This isn't killing registration, it's REQUIRING one. A really horrible one.
It is like facebook, only forcing people to use it - FOR EVERYTHING.
It's not just the end of online anonymity, it's the total destruction of what remains of privacy.
Look, I do NOT want to use the same ID for my Medical history for ANYTHING. No one should be able to know what ointments I am getting or for what, just because I sent them an email.
People have a right to privacy, even if most morons ignore it.
Although you could put in a minimal volunteer requirement.
In particular, some studies have shown that sole income providers do not significantly reduce their work even after getting a basic income, although people do reduce hours for second jobs - whether they be 2nd jobs done after normal working hours or second jobs done by a mother whose husband provides the main income while she takes care of the child.
A break down of how many were identified (not something they desire) versus how many were rescued (something they desperately desire) is probably the single most important number in that story.
Yes, there will be disruption. When you replace chariots with horse drawn wagons, the chariot makers lost their jobs, but the wagon makers gained new jobs Then when they replaced horse dragon wagons with cars, the same scenario happened again. As we replace gasoline powered vehicles with electric, it will happen again.
Technology ALWAYS creates more jobs than it takes, but their is a lot of froth in the job market when it happens. You and the other data entry clerks definitely lost your jobs, but other people gained new ones.
I don't know how exactly it happened, but the result is obvious when you look at the big picture. Among other things, the electronics that replace your old job needed mining,engineering, building, transporting, software, installation, maintance, repair, and disposal. Those are just the most obvious ones. But most likely, the increased efficiency of the machines as compaired to you, meant more things could be polled. Perhaps they expanded the poll, meaning more mailings, etc. Perhaps the price of polling dropped so much that private poll takers expanded their service.
Your pain is real, but just because technology replaced your job does NOT mean that the total # of jobs dropped.
P.S. I am currently unemployed myself. I am not some white tower philospher talking about something he has not experienced.
This story typifies what is wrong with policing in the US.
1) The cop did not plan on doing anything wrong, criminal, evil or stupid. He did what he did with the best of intentions (as evidence by the fact that he told the truth when questioned about it.)
2) The cop was so ignorant, so arrogant, so focused on getting the arrest, that he did not know it was wrong, why it was wrong, and probably still does not understand the principle (but I bet he knows not to do that exact same thing again.)
3) No real change will happen. They won't teach that cop, or other cops that "your job is NOT to get a conviction, but aid civilans, and honestly report what happened." They won't change the culture of being "in charge" rather than "of service". They will continue using the Dirty Harry (mean, angry, takes no crap, there to kill the bad guy) stereotype rather than the Columbo stereotype (self effacing, polite, there to ask questions)
First, robots will not be stealing jobs, tech will create more than it takes, it always does, because we filled all the "neccessary" jobs centuries ago and most current work is luxury - and humans being greedy keep expanding the luxuries we decide are 'essential' - health care is a prime example.
That said, a robot tax is not a bad idea. It's a good way to tax the succesful businesses after they have advanced past the beginner stage and become profitable enough to automate.
Of course the real question is what is a robot and what is a 'job human's used to do'. Robots could be defined as any machine that is capable of moving itself more than 10 ft without a human operating it. That excludes stationary machinery, but would include driverless cars.
But "humans used to do" is stupid, all jobs are things human used to do. Even if you make a new job tomorrow, I could screw you over by doing it once, then it becomes something a human used to do.
Is a Roomba a taxable robot? Humans used to vaccuum. Is it taxable if you buy one to clean a factory - but not taxable if you get it for home use?
1) All equiptment is designed for the apple computer, not randomly put together with whatever is cheapest that month. Everything is designed to work together, as they know ahead of time what other gear will be installed.
2) You get the apple OS, that used to have no viruses and even now has much fewer issues with unauthorized take over.
3) Also, you get the brand, which for some people is enough. Remember the whole "PC is for business, but apple is cool" mystique? People still believe it.
Wow. Another telepath telling me what is going on in my brain. Funny how they always get things wrong.
