Agreed. If the car is mostly driving itself, the driver's attention will soon wander. That seems more dangerous than having the driver do all or most of the work (still having cruise control). We will have self driving cars one day, but at the current state of the art it seems more prudent to let the autopilot keep an eye on the driver rather than the other way around.
So it's meh competing with bleh. Which pretty much sums up my experience in cinemas in the past few years. There's been plenty of good "good" movies, but very few enjoyable simple minded blockbusters. I hope these three titles are not examples of the caliber of movies we can look forward to the next few years.
If anything, the presence of our Navy (Dutch) is encouraging them. No shots are fired, pirates are arrested and shipped to the Netherlands where they are convicted, after which they can apply for asylum. Beats crossing the Mediterranean in a leaky boat and paying thousands for the privilege.
That would be my thought but not my response. Politeness costs nothing, and around "security" personnel it means the truncheon and rubber gloves stay in the drawer instead of going into your drawers...
If you're organizing groups, do respect the privacy of those whom you invite as well, and consider other options or provide an alternative. The group membership roll alone is potentially very interesting information to FaceBooks "valued partners". And forcing people to sign up for FB in order to join is just plain wrong.
FaceBook is trying that crap on a large scale with its single sign-on feature. Luckily I have not come across many sites yet that actually use the feature, let alone have it as the only means to sign up.
Commonly that's not seen as a good way. In such situation, the use of deadly force is deemed acceptable in defence of the crew IIRC (and even then often not used, for fear of escalation). But if there is no crew... This is a bit like setting booby traps in your home to nail burglars: if the trap actuall injures or kills the burglar, you're off to jail according to the law in a good many countries.
doing financial audits, do pharmacy audits, checking for overdue records, checking to see if you are overdue for an appointment, checking the status of an insurance claim (twenty times a day), counting the number of diabetics, counting the number of people who need tetanus shots.
You shouldn't have to access my personal medical records for that, I'm not talking about generic hospital administration stuff. In fact over here you're not even allowed to access medical records for any of those reasons, the best you get is anonymized aggregated data. Hospitals do keep a lot of additional data in order to keep their books in order, but even so that information is still classed extremely sensitive, and they're not about to open up that data to other parties like insurance companies (though insurers have pushed for wider access to that data as well).
Exactly what they're saying in Brussels; they are bent on "digging fire corridors" as they call it: make the most dire economic consequences a reality, in order to make an example out of Britain. Thankfully a few national European leaders have already objected and said that the Brexit is to be conducted in an orderly fashion and on friendly terms. Which makes sense: isolating Britain is going to hurt the EU as well, in a big way.
Maybe the "financial disaster" comes from the fact that this Brexit put a giant turd in their double Dutch sandwich or whatever it's called. Some of the tax avoidance schemes are based on tax-free transfers to Cyprus and/or the Netherlands, and when the UK leaves the EU, that will no longer be free.
I just take a close look at the receptacle and especially the keyboard. I keep one hand on the keyboard (touching multiple keys) and cover it with my other hand, then enter the PIN blind. Good against camera's, but not against a fake keyboard. Another measure that a lot of machines here have implemented is to ingest the card in a very jittery manner, making it (almost) impossible for a skimmer to properly read the mag strip. And people still get skimmed: some skimmers took to breaking into shops in order to tamper with or replace the payment terminals.
Most banks here now issue cards with chips that cannot be skimmed. So skimmers came up with a new trick: they install a camera or keyboard to get your PIN, then stick something in the card receptacle in order to trap your card in there. Once you get fed up and leave, they'll retrieve it and now have your chip & PIN.
I'm not against electronic medical records, though I do see the potential security issues. But it's not hackers I am most worried about, it's medical staff with legitimate access, who have no business nosing around my records but do so anyway. It happens a lot more than you'd think, not too long ago there was a big stink here about policemen going through all manner of records they had no business peeking into. Bored cops reading up on celebrities, or checking records on their ex or recent date. And in case of medical data there is a solution for that: any time someone pulls my data, I am notified (by email or whatever): who requested my data, what is their function and who is their employer, and what is their stated purpose of the request. Exactly this kind of audit trail was proposed for our new centralised medical records database, and guess who opposed it? That's right: the medical insurance companies (who should not get access to any of that data unless by explicit permission)
This article combines several of my favourite things to hate on: patents, advertising, and selfies. The only thing missing (but probably already contemplated by the designers) is a data whorehouse.
