The rear cars have to have some way to know to brake with maximum force immediately. Without that, the feedback loop will be too slow and they will close that 1m gap all too quickly. Or the alternative is for the autonomous car to slam on the brakes every time the car in front slows even a little bit.

Relying on wireless communications for that is a recipe for disaster, as wireless is simply not reliable enough. (You wanna bet your life that a WiFi, Bluetooth or similar connection doesn't get dropped at the wrong moment? I don't.)

Furthermore, if the front car swerves, instead of brakes, when it detects the deer, then a car following closely behind could be in a world of trouble, not have detected the deer due to the intervening car blocking the view.

You can't just say "fast computers" and suddenly ignore physical realities.

That may be, but one still need not blame the individual cop for that. That's really what my original comment was about.

Exactly the original point I made. The municipality may care about that money, and they may pressure the cop, but the cop himself doesn't really care about that money. (To me, the commish isn't so much a "cop" in this scenario, as he is the cop's politically appointed boss.)

The reason I make the distinction is purely because it's not fair to the individual cops to label them in that manner -- as being simple cash grabbers. The cops don't want to be out there giving tickets for going 12 mph over the speed limit. They do it because the bosses tell them to do it. As I indicated in another comment, the cops will happily give tickets for really dangerous stuff, because they tend to care about public safety, but most would just as soon focus on "real" crime than be out handing out tickets for going 67 in a 55 zone.

I challenge you to find a cop out writing speeding tickets who is doing so in order to avoid layoffs at the police department. They're doing it because they got put on traffic duty that day, and they get yelled at if they don't meet the not-really-a-quota-but-come-on-we-all-know-its-a-quota.

For the most part, cops write tickets because their bosses tell them to write tickets. If you were doing 67 in a 55 zone, the guy writing your ticket doesn't really want to be giving you a ticket much more than you want to be getting a ticket. If you were doing 140 in 55 zone, that guy might be very happy to slap you in the wallet for your dangerous stupidity. But in neither case is that cop particularly considering the effect of the fine on the municipal budget.

An individual cop really cares very little about a "bigger budget". And the effect of any one cop's ticket writing on the budget is exactly nothing.

A cop gets the same salary if he writes 5 tickets a day as if he writes 6 tickets a day (or 50 vs 60, or whatever the appropriate order of magnitude might be). He cares much more about whether or not his supervisor is hounding him than whether or not the municipality gets an extra few $100 speeding tickets.

I have not just read a quantum mechanical text, but got an A in quantum mechanics. Nice snark, but that characterization of the wave function is simply 100% inaccurate.

Why do you think cops care about that money? Municipalities may care about that money, but the cops couldn't care less (they don't get a cut, after all). But cops do try to avoid hearing "how come everyone else writes more tickets than you do?" So they make a point of writing tickets. But they really don't care about revenues, per se.

Now you're going to tell me there's no such thing as a single scissor, either. ;-)

How do you know that's releasing single photons and not simply low-amplitude waves?

How does one release one photon of light at a time in a way that shows a student there's only one photon being released?

As far as putting the detector in front of one hole and seeing the interference disappear, this is exactly what happens with waves. You don't need quantum mechanics to see that effect.

You have yet to show an experiment that shows anything particularly quantum.

But you have to have other reasons to believe there are only single photons in order for that experiment to show anything quantum. Without such other information, all you're showing is very low energy waves interfering with each other.

No. The "wave function" is only tangentially related to the concept of whether light acts like a wave, a particle, or has some kind of duality. It is tangentially related only because as you dig into the quantum mechanical nature of the universe, you end up with this statistical function that we happen to use the word "wave" in its name.

All one shows in those two experiments is that like acts like a wave.

Please go on.

Wait... I thought Apple was the only one abusing the patent system. Is it possible that the righteous indignation aimed against Apple should be aimed just as much against their competitors? Can't be.