The emergency language is probably just there for a legal reason--
Such emergency declarations are usually there to allow immediate implementation of something that would normally require a lead time between passing the law and requiring compliance. If it's a crisis, all kinds of shortcuts can take place.
But if it were truly an emergency, where are the local school boards? Why haven't THEY already acted to solve the emergency crisis? They're the front line in education, and they're supposed to know what the community needs. They certainly know more about their schools than the feds or even the state.
Interesting argument but go live in fully electric housing and use bicycles for transportation, then you won't miss fossil fuels much even though your use of everything is "unlimited".
This appears to be the same use of the word "unlimited" as when a cell company says you have "unlimited data" but can only supply it at 2g or slower speeds, or lets you have the first 1Gb at 4G and then slows to 56k modem speeds.
Any population reduction effort begins with education,
Population reduction starts with population elimination.
Population limitation starts with education. Then moves to population reduction when "education" in the "correct way to have children" meets up with the desire to have children and improvements in medical and health care.
It's hard enough for human to keep attentive on the road when they are fully in control of the car. Can you imagine humans having to take over when something has failed.
I agree with you fully, and I've said this every time this kind of autonomous vehicle discussion comes up. Any system that has to prompt a human -- who has been told he can read, watch TV, or even sleep while the car protects him, and all quite legal -- who isn't paying attention is a system waiting for catastrophe. But...
"Human taking over" is a really really bad failure mode in a self driving car.
I also agree with that. But I also accept the fact that there WILL BE BAD FAILURES in these autonomous vehicles and there has to be some fallback mode to deal with them. If the autonomous system has failed it is lunacy to assume that the autonomous system will be able to deal with that failure. It's kinda like the old joke about the office worker who complains to IT about his email not working and IT tells him to send them an email describing the problem. Or Comcast trying to upsell me to their telephone service while I'm calling them on my wireline phone reporting a complete cable (TV and network) outage.
The discussion in this thread was about not even ALLOWING the human to control anything, to the point of not even having a steering wheel or other controls. It ASSUMED that the human would be asleep or reading a book or doing something else.
Now let's assume that the human is actually alert and looking out the window to see where he's going. Or being taken, actually. He sees a hazard ahead (pedestrian wandering into the street, car slamming on the brakes, etc) but his perfect autonomous vehicle fails to detect it. The system has failed but does not know it has failed, thus it takes no preventative action. Now your next sentence becomes critical:
It's way worse than the computer trying to take appropriate action to prevent accidents and loss of life.
To the computer, the appropriate action is to "continue." By doing so, it will run down the pedestrian or plow into the back of the car that has stopped. In this case, don't you think it would be way better for the human to take over and prevent the accident or loss of life? Or suppose the AI detects the pedestrian or car ahead and decides that "ditch" will be a safer alternative -- but it doesn't detect the tree in the ditch?
But people who claim autonomous vehicles will be better than he is at driving, who say they'll be, if not perfect, then able to deal with all failure modes without human help, will have gotten the controls he needs to take over removed. Someone may die unneccessarily because the computer failed and the human, who was awake, alert, but able only to watch the accident happen, could not intervene.
My most serious issue is not with autonomous vehicles per se, but with the people who try to claim that they will always be perfect enough to deal with their own failures safely, and that we cannot allow humans to drive because they're so bad at it. Even before the systems get beyond experimental stage, and long before they appear in any numbers sufficient to observe their collective, emergent behavior, people are saying how great and wonderful the world will be when they are ubiquitous.
It reminds of me of how great the world would be when the malaria transmission vector of mosquitoes were removed by use of DDT. Or how great a reliever of morning sickness in pregnant women thalidomide turned out to be. The anecdotes are endless; the takeaway is that human endeavors are rarely perfect, and human design of fail-safe systems always seems to overlook failures that are obvious in hindsight. Isn't it obvious that wind forcing of a harmonic oscillation in a semi-rigid structure will result in catastrophic failure of that structure? Or how about, it is a grade-school demonstration that a 100% oxygen atmosphere will result in g
I remember visiting my cousins in LA who had cable. We watched many hours of programming with no ads at the time in the late 70's.
Then your "cable" was really just a pay movie distribution service and not what cable TV started out to be. If your "cable" didn't carry the local broadcast TV then it was something different. Like back in the mid seventies there was an OTA pay service in Chicago which wasn't broadcast TV even though it used the same technology for distribution.
I remember in the mid to late 70's when HBO became the first and at that time only pay service on our cable system. The only other channels that didn't have ads were the public access ones. And before that, the CATV and MATV systems that grew into what we know as cable TV today carried ONLY broadcast, advertising supported, TV signals.
Network TV is quite common vernacular
I know what network TV is, but you didn't say network TV, you just said "network". "Network" could refer to either network TV or cable/satellite networks.
Since you meant "network TV", then it is relevant to understand that network TV was a prime component* of cable TV from the beginning, and since network TV (sans perhaps PBS) was advertising supported then cable cannot have started with the promise of "no ads". Not every service delivered over a wire is what "most people understand" when you say "cable TV", just as not everything delivered OTA is "broadcast TV".
* and I will happily avoid the whole "comprise" argument.
(and why not, likely we'll end up in a word where the AI is much safer than mere humans)
A self-fulfilling prophecy. As humans start to abandon driving to the promise of the uber-safe AI, they'll lose skill at driving and the AI will become better at it than humans.
That's not because the AI will actually be uber-safe and perfect at driving, it will be because humans will take the easy road and not bother to learn how to do it well. It's trivial to be better than someone who doesn't know how to do something, but that doesn't mean you are actually good at whatever it is.
Anti-lock brakes proved the point. People rely on their smart braking systems to keep them out of trouble and forgot how to deal with locked-up brakes or what kinds of situations to avoid.
