This sounds more likely to me. Fire doesn't spread quickly in a building built specifically to protect property from fire damage (the most immediate threat to any library).
So, for security, you had to provide a telephone number? Ahahahahaha.
Bitcoin makes everything about currency handling harder for the average person.
It doesn't provide anonymity - that could be facilitated by a central bitcoin exchange server, which may or may not be logging everyone's activity (intentionally or otherwise). But then you might as well use any traditional money laundering method.
The only interesting thing with Bitcoin is that there's a limit to the amount of bitcoins. But just as a govenrment mandate detached the dollar from gold, a government mandate could change relevant representations+algorithms to allow the government to produce more bitcoins at will. And, just as everyone accepted who accepted US dollars accepted the former change, they'd accept the latter change too.
Bitcoins are a tool for speculators, drug dealers, and criminals.
I would certainly like it to be so, but so far it's based all purely on conjecture, as there's not one bit of independent empirical evidence that driverless cars are safer.
Ignoring your paranoid "SOMEONE WILL PROBABLY KILL ME IN A BUS" nonsense, I agree that there are advantages to cars. It's just that for many people they're irrelevant. It would help if some buses had better luggage space, too.
AC [from basement]: Mooooooom they're not using English words they way I want them to be used.
Mom: Why don't you call the Académie anglaise?
AC: Moooom ur SOOOOOO dumb there isn't an Académie anglaise you see English is a descriptive language GOD THIS IS TYPICAL PUBLIC SCHOOL AMERICAN EDUCATION...
Mom: Erm, you went to a publi.. never mind, your sarcasm/nuance detector is clearly broken. OK, so given that words evolve, what do you think we can do about it?
AC: Moooooooooooom call my lawyer it's slander!!!!!
Mom: You're a 25 year old manchild, you don't have a lawyer.
AC: Mooooooooooom call the police!!!
Mom: Why can't you?
AC: Moooooooooom I don't like using the 'phone, people are mean to me, they say I'm a criminal cos I'm a hacker. It's not my fault I'm more intelligent than them:'(.
Mom: There there, son.
AC: Bitty.
Mom: Not now, son, we're doing a piece for Slashdot.
We all wish this, but ya cannae change the laws of physics.
People who run in front of a self-driving car are still going to get injured. Mechanical faults are still going to happen. Obstructions on the road are going to suddenly appear, or remain invisible until it's too late. Finally, of course, every sufficiently complex software product always has bugs - if you think a hundred million deployments will identify them all, see Windows.
You can still vote for independent candidates under PR, you know - it's just a "party" putting forward one person. And I'm entirely confident that the multiparty politics of Germany is more healthy than the one-and-a-half party politics of the US.
Conservatism is just a request to create a temporary power vacuum. It doesn't solve anything. At best, you'll eventually return to the present form of US democracy, IOW exactly what happened when the US began with "US conservatism". At worst, far less accountable private enterprise will regulate the country directly (one dollar - one vote), or even military (one gun - one vote). History gives us a clue as to what usually happens in a country with weakened government but strong (rather than nascent, as in C18 America) industry+military.
It's taken me a while to get there, but I've finally got round to realising all conservatism (in all its forms) boils down to is thinking about 200 years in the past. In 200 years' time, the conservative will look fondly to today. This viewpoint is just a request to repeat history.
...in the emerging post-NSA new world order, the unwritten privacy-for-cool services agreement that drives the internet ecosystem is making netizens increasingly uneasy...
"emerging" "post-" "NSA" "new world order" "unwritten agreement" "services" "privacy" "meaningless-hyphenation" "drive" "internet ecosystem" "netizens"
But one reason for driving is that public transport is inaccessible.
And one reason public transport is inaccessible (in the UK, at least) is because of the de facto collusion of local government authorities with private transport companies, artificially restricting availability of public transport.
If you're going to relax restrictions on transport, surely it's better to relax restrictions on public rather than individual transport? That gives the person wanting to get from A to B way more advantages than merely not having to pay attention to the road.
The question didn't offer a comprehensive, cost-effective bus system as alternative, did it?
I don't know about where you live, but in many parts of the UK, local or state-managed bus services were undercut by private national providers being given permissive operating licenses a long time ago; the latter then boosted prices way beyond original fares, while maintaining their new regulated monopolies. If the state is going to go about removing restrictions from road transport, it would do better to allow at-cost public transport (already tested as workable) rather than allow driverless cars.
Ooh, I know what would be more efficient AND I don't have to pay the full insurance: a bus!
Computer-generated ad hoc bus routes to satisfy immediate requirements wouldn't be hard, if you're not such a prissy little bitch that you can't cope with changing vehicles once or twice on long journeys.
The only evidence we have for the relative safety of driverless cars is their major sponsor telling us that they're safe. This is worse than nothing - because if Google had even convinced itself, it'd've given a hundred models out to independent testers.
