I don't think women in tech spend more time with their families. But I do think that men in tech spend less time with their families,
That's a contradiction. I think I know what you ~mean~ but still, its a contraction... men spending less time then women at X is by definition women spending more time then men at X.
How would they adjust for it? My company doesn't keep a database of who is working late at night, and even if we did, these researchers wouldn't have access to it.
I think he meant hours in total. e.g if you and I both work for $100 per hour but you work 60 hour weeks and I work 40 hour weeks, you make a lot more than i do, despite us both making the same hourly.
Controlling for hours worked eliminates any bias that men might be making more simply because they are spending more time at work.
(This is also different from the 'more time with their families' because that's talking more about women potentially being less competitive for promotions prioritizing "work life balance" over "dollars/hr" resulting in a systemic wage disparity as they gravitate towards positions that offer less money but better working conditions.)
I guess that would technically work. But it's not scalable and is about as blunt as an instrument can be.
An entity like wikileaks which is being theoretically blacklisted by not just visa, but also world governments, banks, etc would have challenges to be sure. Hell, even cash is not as simple as all that. It's often unwise to send it in the mail, and as an international organization are they receiving dozens of currencies to sort through. IF they've been blacklisted by the banks, what are they doing with it... sorting it by country and putting it into suitcases? And then paying their various vendors from those suitcases? Of course not.
Even cash is not really much of solution on that scale and with that level of government interference.
They'd need to have legal intermediaries handling their banking (and money laundering) activities. And if they have intermediaries doing such... well they can readily handle visa prepaid cards received in the mail too via similar mechanisms. Intermediary drains the cards into accounts maintained for wikileaks not directly connected to wikileaks. Organized crime style...
Cryptocurrencies are theoretically better in this one instance; but even bitcoin can blacklist transactions; especially if nation states and large corporate entities are running the majority of the computing power and colloude, which in this scenario is not at all a completely implausible situation.
The trouble with decentralized cryptocurrency is that its one "cpu-cycle one vote", not "one person one vote". And some of entities have a LOT more cpu-cycles than others. If nationstates and large corporations got into the act they could easily collectively seize control of the network and concentrate decision making into the hands of a few super powers / mega corps.
Gift cards expire, many also have transaction fees associated with them, as well costing more than the cover price
"On October 1, 2007, the Consumer Protection Act banned expiry dates and most fees on gift cards bought after that date to make sure you get their full value, regardless of when you use them. The only fees a business is allowed to charge are to customize a gift card or replace one that has been lost or stolen.
Some of the fees that a business is no longer allowed to charge are activation fees and dormancy fees."
Your Smartphone reports where you are. If there is a matching pattern with a physical credit card at locations where it is used for transactions, it will be trivially obvious that you are the one using it.
1) Cash has the same theoretical problem. My proposal is as good as cash. I am not trying to solve problems not even cash solves.
2) Turn off your phone.
Plus you need to swap with someone who has the same balance left - this doesn't seem feasible.
Swap them while its still full, or refill them to some standard level... $100 or whatever before swapping. Your idea of infeasible seems downright trivial.
So you either need to maintain a ledger of how much your friends "owe" you for cards which you have swapped with differing balances, which is an added cost and risk to an ordinary person, or you need to balance transfer.
No.
Plus, if enough people start doing it, they will introduce biometrics in addition to Chip n PIN or whatever authentication method is being used.
Same problem as cash. We can hypothesize that "THEY" will refuse to accept it until you show ID.
Seriously? They'll just jack up the premiums on the cards, or stop accepting them as payment.
The whole selling point of them is that you can use them anywhere you can use a Visa card. Merchants aren't even allowed to refuse to accept them if they accept Visa, and Visa loves the cards.
This is true and the reason why Bitcoin or other crypto-currencies have a bright future serving the needs of the under-served in the economy .
Because places that won't accept visa prepaid because it's not traceable enough will accept bitcoin? Are you sure you've actually thought that through?
You're assuming that, in a world where autonomous cars have been around long enough to be common, that there would be no way for the police to communicate with them
I am making no such assumption. I am *merely* pointing out that if google puts those cars on the road *this* year, the police do not have the ability to "message them".
Naturally it WILL happen eventually.
Before the first fully autonomous vehicle is allowed on public roads, there will be a way for the police to direct it.
