Mark...is that you?

If you think it costs a lot to develop and build a flying car, wait until you find out how much it costs to change the FAA regulations.

Where are my mod points when I need them. Thank you - I couldn't have said it better myself.

Stop trying to use logic to discredit an article that gets these /. geeks in such a froth. These are people who use logic for a living, but ignore it when it suits their cause.

Indeed - you should be in the business where you have hundreds of millions of installed users. That's the way to make the dime easily.

Why would you want to pull over the let your passenger send a text?

Dead wrong. Driver mode should be a UI mode which is tuned for hands and (mostly) eyes free usage. Allowing communication, navigation, and entertainment (audio) to seamlessly be integrated with the automotive head unit. The use of simpler prompts keyed through the steering wheel (like volume on head units or set/coast/resume cruise control) and large format feedback/UI viewable with peripheral vision.

Phones *could* make the driving experience safer by bypassing the distraction of the modern touchscreen headunit which is mounted way outside of peripheral vision. But because there is no dedicated mode, it's simply not suited for the task. Yet.

Mobile phones *could* make much of driving safer than it is today instead of making it more dangerous. For the first time, we have devices which be an effective co-pilot (mapping, traffic, entertainment, communication) and yet most of them are unusable in a voice-only mode. Part of that is standardization - every app requires a different set of commands, or an incomplete set of commands. Part of it is parochialism - OS developers allowing only their own offspring apps (most of which are, at best, middling compared to 3rd party) integration with the OS. This speaks nothing of the hideous integration with head units in cars, both OEM and aftermarket, which have the same problems - and don't even get me started on the microphones in cars.

Nobody seems to have really put a team together that has been tasked with making the experience safe for use in a car. They've bolted on weird, disfigured additions that make demos possible but which are not really useful in regular usage. It needs to be a core functional operating mode.

FWIW, I don't consider a ban on personal computers useful in cars. The distractions of text messages and the idiot watching movies is no different than the woman putting on lipstick or the guy reading a paperback while driving, and the presence of music and navigation and communication is no different than the music and navigation that gets built into head units today and the husband jabbering away or the kids yelling at each other in the back seat. Until we are no longer driving it's better to manage distractions than think we can eliminate them.

Okay. So, honestly, look at the people who work the mines. Not the engineers or supervisors, but the bulk of the 9-5 guys. What percentage of them, in less than a year's worth of school/retraining, would be really good coders - the kind you could put on a project in an office in SF and expect to get a similar result to someone who's first chosen profession from their teens was coding and spent 4-6 years in post-secondary school learning the art, science, and math of coding?

I say this because Bloomberg is probably right. I'll bet at least 80% of them can't make up for lost time in a year or less (which, if you want to completely fund their retraining, including costs and living expenses is going to run towards $100k each). I'd bet more than 50% couldn't do it in 4 years. I say that because more than 50% of the general population wouldn't make it, and coal miners are no different.

As you said, coal miners are the product of their families, and often families where higher education is neither valued nor rewarded. It's not about better or worse, smart or stupid, it's about expectations and preparation. Take a 35 year old who hasn't done more than 3rd grade math in the last 20 years and put them into a math-intensive program. Most will fail miserably. Doesn't matter if they're a farmer, a coal miner, an automotive assembler, a construction worker, a retail cashier, or a salesman.

Bloomberg's words may feel like a put-down, but they're about as straight forward realistic as it gets. It's hard for "smart" people to understand that mere's applying yourself to a higher field of study often isn't enough to master it.

Note that they didn't say - "Hey, we're going to do this merger, here's a check for $50k to help you do the right thing." Money that is considered for this "story" goes back to 2009, long before anyone was talking about a merger, or even the NBC/Universal acquisition.

That's not to say the whole system isn't corrupt - people and corporations buy influence with congressman all the time through donations. But this isn't a case of a bribe - it's buying recognition and face time. Something which is not illegal but should be as it skews the perspective seen by those who are making laws.

#cancelcolbert gets SC off of CC and the show dies...but only because he got promoted to a prime network spot with more visibility and more money.

Colbert's writers couldn't have scripted this as well as it was performed in real life.

misattributed

Somebody apparently stole my ability to spell, or at least to spell-check before hitting submit.

The authorship was misattribited

No doubt, but it won't do much more than dent anything that has been hardened against HE (or even large LE) munitions.

Golf clap.