And I forgot my drooling-from-the-mouth-fanboy/shill check list: * brand new account * posts a long post the minute the story goes live, despite the user not being a subscriber * subtle or over anti-Google bent in post
sounds to me like there is some massive lobbying going on to short-cut the necessary amount of time to test auto-driven cars under all senarios, not just ones in controlled and predictable setups like we have seen.
Ah, here it is. Google is paying off the government in order to kill us more quickly! Quick, bring out the pitch forks!
yep - the hard part is not the decision making. That's easy. The hard part is figuring out what it is that you're looking at. That's why computers do so well at limited scope problems like chess and checkers, and why they're still pretty dumb at understanding what they're interacting with.
So the self-driving wonder swerves right to avoid the other car and zooms off the cliff. A human driver would recognize that hitting the other car in this instance is the safer solution then to go careening off the steep cliff.
Someone has never, ever taken an AI class. Or even an algorithm class dealing with risk. Here's how the calculation actually works (and by the way, that approach is about 20-30 years old). Every situation is assessed an impact value: driving into oncoming traffic, 0 (very bad); driving into the right ditch, 10; swerving into a legal lane, 50; etc. Every situation is given a set of possible actions, with each action having a probability of being completed successfully. The algorithm multiplies the outcome with the odds of achieving that outcome, and picks the highest value. You can set it up in different ways, but the idea is the same: multiply outcome severity with odds of achieving outcome, pick lowest combined risk/outcome. In your situation, driving off the cliff (which is assumed to be very bad, since the car can see a very steep drop-off with no bottom) is going to have a much worse outcome than hitting the car in front of it. Hitting the car in front of it is guaranteed, but so is driving off the cliff. As a result, the algorithm will make the automated car hit the car in front of it, rather than drive off the cliff.
Not to mention that cars don't sleep, always behave optimally (according to the algorithms in place), and have no blind spots.
Basically what I am waiting for is the inevitable 100 car pile up with massive fatalities that WILL occur at some point in time where investigation will identify that a self-driven car, or cars, was the cause of it.
You mean like the ones that regularly happen in fog and icy/rainy conditions?
Any company involved in programming or manufacturing that self-driven car will be sued out of existence and the "love affair" everyone seems to have about auto-driving cars will end quickly.
That is a very real risk. Not sure how the laws will deal with it. But until that question is addressed, we won't see large-scale sales of automated cars. I suspect that we'll see the equivalent of ToS: by using this car, you agree to be fully responsible for all its actions and accidents.
Here's how I look at it: the electric car isn't going to replace every single gasoline car, because there are many cases where the gasoline car is going to have the edge for many, many years. The cases all come back to charging time and availability of charging stations. If you frequently travel distances that exceed the max capacity of your battery, an electric car isn't for you. If you frequently tow heavy loads, electric is probably not for you. For all other uses, the only disqualifier is price.
Quite frankly, I don't see electric vehicles ever fully replacing ICE-powered cars. But they are ideal second cars, and even ideal first cars for a significant portion of people - even Americans. Most posts I see that rail against electric cars are basically saying that they're cars for tree-hugging hippies, and they would totally kill the right of every red-blooded American to go on a cross-country road-trip. That's an appeal to emotion, and I can't help with that. But at least, I can point out where requirements turn ridiculous.
Oh, and thanks to everyone who pointed out that the Golf TDi actually gets more than 500 miles per tank. I didn't realize they had kept the tank size similar.
I'm repeating myself a bit, but.... it seems these opinions just don't die.
It has to have acceleration,
The Tesla S handily beats anything south of a Vette.
at least 500 mile range on a charge
Not a single performance sedan has that range. Heck, not even the Golf TDi has that range. Why that requirement?
and not look like a piece of crap.
The Teslas are all hot.
Oh and it has to at least be in the price ball park of my gasoline powered car.
Define ballpark. It's in the range of the luxus import sedans, which is what the Tesla is competing against. It is not in the range of a Kia Rio, which is what I suspect you're thinking of.
Sigh. Posted without reading the article first. Replace space shuttle with airplane, and vacuum with 30000 feet. Still, it should be pretty obvious why you don't open windows on airplanes.
Oh wow, that's pretty stupid; but he was speaking from emotions.
