rid of the throttle cable.
I'm not so sure cost is the biggest problem. Once upon a time ABS was an exotic tech used only on aircraft. I was impressed when they became a car option.
My biggest concern is whether a driverless car can be smart enough to reliably handle all the situations that arise. Probably someday, but I don't know when. Google's over-hyped toys can only handle clear weather, and even then they often have to kick out and go to manual control.
you *know* that somewhere in the software there's an extremely rare corner case that will fail to shut off the x-ray source
Certainly you should assume there is, and have some sort of "dumb" safety override (e.g. a simple timer, not in software). Doing otherwise in a system like that is madness.
I've known a lot of high-quality developers over my 15 years of professionally developing software. The reason I don't want an automated car is because of these people. People make mistakes, intentionally or otherwise.
When it comes to true high-rel software, like that written to DO-178B Level A (an avionics software standard used for things like fly-by-wire) it's almost never the software per se that's at fault. The stuff is amazingly good. It's also amazingly expensive to write and test. You might also find it frustrating because it brings new meaning to the idea of conservative design. For example, I don't think it allows recursion. I know it doesn't allow dynamic allocation.
There are unforeseen circumstances that the software may not understand.
That's more the point. When things like fly-by-wire systems have problems, it's almost never the software itself, but something that was unforeseen by the system designers.
A foreseen circumstance: I've yet to see a demo of an automated car navigating anything resembling an icy surface (safely or otherwise), let alone in stop & go traffic in a city such as Chicago, where such things are quite common.
Agreed. This technology is interesting, but it's way over-hyped. It's impressive to be able to drive on a nice clear day, but a far cry from the real world, even in Silicon Valley, let alone Chicago.
Ever hear of the flying cars that in the 1960's they said we'd all have soon? I haven't seen any lately. I suspect driverless cars robust enough not to require human intervention when the going gets tough may be developed on the same schedule.
The problem is if you try to artificially curb their salaries/bonuses they will just get up and move to some other nation where they don't.
You mean they're going to move to CEO fantasy land? In the US a CEO of a large company earns about 400x as much as an average employee. The runner up is the UK, at 45x. The rest of the developed world, like Western Europe (sans UK), Canada, Japan, Australia, etc. varies between 10x and 20x. Let American CEO's leave, because they're obviously not globally competitive.
I make about $32,000 a year, which is well below the national average salary, so my opinion on this must be driven by something other than personal gain
Are you suggesting that when you are in a public park, being filmed by security cameras is a violation of your 4th amendment rights?
If the information from those cameras is subject to techniques like automatic recognition, and used to track people who are not under any reasonable suspicion, then yes. To say otherwise is to play the government's apologist, looking for any technicality that can be used to work around the Bill of Rights. That's how a criminal defense lawyer works, because a defendant has to be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and can only be subject to laws that are much more specific than the Bill of Rights. That's not how the Bill of Rights should be interpreted, and it wasn't until the Supreme Court was reduced to a bunch of government lickspittles like yourself.
By your thinking government eavesdropping on phone calls shouldn't require a warrant because a phone call isn't "persons, houses, papers, [or] effects". Thankfully at one time we had a Supreme Court that understood that the 18th century framers of the Constitution couldn't possible have foreseen telephones, let alone automatic recognition and computerized databases. As such the court made reasonable interpretations of how our inalienable rights applied to post-18th century technology.
The RIGHT of free travel between the states is guaranteed in the constitution.
Where? Seriously. I believe that it is a basic right, and in the 19th century and before was treated as such (there are several SCOTUS rulings that dealt with that). It may have been handled under a longstanding common law right and/or the 9th Amendment, but it's not specifically enumerated. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
It doesn't bother you because you're only aware of it in an abstract sense. I've got a proposal. Let the government track people all they want, as long as they periodically send people the government's records of where they've been. You'd soon see outrage of historic proportions.
Your right to privacy doesn't automatically completely disappear because you're on government property. If you go to a public park, you still have a right against unreasonable search and seizure. A cop can't tell you to empty your pockets or open the trunk of your car just because he feels like it and you happen to be on government property. Admittedly "stop and frisk" has made a mockery of that, but it used to apply before they made a mockery of the 4th Amendment.
most all the huge wars in the past have happened because of too many people and too few resources. Look forward to more as resources die off
Including nuclear war. Nuclear winter is the cure for global warming. Ergo we have a negative feedback loop - one which the people focused on methane failed to take into account.
they could move to water wicking and cut the evaporation rate massively. I doubt they will do that as it would up labor costs
Make farmers pay the real cost of water and they'll switch to more efficient irrigation techniques in a real hurry.
I think a few Aquanators would be more then enough to power the initial lift of the water.
Ok, Aquanators are great. Bottom line though is the electricity they generate could be used/sold elsewhere, instead of pumping water to a state that would have no water shortage, were it not for the ridiculous subsidies to farmers.