Did you read the full article. Google is asking for expedited permission to bring to market a car that has no driver controls.
To wit: "Under Google's proposed framework, a company that could show its vehicles passed federal safety standards could receive permission from transportation regulators to sell them. "
So, no, you are mistaken. The notion that the police would be able to send messages to these vehicles to direct them into detours is not part of this proposal.
And never mind the police, what about normal people... if your google car is driving along and you come across a downed power line or tree or flooding that has submerged the road, and your car comes to a safe stop before it reaches it, then what?
Are you going to be able to order it to make an otherwise illegal U-turn?? Will it drive on the grass or sidewalk around an obstacle at my prodding? Will it pull into a service lane?
None of that has been tested or even defined. Right now, when an autonomous car runs into trouble it safely pulls over. If it doesn't have a steering wheel or other controls... the question becomes: Now what?! Do I get out and walk?
An autonomous vehicle that relies on the human to take over in emergencies is really, really dangerous, because in the second or two for the human to realize what's going on the vehicle will crash. That's not a realistic option.
Of course. That would be ridiculous. I am not advocating that. However, after the car has stopped safely, there is no reason the human can't take control.
If I drop my phone, odds aren't too bad that I've just ruined it.;)
it only takes me two seconds to pick it up and use to to buy stuff. If you lose your phone, it's no good for purchases without your fingerprint.
But yes, that's a fair comment otherwise. On the other hand, my bank has given me zero grief refunding transactions that aren't mine in previous fraudulent use situations.
2. If Trader Joe gets hacked, the credit card number behind your NFC card is in their database and gets sold en masse to carders.
Wait, why is trader joe storing it? Even Home Depot's breach wasn't that stupid. The malware was siphoning cards as they were swiped. You are correct... insofar as one time numbers would break that... but we are talking about holding up my card next to a terminal infected with malware...
I have to ask whether you really think its a smart idea to hold up your unlocked NFC enabled phone next to a terminal infected with malware? What could possibly go wrong with THAT?
3. If privacy is a thing you care about,
If privacy is the thing I care about, then I'll turn my phone off and pay cash.
Your solution to privacy is to to give apple my fingerprint and all my transaction details in order to keep the purchases I make at traderjoes a secret from trader joes? Seriously?
And how private even from trader joes is this really going to be? Are we sure they can't fingerprint the NFC connection itself to connect your different payments, even though the 'card number' presented is different? After all there's big business fingerprinting and tracking phones as they walk around your store these days.
Besides at the end of the day I don't even really care if trader joes knows what I buy at trader joes. As long as that's all they get to know.
"I use Android Pay at Trader Joe's regularly specifically because it's faster than using my chip card."
I have a card with NFC. It also takes 2 seconds, and I don't even have to unlock my phone.
Why on earth would I want to use my phone instead? I don't want to unlock my phone to make a payment. I don't want to have NFC enabled on it. I don't have to worry about whether my phone is charged. (Sometimes it doesn't make it to the end of the day, especially if I haven't charged it the night before, or made heavy use of it.)
It seems like American card technology is so far behind what the rest of the world is doing that using your phones actually feels like a step forward. It just seems like a problem looking for a solution.
Rejecting future technology on the grounds that, if the engineers are idiots, it could potentially have bad consequences is stupid.
I am not rejecting future technology; I am simply arguing that the future technology does not exist yet. Therefore calls to put autonomous cars on the road today is premature.
If you read the thread, for example, you'll see that I argued that if a road is closed and a detour is established by police using service roads and oncoming lanes the autonomous cars would not be able to use it. The person responding to me said the police would simply "broadcast a message" to advise the cars stuck at the road closure to get them into the detour. The police do not have this capability. Surely one day they will, but if google puts an autonomous car on the road this year, this detour broadcasting system simply doesn't exist.
There are some of us who do maintain our cars properly.
Of course there are. So what?
Once more, you're generalizing from the worst case and assuming the computer won't know what to do about it.
I am not generalizing from the worst case. Even assuming many cars are fine, it is the remainder that will cause problems.
I am not against autonomous cars, hell I think they will improve the world considerable. But I simply don't think we are remotely ready for fully autonomous cars that never require a driver on the road today. There are too many scenarios they aren't able to cope with.
