You want new features, buy a new phone. There is no money to be made supporting old handsets.
You mean "features" like security updates? Or existing features that don't work quite right out of the box? Yeah I don't really give a crap if the vendor makes money on those or not. If they don't provide updates I won't buy their product in the first place. So at least from me there is no money to be made in NO supporting old handsets.
Seriously? What's with the article troll? Are the slashdot editors just trying to get a good laugh?
TFA references a "study" with no citation of the alleged study with conclusions that sound like they are straight from The Onion. No way to tell if the study was conducted with good scientific techniques and rigor or if it is just a grab for grant money or something else.
Management is going awry at google, creating several projects than canning them all, getting products that people used, liked or even loved with a passion like Reader and Talk and just getting rid of it.
It's all about return on investment. Never forget that almost all of Alphabet's (aka Google's) revenue comes from advertising. Anything that doesn't ultimately generate more advertising profits is very likely to get the ax at some point. Search, Gmail, Youtube, etc are quite safe. I'm not remotely surprised that some of those other projects were killed off and/or neglected. Interesting ideas but not necessarily good businesses within Google. Google isn't a charity so it should shock no one when they get out of lines of business that they regard as dead ends.
Anything that involves actually making and distributing physical products is probably not going to be something Google pursues hard themselves. They aren't a manufacturing or consumer electronics company in their DNA. Not to say they couldn't become one with a lot of effort but you'd see it coming a mile away. The ONLY reason Google got into making Android was to keep themselves from being shut out of the advertising business by other mobile phone makers (Apple, Blackberry, Microsoft, etc). They don't make money from Android itself but they do make money by advertising through android devices. Google isn't a hardware company and it doesn't shock me at all that they have a hard time keeping their eye on the ball when they do make hardware for retail markets. Doing that well requires structuring the company to support it and Google clearly isn't interested.
I'm really afraid that any day now they will touch Gmail and Search and will start a down spiral so steep that the crash will be inevitable.
Since those are basically among their main drivers of advertising income I think your fears are misplaced. I really cannot imagine Google getting out of the search business.
There's a certain amount of sunk costs involved in moving that makes the calculus a little trickier than just move back to Texas over a missed paycheck.
Considering sunk costs in your evaluation of what to do going forward is irrational. Either the expected future prospects of an investment (time, money, effort, etc) are worthwhile or they are not. The past investments are already spent and gone and if one is acting rationally they should play no role in determining actions going forward. Yes it is frustrating to spend a lot of resources on something that ultimately proves a dead end or the expected return seems too low to justify continuing with but once you realize it is a dead end you then are throwing good money after bad.
Well, John Galt sells power he generates, you don't like the price don't buy it from him. I am sure others would be happy to sell you the power they generate at lower prices.
Ahh, I get it now. You're one of those credulous idiots who read "The Fountainhead" and thinks that it has some actual relevance to reality. Here's a clue, Ayn Rand had NO idea how real economics and politics and civil society functioned. She was a functioning hypocrite and her books are fodder for clueless ideologues who either don't know how the real world works or con men who have found they can convince credulous fools that there is sense in her writings so that they may gain power over them.
People who actually follow the "teachings" of Ayn Rand are as idiotic as those who follow the "teachings" of Joseph Smith or L. Ron Hubbard or any number of other con men. The are credulous sheep who lack the ability to reason independently or logically.
- the law is theft and the entire system is built around that theft.
Oh fuck off with that stupid argument. Tax is not theft and never was. The argument doesn't stand up to the most cursory scrutiny. The very fact that you have roads and an education and healthcare and police protection and the internet and first responders and clean water and postal service and safe drugs and military protection and plenty more is because of taxes. Without a civil society and people paying taxes to fund things we all benefit from none of that stuff exists. The fact that you can post your witless argument is because of those taxes you are so bent out of shape over.
AFAIC Apple shouldn't pay a cent and instead hire a private army to go after every single politician involved in this racketeering and I mean to go with full force of every shady tool available to people when that sort of money is involved, up to and including blackmail, kidnapping, extermination and regime change.
