Maybe at first, but in the long term humans will not even know what it means to drive a vehicle. Ultimately it will come down to safety... once they get all this figured out it will just be too risky to have humans manually driving.
You're right, but with a lot of emphasis on "long term". Very long term.
We're talking 30 to 40 years for having no human driver on the road.
Replacing all the cars currently on the road, considering the fact that a lot of them are used for 15 to 20 years before being scraped, and considering that for at least the next 15 years only some cars for sale will be autonomous, and you get at least 30 years for a complete turnover.
Would you force someone who took great care of their cars, which is still perfercly fonctionnal, to shell out tens of thousands of dollars to buy a new autonomous car? And what about motorcycles? Antique and collector's cars?
What about winter, bad weather, trails, unpaved roads, camping trailers, boats trailers... It will take years before the AI can handle those border cases. You know how it goes, 80% of the cases are probably currently covered by the Google car, but the last 20% will be a bitch, just like most projects.
I think the right thing to do is to have self driving cars for those who can't, shouldn't or don't want to drive, and let those who can drive for themselves.
But I would make it a lot tougher to get a driver's license, and to keep it. Better education, tougher tests, regular retesting, medical examinations, more like a pilot's license. It would be a privilege, and those human drivers would be much safer.
I don't know where you live, but here in Canada me and my father tried a 30 years old rotary phone on his landline a month ago and it worked perfectly, to our amazement.
But I have serious doubts it would work on my "land" line, since it's really just a cell base station with a SIM card.
Do you really think someone can become ill just because he made bad choices in his way of life?
What about pollution? Viruses? Cancer? Car accidents? Those can happen to you even if you are an olympic athelete eating a vegan diet who has never smoked, drank alcohol or even coffee in his life.
To think that cancer or having a life threatening infection can't happen to you because you chose a good lifestyle is a proof that you don't understand anything about health.
You're a selfish, egocentric person, you don't want to share anything with others. I sincerely hope that you never need help from others, but it could happen to you in a flash.
Humans are social animals, because it's much easier to survive as a group, helping each other as needed. Sometimes it's you who are going to contribute to others, and sometimes it's other who will contribute to you. That's part of being a responsible human being.
How do you explain the fact that drugs, and physical interactions with the brain (be it accidental, like injury, or voluntary, like implanted electrodes) can alter someone's personality, memories, mood, in fact all that make this person unique?
How do you explain the results of a lobotomy? We only damaged the interface? The "real" consciousness of that person still exists outside his physical brain, but he can't access it?
What about a free newspaper, like those distributed in the subway?
I can rip off all ads before reading it, once it's in my hands I can do whatever I like with it (apart from copying and distributing the articles, that's not permited of course).
I have not bought and paid the webpage I'm viewing, my browser requested the content at an address, and the web server sent me the content. For free. Now that this content is on my computer, I can do what I like with it. I can delete it in part or in whole, I can choose to display any part of it on my browser, I can save it to read it later, I can look at the source code, I can display it using my own CSS to alter how it's looking...
It's MY computer, that I bought myself. I'm the administrator on this computer, I can choose what I want to display, what code I want to execute, what files I want to delete, save, alter, etc.
Now if they want to have total control on how the page is displayed, they're welcome to lend me a computer where they are the administrator, they use their electricity, and their internet connections.
I pay for my hardware and ressources, I'm the only one who can decide how they're used.
My computer is private property, the processor, RAM and storage space is part of my private domain, nobody can decide what's going on in my house as long as I obay all laws.
So, like you said, if the content creator or distributor doesn't want me to display the content like I want, their only option is NOT to send it to my computer. I have no problem with that, it's not like I will miss it.
If I buy a newspaper, and I hire someone to remove all ads before I read it, is it censorship? No, of course not. I can do what I like with the newspaper, including burning it, using it in a bird's cage, etc...
When I request a web page, and the server sends it to MY computer, MY browser can render it any way I like. I can add an extension to remove all ads so that what's appearing on MY display, using MY computer, is how I like it. I can even write my own browser, and interpret and display the page any way I like, just like I can cut out every article in the newspaper et rearrange it any way I like.
What's the difference? Cutting out paper ads, or cutting out digital ads, when the data is on my computer I can do whatever I like with it (except of course I have to respect copyright, so I can't redistribute it).