Yeah, at some point soon we're going to get AI which is good enough for limited sets of real-world driving conditions. At the moment, though, we have nothing.
Not every littlw subproject has to be profitable - you just need the whole shebang to make money, and it's often not obvious where the profitability will emerge.
At first, many emigrated because they wanted the freedom to worship even sillier sky fairies.
But mostly they emigrated because huge expanse of fertile unplundered land + lots of waterways = job opportunity.
Your revolutionary war, a cheap imitation of the French Revolution, involved a bunch of common businessmen (they supported slavery, for heaven's sake!) reckoning that they could do the Aristocracy thing on their own without the crowns. Considering the imbalance of wealth in modern America, they've suceeded in consolidating power beyond any British monarch's wildest dreams.
The real metric is where on the scale between Anarchy and Tyranny a government & society falls for the common man.
Everything else is propaganda, distraction, and ideological masturbation.
Inventing a scale to suit your viewpoint with "Anarchy" and "Tyranny" on each end sounds to me p. much like "propaganda" and "ideological masturbation".
You're allowed "distraction", of course, because all of Slashdot's entirely that.
This is something I've never understood about the military: anyone bright enough to achieve more than a grunt rank will know that the military hasn't been engaged in mere defense for decades, so why exactly did they join up?
But watching a movie on a tablet or a laptop is a horrific experience.
Admittedly, I was born in a house with an attic which my uncle had turned into a proper home cinema... took the furnishings from a derelict movie theatre, even. I just can't imagine immersing myself in a 15" screen.
I realise I live in an 18th century house with '70s heating system and am dripping in Old Money, which means I have the best money could buy... 30-300 years ago, but have people really moved on that quickly that everyone today has an IP-connected TV in their living room with which to watch films?
Slashdot Mirror
This sounds more likely to me. Fire doesn't spread quickly in a building built specifically to protect property from fire damage (the most immediate threat to any library).
Which currency isn't used as a tool for speculators, drug dealers, and criminals?
Exactly. We don't need another one.
So, for security, you had to provide a telephone number? Ahahahahaha.
Bitcoin makes everything about currency handling harder for the average person.
It doesn't provide anonymity - that could be facilitated by a central bitcoin exchange server, which may or may not be logging everyone's activity (intentionally or otherwise). But then you might as well use any traditional money laundering method.
The only interesting thing with Bitcoin is that there's a limit to the amount of bitcoins. But just as a govenrment mandate detached the dollar from gold, a government mandate could change relevant representations+algorithms to allow the government to produce more bitcoins at will. And, just as everyone accepted who accepted US dollars accepted the former change, they'd accept the latter change too.
Bitcoins are a tool for speculators, drug dealers, and criminals.
I would certainly like it to be so, but so far it's based all purely on conjecture, as there's not one bit of independent empirical evidence that driverless cars are safer.
Ignoring your paranoid "SOMEONE WILL PROBABLY KILL ME IN A BUS" nonsense, I agree that there are advantages to cars. It's just that for many people they're irrelevant. It would help if some buses had better luggage space, too.
AC [from basement]: Mooooooom they're not using English words they way I want them to be used.
Mom: Why don't you call the Académie anglaise?
AC: Moooom ur SOOOOOO dumb there isn't an Académie anglaise you see English is a descriptive language GOD THIS IS TYPICAL PUBLIC SCHOOL AMERICAN EDUCATION...
Mom: Erm, you went to a publi.. never mind, your sarcasm/nuance detector is clearly broken. OK, so given that words evolve, what do you think we can do about it?
AC: Moooooooooooom call my lawyer it's slander!!!!!
Mom: You're a 25 year old manchild, you don't have a lawyer.
AC: Mooooooooooom call the police!!!
Mom: Why can't you?
AC: Moooooooooom I don't like using the 'phone, people are mean to me, they say I'm a criminal cos I'm a hacker. It's not my fault I'm more intelligent than them :'(.
Mom: There there, son.
AC: Bitty.
Mom: Not now, son, we're doing a piece for Slashdot.
AC: But, mom, bitty.
Mom: Oh, all right, sweety, come here.
* Mom takes out breast and AC begins suckling.
You're already complaining about how your current Government isn't accountable to the will of the people. You can't have it both ways.
*not accountable enough. I don't want to make it even less accountable.
What clue would that be? Come to think of it, when has a non-nascent government ceded power willingly?
British post-war Labour government was a massive power shift away from aristocracy and to the people.
All that your leftism is is a demand to control more and more of people's lives. Even if the people give up their rights to you and your ilk
Of course, private ownership is not control, is it?
"will drop into the hundreds".
We all wish this, but ya cannae change the laws of physics.
People who run in front of a self-driving car are still going to get injured. Mechanical faults are still going to happen. Obstructions on the road are going to suddenly appear, or remain invisible until it's too late. Finally, of course, every sufficiently complex software product always has bugs - if you think a hundred million deployments will identify them all, see Windows.
