Comment Re: Speculation (Score 1) 475
That's probably where they got this anyway.
That's probably where they got this anyway.
Why wouldn't an autonomous car be able to avoid potholes?
I really don't know, can they?
It seems reasonable to me that they easily could, although I don't know if they do already. A lot of the data input for automation comes from cameras, programming pothole detection would be trivial compared to what they've already accomplished.
well do you want to pay $10 GB in data and $15-$20 roaming?
it better have XM as well.
I just plug in a memory stick to a USB port. I think this is becoming fairly standard these days?
Every car maker is going to start losing market share to Google unless they offer this. Google's head start combined with their better engineers means that Google might become the dominant software provider to cars. Unless car manufacturers come up with software that is equally safe, Google will soon start making more money per car sale than the manufacturers.
Google isn't interested in manufacturing cars. Google is interested in licensing their technology to other companies that already do. This is how it works today. Most of the Japanese companies use Denso. Ford used to use Microsoft but will be using Blackberry/QNX going forward. Google wants to compete with those guys, not with the auto manufacturers themselves.
One thing I like about driving is that I can choose my route. Go new places. Will the self-driving car give me any choice of route, or will it always take the same boring route to a given destination?
I've seen this question a lot on this story. I can't imagine it would be in Google's (or anyone else's) interest to not provide the driver with complete control over every aspect of the journey. Many of the assertions I've seen today are just silly. Of course the car will allow you to stop and pee, or change the route, or cancel it and go somewhere else, or avoid your ex-girlfriend's street, or whatever. They're still hauling bags of meat around and the entire point is to service their transportation needs.
That said, Google/Waze + autonomous car = commute nirvana.
At least put in a CD / CD changer.
People still use CDs?
There are far too many scenarios on public roads where a self drive car wouldn't know what to do and would require human intervention. At the very least it requires an unimpaired, conscious, qualified human being with their own set of controls who can take over if the need arises or if the car does something dumb.
If these become shuttles or taxis it would have to be in carefully controlled conditions where it is highly unlikely that some event would occur that leaves the vehicle stuck and unable to move. And even there, it's possible that there would have to be a a human sitting in a booth nearby who could override the system if it became stuck.
And yet Google has clocked over 700,000 autonomous miles on public roads already, in uncontrolled conditions. The pool of unforeseen scenarios is finite and shrinking. I do agree that manual controls should remain in place as the technology matures.
An example: The train you're on is running 30 minutes late, and you need a cab to get you to the day's last ferry, or you will have to wait until morning. That's when you'll really appreciate what a skilled cabdriver can do for you. Not to mention a human driver can avoid potholes, at least until the Google Hover Taxi comes along...
Why wouldn't an autonomous car be able to avoid potholes?
Fair enough, but the reason we know this won't work due to those factors is because... they tried it and it didn't work.
The hook/trapeze method is the same as what they were attempting with the Goblin. The "hanger" in this case was a B36, but the launch/recovery method was very similar.
Wait, they were not sure mid air refueling could work, but they thought they could dock a fighter to a bomber in mid air? What sense does that make?
It makes a lot of sense. They had a problem they weren't sure how to solve and were trying different methods. At the time the problems associated with mid-air refueling were no better understood than those of mid-air docking. Docking was the ideal solution, because it would have given them the range they needed AND reduced pilot fatigue, which was also a big problem.
One of my FAVE failures:
McDonnell XF-85 Goblin
What WERE they thinking?
They were thinking that many bombers were getting shot down after their shorter-range fighter escorts had to peel off and head home. It wasn't clear at the time that mid-air refueling could work.
The pedantic GNU/Linux war is long over. It's like going around telling everyone that the tomato is a fruit; technically true but of no practical use.
I was talking to an employee who was fired, but still around for a couple of days to clean up her stuff. She asked if I had backups, because she wanted to delete all of the projects she was working on. I told her that she was paid to do that work and I doubt if other people will go through her work that much anyway. Why go the unethical route when it just makes you look bad?
I bet this guy could have just left, and assuming he was useful, the company would soon be feeling the pain anyway.
The sad thing is that the people who think like this don't seem to be aware that this flaw in their character is probably why they got fired in the first place.
Why should they? It's not the USN's responsibility to find another country's lost plane. Instead of wasting money on that, the US government could be spending it to help THEIR OWN PEOPLE.
The plane was a US-manufactured Boeing. Finding it and understanding the reason it crashed is in the interest of the US.
Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here?
