Almost all the career ending injuring that happen to MMA fighters happen during training. The safety level is comparable to other athletic events. The action is all indoor in a highly controlled field, and action can be stopped very quickly. So it is much, much safer than something like cycling, or distance running. A marathon runner who has an accident might not get medical attention for full minutes. An MMA fighter will have a qualified doctor working on their injury within a few seconds if it happens during the actual fight.
It turns out, contrary to all the martial arts mythology most of us where raised around, hand to hand combat does not make the sport dangerous. The more important safety factors: indoor, closed course, real-time monitoring by trained professionals.
It will take more than fancy camera angles to make boxing relevant. First of all, why is it better to only punch? What is the reason for boxing, instead of MMA fighting, now that we have both? Boxing hasn't even come up with a reason for why their side is better. 100 years ago, boxing with gloves and consistent rules was the civilized way to fight. Are they more civilized than MMA, though? Consider this: clinching is against the rules in boxing. It is a "foul." Every time the ref stops and separates the fighters, that is a "foul." How many intentional fouls are there in a boxing match? If it is a "clean" fight... only a hundred or so! lol
Another problem, boxing is a sham because of the way the promoters operate. If they want people to watch boxing, they have to be able to have some confidence that it is real. Even if the fighters are really fighting, you're likely to get a judge's decision straight out of professional wrestling! MMA rules gives a better chance to finish a fight with a clear result, even when the same un-credible judges are used. An MMA fighter can finish the fight if they're clearly better than their opponent. In boxing, because of the rules and the equipment, even a mismatched fight often will go to a decision.
So if boxing wants to compete again, they need to hire some marketing people to come up with a "reason" that sports fans can repeat to each other without sounding lame. Second, they need a single-promotion fight league like the UFC, to reduce the incentives to cheat. Third, they'd have to throw a lot of real money at athletes who probably don't really rate that pay, in order to pull enough young fighters away from MMA to get their league jump-started. There is room for something more than MMA, K-1 was very popular for example. But fans knew they wanted an improved kick-boxing. K-1 was just kickboxing, with brief single-hand clinching and "dirty boxing" allowed. ("dirty boxing" is the technical term for holding with one hand and punching with the other, it is legal in MMA and K-1) K-1 filled a real gap, because in Thai-style kickboxing sweeps are allowed and score points, which can allows for "boring" and less martial styles to be successful, whereas traditional kickboxing bans sweeps, which means less leg kicks, and doesn't allow clinching. But Thai style allows clinching, and that is usually the most exiting part. So with K-1, sweeps aren't fouls, they simply do not score. So K-1 gave the fans what they wanted, striking-only, you can clinch but you have to let go after delivering a single blow; so no getting stuck in the corner for a boring round of hugging, but you still get some Thai-style KOs. It was very easy in 1 or 2 minutes for the commentators to bring kickboxing, Muay Thai, boxing, or MMA fans up to speed on the rules, and the rules made for exiting fights, and a high rate of KOs. What is the actual use case for the style of fighting with the least KOs, the most "bad decisions," and highest percent of boring hug-fests? As a fight fan who would watch boxing if it followed its own rules, the only use case I can see is for old fight fans who didn't get on the MMA bandwagon, and are too stubborn to change now.
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I hope your time and effort are worth the $25k first prize because that's about all you will *ever* get for it.
Uhm, yeah, if you have no use for it yourself, you'd only get the 25k from this one buyer, and you'd need to move on to another product. Nothing lasts forever. The only reason you need to keep making money off of it is if you're still trying to put it to some other commercial use. The part where it says, "non-exclusive," that means you can also sell it elsewhere.
You're obviously not a software developer, so it is entirely academic to you anyways.
The phone company already knows who is doing what and is complicit in the problem. That is why the effort is to build a honeypot. If you reply on the phone company, the software will "accidentally" have a lot of "bugs" and won't change anything.
I'm not against the death squads necessarily, but in your scenario the phone company would probably fake the data to get their own enemies killed.
3 years is still term insurance. New cars are often under full warranty for over 3 years, so they can roll in "full coverage" insurance for the price of liability, and market it as a savings. They might be getting a better profit margin on that insurance than the insurance company!;)
Being credulous of bundled offers doesn't stop that from being term insurance. You can probably find an auto lease somewhere in the world that includes insurance, but it still all term insurance.
The Mercedes stuff is really interesting. They're already on the road with it, just not for sale yet, so don't be misled by their expectation of having it "by 2016." That is when it might be fore sale, but it is already on the roads, and has already been tested successfully.
