Even in the 70s, someone who was educated and understood the problem knew that equipment was required... Your father simply didn't care, or didn't know any better.

No, that's the whole point: the equipment was not required because there was no air pollution problem to begin with. We were saddled with a lot of superfluous emissions hardware in Oklahoma because it was needed in California.

The point of my CSB is that you can't possibly use your own preferences or localized requirements to gauge what's coming, or argue against it. Not in the car business, anyway.

You won't be putting a subway system into Dallas, it would cost a hundred billion dollars and still be poorly used, the city is too spread out. As it stands, we already have a multi-billion dollar light rail system that is poorly used and doesn't even run to half the city. The bus system costs just as much and is also poorly used...

What does any of this have to do with the subject under discussion?

A lot of people have ideas that might work in 2 or 3 big cities, but for the vast majority of America, have no chance.

I'm reminded of the emissions-control laws of the early 1970s, in that respect. During that time, I grew up in a flyover state in the middle of nowhere. There was widespread resentment -- more like frothing-at-the-mouth fury -- that our vehicles had to have catalytic converters, smog pumps, and endless tangles of seemingly-unnecessary plumbing under the hood, when there was clearly no problem with air pollution within a thousand miles or more. My old man constantly ranted about how the government was destroying the automobile industry out of sheer bureaucratic stupidity. There was an underground cottage industry devoted to bypassing and removing emissions equipment.

Now, 40 years later, I can go down to my local Chevy dealer and buy a 460 HP Corvette that gets 30 MPG. Oops. Guess my old man was wrong.

The same thing's going to happen this time, down to the last chapter and verse. People like you and me will scream bloody murder, and then we will wake up one day and realize we were wrong.

Also, no wireless, less space than a Nomad.

But not for me... Pride of ownership is a key point, having a nice well maintained vehicle that I worked hard for...

For the record, I'm with you 100% on that. I'm not personally going to like what I'm predicting, but I have no illusions that it won't happen exactly that way, because it makes too much sense in the vast majority of use cases.

Plus, my vehicle needs don't match most people's, I have a 7 person full sized SUV (Yukon XL) so I can haul the kids + stuff. JohnnyCab can't handle that.

Why not? There will be different levels of service, and numerous models of vehicles available at varying prices.

The rest of the objections people are raising go away when all of the autonomous cars are talking to each other and behaving as cooperative actors. On expressways, it will be only slightly more dangerous for a pack of "JohnnyCabs" to travel 10 feet apart at 100 MPH than it is for them to obey the current traffic laws designed for human judgment and reaction times. And on surface streets, traffic controls at intersections will be orders of magnitude more efficient.

Self-driving cars are mass transit. At some point, once you're no longer driving your car, it will occur to you that you don't really care if you own the car. That's when things will get interesting.

IMHO, most self-driving cars will be operated by a networked JohnnyCab-like service that will combine the efficiency of public transportation and the freedom of personally-owned vehicles. It will be a big social, political, and economic change, but almost everyone will end up better off.

Wait until the next J. Edgar Hoover comes along. With the power of the modern security state behind him, he will seem more like Lavrenti Beria.

The lag isn't just 30hz touch/refresh and triple-buffering. I've got a Samsung S3 and it feels like most actions take from around a second and up to complete

iOS is exactly the same way these days. Touch the screen. Nothing happens. Touch it again. Nothing happens. Touch it again, harder this time, and a bunch of stuff you didn't expect happens because the phone thinks you submitted three touches in a row.

I don't think it's valid to use a couple of minor, specific, and temporary technical issues to condemn an entire trend.

This is one of my favorite responses to people who question the money spent on projects like RHIC and LHC. "You're right, there is no known application for this stuff. But aren't you glad nobody listened to your old man when he said the same thing about the laser?"

We used to have a great small local magazine shop in this town. Borders moved in. They had books and magazines and a coffee shop and ... all in one place. The local shop was driven out of business. Bad for them. Then Borders lost the competition with B&N (and Amazon) and they have now gone away. It's an hour drive to the closest full-service shop. This competition turned out just great for the local shop, Borders, and the customers in this town, didn't it?

(Shrug) The same thing would have happened to the local shop, with or without Borders. I wouldn't trade Amazon for all of the Mom & Pop outfits, Borders, and B&N combined. The marked worked exactly how it is supposed to work, and the best competitor won.

Just because someone conducted a study doesn't mean the results are valid. Many if not most published studies have serious methodological weaknesses.

They certainly didn't seem very "frightened" of the government when they received tax breaks and incentives to build out the network, did they?

Yeah, I was duped into watching LOST too.

Those aliens are going to be pissed.

The reasons hardly matter when you consider that the US is the only reason that western European countries didn't spend fifty years as shithole Russian client states like your brothers and sisters in the Eastern Bloc had to. Never mind Japan, which would have become North Korea with weirder cartoons.

Somehow I'm guessing that if time travel is ever invented, you're not going to go go back to 1942 and tell us to get lost.

It's a bit late to collect those Ballmer Bucks now.

Also, the Japanese embassy called and said it's OK to come out of your cave now. Or, failing that, at least quit sniping tourists on the beach. There's a reason they don't look like US soldiers anymore.