I think even if I was trying to cope with the thought of my wife dying in a space shuttle fire, I'd know that outside the space shuttle, there's pretty solid vacuum, and that I should take that into consideration. Or are you arguing that getting some very basic physics wrong when you're under pressure is ok? What if the pressure situation is the Chinese landing troops on the Diaoyu islands? Do you really want him to go "wow, that's bad, I'd better hit them with my space laser?"
I can understand not thinking through long-term ramifications. I don't understand forgetting basic physics - or geography, or political landscape, or conflict principles.
They are if there's a tax penalty in it levied under the FBAR Amnesty program because his Swiss bank threatened to report his numbered account to the IRS.
That program is for two people: those who are completely ignorant of the tax code because they just immigrated into the US and were told too late what to do with offshore accounts, and those who tried to hide capital gains from the IRS. The first one doesn't apply the Romney, and the second ought to really make you question why Romney is running.
What people want is something that works as well as their SUV.
Really? What does the SUV do? 99% of the SUVs that I see are filled with one person. Some of them hold maybe 3-4 people, 2 of which are kids. And I see them occasionally in a ditch in the snow. So again - what exactly does an SUV do that is unique to it? I mean, beyond giving someone the misguided feeling that "I am in a tank, nothing can hurt me!"
A really useful all-electric vehicle needs to have a 300+ mile range,
Tesla S.
400-500 would be better.
And I want a pony. Few cars outside of Diesels have that range. And certainly no Electric car competitors.
It needs to fully recharge in the same amount of time it takes to fill a gas tank.
Why? If you drive less miles in a day than a full charge, you can recharge it at home in as long as you want.
And it needs to be able to hold four adults and all their paraphernalia comfortably.
Tesla S.
To a lesser degree, the battery pack needs to have at least a 5 year life if not 10 years.
Tesla S.
Every "green" vehicle with the exception of a Tesla, is a big dork-mobile. Excuse me, tiny dork-mobile.
As you pointed out, Tesla S.
The only valid point you have is that extended road trips at this point still require gas cars. But that's a far cry from arguing that electric cars are completely useless. As a matter of fact, within a 300 mile range, the Tesla S is MORE useful than almost anything short of a full-size pick-up truck.
When cab drivers start using them, I might get interested.
Are you driving like a cab? Then why are you interested in a cabby's opinion of a car? Shouldn't you be looking towards the opinion of someone who has similar driving habits and requirements?
As for subsidies - who cares? Electric cars cost what they cost. Quibbling around where the money comes from only matters if you figure out that the subsidies or situations don't apply to you.
If you consider your parent post "flaming religion", you ARE indeed the problem. That was a well-reasoned, politely-worded to response to an idiotic statement. I think you might want to look into your persecution problem. I doubt you will, since you probably will utterly forget that no one modded you down, and no one modded any of your replies up.
What do you think sectarian violence is all about? Shias and Sunnis are happily killing each over whether there was a 13th Imam or not, and both don't like the Sufis. Compare it to Mormons, Catholics, Protestants and their various flavors, and blasphemy laws have never lead to anything but general violence against people "we don't like".
Of course - anyone who gets offended by blasphemy only gets offended if THEIR religion is on the receiving end. You don't think that these people want to protect some animist sects in the Brazilian jungle from missionaries, do you?
Conversely, any Christian who wants to put God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit under legal protection ought to be laughed out of court the same way. Unfortunately, that's not happening either.
I'm pretty sure we're heading down the road towards a global Culture/Religious War. It won't be fun.
Freedom of religion is inherent in freedom of speech.
What these people want to do is put one religion over another, and put one set of speech over another. What they're proposing is antithetical to freedom of religion, as it means that religion is the final arbiter of good taste, social customs, and therefore the rule of law.
They are setting up a global religious war, because I can guarantee you that some Christians at some point will get down to the same level, and shoot Islamists just because they're Islamists.
Note: I understand this is already happening on an individual basis. But if you seriously think that the current wars were religious wars, you ain't seen nothing yet.
That means then that about a billion+ muslims in the world are not really muslims, because they're not busy spreading Islam through violence.
What is it going to be? Are you going to legitimize a fringe set of muslim radicals as the only true muslims, or are you going to stop the Culture War that morons on both ends are itching to start?
No, no, no. Stop this stupid equivocating crap. Demand for blasphemy laws is no more blasphemy to a free speech activist than rejecting intolerance is intolerance from a free love hippy. It is not even funny. It's just wrong.