Flying cars have serious, real problems that make them unlikely for a long time, at least as common things that are commercially available. Actual flying cars have existed for many decades. In fact, regular airplanes have wheels and drive like cars while not in the air! The big problem then is not in the technology of the car, or the flying, but the establishment of lanes. There is simply not enough room in the air for everybody to fly around without narrow traffic lanes. There has to be a standards-based system of arbitrary air traffic control that is very different than what is used now for airplanes. Once self-driving cars because standard, that is what will shake the bugs out of the navigational controls enough that they'll be able to adapt them to airborne lane assist. But you need a lot that we don't have now, like vehicle to vehicle communication to give movement warnings, and lane entrance/exit notification. Notice there is no missing technology here, only missing standards, and missing domain-specific implementations of existing tech.
It can't get you to your destination if your destination is off road, if there is significant construction in between, significant rain, snow or ice on the road, etc...
Right now it's equivalent to a very safe 'fair weather' driver. The type that stays home if conditions aren't optimal.
So it is fully autonomous, it just doesn't get out much yet. It will, when it's older.
One of the examples that Webster's gives is "an autonomous zooid." A zooid might not be able to venture into inclement weather, either. It might only wander into places it considers to have "fair weather." Doesn't make it less autonomous; actually it doesn't even address the subject of autonomy!
If I can program a destination into the GPS, press "GO" through the window, and watch the car drive off without me, down the street and around the corner, and it is trying to get there, it is 100% autonomous while driving. Note that it would not be navigating autonomously; it is only going places I told it to go. But the driving is fully autonomous. And that stays true if it comes home without getting there, because it couldn't figure out the construction detour. And it stays true if it parks and calls for help; or crashes. A zooid might not succeed in reaching its destination, either.
More likely, you and the parent poster are using different definitions of "fully autonomous". You might want to compare notes on that.
No need to compare notes, if he didn't try to understand my statement in a way that makes it true, and so misses the truth, and instead tries to understand it as something factually false, there is no way to correct that. He'll drive off the path at each and every turn, any time there is new information or a unexpected comment, he'll be in the ditch, misunderstanding it.
That is a bit silly, to be honest. It is like saying if you put a push handle on the back of a car, it isn't a car anymore.
You can have a steering wheel that is turned by the computer, for example, and still have the computer driving. I've seen aircraft systems like that, that have both auto-pilot and fly-by-wire modes, and the controls move all the time. You can look at the controls and see what the computer is doing. You could build a car the same way, so that you can watch the computer steer the wheel.
I wouldn't prefer that design, of course. I'd prefer the steering wheel to be there, but to disengage, and hopefully partially retract, when the computer is driving. That way if it snows, and the car can't drive, I can still flip the "manual mode" switch and drive.
Having a steering wheel or not tells you nothing about if the car is self-driving. And no, that part really isn't opinion. If it sucks, that is opinion. If you're not sure who is driving, quickly lower your hands so that they don't get smashed into your face when the airbag deploys, because you're about to crash.
There are these things in some regions called "mountains." (I'm in the Lower 48, this isn't Alaska or something) From one city to a city on the other side of the mountains is about 60-80 miles. There is a mountain pass every 30 miles or so. That makes a bit of a square. The place I personally go is about 80 miles from me. So from there, lets say I'm driving home and I get half way, and the road is blocked by a land slide. That happens regularly in mountainous terrain. 40 miles back to where I started, 30 (slow,windy) miles north to the next highway with a pass, 60 miles back to my side of the mountains, and 40 more miles to home. 40+40+60+40, only 180 miles. That is the normal case. But accidents also close these roads. It absolutely happens that people sometimes drive 60 miles to the coast, and another 400 to get home because they didn't want to get a hotel and wait, and the second road was also closed. Accidents go up during the same weather that encourages landslides.
I'm not even in one any of the most remote states. These are roads dotted with small towns. Yes, there are technically forest roads that connect with shorter miles, but they're not on regular maps. I do have those maps, and better, I already know those roads; but it doesn't save time to wind over the mountains on those roads. And during that sort of weather, you'll have to stop and clear multiple trees off the road. It takes longer, uses more gas, and is more dangerous than using the next highway. Those are never distance shortcuts in mountainous terrain. There are real reasons why the passes are where they are, and the other roads that go over can't replace the passes.
In the deeper terrain you imagine, a closed road can mean waiting a week for it to be fixed, (or even the whole season+ 2 weeks!) or an extra 500 mile drive. Mountains aren't like cities, there isn't always a next street if it is actually a "deep northern" region. You can't just drive over a mountain in a jeep, either.;) You might have to drive 500 miles the wrong way, and fly to your destination, and recover the vehicle later. It is a small world, but a large planet.
