I think both of them are wrong too, but for other reasons. The problem I see is that the smarter our helpers get, the dumber it allows us to be. Just look at computers for a good example of that. As they became ubiquitous and smarter on the inside, with user interfaces dumbed down for "everybody" to use, there was no longer a need for people to learn anything. Or calculators - people don't feel they need to understand even simple maths anymore, because there's a calculator (or calculator app, or google's built-in calculator) to do everything for them. I truly fear that as the helpers get smarter, we get dumber. Only a few people will need to be smart enough to program them, but even that is dumbed down with higher and higher levels of abstractions.
He had a significant role in the Star Wars Holiday Special already in 1978. I see that as more canon than Muppets in Space, the War Edition (episodes I-III).
Better idea: Ask folks that lived under socialism what they think about socialism.
I've lived under socialism, and I really liked it. Free healthcare, free education, no one living on the streets. Quite substantial taxes, but you felt people got something back for the taxes, and especially those who needed it the most. Of course, as you say, there are many flavours of socialism. This was a social democracy with the socialist worker's party having a clear majority for several decades.
Solar is dirt cheap, cheap enough for everyone's roof,
For values of "everyone" that excludes those who don't have a south facing roof, those who have trees, mountains or buildings around them, or those who live far enough from the equator that sunlight is weaker due to the atmosphere, and scarce in the winter half of the year.
offshore wind is a scam
Eppur si soffiare. Denmark currently produces around 42% of all the country's electricity through wind, most of it offshore. By 2020, this is expected to pass 50%.
Does APK have children? I'd bet against it - while there are all kinds of tastes out there, there must be a limit to how much craziness that women can put up with. Mustn't there?
Holy fuck I wish we had that here in Canada... idiots driving down the highway on icy roads like it's the 15th of July...
I've been over the Okanagan highway a few times. I remember the large collection of broken vehicles on display (in Peachland?), largely caused by people riding down the mountain with a foot resting on the brakes.
You can't pull down to walking speed next to someone you know and ask them if they want a ride. How do you know that?
Because the robotic brain of the car cannot know which person I have in mind, nor do voice requests leave enough time to do so before having overshot the person.
There is a man/machine interface that is fast enough to react fast enough to do things before they become missed opportunities, and also react to what you're thinking without having to vocalize it or go through menus. It's through pedals and a steering wheel.
a) Has anybody planned a car where the autopilot doesn't have an on/off switch?
Yes. That's called an autonomous car, and what we discuss here.
b) Drivers don't get to look out of the window at the landscapes, they're too busy driving.
Drivers get to look out the window all the time - that's part of being aware. And drivers often have passengers too, who say things like "can we stop here?"
c) Teslas have a Ludicrous mode which is a big selling point - they're more of a drivers car than anything else you're used to.
"Ludicrous" mode only affects acceleration/torque, and does nothing to how the car handles, which is important if your idea of sporty driving is more than straight line drag racing. And even more to the point, it is only for manual mode, so it's irrelevant when discussing autonomous operations.
Or stop at a kid's lemonade stand, for that matter. Or a duck family or baby turtles crossing the road.
I can predict that if all cars become autonomous, the sale of motorcycles will take off (unless they have plans to make those autonomous too). Because for a great many, a car is not just a people transportation device, but freedom. When you got your first car, what went through your head wasn't "this will make it easier to get to school and home". It was unfolding your wings. Freedom.
For me, reducing a very low risk to an even lower risk just doesn't outweigh giving up that freedom. And I think that it must be terrible to be someone who would make that trade - how scared must they be of risks in their daily life?
And a good number of those are likely suicides. More than we can determine for certain.
Going out in an "accident" is a fairly common way to make a quick escape, and one that has a chance of letting those left back at least get insurance money. With autonomous cars, I predict other death causes will rise, like "accidental" drowning (another big one).
The real difference is with automated driving cars, their safety will only get better with new technology and applied lesson learns over a long period of time.
How is that a difference? Human driven cars most certainly get safer too - just look at the statistics. Human drivers have in general gotten better too; in parts of the world through programs like mandatory slick driving and obstacle avoidance courses, or it becoming easier to lose a license.
Agreed. But even with those incidents my underdstanding was the death rate per mile is much lower than with human drivers. Am I wrong on that?
Actually, yes, you are. The number of miles driven autonomously for the same reasons as regular driving is still too low to draw any statistically significant conclusions either way. We need to get at least an order of magnitude more data in before we can even speak of significant tendencies.
How many crashes happen every day because of humans? Yes I know it is sad, no one wants bad things to happen. But in the long run this is going to save far more lives than take.