In the EU, the EU or its collections of institutions is often referred to as "Europe".
And yes, they are written in legal language, laws usually are, and yes they are treaties because that is what laws between countries are.
Treaties are written in legalese, and they have to, as they deal with details. Constitutions on the other hand deal with base principles, ideals, and ground rules, and they can and usually are written in short and extremely accessible language. In case of Europe (I'll just keep calling it that), the treaties would need to follow from the constitution.
For a country: yes, absolutely. In case of the EU, it also needs to clearly define its mandate and span of control (like the US constitution does), and may defer the definition of some of those core rights to its member states. For instance, some say that the EU should really only be about trade, and a constitution would need to reflect that, guaranteeing free movement of goods and people between states, and mandating the EU to impose common trade regulations, set standards, and negotiate trade agreements with other nations. But in that case the constitution would say nothing about human rights, abortion, taxation, justice and so on.
No. What Europe needs and has always lacked is a proper constitution. That absolutely has to come first, and the fact that we have no constitution has always been a (very, very dangerous) problem in the EU. Its lack is the root cause for our weak parliament, weak democratic oversight, martinets like Juncker and van Rompuy popping up in positions of power, the worrying shift of democracy to bureaucracy (not meaning lots of red tape, but being ruled by an uncontrolled system that has become a goal unto itself), and Brussels ever seeking to expand its sphere of political influence. And in case anyone feels a need to mention that the EU does in fact have a "constitution", I'd say: read the damn thing first. That's right: you can't, really. It's a pile of treaties rewritten in legalese, not a constitution.
An EU constitution must set out how the (central) state operates, what its relation is to the people and member states, and last but not least it outlines (and limits) the state's mandate. And in case of the EU, a statement about the overall objectives of the Union might have been nice as well. We have none of this. And we have gotten to the stage where meaningful reform (such as your suggestions) is never going to happen anymore. Not without some very strong incentive... perhaps in the form of more influential member states threatening to leave after the UK has. The popular vote is already approaching a majority for "leave" in many member states.
Scotland is hardly a secessionist group like the Basques. It's part of the UK but a country in its own right, and a few years ago they had a referendum on whether to stay or leave the UK. They choose to stay, but it looks like that may change.
Not sad at all. If you think to get your country out of the dark ages by building sanitation first, and only then tackling education, followed by modernisation of agriculture, decent justice and law enforcement, health care, and social security, before embarking on a space programme (or paying other countries to launch your sats), then you have another think coming. India's space program is both cheap and successful and it will pay off in the long run. In terms of reputation and inspiration, it is already paying off now.
I hear the same stupid question when there's news of a programme to get Internet to rural Africa, or to get smart phones in the hands of Asian farmers: "what would they need with that when they barely survive?" Just as subsistence farmers derive huge benefits from having a connected smart phone (more than we selfie-posting drones do with our phones), a developing nation can reap a great return from space technology. And for a nation like India it makes sense to get into the space game themselves instead of relying on others: the space programme helps their industry and their defense, which in turn helps inspire and retain valuable talent. As long as they can do so cheaply.
In your shoes, the car would probably follow the same rules: evade if it can be done safely, else slow down as much as possible and keep going. It might have been able to make that high speed exit. But a decision to keep going is not really an ethical decision... at least not one made by the car on the spot. Perhaps not even by the programmers; I can well imagine that the decision-making behaviour of autonomous cars in emergency situations will be defined in traffic regulations. And that won't change until AI becomes much better at assessing unusual traffic situations and its own capabilities for reacting to each. Until cars are capable of determining the outcomes of each possible course of action with a very high degree of accuracy, it would not be ethical to allow them to try and choose the lowest value target or the target with the highest chance of survival. If there is no way to avoid a crash without endangering passengers or other road users, and having imperfect information on which to act, the only course of action is to hit whatever's in front of the car. Sucks for the biker. Or for you if that biker turns out to be a semi with a broken headlight.
What happens is that the car will react to unexpected obstacles the way most humans do this, except making the decision much faster and assessing the situation more accurately, perhaps along the following lines:
- attempt a full stop while remaining in the same lane.
