we are easily influenced but not easily programed, (that is without negative reinforcement, get a mild electric shock every time you answer wrong i bet you would learn whole lot faster.)
You'd just learn to hate the people giving you the shocks. It's all very well testing this on dogs, but we don't then release them and expect them to be nice human-friendly pets.
Like early auto-pilots that required huge safe distances & cautions, driverless cars initially will be similar since safety is far more important than expedient travel. It's likely travel will be so slow and it'll let so many cars cut them off that taking a bus is faster.
That will be a problem when there are still lots of speeding human drivers. Once all cars are driverless, much higher average speeds will be achievable, as unlike many humans, computers can co-operate very nicely.
Now, I don't know you. For all I know, you may have godlike driving abilities, reflexes faster than Jeff Gordon, and you may live and breathe in a hyperaware state that NoDoz users can only envy. Fine. I will trust that you are way above average, and that you are in fact the guy who taught Jason Statham's stunt driver everything he knows.
From what I've seen here, the vast majority of slashdotters think they are above average in everything they do, whether it's coding, making coffee, investing on the stock market or driving, and shouldn't have to follow the same rules as the "sheeple".
The number of accidents will go down, but many of those are minor--such as backing out of a parking spot and tapping the car behind you. Pretty all minor accidents may be eliminated. But in their place we'll see more serious accidents. So instead of one person hitting the gas instead of the break, you'll have every car of a particular make or model hitting the gas instead of the break.
When a human driver does this and dies, there is no feedback. Everyone just says he was a shitty driver. If a computer-controlled car did it, it would be corrected and shouldn't happen in the future ever again. (Regardless of the fact that it seems remarkably unlikely to happen in the first place).
Most serious accidents are caused by driver error. You're never going to be able to do anything about situations where a tyre suddenly explodes or all the brake fluid suddenly gets lost through a catastrophic leak just when you're coming up to a stop sign and there's a thousand foot precipice in front of you. But people driving too fast because they're late for a meeting, cutting others up because they're annoyed and so on will be prevented entirely.
As you say, morality is relative; it's internal to the person. You can't program morality into a person, it's impossible.
Of course you can, it's mostly down to good parenting. With the exception of those who are born psychopaths, and will never learn to act morally, children are blank blobs of clay that get formed by those around them, and for the first crucial few years of their lives, that means the parents.
I agree that it's generally too late once they're adults.
Also, can we have a similar rule for a**hole bicyclists who flagrantly ignore traffic rules? And maybe an automatic door-open rule for motorcyclists who are splitting lanes because the speed limit isn't fast enough for them? Thanks.
People like you are the reason why driverless cars are a good idea. Neither cyclists nor motorcyclists who break any rules of the road are any physical danger to you in your car, but you would quite happily kill them?
Will computer control eliminate some of the stupid mistakes people make behind the wheel? Yes. Does that mean computers (on behalf of the people who program and build them) won't make mistakes of their own? Heck no.
But any computer mistakes will be correctable in the future, whereas people will always be prone to anger, tiredness, being distracted or whatever.
I'd say that if it's private property, drones like this deserve to be shot down.
I know you're not supposed to say this on slashdot, but if the hunters aren't doing anything wrong, what are they afraid of the drones showing?
Why is this different from Wikileaks releasing classified documents?
And no, it's not different because these are individuals rather than government. Right is right, and wrong is wrong. Just because most slashdotters appear to be in favour of hunting because it involves guns, doesn't mean that the shooters are above either the law or the court of public opinion.
Here in the UK, it was precisely the work of hunt saboteurs and animal rights groups which led to footage of what actually goes on in fox hunts being made available to the public. After that, the majority of public opinion turned against the fox hunters. The hunters' rights do not outweight general matters of public policy, such as the ending of pointlessly cruel treatment of animals for sport. Fox hunting was banned here, and nobody cares about the poor red-coated fuckers (hunters not foxes) being forced to abandon their silly games.
Killing animals for pest control or food is a different question altogether from killing them purely for sport.
I'm rather more worried about irritated people with guns who aren't maintaining gun discipline, than I am about pigeons getting killed or protesters losing their toys.
As slashdot is apparently almost 100% in favour of guns whatever the situation, no one has yet made the point that the hunters precisely fell into the animal activists' trap. For a non gun nut, your point is sobering reading.
I couldn't give a toss about people shooting pigeons either, but I certainly do about them loosing off shots into the air without any awareness of what's in front of them.
If a pigeon is on your land (owner or tenant) or you have the authorisation by the landowner to be on his land with a firearm of whatever description covered by whatever ticket necessary (air rifles over 12fpe and pistols over 6fpe require a class 1 firearms ticket, those below require no licence whatsoever), and you have the means to destroy it with a clean shot you're pretty much obliged by Law to do precisely that.
I'm not aware of any legal obligation to kill pests in the UK, could you provide a link?
I'm sure the tresspass laws are diffferent in the US than here in the UK, but do you really have absolute freedom to destroy other people's property on/above your land?
