Right, they no longer fly, but they flew for a long time and tickets sold well, right up until the end when renewed safety concerns led to the decision to retire them. They were never a big money-maker, but they were popular and commanded high ticket prices.
The reason they no longer fly is that they didn't make enough money to stimulate a new product generation, and the old product was retired after a long service life. They weren't getting safer as they got older, and after a crash there are expectations of design analysis, upgrades, etc., that would have been expensive and wasn't warranted for such an old aircraft.
People who read that as some sort of spectacular failure that would prevent interest, or imply lack of interest, in high speed flight, well, that is just silliness. It was clearly a successful craft, it flew full, and yet it didn't make a boatload of money. Lots of airlines around the world operate at a loss, that is actually normal for the industry and does not alone tell you if the airplanes they are buying are successful models or not.
With a user id so high, I already know you're not old enough to realistically conflate "30 years ago" with the 1960s. And yes, in the 1980s they did indeed already have that reputation.
Yeah, because if those words are your "defense" it means you don't have a lawyer. Once you translate the real scenario where the person's computer really did do it into legal terms, then I'm sure it will sound a lot more believable.;)
It wasn't found that a person committed manslaughter in the company's name, and was shielded. There was no single person whose actions were considered manslaughter. The actions of the company in total were accused of amounting to manslaughter, and the company admitted to that.
Without that minimal collective liability, there just would have been nowhere to hang it at all, and no entity to even fine.
The reason you're not understanding the legalities is that you're conflating results with intent. Using an intermediary to achieve the same results does not change liability, and that has nothing to do with Wall Street. Having innocent intent and accidentally getting the wrong result, that is already not illegal.
If you program your robot to download pictures of kittens, and a few child porn pictures get downloaded too, your liability rests mostly on what you did in the first moments after you discovered the error; did you delete, or retain?
One of two things would happen; you'd be found to have been reckless and go to prison for multiple manslaughter, or it would be found to be an accident and you'd be civilly liable and later unable to get credit or insurance to build such devices, so you'd be out of business and the deaths would stop.
Of course you would be "responsible," but how responsible and what exactly for depends on various facts and details.
Bridges don't have an inflated insurance cost, so no. Also, bridges are designed to be as strong as the relevant authorities dictate, they're not just built to whatever minimum strength the designer feels happy to accept liability for.
... and if you accidentally drop the hammer, then you did "it" but "it" was only an accident, and you likely only have civil liability, depending on the details of the accident, your training, your expected level of training, etc.
Parents are civilly responsible for whatever their kids do, potentially even including signing contracts, but in modern countries they are not criminally responsible for their children's acts. Though permitting some acts may be an additional crime.
If you read your link, it describes laws where permitting some acts is an additional violation or crime, and then civil liability. It never claims a parent has criminal liability for the laws the child breaks.
I think you're over-simplifying here. Just because a machine has a design flaw does not elevate any accident it has to a crime, or an intentional act.
If you close your eyes and throw a punch, your intent is still to throw a punch that you know might land. You haven't changed intent at all. But if you build an experimental personal conveyance device, and it breaks, and you fall off, and your hand strikes me in the face, you're responsible for any damages but it probably not assault. It may be some sort of reckless endangerment, depending on a wide variety of other facts and complications, though.
Reckless is going to be harder to prove than knowingly here. It is clearly not reckless to purchase a random item in a store. For that to be the case you have to prove that the store itself was of such disrepute that the customer should expect them to sell illegal items. But if you prove that, you've proven actual intent already, since we're already stipulating that the contraband purchase was made by the robot, that the store was selected by the human, and that the robot was under the human's control. They actually both come down to the same issue of intent, which if proven, would prove the action to be knowing, and not reckless.
In many countries there is a common-law presumption that items for sale in shops are legal, and the fault for the purchase lies with the proprietor of the shop. The fault for possession after purchase might lie with the purchaser, but in the case of an automated robotic purchase, the question would be if the robot owner took possession of the items when they became aware of the nature of the purchase, or if they disposed of them immediately.
A lot of people seem... mentally "allergic" to the idea of waiting until the human finds out and responds before deciding if "a law was broken," but courts in most countries are going to focus mostly or entirely on exactly that; when did the human find out the purchased item was illegal, and did they accept possession or dispose of the contraband according to local custom or reasonable action?
