look at another parked car and park next to it?
How do you know where to park?

What he wrote was:
"Our self-driving cars have now traveled nearly 200,000 miles on public highways in California and Nevada, 100 percent safely. They have driven from San Francisco to Los Angeles and around Lake Tahoe, and have even descended crooked Lombard Street in San Francisco. They drive anywhere a car can legally drive."

I like how you left out the fact that, clearly, they didn't need special roads.

" entire highway infrastructure will have to be completely overhauled, at enormous expense, before 'self driving cars' could be a reality"
since they are using them everyday, and taking them on trip in CA, on normal roads, I don't think you are correct.
Of course are road infrastructure could use a few smart changes anyways.

It's trivial to kidnapped some in a car today.

"There's no way they're going to code an 'evasive maneuvers'"
Oh, I see. You think you would be able to do some Die Hard esque driving to get away from kidnappers.

"It is to counter Google's skewed data that make it look like autonomous cars are just around the corner."
Google has never said that. And this guy doesn't have all the data, nor does he know whats in development.

"why come out with a vehicle that has no steering wheel if it is not viable for another 5-10 years (by your estimate)?"
The same reason worlds fair showed tech that will be coming out in 5-10 years. Its' fun, it's cool. It also show they are thinking long term and not quarterly. It also shows a company spending money on RnD.
I consider all of that a good thing.

"Do you ever see a Google press release mention any of these limitations?"
Yes.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com...

" All you hear from Google is a rising tally of miles driven and the fact that there have been no accidents. "
Which is pretty important.

"The fact that the miles are driven on carefully selected, heavily scanned roads under optimal conditions never seems to make it into the reports."
That is the smart way to start, but they are moving past that.

" Driving down the same roads thousands of times is not progress."
Of course it is. Same roads, different traffic. The same rods can have 10's of thousands of changing variables at any given time.
The team members are using them. A team member took one from Google campus to Tahoe on a trip.

Do you lay awake at night just trying to think of ways to hate cool new things?

Google is big.
Google general does good things
So people who make money from hating need to find something, anything to get clicks from google hate.

Well, you start to turn, the next millisecond the car detects something is moving in front of it and slows. Far faster then any current driver.

You are just another object. The fact that you are on a bike getting in everyone's way is irrelevant.

Why can't the be just as safe?

You'r post tells everyone everything about you: You are a pretentious hater.

" google cars should never be allowed on the road."
Not: " until they can reliable detect bicycles, driver-less cars shouldn't be sold to the public.

Have you contact Mercedes to tell them they need to stop selling there cars that can automatically follow the car in front of them? do you rally against self parking cars?

I'm sure you ancestors railed against fire.

For that price, you can get far more powerful PCs.
In fact, you could get several PC and create a mini farm.

OTOH, it's for a graphic designer, so pretty of substance.

1. I disagree.
2. No more then it is now. Pop open the top, and blow it out.
3. As nears as I can tell, the motherboard isn't standard, but everything else is.
4. Clearly you didn't pay attention to how it removes heat. Having the weight at the bottom is better.
5. lan parties. Cute.

Why not trapezoid?

I'm not hearing a no....

Some do. But mostly, it's to prevent damage from spillage.

Frankly, we need to go back to desk tops.

False. Very few Application use more then a few gigs.
Some do, and that's great, but for 95+% of users, it would just be wasted.
This isn't 1993

It's math.

but when I am, I buy Alienware.

That's a rather one-sided view of what happened. Yes, the Soviet Union did invade Afghanistan as part of pushing its global ideology, much like the USA invaded Vietnam. But the stone age state of Afghanistan at the time of the US invasion in 2001 was a direct result of America supporting religious fanatics in a proxy war, the mujahideen, who after the war ended and the Soviet's were defeated went on to become the Taliban. That's why bin Laden is so famously a former ally of the US.

The USA is not only building an empire but doing so in plain sight of everyone. To quote Putin directly:

Our partners, especially in the United Sates, always clearly formulate their own geopolitical and state interests and follow them with persistence. Then, using the principle “You’re either with us or against us” they draw the whole world in. And those who do not join in get ‘beaten’ until they do.

This principle is most clearly visible in two acts. One is that the sanctions on Iran are built as a "you're with us or against us" model. Any country that is seen by America to be "undermining" the sanctions i.e. not joining in is itself sanctioned. And the second act is again sanctions based: every financial institution in the world is being taken over by Washington via a system of recursive ("viral" if you like) sanctions that require banks to obey the USA even if that would contradict local laws. The goal is to collect tax from American's abroad. It's called FATCA and it's resulted in many, many nations having to repeal their own privacy laws, in order to allow banks to become agents of the US Government. They were given no choice in the matter.

So the USA has found ways of forcing people in countries all over the world to: (a) engage in economic warfare against America's enemies and (b) pay taxes directly to America, all regardless of what the local government wants or how the local people vote.

Being able to conscript people to their fights and force payment of taxes is the very foundation of empire itself.