Either you are a troll or a raving lunatic with no concept of reality. I hope it's the former but I'm pretty sure it's the later.
Are you one of those that think that Spirit of the Law only applies when you agree with the law, and doesn't apply when you don't.
I don't have a problem with anyone engaging in conscientious objection to what they think is an unfair law. However there are usually consequences for doing that. If Apple thinks the laws are unfair then they should be actively working to get them changed to something that is fair. As it stands they are just trying to weasel out of paying a reasonable portion of their Scrooge McDuck horde of cash. There is no ethical stance being taken here, just pure greed and opportunity.
How do you feel about Hillary skirting the applicable laws regarding Security of Secrets?
I think she should be subject to the same laws as everyone else. Similarly Apple appears to think because they are able to find some clever loopholes because of their power and size that the laws shouldn't apply to them. I disagree.
How about Immigration law?
What about it? If someone comes here illegally and gets caught they should expect to get deported. I don't have a problem with that. They rolled the dice when they came here. However since at some point almost all the people who are here in the US had many relatives who came here without the permission of any government or were brought here against their will I'm not bent out of shape about some people coming here for economic opportunity. Do you speak fluent Cherokee? Didn't think so. How do you like those cheap groceries? Are you insisting on paying for only legal labor (read white people) or are you a hypocrite? You should worry about illegal immigration if the people STOP wanting to come to your country. I think the immigration laws in my country are idiotic and hugely racist but they are what they are until sanity hopefully prevails one day.
Apple paid about $7,000,000,000 in taxes to the US govt last year.
That isn't the real number. In 2011 the tax on their GAAP statements was $6.9B but the amount the actually sent to the IRS was less than half of that. Taxes are done on a cash basis, not accrual basis so you have to look deeper than their financial statements. Apple pays in some cases single digit percentages of their profits.
Is that a fair enough share for you?
Considering that the amount they paid as a percentage is FAR less than what many other companies pay and less than the percent I pay the answer is a clear NO. Furthermore they pay a lot of tax because they are absurdly profitable. Complaining about having such good fortune is absurd.
Do you try to minimize your tax burden?
Don't pretend that Apple's situation and my personal tax situation are remotely comparable. I pay a FAR higher tax rate than Apple does. Furthermore Apple gets to play all sorts of games playing jurisdictions off against each other which isn't something you or I get to do. It's not fair, it's not right, and it's not ethical. Evidently the EU agrees that it isn't legal either. Perhaps Apple shouldn't be entitled to hire people from public schools and universities or get protection from police or fire. After all they seem to think that we should have to pay for those things on their behalf so they can make even more billions than they already are. When is enough money enough?
Do you take any deductions? Are others not allowed to because they made more money?
Spare me. When Apple pays as much of their profits in taxes as I do on my income then you might have an argument. As it stands it's not even a discussion.
Is there any question that Apple has been avoiding taxes? Apple admits that fact freely and seems rather proud of it in fact. The only question is whether their activities were actually legal or not but their guilt in avoiding taxes is not in question. Now the EU seems to have determined that they were illegal under the law as well. Apple got special treatment they weren't entitled to and they owe a lot of money they should have paid earlier. Sounds fair to me.
This is the EU saying to Ireland "Your law violates European law - fix it". This is correct. What is sketchy is the retrospective nature of the "and grab a few billion from Apple while you're fixing it"
I disagree that it is sketchy at all. Apple is going through all kinds of contortions to avoid paying any taxes. This is in clear violation of the spirit of the law and apparently the EU believes it is in violation of the letter of the law as well. Apple enjoys the benefits of public services from the taxes paid but isn't willing to pay their fair share. I have ZERO sympathy for Apple here. They shouldn't be entitled to any tax breaks not available to individuals or small enterprises. Furthermore if what they did was illegal then there is no retrospective anything. It means that Apple rightfully owes money it hasn't paid.
