if done RIGHT, internet connectivity of the network of devices inside the car has all kinds of benefits.
1) devices that control fuel efficiency can have their firmwares updated by the manufacturer OTA,... without ever taking it to a dealership for service.
.... Most people do take their car for a routine service anyway. Such updates cannot be that urgent.
2) Anomalies in function can be solved through [firmware updates]
No thanks. I have a Jeep Grand Cherokee and there were some rare cases of the transfer case (TC) putting itself into neutral while parked (the circumstances seemed dubious according to Jeep owners' forums). If the owner had not bothered to apply the handbrake also the car could roll away. Jeep's "solution" to absolve themselves was a software patch to fix the TC in High (ie normal road) ratio. This disabled neutral but also the Low ratio, thus limiting its usefulness as an off-roader etc (I have pulled tree stumps out with mine in "Low").
Result was a load of owners (including me) not wanting to let a dealer plug their car into their computer (which would promptly upload this patch). I generally have the same attitude to car software patches as I have to the Windows 10 "upgrade". And I apply the handbrake when I park.
You seem to be underestimating how useful these features are. Being able to turn on my engine and warm the car (read: melt the ice on the window so it's drivable) from my bed seems like a VERY useful feature.
Fuel must be nearly free where you live; have you any idea of how inefficient that is? (and non-green, even though I am not a green fan much myself)
I leave an old rug on the windsceen overnight, and a hot water bottle in the car directly under the windscreen while I am eating breakfast. Anyway, I would feel extremely uneasy about starting my car remotely, especially if I could not even see it. It amazes me that it is legally possible.
Business man who opened up all of his patents to his competitors and whose competitors are all currently engineering all-electric vehicles as well is happy because it's the right thing to do. If you think Telsa will be the only all-electric car company by then, you're misinformed.
No-one thinks that Musk will be the only guy making electrics, but as he is coming from behind in the competition to make cars it suits him to have the race effectively stopped and restarted with himself allowed to catch up with his competitors.
As for "What an amazingly awesome country. You guys rock!!", it is not "absolutely amazing", nor "rocks" just to ban something. You need to be creative to deserve that sort of praise.
If the virus will be able to penetrate their [Windows] system, they can quickly gain access to important parts of the system. On the other hand, in Linux, they have a lower access rights, and, theoretically, the virus can only access local files and folders, the system will remain safe.
Data is more imortant than the system - the system can be restored. We are talking about data encryption here.
So he is the president of Estonia yet his wife does not have an Estonian credit card. What is her problem exactly? Her credit score too low? Husband has only temporary employment? Or what?
And so his solution to the problem of his wife not having an Estonian credit card, despite living in Estonia, is to re-organise the European economy.
Funny, I have the opposite problem. I have about 8 credit cards and keep getting letters and phone calls egging me on to have more. Perhaps unknowingly I am a bigger celebrity and regarded as more credit-worthy than the Estonian presidential couple.
Why do we need restrictions on moving physical and digital goods across borders? For that matter, eliminate barriers to labor crossing borders, too......[this] results in a suboptimal economy
By the time USB became available, Windows 95 had already destroyed OS/2 in the marketplace.
I would not agree, they were different markets. OS/2 was aimed primarily at corporates, with personal users a bonus. It's rival was WinNT and it was NT4 that destroyed OS/2. My company went from DOS to Win3.x, which stung badly, and then piloted OS/2; but hen NT4 came out they went for it entirely. They would not have touched Win95 with a bargepole, rightly so.
Of course many small companies used Win9.x, because they did not know any better, but they probably never used OS/2 anyway.
IBM seemed to drop OS/2 support hard - no updates to WebExplorer
As I remember the OS/2 browser (which combined a dialler) in v2 was called "Dial Other Internet Providers" . That was the caption below the icon. "Other" meant other than dialling into IBM's BBS for news and support documents. I remember a magazine reveiwer giving it a spoof award for the most uncatchy app name of all time, and I should think it is still unbeaten. I suppose they renamed it "Web Explorer" later.
