Planes have a lot less traffic to deal with and when they do have to deal with.
Anyway, the main reason I don't think we'll see a completely self-driving car is that I don't think any company's legal department will let them make one. They'll be sued every time one of their cars is involved in an accident (it's already standard practice for accident attorneys to sue the government body and paving company responsible for the road, regardless of whether or not they are actually to blame). By making it clear that the system cannot account for all possibilities they reduce their liability.
You also have to remember that an unreliable backup system is better than no backup system at all. I'm not convinced that any computer can be prepared for all possibilities. There is no way a computer system can fail gracefully when it is controlling a car moving at 75 MPH.
I mean, how are you supposed to refer to this thing if you want to distinguish it from the PS2? Should we call it PS word two and call the PS2 PS number 2? Or maybe we should pronounce it Psstwoh or something like that.
In cases like this it's foolish to make technologies that replace humans entirely. You can make the car do a lot of work for the driver, but the driver still needs to be able to take over in an emergency. At the same time the driver needs to always be ready to take over. So to keep the driver from going to sleep or whatever, you need to give them something, anything, to do.
Even if you know that all of the other vehicles are computer guided and can be expected to be well-behaved, you can't rely on a computer to do everything unless you can prove that the software is bug free and that all of its sensors and all interfaces between the computer and the mechanical aspects of the car are in working order.
No, he's required to do what the shareholders want him to do or they can replace or sue him. Generally it's hard to get shareholders to agree on anything other than making money though, but they will tolerate CEOs with secondary objectives so long as they don't interfere with profit.
Thank you very much. This should be self-evident to anyone who took highschool chemistry. The rate at which any chemical reaction takes place is governed by the slowest step of the reaction.
In any process where you have a series of linked events (i.e. one event depends on the results of a previous event and must wait for it to finish), you will at best get marginal gains from improving the speed of anything other than the slowest event.
The only useful benchmarks of a computer's performance are those that only measure the performance of the components that become bottlenecks under normal use. Anything else is crap.
Yes, but it's a point that carries no significance. If the Constitution didn't state that all amendments "shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution" your point would be relevent to this discussion. However, as it stands, saying that the separation of church and state isn't in the Constitution only introduces an unneccessary distinction. Whether you interpret "the Constitution" to mean "the Constitution as originally written" or "the Constitution and all of its ratified amendments" is just a matter of semantics.
You're just quibbling on the point of separation of church and state not being in the Constitution. While it is true in a technical sense, Article V of the Constitution states that amendments to the Constitution are to be treated as though they were part of the Constitution itself.
I agree with the rest of your points to an extent though.
You should read an EULA some time (doesn't matter which one, they're all pretty similar). They say the software is provided "as is" and that under no circumstances will they pay for damages incurred by any use of the software.
It would be a nice project for a lawyer who wants to start a career in politics. It's the sort of thing that you can bring up as proof that you care (or that you can just bring up for no particular reason).
You make the flaw of assuming that all forms of supply and demand affected by taxes are highly elastic. The fact of the matter is, people cannot live without transferring capital. Expecting an exponential increase in the transfer of capital is exceptionally naive.
I believe that this country would benefit greatly from massive tax reform. However, I also believe that tax policy is too crude of a tool to reliably control the economy. The effects of policies this broad are too subtle to predict and even after the fact, attributing changes in the economy to specific policies is an intellectual fraud.
It must be noted that at least some businesses (primarily those for which unskilled labor is a large component of their operating costs) increase their prices in response to minimum wage increases so it does have an impact on inflation.
Basically this means that increases in minimum wage result in higher fast food prices. There's no reason to expect a 5% increase in minimum wage to cause a 5% increase in in living expenses for the lower class.
The impact of minimum wage on unemployment is also largely overstated (and as you say, the numbers support this) because in some industries, demand for unskilled labor is largely inelastic. For example, in some industries, the cost of unskilled labor is dwarfed by other costs (maintenance of equipment for example). Another example is that the opportunity cost of not having enough labor may be too great to justify layoffs or changes in hiring practices. Still another example would be things like lawn service companies where the number of manhours to complete any given job is roughly constant and so, assuming that the company isn't paying any idle hours (and these sorts of companies generally don't), the cost of labor per job will be roughly constant regardless of the number of employees.
All of that said, I feel that a national minimum wage is a rather crude tool for eontrolling the economy. I suspect a minimum wage varying by region based on differences in cost of living might be worth investigating (and in fact some states do have their own minimum wages higher than the national average, but I do not know if cost of living considerations influenced these policies).
If you can't defend yourself with a knife...
on
Assault Weapons Ban
·
· Score: 0, Troll
Heh, just about everything can be found in the works of Euler. It's like they say, "In Mathematics, it is customary to name things after the first person after Euler to discover them."
From what I've heard, that's exactly what Infinium is hoping. But it's not going to happen here.