Anyone remember the original premise of cable TV. No Advertising.
No. The original premise of cable TV was to provide good TV signals from broadcast stations to places where either antennas couldn't be installed or would be expensive. I.e., apartment buildings or distant signal areas. Since broadcast TV has ALWAYS had advertising, cable could NOT promise "no advertising".
The acronym CATV (early "cable") does not stand for CAble TV, it stands for Community Antenna TV. One antenna serves a community and distributes signals via cable. Broadcast, ad-supported signals.
Once programming networks popped up that were being distributed only via cable THEN it was possible to have certain channels that were "no advertising", because you could go to a pay-channel system. (Early broadcast pay-channels suffered from several problems, including limited bandwidth, scrambling systems that degraded the signal, and piracy, so they were never very profitable.) Early players in the satellite-distributed cable programming channels included WTBS and WGN (both "free" and ad supported), and pay channels like HBO ("ad free", during movies.)
Once hooked though... a scattered ad or 2 barely was noticeable until Cable is the same as Network and nobody remembers the ad-free days.
Nobody remembers what never was. I was around from the time HBO was a small single-channel network, and I worked with people who were there long before me. HBO was one of the first ad-free channels on the system, not one of the last.
I have no idea what you mean by "Network", but since cable is one medium for distribution of network programming, it's hard to say that cable is not "network"-- and it was from the very beginning.
If the failure mode of your imagined self-driving car requires a driver to take over, then you have failed to create a viable self driving car.
Thus proving the inability to create a viable self-driving car. There will never be perfection; there will always be failure modes where a human has to take over. And I don't think it is too far fetched to accept that there are failure modes that we don't know will be failure modes until they happen. Exploding Pintos and a host of other issues that have forced safety recalls are proof of that.
Remember the Tacoma Narrows Bridge? Do you think they'd have built that if they knew of the failure mode it had? Would the NASA bosses have launched on a cold day if they really knew the failure mode of frozen o-rings and the catastrophic results?
For someone who claims language is so important, you sure miss simple concepts like hyperbole.
No, I just realize that hyperbole is usually the sign of someone who lacks a grasp of the facts or has no significant real argument. It is a sign of a dishonest debate. It's the way used car salesmen get people to buy their cars. Start with questions that the rube will say "yes" to. Keep him saying "yes" until you get him to buy.
Of COURSE nobody should be forced to learn 16 languages. That doesn't mean they shouldn't learn at least the basics of a second language.
Most people in CS are not 'participating in the world' as you put it.
Given the spread of global technologies they certainly are. They may not be interested in doing so, but they are.
They're trying to gain employable skillsets in their communities within the reach of their abilities.
That's the task of the trade school, not the university or even the high school. University is supposed to be creating well-educated people, not just good welders or bricklayers.
Learning new languages doesn't automatically make you more 'worldly', either.
Argue with me over something I've said, no something you wanted me to say but did not.
It does not mean stuffing programs with spurious busywork that has little to do with the major.
High schools should not be having "majors". They should have a broader impact on our next generation. They should be providing a general background that all civilized people can use. There is time for specialization later.
If all they're supposed to provide is a job skill, then we're shortchanging every student.
this has nothing to do with CS and should not be a requirement for the degree.
If there are high schools that give out "CS degrees", then they're not doing their job as a high school and they need to be fixed. Maybe that IS the problem -- "me and my buddies got us a CS degree in high school" is a good demonstration of why.
If I am disqualified, why did you bother replying? Anyone intelligent enough to have this conversation could do so without ad hominem attacks.
I replied because I though you were interested in having a discussion, and I was wrong. You don't know what "ad hominem" means, either. I didn't attack you because of you, I showed how your ideas were wrong, and by not knowing what the purposes of an education are you showed yourself as being unqualified to debate it.
Those are much more relevant to CS as well.
My God, man, do you REALLY believe that the only courses a high school should teach should be ones used in a CS degree? And that our Universities should be relegated to the status of technical schools teaching only those things someone will need to do a specific job? How very very sad.
People spend too much time talking
That's the most pitiful excuse for not teaching language classes that I've ever heard.
I said it's unnecessary unless you plan to use the skillsets in your career path.
Using a language "in your career path" is not the only reason to learn one, and if it is your only reason then you should use one of the many language training systems like Rosetta Stone.
A proper CS program is heavy on the workload to begin with. What's the point of stuffing those programs with spurious work if most of the students will not use the language after they graduate and pursue work in their given field?
So the only thing that high schools should teach is what you're going to use on your "career" when you graduate? No, sir, high schools need to teach a broad range of things. If it is just CS that you seek, go to ITT Tech or a community college.
There's no need to make it a requirement just to make more busywork for them.
I thought the reason languages were taught is so that people could yammer in them. Now it's just busywork. How about not trying to turn our high schools into trade schools and we give our next generation a broader education than just "pull the basket out of the fryer when the dinger goes off and make sure you ask if they want fries with that"?
"If management approves plan A, then we proceed with plan X. Else, if they reject A, then we try plan B.
Sloppy and wasteful coding. You do not execute the else clause unless the first IF condition is false. By the time you execute the second "if" ("if they reject A") you already know that A has been rejected.
You don't even need to be thread-safe on this, as "accept/reject A" is an atomic operation.
Interesting point, but most German engineers are going to speak English better than you can speak German. I imagine the same is true for Japan.
Interesting point. IGermany and Japan seem to be able to produce productive and well educated engineers and programmers from their academic systems, even though they spend time teaching a "foreign" language from very early on. Certainly much much more than just classes during two years of their equivalent to US high school. But we can't do it because those two years of one class a term is too much time to spend.