OS/2 came on 3.5" floppies at least from v2.0 - I had it and sold the box on ebay recently. Not sure how long 5.25" floppies remained an option. I hated those things.
There were two versions of OS/2 Warp. One came with Windows 3.1 built in,..... The other version.... required you have a copy of Windows 3.1
It did not of course require you to have a copy of Win3.1; that was only required if you wished to run Windows programs. Of course everybody did, using (except corporates) spare or borrowed copies of Win3.1 (no DRM in those days). For the version with included Windows IBM paid a licence fee to MS. Both versions of OS/2 also came with PC DOS which of course IBM owned.
About 1996 I was one of the first personal users of internet banking in the UK (told I was the first in the South West division of TSB). It was with their own Windows 3.x app which I had running under OS/2. When I mentioned this to a techie on their help line (not about an OS/2 related problem) he told me it was impossible.
Funny thing was that the latter version was hyped as "OS/2 for Windows" as if OS/2 was some kind of app running under Windows when the opposite was more true. AFAIR, you could install that version OS/2 on top of an existing Windows installation and it was all sorted for you. The "for "Windows" meme was the leading software sales meme at the time, usually as a prominent sticker on software boxes. Yes, software came in boxes then, with manuals.
My own observation is that obese people tend to skip or have a very light breakfast. They then make up for it by having a big lunch, dinner and then snacks right up until bedtime.
My observation too. I have always been slim and fit, and I eat little and often:- Breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, mid-afternoon tea, evening dinner, and supper.
OTOH my brother-in-law only eats once a day (around 6pm) and has a massive blow-out at that time. He is shaped like a barrel I believe because that huge meal over the years has stretched his stomach muscles and gut to collapse point. He makes his kids eat like that too - the poor sods are in tears with hunger by mid-afternoon.
Anyway, if I did not eat breakfast my stomach would be rumbling noisily all morning. It depends on your personal metabolism.
As for people "lecturing" you to have a big breakfast, what rock have the authors been under for the last few years? All the lectures I now hear are telling us to eat less, like this one is.
The planet would be more sustainable if we try redistributing existing wealth first.
After you.
It might be fairer, but why would it be more sustainable? People with more money generally waste more. Not much gets wasted in poor third world villages, and we know that such villages are sustainable because such a way of life has existed for 10,000 or more years. We do not know that the "wealthy" 21st century developed nations' way of life (that you and Zucherberg want to spread around) is sustainable. It almost certainly isn't.
My parent's generation (in the UK) used to make and mend all sorts of stuff : mend holes in clothes, save the wood from broken furniture to make new stuff, and even scavenge stuff from the local council rubbish dump (we as kids were actually allowed to do that). I have inherited a lot of that attiude, but most people now are so much better off now that things get trashed even before there is anything wrong with them, on a whim. The excuse is that "it will be recycled".
By bypassing corrupt local officials, automating title searches, integrating maps, etc., countries with internet access have done much better than those without at reforming property ownership laws, and establishing clear title to land.
Nothing to do with the internet, not where I live (UK) anyway. Clear title to land was a project that resulted in establishing the Land Registry here, long before the internet. Things like that get done only if people, including the "officials" and other autorities want them to be done, interernet or not.
Websites... make reporting corruption much easier.
No, because people get bored with stories of corruption, or it does not affect them, or they don't believe the stories, or there is too much noise on the internet for them to be heard.
For example I often take the opportunity in forums to point out the corruption in the UK annual car roadworthiness checks (the "MoT Test"). Makes no difference even though it affects millions of car owners; I am told I "don't understand". LoL, I was once the lead mechanic at a main car dealer and was involved in testing; we were not corrupt but I know places that are. If I reported them by name I'd probably be sued for libel and I can't afford the legal expense, if anyone took any notice at all.
If you're running unpatched Windows 7 you're going to get fucked by scumware.
If you're patching Windows 7 you're going to get fucked by Microsoft and possibly scumware; eventually an update will roll in that will nearly cripple your system in one way or another and the only fix will be to either reinstall Win 7 and years of patches or upgrade to Win 10.