Here's why: the concept of free speech is based on human rights, not God's demands. That means that it cannot actually be blasphemy, which is specifically defined as speech harmful to God's image. Furthermore, free speech is based on the understanding that people will be enforcing laws, which means that people will be interpreting laws, which means that something as nebulous as "thou shall not insult me" is guaranteed to be abused in the most terrible fashion, and therefore has no place in a book of law. To put it another way: the requirement inherent in free speech that I tolerate your foul mouth has nothing to do with requiring to tolerate your actions, or your calls to action. If you're going to advocate restrictions on free speech, free speech activists will come down on your ass.
I know you were going for funny, but there are too many idiots out there who see this and go "Hypocrites! All of you! Now let me play my Call of Duty 27".
Here's the thing: a communication tool is exactly that - a tool. It's effectiveness depends on how you use it. If you decide to crowdsource your design/review/approval process, that's your problem. If you make it easy for people to communicate with each other when there's a NEED to do so (and not just a want), that's your win. During it all, the tool just stays a tool.
You're absolutely right that focus is the key part to getting a project done. What you left out is what focus is. Is focus spending two hours tracking down the legal department to approve the use of a particular piece of art? Is focus waiting days for messages to work their way up the chain of command in one department, to work its way back down in the other department, and then have the response travel the same way? Is it focus to spend a day troubleshooting a cumbersome API that you're new to, because you don't know who in your company knows that API?
You can do these things via email and phone. But in some circumstances, feeds save the day. To tie it in to your anti-pattern, the tool used for the information feed is irrelevant. It's the process around it that creates the anti-pattern. To put it another way: email, IM, phone, wikis, blogs, RSS are just information feeds. Microblogging posts like Twitter and facebook are just another information feed. Why do you think that they're inherently more prone to generating anti-patterns than other information feeds? They aren't.
Full disclosure: I work for Salesforce, and I work specifically with people to help them use data feeds properly.
Remember what the Slashdot consensus was when the iPod first came out? "No wireless, less space than a Nomad. Lame." Slashdot as a hive mind has a surprising inability to identify trends, especially in computing. I expect the trend to continue here.
He's talking about a private feed, with significant access restrictions. Generally, this means feeds that are restricted to the company, or are invite-only. Not sure why everyone thinks that the feed will contain random sensitive information from other companies.
In other words, it'll be like Facebook, except with far less privacy issues.
Looks like most people don't understand the comment, or understand just how important collaboration is. I'm sure you understand how important it is that everyone on your team works in the same direction. That requires collaboration. What he's saying is that collaboration that is restricted just to the immediate people on your local team is not enough, and often you need more input from people only tangentially related to your project. Getting stuff done quickly and reliably requires having easy access to those tangential people, without having to move up your chain of command and down the other.
Everyone always is amazed at the flat company structure of Valve. What Benioff is saying is that software needs to flatten all company hierarchies to the same extent, and collaboration feeds that are open to everyone will help with that.
Now, is a good amount of what he said pure fluff? Sure it is. But quite frankly, I'd love more built-in communication abilities in my software. I hope he is right on that.
You're missing the point, and the history of the analogy. He started of selling Salesforce as "it's going to be like Amazon": i.e, you go to a site to do stuff, and you never worry about what's actually running behind the site. He is now starting to sell Salesforce as "it's going to be like Facebook": i.e., when you do your CRM stuff, you'll have information feeds coming from other people in your company that are related to what you're working on. It's going to be public, and you will be able to subscribe to any information stream (with some customizable limitations), instead of having to wait for IT to add you to a mailing list.
He's not saying that all software is going to be built like Facebook. He's saying that all software is going to have built-in information streams from people you know. It's an exaggeration, yes, but it's the Dreamforce pep-rally. It's supposed to be feelgood exaggeration.
And the world was populated through incest, polygamy is a-ok, slavery is dandy, and killing non-believers is supported. At least, that's what I get from a few passages in the Bible. What's your point again? That the Koran, like the Bible, is an origin myth massaged to also be a political and social guide to the world? Or that by pointing to the right verse, I can support whatever I want?
Except "proven to work" in this case means that some people showed that the theory is sound, and it is possible to generate electricity that way. The engineering problems behind scaling this reactor up to commercial levels have NOT been overcome.
