This has been one of my names for over 20 years. I even receive mail under this name.

If you know where to look, there's a clear enough connection between this name and the one on my driver's license.

If anyone is looking for me, I'm not hard to find.

LK

My first thought upon reading this summary? What about the Mythbusters?

In many episodes, they've rigged up a remote control setup to a car. Many times, it has been because testing a particular car myth would be too risky with a person actually inside driving the car. They've even gone so far as to have a camera setup so they could see where they were driving.

I'm sure there's a learning curve here - not everyone could stop by their local hobby shop and remote control enable their car in an afternoon - but learning curves aren't a hindrance to people who are motivated enough. (i.e. People who want to commit acts of terrorism.) They could even put some sort of dummy in the car to keep people from realizing that the car was driving itself. Then again, they are "motivated" enough to not care if they kill themselves in the process so they could easily just load a car up and drive it where they want it to be.

Self-driving cars aren't any more of a threat than any other piece of new technology. Yes, some people will use it for bad purposes, but many more people will use it for good purposes. If we banned any technology that anyone ever used to harm another person, we wouldn't have any technology left at all.

Scary thought. What if the liability the car sought to minimize was for the insurance companies?

"Upcoming crash detected. Liability analysis pending. If the crash is fatal, typical payout is $N. If the crash is non-fatal, initial payout will be lower, but long-term repeated payments will increase until they are greater than $N. Minimizing liability demands a fatal crash. Initiating termination of car's occupants."

You will still be required to have car insurance (whether because of some actual need or because of lobbying from the insurance industry). Your rates might lower a bit to give you an incentive to get a car that drives itself, but they won't plummet. Less accidents/claims will just mean that the insurance companies will wind up with more profits. Which means more money to spend lobbying the government to require auto insurance and robot cars which means more profits. Rinse. Repeat.

Proper out of office messages will also give you the name and number or e-mail address of the person to contact if this is an urgent matter. So for a routine issue, you'll know that you at least have to wait X days until the person returns. For an urgent issue, you can expedite matters with one more contact.

I can't see Daimler's solution being used anywhere to good effect.

It's easy to not care what people think of you when you're anonymous.

Pussy.

LK

True, but this is another reason why people should know that war is a horrible affair and should only be a last resort. If we combined that with a heavy dose of skepticism of anything that comes out of a politician's mouth, the world would be a better place.

I suggest you read the Photographer's Rights site.

There have been security guards who have harassed photographers for taking photos of buildings because the building designs are "copyrighted." You are allowed to take a photo of a copyrighted object. (If you couldn't, someone wearing a shirt bearing the likeness of any copyrighted fictional character could end all street photography in an area.) You may or may not be able to publish said photo (depending on the circumstances), but you can certainly take the photo and enjoy it for your own private use. Nobody is saying that the copyright of the original changes hands, but you own the copyright of any photo you take.

Awhile back, Toyota tried to claim that they owned a copyright on any Toyota vehicle and so any photographs containing Toyotas were owned by them regardless of who took the picture. (They actually used the DMCA to take down photos involving Toyotas.) Needless to say, they didn't succeed and you can take a photograph of any Toyota in public without having to turn said photo over to Toyota.

Private places can tell you up front that photography is not allowed (e.g. museums where the exhibits would suffer from the flashes or movie theaters). If they do, they can kick you out for photographing where you were told not to. What they can't do, though, is order you to delete those photos. They can contact the police, try to have you arrested, and sue for the photos to be destroyed. They can't demand that you hand over your camera so that they can delete the photos or detain you until you delete the photos yourself.

I did a quick Google search and it turns out it IS on the Discovery Channel. So score one more for Discovery going downhill. It's not enough to show someone trying to survive in a hard environment on a "reality" show. Now you need to toss a naked man and woman into the mix. For reasons. (aka Ratings.)

I read the summary wrong at first and thought that it meant they "fixed" ADHD by participants taking meth. If that's the cure, I think I'd stick with being uncured.

I'm not sure of the chemical makeup of the compound they are talking about versus the illegal drug. (Chemistry was one science class I always stunk at.) They might be somewhat-related with the name similarity. Perhaps someone can explain the difference?

My oldest has just gotten into Mario Kart 8. Should I strap him into the car, drive it down the highway at insane speeds, and have him toss objects out of the windows at other cars? Maybe I'm doing parenting wrong.

Kids should be taught that war is horrible, but that sometimes that horribleness needs to be undertaken to prevent something even worse. I don't agree with the "War is never the answer" bumper stickers I see here and there, but war should never be the first answer. War should be our last option after all other options are exhausted. You should beware of people who either a) think that you should never engage in war ever or b) are itching to rush into a war. The former will let atrocities happen while they wag their fingers at the perpetrators. The latter will cause bloodshed (on both sides) when diplomacy could have been used instead.

In a similar fashion, you can enter any mall in America and start taking photos of everything in sight. The mall can toss you out and even ban you from ever entering again. If you do, they can have you arrested for trespassing. The photos you've taken while there, though, are under your copyright and they can't order you to delete them (or, worse, seize your camera and delete them). Whether you can use them commercially is another story, but simply posting a shot online would be fine.

Not to mention that going to court to defend your Fair Use rights will cost you time and money. So if Big Corporation X says "that video you posted including a tiny snippet of our material is violating our copyright. Take it down.", you have two options:

1) Take it down. Pro: You don't spend a lot of time and money fighting a lawsuit. Con: You've rolled over instead of defending your Fair Use rights.

2) Keep it up and fight for your Fair Use rights. Pro: You are defending your rights. Con: You can spend a lot of time and money fighting the lawsuit. If you win, you might not get legal fees paid. If you lose, you might be liable for copyright infringement fines totaling many thousands of dollars.

Sadly, defending your rights against a giant corporation winds up being a losing proposition for most people.

Or it would be the world's most boring version of Voltron.

"I'll assemble a third of the lower left third of the pinky!"
"I'll assemble the upper tip of the ear!"
"I'll assemble the middle of the right elbow!"