- if the vehicle cannot stop in time, divert to another lane for the same direction or an emergency lane / row of parking spaces if there are no obstacles there.
- if the vehicle cannot divert safely into another lane, divert into oncoming traffic or the sidewalk if the coast is clear
- if all of the above cannot be done safely, continue braking in the same lane and attempt to minimise damage
Point is: such cars will most likely never make decisions between 2 targets; it will either take evasive action if that can be done safely, or minimise the impact in its designated lane if it can't. It might not even attempt to divert into the sidewalk at all as that is not a normal manoeuvre for that car and it may not possess the sensors to assess if this can be done safely. Attempting to choose the lesser of two evils is precisely what would expose the owner or manufacturer of the car to massive lawsuits: it is likely that the car will often choose incorrectly. Besides, if a woman with a baby carriage walks into traffic ignoring a red light, I wouldn't want an autonomous car swerving into me in order to avoid her (seriously: every so often I see women using a baby carriage as a means to clear a path, pushing it into traffic to make everyone stop so she can cross. What's up with that?)
It's pointless to argue the rights and wrongs of the matter; this guy is just going through the 8 stages of grief: Disbelief, Denial, Bargaining, Guilt, Anger, Depression, Acceptance, and Looking for a Payday.
I'm not going to read a scientific report as it's most likely going to be waaay over my head. But I remember when mass media journalists were able to report stuff as if addressing adults instead of dropping to the level of Yo Gabba Gabba.
This. The information density in video in insanely low. Indexing, skimming, cutting & pasting is crap or impossible. There are some cases when videos work well, when explaining your audience how to do something: jack up a car to change a tyre, rub 2 sticks together to build a fire, or field strip an AR15. And even then it is difficult to produce a good video, as countless counterexamples on Youtube prove.
No, instead we get that awful animated infographic (complete with obligatory nondescript upbeat music). To be honest I prefer a nice dry and poorly designed Powerpoint over that.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. If the car is mostly driving itself, the driver's attention will soon wander. That seems more dangerous than having the driver do all or most of the work (still having cruise control). We will have self driving cars one day, but at the current state of the art it seems more prudent to let the autopilot keep an eye on the driver rather than the other way around.
So it's meh competing with bleh. Which pretty much sums up my experience in cinemas in the past few years. There's been plenty of good "good" movies, but very few enjoyable simple minded blockbusters. I hope these three titles are not examples of the caliber of movies we can look forward to the next few years.
That new Independence Day movie any good?
If anything, the presence of our Navy (Dutch) is encouraging them. No shots are fired, pirates are arrested and shipped to the Netherlands where they are convicted, after which they can apply for asylum. Beats crossing the Mediterranean in a leaky boat and paying thousands for the privilege.
That would be my thought but not my response. Politeness costs nothing, and around "security" personnel it means the truncheon and rubber gloves stay in the drawer instead of going into your drawers...
If you're organizing groups, do respect the privacy of those whom you invite as well, and consider other options or provide an alternative. The group membership roll alone is potentially very interesting information to FaceBooks "valued partners". And forcing people to sign up for FB in order to join is just plain wrong.
FaceBook is trying that crap on a large scale with its single sign-on feature. Luckily I have not come across many sites yet that actually use the feature, let alone have it as the only means to sign up.
Commonly that's not seen as a good way. In such situation, the use of deadly force is deemed acceptable in defence of the crew IIRC (and even then often not used, for fear of escalation). But if there is no crew... This is a bit like setting booby traps in your home to nail burglars: if the trap actuall injures or kills the burglar, you're off to jail according to the law in a good many countries.
doing financial audits, do pharmacy audits, checking for overdue records, checking to see if you are overdue for an appointment, checking the status of an insurance claim (twenty times a day), counting the number of diabetics, counting the number of people who need tetanus shots.
You shouldn't have to access my personal medical records for that, I'm not talking about generic hospital administration stuff. In fact over here you're not even allowed to access medical records for any of those reasons, the best you get is anonymized aggregated data. Hospitals do keep a lot of additional data in order to keep their books in order, but even so that information is still classed extremely sensitive, and they're not about to open up that data to other parties like insurance companies (though insurers have pushed for wider access to that data as well).
