Comment Re:LEO Rapid Transit (Score 1) 140
The Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT) was the original name for what is now the MTA's Number 7 - Flushing Local/Express line.
Meh. Companies already face this. If any one of the thousands of parts in your car fails and causes an accident, the manufacturer can [...] get sued. Ask Toyota or Firestone how that plays out. All we're talking about here is another new part.
Okay, whatever guy.
The parts that fail now, in plain old dumb cars don't derive their autonomy from lidar, RFID, or 4G cellular radio transmissions or (god forbid) Wi-Fi (or the future equivalent).
When a spring or a bolt, or a seatbelt fails, it fails on that individual car. Even modern electronic systems fail in isolation. While many cars may have the same defect, and be prone to malfunctioning in the same manner, when Cruise Control in one car fails, it will never tell another car to travel at the same speed. The Toyota acceleration problem while affecting many cars, happened one car at a time. But guided cars are different. Depending on design and features implemented, one car could, in theory, affect multiple other guidance systems in other cars not even produced by the same maker.
When we engineer autonomous highway systems, with preset mandatory speeds of exactly 100KPH, let's say (in a future where carbon footprints are also standardized and enforcible by law, since an autonomous system is "perfect" and can do this) that cars also have a drafting algorithm to enhance fuel efficiency, and automatically organize into gaggles and formations, and communicate anticipated route information in situ, while updating eachother, so that members can exit and leave the formation, and optimal wind resistance can be controlled to save fuel.
Suddenly, a malfunction in such a system could throw many lives into peril, or maybe severly inconvenience people by travelling far off course unexpectedly, because of a software bug.
No company faces a reality such as this. Autonomy is different.
"Joyent"
I mean really. It makes my mind wretch. It's like some kind of INGSOC Newspeak name, for a happy happy joy joy Enterprise Computing corporation. Very "Doublethink". You know, like "Minipax", " Miniplenty", "Minitrue", "Miniluv"... Looks like Joyent's private Thinkpol threw your Time Live contract down a Memory Hole.
...because it is built on MS Access.
I can't believe I just read that.
Stellar rays prove fibbing never pays. Embezzlement is another matter.