New Jersey's much-derided jughandles do exactly that. People from out of town don't get them but they can considerably improve traffic flow.

Driving in DC's "arteries" is broken-field running, jumping into the right lane to get around people turning, then jumping left to get around cars that are somehow allowed to park on the arterial roads in some spots. It's really quite abysmal.

DC's traffic largely due to more cars than lane miles, but a fair bit of it is due to poor design that leaves a lot of pavement underused. I'm really looking forward to letting a computer do it. Computers could coordinate a far better system without having to build a lot more asphalt.

Even if trial by combat became legal once again, it wouldn't be done with surprise sniping. Instead the litigants would have to fight it out at their municipal thunderdome or something.

As long as the total liability is decreased, then it's a solvable problem. We already have mandatory insurance in a lot of places. We could piggyback off that. It would involve some legislating and contracting and other paper-shuffling, but it doesn't seem impossible to just treat it as part of your insurance.

Heck, the insurance companies might even offer you a discount for turning your car over to a superior mechanical driver.

People may want to go after Google's deep pockets, and that's up to lawyers to figure out. I'm not a lawyer myself, so I can't really say how the ins-and-outs play out. For all I know, it may end up with Google assuming full responsibility, and you pay your insurance premiums to Google rather than your insurer. Google then turns it around to whatever reinsurer was really handling your insurance in the first place.

The transition would, I'm sure, be ugly, just because this is a litigious society and the rules encourage people to sue. Not to mention two political parties whose first jobs will be "what side of this issue are we on, and how can we make sure that the other side doesn't get what they want?", blocking any legislation. But of all the tech companies in the world, Google seems the one with the most practice at lobbying for a change.

Plenty of people will try to stop it, but there's also going to be at least some impetus to fix it, since it has the potential to save many lives and reduce traffic massively. (Automated cars can be much better coordinated and timed. Go watch humans try a zipper merge and you'll scream at all of them to get their incompetent hands off the wheels.)

That all depends on it working, of course, and we're some years from that. So it's not too soon to start working on the political theory of the new system. But a new system shouldn't be impossible. (Note: I am being uncharacteristically optimistic. My usual response to political things is "it's going to fail because the system is designed for inaction". Try again tomorrow and I may well find it impossible.)

Thing is, the systems that are already on the road are also controlled by neural nets. Really crappy ones, with slow reaction times, a very limited sensor set (it has barely 110 degrees of vision), and is incredibly prone to impairing even those limited abilities. Yes, it's got a few advantages, with an almost preternaturally potent visual recognition system, but even so it's responsible for 10 million accidents per year, with tens of thousands of fatalities.

Humans just aren't very good drivers. Automated systems will make mistakes, though the more of them there are on the road, the fewer they will make, because they'll be able to communicate with each other to reduce accidents still further. Total accidents will likely be reduced dramatically. People will throw red flags as soon as somebody manages to actually get injured by one (most likely in an urban setting, with a small child laying in the middle of the road and being mistaken for road trash), but if we get lucky and avoid that for just a little while, people will realize eventually that the total number of deaths is far, far fewer when you turn it over to machines that don't get drunk, fall asleep, or take most of a second to get information from their brains to the brake pedals.

Well, lessee... a bit of Googling says that your average 9V will have about 15 to 20 kJ. Let's go with the high number.

For a 100 kg fridge, if I'm doing the math correctly, that comes out to 20 meters. Not bad, actually. Or 15 meters for the low end.

Of course you can't really get that kind of efficiency, I'm sure. And 100 kg is actually a pretty light fridge. But it's actually not completely out of the realm of possibility.

(Unless I've screwed up the math, which is entirely possible.)

> This is the first time that I can think of that a population directly voted in the affirmative to collapse their economy.

In fact, that happens so often, political scientists have a term for it: "populism". It's very popular in some parts of the world.

Mostly not in the /first/ world, admittedly.

Yeah, the similarity of figures between the two did strike me as suspicious.

Sure. Perhaps you've heard of bigamy? Alice can't marry Carol because Bob already has a vested marital interest with Alice. For example, if Alice marries Carol and dies, Carol is entitled to 100% of her assets as spouse. But so is Bob.

That's not the policy rationale for the prohibition on bigamy, and while it is perhaps a little better of a reason than administrative convenience, it boils down to the same thing, since the question of marital property is one of the issues that legislatures will have to address when the ban is overturned as it inevitably will be.

On the contrary, tradition is absolutely relevant as to whether something is a fundamental right. Marriage is a fundamental right because it's enshrined in our traditions and collective conscience. ...
Polygamy does not have such a place in our traditions or collective conscience, and therefore is not a fundamental right.

Yep, that's the bullshit argument that people were rolling out against same sex marriage all right. That because it wasn't traditional, it wasn't fundamental.

The core mistake with that argument, whether in the context of same sex marriage or marriage among persons already married, or in larger numbers than two, is that what's fundamental is not opposite sex marriage, or same sex marriage, or polygamous marriage, but simply marriage, without qualification of any kind.