Hybrids that can be fully autonomous, or driven, sure we can do that -- because a driver can deal with the extra scenarios. But that's not ideal...we want JohnnyCab... a car that can drop the kids off at hockey practice or piano lessons without having to go ourselves, a car that can pick us up and take us home after a night drinking, etc. But the cars aren't ready for that... yet.
Or the police sends out a message "back up until this exit-point"
Ah, but now you are just speculating on future technology and systems which DO NOT CURRENTLY EXIST.
Sure such systems will surely eventually exist, but they want to push the cars out now.
But to start with... when you have that many autonomous cars on the road the biggest suspect for the actual accident is that a human was driving..
Or an act of god. A sink hole. A mudslide. A downed tree or power line.
And 15 years out, those autonomous cars are going to be riddled with dirty and failing sensors and dodgy electronics built by low bidders.
The autonomous cars on the road right now are state of the art being baby sat by teams of dedicated engineers who test and monitor everything continually.
Next time you're out driving take a look at all the poorly maintained clunkers out there. With a broken headlight, and the air conditioning doesn't work, the sunroof doesn't open, and one of the doors only opens from the inside. Tires are 2nd hand and don't match. Cruise control hasn't worked in 5 years. Filters are probably overdue. Timing belt is on borrowed time. Now imagine it's also autonomous...
Yes, I agree with you. The actual accident scenarios are fairly logically covered. However, and here is the thing that HASN'T been convered:
The aftermath.
the accident has happened. Its a divided highway. The affected cars in the accident are strewn across the road in one direction. The autonomous cars all safely stopped by the side of road.
Emergency services show. Close the road, the police block a lane in the oncoming traffic. Then half a mile back they open one of the service roads connecting the divided highway and start directing traffic through it into the closed oncoming lane past the accident, and then accross another service lane back.
New arriving traffic is directed through the detour. Traffic caught ahead of service entrance, backs up to the opening and are directed through the detour as well.
Meanwhile the fully autonomous cars... sit patiently by the side of the road. waiting for it to clear.... for hours. and hours. and hours.
And yet they couldn't be bothered to get full global rights for some of their biggest shows like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black.
It sounds like they sold the streaming rights to shows they produce to others in regions they didn't offer service.
Now that makes perfect sense.
Then when they expanded their service, the preexisting contracts giving distribution rights to others were still in effect.
Its hard to be overly critical of this. It happens to companies all the time. I work for one right now that sold the distribution rights to product to dealer in another country. Then we expanded into that country a couple years later with another product line. The first product line is still distributed by our dealer.
Some of our customers do find it weird that they can't buy the first product directly from us; but thats the countract in place, and our dealer invested considerable time developing marketing materials, training support staff, attending shows and conferences, and creating distribution channels, etc... which has been good for the product. And they wouldn't have done any of that if we hadn't granted them exclusive distribution in the country at the outset.
But then, ask yourself why you feel entitled to run other people's software on whatever machine you want?
Same reason I feel entitled to watch my copies of "other peoples" movies on whatever TV i want, read my copies "other peoples" books on whatever chair I want.
Once something is 'my copy of "other peoples" software', I absolutely *do* feel entitled to do pretty much whatever the fuck I want with short of redistributing copies of it and a couple other 'copy rights' the 'other people' have.
You have no such inherent right.
Quite the opposite actually. There is no inherent right of apple to prevent me from doing whatever I want with a copy at all. Any an all "rights" they have exist at only only by decree and public tolerance. There is nothing inherent about copyright whatsoever.
However, someone above reported an "upgrade" happening on an unattended machine with no mouse or keyboard attached.
This is/. people who haven't used Windows versions newer than XP have made all sorts of wild claims about what it has or hasn't done lately.
I haven't seen any systems pushed to Windows 10 at all that weren't somehow user initiated.
People simply don't read what they click on, then deny they clicked on anything at all. I've literally WATCHED it happen live hundreds of time when doing remote screen-sharing support.
Other people will have had their kids click on it.
And Win10 update does have a few quirks, where it will 'confirm and reserve your upgrade today' and then due to missing hardware support defer your upgrade until drivers available. My Mom's old laptop was like that, windows 10 showed up several months after she'd first tried to update it.
