On the flip side, if there are outages or faults you almost automatically acquire a negative view of them and again there isn't really a lot they can do to counteract it.

On the other hand, if you have a swift, efficient, and high quality service for an outage, most people understand that things fail and will forgive. It's only when YOU SUCK, repeatedly and without meeting customer needs in a quick and reliable way, that you get real negatives. And, if you actually work to improve these things (e.g., bury above-ground wires to improve reliability, more, smaller substations to limit outages, etc.) and promote these useful activities, you'll get even more positives. So, in short, I think this is an issue of a company coasting and the CEO being an asshat about being criticized while his company coasts. Maybe he ought to think about improvong service so people don't hate him.

I think they only care about eyeballs per advertisement.

The profit for that strategy is limited because soon you have no eyeballs and no eyeballs leads shortly after that to no advertisements.

The statistic is not 97% of Scientists then is it.

Yeah, you're right. It's 97% of scientists who actually know what they're talking about instead of a population that includes a bunch of kibitzing amateurs who don't actually understand what they're going on about. But I guess that about 97% of the readers here think you're an idiot because you believe that makes some difference with respect to the actual sciencey stuff. Thanks for defending the planet wreckers - it helps to make the place so much more wonderful!

How many tailgaters would continue to tailgate if it was as simple as slamming on the breaks to ruin them financially...

Most of them. You seem to have a overestimation of how rational human actors are and how well deterrence works. The number of "Fuck it! I'm insured!" accidents (as you put it) are vanishingly small because insurance companies almost never pay the entire amount that would make the people involved in the accident whole in addition to the fact that most most people don't have insanely low deductible policies.

Yep, traveling with Granny might hinder your ability to make connecting flights.

You mean more than she already does? Inconceivable!

In all airports I've seen, they're past the security checkpoints.

Yeah because being an immature dick and trying to cause an accident at a light in response to someone else being an immature dick makes the world such a better place. Good work. But you're still an immature dick.

Yes. And these requirements will come into being as soon as we want to fund more frequent and useful mass transit so that those who can't meet your desired stringency can still get around - don't forget rural areas, too, unless you want to make your licensing laws vary based on population density.

Your whole point will soon be obviated by increased use of autonomous vehicles anyway - you think that the powers that be will still allow you to drive manually at high speed once autonomous vehicles become common? You're such a precious little snowflake, after all! Nah, manual drivers would fuck up the traffic flow too much compared with autonomous vehicles that can actually coordinate between themselves.

Your period of grace will last about twenty years after their introduction when almost all cars on the road will be under automated control. After that, you'll have neighborhood streets for a few more years. And I guess there will always be race tracks. But driving at high speeds on public roads? I'm afraid we humans just aren't cut out for that.

Did you wear an onion on your belt, too? Or was that just the fashion up around Springfield?

Why do people use a video these days rather than just typing answers? Moving pictures of Larry's face jabbering don't add much to the proceedings and frankly, I can read answers a lot more quickly than it takes to listen to a video. And, if I happen to be in my office, I can read a transcript without disturbing others.

Sorry, but this is really a pet peeve. If you don't have a visually dynamic presentation of information that can't be conveyed any other way, video takes more bandwidth and adds little. So why do you do it? To look hip? It doesn't work.

So, I'd say it's kind of a given that when the old-breed, "we've been doing this for generations" brand of arrogance meets the upstart "we've literally changed the world in a little over a decade" brand of arrogance, sparks are going to fly. And the fact that the upstarts have working technology to do what the old breed still isn't sure is possible isn't going to help one bit.

Working technology? Well, sort of.

I'd like to see how comfortable these cars are to operate as random folks seeing the LiDAR unit on top of the car swerve suddenly towards the car to see how it responds. Hell, I'd do it once or twice to see if I could make it flinch and I'm a pretty mild guy in his 50's. I'd love to see what a few teenagers could do with your "smart" car. And I figure replacing a broken LiDAR unit would be a lot more expensive than replacing a couple of slashed tires. Yes, I can see many scenarios where you might be tossed out of autonomous mode quite frequently or incur higher costs, making this "feature" not particularly cost effective.

Think about Google Glass and think how well some early adopter with an automated chauffeur (one that might be slowing down traffic) would fare - that's all I'm saying.

A great book on this topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Reckoning_(1986_book).

So you liked not prosecuting bank executives because "high ranking officials... will be even harder to pin down"? That was the line of reasoning used in the AG's office for not doing that. You want to give the powerful a pass because it's inefficient to prosecute them? But the rest of us? We're fair game? What a dick.

I am not saying that running social experiments on random people is a great idea (though it is funny),

Well, if it's so funny, how would you like random "social experiments" tried on you? Read this story from the days before informed consent and review boards became required and still tell me if you think it's "funny". Or better yet, tell the folks who potentially lost life and limb as a result how funny these experiments are.

Why don't you start by telling this guy? He's in our field so, surely, he'd understand all about these "harmless" social experiments and see how humorous they can be.

The reasoning was the same as what many are saying (IMO, incorrectly) here - that FB was already manipulating feeds so it was OK. I find this reasoning specious because, normally, FB modifies what it shows to attempt to change a narrow behavior with relatively finite consequences - whether a user clicks on an ad or not - while with this experiment the researchers were trying to alter something much more broad - a person's entire emotional state - a change with much broader implications. Given what we know from online bullying episodes, targeting a broad population in this manner could possibly exacerbate underlying emotional problems in some of the subjects. I can't see how these review boards let this study through - especially with a bullshit EULA for "informed consent".

The grounds for and circumstances surrounding these approvals should be investigated thoroughly.