I think mandatory voting should come with 2 or 3 simple multiple choice questions that test the voter's grasp of democracy, the state they live in and the USA as a whole. Nothing that could possibly disenfranchise anyone except morons. The vote is weighted by how many questions the person gets right. All right and you get 100%, none right and you get 30%.

1. Ah I see. So you have evidence that this is solved? You know like a paper demonstrating the capability of a car to read a sign, upload this to the web (never mind the bandwidth issues hey?), be told it's a diversion and magically follow all the other diversion signs.

2. So you have evidence that a self drive car can determine intent? Oops no.

3. Superior sensing? I get it now - You're a fucking idiot.

etc.

I didn't say foreign country, I said restricted foreign country. As in Syria, Iran, North Korea, and the rest. And yes, if equipment shows up in a restricted country, they will chase it back to the day it was made on the Cisco factory floor and they will question every single partner in the supply chain trying to figure out how it wound up in that country.

You act as though Iran or other sanctioned countries can just go to eBay and buy whatever they want. That's not accurate as sanctions have real teeth (and costs for US companies that don't pay heed).

Utter nonsense. These are all examples of intractable problems that no self drive car would figure out without screwing up enough to annoy the driver, other road users or pedestrians.

You see, the US Government is very keen about governing exports. They prohibit shipping many products into restricted countries and they actively police it in a serious manner. Anyone who's product gets found in a restricted country is in hot water. It doesn't matter if the product(s) was sold through an intermediary or 20 middle men, the manufacturer is 100% responsible for asserting, under penalty of law, that their products will not end up in a restricted country and that's that. The treasury department even publishes a monthly list of offenders they catch but I apologize as I cannot seem to find it on google.

To address this issue, many companies that have been caught are required by the US Treasury Dept to document every single end user of their product. Yes, every single unit that is sold must be documented as to where it's final resting place is. I doubt Cisco is under this kind of requirement (unless they've been caught in the past) but it seems this new policy is a huge risk for them in that area. If you were an Iranian supply store trying to procure Cisco equipment, this seems like a good way to do it without anyone knowing or being able to track it --- and that's a serious risk for Cisco.

The minute one of those units gets found in Iran (or any restricted country), all hell will break loose. Again, it doesn't really matter how it got there.....

Here is a good overview of the requirements and Here is a company that has a good policy summary that they live by. Smart on them.

Understand that this has nothing to do with NSA or espionage. This is just a basic requirement of doing business overseas and exporting products. Doesn't matter whether it's plastic dog poo, Intel CPU's, lab equipment, cranes, or other engineered equipment

Because there is nothing to say a human driven car can't contain collision avoidance software for such an eventuality. As some cars already do. It's not self drive car or nothing.

Assuming the car behind is using Google's self drive protocol and not Tesla's and assuming that the latency, bandwidth and compute power of this hypothetical cloud of cars is sufficient to avoid such a collision.

It'll blow even for every day use. Does the car know that the street is closed and there is a diversion is in place? Or that the car in front is reverse parking into a space and not nudge up his ass while he does so? Or that the street lights are faulty and how to navigate safely in such an event? Or how to obey a cop's hand signals (and not some crazy guy's)? Or see the temporary stop/go signs some roadworkers put up? Or to signal to the pedestrian that we'll wait for them to cross the junction? Or give priority to the oncoming driver in a narrow road? Or what a pothole is and how to avoid it? Or not to drive through dangerous parts of town? Or how to drive and navigate through a tunnel, carpark or other area where GPS or radio is down?

Even if the car were able to come to some reasonable solution 90% of the time it would still blow for the 10% of the time when it didn't. It also rules out any chance that we'll see cars where the driver can sleep (or be passed out), or there is no human passenger at all. Because cars will get stuck and will need extrication.

The most likely place I see self drive occurring is vehicles shuttling people around airport terminals or between hotels and conference centres on closed tracks. A predictable, relatively contained system where the number of variables is limited and manageable. Even then there is probably a guy in a booth whose job it is to extricate the car when its sensors are confused by a leaf or a piece of junk and refuse to move without a human to override the system.

The gotcha in this case is so blazingly obvious that I fail to see why anyone is arguing over it. Microsoft have stated time and again they want to move to a subscription model and they want to monetize Windows 10. Given those facts it is easy to think of ways they intend to do it and there is plenty of precedent around the web, and in service platforms to have a pretty good idea.

I never said it would. I'm quite certain it will be free for its lifetime and will work in a basic form whether you pay or not. But that doesn't mean it won't wall off certainly functionality, or nag you to upgrade, or throw banner / interstitial ads all over because that's probably what it will do.

No it isn't. They've already stated their intentions and constructing a straw man of my words doesn't change that.

Microsoft have stated their intention of monetizing the platform and it's quite clear they want it to become a subscription service. So no it's not FUD.

Windows 10 will be "free" the way some websites are free - basic functionality is free but there will be lots of annoying limitations and barriers throughout that encourage users to pay for a premium version or take out a subscription. You only have to look at previous Windows editions to see the sort of things they can gimp to encourage people to pay out more and I bet they go all out this time around.

Apple have a big sack of money. I doubt they'd so much wish to "partner" with Nintendo as gobble them up and transform them into a brand. If not them, then Disney which has been on an IP buying spree for a while now.

Symantec is subject to national security letters just like every other US company that exists. If they received one, they are prohibited by law from telling you what they do to assist the government with their products.

This is a solved problem, although by a commercial solution. Symantec's Encryption Desktop....
I stopped reading after that. If you think Symantec is a solution to any problem that exists, then we'll just have to agree to disagree.