Slashdot Mirror
And I forgot my drooling-from-the-mouth-fanboy/shill check list:
* brand new account
* posts a long post the minute the story goes live, despite the user not being a subscriber
* subtle or over anti-Google bent in post
sounds to me like there is some massive lobbying going on to short-cut the necessary amount of time to test auto-driven cars under all senarios, not just ones in controlled and predictable setups like we have seen.
Ah, here it is. Google is paying off the government in order to kill us more quickly! Quick, bring out the pitch forks!
Go away.
yep - the hard part is not the decision making. That's easy. The hard part is figuring out what it is that you're looking at. That's why computers do so well at limited scope problems like chess and checkers, and why they're still pretty dumb at understanding what they're interacting with.
So the self-driving wonder swerves right to avoid the other car and zooms off the cliff. A human driver would recognize that hitting the other car in this instance is the safer solution then to go careening off the steep cliff.
Someone has never, ever taken an AI class. Or even an algorithm class dealing with risk. Here's how the calculation actually works (and by the way, that approach is about 20-30 years old).
Every situation is assessed an impact value: driving into oncoming traffic, 0 (very bad); driving into the right ditch, 10; swerving into a legal lane, 50; etc. Every situation is given a set of possible actions, with each action having a probability of being completed successfully. The algorithm multiplies the outcome with the odds of achieving that outcome, and picks the highest value. You can set it up in different ways, but the idea is the same: multiply outcome severity with odds of achieving outcome, pick lowest combined risk/outcome. In your situation, driving off the cliff (which is assumed to be very bad, since the car can see a very steep drop-off with no bottom) is going to have a much worse outcome than hitting the car in front of it. Hitting the car in front of it is guaranteed, but so is driving off the cliff. As a result, the algorithm will make the automated car hit the car in front of it, rather than drive off the cliff.
Not to mention that cars don't sleep, always behave optimally (according to the algorithms in place), and have no blind spots.
Basically what I am waiting for is the inevitable 100 car pile up with massive fatalities that WILL occur at some point in time where investigation will identify that a self-driven car, or cars, was the cause of it.
You mean like the ones that regularly happen in fog and icy/rainy conditions?
Any company involved in programming or manufacturing that self-driven car will be sued out of existence and the "love affair" everyone seems to have about auto-driving cars will end quickly.
That is a very real risk. Not sure how the laws will deal with it. But until that question is addressed, we won't see large-scale sales of automated cars. I suspect that we'll see the equivalent of ToS: by using this car, you agree to be fully responsible for all its actions and accidents.
Here's how I look at it: the electric car isn't going to replace every single gasoline car, because there are many cases where the gasoline car is going to have the edge for many, many years. The cases all come back to charging time and availability of charging stations. If you frequently travel distances that exceed the max capacity of your battery, an electric car isn't for you. If you frequently tow heavy loads, electric is probably not for you. For all other uses, the only disqualifier is price.
Quite frankly, I don't see electric vehicles ever fully replacing ICE-powered cars. But they are ideal second cars, and even ideal first cars for a significant portion of people - even Americans. Most posts I see that rail against electric cars are basically saying that they're cars for tree-hugging hippies, and they would totally kill the right of every red-blooded American to go on a cross-country road-trip. That's an appeal to emotion, and I can't help with that. But at least, I can point out where requirements turn ridiculous.
Oh, and thanks to everyone who pointed out that the Golf TDi actually gets more than 500 miles per tank. I didn't realize they had kept the tank size similar.
I'm repeating myself a bit, but.... it seems these opinions just don't die.
It has to have acceleration,
The Tesla S handily beats anything south of a Vette.
at least 500 mile range on a charge
Not a single performance sedan has that range. Heck, not even the Golf TDi has that range. Why that requirement?
and not look like a piece of crap.
The Teslas are all hot.
Oh and it has to at least be in the price ball park of my gasoline powered car.
Define ballpark. It's in the range of the luxus import sedans, which is what the Tesla is competing against. It is not in the range of a Kia Rio, which is what I suspect you're thinking of.
Sigh. Posted without reading the article first. Replace space shuttle with airplane, and vacuum with 30000 feet. Still, it should be pretty obvious why you don't open windows on airplanes.
Oh wow, that's pretty stupid; but he was speaking from emotions.
