I think you miss the point of the question. AC wants to know why we just bombarded a planet with our debris -- scarring another world rather than take the extra fuel to clean up our mess and avoid adding to the craters on Mercury. This is a sentiment I've heard elsewhere -- that the extra science time wasn't worth the environmental cost of dumping our stuff on Mercury.

AC: What you miss is that Mercury is a lifeless rock already marked by tons of craters. One more makes little difference. There wasn't any benefit from the view of anyone working on the project in avoiding impacting Mercury. If this were Mars or someplace that humans might one day live, that would be different.

All the EULAs will just get updated to include a clause saying, "And you give us the right to share." The problem seems to be that if you *can* give permission then you will be coerced into giving permission. That implies that, just like a contract of enforced slavery is illegal in USA even if signed willingly, any agreement that gives permission for sharing is illegal. That would solve the problem of coercion but would wipe out a whole bunch of services that people actually like and want.

I don't have an answer, but I am pretty sure that just barring the data sharing would not actually change anything except the EULAs.

What if you made the default password the date the system was turned on? Sure, it's a simple 8 digit numeric value, but it would be somewhat unique per machine or local bank of machines. Don't ask them for a default password, tell them what it is and make them go change it. Various studies suggest they probably won't.

His math is fine. It's his civics estimate of US population that's a problem, and he wasn't claiming expertise there.

I think KingOfBash's point is that in the future, there may not be any "licensed drivers", only "licensed passengers". And if you lose that license, there wouldn't be any of those other options that you point toward -- the robots would turn you down for a ride.

Depends. How much do airlines pay in insurance to cover the possibility of disasters? How much would that decrease through automation?
How much do they pay in maintenance? How much would that decrease if the plane were always piloted exactly as spec'd?
There's many variables that come into play that could easily make this financially viable. I don't know enough about the industry to say whether or not it would actually be.

Consider the comment at the end of the summary: "If you put more technology in the cockpit, you have more technology that can fail."
We just had a human brain fail -- in the computer sense -- in Europe. I sometimes wonder whether we have too much tech in the cockpit right now. A computer that stays focused on the act of flying as fewer mental "moving parts" than a human brain that has a life outside the cockpit.

Sounds like a user interface problem. Users won't get accustomed to it if unsecure sites are mauve text on navy blue background. Or something equally egregious and harder to use.

This is why you should treat employees as criminals from their first day on the job. Then there's no difference when the last day comes.
Right? :-)

> I think i know why she isnt a computer programmer

She's a psychologist. That's pretty close to a computer programmer. Psychologists do their work on a biological computer and without the aid of a debugger and without the programmer's greatest tool: the reboot. But in both cases, it is trying to work out where the logical inconsistencies are and apply code patches to get the system to respond correctly to input.

If the cost is supposed to be "some portion of what you have to spend each day", the story mentions net income and the discussion threads talk about net worth, and the downsides of both. What if we simply said, "Show your bank statement, credit card and estimated cash transactions for the last 60 days and we base your fine off of the *expenditures* you have made." Thoughts?