I'll take the scumware over Microsoft.
As I only use Win7 in a VM under Linux, I shall restore an earlier Win7 snapshot when the scumware hits me. I shall have moved any significant data out of reach into the host OS. This is a further option.
Until the greedy owners figure it out and start charging $20 to park.
... and then another parking lot undercuts them by only charging $10, and then a bunch of homeowners undercut them by renting out space in their driveways for $5, and then...
The market will determine that it will only go down to a price round about the same as what it would cost in juice either driving around or driving out far enough to where there is plenty of free parking. In districts where there are homes with driveways (in the UK anyway) parking for free in the street is usually possible anyway (because the homeowners park on their driveways!).
But from the centre of London for example you would need to drive out about 10 miles to find a district of homes with driveways, and there are no sports stadiums very near either. Which comes back to the point that sending SD cars away to find parking (avoiding astronomical city centre parking fees) is only adding more to traffic movements and congestion.
Then you put the goods in a marked bin in the car, which is unloaded at the staging lot and consolidated with any other purchases, then delivered to your home later.
Alternately, you might even skip the step of loading the goods in the car, that part might be taken care of by the vendors themselves.
Hang on, hang on.
We started this discussion about the viability of SD cars and It seems that you advocates can only justify them by assuming all sorts of further super-efficient infrastructure and organisations will pop into existence to make them viable.
It is telling that some such infrastructure already exists (as you say) and proves itself far from efficient. "Purchases delivered to your home "? I've tried that and it's a nightmare. Either I am not in when it arrives (they can't just leave it on the doorstep) or they deliver the wrong stuff (I ordered some canned groceries once and got 10 fresh cabbages) or they can't even find your place.
The problem with parking isn't that there's no parking, it's that there's no parking sufficiently close..... With self-driving cars that can drop you off then go park themselves, and be summoned when you are ready to leave, this won't be a problem.
In the context of congestion this is part of the problem (in addition to those mentioned in TFA). Because:-
1) Where before people would have used say the metro or other public transport (because there is insufficient city city centre parking - in London, Paris Moscow etc vast numbers of people are carried by the underground railways), many will be inclined to use SD car instead. For the very point you make, SD cars are more attractive. That's bad enough, but....
2) Having reached their city destination, they will send their SD car back home in the suburbs (rather than pay a city centre car parking fee), or at least part of the way, and then call it back again when they wish to leave. So journey miles are further doubled.
Of course many here are assuming SD cars being operated like taxis (as I believe you are). No doubt some will be and some won't be. Taxis are nothing new and have never reduced traffic congestion.
It is unlikely that they will increase congestion. It is far more likely that they will help relieve congestion. Large fixed-route public buses will be replaced by small self-driving vans, with flexible on-demand routing........ more people will use it, reducing congestion
They do that now in UK cities with mini-buses (say 8 seaters), but of course with drivers. It is for old people, and called dial-a-ride. Not from personal experience, but the system is shit, and only used by old people with no alternative. The journey takes years because the mini-bus is zig-zagging around the city and its suburbs to pick up people (orders come on the radio all the time) and dropping people off at different places. That's on top of waiting an hour for it to turn up in the first place.
But those old folk think it's great as the long (timewise) journey is their only social life. Can't see it being attractive to most people (self-driving or not). Such systems would have taken off generally already if they were any good; the self-driving is an orthogonal factor
Slashdot Mirror
if done RIGHT, internet connectivity of the network of devices inside the car has all kinds of benefits.
1) devices that control fuel efficiency can have their firmwares updated by the manufacturer OTA, ... without ever taking it to a dealership for service.
Most people do take their car for a routine service anyway. Such updates cannot be that urgent.
