Right. Or perhaps several of these objects. Has anyone seen my paper-weight??

Hi there. Try this - look up the nearest outdoor range, and find out when they're having the next match, any sort will do. Go there, with ear and eye protection (your prescription lens glasses will pass in most places, any safety glasses will do). Watch how the day goes. Afterwards, consider how many times the same basic thing is happening, on any given weekend, across the country. If you want the condensed version, look up USPSA, IPSC, IDPA, Sporting Clays, Trap, Skeet, Cowboy Action, 3-gun, or just Shooting Match on YouTube. The super-condensed version is, I sent two people to a single day competitive handgun class with 1800 rounds of ammunition, and they returned with ~400. I'm not talking "militia's", just competitive shooters. Then let's discuss the above...

A friend once received a letter from his grandfather, mailed from a nursing home in another state. It was addressed with only his first name, "The Donut Boy", and the city - no last name, no state, no zip. It was delivered to the donut shop we worked at. The USPS gets all sorts of things right, we just forget to talk about it...

Or, keep driving until you can take over, but this doesn't change my point. There's also the problem of the AI has only learned what you've taught it - missing a turn (for whatever reason) could leave it on roadways it's never seen. I'm fairly certain the coders aren't morons, but don't believe a 'learning' program would benefit most drivers. It would demand much more oversight than most users are willing to give.

I agree, but a major construction project could quickly exceed the count. What my (warped) imagination sees is, pull out the drive on the way to work, tell the car to go to work. Now that you're not driving, the day's paper comes out, but half way into the sports section, the car announces it's confused and you should take over, whilst zipping down the road. Or any number of other similar situations. The point is, if there's *any* possibility of the program suddenly demanding a driver, it largely negates most of the reasons someone would want this feature, even if it can transition sanely.

So, what happens if, say, a building gets demolished, or a set of trees are cut, or it snows? If the software is looking for specific topography, which it learned from previous trips, isn't it as likely as humans to get lost when things change?

I was supposed to keep count?

My response was directed more towards those who seem to think we can prevent this, than to the article. The site owner(s) may do whatever they wish, it's their site, and frankly, I don't care one way or another about what they host. But the early responses seemed to think this could/should be supressed, and that's about as productive as wishing Pandora's Box was never opened. Until we can look past the horror of what's on top, we will never find that underneath.

I don't blame anyone for worrying about liabilities, but Pandora's Box is open, there's no closing it now. The specs for many, many firearms parts are readily available, and anyone who wants to take the time to translate those designs to 3D, is going to be able to print them, and distribute the designs. I'm waiting for someone to notice they can print 3D magazines, of any capacity they want. Yes, this is another opportunity to learn that all we do for good, can and will be perverted to bad. Are we willing to throw out the whole 3D printing movement as a result?

Your message is accurate, but your delivery almost guarantees you will be ignored. There really is no reason to be rude... To the OP, you really should be looking at Moodle, or some other Learning Management System. It's not just about the grades, but modernizing how we educate. Keep in mind this is likely a radical shift for your district, but push for it anyway.

Now, imagine you're working on the site of a ~5000 year old camp. The only materiel you can find to help piece together some understanding of the people who lived there is stone, and some smudges in the dirt. Yes, I was once a field archaeologist, and know first hand how durable some media is over time. We've lost countless bits of photographic evidence to time as well, and will continue to do so. Digital media has yet to exist long enough to see if the picture you paint is accurate, as I could recover ZIP media before the day was out ;-) Look at it another way - you are sifting through the contents of your grandmother's home, six months after the flood, and find several USB drives in the drawer above the mush that was her photo albums....

Actually, I lost my 5 1/4 floppy drive to someone who "borrowed" it to recover ~20 year old data. But, as you point out, I am a geek ;-) From a user perspective this may seem difficult, but from a business perspective, it happens all the time (how else can we account for the current use of COBOL?!?) Admittedly, many business interests just migrate old data to new media, but it's not uncommon to need access to data recorded decades ago on a medium otherwise forgotten. All this aside, my re-direction of the question was deliberate, and your answer is, "Paper hard-copy." There are other answers, including moving it from one medium to the next as they become available/common, and there is validity in using more than one of these as a hedge, but the debate should be which is most viable. In the end, however, I will certainly not miss the tons of paper digital media replaces, during the next move!

I can't see the point of this. People no longer keep horses for transportation, we hardly write things down (I've seen graduate research indicating handwriting is ceasing to be relevant), even our books are moving to digital. The proper question would be, "What is the most reliable storage medium for my digital photographs, assuming I need to access them in twenty years?"

Interesting argument, but I still disagree. Being purchased by Blackboard does not prevent those previously contributing to the code base from continuing to do so. Additionally, talent moves into/ leaves open source projects regardless, and Moodle is certainly large enough to draw new talent in on its own. Again, it's an opportunity. In an absolute worst case scenario, Blackboard further enhances their bleak reputation, while Moodle remains the same.

So, Blackboard acquired some firms supporting open source LMS. At most, they've inconvenienced the folks who have been using the services of the firms they purchased with needing to find new support. At least, they've acquired some new potential profit centers. And, if they do a poor job of managing them, or deliberately kill them, they will have succeeded in creating an opening for new firms supporting LMS. They can't impact the code or the knowledge base, and those people currently working for those firms always have the option of working elsewhere, like new start-ups. Come on people, a huge percentage of us got into this business, at least in part, because we didn't like how someone else was doing it, and knew we could do better ourselves. This is just another one of those opportunities ;-)