We humans have this organ on top of our bodies that has evolved to be able to assess risks and rewards, weigh them against each other, and make choices accordingly. We accept small risks all the time. Evolution has had a lot of time to weed out both the excessive risk takers and the risk averse.
The risk of driving is minimal compared to the rewards. Reducing the risk is a good thing only as long as it does not reduce the rewards to a higher degree.
And that, I believe, is a problem with autonomous cars, even if the risk is reduced to near zero. You can no longer go on a joyride (how big a percentage of Americans was it that lost their virginity going on a joyride, again?) or other unplannable activities like sale spotting or house shopping. You can't decide to cross a double yellow line in what you deem to be a safe manner to get past a garbage truck that stops at every house, instead of getting late for a meeting. You can't pull down to walking speed next to someone you know and ask them if they want a ride. How will they handle things like concert parking where the attendant says "start a new line over there"? The freedom that driving your own car gives is going to be greatly reduced. I think only the most risk averse will buy into that - the same kind of people who cut down trees at kids' playgrounds so the kids won't have a chance to hurt themselves.
Part of the problem is that too few sizes and cuts are offered. SML just doesn't cut it (no pun intended). The stores that offer selections based on things like shoulder width or sleeve length are getting rarer every day.
The worst waste is probably for socks and underwear. If it doesn't fit, it's not like they can repackage it and send it to anyone else. After it gets returned, it gets destroyed. For online stores in particular, where adding a "details" section doesn't take up precious wall and shelf space, why can't they add measurement details in the descriptions? One or two sales extra out of thousands looking, or one or two fewer returns would make up for someone measuring and jotting it down.
I don't think this was about Amazon banning people for having items replaced, but people returning items.
And only those returning a large percentage of their purchases, compared to most customers. I have little sympathy for greedy fucks who intend to game and exploit the system, because it's everybody else that pays the price.
You do realize that the UN standards for free and fair elections requires positively identifying voters:
- Ensure the integrity of the ballot through appropriate measures to prevent multiple voting or voting by those not entitled thereto;
So you're advocating a voting system that doesn't meet UN standards?
You're jumping to conclusions here. Positively identifying voters isn't the only way of ensuring that. Different countries use different measures - all from indelible ink to mark voters with, voter cards that must be handed over to be allowed to enter the booth, and all the way up to centralized computer systems that register that a certain hash has already voted that day.
In other news: there's no reason to ask for ID when voting in federal elections.
There really isn't, you should have had your identity determined when you registered to vote.
Or, following the lead of countries with much higher voter turnout, get rid of the requirement to register to vote, and auto-register all citizens. Voter registration is just a bottleneck designed to make it harder for the destitute to vote.
Wickwrackrum has been thoroughly debunked here on/. before - this is just his latest manifestation of his idee fixe. As headlines go, this is of "Elvis abducted my space baby" quality.
The TV emergency broadcast system has the problem that it can only reach those who have the TV turned on.
Which is why one of the emergency siren codes is "important message, listen to radio/TV". During the cold war, we were drilled in these, but these days, I would wager that nine out of ten people can't tell what any of the siren codes mean.
Most of the non-white population in London are Middle Eastern and Indian. Not North American African or South and Central American.
Again, you spew bullshit about a city you have never walked the streets of, as I have, frequently. 4.2% of London's population identify as black American (chiefly Caribbean) heritage. Plus 1.5% of mixed white and black American heritage. Arabs are only around 1.3% of London's population. Asians are more populous than American blacks, sure.
And what's this focus on "North American African"s anyhow? How big percentage of the dozens of mass shooters the last few years fit that bill? It seems to me that it's the white guys one should be worried about...
"Western countries" like UK and Australia do not have a large amount of African or South American populations. You will notice as populations of these southern hemisphere types increase, crime increases.
You have apparently never been to the UK. 20% of the UK population identify as non-white, and in London, only 45% of the population is "White British". It's hard to find any metropolis in the world with more cultural diversity than London. Or one where your life is in less danger from murder.
How is UK's gun ban working for London's stabbing rates?
Quite well, actually. Compared to the total number shot or stabbed before with the number shot or stabbed now, the risk has gone down. And given a choice, I'd take a higher risk of being stabbed or sliced over being shot any day. The odds of leaving the hospital upright are indisputably much better.
Slashdot Mirror
It would be like my Roomba. It's not the world's best vacuum cleaner, but it's really persistent.
Sounds like my mother, may she rest in peace.
I think both of them are wrong too, but for other reasons.