Issues like gender, race, consanguinity, marital status, and number of spouses are all restrictions on that singular fundamental right. Whether they stand hinges on whether they can be justified. Two of them, it transpires, cannot be. Ultimately I think the only restriction that will hold up will be consent, and perhaps consanguinity will have to be reframed in terms of consent if it's to be salvaged.

because, as noted earlier, 3>2. Equal protection is an issue where two groups that are equally situated are treated differently. For marriage, there is no difference between a gay couple and a heterosexual couple. There is a difference between a couple and a larger group, however.

The litigant needn't be the entire group. Marriage is a fundamental right, subject to various restrictions, such as consent and consanguinity. Yesterday, one of the restrictions, at least in some places, was that the genders of two of the spouses couldn't be the same. Today, it's fine nationwide if they're the same.

The restriction to look at now is whether the marital status of each spouse in the marriage at hand is single. Today it has to be. But there's not a good reason for it. (As already mentioned, administrative convenience is not a good reason). So why can't Alice, who is married to Bob, now also marry Carol? Bob isn't marrying Carol; the A-C marriage would be between two people only. You're treating Alice differently merely because she is already married.

It's also not a fundamental right, as polygamy is not part of the traditions and collective conscience of society, except for Mormons.

Marriage is a fundamental right and is extremely broad. Restrictions on marriage, such as requiring the spouses to be of opposite genders, or of the same race, or of the same religion, or of compatible castes, etc. are not inherently part of marriage and are certainly not part of the fundamental right of marriage.

Also, today's events make it clear that tradition is irrelevant; polygamy is practiced today among many groups, and has a long history back into antiquity. Same sex marriage was known in the past but was far more rare.

It will certainly be a massive pain in the ass. But administrative inconvenience is not an adequate justification for denying people their fundamental rights or equal protection of the law. It'll take a while, but just as this took a while, but in time polyamororous marriages will be legally recognized.

I appreciate your reply, though please note that the post you're replying to was incomplete; Slashdot's lousy UI went ahead and posted it while I was in the middle of writing it. For the whole thing (revised slightly) see here: http://entertainment.slashdot....

Anyway, I don't have any qualms with rightsholders complaining about, or refusing to assign or license rights to, businesses that they disagree with. That's their choice. But the music industry is in a bad way right now. Siding with Apple might be a bad choice, but refusing to deal with them might also be a worse one. There probably isn't a good option to choose.

Most people won't buy CDs if they can buy tracks online. Most people won't buy tracks online if they can stream; music purchase is already dying if you look at the numbers. Most people won't pay for streaming if they can stream for free. And most people won't do any of those things if the cost and inconvenience is even moderate, because piracy is free and quite easy also.

(Note also that because an individual's taste in music typically ossify, once they've got a big enough collection, barring format shifts, which don't happen anymore, you basically lose them as a customer. You'd better hope that they stream instead of collecting, and that if they collect, they pay for it instead of pirate it)

Like it or lump it, this is the reality that participants in the music industry need to face. Bitching about Apple isn't going to change it.

It's not illegal. Apple either has permission from the rightsholders for the music they offer, or a statutory right to offer it, and doesn't offer the music for which they don't have permission or a right.

Well, looks like /. ate and posted an incomplete post of mine. I guess I won't try writing any posts from my phone in the future, if their UI is going to be this crappy. Let's try again, with a few revisions:

I think she's calling for a bit too much out of Apple.

Apple is a hardware company; any products or services they offer other than hardware are only relevant to them because they think it'll help them sell hardware. Apple also has a justified complex regarding self-sufficiency. More on that presently.

When listening to compressed music on computers began to take off, Apple responded by buying SoundJam MP, modifying it, and releasing it as iTunes. Mostly this was to sell computers -- making sure that people knew that Macs were well-suited to storing, organizing, and playing music files, and could also rip and burn CDs. It was also part of their complex to not rely on third parties to provide important features, and this was now deemed an important feature, with the iPod beginning development shortly after the purchase of SoundJam, and with iTunes to be the syncing software for it.

Releasing a Windows version of iTunes, and selling music via the iTunes Music Store were both just strategies to sell more iPods. Apple figured that some people would buy downloaded music at the 99 cent price point, and that some of them might even be former pirates. The store's label-mandated use of DRM would also help lock customers into the iTunes ecosystem, helping to sell more iPods.

Streaming is just more of the same; because of free streaming, many people who would buy music, or who would pirate music, have flocked to listen to music legally for free (at the expense of having to use bandwidth to stream, not having offline copies, and losing some degree of choice in what you're listening to when. Also, ads). While the iPhone is now more important than the iPod, Apple likes having people locked into the iOS ecosystem. They like having people buy iOS devices, on which music listening is still a core feature (and will continue to be, e.g. with the CarPlay platform). Streaming has become important, and like all important things, it can't be left in the hands of third parties. Therefore Apple must provide music streaming.