I've heard say that English is much harder to learn than other languages, yet I've met many Germans who are fluent in it. And I know that what I've heard is true because of the number of times I hear native English speakers say things like "Me and my friend went..." or even the more nonsensical "I could care less."
You can take other classes on those days. INCLUDING CODING CLASSES.
This. They're creating an artificial dichotomy as an excuse for dumbing down college admission requirements AND dropping high school electives. In other words, UW is supposed to compete with ITT Tech instead of MIT.
A college prep curriculum SHOULD be harder than one intended to dump people into the labor pool, and it should cover more than what someone with an entry level job needs to live day-to-day.
Do we really need to learn 16 different ways to communicate
I think the number was "three". English and two other languages. Yes, if you're going after a good education to be a participant in the world, you need to know enough about other languages to understand that there are cultural differences embedded in them.
but unless you're a prodigy, it takes years to master any language enough to not sound like an idiot.
One does not have to be a fluent speaker to find value in understanding a bit more about the other people on the planet.
Those of us with other priorities don't have the time.
If your priority is not to get a good education at a University, then I fear you don't have time to attend one. You should go to a trade school and learn just what you think is important today.
Why should we encourage this? People already spend too much time yammering.
The fact that you think the only use for a foreign language is so that someone can "yammer" pretty much disqualifies you from an intelligent conversation about whether foreign languages should be required.
In other words, they still won't require broadband providers to open up the public infrastructure to competing ISPs.
If it is public infrastructure the existing broadband companies won't have any control over it. Companies cannot open up a public resource.
or innovating with different networking technologies won't be possible like you can do with an unbundled loop and a competing carrier.
There is still nothing stopping a competing carrier from bringing you your token ring or whatever technology you want to compete with Ethernet and IPv4.
I was most interested in the statement that there would be no rate regulation. Deregulating the cable industry rates worked out SO well for the consumer, let's make sure everyone is deregulated.
You aren't active in your local government, are you? Your loss.
That was the ENTIRE comment I replied to. Two sentences. You may have made some other point in some other place, but what I replied to, and what I quoted while doing so, was that. And no, by showing that it was more of a loss to participate, I did not prove your point. Exactly the opposite, in fact.
Actually, he is correct. You just showed you are not currently active.
The comment wasn't about whether someone was currently active, it was a statement that it was "your loss" because they weren't active. I showed that, when comparing "active" and "not active" wrt local government, it is more of a loss to be active. The correct statement would be: "you aren't active in local government. Your gain."
So for the years when I had no car and couldn't use freeways I should have paid nothing to support them?
You paid zero in gas tax. People who came to visit you could use them. You could have used the freeways except you didn't pay for your own equipment to do so. That would be equivalent to having the internet connection to your house but you don't own a computer. You'd pay for the connection. Just as were I to have a connection to the gas lines but not own a gas appliance. I'd pay for the connection because I could use it. All I'd need to do is buy a stove. That's different than not having a connection at all.
We should just make all roads toll roads then,
A fascinating idea, but not based on anything I've said.
If I get together with a group of like minded individual with the goal of creating a local fibre ISP, we will fail for the simple lack of access. In most areas, governments have given a local monopoly to an incumbent cable and/or telephone company, and they have exclusive access to the infrastructure needed to run new cables.
Except that isn't correct. A franchise is not an exclusive grant, it is a non-exclusive. I know of exactly zero exclusive franchises in all of the cities I've been involved with cable in. Nobody has ever pointed me to one.
Even if it was physically possible, do we really want 47 different sets of cables run up and down every street?
And now you have to resort to hyperbole to make your case. Why would two cable companies need 47 different sets of cables? That's simply ridiculous. Why would even THREE companies need 47 sets of cables? They wouldn't.
Yes, there is a limit to the number of cables an existing pole can carry. It's much higher than "one". It's not the number of sets of cables that's limiting competition because "three" is hardly unreasonable, nor "four".
It's not the franchise agreement that stops competition. A competitor who agrees to the same terms the existing company did can get a franchise. They would have to, because otherwise the franchise and the enacting resolutions would be bills of attainder.
So what does stop competition if not the franchise or capacity of the poles? The inability to get a return on investment.
Is government regulation better than the pure free market approach? I expect yes,
And yet it is this alleged government regulation that you blame for the lack of competition. In truth, it is economic reality, but were it government regulation then it would be "the voice of the people" since it is regulation by the local municipality.
Maybe if you use the word freedom a few dozen more times it will all work itself out?
I didn't bring up the issue of freedom. I didn't use the word a dozen times, I used it exactly four times. Your hyperbole doesn't respond to the issue.
You have arrived at the point where your awareness of the situation ends. "Another company" can't show up since many municipalities have incumbent agreements that specifically *forbid* anyone from competing with the cable or phone company that first installed infrastructure.
Phone companies are almost always handled on a state regulatory basis. Cable companies are handled locally. I know of exactly zero exclusive franchises in any of the cities I've lived in. You call them "incumbent agreements", but that's not what they are.
Who thought of those laws? It wasn't the will of the people, not by a last mile
And now you are even more wrong. Whatever exclusive franchises are in place were approved by the municipal government. The same "voice of the people" that is being used to justify municipal governments who want to compete with the same companies they've granted franchises to. You can't claim that one voice that issues a franchise is bad while the same voice that tries to compete is good.
Even if some stupidity led to an exclusive franchise somewhere, how is it not a breach of contract for the city that said "you have exclusive rights to operate here" to suddenly decide THEY will compete with that company, using taxpayer money to back the costs of building the competition so the city can operate at below cost and still survive?
There is such a terrifying patchwork of local laws surrounding utility construction and availability that no company large enough to pull it off would ever want that kind of risk
And THAT, sir, is the real reason why competition doesn't take place. It's not the mythical dejure monopoly, it's the economics.
