And I thought there were only 43 reasons to cancel facebook. Now there are 44.

There must be 50 ways to leave your stalker^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hfacebook.

Speak for yourself - I got my FAA PPL in about 50 hours and adjusted to today's dollars it probably cost less than half of that.

Navigable airspace in the US starts at the surface, everywhere. Don't confuse class G airspace with the idea that it's unregulated.

Scientists and engineers are by definition not supposed to be ethical.

"I just invented the bomb. I didn't drop it."
        --Brice, Max Headroom Episode 1 "Blipverts", 1987

Reference (in particular, the third video clip): http://www.avclub.com/article/...

Back then that line was meant as tongue-in-cheek humor, funny because of its ridiculousness Depressing that we've degenerated so far that you've actually said the equivalent with all seriousness. (The same could be said for many things in that once funny, now prophetic series.)

As engineers and scientists we do NOT check our humanity at the door, or our ethics. At least, good engineers and scientists do not.

When it comes to road safety, sentience is overrated.

If a non-sentient computer can drive a car safer and more efficiently than me and other people, we'll be better off for it.

You are somewhat the rarity with your vintage car. For most people, drive by wire is already a thing. The throttle has been drive by wire for years on most cars, and some of today's cars are steer by wire. (Yes, there is manual reversion if it fails, but in normal driving you have no mechanical connection between the steering wheel and the wheels of the car). Many cars can brake independently of the driver. Even my 2007 Civic has traction control and ABS fitted as standard.

Traffic would probably flow considerably better in a city full of self driving cars. A lot of the chaos of city driving is because of human error and human reaction delays.

You only have to fly over a traffic jam on a major highway to see problems that could be significantly alleviated by self driving cars that communicate with each other. Quite often you see traffic jams with no explanation - a mile of stationary traffic, but there's no obstacle in front and none behind. What happened is two hours earlier someone slammed on their brakes, someone following too close had to brake harder, and eventually the whole highway stops. As long as traffic is not leaving the stopped area faster than it is arriving, you get a self-sustaining traffic jam long after the original cause has gone away. The self driving car will reduce the instances in the first place of the cause, and if it does happen will be able to as a group moderate their speed in such a way that you don't end up with a mile of stopped cars. Instead of the next car only starting after it has seen the previous one begin to move + reaction delay, all cars will be able to start moving at once or nearly so.

Surely drive-by shootings will become easier, as now they have one more person who can do the shooting once you get rid of the need for a driver?

Look at how you build a computer for casual home use, where downtime means that no astronauts will die, nor will you lose a million dollars per day in sales, but there will be some inconvience and maybe an angry wife. One of these components is so expected to fail, that your initial build will have redundancy for that component. You start out thinking not "that would suck if this failed, because it's critical and will be expensive to replace," but rather "when one of these goes, we'll be fine until the replacement arrives."

Replacing the other things is an exception and it will usually have an interesting story behind it. Replacing a disk, though, is just routine maintenance.

Don't feel too bad. I'm a native English speaker (with Spanish as a 2nd language) and I can't do crosswords (in English) either.

I have a Microsoft mouse on my main work workstation. The irony is that it has never been connected to a computer running Microsoft's software, and I've been using it now for years...

I have a Unicomp at home.

Our department is constantly criticised for "being lacksadasical", "not having enough urgency"... because our jobs involve sitting down and thinking a lot. (The finance director suggested we "walk quickly" to get rid of this perception).

My suggestion is we kit the entire department with Unicomp buckling spring keyboards. Not only will we enjoy typing more, but we will sound like an old fashioned typing pool, and we will sound hugely productive.

Peak oil is a mathematical certainty. One day we will be no longer using oil. This means it is mathematically certain at some point there will be a global maximum to the oil production function.

That's just the sort of thing Hitler would say.

the Internet of Things us not only useless, but detrimental

You've got it all wrong. It's the Internet of Other People's Things That You Use To Serve Their Interests which is detrimental. But as soon as we go from there to the Internet of Your Things Intended to Serve Your Interests Above All Others, this stuff is unambiguously good. All it takes to do this stuff right, is to not buy it. Build it. Just like your desktop PC, your server, and hopefully pretty soon, your phone. (I'm surprised by how feasible that last one is getting. I bet in 5-10 years a significant fraction of "typical nerds" will be using their own phones. It might still have a spy on board, but the spy will have very limited access.)