Autopilot in an airplane does far more than maintain speed and heading. An autopilot in an airplane can takeoff, land, and everything in between. Autopilots are better at every single part of the flying process than humans, as long as all equipment is operating properly. It's not even a contest. Machines are superior to humans. There are autopilots now (the X-47B being the main interest) that can land tailless aircraft on aircraft carriers without human input. Despite the fact that airplanes fly through the air, and so it seems like it's more open than, say, a road, airplanes are far more restricted than cars. The 'choices' an autopilot or human pilot make are a lot more constrained than a typical car driver, with the exceptions of course being the cases where catastrophic equipment failures are present (at which point the meatbag pilot must take control and handle the situation - regardless of whether its in the air or on a road).
Also, modern autopilots are integrated with TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance Systems) in order to do exactly that - avoid traffic collisions. An autopilot integrated with TCAS would be able to avoid traffic just like a human pilot, because collision avoidance has *very* strict rules set by the FAA and other aviation administrations around the world which determine things like: who goes nose up, who goes nose down, what altitudes they need to go to, and what heading/speed they need to be at. And the TCAS/autopilot systems on aircraft can communicate this amongst each other in real-time at rates exceeding 50 Hz (as opposed to a human, whose reaction time from eye-to-brain-to-hand is 10 Hz at a very theoretical-best).
So comparisons to an aircraft autopilot aren't really appropriate. They do just as much as the human does, but both are so heavily constrained on what they can do in an average situation that it becomes easier to make the decision making autonomous. However, due to the ironically more open nature of driving a car on a road than flying an airplane through the air, the things a human can (legally) do and what a car's 'autopilot' can do are not yet the same. If roadways were as heavily restricted as airspace and required the same level of training, planning, and communication for a driver to operate a vehicle on the roadways, then the autopilot's job would be far easier to automate. But we don't require drivers to have much training, we don't require them to register their driving plan before driving, we don't require them to communicate their driving plans to others while driving, we don't require them to communicate changes to driving plans while driving, etc.
Roadways are also far more densely packed, and there is currently no analogue of a TCAS. To be clear about what TCAS means - it's not just any system that does Something to avoid a collision. It's a very specifically defined piece of equipment that is required to transmit data such as x, y, z velocities + accelerations, course, true airspeed, heading, latitude, longitude, altitude, etc. While there are systems in cars that can be classified as 'tries to avoid collisions' there are no systems which communicate with other cars in order to calculate whether collisions are about to occur, and offer corrective actions to avoid collisions - and this owes a lot to the fact that the car/roadway system is far more complex in some ways than the airplane/airspace system, and also that we allow extremely old cars to drive on roads, whereas the FAA can mandate TCAS to be installed on all aircraft that wish to fly in certain airspaces (low flying aircraft like crop dusters, for example, usually aren't required to have a TCAS, but they also fly in airspaces that don't typically intersect with commercial passenger aircraft).
Not trying to beat you up on these things, it's just that I have experience with working with, and on, these systems in aircraft. I agree that the name is appropriate if people understand how to use it (and Tesla is clear on the "Keep your hands on the damn wheel, you hairless monkey" thing), but perhaps if people are too stupid to understand it based on its name, then perhaps the name needs to be changed. It's our job as engineers to make sure that everyone is safe, even the stupid people.
I think this is the key difference that almost 100% of the comments are missing so far: It's not just about hackers producing a hack, it's about them making a profit off of it. I know/. isn't known for RTFA, but this was even in the summary.
The hackers have developed a business that is based 100% on Blizzard's business, which, for those of you who just hit "Agree" and then "Submit", there is a Terms of Service document that is legally binding that says you can't do that. Blizzard is fully in their rights to pursue legal action.
Slashdot Mirror
Autopilot in an airplane does far more than maintain speed and heading. An autopilot in an airplane can takeoff, land, and everything in between. Autopilots are better at every single part of the flying process than humans, as long as all equipment is operating properly. It's not even a contest. Machines are superior to humans. There are autopilots now (the X-47B being the main interest) that can land tailless aircraft on aircraft carriers without human input. Despite the fact that airplanes fly through the air, and so it seems like it's more open than, say, a road, airplanes are far more restricted than cars. The 'choices' an autopilot or human pilot make are a lot more constrained than a typical car driver, with the exceptions of course being the cases where catastrophic equipment failures are present (at which point the meatbag pilot must take control and handle the situation - regardless of whether its in the air or on a road).
Also, modern autopilots are integrated with TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance Systems) in order to do exactly that - avoid traffic collisions. An autopilot integrated with TCAS would be able to avoid traffic just like a human pilot, because collision avoidance has *very* strict rules set by the FAA and other aviation administrations around the world which determine things like: who goes nose up, who goes nose down, what altitudes they need to go to, and what heading/speed they need to be at. And the TCAS/autopilot systems on aircraft can communicate this amongst each other in real-time at rates exceeding 50 Hz (as opposed to a human, whose reaction time from eye-to-brain-to-hand is 10 Hz at a very theoretical-best).
So comparisons to an aircraft autopilot aren't really appropriate. They do just as much as the human does, but both are so heavily constrained on what they can do in an average situation that it becomes easier to make the decision making autonomous. However, due to the ironically more open nature of driving a car on a road than flying an airplane through the air, the things a human can (legally) do and what a car's 'autopilot' can do are not yet the same. If roadways were as heavily restricted as airspace and required the same level of training, planning, and communication for a driver to operate a vehicle on the roadways, then the autopilot's job would be far easier to automate. But we don't require drivers to have much training, we don't require them to register their driving plan before driving, we don't require them to communicate their driving plans to others while driving, we don't require them to communicate changes to driving plans while driving, etc.
Roadways are also far more densely packed, and there is currently no analogue of a TCAS. To be clear about what TCAS means - it's not just any system that does Something to avoid a collision. It's a very specifically defined piece of equipment that is required to transmit data such as x, y, z velocities + accelerations, course, true airspeed, heading, latitude, longitude, altitude, etc. While there are systems in cars that can be classified as 'tries to avoid collisions' there are no systems which communicate with other cars in order to calculate whether collisions are about to occur, and offer corrective actions to avoid collisions - and this owes a lot to the fact that the car/roadway system is far more complex in some ways than the airplane/airspace system, and also that we allow extremely old cars to drive on roads, whereas the FAA can mandate TCAS to be installed on all aircraft that wish to fly in certain airspaces (low flying aircraft like crop dusters, for example, usually aren't required to have a TCAS, but they also fly in airspaces that don't typically intersect with commercial passenger aircraft).
Not trying to beat you up on these things, it's just that I have experience with working with, and on, these systems in aircraft. I agree that the name is appropriate if people understand how to use it (and Tesla is clear on the "Keep your hands on the damn wheel, you hairless monkey" thing), but perhaps if people are too stupid to understand it based on its name, then perhaps the name needs to be changed. It's our job as engineers to make sure that everyone is safe, even the stupid people.
I think this is the key difference that almost 100% of the comments are missing so far: It's not just about hackers producing a hack, it's about them making a profit off of it. I know /. isn't known for RTFA, but this was even in the summary.
The hackers have developed a business that is based 100% on Blizzard's business, which, for those of you who just hit "Agree" and then "Submit", there is a Terms of Service document that is legally binding that says you can't do that. Blizzard is fully in their rights to pursue legal action.