I've never used AV, and I've never contracted a virus
How do you know ?
Most people who say this usually mean that they don't have an AV program running all the time in the background, but do regular AV/Malware scans as a separate check when their machine isn't busy.
No, there is no communicating with whining ingraits with no money. driving them away is the goal; automated voip solutions to do that are cheap, plop them into trash voicemail to wither and die.
Yes, Cinders, some day you WILL be Head of Customer Services.
If you think of the psychology of this, it looks like bait and switch.
To combat this, make it clear at the before the download how it all works.
Make them enter their credit card details before they're allowed to download the software, then immediately take a nominal $500 charge on the card to cover any future support calls. Probably best to subtly cripple the software so they'll need at least one support call just to get it installed.
Otherwise known as the "Eighty Twenty" rule. 20% of customers/users generate 80% of the cost/effort. They key is identifying and dropping the bad ones and not letting the sales guys dictate the entire company strategy.
Yes, but the problem is that it's never possible to precisely identify that 20%, it's just a rule of thumb. And it's also never possible to know which of the most problematic and time-consuming customers will suddenly place a huge order.
If they want free support and get irate when its explained to that that its how you may your money, they can take a flying leap.
No great loss if they go elsewhere for their handouts. I'm sure your paying customers will still be around.
It's pretty much the first rule of business that you don't piss off any customer if you don't have a compelling reason to do so. The reason for this isn't because businesses are all concerned about not hurting people's feelings, it's because pissed-off ex-customers tend to tell other people about your shitty product much more than happy current customers tell them about your great product.
That's the big advantage of open-source software (as opposed to "free" as in beer software). If it doesn't work, you can fix it yourself.
That is a meaningless feature for anyone who isn't a programmer though. And saying that you can then pay a programmer to fix and support your free software is to most businesses no improvement on buying proprietary software with a support contract.
No, the problem non tech-people have is that calling software free but assuming they realise they have to pay for support is the same to them as saying "the beer is free but obviously you have to pay for the dinner" when they just want the beer.
Slashdot Mirror
we are easily influenced but not easily programed, (that is without negative reinforcement, get a mild electric shock every time you answer wrong i bet you would learn whole lot faster.)
You'd just learn to hate the people giving you the shocks. It's all very well testing this on dogs, but we don't then release them and expect them to be nice human-friendly pets.
Like early auto-pilots that required huge safe distances & cautions, driverless cars initially will be similar since safety is far more important than expedient travel. It's likely travel will be so slow and it'll let so many cars cut them off that taking a bus is faster.
That will be a problem when there are still lots of speeding human drivers. Once all cars are driverless, much higher average speeds will be achievable, as unlike many humans, computers can co-operate very nicely.
Now, I don't know you. For all I know, you may have godlike driving abilities, reflexes faster than Jeff Gordon, and you may live and breathe in a hyperaware state that NoDoz users can only envy. Fine. I will trust that you are way above average, and that you are in fact the guy who taught Jason Statham's stunt driver everything he knows.
From what I've seen here, the vast majority of slashdotters think they are above average in everything they do, whether it's coding, making coffee, investing on the stock market or driving, and shouldn't have to follow the same rules as the "sheeple".
The number of accidents will go down, but many of those are minor--such as backing out of a parking spot and tapping the car behind you. Pretty all minor accidents may be eliminated. But in their place we'll see more serious accidents. So instead of one person hitting the gas instead of the break, you'll have every car of a particular make or model hitting the gas instead of the break.
When a human driver does this and dies, there is no feedback. Everyone just says he was a shitty driver. If a computer-controlled car did it, it would be corrected and shouldn't happen in the future ever again. (Regardless of the fact that it seems remarkably unlikely to happen in the first place).
Most serious accidents are caused by driver error. You're never going to be able to do anything about situations where a tyre suddenly explodes or all the brake fluid suddenly gets lost through a catastrophic leak just when you're coming up to a stop sign and there's a thousand foot precipice in front of you. But people driving too fast because they're late for a meeting, cutting others up because they're annoyed and so on will be prevented entirely.
As you say, morality is relative; it's internal to the person. You can't program morality into a person, it's impossible.
Of course you can, it's mostly down to good parenting. With the exception of those who are born psychopaths, and will never learn to act morally, children are blank blobs of clay that get formed by those around them, and for the first crucial few years of their lives, that means the parents.
I agree that it's generally too late once they're adults.
Also, can we have a similar rule for a**hole bicyclists who flagrantly ignore traffic rules? And maybe an automatic door-open rule for motorcyclists who are splitting lanes because the speed limit isn't fast enough for them? Thanks.
People like you are the reason why driverless cars are a good idea. Neither cyclists nor motorcyclists who break any rules of the road are any physical danger to you in your car, but you would quite happily kill them?
You're the fucking a**hole.
Will computer control eliminate some of the stupid mistakes people make behind the wheel? Yes. Does that mean computers (on behalf of the people who program and build them) won't make mistakes of their own? Heck no.