I think even if I was trying to cope with the thought of my wife dying in a space shuttle fire, I'd know that outside the space shuttle, there's pretty solid vacuum, and that I should take that into consideration. Or are you arguing that getting some very basic physics wrong when you're under pressure is ok? What if the pressure situation is the Chinese landing troops on the Diaoyu islands? Do you really want him to go "wow, that's bad, I'd better hit them with my space laser?"
I can understand not thinking through long-term ramifications. I don't understand forgetting basic physics - or geography, or political landscape, or conflict principles.
They are if there's a tax penalty in it levied under the FBAR Amnesty program because his Swiss bank threatened to report his numbered account to the IRS.
That program is for two people: those who are completely ignorant of the tax code because they just immigrated into the US and were told too late what to do with offshore accounts, and those who tried to hide capital gains from the IRS. The first one doesn't apply the Romney, and the second ought to really make you question why Romney is running.
What people want is something that works as well as their SUV.
Really? What does the SUV do? 99% of the SUVs that I see are filled with one person. Some of them hold maybe 3-4 people, 2 of which are kids. And I see them occasionally in a ditch in the snow. So again - what exactly does an SUV do that is unique to it? I mean, beyond giving someone the misguided feeling that "I am in a tank, nothing can hurt me!"
A really useful all-electric vehicle needs to have a 300+ mile range,
Tesla S.
400-500 would be better.
And I want a pony. Few cars outside of Diesels have that range. And certainly no Electric car competitors.
It needs to fully recharge in the same amount of time it takes to fill a gas tank.
Why? If you drive less miles in a day than a full charge, you can recharge it at home in as long as you want.
And it needs to be able to hold four adults and all their paraphernalia comfortably.
Tesla S.
To a lesser degree, the battery pack needs to have at least a 5 year life if not 10 years.
Tesla S.
Every "green" vehicle with the exception of a Tesla, is a big dork-mobile. Excuse me, tiny dork-mobile.
As you pointed out, Tesla S.
The only valid point you have is that extended road trips at this point still require gas cars. But that's a far cry from arguing that electric cars are completely useless. As a matter of fact, within a 300 mile range, the Tesla S is MORE useful than almost anything short of a full-size pick-up truck.
When cab drivers start using them, I might get interested.
Are you driving like a cab? Then why are you interested in a cabby's opinion of a car? Shouldn't you be looking towards the opinion of someone who has similar driving habits and requirements?
As for subsidies - who cares? Electric cars cost what they cost. Quibbling around where the money comes from only matters if you figure out that the subsidies or situations don't apply to you.
If you consider your parent post "flaming religion", you ARE indeed the problem. That was a well-reasoned, politely-worded to response to an idiotic statement. I think you might want to look into your persecution problem. I doubt you will, since you probably will utterly forget that no one modded you down, and no one modded any of your replies up.
You're about 10 years late to the bitch party about lame stories only being there for ad revenue.
What do you think sectarian violence is all about? Shias and Sunnis are happily killing each over whether there was a 13th Imam or not, and both don't like the Sufis. Compare it to Mormons, Catholics, Protestants and their various flavors, and blasphemy laws have never lead to anything but general violence against people "we don't like".
Of course - anyone who gets offended by blasphemy only gets offended if THEIR religion is on the receiving end. You don't think that these people want to protect some animist sects in the Brazilian jungle from missionaries, do you?
Conversely, any Christian who wants to put God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit under legal protection ought to be laughed out of court the same way. Unfortunately, that's not happening either.
I'm pretty sure we're heading down the road towards a global Culture/Religious War. It won't be fun.
Freedom of religion is inherent in freedom of speech.
What these people want to do is put one religion over another, and put one set of speech over another. What they're proposing is antithetical to freedom of religion, as it means that religion is the final arbiter of good taste, social customs, and therefore the rule of law.
They are setting up a global religious war, because I can guarantee you that some Christians at some point will get down to the same level, and shoot Islamists just because they're Islamists.
Note: I understand this is already happening on an individual basis. But if you seriously think that the current wars were religious wars, you ain't seen nothing yet.
That means then that about a billion+ muslims in the world are not really muslims, because they're not busy spreading Islam through violence.
What is it going to be? Are you going to legitimize a fringe set of muslim radicals as the only true muslims, or are you going to stop the Culture War that morons on both ends are itching to start?
No, no, no. Stop this stupid equivocating crap. Demand for blasphemy laws is no more blasphemy to a free speech activist than rejecting intolerance is intolerance from a free love hippy. It is not even funny. It's just wrong.