I've done a bit of system integration with bill acceptor machines, and they should be fine. They're not looking for visual spectrum stuff, or comparing a bitmap, they're checking for a finite number of specific features. Usually, it is 9 or 11 small spots that are each checked for one thing. None of them are the face visuals.
The smart cruise control already is being installed in regular cars, and isn't even called self-driving. Since the human is still in the seat, and does small parts of the work, they just call it "intelligent cruise control." Cars that have it, it is almost impossible to read-end the car ahead. Current models have lane-assist during cornering, too.
Life passed up your prognostication... A-priori!
Existing self-driving cars have trouble with snow, and heavy rain, but work fine in most weather conditions, including most precipitation.
The google stuff is fully autonomous already. They have steering wheels for 2 reasons: they're required to by the State of California, and they're prototypes and they need to be able to steer them around with some of the equipment turned off.
A consumer model doesn't need to be able to still be operated after a malfunction. It can just shut down and call a tow truck.
Nonsense, the insurance would never get shifted onto the manufacturer, because maintenance happens after that, and is part of the accident risk. The vehicle owner will be required to pay for ongoing insurance, and will be required to be licensed (for the purpose of purchasing insurance!) until the car insurance requirements get shifted so that non-licensed drivers can buy insurance on self-driving cars.
But I like the taxi analogy. And it keeps working too; just like in that situation, the most likely thing an idiot does is grab the wheel and crash into something, or run over some pedestrians while trying to save their own ass; even though if there are modern airbags and collision detection, the taxi is likely to stop in time anyways. Even the human-driven new cars are getting safety features... where it is the computer that takes over to stop the vehicle when the human screws up, rather than the other way around.
The computer, having detected the loss of brakes, will not ask the magical human to save it, it will just activate the emergency brake and flashers, maintain control of the vehicle, stop in the lane, and call roadside assistance.
Then the car will ask you to do a manual chore. Pushing the car off the road. And there is absolutely nothing about the brakes going out that makes the human suddenly better at controlling the steering wheel, avoiding accidents, or obeying traffic laws.
Humans are too stupid to operate cars now that they don't have to. They actually even think they're better drivers... than the existing self-driving cars! Only in the snow, Bub. Only in the snow.
You don't have to be licensed so that you can pay attention "in case something goes wrong," though you'll probably be expected to push the car out of the roadway if physically able.
The reason you have to be licensed is that if the car malfunctions and creates an insurance claim, there is lots of existing legal precedent related to insurance liability that means the insurance company will require a licensed driver, until the laws are changed by people not scared of self-driving cars. That will take up to 50 years after they're first legalized.
Also, in most states there will still be a requirement to "exchange driver info" after any accident; including one that is not the fault of the self-driving car. There are probably lots more examples. The first steps will only say, "yes you can do this new thing but you also have to follow all the old rules too."
Human reaction time is slower than computer reaction time, so it is unlikely that you'll have more than an emergency shutoff to deal with mechanical problems. The idea that the human will be interrupting the computer in real time while in traffic to correct some mistake, that is a total joke. The humans would cause a wreck almost 100% of the times they tried it! I don't drive very much, but I'm out there enough to know how awful human drivers are. And that's when they're giving their legally-required full attention to the task.
By that theory, nobody ever drives anywhere, because there could be an unexpected road closure. I go lots of places where there is only one road, and if it is closed (which happens) then you can either try the next day, or drive an extra 250 miles. I've never once heard of it as a reason people don't go to those places. Even a doctor isn't going to stay in town and never go to the beach on a day off because of some small percent chance the road would be closed.
If the car is leased with a service agreement (likely for early versions) then you probably just call roadside assistance if it strands you, and they send a tow truck, same as AAA.
Gosh, nobody would even play golf, because of the lightning risk.
I know, right? Like, how can you drive your license around if you're not driving. Oh wait, but it says the car will be driving. Wait, I don't even drive my license as it is, I drive my car!
If it doesn't drive, I'll agree it isn't self-driving. But if it isn't licensed, then I can only agree it is not self-licensing.
It is a bit of a "no-brainer" that at first a licensed driver will be required, for the purpose of integrating normally into the existing insurance law and regulation. Only after they're common will the laws be streamlined.
Really? You spend time to reply and reply and reply, and even call me "stupid," you must feel really smart to magically know how people feel. You seem to think I "wasted" my time, or that you personally were who I was writing for. Guess what, I've been online since before the internet was public, and I've never written you even one personal message.
As for feeling "stupid" or not, lets put it this way: I stand by my analysis, and further, you didn't even succeed in addressing it. None of the intended readers need your name-calling to read the ideas and claims and decide what has value. To take it to another level, I can point out that my analysis is actually mainstream, past-tense stuff about an already-shrunken industry.