There is no shortage of water in CA, but there is a surplus of agri-politics.
There are already numerous water transportation aqueducts all over that region.
And the combined flow rate is? Furthermore, how long are those aqueducts. What is their destination?
Your forgetting this is already being done from other states.
Which other states? The watery paradises of Arizona and Nevada? If there is something like that, I'm sure it's being used with as much care for conservation as Owens Valley.
looking at how it is already done
I never said it couldn't be done - I said it shouldn't be done.
My real mistake was in assuming that (some people in) Oregon would be foolish and short-sighted enough to do this. If nothing else the water could be be used to irrigate Oregon's high "desert" (actually a semi-arid region, about the same as the Sacramento Valley, and wetter than the San Joaquin Valley). But even as far as existing economic activity is concerned, it's best to consider long term issues. From Tree-ring data reveals multiyear droughts unlike any in recent memory:
Extended periods of low flows include a 12-year drought starting in the 1840s, a severe drought in the 1930s, and four periods of low flows in 1775, 1805, 1890 and 1925. The half-century following the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, the period during which most of the dams and operating rules on the rivers were developed, was anomalous for its relative absence of multiyear droughts.
Farmers, hydroelectric power producers, shippers and wildlife managers remember the Columbia River Basin drought of 1992-1993 as a year of misery.
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there's one that can drive an open-wheeled indycar around Nurburgring in the rain with professional-class lap times
Which doesn't mean driverless cars are much closer to being usable in the real world. Nurburgring, like any race course, consists of a single known path, and you don't have to worry about pedestrians walking across the road without looking.
Those at least have the brains to *PULL OVER* if there is some weird condition (internal or external)
No, the automatic systems kick out and say to the driver "your problem schmuck". In other words, they're least helpful when most needed.
Considering that children with autism almost always have major digestive issues and will usually see dramatic behavioral improvement by moving to a strict gluten free, casein free diet
You're exaggerating a bit. Digestive issues (and food allergies) are common in autistic people, but not "almost always". Often they're not severe problems either. As for the restricted diet, it does work for some, and it's certainly something worth trying for an autistic person, but it doesn't have any effect on most of them.
absolutely no local variables. it could lead to stack overflows
In which case you shouldn't have function calls or interrupts either. I know recursion and dynamic allocation are to be avoided, but even in the highest rel standards I've never heard of not being able to use local variables. Careful stack use analysis and testing, sure.
Masters of the trade know their tools well.
Which is why designers of hi-rel systems never use recursion.
Are you sure? Diesels have electronic controls these days. Even before that, how did you shut them off normally?
All of the new electronic stuff is required for emissions and fuel efficiency.
You don't need things like throttles without a mechanical connection for that. The emissions and fuel efficiency is handled by the engine and transmission controllers. You might need to automatically move the throttle plate a little for idle, but that's about it. They were doing stuff like that long before some genius had the idea of getting rid of the throttle cable.
I'm not so sure cost is the biggest problem. Once upon a time ABS was an exotic tech used only on aircraft. I was impressed when they became a car option.
My biggest concern is whether a driverless car can be smart enough to reliably handle all the situations that arise. Probably someday, but I don't know when. Google's over-hyped toys can only handle clear weather, and even then they often have to kick out and go to manual control.
you *know* that somewhere in the software there's an extremely rare corner case that will fail to shut off the x-ray source
Certainly you should assume there is, and have some sort of "dumb" safety override (e.g. a simple timer, not in software). Doing otherwise in a system like that is madness.
I've known a lot of high-quality developers over my 15 years of professionally developing software. The reason I don't want an automated car is because of these people. People make mistakes, intentionally or otherwise.
When it comes to true high-rel software, like that written to DO-178B Level A (an avionics software standard used for things like fly-by-wire) it's almost never the software per se that's at fault. The stuff is amazingly good. It's also amazingly expensive to write and test. You might also find it frustrating because it brings new meaning to the idea of conservative design. For example, I don't think it allows recursion. I know it doesn't allow dynamic allocation.
There are unforeseen circumstances that the software may not understand.
That's more the point. When things like fly-by-wire systems have problems, it's almost never the software itself, but something that was unforeseen by the system designers.
A foreseen circumstance: I've yet to see a demo of an automated car navigating anything resembling an icy surface (safely or otherwise), let alone in stop & go traffic in a city such as Chicago, where such things are quite common.
Agreed. This technology is interesting, but it's way over-hyped. It's impressive to be able to drive on a nice clear day, but a far cry from the real world, even in Silicon Valley, let alone Chicago.
Ever hear of the flying cars that in the 1960's they said we'd all have soon? I haven't seen any lately. I suspect driverless cars robust enough not to require human intervention when the going gets tough may be developed on the same schedule.