I have doubt - doubt in the total ignorance exposed by the 'technology kills jobs' meme when in fact technology has ALWAYS increased the number of jobs.
Because the basic principle behind their inane theory is that there are a set number of jobs and technology reduces that.
No. The only jobs we truly need are creating food and shelter. Those jobs were all filled hundreds of years ago. Almost all current jobs (excluding a small number of farmers and energy jobs), are LUXURY jobs. The more jobs we do not have to do, free us up to get more luxuries.
That cycle will never stop because Humans are greedy. If you give us all a sex robot, we will demand a SECOND sex robot for threesomes.
I have NO DOUBT in the nature of mankind and the nature of work. The only way the total number of people employed could possibly drop would be if we a huge disaster struck killing most people.
There are two different kinds of "bad ideas". Some have been tried and failed, others we have not found a good way to test yet.
The reasons that failed bad ideas are still believed is poor education. We don't teach people about science, so they don't understand how to test ideas or waht an idea failure looks like. Nor do we teach them how tell the difference between good information sources and bad information sources, so they trust Jenny McCarthy, Donald Trump, Glenn Beck, and Rod Blagojevitch.
We don't show people how to check sources, nor do we even educate them about the clear signs of falsehood (my favorite is telling people what your opponent thinks, rather than what you belief. Obvious sign of a liar (unless they first prove they can read minds. ).
Just as the computer industry has been horrible for employment - all those computing jobs stolen by machines. Work expands to new fields once old ones are satisfied.
I have no doubt that 50% of all current jobs will at least be threatened within 10 years. And I have no doubt that the number of people employed will INCREASE.
I currently need reading glasses for most paperbacks. I would still rather read them then an ebook, in part because I find the large print settings on ebooks to be poorly done. Particularly on smaller ereaders, it isn't worth the effort.
Basically, print books are far superior to ebooks.
Paperbacks are cheap and you can mistreat them / throw them away / easily give them away / sell them / donate them.
Hard cover are nice and large and easy to read. They feel good and are a much better experience.
The real problem for me are the graphics. Which is a shame because obviously the ebooks COULD be far superior. But they aren't. They totally suck when it comes to any graphics. They don't move, they don't enlarge. They aren't in color. Worst of all, they somehow manage to shrink them down so even though the ereader is BIGGER than the paperback, the drawing is SMALLER on the ebook. Not to mention the fact that while the resolution is good enough for letters, it is too low for good graphical display.
When I buy a book that has a map (like many sci-fi/fantasy books), I enjoy the map. I ignore it in an ebook. While I feel cheated.
Basically the only time I ever want to get an ebook is when space is at a premium. Airline trips for example.
As other noted, that cost is only partial. Worse, it's for installation, not life cycle. It costs money (and power) to run those scrubbers.
Also, once you remove the carbon, sulfur, mercury, thorium and other stuff, you have to dispose of it. The carbon and sulfur take up space, but aren't that dangerous. The mercury and thorium are dangerous ingredients that you have to pay to properly transport and dispose of safely.
Which is why there are a grand total of two 'clean coal' plants in the USA, both finally operational as of January 2017, both funded in part by the US government as a test program.
Not a single corporation felt it made any monetary sense to run these stupid things without government money. Why? Because they are too damn expensive to run. If they made sense, we have built them without government cash.
Actually it's worse than that. It's the bank manager (or CEO) that refuses to input false information with a note having the truth and a memo to their employees to fix it or be fired.
Computers are not perfect. The difference between a good manager and a MORON is the moron says "sorry, the computer won't let us do that", while the manager ignores the rules and takes personal responsibility to see that the customer gets serviced.
It is true that they have invented scrubbers that solve most of these problems. But said scrubbers are incredibly expensive to run, making coal the single most expensive form of energy around.
There is not a single 'clean coal' plant that is currently making money. They are all run as loss leaders to 'prove' coal be be clean.
1) It produces more radioactivity than all other energy sources, including Nuclear power. (A small percentage of coal is thorium, which settles around wherever you burn the coal.)
2) It takes more work to mine it than all other sources (including uranium - though it does require less processing).