I'm not saying it's outright impossible that MS has pushed the update without user confirmation on some systems due to a bug or some other issue. But I'd say the VAST majority are people who did confirm it and either don't even realize they confirmed it, or had someone else who uses the system confirm it, or who are just posturing on slashdot, or claiming other peoples anecdotes as their own (where the 'other person' probably clicked update without reading it...)
Its nowhere near as bad as/. shrill monkeys would have you believe.
I was just reading an article somewhere about cheap 40$ chinese tablets... not much use as tablets... but for something like this... you'd probably be able to set it up 'just so'.
a clock app, with wifi sync is trivial. a few settings to keep the screen on, and you'll leave it plugged in 24x7...
You've made a very interesting point. I don't share it. We all remember bitcoin in the early day when 12,000 bitcoin were used to buy a pizza.
Heh, yes; but at the same time you do hear about stupidly large wallets belonging to early insiders. And while they may have lacked some of prescience or even lacked the cynicism to think like this, I think its definitely a factor in all the new crypto currencies.
The delay in confirmation should not be an issue.
Customers aren't going to be happy about minutes or hours delay purchasing a $1-$5 app. Not when Visa et al take 3% of the sale and approve or deny in seconds.
GPL has nothing to do with making sure that the code stays free.
Please define 'free'.
What GPL does is that it ensures that any software that is built on top of it will have to be open source.
Ok. That Includes copies of the original source.
When it comes to the original source code BSD/MIT/unlicensed distribution all ensures that the original source remains free.
How is the GPL not ensuring this exactly?
You can compile and distribute as many binaries you want, the source is still out there,
How is this not the case with GPL?
this makes the "free" claim often put on GPL software a bit dubious since it limits what you can do with the software rather than ensures that you can decide on your own.
Its analogous to any system of freedom which states that your freedom ends where it starts to infringe on mine.
If you take a free project, add your 0.02 cents and change the license, then give it to me, then I don't enjoy the same rights you enjoyed. The GPL ensures that I'm just as free when i get your modified code as you were when you got the code from someone else. Not more free; but crucially: Not less free.
The GPL only limits your freedom to put the next user into a cage. Your absolute freedom with BSD is the freedom to put the downstream users into a cage.
As an upstream author, that's the decision I am making when I release under GPL vs BSD. Do I want to give downstream users the ability to put people even further downstream into a restrictive license? Or do I want everyone, no matter how downstream to have the same set of freedoms when they get derivate works of this as the first person who picks it up?
The BSD has certain advantages -- it can be combined with other licenses easier; it can result in the code being used in projects where GPL code couldn't or wouldn't be.
But it has disadvantages as well... it may be that the hardwork I did, gets subsumed into a new work and nobody, not even me can benefit from that and improve it further. Best case, we can go to the original project where it was still BSD and try to recreate all the features that were added to the now-locked-up version.
I feel that calling GPL free software is a bit dishonest.
I don't see that at all.
I would rather call it something like "ensured open" or "ensured open derivatives" since that is more that GPL is about.
That's not the worst idea I've heard. Bu you can have open source software that grants you no freedom to redistribute or derive from it at all. So your 'preference' just kicks the can into a different but equally unsatisfying semantic argument about 'open' instead of 'free'.
For me freedom typically means that you are allowed to do things that someone else doesn't necessarily approve of, and that would include change the software and release the binary.
You can do that with GPL. Just alongside the binary must be the offer to make the source available, under the GPL.
The only thing you can't do is change the license.
Slashdot Mirror
Grow the fuck up.
That's Quran 8:59-60. (and a very 'opportunisitic' transalation too,
Quran 8:61 (ie... the VERY next sentence)
"And if they incline to peace, then you (also) incline to it, and put (your) trust in Allah".
Talk about twisting a passage to suit your bullshit.
It essentially says "if you are attacked muster all your forces to defend yourselves, but make peace with those that come in peace".
Seriously... that's about as American as apple pie.
I don't think women in tech spend more time with their families. But I do think that men in tech spend less time with their families,
That's a contradiction. I think I know what you ~mean~ but still, its a contraction... men spending less time then women at X is by definition women spending more time then men at X.
How would they adjust for it? My company doesn't keep a database of who is working late at night, and even if we did, these researchers wouldn't have access to it.
I think he meant hours in total. e.g if you and I both work for $100 per hour but you work 60 hour weeks and I work 40 hour weeks, you make a lot more than i do, despite us both making the same hourly.