Where I live we have this, and you can't flee from the scene of the accident. If you do that and they find you, you'll have a huge fine and they revoke your driver's permit for 30 days.
What it means is that if I'm in an accident, I don't have anything to do with the other driver beside exchanging info. If he's not insured, that's not my problem. That's my insurance company's problem, they'll deal with him.
I can still be found at fault and will have to pay a deductible if that's the case, but I will only deal with MY insurance company. They'll deal with the other insurance company or the individual themselves if there's a problem.
All this is only for material damages mind you, because for injuries we have a collective insurance which is paid by cars registrations and driver's permits. This insurance automatically covers EVERYONE on the road, including pedestrians, cyclists, event tourists (so if you come here and get hit by a car while crossing the road, you're covered!).
No fucking lawsuits, no millions $$$ of damage, no ambulance chasers, just peace of mind.
and other tech companies have folded because they myopically assumed that whatever thing they'd done to make their name would continue to bring in revenue
Netflix is doing good with their original content and has a good selection of overall (and I'm Canadian using the Canadian Netflix). The wife and I cut our cords over a year ago now. We get a lot of content from Netflix now (mostly for our 4 yr old)
I would say that the content of the Canadian Netflix is getting better, but there's still a serious lack of french dub.
I watch everything in english, but my kids aren't fluent enough for now and prefer watching the french version, and it's getting tiring everytime we sit for a bunch of Netflix and have to click on every single movie to see if it's dubbed in french or not (why can't we have a search option for this?).
And it's really stange that sometimes the dvd cover is displayed in french, the description is in french, but it's english only. And a lot of these movies are old, and I know for sure that a french dub exists for them. I have also seen some French movies (real French movies, from France) where Netflix offers only the english dub!!! WTF?
At least all the original Netflix content is available in a lot of languages, that's really smart when you try to become a world leader in streaming, so kudos to them for at least trying.
And a cracker not only removed protections, but often had to also port the games to NTSC since a lot of games and demos in the 80's where not imported to the US/Canada and those were in PAL.
Porting usually meant optimizing the game to fit in the NTSC timing which was shorter than PAL (less scan lines, so less time to execute code before next screen).
And I remember that in those times Hacker meant someone trying to penetrate computers/networks, Cracker meant someone bypassing/removing protections from software, and Phrackers where those who hacked the phone lines.
because the heater, whether heat pump or fossil fuel, is a lot cheaper than electric heat.
That depends on where you live. Here in Quebec, Canada, electric heating is much cheaper than fossil fuel. And heat pumps are not very efficient below -10 C.
If you run your AC in the summer, I agree that it make sense to have less heat and more light. But then again it's a minority of houses that have AC here up north.
From what I've heard, they're not even able to tackle a road that hasn't been mapped in detail, including having recorded the position of every single stop sign, traffic light, speed limit, etc.
I don't even know if this google car can handle a police officer trying to direct traffic. Probably not...
and speaking to control a computer (only something we've fantasized about in movies for half a damn century now) is somehow infinitely better than actually having to lift fingers and depress a touch screen.
That's your opinion, from my point of view it's the total opposite. Voice control outside of my home is a total no-no for me. I hate speaking to people, what makes you think that I would like to speak to a thing?
In fact I also despise touch screens, give me real physical buttons, keyboards, knobs and sliders, without any lag, and I'll be very happy.
I'm so tired of all the lag that is creeping everywhere. It seems like things are becoming slower, not faster. There's always lag on every button press, when you turn something on, when you change volume, or the button lights up but the action comes after, or the reverse, and then you press it twice because you think it didn't register your click... It's worse on touch screens.
And voice recognition is the mother of all laggy way to command something.
No counting the fact that I've yet to find a working voice recognition for my mother tongue. You see I speak French, but I don't live in France. Wich means that all voice recognition software is almost useless unless I fake a French accent instead of my own Quebecois accent.
install a retail copy of windows instead of manufacturer supplied OEM one and your hardware will work even less.
I've installed / reinstalled windows xp/7/8 retail and OEM on several laptops (acer, dell, lenovo, toshiba) in my family and I've never got a problem with unrecognized or non-working hardware. Sleep/hibernation works 100% on all laptops for us.
In fact I'm now upgrading most of our laptops (some are 7 to 8 years old) to windows 10 and so far I have zero incompatibilities.
