Agreed. I'd be very surprised if the data doesn't point just as strongly to an exponential distribution. Phrases like "the psychotic affects, causing a serial killer to commit murder, arise from simultaneous firing of large number of neurons in the brain" sound a little bit hand-wavey to me.
If you think successfully executing a leveraged buyout is "no work" I suggest you go ahead and try it. As for the efficacy of debt financing, talk to those who write the tax code.
You're quite right. The flipside, of course, is that no-one expected their crappy little utility to be used for ten years, and as another poster pointed out, using the same coding technique that worked perfectly well since the days of 3.0 is understandable.
Kernel branches back to 2.0 (released in 1997) have maintainers who can update if required. The longest lived branch to date was the 2.4 branch (2001) , which last got a release Dec 2010.
At home, I last booted into windows when I reinstalled XP after upgrading hardware. That was two years ago and I can't remember when I used it for anything before that.
At work...well, I can't see us getting off XP until 2013 at the earliest. Nobody, but nobody wants the hassles of upgrading ten years of software applications written for a 20,000 seat enterprise and targeted to XP. It has to happen, but we don't want it.
In general, I suspect an unpublicised phone number direct to the second line would be adequate. Those who Google and find it are probably also bright enough to have checked that it is turned on, and so forth.
If it's not in the public domain, it is almost by definition not science. And nukes are not that hard to do for a seriously committed organisation with a bit of cash to spend.
Under UK law, in those circumstances, if you were driving, you could be charged with careless or dangerous driving (depending on the circumstances). Since you were not driving at the time, I don't see how you could bring criminal charges. I think some countries will probably have to update their laws to fit circumstances they weren't written for, but again I would see such a crash as being one for the insurance companies to pick up. And in the UK, liability caps are typically on the order of £2-10m.
This is a longstanding issue in medical trials. If you want to carry out a controlled trial of a treatment *already* in use, you have to jump through so many hoops it's not feasible. Meanwhile, if you're a doctor who just feels like prescribing fried monkey brains, you're perfectly free to do so.
The simple answer is the insurance market will sort it out. The first few driverless cars on the market will incur massive premiums, one will eventually crash, the issues will be litigated, and underwriters will start to get a feel for how to price the risk. At the same time, the manufacturers will respond to consumer demand for vehicles that incur lower premiums, and the issues will gradually go away.
In practice, I don't think it would be long before driverless cars are cheaper to insure than cars controlled by inattentive blobs of meat.
Heh. I've been considering installing a battery powered car horn on my (pedal) bicycle. No matter how carefully you ride, you can't control for idiots; but you can make a loud noise at them.
That's actually true of most mature markets. Aggregator websites that let you compare premiums have driven rates down and very few companies write profitable business anywhere.
I don't work in motor insurance, but I can assure you they wouldn't care if competitive drivers weren't a risk. I suspect the truth is that competitive drivers have fewer on-road accidents, but when they do they're spectacular and give rise to large claims. More generally, the point is that when you write a policy, you have to know what the actual risk you're covering is. Just writing an exclusion into the policy document doesn't mean you don't need to know about it, because that exclusion can create exposure to other risks.
In one sense, no; you're just being charged appropriately, in the same way that a 60 year old smoker must pay more than a 25 year old health freak for life insurance. If the indicator is a meaningful predictor of default, then it's probably in your own interests to do something about that indicator.
Of course, there are indicators that society as a whole decides are not acceptable. Race is the classic example; many risk-based products could be differentiated on race, but I think we can all agree that's bad. What about gender? The EU thinks that's not right either.
My favourite example of this was working in a fish factory. Removing the head of a large fish is done with what is effectively a large mechanical guillotine. It's controlled by two buttons, which you activate at the same time, one with each hand to ensure you don't chop your hand off.
The problem is, fish are slippery, and positioning them so as not to chop off half a head or several inches of tasty fillet is tricky. So the technique was to hold them in place near the neck with one hand and use the elbow and hand of the other arm to hit the button. Much faster, at the risk of losing fingertips, fingers, or an entire hand if you were really sloppy. I wasn't a popular bunny the day I put an end to that practice.