2) Anomalies in function can be solved through [firmware updates]
No thanks. I have a Jeep Grand Cherokee and there were some rare cases of the transfer case (TC) putting itself into neutral while parked (the circumstances seemed dubious according to Jeep owners' forums). If the owner had not bothered to apply the handbrake also the car could roll away. Jeep's "solution" to absolve themselves was a software patch to fix the TC in High (ie normal road) ratio. This disabled neutral but also the Low ratio, thus limiting its usefulness as an off-roader etc (I have pulled tree stumps out with mine in "Low").
Result was a load of owners (including me) not wanting to let a dealer plug their car into their computer (which would promptly upload this patch). I generally have the same attitude to car software patches as I have to the Windows 10 "upgrade". And I apply the handbrake when I park.
You seem to be underestimating how useful these features are. Being able to turn on my engine and warm the car (read: melt the ice on the window so it's drivable) from my bed seems like a VERY useful feature.
Fuel must be nearly free where you live; have you any idea of how inefficient that is? (and non-green, even though I am not a green fan much myself)
I leave an old rug on the windsceen overnight, and a hot water bottle in the car directly under the windscreen while I am eating breakfast. Anyway, I would feel extremely uneasy about starting my car remotely, especially if I could not even see it. It amazes me that it is legally possible.
Business man who opened up all of his patents to his competitors and whose competitors are all currently engineering all-electric vehicles as well is happy because it's the right thing to do. If you think Telsa will be the only all-electric car company by then, you're misinformed.
No-one thinks that Musk will be the only guy making electrics, but as he is coming from behind in the competition to make cars it suits him to have the race effectively stopped and restarted with himself allowed to catch up with his competitors.
As for "What an amazingly awesome country. You guys rock!!", it is not "absolutely amazing", nor "rocks" just to ban something. You need to be creative to deserve that sort of praise.
If the virus will be able to penetrate their [Windows] system, they can quickly gain access to important parts of the system. On the other hand, in Linux, they have a lower access rights, and, theoretically, the virus can only access local files and folders, the system will remain safe.
Data is more imortant than the system - the system can be restored. We are talking about data encryption here.
So he is the president of Estonia yet his wife does not have an Estonian credit card. What is her problem exactly? Her credit score too low? Husband has only temporary employment? Or what?
And so his solution to the problem of his wife not having an Estonian credit card, despite living in Estonia, is to re-organise the European economy.
Funny, I have the opposite problem. I have about 8 credit cards and keep getting letters and phone calls egging me on to have more. Perhaps unknowingly I am a bigger celebrity and regarded as more credit-worthy than the Estonian presidential couple.
Why do we need restrictions on moving physical and digital goods across borders? For that matter, eliminate barriers to labor crossing borders, too......[this] results in a suboptimal economy
How about : money isn't everything.
By the time USB became available, Windows 95 had already destroyed OS/2 in the marketplace.
I would not agree, they were different markets. OS/2 was aimed primarily at corporates, with personal users a bonus. It's rival was WinNT and it was NT4 that destroyed OS/2. My company went from DOS to Win3.x, which stung badly, and then piloted OS/2; but hen NT4 came out they went for it entirely. They would not have touched Win95 with a bargepole, rightly so.
Of course many small companies used Win9.x, because they did not know any better, but they probably never used OS/2 anyway.
IBM seemed to drop OS/2 support hard - no updates to WebExplorer
As I remember the OS/2 browser (which combined a dialler) in v2 was called "Dial Other Internet Providers" . That was the caption below the icon. "Other" meant other than dialling into IBM's BBS for news and support documents. I remember a magazine reveiwer giving it a spoof award for the most uncatchy app name of all time, and I should think it is still unbeaten. I suppose they renamed it "Web Explorer" later.
OS/2 warp 4 at least came on 3 1/2 floppies.
OS/2 came on 3.5" floppies at least from v2.0 - I had it and sold the box on ebay recently. Not sure how long 5.25" floppies remained an option. I hated those things.
I know this ... is almost 2016.
Overdid your meds? Wake up!