Controlling for hours worked eliminates any bias that men might be making more simply because they are spending more time at work.
(This is also different from the 'more time with their families' because that's talking more about women potentially being less competitive for promotions prioritizing "work life balance" over "dollars/hr" resulting in a systemic wage disparity as they gravitate towards positions that offer less money but better working conditions.)
I guess that would technically work. But it's not scalable and is about as blunt as an instrument can be.
An entity like wikileaks which is being theoretically blacklisted by not just visa, but also world governments, banks, etc would have challenges to be sure. Hell, even cash is not as simple as all that. It's often unwise to send it in the mail, and as an international organization are they receiving dozens of currencies to sort through. IF they've been blacklisted by the banks, what are they doing with it... sorting it by country and putting it into suitcases? And then paying their various vendors from those suitcases? Of course not.
Even cash is not really much of solution on that scale and with that level of government interference.
They'd need to have legal intermediaries handling their banking (and money laundering) activities. And if they have intermediaries doing such... well they can readily handle visa prepaid cards received in the mail too via similar mechanisms. Intermediary drains the cards into accounts maintained for wikileaks not directly connected to wikileaks. Organized crime style...
Cryptocurrencies are theoretically better in this one instance; but even bitcoin can blacklist transactions; especially if nation states and large corporate entities are running the majority of the computing power and colloude, which in this scenario is not at all a completely implausible situation.
The trouble with decentralized cryptocurrency is that its one "cpu-cycle one vote", not "one person one vote". And some of entities have a LOT more cpu-cycles than others. If nationstates and large corporations got into the act they could easily collectively seize control of the network and concentrate decision making into the hands of a few super powers / mega corps.
Gift cards expire, many also have transaction fees associated with them, as well costing more than the cover price
"On October 1, 2007, the Consumer Protection Act banned expiry dates and most fees on gift cards bought after that date to make sure you get their full value, regardless of when you use them. The only fees a business is allowed to charge are to customize a gift card or replace one that has been lost or stolen.
Some of the fees that a business is no longer allowed to charge are activation fees and dormancy fees."
Not in civilized countries.
http://yourlegalrights.on.ca/c...
And you'll invariably be left with £$X.nn left that cannot be spent as the retailer will only accept payment on a single card.
That literally has never has happened to me, not once, ever.
But that's beside the point, pre-paid visa cards are not typical gift cards, they don't expire, and they are refillable.
Sure, you can use the card wherever Visa is accepted. But what if Visa doesn't accept the merchant?
Put the amount you want to give them on the card, then put the card in the mail and send it to them.
Your Smartphone reports where you are. If there is a matching pattern with a physical credit card at locations where it is used for transactions, it will be trivially obvious that you are the one using it.
1) Cash has the same theoretical problem. My proposal is as good as cash. I am not trying to solve problems not even cash solves.
2) Turn off your phone.
Plus you need to swap with someone who has the same balance left - this doesn't seem feasible.
Swap them while its still full, or refill them to some standard level... $100 or whatever before swapping. Your idea of infeasible seems downright trivial.
So you either need to maintain a ledger of how much your friends "owe" you for cards which you have swapped with differing balances, which is an added cost and risk to an ordinary person, or you need to balance transfer.
No.
Plus, if enough people start doing it, they will introduce biometrics in addition to Chip n PIN or whatever authentication method is being used.
Same problem as cash. We can hypothesize that "THEY" will refuse to accept it until you show ID.
What difference does it make? You aren't the one using the ones you bought.
It works just fine until the government makes them illegal to sell.
What is the point of your post exactly?
No alternative currency or system of exchange or even barter would be immune from that.
Seriously? They'll just jack up the premiums on the cards, or stop accepting them as payment.
The whole selling point of them is that you can use them anywhere you can use a Visa card. Merchants aren't even allowed to refuse to accept them if they accept Visa, and Visa loves the cards.
So yeah... "seriously".
As a cash replacement it works just fine.
This is true and the reason why Bitcoin or other crypto-currencies have a bright future serving the needs of the under-served in the economy .
Because places that won't accept visa prepaid because it's not traceable enough will accept bitcoin? Are you sure you've actually thought that through?
Design suggestions?
First buy visa gift cards. Then swap them around. :p
Every few months, swap your card.