Is vibration for computers still a problem in the 21st century.
Sure. Particularly if you have rotating platter hard drives. It also depends on the intensity of the vibrations. Material fatigue is still a thing last I checked and there are mounting considerations. Granted it's usually not as much of a problem as it once was but it is a consideration. However, I doubt any speaker would be likely to cause problems at volumes that would not induce instead deafness.
You can insure almost anything. Whether the cost of the premium is good value for money is a separate issue. The upper bound on an insurance policy premium is the cost to replace whatever is being insured. Beyond that there is no point in utilizing insurance. (In reality the real bound is substantially lower than that)
But frankly nobody would fly cargo on a spacecraft if it wasn't either insured or if the owners of the cargo could not absorb the loss. Obviously someone thinks the benefits outweigh the cost.
Even with a fee for the service, if it does not matter how often or how much you use that service, it amortizes to being effectively free.
If you make one phone call per billing cycle the price does not amortize to even close to free. Even if you use it a lot the price per call might be cheap but it will not and cannot be free. It might be inconsequential but it isn't zero.
The limit of some fixed positive number over x as x approaches infinity is zero.
There is an upper bound on the number of minutes a phone can be used in a billing cycle. Infinity does not ever come into the discussion. To make up some bogus numbers for a 28 day billing cycle, the most a phone could possibly be used is 40,320 minutes if it was used 24/7. If the flat fee per month is $100 then the per minute rate is effectively $0.00248. Very cheap to be sure but not free.
It means no additional charge for calls, regardless of how many you make.
No shit Sherlock. It's still a lie. The calls are not and could not be free. It just means that they pay a fixed cost instead of a variable cost but there still is a cost. I don't think anyone is confused but it is false to say it is free.
Michigan being protectionist in favor of old established companies?
Go figure. What I don't really get is why Ford, GM and FCA aren't making a bigger stink about getting rid of the dealer networks. I realize there is a lot of short term pain for them to do that but the dealers really provide them no benefit at all. In fact they really hurt their business. The sell marginally less cars because of the middleman markup, nobody trusts the dealers, the dealers capture a ton of repair business, etc. I don't get why they aren't maneuvering to buy out or otherwise get rid of their dealer networks. It's clearly in their financial interest to do so.
This will change once the sales tax folks start noticing how many of us are hopping over to Ohio or Indiana to buy Tesla's direct.
Maybe. I don't think it will change in Michigan unless the Big 3 get behind the change or if state laws regarding mandatory dealer networks are ruled unconstitutional somehow.
India's biggest industrial house has launched its 4G LTE network and is offering unlimited free voice calls forever to anyone who signs up for its services.
If there is a monthly fee for the service then they aren't free. On a unit cost basis (per call) it might be cheap if someone makes a lot of calls but it isn't free. If the network has enough bandwidth the marginal cost of allowing additional calls within the network is a good approximation of zero. There is an upper cap to the amount of bandwidth a single phone can use for voice calling so once the network exceeds that capability there really is no reason to bill by the minute anymore.
Ambani said, adding that the network is also "future proof" with baked in support for upcoming 5G and 6G network technologies.
Nothing was lost by including the information and if it helped a few it was helpful.
It doesn't help anyone. Using US customary units is harmful. It adds lots of cost and needless complication for no commensurate benefit. The sooner everyone in the US switches to metric and SI units the better.
No use being unit snobs, or did you want this to be a special elite club for those who have reached metric ascendancy.
If you can't handle metric units I'm not about to make that my problem. "Special elite club"? You mean for the 5% of the world's population that are too arrogant to bother switching to the actual standard units that US Customary units are defined from? The 5% who cost themselves billions of dollars with needless tooling and unit conversions? If you think that makes me a snob then you don't know what the word means.
Who said the particle was orbiting the Earth? Or if it was orbiting it might have been a retrograde orbit so the closing velocity was the sum of the two objects.
Except that self-driving cars have been around for several years.