3) It takes more work to ship it from it's source to the plant than all other energy types.
4) It produces more carbon pollution than all other sources. Coal is basically pure carbon plus some nasty impurities. Oil and gas are Carbon + Hydrogen + some other stuff. Carbon burns to Carbon Dioxide (or worse, monoxide). Hydrogen burns nice and clean, turning into water.
5) Coal contains trace amounts of mercury, which when burned makes it's way into the atmosphere, then rains down into the oceans. Nasty stuff. No other energy source has this problem.
6) Coal mining has some nasty problems, including black lung disease and sometimes starts underground fires we literally can NOT put out.
No sane person mines coal for energy if they have any other energy source. All others are safer and better. Burning oil, gas, or wood are all better. Nuclear is better. Tidal, wind, solar, hydro, are all better.
Coal mining should only be used after you have burned all your forests up, mined all your uraninum, pumped all your natural gas and oil, and the sun has gone out.
"Fake News" does not just mean not true. That is called slander and libel. Nor does it refer to just true facts that are not "news." (Then it would include all of sports reporting).
Instead the term Fake News was created because of people avoiding the libel and slander laws by taking a fact and stretching it all out of proportion to reflect something that a certain mindset will either love or hate.
In this manner, the clear and obvious successor to " Pravda", called "RT", achieves its goals of lying to America and the west without being held legally responsible. In America, rather than the government, it is the political parties that desire to slander and libel people, so we get Conservative Breitbart and Liberal Huffington Post.
In other words, BIAS is exaclty the source of all Fake News. It doesn't mean that all biased things are fake news, it just means all Fake news comes from bias.
While it is true that fake news becomes profitable, that only happens after fake news creates it's own market in a feedback loop.
To get those feedback loops start, you need the bias.
So use the essential ingredient to root out the problem.
Look, 100k/4 = 25k = low salary. Not unusual at all. Similarly if you have 10 children, but only make 200k, your freakin' POOR.
The basic problem is our culture tries to measures wealth by income rather than net worth.
You can not compare the salary of a young, healthy, single orphan with a married couples supporting two sets of sick parents and multiple kids.
We need to reset our definition of wealth to be based on cash, stocks, mutual funds and real estate in the bank. This means the IRS should ignore your salary and base your taxes on what you own. Ignore the stuff in your IRA and give a set amount to ignore (just as we don't take the first 10k of income for a single person). Start it at 1% and gradually raise it to a max of 5% if you have more than a couple million in the bank.
If we did this, we could get rid of most of the complexity of the tax code, because it is all based on not overcharging the poor, which this system does automatically.
Step 1. Find a good set of sources of a variety of fake news. At least one conservative (Brietbart), Russian (RT), and Liberal (Huffington Post) to start.
Step 2. Set up software to track everyone that regularly reads any of those three as your secret mechanical Turk testers. Everything those people like, post, or otherwise support will be fake news.
Step 3. Create a solid scoring system based on your testers.
Basically, use the stupidity of the users against them. Once you find people stupid enough to believe the fairly obviously low production value of fake news, you have your testing machine.
You just have to make sure you get all strains of bias. If new strains show up, be sure to add them to step 1.
Yes because that is their mission. Your complaint is that they are too EFFECTIVE.
There are lots of solid evidence that people dislike government because it is too good at what it does. Then they undermine the government and laugh and say "Hey, now that we have handcuffed them, they can't do anything right.!
Which is why I want to create one to protect us rather than spy on us.
Government agencies are actually more effective than businesses (two thirds accomplish thier goal, vs 1 third for small business).
The problem is that when a government agency fails, it has to keep trying, while a small business that fails goes bankrupt and someone else tries again in a year or two. But government does such important work that we frankly are not willing to go without for the year or two. So we keep the failed agencies around, which makes replacing it harder.
: a member of a volunteer committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily (as when the processes of law are viewed as inadequate); broadly : a self-appointed doer of justice
Note the parenthetic comment - "when the processes of law are viewed as inadequate".