You're assuming that, in a world where autonomous cars have been around long enough to be common, that there would be no way for the police to communicate with them
I am making no such assumption. I am *merely* pointing out that if google puts those cars on the road *this* year, the police do not have the ability to "message them".
Naturally it WILL happen eventually.
Before the first fully autonomous vehicle is allowed on public roads, there will be a way for the police to direct it.
Did you read the full article. Google is asking for expedited permission to bring to market a car that has no driver controls.
To wit: "Under Google's proposed framework, a company that could show its vehicles passed federal safety standards could receive permission from transportation regulators to sell them. "
So, no, you are mistaken. The notion that the police would be able to send messages to these vehicles to direct them into detours is not part of this proposal.
And never mind the police, what about normal people... if your google car is driving along and you come across a downed power line or tree or flooding that has submerged the road, and your car comes to a safe stop before it reaches it, then what?
Are you going to be able to order it to make an otherwise illegal U-turn?? Will it drive on the grass or sidewalk around an obstacle at my prodding? Will it pull into a service lane?
None of that has been tested or even defined. Right now, when an autonomous car runs into trouble it safely pulls over. If it doesn't have a steering wheel or other controls... the question becomes: Now what?! Do I get out and walk?
An autonomous vehicle that relies on the human to take over in emergencies is really, really dangerous, because in the second or two for the human to realize what's going on the vehicle will crash. That's not a realistic option.
Of course. That would be ridiculous. I am not advocating that. However, after the car has stopped safely, there is no reason the human can't take control.
40 millionaires opening their checkbooks and paying some extra tax won't solve large problems.
But if all millionaires do, that adds up to a lot more. This is a stunt by 40 millionaires to suggest that this is what should be done.
There's nothing hypocritical about it.
1. Because if you drop your NFC card
If I drop my phone, odds aren't too bad that I've just ruined it. ;)
it only takes me two seconds to pick it up and use to to buy stuff. If you lose your phone, it's no good for purchases without your fingerprint.
But yes, that's a fair comment otherwise. On the other hand, my bank has given me zero grief refunding transactions that aren't mine in previous fraudulent use situations.
2. If Trader Joe gets hacked, the credit card number behind your NFC card is in their database and gets sold en masse to carders.
Wait, why is trader joe storing it? Even Home Depot's breach wasn't that stupid. The malware was siphoning cards as they were swiped. You are correct ... insofar as one time numbers would break that... but we are talking about holding up my card next to a terminal infected with malware ...
I have to ask whether you really think its a smart idea to hold up your unlocked NFC enabled phone next to a terminal infected with malware? What could possibly go wrong with THAT?
3. If privacy is a thing you care about,
If privacy is the thing I care about, then I'll turn my phone off and pay cash.
Your solution to privacy is to to give apple my fingerprint and all my transaction details in order to keep the purchases I make at traderjoes a secret from trader joes? Seriously?
And how private even from trader joes is this really going to be? Are we sure they can't fingerprint the NFC connection itself to connect your different payments, even though the 'card number' presented is different? After all there's big business fingerprinting and tracking phones as they walk around your store these days.
Besides at the end of the day I don't even really care if trader joes knows what I buy at trader joes. As long as that's all they get to know.
"I use Android Pay at Trader Joe's regularly specifically because it's faster than using my chip card."
I have a card with NFC. It also takes 2 seconds, and I don't even have to unlock my phone.
Why on earth would I want to use my phone instead? I don't want to unlock my phone to make a payment. I don't want to have NFC enabled on it. I don't have to worry about whether my phone is charged. (Sometimes it doesn't make it to the end of the day, especially if I haven't charged it the night before, or made heavy use of it.)
It seems like American card technology is so far behind what the rest of the world is doing that using your phones actually feels like a step forward. It just seems like a problem looking for a solution.
Rejecting future technology on the grounds that, if the engineers are idiots, it could potentially have bad consequences is stupid.
I am not rejecting future technology; I am simply arguing that the future technology does not exist yet. Therefore calls to put autonomous cars on the road today is premature.
If you read the thread, for example, you'll see that I argued that if a road is closed and a detour is established by police using service roads and oncoming lanes the autonomous cars would not be able to use it. The person responding to me said the police would simply "broadcast a message" to advise the cars stuck at the road closure to get them into the detour. The police do not have this capability. Surely one day they will, but if google puts an autonomous car on the road this year, this detour broadcasting system simply doesn't exist.