And now that we agree that it is the economics that stops competition, then we shouldn't be too far from agreeing that an abuse of the economic system that a local government can bring to the table would be a worse solution. You admit that it is scary for anyone but the largest companies to be in the business because of the risk, so why should a local government that has no risk be allowed to compete and undercut the people who are taking the risk?
The situation isn't as you describe it. If a student enrolls in a CS class, that almost always means that there is a different class that the student is choosing not to take. Computer classes are often electives, so that means one less student in art, or gym, or music.
That one less student in art doesn't mean that the CS class can absorb one more, it only means a potentially empty seat in an art class. The art class isn't going to be cancelled beacuse there's now 24 students instead of 25 -- and if it is, then those 24 art students get shafted.
Additionally, if more students enroll, the school gets more funding.
That is not true. School funding is based on total number of students, not how many students are taking which classes. That hypothetical student who transfers out of art to take CS gets counted once in either class.
I don't think this is the ideal setup, but at the same time I can't say that I mind too much - IMO, schools place far too much emphasis on sports.
The point I was making is not the emphasis on sports, it was that a goal of "equal opportunity" is almost always converted into "equal outcomes", simply because it is easier to measure outcomes than opportunity. Having a girl's soccer team to provide opportunity is hard to judge how even the opportunity is. Counting heads and calculating percentages is easy. The fact that your student population is 49% female and only 20% of your athletes are female is a fact. Should that fact be proof of lack of opportunity? A schools that has a girl's soccer team that only a few girls go out for isn't a lack of opportunity, but to prove the school is meeting Title IX requirements they may have to cut a boys sport to make the numbers balance.
You say that you don't mind if the facts are used that way. I think it is an abuse to do that. And it happens all the time when "equal outcomes" are measured instead of equal opportunity. A business where there are only 10% female executives is painted as discriminating, even if they hire every female who applies.
However, the fact that you have an axe to grind with liberals and try to turn this into more fuel for the partisan fire hurts your credibility.
I don't see where I've made this an issue of liberals, especially in what you chose to reply to. I don't care who does it, substituting "outcomes" for "opportunity" is just plain wrong. You don't agree, especially when the issue is "sports". It's okay to make the metric into simple participation percentages and not a full examination of opportunity because you don't care if boys don't get to play sports because the girls choose not to. That speak volumes to your credibility, I'd say.
You are confised. Obama is not (and never claimed to be) a public health expert.
The only claim that Christie was a public health expert of any kind was by the author of the article. Christie didn't claim that.
The point remains -- if Christie is only a "self appointed" expert, then so is Obama, and neither one should be quoted. Using a quote from Obama to discredit Christie and also discrediting him because he's a "self appointed" expert is hypocrisy.
But He would claim to be a spokesperson for his advisors who are certified public health experts.
I notice the Divine Capital on "He". Interesting. Anyway, Christie has public health experts on the state payroll, too. Sauce for the goose is fit for the gander.
And how is that different from the fast Internet connection?
If you are have a fast internet connection, it isn't. The question was about paying for the construction of an internet you aren't connected to. If you aren't connected, you pay nothing and you SHOULD pay nothing. You cannot use an internet connection that you don't have. Municipal internet makes everyone pay, even those who don't want a connection.
Last month my council decided to fund a new park. By your standard it should be a commercial park with fee paid each time you step inside.
No, not by my standard. You're making it up. You have access to a park any time you show up. There is no service call necessary to connect to a park. You walk in, you're using it. UNLIKE an internet connection you don't have that you can't just start using.
Not true. My new housing development paid quite a bit of money to connect to the electric grid. Once the connection fee was paid (about 4 years) the monthly electricity bill went down.
Your bill went down but your electric rates did not. You were paying off the connection and developer's fees on a monthly schedule, NOT paying for the intial build of the electric grid you connected to. That is no different than if Comcast or your municipal internet allowed you to pay off the connection fee over 48 months. You aren't paying for the system buildout, only your connection to it. It doesn't matter if you subscribe from day one or day ten thousand one, you still pay the connection fee for the actual connection. The fee for ongoing SERVICE is something else. You are claiming that fee -- the rate for service -- will go down. That doesn't happen.
Yeah, they have developer's fees in our city too. They pay for the connections into the existing infrastructure, not the initial building of that infrastructure. What bill they get added to to pass them onto the new home owner is irrelevant, they aren't part of the rate for service.
Certainly. IF the buildout was financed from taxes then everyone is entitled to the same low fee. However, what if it was financed only by the initial subscribers?
There are no subscribers until there is a buildout. The money has to come from somewhere. Those people are called "taxpayers". If the money is borrowed from someone, then the people who are backing the bonds and paying the interest are called "taxpayers". Once there are subs then they'll pay, but since it is a municipal system the taxpayers are still backing it. The taxpayers get to cover the losses when there aren't enough subscribers to cover the costs. Trying to claim that taxpayers aren't involved is silly.
What should be done in this case?
1. People who aren't connected to the system should pay zero for the system. I have no connection to Comcast, I pay nothing to Comcast. I have no connection to the municipal internet, I should pay nothing for the municipal internet, not even through taxes.
2. People who connect to the system should pay the rate in effect when they connect. If that rate is lower now, then they pay the lower rate.
3. Any rate should be based on actual costs and not be a profit center for a government.
Pretty simple. 1 is violated by using tax money. If new subs pay a higher rate than existing subs for the same service, and the price for existing subs is based on costs, then new subs are being asked to pay above-cost rates -- a profit center for the city. New subs will still pay a fee to connect, but that's for their connection, not for the entire buildout.
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The emergency language is probably just there for a legal reason--
Such emergency declarations are usually there to allow immediate implementation of something that would normally require a lead time between passing the law and requiring compliance. If it's a crisis, all kinds of shortcuts can take place.