There were two versions of OS/2 Warp. One came with Windows 3.1 built in, ..... The other version .... required you have a copy of Windows 3.1
It did not of course require you to have a copy of Win3.1; that was only required if you wished to run Windows programs. Of course everybody did, using (except corporates) spare or borrowed copies of Win3.1 (no DRM in those days). For the version with included Windows IBM paid a licence fee to MS. Both versions of OS/2 also came with PC DOS which of course IBM owned.
About 1996 I was one of the first personal users of internet banking in the UK (told I was the first in the South West division of TSB). It was with their own Windows 3.x app which I had running under OS/2. When I mentioned this to a techie on their help line (not about an OS/2 related problem) he told me it was impossible.
Funny thing was that the latter version was hyped as "OS/2 for Windows" as if OS/2 was some kind of app running under Windows when the opposite was more true. AFAIR, you could install that version OS/2 on top of an existing Windows installation and it was all sorted for you. The "for "Windows" meme was the leading software sales meme at the time, usually as a prominent sticker on software boxes. Yes, software came in boxes then, with manuals.
I can sit for hours now in a hospital emergency waiting room and never be bored.
Hours in emergency waiting rooms?! Who TF are you, Evel Knievel ?
My reasonable dinner may be unreasonable, of course, but at the end of the day, it's less calories than eating three meals a day like a chump.
It depends on the sum of the calories of the three meals, doesn't it?
My own observation is that obese people tend to skip or have a very light breakfast. They then make up for it by having a big lunch, dinner and then snacks right up until bedtime.
My observation too. I have always been slim and fit, and I eat little and often :- Breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, mid-afternoon tea, evening dinner, and supper.
OTOH my brother-in-law only eats once a day (around 6pm) and has a massive blow-out at that time. He is shaped like a barrel I believe because that huge meal over the years has stretched his stomach muscles and gut to collapse point. He makes his kids eat like that too - the poor sods are in tears with hunger by mid-afternoon.
Anyway, if I did not eat breakfast my stomach would be rumbling noisily all morning. It depends on your personal metabolism.
As for people "lecturing" you to have a big breakfast, what rock have the authors been under for the last few years? All the lectures I now hear are telling us to eat less, like this one is.
What could possibly go wrong?
Man that's a lot of extra Nigerian scams.
Damn, you've blown it. That is where the $6.7 trillion was coming from.
Who exactly gets the trillions[?]/p>
Zucherberg, Gates, Nadella, Page, Brin, Cook, Greenspan, ..... do I need to go on?
The planet would be more sustainable if we try redistributing existing wealth first.
After you.
It might be fairer, but why would it be more sustainable? People with more money generally waste more. Not much gets wasted in poor third world villages, and we know that such villages are sustainable because such a way of life has existed for 10,000 or more years. We do not know that the "wealthy" 21st century developed nations' way of life (that you and Zucherberg want to spread around) is sustainable. It almost certainly isn't.
My parent's generation (in the UK) used to make and mend all sorts of stuff : mend holes in clothes, save the wood from broken furniture to make new stuff, and even scavenge stuff from the local council rubbish dump (we as kids were actually allowed to do that). I have inherited a lot of that attiude, but most people now are so much better off now that things get trashed even before there is anything wrong with them, on a whim. The excuse is that "it will be recycled".
By bypassing corrupt local officials, automating title searches, integrating maps, etc., countries with internet access have done much better than those without at reforming property ownership laws, and establishing clear title to land.
Nothing to do with the internet, not where I live (UK) anyway. Clear title to land was a project that resulted in establishing the Land Registry here, long before the internet. Things like that get done only if people, including the "officials" and other autorities want them to be done, interernet or not.
Websites ... make reporting corruption much easier.
No, because people get bored with stories of corruption, or it does not affect them, or they don't believe the stories, or there is too much noise on the internet for them to be heard.
For example I often take the opportunity in forums to point out the corruption in the UK annual car roadworthiness checks (the "MoT Test"). Makes no difference even though it affects millions of car owners; I am told I "don't understand". LoL, I was once the lead mechanic at a main car dealer and was involved in testing; we were not corrupt but I know places that are. If I reported them by name I'd probably be sued for libel and I can't afford the legal expense, if anyone took any notice at all.