But any computer mistakes will be correctable in the future, whereas people will always be prone to anger, tiredness, being distracted or whatever.
Why would a driverless car ever be about to crash into a bus and yet still have the time to react by driving off a bridge instead?
If you think that wearing contact lenses instead of glasses stops you looking or acting like a geek/nerd, you are sadly mistaken.
Seems they've not released a decent multiplayer game (where gamers spend all their time) since Q2.
Not all gamers: I have absolutely no interest in multiplayer/online games. My idea of a fun evening is not being sworn at by 13 year old boys.
I'd say that if it's private property, drones like this deserve to be shot down.
I know you're not supposed to say this on slashdot, but if the hunters aren't doing anything wrong, what are they afraid of the drones showing?
Why is this different from Wikileaks releasing classified documents?
And no, it's not different because these are individuals rather than government. Right is right, and wrong is wrong. Just because most slashdotters appear to be in favour of hunting because it involves guns, doesn't mean that the shooters are above either the law or the court of public opinion.
Here in the UK, it was precisely the work of hunt saboteurs and animal rights groups which led to footage of what actually goes on in fox hunts being made available to the public. After that, the majority of public opinion turned against the fox hunters. The hunters' rights do not outweight general matters of public policy, such as the ending of pointlessly cruel treatment of animals for sport. Fox hunting was banned here, and nobody cares about the poor red-coated fuckers (hunters not foxes) being forced to abandon their silly games.
Killing animals for pest control or food is a different question altogether from killing them purely for sport.
I'm rather more worried about irritated people with guns who aren't maintaining gun discipline, than I am about pigeons getting killed or protesters losing their toys.
As slashdot is apparently almost 100% in favour of guns whatever the situation, no one has yet made the point that the hunters precisely fell into the animal activists' trap. For a non gun nut, your point is sobering reading.
I couldn't give a toss about people shooting pigeons either, but I certainly do about them loosing off shots into the air without any awareness of what's in front of them.
If a pigeon is on your land (owner or tenant) or you have the authorisation by the landowner to be on his land with a firearm of whatever description covered by whatever ticket necessary (air rifles over 12fpe and pistols over 6fpe require a class 1 firearms ticket, those below require no licence whatsoever), and you have the means to destroy it with a clean shot you're pretty much obliged by Law to do precisely that.
I'm not aware of any legal obligation to kill pests in the UK, could you provide a link?
Genuine question.
It shouldn't, but I've found occasional websites that I simply can't use with my netbook. Bad javascript can really clobber a relatively slow CPU.
I assume you're not using your netbook to try to read slashdot then?
Hello,
How do you know ?
Most people who say this usually mean that they don't have an AV program running all the time in the background, but do regular AV/Malware scans as a separate check when their machine isn't busy.
You have branched out beyond specialists who understand what you do and reached the loserbase.
That tends to happen when you leave college and try to get your paradigm-shifting piece of software out into the real world.
If he offers free support hows does he pay his workers?
If he doesn't have a coherent business plan why is he employing workers?
No, there is no communicating with whining ingraits with no money. driving them away is the goal; automated voip solutions to do that are cheap, plop them into trash voicemail to wither and die.
Yes, Cinders, some day you WILL be Head of Customer Services.
If you think of the psychology of this, it looks like bait and switch. To combat this, make it clear at the before the download how it all works.
Make them enter their credit card details before they're allowed to download the software, then immediately take a nominal $500 charge on the card to cover any future support calls. Probably best to subtly cripple the software so they'll need at least one support call just to get it installed.
Customer service at its finest!
Otherwise known as the "Eighty Twenty" rule. 20% of customers/users generate 80% of the cost/effort. They key is identifying and dropping the bad ones and not letting the sales guys dictate the entire company strategy.
Yes, but the problem is that it's never possible to precisely identify that 20%, it's just a rule of thumb. And it's also never possible to know which of the most problematic and time-consuming customers will suddenly place a huge order.
If they want free support and get irate when its explained to that that its how you may your money, they can take a flying leap.
No great loss if they go elsewhere for their handouts. I'm sure your paying customers will still be around.
It's pretty much the first rule of business that you don't piss off any customer if you don't have a compelling reason to do so. The reason for this isn't because businesses are all concerned about not hurting people's feelings, it's because pissed-off ex-customers tend to tell other people about your shitty product much more than happy current customers tell them about your great product.
That's the big advantage of open-source software (as opposed to "free" as in beer software). If it doesn't work, you can fix it yourself.
That is a meaningless feature for anyone who isn't a programmer though. And saying that you can then pay a programmer to fix and support your free software is to most businesses no improvement on buying proprietary software with a support contract.
No, the problem non tech-people have is that calling software free but assuming they realise they have to pay for support is the same to them as saying "the beer is free but obviously you have to pay for the dinner" when they just want the beer.
It is "rather than answer" and not "rather then answer"!!!
Maybe he meant "rather than then answer..." so you're both wrong!!!