In most places even if there is a remote possibility that a purchased item is contraband, or stolen property, the customer is still allowed to make a presumption that items for sale in stores are legal to buy. So even if your robot has returned with stolen items, or other contraband, that doesn't mean you're knowingly breaking the law to ever use the robot to purchase again. It is actually a crazy idea; if you extend that hyper-strict concept out to automobiles, the existence of deaths due to mechanical failure would turn driving a car into attempted homicide, even without an accident happening. So if the normal reasonable thing is that the robot will purchase legal items, then it is not illegal for the robot to purchase illegal items accidentally. Just inspect the items before taking possession, and be aware of local disposal customs.
hmmm, I just walk into the store and purchase my stuff
I can't imagine spending my life in a place so far into the 3rd world that they sell fake Hungarian passports in shops. I would totally send in the tele-presence robot for that one.
So, you're not going to see it, because it doesn't save money. Except, it has the potential to be many times faster. Which is a reason to use it that isn't "it costs less." So the argument can't hope to support its thesis. If it happens or not is not based on just if "because we can." It is going to happen or not based on the actual advantages of being faster, their value, and the final cost.
We can certainly say, based on our experience with Concord, that if it is fast enough and safe enough the rich will use it, and if it as safety issues, they will abandon it quickly.
Only if you value both equally, and depending on the other design decisions. For example, you can accept a little less interior space at the same vehicle weight and length and have better access, without sacrificing aerodynamics. Just based on the tradeoff of space in the interior and in the mechanical areas.
When people hear "20% more interior space" they should also be hearing, "less mechanical room, more difficult and expensive maintenance."
There are lots of different tradeoffs. None of them are objectively better or worse, but they do exist. For every car with maximized interior space and little mechanical room, there is another one the same size and drag rating with more mechanical space and less interior room.
You can have an ugly car with decent aerodynamics and reasonable interior room. Cars these days are more "wooshy" shaped than is actually desirable for fuel economy. The best shape is water drop-esque. That gives a fat, rounded front end. The only reason for that to really screw up the position of lighting support and such things is if you're also trying to squish the engine compartment down into as small a space as you can. The stylish shape they're usually going for though is a water drop... falling backwards. Which is better than a box in the back... but not by much. It does at least reduce the effect of cross winds.
You'll just have to figure out for yourself what your priorities are. I didn't say what priorities people should have. I pointed out some obvious design tradeoffs, and where there are complaints about the tradeoffs I explained the design decisions that cause them. If your priorities match up with those tradeoffs, great!
For people who choose what they don't want and then whine about it, I'm not saying they should have different priorities. I'm saying they should understand the tradeoffs, and choose, and own their choice instead of whining and blaming. My vehicle doesn't have any of the access problems people in this thread are whining about... because I did some basic research with my own preferences in mind when selecting a vehicle.
If you can't differentiate between different manufacturers and identify brands like BWM that have different attributes than the pack, then even having a conversation that uses... any data points becomes impossible. It isn't just "them." There are different known "thems."
Your "reflection" is rather... weak. It doesn't take a mechanic to install a battery, so just basic mechanics and you're already outside your areas of knowledge.
Why do you assume that in a backwater like the USA that auto shops would have expensive batteries? The advantage that the "*mart" has on car parts is that they're open longer hours, and you're already there buying something else. There is no reason for them to have lower prices on car parts, because even with higher overall sales than an auto parts store, they're probably not actually selling more car batteries. And it would make a horrible loss-leader because if you're buying a car battery it is probably not a normal shopping trip and so you're less likely to fill a cart with other stuff. And for an auto parts store, it is a no-brainer; they can have any retail clerk also install a battery. You probably assume you won't save time, because your job is already as a wrench-monkey. It is funny though that you think only a rich person with a chauffeur would be slower at changing a car battery than somebody who does it every day. Also, you seem to just assume that for other people it is automatic that changing it yourself more slowly, for the same price, is qualitatively equal to having somebody else do it. You can't have it both ways; if it is so quick and easy to change it yourself, then it hasn't cost the shop much at all to earn the goodwill of customers by helping with the easy stuff that doesn't require a mechanic.
A lot of computer stores will install RAM for free, too. It doesn't actually have to change the price, or cost them anything. If the store is busy, you'll just have to browse a few minutes before they finish it.
Actually in my State the only way you can buy gasoline is to have a professional pump it for you. People from other places whine about it a lot, but I've never once heard a good reason why they're against it. Studies have proven that you don't save a single penny by pumping it yourself; the price of gas is not in any way tied to the cost of operating the terminal pump. I've certainly never heard of a gas station (outside the Middle East) that sets their prices based on cost.
In some countries they have awful service, just because they have a culture that assumes good service would be expensive. Here in the modern world, we know that good service is good business, and it increases profit, it doesn't decrease it. And it doesn't have to cost more. It does require workers with a good attitude, something not available in all localities.