Some hand-waving about "anecdotal shit," well, like you say, we could look up the numbers.;) To you it is an "anecdote" that rail shipping is an already-declined industry in the US. It is an obvious reality for those of us here. I don't need numbers, because Americans can go out and see for themselves. Like your claim about oil train cars. You seem totally unaware that we do that using trucks, or even that it is possible. You don't know oil tanker trucks are a thing. You're probably from a place without them. You're dreaming that numbers you don't provide will refute "anecdotes," but you don't provide them. Why? Is it because they prove you wrong, or because you don't know where to look? If you wanted to challenge my claims with numbers, you failed.
So, your point is that... because something exists and is important to niche users, it must not be true that it isn't used "a lot?" Huh?
You seem really hung up on absolutes. But I didn't use any. I didn't (and wouldn't) say that trains aren't used, I said we don't use them very much. And indeed, most things that were moved by train in the US in the past are now moved by trucks. If you ever visit the USA, I recommend you take a side trip through a few random, 30+ year old industrial parks. What you'll find is railroad crossing on the roads, but weeds on the unused tracks. Even places where the tracks are still used, they'll usually have weeds on the business access sections, because nobody cares. You'll find loading bays next to the tracks converted for loading trucks. Are there still trains? Yes, of course.
Outside of certain regional commuter routes, passenger trains are used as a luxury alternative to... buses. They do not often arrive more than 10% faster than a bus. And nobody cares, because if they were in a hurry, they would have flown.
"A couple of recent accidents" only tells you that trains exist. It tells you nothing about the relative number, or what is usually used for shipping.
And if you spent time on US roads, you'd quickly realize that there are a large number of oil tanker trucks. You can stand on the side of a major freeway and count them. On the west coast there are numerous places where there is only 1 major north-south freeway, and 1 major north-south railway, side by side. You can stand there and count oil cars. You'll see a few on the tracks; maybe even 1 train car for every 100 trucks. Presumably if you live right next to an oil distribution facility you'll see more rail cars than that. We have various petroleum distribution facilities in my town, because we're at a rail junction that connects to other regions. So they built them here, many years ago. But guess what? They removed all but 1 track of rail access! And that one has weeds. I don't think I've seen a train parked there for over 20 years. But if you have to drive in that neighborhood, you encounter a large number of oil and gas trucks. Someday they'll build a new facility... closer to the freeway! But for now they only lose 10 minutes by being stuck out by the railroad tracks, and they already have the storage tanks.
Oh, gosh, you saw a train on tee vee, they must be falling from the sky! Golly gee!
It should be noted that our electric light rail are almost all modern, except for BART in the Bay Area. (No faulting BART, they pioneered the field) Trains are well used... at the municipal level, for moving people short distances. We're not going to build expensive high speed crap for that. They're faster than driving, and have bike racks. They connect the `burbs.
Your theory about the markets represents considerable original research, I don't think it is useful to just assert those ideas as facts or as changes that have happened in the markets. You're obviously aware of specific pieces of equipment that used to have a capability gap that no longer does; you mentioned CNC mills, for example. But just waving your hands and asserting the US no longer has manufacturing sector equipment exports that are difficult to replace, well that just shows ignorance of US exports in that sector. It isn't magic, so it doesn't apply to random things like CNC mills, which are somewhat trivial.
If you ever visit the US you'll find out how funny the trains comment is; we don't really use many trains. It would be somewhat predictable that modes of transport we don't use don't have much investment. It has nothing to do with complacency. I doubt the existing horse-drawn carriages are state-of-the-art, either. Maybe you can sell the sleigh industry on upgrades.
http://trade.gov/mas/manufactu... US has 14% of the global machinery equipment market. Export leaders included: construction machinery, engine equipment, turbines and turbine generator sets, and agricultural equipment.
Nonsense, it is absolutely do-able to have a realistic understanding of your actual security. The impossibility of secrecy does not refuse the usefulness of true information.
And I agree, there are few things more secure than the best available open offerings. But well financed law enforcement and security agencies are outside of that security. That the attack vectors are not revealed as such in the media is meaningless when the necessary capabilities are know to be possessed by them, and where their tactics are considered secret.
Luckily once somebody being honest about the security situation understands all that, they can just get on with locking out black hats, which is what the software can do; protect you from those without legal recourse to tell your ISP what to do. You just can't protect your privacy from government actors based solely on technology. They're in the position to MITM anything, to keylog anything, to anything anything.
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Almost all the career ending injuring that happen to MMA fighters happen during training. The safety level is comparable to other athletic events. The action is all indoor in a highly controlled field, and action can be stopped very quickly. So it is much, much safer than something like cycling, or distance running. A marathon runner who has an accident might not get medical attention for full minutes. An MMA fighter will have a qualified doctor working on their injury within a few seconds if it happens during the actual fight.