Not on public roads in many places. Until recently it would have been illegal to use a self driving car on a public road in my state.
They certainly aren't perfect, but they already have a track record better than human drivers (which is not a difficult criteria).
That is debatable. A) The data comes largely from private sources with a vested interest in positive results and B) since the vast majority of "self driving" cars still have a person sitting at the wheel who is actually paying attention (because it is their job) it is unclear what the source of their advantage in safety is if any. While I would agree with the assertion that this technology seems very likely to result in safer road in time, it isn't in the hands of the general public in any substantial way at this time and so conclusions are difficult to draw.
They are ready to replace human drivers on public roads for many tasks, including routine driving on known routes.
Umm, no. No they are not. Not at the time I am writing this and probably not for at minimum another 5-10 years under the most optimistic assumptions. I look forward to the day when that is true but it is not true in 2016.
Will SDCs be in accidents and even kill some people? Very likely
"Very likely"? Try absolutely certain to kill some people. Rest assured that developing this technology will come at the cost of some lives like most revolutions in transportation technology. There will be some failure modes we will only learn about from people being hurt/killed. The hope is that the many will benefit from the sacrifice of the few.
Would even more people die if the same cars had human drivers? Even more likely.
To be determined. That is however hopefully the end game. Going to be a bumpy road getting there though.
Using on-board cameras, engineers have determined that the hole is about 40 centimeters (16 inches) in diameter.
That's 0.00198838 furlongs for those too lazy to do the conversion.
I think slashdot readers are fine with having just the metric units. Anyone who couldn't do the conversion in their head if they cared probably isn't reading slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
You want new features, buy a new phone. There is no money to be made supporting old handsets.
You mean "features" like security updates? Or existing features that don't work quite right out of the box? Yeah I don't really give a crap if the vendor makes money on those or not. If they don't provide updates I won't buy their product in the first place. So at least from me there is no money to be made in NO supporting old handsets.
Seriously? What's with the article troll? Are the slashdot editors just trying to get a good laugh?
TFA references a "study" with no citation of the alleged study with conclusions that sound like they are straight from The Onion. No way to tell if the study was conducted with good scientific techniques and rigor or if it is just a grab for grant money or something else.
Management is going awry at google, creating several projects than canning them all, getting products that people used, liked or even loved with a passion like Reader and Talk and just getting rid of it.
It's all about return on investment. Never forget that almost all of Alphabet's (aka Google's) revenue comes from advertising. Anything that doesn't ultimately generate more advertising profits is very likely to get the ax at some point. Search, Gmail, Youtube, etc are quite safe. I'm not remotely surprised that some of those other projects were killed off and/or neglected. Interesting ideas but not necessarily good businesses within Google. Google isn't a charity so it should shock no one when they get out of lines of business that they regard as dead ends.
Anything that involves actually making and distributing physical products is probably not going to be something Google pursues hard themselves. They aren't a manufacturing or consumer electronics company in their DNA. Not to say they couldn't become one with a lot of effort but you'd see it coming a mile away. The ONLY reason Google got into making Android was to keep themselves from being shut out of the advertising business by other mobile phone makers (Apple, Blackberry, Microsoft, etc). They don't make money from Android itself but they do make money by advertising through android devices. Google isn't a hardware company and it doesn't shock me at all that they have a hard time keeping their eye on the ball when they do make hardware for retail markets. Doing that well requires structuring the company to support it and Google clearly isn't interested.
I'm really afraid that any day now they will touch Gmail and Search and will start a down spiral so steep that the crash will be inevitable.
Since those are basically among their main drivers of advertising income I think your fears are misplaced. I really cannot imagine Google getting out of the search business.
There's a certain amount of sunk costs involved in moving that makes the calculus a little trickier than just move back to Texas over a missed paycheck.