Chess software also does not remember arbitrary stuff.;)
It could. But so could the human, if the reason stopped being arbitrary.
There are a lot of theories why Go computers are weak. I saw one analysis that compared the amount of effort to the amount of success, chess vs go. I don't have a link, but the conclusion was that go computers are actually just as far along as chess computers were with similar total effort.
You can also get $12 bluetooth readers that use a phone/tablet as the display. All the information is easy to access these days. It is like a golden age.
Your mentality may run deep, but it only extends to your forehead.
A couple months ago I was on the coast in a rain storm, and a guy with a Ford truck was stopped on the side of the road, laying under it abusing his fuel pump with a tire iron. It would eventually click on and he'd jump in and start it, drive 10-20 feet, and it would die and he'd crawl under again. In the time it took me to eat my sandwich he made it a few hundred yards. The whole time I was thinking, he'd get home a lot faster in a tow truck, even if it beating on it with a tire iron does sometimes help. I could tell by his frustration that in the past the "fix" had been more effective.
Why blame the engineer? It may be that they originally designed it to be easier, and then they told to make this part smaller, that part smaller, that part bigger, and leave X, Y and Z the same. It might not be a clueless engineer at all, but a clueless customer to buy the sucky model years and vehicle shapes (rounded or squashed front) that create the most design restrictions.
As for who designs a furnace that way... a company that also sells service contracts, that is who. It has "always" been that way. The engineers have always hated it, too. But forcing them to turn some screws all weekend suffering in Dilbert Hell isn't going to help.
You replace a car battery maybe once every 3-5 years. Most people don't do it themselves,
People cannot even swap the friggin' battery!? Seriously? If so, I think that is symptomatic of the creeping idiocy that TFA is complaining about.
Even worse, people don't even read anymore.
What he said was not that people cannot swap a battery. What he said was that most people do not swap a battery themselves.
I do agree it is symptomatic of the creeping idiocy that TFA is pointing out.
I did recently swap my own battery, but that is only because I like it that way, not because I did any better of a job than a wrench-monkey would do. A lot of places offer free installation anyways.
Slashdot Mirror
Right, they no longer fly, but they flew for a long time and tickets sold well, right up until the end when renewed safety concerns led to the decision to retire them. They were never a big money-maker, but they were popular and commanded high ticket prices.
The reason they no longer fly is that they didn't make enough money to stimulate a new product generation, and the old product was retired after a long service life. They weren't getting safer as they got older, and after a crash there are expectations of design analysis, upgrades, etc., that would have been expensive and wasn't warranted for such an old aircraft.
People who read that as some sort of spectacular failure that would prevent interest, or imply lack of interest, in high speed flight, well, that is just silliness. It was clearly a successful craft, it flew full, and yet it didn't make a boatload of money. Lots of airlines around the world operate at a loss, that is actually normal for the industry and does not alone tell you if the airplanes they are buying are successful models or not.
With a user id so high, I already know you're not old enough to realistically conflate "30 years ago" with the 1960s. And yes, in the 1980s they did indeed already have that reputation.
Yeah, because if those words are your "defense" it means you don't have a lawyer. Once you translate the real scenario where the person's computer really did do it into legal terms, then I'm sure it will sound a lot more believable. ;)
Can a bot have a positive drug test?
I can program one to, for a fee.
That's one way to replace the lost business income from factory robots... program them to accept a paycheck and shop!
It wasn't found that a person committed manslaughter in the company's name, and was shielded. There was no single person whose actions were considered manslaughter. The actions of the company in total were accused of amounting to manslaughter, and the company admitted to that.
Without that minimal collective liability, there just would have been nowhere to hang it at all, and no entity to even fine.
The reason you're not understanding the legalities is that you're conflating results with intent. Using an intermediary to achieve the same results does not change liability, and that has nothing to do with Wall Street. Having innocent intent and accidentally getting the wrong result, that is already not illegal.
If you program your robot to download pictures of kittens, and a few child porn pictures get downloaded too, your liability rests mostly on what you did in the first moments after you discovered the error; did you delete, or retain?
One of two things would happen; you'd be found to have been reckless and go to prison for multiple manslaughter, or it would be found to be an accident and you'd be civilly liable and later unable to get credit or insurance to build such devices, so you'd be out of business and the deaths would stop.
Of course you would be "responsible," but how responsible and what exactly for depends on various facts and details.
Bridges don't have an inflated insurance cost, so no. Also, bridges are designed to be as strong as the relevant authorities dictate, they're not just built to whatever minimum strength the designer feels happy to accept liability for.