Slashdot Mirror
Umm, a triumph of hope over law there.
Agreed. I'd be very surprised if the data doesn't point just as strongly to an exponential distribution. Phrases like "the psychotic affects, causing a serial killer to commit murder, arise from simultaneous firing of large number of neurons in the brain" sound a little bit hand-wavey to me.
If you think successfully executing a leveraged buyout is "no work" I suggest you go ahead and try it. As for the efficacy of debt financing, talk to those who write the tax code.
You're quite right. The flipside, of course, is that no-one expected their crappy little utility to be used for ten years, and as another poster pointed out, using the same coding technique that worked perfectly well since the days of 3.0 is understandable.
Kernel branches back to 2.0 (released in 1997) have maintainers who can update if required. The longest lived branch to date was the 2.4 branch (2001) , which last got a release Dec 2010.
At work...well, I can't see us getting off XP until 2013 at the earliest. Nobody, but nobody wants the hassles of upgrading ten years of software applications written for a 20,000 seat enterprise and targeted to XP. It has to happen, but we don't want it.
In general, I suspect an unpublicised phone number direct to the second line would be adequate. Those who Google and find it are probably also bright enough to have checked that it is turned on, and so forth.
Economics is a large part of it, but the bigger issue is they didn't have the metallurgy to build anything realistically useful.
Could someone please tell me whether or not this is meant to be a piss-take?
If it's not in the public domain, it is almost by definition not science. And nukes are not that hard to do for a seriously committed organisation with a bit of cash to spend.
Under UK law, in those circumstances, if you were driving, you could be charged with careless or dangerous driving (depending on the circumstances). Since you were not driving at the time, I don't see how you could bring criminal charges. I think some countries will probably have to update their laws to fit circumstances they weren't written for, but again I would see such a crash as being one for the insurance companies to pick up. And in the UK, liability caps are typically on the order of £2-10m.
This is a longstanding issue in medical trials. If you want to carry out a controlled trial of a treatment *already* in use, you have to jump through so many hoops it's not feasible. Meanwhile, if you're a doctor who just feels like prescribing fried monkey brains, you're perfectly free to do so.
While it's not the ideal answer, in the real world it is medically proven and actually feasible. What do you suggest instead?
Also, ostentatiously reading Lolita is a good way to make sure parents don't seat their little brats next to you :)
In practice, I don't think it would be long before driverless cars are cheaper to insure than cars controlled by inattentive blobs of meat.
Surely the error was that you were going too fast, not the plane's response to that condition.
Those of us who have a passing interest in avoiding world war three?
A lowbrow puppet dictator with his finger on the nuclear button. You don't have to think he's special to know you need to take him seriously.
Thanks! This could be fun :)
Umm, that is entirely the whole point of the GPL. Why should you be distributing other people's code without abiding by the conditions they did?
Heh. I've been considering installing a battery powered car horn on my (pedal) bicycle. No matter how carefully you ride, you can't control for idiots; but you can make a loud noise at them.
That's actually true of most mature markets. Aggregator websites that let you compare premiums have driven rates down and very few companies write profitable business anywhere.
I don't work in motor insurance, but I can assure you they wouldn't care if competitive drivers weren't a risk. I suspect the truth is that competitive drivers have fewer on-road accidents, but when they do they're spectacular and give rise to large claims. More generally, the point is that when you write a policy, you have to know what the actual risk you're covering is. Just writing an exclusion into the policy document doesn't mean you don't need to know about it, because that exclusion can create exposure to other risks.
Of course, there are indicators that society as a whole decides are not acceptable. Race is the classic example; many risk-based products could be differentiated on race, but I think we can all agree that's bad. What about gender? The EU thinks that's not right either.
The problem is, fish are slippery, and positioning them so as not to chop off half a head or several inches of tasty fillet is tricky. So the technique was to hold them in place near the neck with one hand and use the elbow and hand of the other arm to hit the button. Much faster, at the risk of losing fingertips, fingers, or an entire hand if you were really sloppy. I wasn't a popular bunny the day I put an end to that practice.