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Comment Re:Seems appropriate (Score 1) 353

In certain legal crimes, intent matters. If you kill someone, then they have to prove you intended to harm the person. But in other crimes - it does not matter at all. For example, your intent does not matter at all if you are charged with reckless endangerment. Your belief that intent matters here is false. We don't care if you accidentally gave us the wrong password or intentionally did it.

Comment Re:Cellphones and laptops will save us all. (Score 1) 389

First of all, I am not talking about blackouts, I am discussing other issues.

Second of all, the only reason so little storage is needed is because we use fossil fuels to store the energy. Among other things. In places where they use hydroelectric, they have a choice - set their water usage to prevent blackouts, or routinely raise it and lower it creating water flows that are incredibly bad for wildlife.

Comment Cellphones and laptops will save us all. (Score 3, Informative) 389

The real problem is not energy generation, but energy storage. So research into better batteries (mainly fuels by laptops and cellphones) can save us.

Because the real benefit of the fossil fuels is the high density of the stored energy.

Give me the technology to build a battery that can power an electric car for 500 miles, and ...

Electric cars can now work for 99% of the population - all running on power they store overnight/while at work.

Solar can now store enough to last not only through the night but also through a cloudy day.

Wind based energies can now store enough to get through some calm days

Comment Download vs indexing (Score 4, Insightful) 87

It is very quick and easy for someone to load a bunch of crap onto a computer. It takes a lot longer to index all that information so that it can be found multiple ways (i.e. to find the word "peanut butter" in a book you can either read the entire book, looking for that word, of if someone has compiled an index at the back, just look there and find it instantly).

All of the schemes to 'download' information to a human brain ignore indexing. That means if you were to say download a german dictionary to someone's human mind, they could NOT just speak german - nor could they understand it.

Instead, they would have to laboriously spend hours thinking about every single german word, and eventually teach themselves german, from the memories they had installed.

Indexing is the creation of relationships. Furthermore memories are not indexed just one way. The word dollar for example is indexed as a currency, as an example of words that begin with the letter d, as a kind of store, as pronunciation, and as rhyming with the word Holler. etc etc. etc.

Memory is not a simple thing, but a very complex web of connections.

Comment I doubt the dna stuff will come true (Score 1) 353

That looks a bit too invasive to me - there is no way it could be compulsory in the current USA constitution and I bet there are far more 'bad' genetic tendencies than 'good' ones.

But the fitbit stuff, I could see occurring - 10% reduction if you wear one 24/day and qualify. Not that different from what we do with cars today. Most importantly, unlike the DNA stuff, a fitbit monitor would theoretically encourage better behavior, which makes political sense, while dna mapping has tons of political issues.

The real problem we are having is not the loss of privacy per se, it's the abuse of private information. Most people are fine letting Onstar know their current location. We are not fine with Onstar telling anyone that information - not the police, not our wife, not our boss.

What we really need are a bunch of punitive laws that punish people/corporations for 'accidental' release of information. It doesn't have to be severe, but monetary compensation seems reasonable. They make X dollars selling the stuff, so we should have the right to get Y if they sell it or give it away without our permission (and Y should be far in excess of X).

Comment Re:John Smith? (Score 4, Insightful) 148

You are kidding right? Are you that foolish?

Court is expensive. Worse, often the 'John Smith" guy is a lawyer, working for a client, both of whom are located outside the USA. So even when you win, you get nothing.

Basically your strategy is to spend tens of thousands of dollars to get absolutely nothing done.

Comment They already have email, why anything more? (Score 2) 131

Look, 'social networks' consist of a compilation of several functions - email, blog, games, and simple push broadcasting for associations you join.

Works already provides emails and usually has a tech group that sets up email groups for push broadcasting. push. Generally you don't need the blog, and work actively discourages the uses of games.

Could we make a successful social network for work? Yes. All you have to do is:

1. Make it your ONLY form of email - in particular make the subgroups the only way to make email groups.

2. Use the blogging functionality extensively. Make it your wiki/source for information about how people do their job, what to do when they can't reach you, when you are on vacation, who to reach when you are unavailable, etc.

3. Let people play games on it for upto one 50 minutes a day (i.e. lunch hour.)

Comment Re:Auto insurance and accident rates (Score 1) 236

I exaggerated when I referenced alcohol. But is is one of the major causes of accidents.

I did make some assumptions. But that is in fact the game here. But the Assumption I made there is not huge. Yes, the first runs will have issues. But google has already proven the concept works. Most importantly, the AI cars can cut accident rates by the simple act of reducing the speed. Taxis in particular will not be adverse to having a set speed limit of 35 mph, particularly in city driving. The cars don't need zero errors, they just need to be better than humans, which is VERY easy to do. Have you seen taxi drivers?

I am not an actuary, but I was talking about car accident insurance, not theft, etc. Liability and incidental are relatively small contributors. Theft will also decrease when the car can call the police or simply drive away from the thief. Insurance rates for AI cars will be much lower than human controlled cars. Please note that even if cars in general are human controlled, the AI driven cars will have MUCH cheaper car insurance rates.

As for ten years, I looked at the introduction of cellphones. Please note I was talking about the majority of new cars being sold So the lifespan of the old cars is irrelevant. The lifespan of old cars does not affect the new cars sold.

Your arguments are flawed, particularly the last one. I stand by the general sentiment of all of my claims, and the exact wording of the major ones.

Comment Re:Until there is Tort reform... (Score 1) 236

I disagree. You are assuming that we will have the same number car accidents. The majority of car accidents are caused by human error. Specifically the error of thinking "I am not drunk."

First there will be test runs. When the test runs do not have car accidents, taxi companies will start using them. Be honest, people would rather trust a computer than the kind of guy that drives taxis in NYC.

Then rich people will be getting them for their elderly parents - AND their children (Why sure I will get my alcoholic, drug using reprobate of a child a car - just one they can't drive.).

By then we will have huge records of a huge decrease in accidents by computer. The fact that the computer based cars will have video recordings of the few accidents they do get into, which will for the most part blame the humans in the other car will be the final tipping point

Then suddenly, car insurance rates will drop to almost nothing - if the car is computer controlled. At the same time, car insurance rates for human controlled vehicles will skyrocket.

Finally everyone will get a computer controlled car.

The whole process should take less than ten years from the introduction of the first commercially available 'no need to have a driver's license car', till the majority of new cars sold being computer controlled.

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