It turns out, contrary to all the martial arts mythology most of us where raised around, hand to hand combat does not make the sport dangerous. The more important safety factors: indoor, closed course, real-time monitoring by trained professionals.
It will take more than fancy camera angles to make boxing relevant. First of all, why is it better to only punch? What is the reason for boxing, instead of MMA fighting, now that we have both? Boxing hasn't even come up with a reason for why their side is better. 100 years ago, boxing with gloves and consistent rules was the civilized way to fight. Are they more civilized than MMA, though? Consider this: clinching is against the rules in boxing. It is a "foul." Every time the ref stops and separates the fighters, that is a "foul." How many intentional fouls are there in a boxing match? If it is a "clean" fight... only a hundred or so! lol
Another problem, boxing is a sham because of the way the promoters operate. If they want people to watch boxing, they have to be able to have some confidence that it is real. Even if the fighters are really fighting, you're likely to get a judge's decision straight out of professional wrestling! MMA rules gives a better chance to finish a fight with a clear result, even when the same un-credible judges are used. An MMA fighter can finish the fight if they're clearly better than their opponent. In boxing, because of the rules and the equipment, even a mismatched fight often will go to a decision.
So if boxing wants to compete again, they need to hire some marketing people to come up with a "reason" that sports fans can repeat to each other without sounding lame. Second, they need a single-promotion fight league like the UFC, to reduce the incentives to cheat. Third, they'd have to throw a lot of real money at athletes who probably don't really rate that pay, in order to pull enough young fighters away from MMA to get their league jump-started. There is room for something more than MMA, K-1 was very popular for example. But fans knew they wanted an improved kick-boxing. K-1 was just kickboxing, with brief single-hand clinching and "dirty boxing" allowed. ("dirty boxing" is the technical term for holding with one hand and punching with the other, it is legal in MMA and K-1) K-1 filled a real gap, because in Thai-style kickboxing sweeps are allowed and score points, which can allows for "boring" and less martial styles to be successful, whereas traditional kickboxing bans sweeps, which means less leg kicks, and doesn't allow clinching. But Thai style allows clinching, and that is usually the most exiting part. So with K-1, sweeps aren't fouls, they simply do not score. So K-1 gave the fans what they wanted, striking-only, you can clinch but you have to let go after delivering a single blow; so no getting stuck in the corner for a boring round of hugging, but you still get some Thai-style KOs. It was very easy in 1 or 2 minutes for the commentators to bring kickboxing, Muay Thai, boxing, or MMA fans up to speed on the rules, and the rules made for exiting fights, and a high rate of KOs. What is the actual use case for the style of fighting with the least KOs, the most "bad decisions," and highest percent of boring hug-fests? As a fight fan who would watch boxing if it followed its own rules, the only use case I can see is for old fight fans who didn't get on the MMA bandwagon, and are too stubborn to change now.
He can probably afford to escalate his security detail farther than you can escalate your attack. Especially since the company pays for it.
If you want to scare him into compliance, you'd need some regulation to make paperwork scarier, and a lawyer to deliver it.
The pen is mightier than the sword, unless you have the mightiest sword on the field.
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I hope your time and effort are worth the $25k first prize because that's about all you will *ever* get for it.
Uhm, yeah, if you have no use for it yourself, you'd only get the 25k from this one buyer, and you'd need to move on to another product. Nothing lasts forever. The only reason you need to keep making money off of it is if you're still trying to put it to some other commercial use. The part where it says, "non-exclusive," that means you can also sell it elsewhere.
You're obviously not a software developer, so it is entirely academic to you anyways.
The phone company already knows who is doing what and is complicit in the problem. That is why the effort is to build a honeypot. If you reply on the phone company, the software will "accidentally" have a lot of "bugs" and won't change anything.
I'm not against the death squads necessarily, but in your scenario the phone company would probably fake the data to get their own enemies killed.
3 years is still term insurance. New cars are often under full warranty for over 3 years, so they can roll in "full coverage" insurance for the price of liability, and market it as a savings. They might be getting a better profit margin on that insurance than the insurance company! ;)
Being credulous of bundled offers doesn't stop that from being term insurance. You can probably find an auto lease somewhere in the world that includes insurance, but it still all term insurance.
The Mercedes stuff is really interesting. They're already on the road with it, just not for sale yet, so don't be misled by their expectation of having it "by 2016." That is when it might be fore sale, but it is already on the roads, and has already been tested successfully.