But if it were truly an emergency, where are the local school boards? Why haven't THEY already acted to solve the emergency crisis? They're the front line in education, and they're supposed to know what the community needs. They certainly know more about their schools than the feds or even the state.
I expect to see every cop in the US wearing these inside of five years. For better or worse.
And my eyeglasses have super-bright IR LEDs embedded in them, too.
Interesting argument but go live in fully electric housing and use bicycles for transportation, then you won't miss fossil fuels much even though your use of everything is "unlimited".
This appears to be the same use of the word "unlimited" as when a cell company says you have "unlimited data" but can only supply it at 2g or slower speeds, or lets you have the first 1Gb at 4G and then slows to 56k modem speeds.
Any population reduction effort begins with education,
Population reduction starts with population elimination.
Population limitation starts with education. Then moves to population reduction when "education" in the "correct way to have children" meets up with the desire to have children and improvements in medical and health care.
It's hard enough for human to keep attentive on the road when they are fully in control of the car. Can you imagine humans having to take over when something has failed.
I agree with you fully, and I've said this every time this kind of autonomous vehicle discussion comes up. Any system that has to prompt a human -- who has been told he can read, watch TV, or even sleep while the car protects him, and all quite legal -- who isn't paying attention is a system waiting for catastrophe. But ...
"Human taking over" is a really really bad failure mode in a self driving car.
I also agree with that. But I also accept the fact that there WILL BE BAD FAILURES in these autonomous vehicles and there has to be some fallback mode to deal with them. If the autonomous system has failed it is lunacy to assume that the autonomous system will be able to deal with that failure. It's kinda like the old joke about the office worker who complains to IT about his email not working and IT tells him to send them an email describing the problem. Or Comcast trying to upsell me to their telephone service while I'm calling them on my wireline phone reporting a complete cable (TV and network) outage.
The discussion in this thread was about not even ALLOWING the human to control anything, to the point of not even having a steering wheel or other controls. It ASSUMED that the human would be asleep or reading a book or doing something else.
Now let's assume that the human is actually alert and looking out the window to see where he's going. Or being taken, actually. He sees a hazard ahead (pedestrian wandering into the street, car slamming on the brakes, etc) but his perfect autonomous vehicle fails to detect it. The system has failed but does not know it has failed, thus it takes no preventative action. Now your next sentence becomes critical:
It's way worse than the computer trying to take appropriate action to prevent accidents and loss of life.
To the computer, the appropriate action is to "continue." By doing so, it will run down the pedestrian or plow into the back of the car that has stopped. In this case, don't you think it would be way better for the human to take over and prevent the accident or loss of life? Or suppose the AI detects the pedestrian or car ahead and decides that "ditch" will be a safer alternative -- but it doesn't detect the tree in the ditch?
But people who claim autonomous vehicles will be better than he is at driving, who say they'll be, if not perfect, then able to deal with all failure modes without human help, will have gotten the controls he needs to take over removed. Someone may die unneccessarily because the computer failed and the human, who was awake, alert, but able only to watch the accident happen, could not intervene.
My most serious issue is not with autonomous vehicles per se, but with the people who try to claim that they will always be perfect enough to deal with their own failures safely, and that we cannot allow humans to drive because they're so bad at it. Even before the systems get beyond experimental stage, and long before they appear in any numbers sufficient to observe their collective, emergent behavior, people are saying how great and wonderful the world will be when they are ubiquitous.
It reminds of me of how great the world would be when the malaria transmission vector of mosquitoes were removed by use of DDT. Or how great a reliever of morning sickness in pregnant women thalidomide turned out to be. The anecdotes are endless; the takeaway is that human endeavors are rarely perfect, and human design of fail-safe systems always seems to overlook failures that are obvious in hindsight. Isn't it obvious that wind forcing of a harmonic oscillation in a semi-rigid structure will result in catastrophic failure of that structure? Or how about, it is a grade-school demonstration that a 100% oxygen atmosphere will result in g
I remember visiting my cousins in LA who had cable. We watched many hours of programming with no ads at the time in the late 70's.
Then your "cable" was really just a pay movie distribution service and not what cable TV started out to be. If your "cable" didn't carry the local broadcast TV then it was something different. Like back in the mid seventies there was an OTA pay service in Chicago which wasn't broadcast TV even though it used the same technology for distribution.
I remember in the mid to late 70's when HBO became the first and at that time only pay service on our cable system. The only other channels that didn't have ads were the public access ones. And before that, the CATV and MATV systems that grew into what we know as cable TV today carried ONLY broadcast, advertising supported, TV signals.
Network TV is quite common vernacular
I know what network TV is, but you didn't say network TV, you just said "network". "Network" could refer to either network TV or cable/satellite networks.
Since you meant "network TV", then it is relevant to understand that network TV was a prime component* of cable TV from the beginning, and since network TV (sans perhaps PBS) was advertising supported then cable cannot have started with the promise of "no ads". Not every service delivered over a wire is what "most people understand" when you say "cable TV", just as not everything delivered OTA is "broadcast TV".
* and I will happily avoid the whole "comprise" argument.
if you can get insurance for our AI driven car
The General will insure anyone.
(and why not, likely we'll end up in a word where the AI is much safer than mere humans)
A self-fulfilling prophecy. As humans start to abandon driving to the promise of the uber-safe AI, they'll lose skill at driving and the AI will become better at it than humans.
That's not because the AI will actually be uber-safe and perfect at driving, it will be because humans will take the easy road and not bother to learn how to do it well. It's trivial to be better than someone who doesn't know how to do something, but that doesn't mean you are actually good at whatever it is.