The problem I see is that the smarter our helpers get, the dumber it allows us to be. Just look at computers for a good example of that. As they became ubiquitous and smarter on the inside, with user interfaces dumbed down for "everybody" to use, there was no longer a need for people to learn anything. Or calculators - people don't feel they need to understand even simple maths anymore, because there's a calculator (or calculator app, or google's built-in calculator) to do everything for them.
I truly fear that as the helpers get smarter, we get dumber. Only a few people will need to be smart enough to program them, but even that is dumbed down with higher and higher levels of abstractions.
I can't help but notice you don't claim to live there NOW...you must not like it as much as you say.
I got married to a monolingual person (i.e. American).
He had a significant role in the Star Wars Holiday Special already in 1978. I see that as more canon than Muppets in Space, the War Edition (episodes I-III).
Better idea: Ask folks that lived under socialism what they think about socialism.
I've lived under socialism, and I really liked it. Free healthcare, free education, no one living on the streets. Quite substantial taxes, but you felt people got something back for the taxes, and especially those who needed it the most.
Of course, as you say, there are many flavours of socialism. This was a social democracy with the socialist worker's party having a clear majority for several decades.
Solar is dirt cheap, cheap enough for everyone's roof,
For values of "everyone" that excludes those who don't have a south facing roof, those who have trees, mountains or buildings around them, or those who live far enough from the equator that sunlight is weaker due to the atmosphere, and scarce in the winter half of the year.
offshore wind is a scam
Eppur si soffiare.
Denmark currently produces around 42% of all the country's electricity through wind, most of it offshore. By 2020, this is expected to pass 50%.
Kids change you
Does APK have children? I'd bet against it - while there are all kinds of tastes out there, there must be a limit to how much craziness that women can put up with. Mustn't there?
Holy fuck I wish we had that here in Canada... idiots driving down the highway on icy roads like it's the 15th of July...
I've been over the Okanagan highway a few times. I remember the large collection of broken vehicles on display (in Peachland?), largely caused by people riding down the mountain with a foot resting on the brakes.
You can't pull down to walking speed next to someone you know and ask them if they want a ride.
How do you know that?
Because the robotic brain of the car cannot know which person I have in mind, nor do voice requests leave enough time to do so before having overshot the person.
There is a man/machine interface that is fast enough to react fast enough to do things before they become missed opportunities, and also react to what you're thinking without having to vocalize it or go through menus. It's through pedals and a steering wheel.
a) Has anybody planned a car where the autopilot doesn't have an on/off switch?
Yes. That's called an autonomous car, and what we discuss here.
b) Drivers don't get to look out of the window at the landscapes, they're too busy driving.
Drivers get to look out the window all the time - that's part of being aware. And drivers often have passengers too, who say things like "can we stop here?"
c) Teslas have a Ludicrous mode which is a big selling point - they're more of a drivers car than anything else you're used to.
"Ludicrous" mode only affects acceleration/torque, and does nothing to how the car handles, which is important if your idea of sporty driving is more than straight line drag racing. And even more to the point, it is only for manual mode, so it's irrelevant when discussing autonomous operations.
Or stop at a kid's lemonade stand, for that matter. Or a duck family or baby turtles crossing the road.
I can predict that if all cars become autonomous, the sale of motorcycles will take off (unless they have plans to make those autonomous too). Because for a great many, a car is not just a people transportation device, but freedom. When you got your first car, what went through your head wasn't "this will make it easier to get to school and home". It was unfolding your wings. Freedom.
For me, reducing a very low risk to an even lower risk just doesn't outweigh giving up that freedom. And I think that it must be terrible to be someone who would make that trade - how scared must they be of risks in their daily life?
And a good number of those are likely suicides. More than we can determine for certain.
Going out in an "accident" is a fairly common way to make a quick escape, and one that has a chance of letting those left back at least get insurance money.
With autonomous cars, I predict other death causes will rise, like "accidental" drowning (another big one).
The real difference is with automated driving cars, their safety will only get better with new technology and applied lesson learns over a long period of time.
How is that a difference? Human driven cars most certainly get safer too - just look at the statistics.
Human drivers have in general gotten better too; in parts of the world through programs like mandatory slick driving and obstacle avoidance courses, or it becoming easier to lose a license.
Agreed. But even with those incidents my underdstanding was the death rate per mile is much lower than with human drivers. Am I wrong on that?
Actually, yes, you are. The number of miles driven autonomously for the same reasons as regular driving is still too low to draw any statistically significant conclusions either way. We need to get at least an order of magnitude more data in before we can even speak of significant tendencies.