There are some of us who do maintain our cars properly.
Of course there are. So what?
Once more, you're generalizing from the worst case and assuming the computer won't know what to do about it.
I am not generalizing from the worst case. Even assuming many cars are fine, it is the remainder that will cause problems.
I am not against autonomous cars, hell I think they will improve the world considerable. But I simply don't think we are remotely ready for fully autonomous cars that never require a driver on the road today. There are too many scenarios they aren't able to cope with.
Hybrids that can be fully autonomous, or driven, sure we can do that -- because a driver can deal with the extra scenarios. But that's not ideal...we want JohnnyCab ... a car that can drop the kids off at hockey practice or piano lessons without having to go ourselves, a car that can pick us up and take us home after a night drinking, etc. But the cars aren't ready for that ... yet.
Or the police sends out a message "back up until this exit-point"
Ah, but now you are just speculating on future technology and systems which DO NOT CURRENTLY EXIST.
Sure such systems will surely eventually exist, but they want to push the cars out now.
But to start with... when you have that many autonomous cars on the road the biggest suspect for the actual accident is that a human was driving..
Or an act of god. A sink hole. A mudslide. A downed tree or power line.
And 15 years out, those autonomous cars are going to be riddled with dirty and failing sensors and dodgy electronics built by low bidders.
The autonomous cars on the road right now are state of the art being baby sat by teams of dedicated engineers who test and monitor everything continually.
Next time you're out driving take a look at all the poorly maintained clunkers out there. With a broken headlight, and the air conditioning doesn't work, the sunroof doesn't open, and one of the doors only opens from the inside. Tires are 2nd hand and don't match. Cruise control hasn't worked in 5 years. Filters are probably overdue. Timing belt is on borrowed time. Now imagine it's also autonomous ...
Yes, I agree with you. The actual accident scenarios are fairly logically covered. However, and here is the thing that HASN'T been convered:
The aftermath.
the accident has happened. Its a divided highway. The affected cars in the accident are strewn across the road in one direction. The autonomous cars all safely stopped by the side of road.
Emergency services show. Close the road, the police block a lane in the oncoming traffic. Then half a mile back they open one of the service roads connecting the divided highway and start directing traffic through it into the closed oncoming lane past the accident, and then accross another service lane back.
New arriving traffic is directed through the detour. Traffic caught ahead of service entrance, backs up to the opening and are directed through the detour as well.
Meanwhile the fully autonomous cars... sit patiently by the side of the road. waiting for it to clear.... for hours. and hours. and hours.
And yet they couldn't be bothered to get full global rights for some of their biggest shows like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black.
It sounds like they sold the streaming rights to shows they produce to others in regions they didn't offer service.
Now that makes perfect sense.
Then when they expanded their service, the preexisting contracts giving distribution rights to others were still in effect.
Its hard to be overly critical of this. It happens to companies all the time. I work for one right now that sold the distribution rights to product to dealer in another country. Then we expanded into that country a couple years later with another product line. The first product line is still distributed by our dealer.
Some of our customers do find it weird that they can't buy the first product directly from us; but thats the countract in place, and our dealer invested considerable time developing marketing materials, training support staff, attending shows and conferences, and creating distribution channels, etc... which has been good for the product. And they wouldn't have done any of that if we hadn't granted them exclusive distribution in the country at the outset.
But then, ask yourself why you feel entitled to run other people's software on whatever machine you want?
Same reason I feel entitled to watch my copies of "other peoples" movies on whatever TV i want, read my copies "other peoples" books on whatever chair I want.
Once something is 'my copy of "other peoples" software', I absolutely *do* feel entitled to do pretty much whatever the fuck I want with short of redistributing copies of it and a couple other 'copy rights' the 'other people' have.
You have no such inherent right.
Quite the opposite actually. There is no inherent right of apple to prevent me from doing whatever I want with a copy at all. Any an all "rights" they have exist at only only by decree and public tolerance. There is nothing inherent about copyright whatsoever.
mac hardware lets you run all three major OS's (osx + windows + linux) on a single piece of hardware.
Its a bit perverse to classify a situation caused solely by apples restrictions as a mac 'advantage'.