Considering sunk costs in your evaluation of what to do going forward is irrational. Either the expected future prospects of an investment (time, money, effort, etc) are worthwhile or they are not. The past investments are already spent and gone and if one is acting rationally they should play no role in determining actions going forward. Yes it is frustrating to spend a lot of resources on something that ultimately proves a dead end or the expected return seems too low to justify continuing with but once you realize it is a dead end you then are throwing good money after bad.
Well, John Galt sells power he generates, you don't like the price don't buy it from him. I am sure others would be happy to sell you the power they generate at lower prices.
Ahh, I get it now. You're one of those credulous idiots who read "The Fountainhead" and thinks that it has some actual relevance to reality. Here's a clue, Ayn Rand had NO idea how real economics and politics and civil society functioned. She was a functioning hypocrite and her books are fodder for clueless ideologues who either don't know how the real world works or con men who have found they can convince credulous fools that there is sense in her writings so that they may gain power over them.
People who actually follow the "teachings" of Ayn Rand are as idiotic as those who follow the "teachings" of Joseph Smith or L. Ron Hubbard or any number of other con men. The are credulous sheep who lack the ability to reason independently or logically.
- the law is theft and the entire system is built around that theft.
Oh fuck off with that stupid argument. Tax is not theft and never was. The argument doesn't stand up to the most cursory scrutiny. The very fact that you have roads and an education and healthcare and police protection and the internet and first responders and clean water and postal service and safe drugs and military protection and plenty more is because of taxes. Without a civil society and people paying taxes to fund things we all benefit from none of that stuff exists. The fact that you can post your witless argument is because of those taxes you are so bent out of shape over.
AFAIC Apple shouldn't pay a cent and instead hire a private army to go after every single politician involved in this racketeering and I mean to go with full force of every shady tool available to people when that sort of money is involved, up to and including blackmail, kidnapping, extermination and regime change.
Either you are a troll or a raving lunatic with no concept of reality. I hope it's the former but I'm pretty sure it's the later.
Are you one of those that think that Spirit of the Law only applies when you agree with the law, and doesn't apply when you don't.
I don't have a problem with anyone engaging in conscientious objection to what they think is an unfair law. However there are usually consequences for doing that. If Apple thinks the laws are unfair then they should be actively working to get them changed to something that is fair. As it stands they are just trying to weasel out of paying a reasonable portion of their Scrooge McDuck horde of cash. There is no ethical stance being taken here, just pure greed and opportunity.
How do you feel about Hillary skirting the applicable laws regarding Security of Secrets?
I think she should be subject to the same laws as everyone else. Similarly Apple appears to think because they are able to find some clever loopholes because of their power and size that the laws shouldn't apply to them. I disagree.
How about Immigration law?
What about it? If someone comes here illegally and gets caught they should expect to get deported. I don't have a problem with that. They rolled the dice when they came here. However since at some point almost all the people who are here in the US had many relatives who came here without the permission of any government or were brought here against their will I'm not bent out of shape about some people coming here for economic opportunity. Do you speak fluent Cherokee? Didn't think so. How do you like those cheap groceries? Are you insisting on paying for only legal labor (read white people) or are you a hypocrite? You should worry about illegal immigration if the people STOP wanting to come to your country. I think the immigration laws in my country are idiotic and hugely racist but they are what they are until sanity hopefully prevails one day.
Apple paid about $7,000,000,000 in taxes to the US govt last year.
That isn't the real number. In 2011 the tax on their GAAP statements was $6.9B but the amount the actually sent to the IRS was less than half of that. Taxes are done on a cash basis, not accrual basis so you have to look deeper than their financial statements. Apple pays in some cases single digit percentages of their profits.
Is that a fair enough share for you?
Considering that the amount they paid as a percentage is FAR less than what many other companies pay and less than the percent I pay the answer is a clear NO. Furthermore they pay a lot of tax because they are absurdly profitable. Complaining about having such good fortune is absurd.
Do you try to minimize your tax burden?