How many crashes happen every day because of humans? Yes I know it is sad, no one wants bad things to happen. But in the long run this is going to save far more lives than take.
We humans have this organ on top of our bodies that has evolved to be able to assess risks and rewards, weigh them against each other, and make choices accordingly. We accept small risks all the time. Evolution has had a lot of time to weed out both the excessive risk takers and the risk averse.
The risk of driving is minimal compared to the rewards. Reducing the risk is a good thing only as long as it does not reduce the rewards to a higher degree.
And that, I believe, is a problem with autonomous cars, even if the risk is reduced to near zero. You can no longer go on a joyride (how big a percentage of Americans was it that lost their virginity going on a joyride, again?) or other unplannable activities like sale spotting or house shopping. You can't decide to cross a double yellow line in what you deem to be a safe manner to get past a garbage truck that stops at every house, instead of getting late for a meeting. You can't pull down to walking speed next to someone you know and ask them if they want a ride. How will they handle things like concert parking where the attendant says "start a new line over there"?
The freedom that driving your own car gives is going to be greatly reduced. I think only the most risk averse will buy into that - the same kind of people who cut down trees at kids' playgrounds so the kids won't have a chance to hurt themselves.
Without any risk, why live?
Part of the problem is that too few sizes and cuts are offered.
SML just doesn't cut it (no pun intended). The stores that offer selections based on things like shoulder width or sleeve length are getting rarer every day.
The worst waste is probably for socks and underwear. If it doesn't fit, it's not like they can repackage it and send it to anyone else. After it gets returned, it gets destroyed. For online stores in particular, where adding a "details" section doesn't take up precious wall and shelf space, why can't they add measurement details in the descriptions? One or two sales extra out of thousands looking, or one or two fewer returns would make up for someone measuring and jotting it down.
I don't think this was about Amazon banning people for having items replaced, but people returning items.
And only those returning a large percentage of their purchases, compared to most customers. I have little sympathy for greedy fucks who intend to game and exploit the system, because it's everybody else that pays the price.
You do realize that the UN standards for free and fair elections requires positively identifying voters:
So you're advocating a voting system that doesn't meet UN standards?
You're jumping to conclusions here. Positively identifying voters isn't the only way of ensuring that. Different countries use different measures - all from indelible ink to mark voters with, voter cards that must be handed over to be allowed to enter the booth, and all the way up to centralized computer systems that register that a certain hash has already voted that day.
In other news: there's no reason to ask for ID when voting in federal elections.
There really isn't, you should have had your identity determined when you registered to vote.
Or, following the lead of countries with much higher voter turnout, get rid of the requirement to register to vote, and auto-register all citizens. Voter registration is just a bottleneck designed to make it harder for the destitute to vote.
They do say 'paninis,' 'tortellinis' and 'biscottis,' which drives me up the freaking wall!
Up the freaking muris, you mean?
English borrows words from many languages, but no-one insists to use the donor languages plural forms for words from any other language.
So people say graffitos, salames and phenomenons?
Wickwrackrum has been thoroughly debunked here on /. before - this is just his latest manifestation of his idee fixe. As headlines go, this is of "Elvis abducted my space baby" quality.
The TV emergency broadcast system has the problem that it can only reach those who have the TV turned on.
Which is why one of the emergency siren codes is "important message, listen to radio/TV". During the cold war, we were drilled in these, but these days, I would wager that nine out of ten people can't tell what any of the siren codes mean.
Most of the non-white population in London are Middle Eastern and Indian. Not North American African or South and Central American.
Again, you spew bullshit about a city you have never walked the streets of, as I have, frequently.
4.2% of London's population identify as black American (chiefly Caribbean) heritage. Plus 1.5% of mixed white and black American heritage.
Arabs are only around 1.3% of London's population.
Asians are more populous than American blacks, sure.
And what's this focus on "North American African"s anyhow? How big percentage of the dozens of mass shooters the last few years fit that bill? It seems to me that it's the white guys one should be worried about...
"Western countries" like UK and Australia do not have a large amount of African or South American populations. You will notice as populations of these southern hemisphere types increase, crime increases.
You have apparently never been to the UK.
20% of the UK population identify as non-white, and in London, only 45% of the population is "White British". It's hard to find any metropolis in the world with more cultural diversity than London. Or one where your life is in less danger from murder.
How is UK's gun ban working for London's stabbing rates?
Quite well, actually. Compared to the total number shot or stabbed before with the number shot or stabbed now, the risk has gone down.
And given a choice, I'd take a higher risk of being stabbed or sliced over being shot any day. The odds of leaving the hospital upright are indisputably much better.