But music streaming is a crappy business. Almost all the users stay in free tiers; a mere handful actually pay. Apple's plan is to draw users in with a free time period and then hope for a good attach rate when the time comes for users to either cancel or pay to subscribe. I doubt that Apple will get more than 10 million paying customers (and therefore will only get revenues of around $200 million their first year, and around $300 million in later years after accounting for payments to rightsholders). Frankly, they can find more money than that in their couch cushions. Apple isn't interested in streaming for how profitable it is (read: it really isn't). And I'm sure that they know that in the absence of free streaming, most people will go right on back to pirating music again (with some returning to the iTunes Store, which suits Apple fine).

The whole point of Apple's streaming service therefore is just to keep their hand in, and to prevent a potential rival from being in a position where Apple is so dependent on the rival that the rival has power over Apple.

So can Apple pay rightsholders during the free period? I'm sure they can afford it. Although it makes no economic sense for Apple, as it would cost over $20 million per million free users, and with low attach rates expected, this could easily run over a billion dollars in payouts for a business expected to generate far far less than that. It's frankly not important enough to them to do it. Putting up with Taylor Swift whining at them, and rightsholders loudly complaining that the world is no longer stuck in the 80's and early 90's, is not too big of a cross to bear.

Apple's options other than a free trial period are a free tier, or no free anything. We already know what Swift thinks about the former. The latter is the plan that Tidal is pursuing, plus a higher subscription rate. I don't think it's going to fly. Whether or not it is a legal substitute, piracy is a real substitute, and can't be ignored. If music costs too much to get, people will gladly pirate. Hell, they'll often pirate just for the joy of it. And for a lot of people, any amount of money out of their pockets is too much. Tidal will not be able to reverse the tide of piracy, and asking Apple to follow in its footsteps will neither change the reality of the music industry nor convince Apple to actually do it, given the relative unimportance of legal music for them at this point.

So by all means, she has a right to complain. But I don't see the numbers working out in a way that will put any force behind her complaints. The music industry will have to collapse further, and be rebuilt anew, before it can become viable again, if it ever can.

Regarding Apple's complex about self-sufficiency, it's due to a history of sudden but inevitable betrayal. In 1978, Apple licensed Microsoft BASIC (renamed Applesoft BASIC) because Apple never got around to finishing floating point routines for their own BASIC. The license was for 7 years. The renewal came up in 1985, at a time when Apple still relied on the profits of the Apple II line, all of which had Applesoft BASIC in ROM. Apple hadn't ever gotten around to making a perfectly compatible new BASIC, which meant that MS had them by the short hairs. Luckily, all MS wanted to renew the license was for Apple's BASIC for the Macintosh to get canceled, which it was.

Later, MS again had great power over Apple, because Apple needed MS Office to be available for the Mac, and MS has both used this as a sword and also never quite made it as good as the Windows version. Now Apple has made their own little office suite just to have some alternative available. (It's not quite a substitute, but it's something, especially for casual users)

Then as Netscape collapsed, Apple needed a good web browser, and had to make a deal with MS for IE. The ultimate response for that was for Apple to write their own browser, Safari.

The original (Google-based) Maps program for the iPhone started as just a demo for scrolling, IIRC. It rapidly became an invaluable feature, but Google became a competitor, and withheld new features seen on Android's version of Maps from the iPhone. Therefore Apple had to develop its own Maps program. (And should've seen this coming as early as 2008)

Why did Apple get into the ebooks business? Because Amazon dominates it, and Apple saw that the iPad might make a good ebook reader. Therefore Apple had to have its own alternative option, not to seriously compete, but to make sure that Amazon couldn't kill off the iOS Kindle app, thus harming iPad sales to people who wanted to read ebooks on iPads.

Ginning up a rival to Spotify & co. is just more of the same.

I think you're kinda screwed either way, actually. Words do hurt; you can tell people to just tough it out but it means that you end up conceding large amounts of the political space to the ones most willing to be cruel and least injured by being defamed.

I'm not calling for speech policing here. I'm just pointing out that the real people who participate in political processes are subject to human failings. It's not a logical conversation; it's emotionally charged rhetoric. So just saying "everybody says whatever they want" amounts to a different kind of censorship. It may well be the most unbiased form of censorship and the one that is most "just", but it's not without downsides.

You see it in social media all the time. Trolls can shut down conversations. Web sites that don't want to be primarily about trolls and up providing tools to reduce their visibility, one way or another. It's often called "censorship", and in some senses it is, albeit not government censorship because it's not a state matter. The national conversation is a state matter, and a state may well want to think about what kinds of tools are appropriate for keeping the conversation civil and productive.

Again, not calling for censorship. I haven't got any policy to offer. It's just that I think it's important to recognize that free speech has non-obvious feedback loops that make it less free than it appears.