Don't pretend that Apple's situation and my personal tax situation are remotely comparable. I pay a FAR higher tax rate than Apple does. Furthermore Apple gets to play all sorts of games playing jurisdictions off against each other which isn't something you or I get to do. It's not fair, it's not right, and it's not ethical. Evidently the EU agrees that it isn't legal either. Perhaps Apple shouldn't be entitled to hire people from public schools and universities or get protection from police or fire. After all they seem to think that we should have to pay for those things on their behalf so they can make even more billions than they already are. When is enough money enough?
Do you take any deductions? Are others not allowed to because they made more money?
Spare me. When Apple pays as much of their profits in taxes as I do on my income then you might have an argument. As it stands it's not even a discussion.
Guilty until proven innocent.
Is there any question that Apple has been avoiding taxes? Apple admits that fact freely and seems rather proud of it in fact. The only question is whether their activities were actually legal or not but their guilt in avoiding taxes is not in question. Now the EU seems to have determined that they were illegal under the law as well. Apple got special treatment they weren't entitled to and they owe a lot of money they should have paid earlier. Sounds fair to me.
This is the EU saying to Ireland "Your law violates European law - fix it". This is correct. What is sketchy is the retrospective nature of the "and grab a few billion from Apple while you're fixing it"
I disagree that it is sketchy at all. Apple is going through all kinds of contortions to avoid paying any taxes. This is in clear violation of the spirit of the law and apparently the EU believes it is in violation of the letter of the law as well. Apple enjoys the benefits of public services from the taxes paid but isn't willing to pay their fair share. I have ZERO sympathy for Apple here. They shouldn't be entitled to any tax breaks not available to individuals or small enterprises. Furthermore if what they did was illegal then there is no retrospective anything. It means that Apple rightfully owes money it hasn't paid.
Is vibration for computers still a problem in the 21st century.
Sure. Particularly if you have rotating platter hard drives. It also depends on the intensity of the vibrations. Material fatigue is still a thing last I checked and there are mounting considerations. Granted it's usually not as much of a problem as it once was but it is a consideration. However, I doubt any speaker would be likely to cause problems at volumes that would not induce instead deafness.
The mission was using the same rocket booster that sent the Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station earlier this year.
The quote is incorrect. The booster they are planning to reuse won't be flown until later this year at the earliest.
Who the hell is going to insure *that*?
You can insure almost anything. Whether the cost of the premium is good value for money is a separate issue. The upper bound on an insurance policy premium is the cost to replace whatever is being insured. Beyond that there is no point in utilizing insurance. (In reality the real bound is substantially lower than that)
But frankly nobody would fly cargo on a spacecraft if it wasn't either insured or if the owners of the cargo could not absorb the loss. Obviously someone thinks the benefits outweigh the cost.
Even with a fee for the service, if it does not matter how often or how much you use that service, it amortizes to being effectively free.
If you make one phone call per billing cycle the price does not amortize to even close to free. Even if you use it a lot the price per call might be cheap but it will not and cannot be free. It might be inconsequential but it isn't zero.
The limit of some fixed positive number over x as x approaches infinity is zero.
There is an upper bound on the number of minutes a phone can be used in a billing cycle. Infinity does not ever come into the discussion. To make up some bogus numbers for a 28 day billing cycle, the most a phone could possibly be used is 40,320 minutes if it was used 24/7. If the flat fee per month is $100 then the per minute rate is effectively $0.00248. Very cheap to be sure but not free.
It means no additional charge for calls, regardless of how many you make.
No shit Sherlock. It's still a lie. The calls are not and could not be free. It just means that they pay a fixed cost instead of a variable cost but there still is a cost. I don't think anyone is confused but it is false to say it is free.
Michigan being protectionist in favor of old established companies?
Go figure. What I don't really get is why Ford, GM and FCA aren't making a bigger stink about getting rid of the dealer networks. I realize there is a lot of short term pain for them to do that but the dealers really provide them no benefit at all. In fact they really hurt their business. The sell marginally less cars because of the middleman markup, nobody trusts the dealers, the dealers capture a ton of repair business, etc. I don't get why they aren't maneuvering to buy out or otherwise get rid of their dealer networks. It's clearly in their financial interest to do so.