... and if you accidentally drop the hammer, then you did "it" but "it" was only an accident, and you likely only have civil liability, depending on the details of the accident, your training, your expected level of training, etc.
Parents are civilly responsible for whatever their kids do, potentially even including signing contracts, but in modern countries they are not criminally responsible for their children's acts. Though permitting some acts may be an additional crime.
If you read your link, it describes laws where permitting some acts is an additional violation or crime, and then civil liability. It never claims a parent has criminal liability for the laws the child breaks.
I think you're over-simplifying here. Just because a machine has a design flaw does not elevate any accident it has to a crime, or an intentional act.
If you close your eyes and throw a punch, your intent is still to throw a punch that you know might land. You haven't changed intent at all. But if you build an experimental personal conveyance device, and it breaks, and you fall off, and your hand strikes me in the face, you're responsible for any damages but it probably not assault. It may be some sort of reckless endangerment, depending on a wide variety of other facts and complications, though.
Reckless is going to be harder to prove than knowingly here. It is clearly not reckless to purchase a random item in a store. For that to be the case you have to prove that the store itself was of such disrepute that the customer should expect them to sell illegal items. But if you prove that, you've proven actual intent already, since we're already stipulating that the contraband purchase was made by the robot, that the store was selected by the human, and that the robot was under the human's control. They actually both come down to the same issue of intent, which if proven, would prove the action to be knowing, and not reckless.
In many countries there is a common-law presumption that items for sale in shops are legal, and the fault for the purchase lies with the proprietor of the shop. The fault for possession after purchase might lie with the purchaser, but in the case of an automated robotic purchase, the question would be if the robot owner took possession of the items when they became aware of the nature of the purchase , or if they disposed of them immediately.
A lot of people seem... mentally "allergic" to the idea of waiting until the human finds out and responds before deciding if "a law was broken," but courts in most countries are going to focus mostly or entirely on exactly that; when did the human find out the purchased item was illegal, and did they accept possession or dispose of the contraband according to local custom or reasonable action?
In most places even if there is a remote possibility that a purchased item is contraband, or stolen property, the customer is still allowed to make a presumption that items for sale in stores are legal to buy. So even if your robot has returned with stolen items, or other contraband, that doesn't mean you're knowingly breaking the law to ever use the robot to purchase again. It is actually a crazy idea; if you extend that hyper-strict concept out to automobiles, the existence of deaths due to mechanical failure would turn driving a car into attempted homicide, even without an accident happening. So if the normal reasonable thing is that the robot will purchase legal items, then it is not illegal for the robot to purchase illegal items accidentally. Just inspect the items before taking possession, and be aware of local disposal customs.
hmmm, I just walk into the store and purchase my stuff
I can't imagine spending my life in a place so far into the 3rd world that they sell fake Hungarian passports in shops. I would totally send in the tele-presence robot for that one.
So, you're not going to see it, because it doesn't save money. Except, it has the potential to be many times faster. Which is a reason to use it that isn't "it costs less." So the argument can't hope to support its thesis. If it happens or not is not based on just if "because we can." It is going to happen or not based on the actual advantages of being faster, their value, and the final cost.
We can certainly say, based on our experience with Concord, that if it is fast enough and safe enough the rich will use it, and if it as safety issues, they will abandon it quickly.
Only if you value both equally, and depending on the other design decisions. For example, you can accept a little less interior space at the same vehicle weight and length and have better access, without sacrificing aerodynamics. Just based on the tradeoff of space in the interior and in the mechanical areas.
When people hear "20% more interior space" they should also be hearing, "less mechanical room, more difficult and expensive maintenance."
There are lots of different tradeoffs. None of them are objectively better or worse, but they do exist. For every car with maximized interior space and little mechanical room, there is another one the same size and drag rating with more mechanical space and less interior room.
You can have an ugly car with decent aerodynamics and reasonable interior room. Cars these days are more "wooshy" shaped than is actually desirable for fuel economy. The best shape is water drop-esque. That gives a fat, rounded front end. The only reason for that to really screw up the position of lighting support and such things is if you're also trying to squish the engine compartment down into as small a space as you can. The stylish shape they're usually going for though is a water drop... falling backwards. Which is better than a box in the back... but not by much. It does at least reduce the effect of cross winds.
You'll just have to figure out for yourself what your priorities are. I didn't say what priorities people should have. I pointed out some obvious design tradeoffs, and where there are complaints about the tradeoffs I explained the design decisions that cause them. If your priorities match up with those tradeoffs, great!
