No, the main obstacle to self-driving cars is the law. And it's a critical issue.
Who, exactly, is at fault when a self-driving car causes an accident? The owner? The passenger? The car maker? The software programmer? No state currently has laws in place that address this issue.
And make no mistake, there WILL be accidents caused by software bugs/hardware failures.
For anyone interested, NPR's Planet Money team ran a very good story back in February on this topic. If focused on the entrepreneur behind carsdirect.com, who ran into the same obstacles in the 90s when he tried to set up a Web site to sell cars directly to consumers.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/19/172402376/why-buying-a-car-never-changes
Are you suggesting that teachers and college professors receive kickbacks on book sales?
Are you high?
That would cut into the publishers' profit margins.
No, you need to change jobs, period.
According to this site: http://www.westportone.com/candidate/counteroffer.htm :
"According to national surveys of employees that accept counter-offers, 50-80 percent voluntarily leave their employer within six months of accepting the counter-offer because of unkept promises. The majority of the balance of employees that accept counter-offers involuntarily leave their current employers within twelve months of accepting the counter-offer (terminated, fired, laid off, etc.)."
So, basically, if you go to your boss with another offer in hand and accept a counteroffer, he or she is going to screw you over simply because they can. And that's how the big sharks swim in the deep end of the pool. If you want better working conditions and/or more money, change jobs. The only exception is if you work in academia, where you have the protections of tenure.
See also:
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/02/06/13/0615238/is-it-wrong-to-accept-an-employment-counter-offer
For starters, DAs don't typically sue people. Criminal and civil cases are two entirely separate beasts.
Don't be ridiculous. Just do what I did and chain your smart phone to a concrete block. Problem solved.
"What testing was done to align the 66 million year old comet strike with the end of the dinosaurs?"
Well, there's the K-T boundary layer, which is loaded with iridium (rare on earth, but not in meteorites), and the fact that no non-avian dinosaur fossils have ever been found above this boundary. And there's also that huge crater just off the coast of Mexico that corresponds to the same time period as the formation of the K-T boundary layer.
Now, off to school with you, junior.
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/07/case-closed-for-dino-killer.html
"There's nothing special about the meter."
Not anymore. However, originally, a meter was 1/10,000,000th the distance between the equator and the North Pole along the meridian through Paris. We later figured out that the standard length of the meter wasn't entirely accurate by that definition, so it was standardized according to a platinum/iridium bar.
Actually, there are indeed far more impressive videos of this effect:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=hQYTMFCLy5E&NR=1
It's called "static up, elastic down" pricing, and it's one of the basic tenets of economics.
Actually, the ingredients of placebos can definitely induce side effects, and this is not a new problem. See http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/10/18/us-whats-placebo-idUSTRE69H51L20101018
Worse than easily fooled...
to quote Lt. Commander Data:
"I assume your hand will open this door whether you are conscious or not."
Do you know what the article doesn't tell you?
How the question was phrased, which makes a helluva lot of difference in the results of any poll.
"Tell me, sir, do you still pirate software?"
"Well... uh... no."
"So you admit that you USED to pirate software?"
"Well... no."
"So you admit you pirate software now, but didn't used to?"
"Well... uh..."
"So how often do you beat your wife?"
"Do you know what the difference is between LSD and Strychnine? Nothing; They're chemically identical, save that one is left-handed and the other right-handed."
Uh... no.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysergic_acid_diethylamide
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strychnine
Not only are those two compounds NOT enantiomers, they don't even have the same chemical formula (C20H25N3O vs. C21H22N2O2).
And when it returns a response of "42," Douglas Adams will die laughing...
no, wait...
System going down in 5 minutes.