In this case, the processes of law are NON-EXISTENCE. It is by definition inadequate. Yes, this is vigilante justice, mainly because our governments have totally failed to properly regulate these issues.
We need a simple government agency to report internet based vulnerabilities. Once reported, the manufacturer should have one month to fix it - and push the fix out. With monetary fines for a failure to do that - calculated so that 1 vulnerability in 100% of their products cuts 10% of their gross profit (note gross, not net).
Because I hate to tell you, but stores in Beverly Hills charge more than they do in Compton for the exact same product.
And their are these things called "sales" and "coupons" to differentiate pricing even at the same store.
Yes, online makes it a bit more obvious, and yes, smart people can kill the cookies that are more likely to raise your price than reduce it (they assume no cookie = new customer, so they offer lower prices).
Study should be redone, comparing price differential online with those off-line.
Good design can reduce a helicopter's noise significantly - half normal which is close enough to a car.
While your points are valid, I don't think they are the main problems. The real issues are those I mentioned - speed and skill. No one wants a flying car that goes only 35 mph, nor do we want anything that takes a pilot's license.
Good autopilot AI - including take off and landing - is the real killer problem. It the one thing we have not been able to solve sufficiently. Once we have that, a solid self diagnostic program should be an easy add on, making everything else possible.
Then the question becomes money, which drops over time and increased sales.
They consist of a small 3 or four wheeled vehicle (car), with a big pusher fan behind it. Attached to the frame is an airfoil = i.e a square parachute.
The fan pushes the car on land, typically at speeds of up to 35 mph (high end). Once up to speed, the parachute is released, fills with air, and begins to act like a wing, providing lift.
It has wheels, an engine, can move on land, fits in a garage, and can fly. It is a flying car.
People do not think of it because it has a) very low speed and b) need at least a sport pilot license.
Granted, google is solving those two issues, but they are not creating the first flying car, they are merely making it commercially viable.
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't killing registration, it's REQUIRING one. A really horrible one.
It is like facebook, only forcing people to use it - FOR EVERYTHING.
It's not just the end of online anonymity, it's the total destruction of what remains of privacy.
Look, I do NOT want to use the same ID for my Medical history for ANYTHING. No one should be able to know what ointments I am getting or for what, just because I sent them an email.
People have a right to privacy, even if most morons ignore it.
Although you could put in a minimal volunteer requirement.
In particular, some studies have shown that sole income providers do not significantly reduce their work even after getting a basic income, although people do reduce hours for second jobs - whether they be 2nd jobs done after normal working hours or second jobs done by a mother whose husband provides the main income while she takes care of the child.
Because those two are close enough / equivelent?
A break down of how many were identified (not something they desire) versus how many were rescued (something they desperately desire) is probably the single most important number in that story.
I am telling it to you.
Yes, there will be disruption. When you replace chariots with horse drawn wagons, the chariot makers lost their jobs, but the wagon makers gained new jobs Then when they replaced horse dragon wagons with cars, the same scenario happened again. As we replace gasoline powered vehicles with electric, it will happen again.
Technology ALWAYS creates more jobs than it takes, but their is a lot of froth in the job market when it happens. You and the other data entry clerks definitely lost your jobs, but other people gained new ones.
I don't know how exactly it happened, but the result is obvious when you look at the big picture. Among other things, the electronics that replace your old job needed mining,engineering, building, transporting, software, installation, maintance, repair, and disposal. Those are just the most obvious ones. But most likely, the increased efficiency of the machines as compaired to you, meant more things could be polled. Perhaps they expanded the poll, meaning more mailings, etc. Perhaps the price of polling dropped so much that private poll takers expanded their service.
Your pain is real, but just because technology replaced your job does NOT mean that the total # of jobs dropped.
P.S. I am currently unemployed myself. I am not some white tower philospher talking about something he has not experienced.
This story typifies what is wrong with policing in the US.
1) The cop did not plan on doing anything wrong, criminal, evil or stupid. He did what he did with the best of intentions (as evidence by the fact that he told the truth when questioned about it.)