Anti-lock brakes proved the point. People rely on their smart braking systems to keep them out of trouble and forgot how to deal with locked-up brakes or what kinds of situations to avoid.
Anyone remember the original premise of cable TV. No Advertising.
No. The original premise of cable TV was to provide good TV signals from broadcast stations to places where either antennas couldn't be installed or would be expensive. I.e., apartment buildings or distant signal areas. Since broadcast TV has ALWAYS had advertising, cable could NOT promise "no advertising".
The acronym CATV (early "cable") does not stand for CAble TV, it stands for Community Antenna TV. One antenna serves a community and distributes signals via cable. Broadcast, ad-supported signals.
Once programming networks popped up that were being distributed only via cable THEN it was possible to have certain channels that were "no advertising", because you could go to a pay-channel system. (Early broadcast pay-channels suffered from several problems, including limited bandwidth, scrambling systems that degraded the signal, and piracy, so they were never very profitable.) Early players in the satellite-distributed cable programming channels included WTBS and WGN (both "free" and ad supported), and pay channels like HBO ("ad free", during movies.)
Once hooked though... a scattered ad or 2 barely was noticeable until Cable is the same as Network and nobody remembers the ad-free days.
Nobody remembers what never was. I was around from the time HBO was a small single-channel network, and I worked with people who were there long before me. HBO was one of the first ad-free channels on the system, not one of the last.
I have no idea what you mean by "Network", but since cable is one medium for distribution of network programming, it's hard to say that cable is not "network"-- and it was from the very beginning.
If the failure mode of your imagined self-driving car requires a driver to take over, then you have failed to create a viable self driving car.
Thus proving the inability to create a viable self-driving car. There will never be perfection; there will always be failure modes where a human has to take over. And I don't think it is too far fetched to accept that there are failure modes that we don't know will be failure modes until they happen. Exploding Pintos and a host of other issues that have forced safety recalls are proof of that.
Remember the Tacoma Narrows Bridge? Do you think they'd have built that if they knew of the failure mode it had? Would the NASA bosses have launched on a cold day if they really knew the failure mode of frozen o-rings and the catastrophic results?
For someone who claims language is so important, you sure miss simple concepts like hyperbole.
No, I just realize that hyperbole is usually the sign of someone who lacks a grasp of the facts or has no significant real argument. It is a sign of a dishonest debate. It's the way used car salesmen get people to buy their cars. Start with questions that the rube will say "yes" to. Keep him saying "yes" until you get him to buy.
Of COURSE nobody should be forced to learn 16 languages. That doesn't mean they shouldn't learn at least the basics of a second language.
Most people in CS are not 'participating in the world' as you put it.
Given the spread of global technologies they certainly are. They may not be interested in doing so, but they are.
They're trying to gain employable skillsets in their communities within the reach of their abilities.
That's the task of the trade school, not the university or even the high school. University is supposed to be creating well-educated people, not just good welders or bricklayers.
Learning new languages doesn't automatically make you more 'worldly', either.
Argue with me over something I've said, no something you wanted me to say but did not.
It does not mean stuffing programs with spurious busywork that has little to do with the major.
High schools should not be having "majors". They should have a broader impact on our next generation. They should be providing a general background that all civilized people can use. There is time for specialization later.
If all they're supposed to provide is a job skill, then we're shortchanging every student.
this has nothing to do with CS and should not be a requirement for the degree.
If there are high schools that give out "CS degrees", then they're not doing their job as a high school and they need to be fixed. Maybe that IS the problem -- "me and my buddies got us a CS degree in high school" is a good demonstration of why.
If I am disqualified, why did you bother replying? Anyone intelligent enough to have this conversation could do so without ad hominem attacks.
I replied because I though you were interested in having a discussion, and I was wrong. You don't know what "ad hominem" means, either. I didn't attack you because of you, I showed how your ideas were wrong, and by not knowing what the purposes of an education are you showed yourself as being unqualified to debate it.
Those are much more relevant to CS as well.
My God, man, do you REALLY believe that the only courses a high school should teach should be ones used in a CS degree? And that our Universities should be relegated to the status of technical schools teaching only those things someone will need to do a specific job? How very very sad.
People spend too much time talking
That's the most pitiful excuse for not teaching language classes that I've ever heard.
I said it's unnecessary unless you plan to use the skillsets in your career path.
Using a language "in your career path" is not the only reason to learn one, and if it is your only reason then you should use one of the many language training systems like Rosetta Stone.
A proper CS program is heavy on the workload to begin with. What's the point of stuffing those programs with spurious work if most of the students will not use the language after they graduate and pursue work in their given field?
So the only thing that high schools should teach is what you're going to use on your "career" when you graduate? No, sir, high schools need to teach a broad range of things. If it is just CS that you seek, go to ITT Tech or a community college.
There's no need to make it a requirement just to make more busywork for them.
I thought the reason languages were taught is so that people could yammer in them. Now it's just busywork. How about not trying to turn our high schools into trade schools and we give our next generation a broader education than just "pull the basket out of the fryer when the dinger goes off and make sure you ask if they want fries with that"?
"If management approves plan A, then we proceed with plan X. Else, if they reject A, then we try plan B.
Sloppy and wasteful coding. You do not execute the else clause unless the first IF condition is false. By the time you execute the second "if" ("if they reject A") you already know that A has been rejected.
You don't even need to be thread-safe on this, as "accept/reject A" is an atomic operation.
Interesting point, but most German engineers are going to speak English better than you can speak German. I imagine the same is true for Japan.
Interesting point. IGermany and Japan seem to be able to produce productive and well educated engineers and programmers from their academic systems, even though they spend time teaching a "foreign" language from very early on. Certainly much much more than just classes during two years of their equivalent to US high school. But we can't do it because those two years of one class a term is too much time to spend.