For people who choose what they don't want and then whine about it, I'm not saying they should have different priorities. I'm saying they should understand the tradeoffs, and choose, and own their choice instead of whining and blaming. My vehicle doesn't have any of the access problems people in this thread are whining about... because I did some basic research with my own preferences in mind when selecting a vehicle.
If you can't differentiate between different manufacturers and identify brands like BWM that have different attributes than the pack, then even having a conversation that uses... any data points becomes impossible. It isn't just "them." There are different known "thems."
Your "reflection" is rather... weak. It doesn't take a mechanic to install a battery, so just basic mechanics and you're already outside your areas of knowledge.
Why do you assume that in a backwater like the USA that auto shops would have expensive batteries? The advantage that the "*mart" has on car parts is that they're open longer hours, and you're already there buying something else. There is no reason for them to have lower prices on car parts, because even with higher overall sales than an auto parts store, they're probably not actually selling more car batteries. And it would make a horrible loss-leader because if you're buying a car battery it is probably not a normal shopping trip and so you're less likely to fill a cart with other stuff. And for an auto parts store, it is a no-brainer; they can have any retail clerk also install a battery. You probably assume you won't save time, because your job is already as a wrench-monkey. It is funny though that you think only a rich person with a chauffeur would be slower at changing a car battery than somebody who does it every day. Also, you seem to just assume that for other people it is automatic that changing it yourself more slowly, for the same price, is qualitatively equal to having somebody else do it. You can't have it both ways; if it is so quick and easy to change it yourself, then it hasn't cost the shop much at all to earn the goodwill of customers by helping with the easy stuff that doesn't require a mechanic.
A lot of computer stores will install RAM for free, too. It doesn't actually have to change the price, or cost them anything. If the store is busy, you'll just have to browse a few minutes before they finish it.
Actually in my State the only way you can buy gasoline is to have a professional pump it for you. People from other places whine about it a lot, but I've never once heard a good reason why they're against it. Studies have proven that you don't save a single penny by pumping it yourself; the price of gas is not in any way tied to the cost of operating the terminal pump. I've certainly never heard of a gas station (outside the Middle East) that sets their prices based on cost.
In some countries they have awful service, just because they have a culture that assumes good service would be expensive. Here in the modern world, we know that good service is good business, and it increases profit, it doesn't decrease it. And it doesn't have to cost more. It does require workers with a good attitude, something not available in all localities.
Chess software also does not remember arbitrary stuff. ;)
It could. But so could the human, if the reason stopped being arbitrary.
There are a lot of theories why Go computers are weak. I saw one analysis that compared the amount of effort to the amount of success, chess vs go. I don't have a link, but the conclusion was that go computers are actually just as far along as chess computers were with similar total effort.
You can also get $12 bluetooth readers that use a phone/tablet as the display. All the information is easy to access these days. It is like a golden age.
Your mentality may run deep, but it only extends to your forehead.
A couple months ago I was on the coast in a rain storm, and a guy with a Ford truck was stopped on the side of the road, laying under it abusing his fuel pump with a tire iron. It would eventually click on and he'd jump in and start it, drive 10-20 feet, and it would die and he'd crawl under again. In the time it took me to eat my sandwich he made it a few hundred yards. The whole time I was thinking, he'd get home a lot faster in a tow truck, even if it beating on it with a tire iron does sometimes help. I could tell by his frustration that in the past the "fix" had been more effective.
In what way would that change what the product executives tell the engineers to build?
Why blame the engineer? It may be that they originally designed it to be easier, and then they told to make this part smaller, that part smaller, that part bigger, and leave X, Y and Z the same. It might not be a clueless engineer at all, but a clueless customer to buy the sucky model years and vehicle shapes (rounded or squashed front) that create the most design restrictions.
As for who designs a furnace that way... a company that also sells service contracts, that is who. It has "always" been that way. The engineers have always hated it, too. But forcing them to turn some screws all weekend suffering in Dilbert Hell isn't going to help.
You replace a car battery maybe once every 3-5 years. Most people don't do it themselves,
People cannot even swap the friggin' battery!? Seriously? If so, I think that is symptomatic of the creeping idiocy that TFA is complaining about.
Even worse, people don't even read anymore.
What he said was not that people cannot swap a battery. What he said was that most people do not swap a battery themselves.
I do agree it is symptomatic of the creeping idiocy that TFA is pointing out.
I did recently swap my own battery, but that is only because I like it that way, not because I did any better of a job than a wrench-monkey would do. A lot of places offer free installation anyways.