2) The cop was so ignorant, so arrogant, so focused on getting the arrest, that he did not know it was wrong, why it was wrong, and probably still does not understand the principle (but I bet he knows not to do that exact same thing again.)
3) No real change will happen. They won't teach that cop, or other cops that "your job is NOT to get a conviction, but aid civilans, and honestly report what happened." They won't change the culture of being "in charge" rather than "of service". They will continue using the Dirty Harry (mean, angry, takes no crap, there to kill the bad guy) stereotype rather than the Columbo stereotype (self effacing, polite, there to ask questions)
First, robots will not be stealing jobs, tech will create more than it takes, it always does, because we filled all the "neccessary" jobs centuries ago and most current work is luxury - and humans being greedy keep expanding the luxuries we decide are 'essential' - health care is a prime example.
That said, a robot tax is not a bad idea. It's a good way to tax the succesful businesses after they have advanced past the beginner stage and become profitable enough to automate.
Of course the real question is what is a robot and what is a 'job human's used to do'. Robots could be defined as any machine that is capable of moving itself more than 10 ft without a human operating it. That excludes stationary machinery, but would include driverless cars.
But "humans used to do" is stupid, all jobs are things human used to do. Even if you make a new job tomorrow, I could screw you over by doing it once, then it becomes something a human used to do.
Is a Roomba a taxable robot? Humans used to vaccuum. Is it taxable if you buy one to clean a factory - but not taxable if you get it for home use?
You pay more, but:
1) All equiptment is designed for the apple computer, not randomly put together with whatever is cheapest that month. Everything is designed to work together, as they know ahead of time what other gear will be installed.
2) You get the apple OS, that used to have no viruses and even now has much fewer issues with unauthorized take over.
3) Also, you get the brand, which for some people is enough. Remember the whole "PC is for business, but apple is cool" mystique? People still believe it.
Wow. Another telepath telling me what is going on in my brain. Funny how they always get things wrong.
I have doubt - doubt in the total ignorance exposed by the 'technology kills jobs' meme when in fact technology has ALWAYS increased the number of jobs.
Because the basic principle behind their inane theory is that there are a set number of jobs and technology reduces that.
No. The only jobs we truly need are creating food and shelter. Those jobs were all filled hundreds of years ago. Almost all current jobs (excluding a small number of farmers and energy jobs), are LUXURY jobs. The more jobs we do not have to do, free us up to get more luxuries.
That cycle will never stop because Humans are greedy. If you give us all a sex robot, we will demand a SECOND sex robot for threesomes.
I have NO DOUBT in the nature of mankind and the nature of work. The only way the total number of people employed could possibly drop would be if we a huge disaster struck killing most people.
There are two different kinds of "bad ideas". Some have been tried and failed, others we have not found a good way to test yet.
The reasons that failed bad ideas are still believed is poor education. We don't teach people about science, so they don't understand how to test ideas or waht an idea failure looks like. Nor do we teach them how tell the difference between good information sources and bad information sources, so they trust Jenny McCarthy, Donald Trump, Glenn Beck, and Rod Blagojevitch.
We don't show people how to check sources, nor do we even educate them about the clear signs of falsehood (my favorite is telling people what your opponent thinks, rather than what you belief. Obvious sign of a liar (unless they first prove they can read minds. ).
Just as the computer industry has been horrible for employment - all those computing jobs stolen by machines. Work expands to new fields once old ones are satisfied.
I have no doubt that 50% of all current jobs will at least be threatened within 10 years. And I have no doubt that the number of people employed will INCREASE.
I currently need reading glasses for most paperbacks. I would still rather read them then an ebook, in part because I find the large print settings on ebooks to be poorly done. Particularly on smaller ereaders, it isn't worth the effort.
Basically, print books are far superior to ebooks.
Paperbacks are cheap and you can mistreat them / throw them away / easily give them away / sell them / donate them.
Hard cover are nice and large and easy to read. They feel good and are a much better experience.