They've lowered the price for the console itself to $199. That gives them a better shot, but if you are trying to sell to casual gamers, it's not going to work. People who aren't already dedicated gamers (i.e. people who don't already own a game console) will regard it as too high an investment.
If you want to sell games to casual gamers, and hopefully to expand that market, you'd be best off making the games run on something consumers already have. If you want to sell millions of consoles to casual gamers, your best bet would be to make it also function as digital cable set-top box and convince cable companies to eat the cost so they can use it as a feature to attract customers.
Two other opportunities are web distribution and mobile phone games, but of course many people have already realized this. I still think the greatest successes for both of these platforms are yet to come and eventually they will do even more to broaden the market for games.
If we weren't talking about Erdos, I'd agree with you. The thing about him, is that he wasn't just a great mathematician, he was a great collaborator. In addition to that he was generally good natured and his many quirks were (mostly) endearing. He brought out the best in the people he worked with. Erdos didn't need money because he was held in such high esteem that he could go anywhere and people would be willing to pay for his meals and give him a place to sleep just for the opportunity to work with him.
There's still not much reason to spend $4200 on one system.
OK, let's say that I have $4200 that I've set aside to spend on gaming hardware. If I get the $4200 Alienware rig I'll have pretty much the best performing gaming system in existence... for about a month or so. Within 6 months there will be hardware outperforming it for less than half the price. The market price of equivalently performing hardware will continue to decrease rapidly as time goes on.
The other option is to spend $2000 or less on a computer that will in all likelihood only have a 10% or lower drop in framerate in Doom III compared to the $4200 system. Then, later when the minimum requirements for new games starts to catch up with your computer, you still have another $2000 to spend on another new computer.
If you want to be as close as possible to the best possible performance all the time, you're best off not buying the top of the line, but instead just upgrading more often. You should only buy top of the line components if a. there is relatively little price difference between the top of the line and the next best performer or b. the performance of the component is a critical bottleneck. If you've got some cash to throw around then buy a top of the line motherboard and maybe even a top of the line video card.
Hell, the $4200 version doesn't even include a RAID set up which is relatively cheap with lots of (affordable) new motherboards having RAID 0, 1, and 0+1 capabilities.
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Planes have a lot less traffic to deal with and when they do have to deal with.
Anyway, the main reason I don't think we'll see a completely self-driving car is that I don't think any company's legal department will let them make one. They'll be sued every time one of their cars is involved in an accident (it's already standard practice for accident attorneys to sue the government body and paving company responsible for the road, regardless of whether or not they are actually to blame). By making it clear that the system cannot account for all possibilities they reduce their liability.
You also have to remember that an unreliable backup system is better than no backup system at all. I'm not convinced that any computer can be prepared for all possibilities. There is no way a computer system can fail gracefully when it is controlling a car moving at 75 MPH.
I mean, how are you supposed to refer to this thing if you want to distinguish it from the PS2? Should we call it PS word two and call the PS2 PS number 2? Or maybe we should pronounce it Psstwoh or something like that.
I've always been fond of calling them file-stealing networks. That doesn't keep me from using them though.
In cases like this it's foolish to make technologies that replace humans entirely. You can make the car do a lot of work for the driver, but the driver still needs to be able to take over in an emergency. At the same time the driver needs to always be ready to take over. So to keep the driver from going to sleep or whatever, you need to give them something, anything, to do.
Even if you know that all of the other vehicles are computer guided and can be expected to be well-behaved, you can't rely on a computer to do everything unless you can prove that the software is bug free and that all of its sensors and all interfaces between the computer and the mechanical aspects of the car are in working order.
No, he's required to do what the shareholders want him to do or they can replace or sue him. Generally it's hard to get shareholders to agree on anything other than making money though, but they will tolerate CEOs with secondary objectives so long as they don't interfere with profit.
Thank you very much. This should be self-evident to anyone who took highschool chemistry. The rate at which any chemical reaction takes place is governed by the slowest step of the reaction.
In any process where you have a series of linked events (i.e. one event depends on the results of a previous event and must wait for it to finish), you will at best get marginal gains from improving the speed of anything other than the slowest event.
The only useful benchmarks of a computer's performance are those that only measure the performance of the components that become bottlenecks under normal use. Anything else is crap.
Actually, he could be serious. There's a very simple formula for any arbitrary digit of pi in base 16.
Yes, but it's a point that carries no significance. If the Constitution didn't state that all amendments "shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution" your point would be relevent to this discussion. However, as it stands, saying that the separation of church and state isn't in the Constitution only introduces an unneccessary distinction. Whether you interpret "the Constitution" to mean "the Constitution as originally written" or "the Constitution and all of its ratified amendments" is just a matter of semantics.
You're just quibbling on the point of separation of church and state not being in the Constitution. While it is true in a technical sense, Article V of the Constitution states that amendments to the Constitution are to be treated as though they were part of the Constitution itself.
I agree with the rest of your points to an extent though.