Flying cars have serious, real problems that make them unlikely for a long time, at least as common things that are commercially available. Actual flying cars have existed for many decades. In fact, regular airplanes have wheels and drive like cars while not in the air! The big problem then is not in the technology of the car, or the flying, but the establishment of lanes. There is simply not enough room in the air for everybody to fly around without narrow traffic lanes. There has to be a standards-based system of arbitrary air traffic control that is very different than what is used now for airplanes. Once self-driving cars because standard, that is what will shake the bugs out of the navigational controls enough that they'll be able to adapt them to airborne lane assist. But you need a lot that we don't have now, like vehicle to vehicle communication to give movement warnings, and lane entrance/exit notification. Notice there is no missing technology here, only missing standards, and missing domain-specific implementations of existing tech.
What part of autonomy is missing?
It can't get you to your destination if your destination is off road, if there is significant construction in between, significant rain, snow or ice on the road, etc...
Right now it's equivalent to a very safe 'fair weather' driver. The type that stays home if conditions aren't optimal.
So it is fully autonomous, it just doesn't get out much yet. It will, when it's older.
One of the examples that Webster's gives is "an autonomous zooid." A zooid might not be able to venture into inclement weather, either. It might only wander into places it considers to have "fair weather." Doesn't make it less autonomous; actually it doesn't even address the subject of autonomy!
If I can program a destination into the GPS, press "GO" through the window, and watch the car drive off without me, down the street and around the corner, and it is trying to get there, it is 100% autonomous while driving. Note that it would not be navigating autonomously; it is only going places I told it to go. But the driving is fully autonomous. And that stays true if it comes home without getting there, because it couldn't figure out the construction detour. And it stays true if it parks and calls for help; or crashes. A zooid might not succeed in reaching its destination, either.
You haven't done good research into this topic.
More likely, you and the parent poster are using different definitions of "fully autonomous". You might want to compare notes on that.
No need to compare notes, if he didn't try to understand my statement in a way that makes it true, and so misses the truth, and instead tries to understand it as something factually false, there is no way to correct that. He'll drive off the path at each and every turn, any time there is new information or a unexpected comment, he'll be in the ditch, misunderstanding it.
That is a bit silly, to be honest. It is like saying if you put a push handle on the back of a car, it isn't a car anymore.
You can have a steering wheel that is turned by the computer, for example, and still have the computer driving. I've seen aircraft systems like that, that have both auto-pilot and fly-by-wire modes, and the controls move all the time. You can look at the controls and see what the computer is doing. You could build a car the same way, so that you can watch the computer steer the wheel.
I wouldn't prefer that design, of course. I'd prefer the steering wheel to be there, but to disengage, and hopefully partially retract, when the computer is driving. That way if it snows, and the car can't drive, I can still flip the "manual mode" switch and drive.
Having a steering wheel or not tells you nothing about if the car is self-driving. And no, that part really isn't opinion. If it sucks, that is opinion. If you're not sure who is driving, quickly lower your hands so that they don't get smashed into your face when the airbag deploys, because you're about to crash.
There are these things in some regions called "mountains." (I'm in the Lower 48, this isn't Alaska or something) From one city to a city on the other side of the mountains is about 60-80 miles. There is a mountain pass every 30 miles or so. That makes a bit of a square. The place I personally go is about 80 miles from me. So from there, lets say I'm driving home and I get half way, and the road is blocked by a land slide. That happens regularly in mountainous terrain. 40 miles back to where I started, 30 (slow,windy) miles north to the next highway with a pass, 60 miles back to my side of the mountains, and 40 more miles to home. 40+40+60+40, only 180 miles. That is the normal case. But accidents also close these roads. It absolutely happens that people sometimes drive 60 miles to the coast, and another 400 to get home because they didn't want to get a hotel and wait, and the second road was also closed. Accidents go up during the same weather that encourages landslides.
I'm not even in one any of the most remote states. These are roads dotted with small towns. Yes, there are technically forest roads that connect with shorter miles, but they're not on regular maps. I do have those maps, and better, I already know those roads; but it doesn't save time to wind over the mountains on those roads. And during that sort of weather, you'll have to stop and clear multiple trees off the road. It takes longer, uses more gas, and is more dangerous than using the next highway. Those are never distance shortcuts in mountainous terrain. There are real reasons why the passes are where they are, and the other roads that go over can't replace the passes.
In the deeper terrain you imagine, a closed road can mean waiting a week for it to be fixed, (or even the whole season+ 2 weeks!) or an extra 500 mile drive. Mountains aren't like cities, there isn't always a next street if it is actually a "deep northern" region. You can't just drive over a mountain in a jeep, either. ;) You might have to drive 500 miles the wrong way, and fly to your destination, and recover the vehicle later. It is a small world, but a large planet.