I've heard say that English is much harder to learn than other languages, yet I've met many Germans who are fluent in it. And I know that what I've heard is true because of the number of times I hear native English speakers say things like "Me and my friend went ..." or even the more nonsensical "I could care less."
You can take other classes on those days. INCLUDING CODING CLASSES.
This. They're creating an artificial dichotomy as an excuse for dumbing down college admission requirements AND dropping high school electives. In other words, UW is supposed to compete with ITT Tech instead of MIT.
A college prep curriculum SHOULD be harder than one intended to dump people into the labor pool, and it should cover more than what someone with an entry level job needs to live day-to-day.
Do we really need to learn 16 different ways to communicate
I think the number was "three". English and two other languages. Yes, if you're going after a good education to be a participant in the world, you need to know enough about other languages to understand that there are cultural differences embedded in them.
but unless you're a prodigy, it takes years to master any language enough to not sound like an idiot.
One does not have to be a fluent speaker to find value in understanding a bit more about the other people on the planet.
Those of us with other priorities don't have the time.
If your priority is not to get a good education at a University, then I fear you don't have time to attend one. You should go to a trade school and learn just what you think is important today.
Why should we encourage this? People already spend too much time yammering.
The fact that you think the only use for a foreign language is so that someone can "yammer" pretty much disqualifies you from an intelligent conversation about whether foreign languages should be required.
In other words, they still won't require broadband providers to open up the public infrastructure to competing ISPs.
If it is public infrastructure the existing broadband companies won't have any control over it. Companies cannot open up a public resource.
or innovating with different networking technologies won't be possible like you can do with an unbundled loop and a competing carrier.
There is still nothing stopping a competing carrier from bringing you your token ring or whatever technology you want to compete with Ethernet and IPv4.
I was most interested in the statement that there would be no rate regulation. Deregulating the cable industry rates worked out SO well for the consumer, let's make sure everyone is deregulated.
I said:
You said:
That was the ENTIRE comment I replied to. Two sentences. You may have made some other point in some other place, but what I replied to, and what I quoted while doing so, was that. And no, by showing that it was more of a loss to participate, I did not prove your point. Exactly the opposite, in fact.
Actually, he is correct. You just showed you are not currently active.
The comment wasn't about whether someone was currently active, it was a statement that it was "your loss" because they weren't active. I showed that, when comparing "active" and "not active" wrt local government, it is more of a loss to be active. The correct statement would be: "you aren't active in local government. Your gain."
So for the years when I had no car and couldn't use freeways I should have paid nothing to support them?
You paid zero in gas tax. People who came to visit you could use them. You could have used the freeways except you didn't pay for your own equipment to do so. That would be equivalent to having the internet connection to your house but you don't own a computer. You'd pay for the connection. Just as were I to have a connection to the gas lines but not own a gas appliance. I'd pay for the connection because I could use it. All I'd need to do is buy a stove. That's different than not having a connection at all.
We should just make all roads toll roads then,
A fascinating idea, but not based on anything I've said.
And I'm arguing with someone who has the "name" bitingduck. What's your point? Are you really judging content on the /. username and not what is said?
If I get together with a group of like minded individual with the goal of creating a local fibre ISP, we will fail for the simple lack of access. In most areas, governments have given a local monopoly to an incumbent cable and/or telephone company, and they have exclusive access to the infrastructure needed to run new cables.
Except that isn't correct. A franchise is not an exclusive grant, it is a non-exclusive. I know of exactly zero exclusive franchises in all of the cities I've been involved with cable in. Nobody has ever pointed me to one.
Even if it was physically possible, do we really want 47 different sets of cables run up and down every street?
And now you have to resort to hyperbole to make your case. Why would two cable companies need 47 different sets of cables? That's simply ridiculous. Why would even THREE companies need 47 sets of cables? They wouldn't.
Yes, there is a limit to the number of cables an existing pole can carry. It's much higher than "one". It's not the number of sets of cables that's limiting competition because "three" is hardly unreasonable, nor "four".
It's not the franchise agreement that stops competition. A competitor who agrees to the same terms the existing company did can get a franchise. They would have to, because otherwise the franchise and the enacting resolutions would be bills of attainder.
So what does stop competition if not the franchise or capacity of the poles? The inability to get a return on investment.
Is government regulation better than the pure free market approach? I expect yes,
And yet it is this alleged government regulation that you blame for the lack of competition. In truth, it is economic reality, but were it government regulation then it would be "the voice of the people" since it is regulation by the local municipality.
Maybe if you use the word freedom a few dozen more times it will all work itself out?
I didn't bring up the issue of freedom. I didn't use the word a dozen times, I used it exactly four times. Your hyperbole doesn't respond to the issue.
You have arrived at the point where your awareness of the situation ends. "Another company" can't show up since many municipalities have incumbent agreements that specifically *forbid* anyone from competing with the cable or phone company that first installed infrastructure.
Phone companies are almost always handled on a state regulatory basis. Cable companies are handled locally. I know of exactly zero exclusive franchises in any of the cities I've lived in. You call them "incumbent agreements", but that's not what they are.
Who thought of those laws? It wasn't the will of the people, not by a last mile
And now you are even more wrong. Whatever exclusive franchises are in place were approved by the municipal government. The same "voice of the people" that is being used to justify municipal governments who want to compete with the same companies they've granted franchises to. You can't claim that one voice that issues a franchise is bad while the same voice that tries to compete is good.
Even if some stupidity led to an exclusive franchise somewhere, how is it not a breach of contract for the city that said "you have exclusive rights to operate here" to suddenly decide THEY will compete with that company, using taxpayer money to back the costs of building the competition so the city can operate at below cost and still survive?