The real problem for me are the graphics. Which is a shame because obviously the ebooks COULD be far superior. But they aren't. They totally suck when it comes to any graphics. They don't move, they don't enlarge. They aren't in color. Worst of all, they somehow manage to shrink them down so even though the ereader is BIGGER than the paperback, the drawing is SMALLER on the ebook. Not to mention the fact that while the resolution is good enough for letters, it is too low for good graphical display.
When I buy a book that has a map (like many sci-fi/fantasy books), I enjoy the map. I ignore it in an ebook. While I feel cheated.
Basically the only time I ever want to get an ebook is when space is at a premium. Airline trips for example.
As other noted, that cost is only partial. Worse, it's for installation, not life cycle. It costs money (and power) to run those scrubbers.
Also, once you remove the carbon, sulfur, mercury, thorium and other stuff, you have to dispose of it. The carbon and sulfur take up space, but aren't that dangerous. The mercury and thorium are dangerous ingredients that you have to pay to properly transport and dispose of safely.
Which is why there are a grand total of two 'clean coal' plants in the USA, both finally operational as of January 2017, both funded in part by the US government as a test program.
Not a single corporation felt it made any monetary sense to run these stupid things without government money. Why? Because they are too damn expensive to run. If they made sense, we have built them without government cash.
Actually it's worse than that. It's the bank manager (or CEO) that refuses to input false information with a note having the truth and a memo to their employees to fix it or be fired.
Computers are not perfect. The difference between a good manager and a MORON is the moron says "sorry, the computer won't let us do that", while the manager ignores the rules and takes personal responsibility to see that the customer gets serviced.
It is true that they have invented scrubbers that solve most of these problems. But said scrubbers are incredibly expensive to run, making coal the single most expensive form of energy around.
There is not a single 'clean coal' plant that is currently making money. They are all run as loss leaders to 'prove' coal be be clean.
1) It produces more radioactivity than all other energy sources, including Nuclear power. (A small percentage of coal is thorium, which settles around wherever you burn the coal.)
2) It takes more work to mine it than all other sources (including uranium - though it does require less processing).
3) It takes more work to ship it from it's source to the plant than all other energy types.
4) It produces more carbon pollution than all other sources. Coal is basically pure carbon plus some nasty impurities. Oil and gas are Carbon + Hydrogen + some other stuff. Carbon burns to Carbon Dioxide (or worse, monoxide). Hydrogen burns nice and clean, turning into water.
5) Coal contains trace amounts of mercury, which when burned makes it's way into the atmosphere, then rains down into the oceans. Nasty stuff. No other energy source has this problem.
6) Coal mining has some nasty problems, including black lung disease and sometimes starts underground fires we literally can NOT put out.
No sane person mines coal for energy if they have any other energy source. All others are safer and better. Burning oil, gas, or wood are all better. Nuclear is better. Tidal, wind, solar, hydro, are all better.
Coal mining should only be used after you have burned all your forests up, mined all your uraninum, pumped all your natural gas and oil, and the sun has gone out.
and best of all, my camera and microphone will cost HALF as much as Amazon is going to charge you. ;D
Unfortunately both of my parents have fallen for this stupid Amazon scheme.
"Fake News" does not just mean not true. That is called slander and libel. Nor does it refer to just true facts that are not "news." (Then it would include all of sports reporting).
Instead the term Fake News was created because of people avoiding the libel and slander laws by taking a fact and stretching it all out of proportion to reflect something that a certain mindset will either love or hate.
In this manner, the clear and obvious successor to " Pravda", called "RT", achieves its goals of lying to America and the west without being held legally responsible. In America, rather than the government, it is the political parties that desire to slander and libel people, so we get Conservative Breitbart and Liberal Huffington Post.
In other words, BIAS is exaclty the source of all Fake News. It doesn't mean that all biased things are fake news, it just means all Fake news comes from bias.
While it is true that fake news becomes profitable, that only happens after fake news creates it's own market in a feedback loop.
To get those feedback loops start, you need the bias.
So use the essential ingredient to root out the problem.
Look, 100k/4 = 25k = low salary. Not unusual at all. Similarly if you have 10 children, but only make 200k, your freakin' POOR.