A whole new group of newbie idiots is going to be tricked out of their money
My first thought too. As Zucherberg's definition of "economy" is advertising revenue, this is about him receiving the $6.7 trillion.
PS: This page's http address says $67 trillion - even better for FB.
If you're running unpatched Windows 7 you're going to get fucked by scumware.
If you're patching Windows 7 you're going to get fucked by Microsoft and possibly scumware; eventually an update will roll in that will nearly cripple your system in one way or another and the only fix will be to either reinstall Win 7 and years of patches or upgrade to Win 10.
I'll take the scumware over Microsoft.
As I only use Win7 in a VM under Linux, I shall restore an earlier Win7 snapshot when the scumware hits me. I shall have moved any significant data out of reach into the host OS. This is a further option.
Until the greedy owners figure it out and start charging $20 to park.
... and then another parking lot undercuts them by only charging $10, and then a bunch of homeowners undercut them by renting out space in their driveways for $5, and then ...
The market will determine that it will only go down to a price round about the same as what it would cost in juice either driving around or driving out far enough to where there is plenty of free parking. In districts where there are homes with driveways (in the UK anyway) parking for free in the street is usually possible anyway (because the homeowners park on their driveways!).
But from the centre of London for example you would need to drive out about 10 miles to find a district of homes with driveways, and there are no sports stadiums very near either. Which comes back to the point that sending SD cars away to find parking (avoiding astronomical city centre parking fees) is only adding more to traffic movements and congestion.
Then you put the goods in a marked bin in the car, which is unloaded at the staging lot and consolidated with any other purchases, then delivered to your home later.
Alternately, you might even skip the step of loading the goods in the car, that part might be taken care of by the vendors themselves.
Hang on, hang on.
We started this discussion about the viability of SD cars and It seems that you advocates can only justify them by assuming all sorts of further super-efficient infrastructure and organisations will pop into existence to make them viable.
It is telling that some such infrastructure already exists (as you say) and proves itself far from efficient. "Purchases delivered to your home "? I've tried that and it's a nightmare. Either I am not in when it arrives (they can't just leave it on the doorstep) or they deliver the wrong stuff (I ordered some canned groceries once and got 10 fresh cabbages) or they can't even find your place.
Case rested.
The problem with parking isn't that there's no parking, it's that there's no parking sufficiently close..... With self-driving cars that can drop you off then go park themselves, and be summoned when you are ready to leave, this won't be a problem.
In the context of congestion this is part of the problem (in addition to those mentioned in TFA). Because :-
1) Where before people would have used say the metro or other public transport (because there is insufficient city city centre parking - in London, Paris Moscow etc vast numbers of people are carried by the underground railways), many will be inclined to use SD car instead. For the very point you make, SD cars are more attractive. That's bad enough, but ....
2) Having reached their city destination, they will send their SD car back home in the suburbs (rather than pay a city centre car parking fee), or at least part of the way, and then call it back again when they wish to leave. So journey miles are further doubled.
Of course many here are assuming SD cars being operated like taxis (as I believe you are). No doubt some will be and some won't be. Taxis are nothing new and have never reduced traffic congestion.
It is unlikely that they will increase congestion. It is far more likely that they will help relieve congestion. Large fixed-route public buses will be replaced by small self-driving vans, with flexible on-demand routing. ....... more people will use it, reducing congestion
They do that now in UK cities with mini-buses (say 8 seaters), but of course with drivers. It is for old people, and called dial-a-ride. Not from personal experience, but the system is shit, and only used by old people with no alternative. The journey takes years because the mini-bus is zig-zagging around the city and its suburbs to pick up people (orders come on the radio all the time) and dropping people off at different places. That's on top of waiting an hour for it to turn up in the first place.
But those old folk think it's great as the long (timewise) journey is their only social life. Can't see it being attractive to most people (self-driving or not). Such systems would have taken off generally already if they were any good; the self-driving is an orthogonal factor