There is such a terrifying patchwork of local laws surrounding utility construction and availability that no company large enough to pull it off would ever want that kind of risk
And THAT, sir, is the real reason why competition doesn't take place. It's not the mythical dejure monopoly, it's the economics.
And now that we agree that it is the economics that stops competition, then we shouldn't be too far from agreeing that an abuse of the economic system that a local government can bring to the table would be a worse solution. You admit that it is scary for anyone but the largest companies to be in the business because of the risk, so why should a local government that has no risk be allowed to compete and undercut the people who are taking the risk?
The situation isn't as you describe it. If a student enrolls in a CS class, that almost always means that there is a different class that the student is choosing not to take. Computer classes are often electives, so that means one less student in art, or gym, or music.
That one less student in art doesn't mean that the CS class can absorb one more, it only means a potentially empty seat in an art class. The art class isn't going to be cancelled beacuse there's now 24 students instead of 25 -- and if it is, then those 24 art students get shafted.
Additionally, if more students enroll, the school gets more funding.
That is not true. School funding is based on total number of students, not how many students are taking which classes. That hypothetical student who transfers out of art to take CS gets counted once in either class.
I don't think this is the ideal setup, but at the same time I can't say that I mind too much - IMO, schools place far too much emphasis on sports.
The point I was making is not the emphasis on sports, it was that a goal of "equal opportunity" is almost always converted into "equal outcomes", simply because it is easier to measure outcomes than opportunity. Having a girl's soccer team to provide opportunity is hard to judge how even the opportunity is. Counting heads and calculating percentages is easy. The fact that your student population is 49% female and only 20% of your athletes are female is a fact. Should that fact be proof of lack of opportunity? A schools that has a girl's soccer team that only a few girls go out for isn't a lack of opportunity, but to prove the school is meeting Title IX requirements they may have to cut a boys sport to make the numbers balance.
You say that you don't mind if the facts are used that way. I think it is an abuse to do that. And it happens all the time when "equal outcomes" are measured instead of equal opportunity. A business where there are only 10% female executives is painted as discriminating, even if they hire every female who applies.
However, the fact that you have an axe to grind with liberals and try to turn this into more fuel for the partisan fire hurts your credibility.
I don't see where I've made this an issue of liberals, especially in what you chose to reply to. I don't care who does it, substituting "outcomes" for "opportunity" is just plain wrong. You don't agree, especially when the issue is "sports". It's okay to make the metric into simple participation percentages and not a full examination of opportunity because you don't care if boys don't get to play sports because the girls choose not to. That speak volumes to your credibility, I'd say.
You are confised. Obama is not (and never claimed to be) a public health expert.
The only claim that Christie was a public health expert of any kind was by the author of the article. Christie didn't claim that.
The point remains -- if Christie is only a "self appointed" expert, then so is Obama, and neither one should be quoted. Using a quote from Obama to discredit Christie and also discrediting him because he's a "self appointed" expert is hypocrisy.
But He would claim to be a spokesperson for his advisors who are certified public health experts.
I notice the Divine Capital on "He". Interesting. Anyway, Christie has public health experts on the state payroll, too. Sauce for the goose is fit for the gander.
And how is that different from the fast Internet connection?
If you are have a fast internet connection, it isn't. The question was about paying for the construction of an internet you aren't connected to. If you aren't connected, you pay nothing and you SHOULD pay nothing. You cannot use an internet connection that you don't have. Municipal internet makes everyone pay, even those who don't want a connection.
Last month my council decided to fund a new park. By your standard it should be a commercial park with fee paid each time you step inside.
No, not by my standard. You're making it up. You have access to a park any time you show up. There is no service call necessary to connect to a park. You walk in, you're using it. UNLIKE an internet connection you don't have that you can't just start using.
Not true. My new housing development paid quite a bit of money to connect to the electric grid. Once the connection fee was paid (about 4 years) the monthly electricity bill went down.
Your bill went down but your electric rates did not. You were paying off the connection and developer's fees on a monthly schedule, NOT paying for the intial build of the electric grid you connected to. That is no different than if Comcast or your municipal internet allowed you to pay off the connection fee over 48 months. You aren't paying for the system buildout, only your connection to it. It doesn't matter if you subscribe from day one or day ten thousand one, you still pay the connection fee for the actual connection. The fee for ongoing SERVICE is something else. You are claiming that fee -- the rate for service -- will go down. That doesn't happen.
Yeah, they have developer's fees in our city too. They pay for the connections into the existing infrastructure, not the initial building of that infrastructure. What bill they get added to to pass them onto the new home owner is irrelevant, they aren't part of the rate for service.
Certainly. IF the buildout was financed from taxes then everyone is entitled to the same low fee. However, what if it was financed only by the initial subscribers?
There are no subscribers until there is a buildout. The money has to come from somewhere. Those people are called "taxpayers". If the money is borrowed from someone, then the people who are backing the bonds and paying the interest are called "taxpayers". Once there are subs then they'll pay, but since it is a municipal system the taxpayers are still backing it. The taxpayers get to cover the losses when there aren't enough subscribers to cover the costs. Trying to claim that taxpayers aren't involved is silly.
What should be done in this case?
1. People who aren't connected to the system should pay zero for the system. I have no connection to Comcast, I pay nothing to Comcast. I have no connection to the municipal internet, I should pay nothing for the municipal internet, not even through taxes.
2. People who connect to the system should pay the rate in effect when they connect. If that rate is lower now, then they pay the lower rate.
3. Any rate should be based on actual costs and not be a profit center for a government.
Pretty simple. 1 is violated by using tax money. If new subs pay a higher rate than existing subs for the same service, and the price for existing subs is based on costs, then new subs are being asked to pay above-cost rates -- a profit center for the city. New subs will still pay a fee to connect, but that's for their connection, not for the entire buildout.