I've done a bit of system integration with bill acceptor machines, and they should be fine. They're not looking for visual spectrum stuff, or comparing a bitmap, they're checking for a finite number of specific features. Usually, it is 9 or 11 small spots that are each checked for one thing. None of them are the face visuals.
The smart cruise control already is being installed in regular cars, and isn't even called self-driving. Since the human is still in the seat, and does small parts of the work, they just call it "intelligent cruise control." Cars that have it, it is almost impossible to read-end the car ahead. Current models have lane-assist during cornering, too.
Life passed up your prognostication... A-priori!
Existing self-driving cars have trouble with snow, and heavy rain, but work fine in most weather conditions, including most precipitation.
The problem with the design of current cars is that a deadly defect is built in; a steering wheel allowing direct, manual human control!
This design flaw causes the vast majority of all automobile accidents.
The google stuff is fully autonomous already. They have steering wheels for 2 reasons: they're required to by the State of California, and they're prototypes and they need to be able to steer them around with some of the equipment turned off.
A consumer model doesn't need to be able to still be operated after a malfunction. It can just shut down and call a tow truck.
You have no idea how long I'll live, you insensitive clod! :P
Nonsense, the insurance would never get shifted onto the manufacturer, because maintenance happens after that, and is part of the accident risk. The vehicle owner will be required to pay for ongoing insurance, and will be required to be licensed (for the purpose of purchasing insurance!) until the car insurance requirements get shifted so that non-licensed drivers can buy insurance on self-driving cars.
But I like the taxi analogy. And it keeps working too; just like in that situation, the most likely thing an idiot does is grab the wheel and crash into something, or run over some pedestrians while trying to save their own ass; even though if there are modern airbags and collision detection, the taxi is likely to stop in time anyways. Even the human-driven new cars are getting safety features... where it is the computer that takes over to stop the vehicle when the human screws up, rather than the other way around.
The computer, having detected the loss of brakes, will not ask the magical human to save it, it will just activate the emergency brake and flashers, maintain control of the vehicle, stop in the lane, and call roadside assistance.
Then the car will ask you to do a manual chore. Pushing the car off the road. And there is absolutely nothing about the brakes going out that makes the human suddenly better at controlling the steering wheel, avoiding accidents, or obeying traffic laws.
Humans are too stupid to operate cars now that they don't have to. They actually even think they're better drivers... than the existing self-driving cars! Only in the snow, Bub. Only in the snow.
... car drives license. License drives you.
You don't have to be licensed so that you can pay attention "in case something goes wrong," though you'll probably be expected to push the car out of the roadway if physically able.
The reason you have to be licensed is that if the car malfunctions and creates an insurance claim, there is lots of existing legal precedent related to insurance liability that means the insurance company will require a licensed driver, until the laws are changed by people not scared of self-driving cars. That will take up to 50 years after they're first legalized.
Also, in most states there will still be a requirement to "exchange driver info" after any accident; including one that is not the fault of the self-driving car. There are probably lots more examples. The first steps will only say, "yes you can do this new thing but you also have to follow all the old rules too."
Human reaction time is slower than computer reaction time, so it is unlikely that you'll have more than an emergency shutoff to deal with mechanical problems. The idea that the human will be interrupting the computer in real time while in traffic to correct some mistake, that is a total joke. The humans would cause a wreck almost 100% of the times they tried it! I don't drive very much, but I'm out there enough to know how awful human drivers are. And that's when they're giving their legally-required full attention to the task.
By that theory, nobody ever drives anywhere, because there could be an unexpected road closure. I go lots of places where there is only one road, and if it is closed (which happens) then you can either try the next day, or drive an extra 250 miles. I've never once heard of it as a reason people don't go to those places. Even a doctor isn't going to stay in town and never go to the beach on a day off because of some small percent chance the road would be closed.
If the car is leased with a service agreement (likely for early versions) then you probably just call roadside assistance if it strands you, and they send a tow truck, same as AAA.
Gosh, nobody would even play golf, because of the lightning risk.
I know, right? Like, how can you drive your license around if you're not driving. Oh wait, but it says the car will be driving. Wait, I don't even drive my license as it is, I drive my car!
If it doesn't drive, I'll agree it isn't self-driving. But if it isn't licensed, then I can only agree it is not self-licensing.
It is a bit of a "no-brainer" that at first a licensed driver will be required, for the purpose of integrating normally into the existing insurance law and regulation. Only after they're common will the laws be streamlined.
Really? You spend time to reply and reply and reply, and even call me "stupid," you must feel really smart to magically know how people feel. You seem to think I "wasted" my time, or that you personally were who I was writing for. Guess what, I've been online since before the internet was public, and I've never written you even one personal message.
