Sure it's possible, but given their history how could you trust them?

It ought to be possible to design an alternative based on interpersonal recommendation. But what do you use for a unique identifier? You need something. Phone number has possibilities, but that, too, is subject to centralized control, AND it identifies the individual, which effectively removes anonymity.

The problem is, you need SOME unique identifier, or nobody can find you to deliver the messages/webpages/etc. I can imagine a hierarchy of geographically based names with the lower level assigned on a collision avoidance kind of approach, which would allow anonymity to the lowest geographical level, say 1024 square kilometers on the average. But you need to remember all the id's you've used, and when you move there would be no way to carry your id (unless the system has some built in way of automatically forwarding calls, which has its own problems).

Sorry, but I have avoided anything sponsored by either the MPAA or the RIAA ever since the Sonny-Bono copyright extension act.

If I felt I absolutely *must* see that movie, I'd feel compelled to donate 3 times the admission cost the the EFF.

No. What you need is a system that is easy to clone, and which n countries can run independently, for n a positive integer.

DNS seems a good choice for the lower layers, but the top layer needs to have a round-robin resolution, such than any root server that don't find the site will pass you on to the next. You need to also, however, be able to specify the starting root, and possibly the 1st alternate, to avoid cache poisoning.

And if you go back further there was a period when nobody had a "job". Everyone worked at hunting, food gathering, or tool making. Nobody owned more than they could easily carry. And people were around as tall as today (which probably means as healthy). Then populations started increasing, somebody invented agriculture, and people started needing to work all the time. But agriculture supported larger populations, even if they were a lot less healthy, and, to all appearances, a lot less happy.

Time doesn't stand still. The question is always "what are the viable ways forwards from here?", and the answers MUST recognize the tendencies of populations to expand until their food supply is insufficient. (There *ARE* ways around that, some quite pleasant[*], but they need to be designed into the system.)

* TV, education of women, video games, etc. are pleasant ways to control the population growth. Some are more effective than others. Populations will inherently evolve to evade the restrictions, but biologic evolutionary time is so slow WRT cultural evolutionary time that this can almost be ignored.

Frederick Pohl:
The Midas Plague
The Man who ate the World

I think the first was originally a short story, or a novella, but that it was later expanded into a novel. I only saw the second as a novel.

I found them both unrealistic because they ignore the geometric expansion of populations. Still, they were well done. They should be seen, however, mainly as social criticism written as science fiction.

My first reaction was "Gee, they noticed.".

The point is, to do most jobs you don't need a strong AI. Someting a bit smarter than a horse, but which was better at manipulation would do fine. The jobs that need more are unusual. (And, by the way, logic engines better than human aren't hard. Our strengths are in other areas.)

E.g., for me the hard part of programming is often writing the code. If it gets complex I can run out of short term memory. But for an AI it would be understanding the problem. (Modularizing the code helps me, but when it gets complex either the modules get too large, or there are too many of them to easily deal with. An AI could be designed to not have that problem. Resizable stack depths, etc.)

Posting anonymously removes your credibility as an expert in the field unless your post contains internal evidence justifying this. Yours didn't.

Most jobs don't require all that much intelligence. Many jobs have (and are being) intentionally redesigned to deskill them. This allows wages to be cut, as it's easier to replace the employees.

Much of this is political decision, but they are political decisions enabled by advancing technologies, including AI. A scanner that can recognize the price of an item whatever orientation it is presented with that item in is more intelligent than one that can't. This is true even if part of the intelligence resides in the design of the system (bar codes).

Automated warehouses wouldn't be being built if they weren't cheaper to operate than manned warehouses. They are being built. Therefore the jobs that they would have provided had they not been automated have been removed from the system. This requires approaches that in even the 1990's would have been called AI, but which aren't called that any more.

This is still the leading edge. Google's automated car isn't up to city streets, but it can remove a lot of jobs without having that kind of general capacity. And it will be (is being) improved. Still, even at its current state of development it is quite capable of being extremely useful in many situations. And in those situations it will be removing jobs because if it didn't, it wouldn't be used. It will only be used where it cuts costs, which means removing enough jobs that it pays for not hiring the drivers.

The question then becomes "What new jobs are created by the removal of the existing jobs?" And the answer appears to be "only a few, and those highly skilled". The last time this kind of thing happened nearly an entire generation of horses got turned into dog and cat food. This time it's not horses being put out of work.

Well, I don't commute anymore, but my post was in reply to someone who was replying to someone talking about freeways.

FWIW, I consider busy city streets too dangerous to ride a bicycle on, but I notice that many people disagree with me. I've never used a moped, so I don't know about it's drawbacks, but back when I used to bicycle I once ended up in the street in traffic because the gears stripped. Not a pleasant sensation, even if that time I was only hurt by the pavement. Right about then I decided that bicycles are too dangerous in city traffic...and it's gotten a lot worse since then. (This decade my knees wouldn't let me ride a bike anyway, but...)

Mopeds aren't allowed on the freeways. I believe you need to have 110 (some measure) cylinder size before you're allowed on the freeway. You need a motorcycle (though not a large one). And at 2 mph it should be pretty safe, even in bad weather.

Ashby is no freeway. A proper comparison would be 880, but that goes through business districts. Which might be the correct answer, though even businesses don't seem to like to be next to freeway ramps. Still, the Berkeley 4th street businesses seem to be doing well.

No. Public transportation needs a high population density to be cheap. It can be quite effective even at reasonably low population densities, but it becomes considerably more expensive, especially if you want it to be frequent enough to be convenient. In the US being dependent on public transit is often inconvenient because it's never there when you want it, especially at night or in foul weather.

OTOH, a dedicated bus lane on the freeway (or bus and car with 3 or more people) can considerably speed traffic IF there are enough buses. And that means the buses need to collect and distribute the passengers. Which means wide coverage handled fairly efficiently. This is never done because of severe cost cutting, which causes the transit to be so inconvenient that nobody chooses to use it if they can choose something else. Which raises the cost. Whoops!

Another problem is that efficiency designers have designed buses that are hideously uncomfortable. This is done in the name of cost reduction, getting more people onto each bus, and ease in cleaning. The result is that anyone who has any choice rides something else. Curiously, as people have gotten taller, the leg space/seat has been reduced. Any guesses as to why people dislike public transit? A few years ago when my legs were stronger I would often prefer to stand rather than to sit.

Actually, the BIG problem with Silicon Valley is that prime farm land has been occupied by housing and factories. They could just as well have been built on lousy land, as they don't use it anyway.

"Silicon Valley" used to the the primary producer of cherries, apricots, etc. in all of California. Now there if there's an orchard left, I don't know about it. That was NOT the highest use of the land, just the one that returned most taxes.

Toll lanes are not a good solution. Traiins have limited value as person traffic relief. Unless you have a really good transit system, which I've never seen. (I don't have wide experience, so I admit the possibility.)

The real problem is the commute distance. That needs to be drastically reduced, which is quite difficult when both jobs and families are mobile.

For businesses that are small my favorite answer it to redo the zoning code, and give a good tax break to owners who live in the same building as their place of business. Also give a distance related tax break to people who live near their job. Unfortunately, most zoning systems actively work against this answer. And most taxation isn't locally controlled (but property taxes could be adjusted).

Is *that* why Google Maps has gotten worse. The other day I actually went back to MapQuest, and it was better.