The basic problem is our culture tries to measures wealth by income rather than net worth.
You can not compare the salary of a young, healthy, single orphan with a married couples supporting two sets of sick parents and multiple kids.
We need to reset our definition of wealth to be based on cash, stocks, mutual funds and real estate in the bank. This means the IRS should ignore your salary and base your taxes on what you own. Ignore the stuff in your IRA and give a set amount to ignore (just as we don't take the first 10k of income for a single person). Start it at 1% and gradually raise it to a max of 5% if you have more than a couple million in the bank.
If we did this, we could get rid of most of the complexity of the tax code, because it is all based on not overcharging the poor, which this system does automatically.
Step 1. Find a good set of sources of a variety of fake news. At least one conservative (Brietbart), Russian (RT), and Liberal (Huffington Post) to start.
Step 2. Set up software to track everyone that regularly reads any of those three as your secret mechanical Turk testers. Everything those people like, post, or otherwise support will be fake news.
Step 3. Create a solid scoring system based on your testers.
Basically, use the stupidity of the users against them. Once you find people stupid enough to believe the fairly obviously low production value of fake news, you have your testing machine.
You just have to make sure you get all strains of bias. If new strains show up, be sure to add them to step 1.
Yes because that is their mission. Your complaint is that they are too EFFECTIVE.
There are lots of solid evidence that people dislike government because it is too good at what it does. Then they undermine the government and laugh and say "Hey, now that we have handcuffed them, they can't do anything right.!
Which is why I want to create one to protect us rather than spy on us.
Government agencies are actually more effective than businesses (two thirds accomplish thier goal, vs 1 third for small business).
The problem is that when a government agency fails, it has to keep trying, while a small business that fails goes bankrupt and someone else tries again in a year or two. But government does such important work that we frankly are not willing to go without for the year or two. So we keep the failed agencies around, which makes replacing it harder.
Vigilante definition, from Online Webster:
: a member of a volunteer committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily (as when the processes of law are viewed as inadequate); broadly : a self-appointed doer of justice
Note the parenthetic comment - "when the processes of law are viewed as inadequate".
In this case, the processes of law are NON-EXISTENCE. It is by definition inadequate. Yes, this is vigilante justice, mainly because our governments have totally failed to properly regulate these issues.
We need a simple government agency to report internet based vulnerabilities. Once reported, the manufacturer should have one month to fix it - and push the fix out. With monetary fines for a failure to do that - calculated so that 1 vulnerability in 100% of their products cuts 10% of their gross profit (note gross, not net).
Because I hate to tell you, but stores in Beverly Hills charge more than they do in Compton for the exact same product.
And their are these things called "sales" and "coupons" to differentiate pricing even at the same store.
Yes, online makes it a bit more obvious, and yes, smart people can kill the cookies that are more likely to raise your price than reduce it (they assume no cookie = new customer, so they offer lower prices).
Study should be redone, comparing price differential online with those off-line.
Good design can reduce a helicopter's noise significantly - half normal which is close enough to a car.
While your points are valid, I don't think they are the main problems. The real issues are those I mentioned - speed and skill. No one wants a flying car that goes only 35 mph, nor do we want anything that takes a pilot's license.
Good autopilot AI - including take off and landing - is the real killer problem. It the one thing we have not been able to solve sufficiently. Once we have that, a solid self diagnostic program should be an easy add on, making everything else possible.
Then the question becomes money, which drops over time and increased sales.
They are called PPC's (powered parachutes).
They consist of a small 3 or four wheeled vehicle (car), with a big pusher fan behind it. Attached to the frame is an airfoil = i.e a square parachute.
The fan pushes the car on land, typically at speeds of up to 35 mph (high end). Once up to speed, the parachute is released, fills with air, and begins to act like a wing, providing lift.
It has wheels, an engine, can move on land, fits in a garage, and can fly. It is a flying car.
People do not think of it because it has a) very low speed and b) need at least a sport pilot license.
Granted, google is solving those two issues, but they are not creating the first flying car, they are merely making it commercially viable.