Try that with Linux. I tried Linux several times in the past 20 years, from the old red had with a text based installation to recent distros, and there's always something not working after installation.
I'm with you with most of what you said except this:
True enough. Low bitrate MP3s annoy me to no end, but they're still better than cassette tape.
A good quality metal tape recorded with dolby C on a good quality tape deck is almost identical to the CD source. I'm quite sure that almost anyone could not tell the difference. I have 20 years old cassettes that I recorded myself that are still very good.
You're probably talking about those cheap pre-recorded cassettes, most of mines are now unlistenable (lots of drop-out or hissing) and most where awful sounding even when new.
Low bitrate MP3 (I'm talking about those 128kbps or less) is really really anoying, it kills the cymbals and any complicated passage. Personnaly above 192kpbs I can't tell the difference with the CD.
This year it will be fucking 12 Celcius on christmas eve. It won't even freeze on christmas night.
We don't have ANY snow yet. In fact, we probably won't have any snow until early january.
I rode my motorcycle in december, for the first time in my life.
I'm in my 40's and I've never seen a december so hot. It's worse than last year, which was worse than the year before.
Usually the snow starts to fall in mid November.
When I was young it was usually -20C to -30C at the same period of the year. With 3 to 4 foot of snow on the ground.
Year after year ski resorts have to delay the start of the skiing season, and these last years it's almost impossible to ski in the holidays, which used to be the best week for those resorts (almost 30% of their yearly revenue).
Slashdot Mirror
99.99% of customers, Apple or other, could care less about government intrusion into your devices.
So, what you're saying is that they care about it? Since they could care less...
crisis counseling centers
You mean those proselytising centers where you take advantage of the vulnerability of victims to push your religion?
Slashdot is really going down the drain when such drivel can be modded to +4.
Ergo, the universe has always existed
What about the big bang??? Where have you been these last 100 years, hiding in a church?
Good god you have a lot of spare time! It must have taken years to assemble this collection.
I'm happy that someone worked to preserve these works of art.
Is your collection available online?
Maybe at first, but in the long term humans will not even know what it means to drive a vehicle. Ultimately it will come down to safety... once they get all this figured out it will just be too risky to have humans manually driving.
You're right, but with a lot of emphasis on "long term". Very long term.
We're talking 30 to 40 years for having no human driver on the road.
Replacing all the cars currently on the road, considering the fact that a lot of them are used for 15 to 20 years before being scraped, and considering that for at least the next 15 years only some cars for sale will be autonomous, and you get at least 30 years for a complete turnover.
Would you force someone who took great care of their cars, which is still perfercly fonctionnal, to shell out tens of thousands of dollars to buy a new autonomous car? And what about motorcycles? Antique and collector's cars?
What about winter, bad weather, trails, unpaved roads, camping trailers, boats trailers... It will take years before the AI can handle those border cases. You know how it goes, 80% of the cases are probably currently covered by the Google car, but the last 20% will be a bitch, just like most projects.
I think the right thing to do is to have self driving cars for those who can't, shouldn't or don't want to drive, and let those who can drive for themselves.
But I would make it a lot tougher to get a driver's license, and to keep it. Better education, tougher tests, regular retesting, medical examinations, more like a pilot's license. It would be a privilege, and those human drivers would be much safer.
I don't know where you live, but here in Canada me and my father tried a 30 years old rotary phone on his landline a month ago and it worked perfectly, to our amazement.
But I have serious doubts it would work on my "land" line, since it's really just a cell base station with a SIM card.
Do you really think someone can become ill just because he made bad choices in his way of life?
What about pollution? Viruses? Cancer? Car accidents? Those can happen to you even if you are an olympic athelete eating a vegan diet who has never smoked, drank alcohol or even coffee in his life.
To think that cancer or having a life threatening infection can't happen to you because you chose a good lifestyle is a proof that you don't understand anything about health.
You're a selfish, egocentric person, you don't want to share anything with others. I sincerely hope that you never need help from others, but it could happen to you in a flash.
Humans are social animals, because it's much easier to survive as a group, helping each other as needed. Sometimes it's you who are going to contribute to others, and sometimes it's other who will contribute to you. That's part of being a responsible human being.
How do you explain the fact that drugs, and physical interactions with the brain (be it accidental, like injury, or voluntary, like implanted electrodes) can alter someone's personality, memories, mood, in fact all that make this person unique?