Exactly what they're saying in Brussels; they are bent on "digging fire corridors" as they call it: make the most dire economic consequences a reality, in order to make an example out of Britain. Thankfully a few national European leaders have already objected and said that the Brexit is to be conducted in an orderly fashion and on friendly terms. Which makes sense: isolating Britain is going to hurt the EU as well, in a big way.
Maybe the "financial disaster" comes from the fact that this Brexit put a giant turd in their double Dutch sandwich or whatever it's called. Some of the tax avoidance schemes are based on tax-free transfers to Cyprus and/or the Netherlands, and when the UK leaves the EU, that will no longer be free.
I just take a close look at the receptacle and especially the keyboard. I keep one hand on the keyboard (touching multiple keys) and cover it with my other hand, then enter the PIN blind. Good against camera's, but not against a fake keyboard. Another measure that a lot of machines here have implemented is to ingest the card in a very jittery manner, making it (almost) impossible for a skimmer to properly read the mag strip. And people still get skimmed: some skimmers took to breaking into shops in order to tamper with or replace the payment terminals.
Most banks here now issue cards with chips that cannot be skimmed. So skimmers came up with a new trick: they install a camera or keyboard to get your PIN, then stick something in the card receptacle in order to trap your card in there. Once you get fed up and leave, they'll retrieve it and now have your chip & PIN.
I'm not against electronic medical records, though I do see the potential security issues. But it's not hackers I am most worried about, it's medical staff with legitimate access, who have no business nosing around my records but do so anyway. It happens a lot more than you'd think, not too long ago there was a big stink here about policemen going through all manner of records they had no business peeking into. Bored cops reading up on celebrities, or checking records on their ex or recent date. And in case of medical data there is a solution for that: any time someone pulls my data, I am notified (by email or whatever): who requested my data, what is their function and who is their employer, and what is their stated purpose of the request. Exactly this kind of audit trail was proposed for our new centralised medical records database, and guess who opposed it? That's right: the medical insurance companies (who should not get access to any of that data unless by explicit permission)
This article combines several of my favourite things to hate on: patents, advertising, and selfies. The only thing missing (but probably already contemplated by the designers) is a data whorehouse.
Europe??
In the EU, the EU or its collections of institutions is often referred to as "Europe".
And yes, they are written in legal language, laws usually are, and yes they are treaties because that is what laws between countries are.
Treaties are written in legalese, and they have to, as they deal with details. Constitutions on the other hand deal with base principles, ideals, and ground rules, and they can and usually are written in short and extremely accessible language. In case of Europe (I'll just keep calling it that), the treaties would need to follow from the constitution.
For a country: yes, absolutely. In case of the EU, it also needs to clearly define its mandate and span of control (like the US constitution does), and may defer the definition of some of those core rights to its member states. For instance, some say that the EU should really only be about trade, and a constitution would need to reflect that, guaranteeing free movement of goods and people between states, and mandating the EU to impose common trade regulations, set standards, and negotiate trade agreements with other nations. But in that case the constitution would say nothing about human rights, abortion, taxation, justice and so on.
No. What Europe needs and has always lacked is a proper constitution. That absolutely has to come first, and the fact that we have no constitution has always been a (very, very dangerous) problem in the EU. Its lack is the root cause for our weak parliament, weak democratic oversight, martinets like Juncker and van Rompuy popping up in positions of power, the worrying shift of democracy to bureaucracy (not meaning lots of red tape, but being ruled by an uncontrolled system that has become a goal unto itself), and Brussels ever seeking to expand its sphere of political influence. And in case anyone feels a need to mention that the EU does in fact have a "constitution", I'd say: read the damn thing first. That's right: you can't, really. It's a pile of treaties rewritten in legalese, not a constitution.
An EU constitution must set out how the (central) state operates, what its relation is to the people and member states, and last but not least it outlines (and limits) the state's mandate. And in case of the EU, a statement about the overall objectives of the Union might have been nice as well. We have none of this. And we have gotten to the stage where meaningful reform (such as your suggestions) is never going to happen anymore. Not without some very strong incentive... perhaps in the form of more influential member states threatening to leave after the UK has. The popular vote is already approaching a majority for "leave" in many member states.