The universe isn't neccessarily Euclidean. There are all sorts of funky ways it can loop back on itself.
You should read an EULA some time (doesn't matter which one, they're all pretty similar). They say the software is provided "as is" and that under no circumstances will they pay for damages incurred by any use of the software.
It would be a nice project for a lawyer who wants to start a career in politics. It's the sort of thing that you can bring up as proof that you care (or that you can just bring up for no particular reason).
This is BY FAR the best troll I have seen in a long time. You, sir, have my respect.
Roleplaying in the bedroom can bring couples closer together.
You make the flaw of assuming that all forms of supply and demand affected by taxes are highly elastic. The fact of the matter is, people cannot live without transferring capital. Expecting an exponential increase in the transfer of capital is exceptionally naive.
I believe that this country would benefit greatly from massive tax reform. However, I also believe that tax policy is too crude of a tool to reliably control the economy. The effects of policies this broad are too subtle to predict and even after the fact, attributing changes in the economy to specific policies is an intellectual fraud.
I'm pretty sure I've already got that one.
From what I can gather, the methodology of their survey was to ask how many people modded their Xboxes in an online forum.
I would expect the sampling bias from this methodology to be tremendous beyond all comprehension.
Reader surveys in magazines don't sound much better either.
It must be noted that at least some businesses (primarily those for which unskilled labor is a large component of their operating costs) increase their prices in response to minimum wage increases so it does have an impact on inflation.
Basically this means that increases in minimum wage result in higher fast food prices. There's no reason to expect a 5% increase in minimum wage to cause a 5% increase in in living expenses for the lower class.
The impact of minimum wage on unemployment is also largely overstated (and as you say, the numbers support this) because in some industries, demand for unskilled labor is largely inelastic. For example, in some industries, the cost of unskilled labor is dwarfed by other costs (maintenance of equipment for example). Another example is that the opportunity cost of not having enough labor may be too great to justify layoffs or changes in hiring practices. Still another example would be things like lawn service companies where the number of manhours to complete any given job is roughly constant and so, assuming that the company isn't paying any idle hours (and these sorts of companies generally don't), the cost of labor per job will be roughly constant regardless of the number of employees.
All of that said, I feel that a national minimum wage is a rather crude tool for eontrolling the economy. I suspect a minimum wage varying by region based on differences in cost of living might be worth investigating (and in fact some states do have their own minimum wages higher than the national average, but I do not know if cost of living considerations influenced these policies).
...you don't deserve to live.
Heh, just about everything can be found in the works of Euler. It's like they say, "In Mathematics, it is customary to name things after the first person after Euler to discover them."
From what I've heard, that's exactly what Infinium is hoping. But it's not going to happen here.
They've lowered the price for the console itself to $199. That gives them a better shot, but if you are trying to sell to casual gamers, it's not going to work. People who aren't already dedicated gamers (i.e. people who don't already own a game console) will regard it as too high an investment.
If you want to sell games to casual gamers, and hopefully to expand that market, you'd be best off making the games run on something consumers already have. If you want to sell millions of consoles to casual gamers, your best bet would be to make it also function as digital cable set-top box and convince cable companies to eat the cost so they can use it as a feature to attract customers.
Two other opportunities are web distribution and mobile phone games, but of course many people have already realized this. I still think the greatest successes for both of these platforms are yet to come and eventually they will do even more to broaden the market for games.
If we weren't talking about Erdos, I'd agree with you. The thing about him, is that he wasn't just a great mathematician, he was a great collaborator. In addition to that he was generally good natured and his many quirks were (mostly) endearing. He brought out the best in the people he worked with. Erdos didn't need money because he was held in such high esteem that he could go anywhere and people would be willing to pay for his meals and give him a place to sleep just for the opportunity to work with him.
There's still not much reason to spend $4200 on one system.
OK, let's say that I have $4200 that I've set aside to spend on gaming hardware. If I get the $4200 Alienware rig I'll have pretty much the best performing gaming system in existence... for about a month or so. Within 6 months there will be hardware outperforming it for less than half the price. The market price of equivalently performing hardware will continue to decrease rapidly as time goes on.
The other option is to spend $2000 or less on a computer that will in all likelihood only have a 10% or lower drop in framerate in Doom III compared to the $4200 system. Then, later when the minimum requirements for new games starts to catch up with your computer, you still have another $2000 to spend on another new computer.
If you want to be as close as possible to the best possible performance all the time, you're best off not buying the top of the line, but instead just upgrading more often. You should only buy top of the line components if a. there is relatively little price difference between the top of the line and the next best performer or b. the performance of the component is a critical bottleneck. If you've got some cash to throw around then buy a top of the line motherboard and maybe even a top of the line video card.
Hell, the $4200 version doesn't even include a RAID set up which is relatively cheap with lots of (affordable) new motherboards having RAID 0, 1, and 0+1 capabilities.
So are you saying that people who use the phrase "goes too far" are going too far?
Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!