You can still vote for independent candidates under PR, you know - it's just a "party" putting forward one person. And I'm entirely confident that the multiparty politics of Germany is more healthy than the one-and-a-half party politics of the US.
Conservatism is just a request to create a temporary power vacuum. It doesn't solve anything. At best, you'll eventually return to the present form of US democracy, IOW exactly what happened when the US began with "US conservatism". At worst, far less accountable private enterprise will regulate the country directly (one dollar - one vote), or even military (one gun - one vote). History gives us a clue as to what usually happens in a country with weakened government but strong (rather than nascent, as in C18 America) industry+military.
It's taken me a while to get there, but I've finally got round to realising all conservatism (in all its forms) boils down to is thinking about 200 years in the past. In 200 years' time, the conservative will look fondly to today. This viewpoint is just a request to repeat history.
The really awful drivers are still going to think they're such hot shit that they choose to drive manually, you know.
...in the emerging post-NSA new world order, the unwritten privacy-for-cool services agreement that drives the internet ecosystem is making netizens increasingly uneasy...
"emerging"
"post-"
"NSA"
"new world order"
"unwritten agreement"
"services"
"privacy"
"meaningless-hyphenation"
"drive"
"internet ecosystem"
"netizens"
But one reason for driving is that public transport is inaccessible.
And one reason public transport is inaccessible (in the UK, at least) is because of the de facto collusion of local government authorities with private transport companies, artificially restricting availability of public transport.
If you're going to relax restrictions on transport, surely it's better to relax restrictions on public rather than individual transport? That gives the person wanting to get from A to B way more advantages than merely not having to pay attention to the road.
The question didn't offer a comprehensive, cost-effective bus system as alternative, did it?
I don't know about where you live, but in many parts of the UK, local or state-managed bus services were undercut by private national providers being given permissive operating licenses a long time ago; the latter then boosted prices way beyond original fares, while maintaining their new regulated monopolies. If the state is going to go about removing restrictions from road transport, it would do better to allow at-cost public transport (already tested as workable) rather than allow driverless cars.
Prepare to be modded down by people who do one or two things very well but have no clue about the rest of the world.
Ooh, I know what would be more efficient AND I don't have to pay the full insurance: a bus!
Computer-generated ad hoc bus routes to satisfy immediate requirements wouldn't be hard, if you're not such a prissy little bitch that you can't cope with changing vehicles once or twice on long journeys.
Mod parent up to stratosphere.
The only evidence we have for the relative safety of driverless cars is their major sponsor telling us that they're safe. This is worse than nothing - because if Google had even convinced itself, it'd've given a hundred models out to independent testers.
Yeah, at some point soon we're going to get AI which is good enough for limited sets of real-world driving conditions. At the moment, though, we have nothing.
Not every littlw subproject has to be profitable - you just need the whole shebang to make money, and it's often not obvious where the profitability will emerge.
Best kill everyone just to be sure, eh?
At first, many emigrated because they wanted the freedom to worship even sillier sky fairies.
But mostly they emigrated because huge expanse of fertile unplundered land + lots of waterways = job opportunity.
Your revolutionary war, a cheap imitation of the French Revolution, involved a bunch of common businessmen (they supported slavery, for heaven's sake!) reckoning that they could do the Aristocracy thing on their own without the crowns. Considering the imbalance of wealth in modern America, they've suceeded in consolidating power beyond any British monarch's wildest dreams.
The real metric is where on the scale between Anarchy and Tyranny a government & society falls for the common man.
Everything else is propaganda, distraction, and ideological masturbation.
Inventing a scale to suit your viewpoint with "Anarchy" and "Tyranny" on each end sounds to me p. much like "propaganda" and "ideological masturbation".
You're allowed "distraction", of course, because all of Slashdot's entirely that.
...the purpose of this is to specifically eliminate uncomfortable research as not "in the national interest".
Like what has been recently happening up in Canadia.
Any party to the right of CPUSA, or to the left of the National Alliance.
This is something I've never understood about the military: anyone bright enough to achieve more than a grunt rank will know that the military hasn't been engaged in mere defense for decades, so why exactly did they join up?
OK, that makes sense... I haven't been in the US for a few years, and didn't know which alternatives had taken over.
The UK has lots of subscription rental services by mail, but that's not the same as being able to PAYG rent a movie same day.
But watching a movie on a tablet or a laptop is a horrific experience.
Admittedly, I was born in a house with an attic which my uncle had turned into a proper home cinema... took the furnishings from a derelict movie theatre, even. I just can't imagine immersing myself in a 15" screen.
I realise I live in an 18th century house with '70s heating system and am dripping in Old Money, which means I have the best money could buy... 30-300 years ago, but have people really moved on that quickly that everyone today has an IP-connected TV in their living room with which to watch films?