Let's completely ignore the fact that it was a rail and road project. Not just 28 miles of road. Also lets ignore that the project has 46 bridges and 12 tunnels with the tunnel lengths being 30 miles.

Was the project over budget? Absolutely. But it was a rushed project because of olympic deadline. When you build something you can built on time, on budget or to quality. Pick 2.

The road also ran essentially along a river bank through a mountain range.

Automated trains are very common around the world. Lots and lots of subways are automated, sections of Japans Metro are for example. At a larger scale RioTinto's iron ore operations use driverless trains for bulk carrying of ore from the mines to the ports in North West Australia.

So what do you suggest we do if a person is incapacitated, and doctors need someone's direction to perform life threatening surgery or not? Ask a random person in the hallway, or ask the person that is legally designated as the spokesperson?

I much prefer an elected government to decide upon these kind of issues than a religious tradition based on the necessities of living in the desert.

Because that's uncharted territory for law. Suppose there are three people in a marriage relationship, and one gets mortally sick, say in a coma. Who of the two others will represent the spouse, particularly when they are in disagreement. How would divorce be handled? Do the two left need to remarry, or does the contract allow to be continued? How does the estate get split up? How does alimony work? How would inheritance work? How would pensions work? What if there are 4 people, 10, 50? How would all this be structured legally?

Even in contract law, it's a big shift to go from two parties to more than two. Too much needs to be sorted out with too many institutions. That's why 2 consenting adults is the best we can do at this point.

Oh no, we can -- and should -- speculate. Consider everything we can think of. Consider.

What we should NOT do is create a self-fulfilling prophecy by taking the verbal fecal output of doom-criers as the inevitable or even as the likely.

Since you mention cats, would you like an AI treating you like you treat the cats?

Frankly, that would be awesome.

Except that the opinion of people like Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates and Elon Musk is definitely worth more than any "majority" thinking differently.

Nosense. That's just hero worship mentality. Very much like listening to Barbara Streisand quack about her favorite obsessions.

Bill Gates' opinion is worth more than the average person's when it comes to running Microsoft. Elon Musk's opinion is worth more than the average person's when building Teslas and the like. Neither one of them (nor anyone else, for that matter) has anything but the known behavior of the only high intelligence we've ever met to go on (that's us, of course.) So it's purest guesswork, completely blind specuation. It definitely isn't a careful, measured evaluation. Because there's nothing to evaluate!

And while I'm not inclined to draw a conclusion from this, it is interesting that we've had quite a few very high intelligences in our society over time. None of them have posed an "existential crisis" for the the planet, the the human race, or my cats. Smart people tend ot have better things to do than annoy others... also, they can anticipate consequences. Will this apply to "very smart machines"? Your guess (might be) as good as mine. It's almost certainly better than Musk's or Gates', since we know they were clueless enough to speak out definitively on a subject they don't (can't) know anything about. Hawking likewise, didn't mean to leave him out.

Within the context of our recorded history, it's not the really smart ones that usually cause us trouble. It's the moderately intelligent fucktards who gravitate to power. [stares off in the general direction of Washington] (I know, I've giving some of them more credit than they deserve.)

I'll take that starter for 5pts.

It would appear that the lawsuit has been enabled because of the acquisition of the company by a man who has a history of beating off such lawsuits.

You are crazy. Here is an example of the democratic process working, yet you desperately have to search for some conspiracy theory to continue your irrational hatred of the USA.

No. It's an example of a republic not working. What history books tend to call "decline and fall" when it's happened in the past. It is what happens when governments completely lose sight of, and concern with, and respect for, the principles that brought them into being.

This is real life, not a Tom Clancy novel.

Oh, we know. In Clancy's works the US TLAs are the good guys. That's not been the case for decades now.

It's deep, but it's dry. And it has a sharp rock floor at about the 100 foot level.

20 Years of write once and test everywhere! And now thanks to Android there are over 18000 distict Andoid platforms to test on too!! http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2...

I for one salute out software testing overlords :|

If you ask me its taken a turn for the würst

Good point. I was commenting on presidential elections, but now see your comment was on congress.

Wazzu...wot? Arguing for legalizing abortion and for gay marriage does not equate tax implications. It's completely consistent to be for legal abortion and against free abortions. Likewise, it's completely consistent to be for gay marriage and against tax benefits for married people. So again, what are you actually arguing?