This will change once the sales tax folks start noticing how many of us are hopping over to Ohio or Indiana to buy Tesla's direct.
Maybe. I don't think it will change in Michigan unless the Big 3 get behind the change or if state laws regarding mandatory dealer networks are ruled unconstitutional somehow.
India's biggest industrial house has launched its 4G LTE network and is offering unlimited free voice calls forever to anyone who signs up for its services.
If there is a monthly fee for the service then they aren't free. On a unit cost basis (per call) it might be cheap if someone makes a lot of calls but it isn't free. If the network has enough bandwidth the marginal cost of allowing additional calls within the network is a good approximation of zero. There is an upper cap to the amount of bandwidth a single phone can use for voice calling so once the network exceeds that capability there really is no reason to bill by the minute anymore.
Ambani said, adding that the network is also "future proof" with baked in support for upcoming 5G and 6G network technologies.
Sounds like puffery to me.
What is it in terms of football fields?
American Football or Association Football?
Nothing was lost by including the information and if it helped a few it was helpful.
It doesn't help anyone. Using US customary units is harmful. It adds lots of cost and needless complication for no commensurate benefit. The sooner everyone in the US switches to metric and SI units the better.
No use being unit snobs, or did you want this to be a special elite club for those who have reached metric ascendancy.
If you can't handle metric units I'm not about to make that my problem. "Special elite club"? You mean for the 5% of the world's population that are too arrogant to bother switching to the actual standard units that US Customary units are defined from? The 5% who cost themselves billions of dollars with needless tooling and unit conversions? If you think that makes me a snob then you don't know what the word means.
How does something stay in orbit at that speed?
Who said the particle was orbiting the Earth? Or if it was orbiting it might have been a retrograde orbit so the closing velocity was the sum of the two objects.
If you are going to do a unit conversion then learn about significant digits.
If you are going to be pedantic then learn about irony.
Except that self-driving cars have been around for several years.
Not on public roads in many places. Until recently it would have been illegal to use a self driving car on a public road in my state.
They certainly aren't perfect, but they already have a track record better than human drivers (which is not a difficult criteria).
That is debatable. A) The data comes largely from private sources with a vested interest in positive results and B) since the vast majority of "self driving" cars still have a person sitting at the wheel who is actually paying attention (because it is their job) it is unclear what the source of their advantage in safety is if any. While I would agree with the assertion that this technology seems very likely to result in safer road in time, it isn't in the hands of the general public in any substantial way at this time and so conclusions are difficult to draw.
They are ready to replace human drivers on public roads for many tasks, including routine driving on known routes.
Umm, no. No they are not. Not at the time I am writing this and probably not for at minimum another 5-10 years under the most optimistic assumptions. I look forward to the day when that is true but it is not true in 2016.
Will SDCs be in accidents and even kill some people? Very likely
"Very likely"? Try absolutely certain to kill some people. Rest assured that developing this technology will come at the cost of some lives like most revolutions in transportation technology. There will be some failure modes we will only learn about from people being hurt/killed. The hope is that the many will benefit from the sacrifice of the few.
Would even more people die if the same cars had human drivers? Even more likely.
To be determined. That is however hopefully the end game. Going to be a bumpy road getting there though.
Using on-board cameras, engineers have determined that the hole is about 40 centimeters (16 inches) in diameter.
That's 0.00198838 furlongs for those too lazy to do the conversion.
I think slashdot readers are fine with having just the metric units. Anyone who couldn't do the conversion in their head if they cared probably isn't reading slashdot.
I think this fits the definition of "used to": "But Downtown Detroit [wikipedia.org] hasn't had factories of any meaningful scale for ages."
Not when you are talking about over a century ago. That's not "used to" in any relevant sense.
Great. But we still can't buy a car without involving a greedy pointless middleman.