Here's why: the concept of free speech is based on human rights, not God's demands. That means that it cannot actually be blasphemy, which is specifically defined as speech harmful to God's image. Furthermore, free speech is based on the understanding that people will be enforcing laws, which means that people will be interpreting laws, which means that something as nebulous as "thou shall not insult me" is guaranteed to be abused in the most terrible fashion, and therefore has no place in a book of law. To put it another way: the requirement inherent in free speech that I tolerate your foul mouth has nothing to do with requiring to tolerate your actions, or your calls to action. If you're going to advocate restrictions on free speech, free speech activists will come down on your ass.
I know you were going for funny, but there are too many idiots out there who see this and go "Hypocrites! All of you! Now let me play my Call of Duty 27".
Here's the thing: a communication tool is exactly that - a tool. It's effectiveness depends on how you use it. If you decide to crowdsource your design/review/approval process, that's your problem. If you make it easy for people to communicate with each other when there's a NEED to do so (and not just a want), that's your win. During it all, the tool just stays a tool.
You're absolutely right that focus is the key part to getting a project done. What you left out is what focus is. Is focus spending two hours tracking down the legal department to approve the use of a particular piece of art? Is focus waiting days for messages to work their way up the chain of command in one department, to work its way back down in the other department, and then have the response travel the same way? Is it focus to spend a day troubleshooting a cumbersome API that you're new to, because you don't know who in your company knows that API?
You can do these things via email and phone. But in some circumstances, feeds save the day. To tie it in to your anti-pattern, the tool used for the information feed is irrelevant. It's the process around it that creates the anti-pattern. To put it another way: email, IM, phone, wikis, blogs, RSS are just information feeds. Microblogging posts like Twitter and facebook are just another information feed. Why do you think that they're inherently more prone to generating anti-patterns than other information feeds? They aren't.
Full disclosure: I work for Salesforce, and I work specifically with people to help them use data feeds properly.
Remember what the Slashdot consensus was when the iPod first came out? "No wireless, less space than a Nomad. Lame." Slashdot as a hive mind has a surprising inability to identify trends, especially in computing. I expect the trend to continue here.
He's talking about a private feed, with significant access restrictions. Generally, this means feeds that are restricted to the company, or are invite-only. Not sure why everyone thinks that the feed will contain random sensitive information from other companies.
In other words, it'll be like Facebook, except with far less privacy issues.
Looks like most people don't understand the comment, or understand just how important collaboration is. I'm sure you understand how important it is that everyone on your team works in the same direction. That requires collaboration. What he's saying is that collaboration that is restricted just to the immediate people on your local team is not enough, and often you need more input from people only tangentially related to your project. Getting stuff done quickly and reliably requires having easy access to those tangential people, without having to move up your chain of command and down the other.
Everyone always is amazed at the flat company structure of Valve. What Benioff is saying is that software needs to flatten all company hierarchies to the same extent, and collaboration feeds that are open to everyone will help with that.
Now, is a good amount of what he said pure fluff? Sure it is. But quite frankly, I'd love more built-in communication abilities in my software. I hope he is right on that.
You're missing the point, and the history of the analogy. He started of selling Salesforce as "it's going to be like Amazon": i.e, you go to a site to do stuff, and you never worry about what's actually running behind the site. He is now starting to sell Salesforce as "it's going to be like Facebook": i.e., when you do your CRM stuff, you'll have information feeds coming from other people in your company that are related to what you're working on. It's going to be public, and you will be able to subscribe to any information stream (with some customizable limitations), instead of having to wait for IT to add you to a mailing list.
He's not saying that all software is going to be built like Facebook. He's saying that all software is going to have built-in information streams from people you know. It's an exaggeration, yes, but it's the Dreamforce pep-rally. It's supposed to be feelgood exaggeration.
And the world was populated through incest, polygamy is a-ok, slavery is dandy, and killing non-believers is supported. At least, that's what I get from a few passages in the Bible. What's your point again? That the Koran, like the Bible, is an origin myth massaged to also be a political and social guide to the world? Or that by pointing to the right verse, I can support whatever I want?
Except "proven to work" in this case means that some people showed that the theory is sound, and it is possible to generate electricity that way. The engineering problems behind scaling this reactor up to commercial levels have NOT been overcome.
Err, make that Lawrence Lessig. That's what I get for not actually reading the Google search results.