How do you explain the results of a lobotomy? We only damaged the interface? The "real" consciousness of that person still exists outside his physical brain, but he can't access it?
Yes of course that was a bad example.
What about a free newspaper, like those distributed in the subway?
I can rip off all ads before reading it, once it's in my hands I can do whatever I like with it (apart from copying and distributing the articles, that's not permited of course).
I have not bought and paid the webpage I'm viewing, my browser requested the content at an address, and the web server sent me the content. For free. Now that this content is on my computer, I can do what I like with it. I can delete it in part or in whole, I can choose to display any part of it on my browser, I can save it to read it later, I can look at the source code, I can display it using my own CSS to alter how it's looking...
It's MY computer, that I bought myself. I'm the administrator on this computer, I can choose what I want to display, what code I want to execute, what files I want to delete, save, alter, etc.
Now if they want to have total control on how the page is displayed, they're welcome to lend me a computer where they are the administrator, they use their electricity, and their internet connections.
I pay for my hardware and ressources, I'm the only one who can decide how they're used.
My computer is private property, the processor, RAM and storage space is part of my private domain, nobody can decide what's going on in my house as long as I obay all laws.
So, like you said, if the content creator or distributor doesn't want me to display the content like I want, their only option is NOT to send it to my computer. I have no problem with that, it's not like I will miss it.
If I buy a newspaper, and I hire someone to remove all ads before I read it, is it censorship? No, of course not. I can do what I like with the newspaper, including burning it, using it in a bird's cage, etc...
When I request a web page, and the server sends it to MY computer, MY browser can render it any way I like. I can add an extension to remove all ads so that what's appearing on MY display, using MY computer, is how I like it. I can even write my own browser, and interpret and display the page any way I like, just like I can cut out every article in the newspaper et rearrange it any way I like.
What's the difference? Cutting out paper ads, or cutting out digital ads, when the data is on my computer I can do whatever I like with it (except of course I have to respect copyright, so I can't redistribute it).
You don't know what you're talking about.
Have you even done some research on no fault?
Where I live we have this, and you can't flee from the scene of the accident. If you do that and they find you, you'll have a huge fine and they revoke your driver's permit for 30 days.
What it means is that if I'm in an accident, I don't have anything to do with the other driver beside exchanging info. If he's not insured, that's not my problem. That's my insurance company's problem, they'll deal with him.
I can still be found at fault and will have to pay a deductible if that's the case, but I will only deal with MY insurance company. They'll deal with the other insurance company or the individual themselves if there's a problem.
All this is only for material damages mind you, because for injuries we have a collective insurance which is paid by cars registrations and driver's permits. This insurance automatically covers EVERYONE on the road, including pedestrians, cyclists, event tourists (so if you come here and get hit by a car while crossing the road, you're covered!).
No fucking lawsuits, no millions $$$ of damage, no ambulance chasers, just peace of mind.
Without France, we'd still be the Colonies.
FTFY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
and other tech companies have folded because they myopically assumed that whatever thing they'd done to make their name would continue to bring in revenue
*cough cough* GoPro :-)
Netflix is doing good with their original content and has a good selection of overall (and I'm Canadian using the Canadian Netflix). The wife and I cut our cords over a year ago now. We get a lot of content from Netflix now (mostly for our 4 yr old)
I would say that the content of the Canadian Netflix is getting better, but there's still a serious lack of french dub.
I watch everything in english, but my kids aren't fluent enough for now and prefer watching the french version, and it's getting tiring everytime we sit for a bunch of Netflix and have to click on every single movie to see if it's dubbed in french or not (why can't we have a search option for this?).
And it's really stange that sometimes the dvd cover is displayed in french, the description is in french, but it's english only. And a lot of these movies are old, and I know for sure that a french dub exists for them. I have also seen some French movies (real French movies, from France) where Netflix offers only the english dub!!! WTF?
At least all the original Netflix content is available in a lot of languages, that's really smart when you try to become a world leader in streaming, so kudos to them for at least trying.
And a cracker not only removed protections, but often had to also port the games to NTSC since a lot of games and demos in the 80's where not imported to the US/Canada and those were in PAL.
Porting usually meant optimizing the game to fit in the NTSC timing which was shorter than PAL (less scan lines, so less time to execute code before next screen).