The only reason I "can't" run all 3 major OSes on any other hardware is because of apple restrictions.
However, someone above reported an "upgrade" happening on an unattended machine with no mouse or keyboard attached.
This is /. people who haven't used Windows versions newer than XP have made all sorts of wild claims about what it has or hasn't done lately.
I haven't seen any systems pushed to Windows 10 at all that weren't somehow user initiated.
People simply don't read what they click on, then deny they clicked on anything at all. I've literally WATCHED it happen live hundreds of time when doing remote screen-sharing support.
Other people will have had their kids click on it.
And Win10 update does have a few quirks, where it will 'confirm and reserve your upgrade today' and then due to missing hardware support defer your upgrade until drivers available. My Mom's old laptop was like that, windows 10 showed up several months after she'd first tried to update it.
I'm not saying it's outright impossible that MS has pushed the update without user confirmation on some systems due to a bug or some other issue. But I'd say the VAST majority are people who did confirm it and either don't even realize they confirmed it, or had someone else who uses the system confirm it, or who are just posturing on slashdot, or claiming other peoples anecdotes as their own (where the 'other person' probably clicked update without reading it...)
Its nowhere near as bad as /. shrill monkeys would have you believe.
I was just reading an article somewhere about cheap 40$ chinese tablets... not much use as tablets... but for something like this... you'd probably be able to set it up 'just so'.
a clock app, with wifi sync is trivial. a few settings to keep the screen on, and you'll leave it plugged in 24x7...
You've made a very interesting point. I don't share it. We all remember bitcoin in the early day when 12,000 bitcoin were used to buy a pizza.
Heh, yes; but at the same time you do hear about stupidly large wallets belonging to early insiders. And while they may have lacked some of prescience or even lacked the cynicism to think like this, I think its definitely a factor in all the new crypto currencies.
The delay in confirmation should not be an issue.
Customers aren't going to be happy about minutes or hours delay purchasing a $1-$5 app. Not when Visa et al take 3% of the sale and approve or deny in seconds.
GPL has nothing to do with making sure that the code stays free.
Please define 'free'.
What GPL does is that it ensures that any software that is built on top of it will have to be open source.
Ok. That Includes copies of the original source.
When it comes to the original source code BSD/MIT/unlicensed distribution all ensures that the original source remains free.
How is the GPL not ensuring this exactly?
You can compile and distribute as many binaries you want, the source is still out there,
How is this not the case with GPL?
this makes the "free" claim often put on GPL software a bit dubious since it limits what you can do with the software rather than ensures that you can decide on your own.
Its analogous to any system of freedom which states that your freedom ends where it starts to infringe on mine.
If you take a free project, add your 0.02 cents and change the license, then give it to me, then I don't enjoy the same rights you enjoyed. The GPL ensures that I'm just as free when i get your modified code as you were when you got the code from someone else. Not more free; but crucially: Not less free.
The GPL only limits your freedom to put the next user into a cage. Your absolute freedom with BSD is the freedom to put the downstream users into a cage.
As an upstream author, that's the decision I am making when I release under GPL vs BSD. Do I want to give downstream users the ability to put people even further downstream into a restrictive license? Or do I want everyone, no matter how downstream to have the same set of freedoms when they get derivate works of this as the first person who picks it up?
The BSD has certain advantages -- it can be combined with other licenses easier; it can result in the code being used in projects where GPL code couldn't or wouldn't be.
But it has disadvantages as well... it may be that the hardwork I did, gets subsumed into a new work and nobody, not even me can benefit from that and improve it further. Best case, we can go to the original project where it was still BSD and try to recreate all the features that were added to the now-locked-up version.
I feel that calling GPL free software is a bit dishonest.
I don't see that at all.
I would rather call it something like "ensured open" or "ensured open derivatives" since that is more that GPL is about.
That's not the worst idea I've heard. Bu you can have open source software that grants you no freedom to redistribute or derive from it at all. So your 'preference' just kicks the can into a different but equally unsatisfying semantic argument about 'open' instead of 'free'.
For me freedom typically means that you are allowed to do things that someone else doesn't necessarily approve of, and that would include change the software and release the binary.
You can do that with GPL. Just alongside the binary must be the offer to make the source available, under the GPL.
The only thing you can't do is change the license.