Scotland is hardly a secessionist group like the Basques. It's part of the UK but a country in its own right, and a few years ago they had a referendum on whether to stay or leave the UK. They choose to stay, but it looks like that may change.
It's not about that. It simply makes a lot less sense to run your own space program if you can buy launches from others at half the price.
Look up Asia on a map some time. It's not just South Korea, China and Japan. Hint: India is also in Asia.
Not sad at all. If you think to get your country out of the dark ages by building sanitation first, and only then tackling education, followed by modernisation of agriculture, decent justice and law enforcement, health care, and social security, before embarking on a space programme (or paying other countries to launch your sats), then you have another think coming. India's space program is both cheap and successful and it will pay off in the long run. In terms of reputation and inspiration, it is already paying off now.
I hear the same stupid question when there's news of a programme to get Internet to rural Africa, or to get smart phones in the hands of Asian farmers: "what would they need with that when they barely survive?" Just as subsistence farmers derive huge benefits from having a connected smart phone (more than we selfie-posting drones do with our phones), a developing nation can reap a great return from space technology. And for a nation like India it makes sense to get into the space game themselves instead of relying on others: the space programme helps their industry and their defense, which in turn helps inspire and retain valuable talent. As long as they can do so cheaply.
In your shoes, the car would probably follow the same rules: evade if it can be done safely, else slow down as much as possible and keep going. It might have been able to make that high speed exit. But a decision to keep going is not really an ethical decision... at least not one made by the car on the spot. Perhaps not even by the programmers; I can well imagine that the decision-making behaviour of autonomous cars in emergency situations will be defined in traffic regulations. And that won't change until AI becomes much better at assessing unusual traffic situations and its own capabilities for reacting to each. Until cars are capable of determining the outcomes of each possible course of action with a very high degree of accuracy, it would not be ethical to allow them to try and choose the lowest value target or the target with the highest chance of survival. If there is no way to avoid a crash without endangering passengers or other road users, and having imperfect information on which to act, the only course of action is to hit whatever's in front of the car. Sucks for the biker. Or for you if that biker turns out to be a semi with a broken headlight.
What happens is that the car will react to unexpected obstacles the way most humans do this, except making the decision much faster and assessing the situation more accurately, perhaps along the following lines:
- attempt a full stop while remaining in the same lane.
- if the vehicle cannot stop in time, divert to another lane for the same direction or an emergency lane / row of parking spaces if there are no obstacles there.
- if the vehicle cannot divert safely into another lane, divert into oncoming traffic or the sidewalk if the coast is clear
- if all of the above cannot be done safely, continue braking in the same lane and attempt to minimise damage
Point is: such cars will most likely never make decisions between 2 targets; it will either take evasive action if that can be done safely, or minimise the impact in its designated lane if it can't. It might not even attempt to divert into the sidewalk at all as that is not a normal manoeuvre for that car and it may not possess the sensors to assess if this can be done safely. Attempting to choose the lesser of two evils is precisely what would expose the owner or manufacturer of the car to massive lawsuits: it is likely that the car will often choose incorrectly. Besides, if a woman with a baby carriage walks into traffic ignoring a red light, I wouldn't want an autonomous car swerving into me in order to avoid her (seriously: every so often I see women using a baby carriage as a means to clear a path, pushing it into traffic to make everyone stop so she can cross. What's up with that?)
It's pointless to argue the rights and wrongs of the matter; this guy is just going through the 8 stages of grief: Disbelief, Denial, Bargaining, Guilt, Anger, Depression, Acceptance, and Looking for a Payday.
I'm not going to read a scientific report as it's most likely going to be waaay over my head. But I remember when mass media journalists were able to report stuff as if addressing adults instead of dropping to the level of Yo Gabba Gabba.
This. The information density in video in insanely low. Indexing, skimming, cutting & pasting is crap or impossible. There are some cases when videos work well, when explaining your audience how to do something: jack up a car to change a tyre, rub 2 sticks together to build a fire, or field strip an AR15. And even then it is difficult to produce a good video, as countless counterexamples on Youtube prove.
No, instead we get that awful animated infographic (complete with obligatory nondescript upbeat music). To be honest I prefer a nice dry and poorly designed Powerpoint over that.