The problem is if you try to artificially curb their salaries/bonuses they will just get up and move to some other nation where they don't.
You mean they're going to move to CEO fantasy land? In the US a CEO of a large company earns about 400x as much as an average employee. The runner up is the UK, at 45x. The rest of the developed world, like Western Europe (sans UK), Canada, Japan, Australia, etc. varies between 10x and 20x. Let American CEO's leave, because they're obviously not globally competitive.
I make about $32,000 a year, which is well below the national average salary, so my opinion on this must be driven by something other than personal gain
TL;DR
Thank you sir, may I have another.
If your point is that that's also a violation of the 4th Amendment, I couldn't agree more.
Government lickspittle AC's always make such eloquent and informative rebuttals.
Are you suggesting that when you are in a public park, being filmed by security cameras is a violation of your 4th amendment rights?
If the information from those cameras is subject to techniques like automatic recognition, and used to track people who are not under any reasonable suspicion, then yes. To say otherwise is to play the government's apologist, looking for any technicality that can be used to work around the Bill of Rights. That's how a criminal defense lawyer works, because a defendant has to be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and can only be subject to laws that are much more specific than the Bill of Rights. That's not how the Bill of Rights should be interpreted, and it wasn't until the Supreme Court was reduced to a bunch of government lickspittles like yourself.
By your thinking government eavesdropping on phone calls shouldn't require a warrant because a phone call isn't "persons, houses, papers, [or] effects". Thankfully at one time we had a Supreme Court that understood that the 18th century framers of the Constitution couldn't possible have foreseen telephones, let alone automatic recognition and computerized databases. As such the court made reasonable interpretations of how our inalienable rights applied to post-18th century technology.
I could criticize you for posting something like that, but I'm sure you're only following orders.
The RIGHT of free travel between the states is guaranteed in the constitution.
Where? Seriously. I believe that it is a basic right, and in the 19th century and before was treated as such (there are several SCOTUS rulings that dealt with that). It may have been handled under a longstanding common law right and/or the 9th Amendment, but it's not specifically enumerated. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
No, it's because you're doing it on a government owned highway.
The same argument could be applied to walking on a government owned sidewalk.
It doesn't bother you because you're only aware of it in an abstract sense. I've got a proposal. Let the government track people all they want, as long as they periodically send people the government's records of where they've been. You'd soon see outrage of historic proportions.
Your right to privacy doesn't automatically completely disappear because you're on government property. If you go to a public park, you still have a right against unreasonable search and seizure. A cop can't tell you to empty your pockets or open the trunk of your car just because he feels like it and you happen to be on government property. Admittedly "stop and frisk" has made a mockery of that, but it used to apply before they made a mockery of the 4th Amendment.
They should have given them hot dogs and marshmallows instead, to roast if it reignites,
most all the huge wars in the past have happened because of too many people and too few resources. Look forward to more as resources die off
Including nuclear war. Nuclear winter is the cure for global warming. Ergo we have a negative feedback loop - one which the people focused on methane failed to take into account.
they could move to water wicking and cut the evaporation rate massively. I doubt they will do that as it would up labor costs
Make farmers pay the real cost of water and they'll switch to more efficient irrigation techniques in a real hurry.
I think a few Aquanators would be more then enough to power the initial lift of the water.
Ok, Aquanators are great. Bottom line though is the electricity they generate could be used/sold elsewhere, instead of pumping water to a state that would have no water shortage, were it not for the ridiculous subsidies to farmers.
There is no shortage of water in CA, but there is a surplus of agri-politics.
In the 21st century the dust comes from the nuclear war that's triggered by loss or resources.
There are already numerous water transportation aqueducts all over that region.
And the combined flow rate is? Furthermore, how long are those aqueducts. What is their destination?
Your forgetting this is already being done from other states.
Which other states? The watery paradises of Arizona and Nevada? If there is something like that, I'm sure it's being used with as much care for conservation as Owens Valley.
looking at how it is already done
I never said it couldn't be done - I said it shouldn't be done.
My real mistake was in assuming that (some people in) Oregon would be foolish and short-sighted enough to do this. If nothing else the water could be be used to irrigate Oregon's high "desert" (actually a semi-arid region, about the same as the Sacramento Valley, and wetter than the San Joaquin Valley). But even as far as existing economic activity is concerned, it's best to consider long term issues. From Tree-ring data reveals multiyear droughts unlike any in recent memory:
Extended periods of low flows include a 12-year drought starting in the 1840s, a severe drought in the 1930s, and four periods of low flows in 1775, 1805, 1890 and 1925. The half-century following the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, the period during which most of the dams and operating rules on the rivers were developed, was anomalous for its relative absence of multiyear droughts.
Farmers, hydroelectric power producers, shippers and wildlife managers remember the Columbia River Basin drought of 1992-1993 as a year of misery.