As for feeling "stupid" or not, lets put it this way: I stand by my analysis, and further, you didn't even succeed in addressing it. None of the intended readers need your name-calling to read the ideas and claims and decide what has value. To take it to another level, I can point out that my analysis is actually mainstream, past-tense stuff about an already-shrunken industry.
Some hand-waving about "anecdotal shit," well, like you say, we could look up the numbers. ;) To you it is an "anecdote" that rail shipping is an already-declined industry in the US. It is an obvious reality for those of us here. I don't need numbers, because Americans can go out and see for themselves. Like your claim about oil train cars. You seem totally unaware that we do that using trucks, or even that it is possible. You don't know oil tanker trucks are a thing. You're probably from a place without them. You're dreaming that numbers you don't provide will refute "anecdotes," but you don't provide them. Why? Is it because they prove you wrong, or because you don't know where to look? If you wanted to challenge my claims with numbers, you failed.
So, your point is that... because something exists and is important to niche users, it must not be true that it isn't used "a lot?" Huh?
You seem really hung up on absolutes. But I didn't use any. I didn't (and wouldn't) say that trains aren't used, I said we don't use them very much. And indeed, most things that were moved by train in the US in the past are now moved by trucks. If you ever visit the USA, I recommend you take a side trip through a few random, 30+ year old industrial parks. What you'll find is railroad crossing on the roads, but weeds on the unused tracks. Even places where the tracks are still used, they'll usually have weeds on the business access sections, because nobody cares. You'll find loading bays next to the tracks converted for loading trucks. Are there still trains? Yes, of course.
Outside of certain regional commuter routes, passenger trains are used as a luxury alternative to... buses. They do not often arrive more than 10% faster than a bus. And nobody cares, because if they were in a hurry, they would have flown.
"A couple of recent accidents" only tells you that trains exist. It tells you nothing about the relative number, or what is usually used for shipping.
And if you spent time on US roads, you'd quickly realize that there are a large number of oil tanker trucks. You can stand on the side of a major freeway and count them. On the west coast there are numerous places where there is only 1 major north-south freeway, and 1 major north-south railway, side by side. You can stand there and count oil cars. You'll see a few on the tracks; maybe even 1 train car for every 100 trucks. Presumably if you live right next to an oil distribution facility you'll see more rail cars than that. We have various petroleum distribution facilities in my town, because we're at a rail junction that connects to other regions. So they built them here, many years ago. But guess what? They removed all but 1 track of rail access! And that one has weeds. I don't think I've seen a train parked there for over 20 years. But if you have to drive in that neighborhood, you encounter a large number of oil and gas trucks. Someday they'll build a new facility... closer to the freeway! But for now they only lose 10 minutes by being stuck out by the railroad tracks, and they already have the storage tanks.
Oh, gosh, you saw a train on tee vee, they must be falling from the sky! Golly gee!
It should be noted that our electric light rail are almost all modern, except for BART in the Bay Area. (No faulting BART, they pioneered the field) Trains are well used... at the municipal level, for moving people short distances. We're not going to build expensive high speed crap for that. They're faster than driving, and have bike racks. They connect the `burbs.
Your theory about the markets represents considerable original research, I don't think it is useful to just assert those ideas as facts or as changes that have happened in the markets. You're obviously aware of specific pieces of equipment that used to have a capability gap that no longer does; you mentioned CNC mills, for example. But just waving your hands and asserting the US no longer has manufacturing sector equipment exports that are difficult to replace, well that just shows ignorance of US exports in that sector. It isn't magic, so it doesn't apply to random things like CNC mills, which are somewhat trivial.
If you ever visit the US you'll find out how funny the trains comment is; we don't really use many trains. It would be somewhat predictable that modes of transport we don't use don't have much investment. It has nothing to do with complacency. I doubt the existing horse-drawn carriages are state-of-the-art, either. Maybe you can sell the sleigh industry on upgrades.
http://trade.gov/mas/manufactu...
US has 14% of the global machinery equipment market. Export leaders included: construction machinery, engine equipment, turbines and turbine generator sets, and agricultural equipment.
Nonsense, it is absolutely do-able to have a realistic understanding of your actual security. The impossibility of secrecy does not refuse the usefulness of true information.
And I agree, there are few things more secure than the best available open offerings. But well financed law enforcement and security agencies are outside of that security. That the attack vectors are not revealed as such in the media is meaningless when the necessary capabilities are know to be possessed by them, and where their tactics are considered secret.
Luckily once somebody being honest about the security situation understands all that, they can just get on with locking out black hats, which is what the software can do; protect you from those without legal recourse to tell your ISP what to do. You just can't protect your privacy from government actors based solely on technology. They're in the position to MITM anything, to keylog anything, to anything anything.