And I remember that in those times Hacker meant someone trying to penetrate computers/networks, Cracker meant someone bypassing/removing protections from software, and Phrackers where those who hacked the phone lines.
because the heater, whether heat pump or fossil fuel, is a lot cheaper than electric heat.
That depends on where you live. Here in Quebec, Canada, electric heating is much cheaper than fossil fuel. And heat pumps are not very efficient below -10 C.
If you run your AC in the summer, I agree that it make sense to have less heat and more light. But then again it's a minority of houses that have AC here up north.
One of my all time favorite TV series.
The sequel, Ashes to Ashes, was quite good also. (Fire up the Quattro!)
they haven't even begun to test snow and ice.
From what I've heard, they're not even able to tackle a road that hasn't been mapped in detail, including having recorded the position of every single stop sign, traffic light, speed limit, etc.
I don't even know if this google car can handle a police officer trying to direct traffic. Probably not...
Speech recognition is still awful if you try it in any other language than english.
It's still as funny and as unreliable as when I first tried it in the 90's.
For any phrases that I try, there are at least 1 or 2 words that are not only wrong but are completely unrelated to the context.
Just like autocorrect, which sugeests me words that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever with what I'm trying to type.
Maybe in 10 years it'll be reliable (again, when not using english). But for now it's a complete joke.
and speaking to control a computer (only something we've fantasized about in movies for half a damn century now) is somehow infinitely better than actually having to lift fingers and depress a touch screen.
That's your opinion, from my point of view it's the total opposite. Voice control outside of my home is a total no-no for me. I hate speaking to people, what makes you think that I would like to speak to a thing?
In fact I also despise touch screens, give me real physical buttons, keyboards, knobs and sliders, without any lag, and I'll be very happy.
I'm so tired of all the lag that is creeping everywhere. It seems like things are becoming slower, not faster. There's always lag on every button press, when you turn something on, when you change volume, or the button lights up but the action comes after, or the reverse, and then you press it twice because you think it didn't register your click... It's worse on touch screens.
And voice recognition is the mother of all laggy way to command something.
No counting the fact that I've yet to find a working voice recognition for my mother tongue. You see I speak French, but I don't live in France. Wich means that all voice recognition software is almost useless unless I fake a French accent instead of my own Quebecois accent.
install a retail copy of windows instead of manufacturer supplied OEM one and your hardware will work even less.
I've installed / reinstalled windows xp/7/8 retail and OEM on several laptops (acer, dell, lenovo, toshiba) in my family and I've never got a problem with unrecognized or non-working hardware. Sleep/hibernation works 100% on all laptops for us.
In fact I'm now upgrading most of our laptops (some are 7 to 8 years old) to windows 10 and so far I have zero incompatibilities.
Try that with Linux. I tried Linux several times in the past 20 years, from the old red had with a text based installation to recent distros, and there's always something not working after installation.
http://www.hdtracks.com/
Hi res, no DRM. You're welcome!
I'm with you with most of what you said except this:
True enough. Low bitrate MP3s annoy me to no end, but they're still better than cassette tape.
A good quality metal tape recorded with dolby C on a good quality tape deck is almost identical to the CD source. I'm quite sure that almost anyone could not tell the difference. I have 20 years old cassettes that I recorded myself that are still very good.
You're probably talking about those cheap pre-recorded cassettes, most of mines are now unlistenable (lots of drop-out or hissing) and most where awful sounding even when new.
Low bitrate MP3 (I'm talking about those 128kbps or less) is really really anoying, it kills the cymbals and any complicated passage. Personnaly above 192kpbs I can't tell the difference with the CD.
I live in Montreal, Canada.
This year it will be fucking 12 Celcius on christmas eve. It won't even freeze on christmas night.
We don't have ANY snow yet. In fact, we probably won't have any snow until early january.
I rode my motorcycle in december, for the first time in my life.
I'm in my 40's and I've never seen a december so hot. It's worse than last year, which was worse than the year before.
Usually the snow starts to fall in mid November.
When I was young it was usually -20C to -30C at the same period of the year. With 3 to 4 foot of snow on the ground.
Year after year ski resorts have to delay the start of the skiing season, and these last years it's almost impossible to ski in the holidays, which used to be the best week for those resorts (almost 30% of their yearly revenue).
And you call them "climate change" alarmists?
Just add a warning label on those websites.
WARNING: This website contains ideas known to the United States of America to cause terrorism and beheadings or other explosive harm.