Fiber optic spanner is kind of a long name.

I suggest hyperspanner.

Asimov later added the 4th (or zeroth) law to address this issue.

0. A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

Basically translates to the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or one. So the robot car would chose to kill it's own passenger to save the bus full of children if those were the only two options.

I like the loaf of raisin bread analogy better.

The rest of the this wikipedia article explains things in more understandable terms.

A good driver will notice a dangerous situation and take manual control well before a bad event happens. For example, traffic congestion, road repair, bad weather, etc. Humans are still better at anticipating unexpected situations.

If you are in auto-drive and a bad event happens that requires a split second action, as others pointed out, it's probably statistically better to let the computer figure out the best course of action.

As far as auto-drive failure. If the system went offline, it would most likely be during a non critical time where the driver can safely transition to manual mode. Unlike a plane, a car can move to the shoulder, stop, and wait for the driver to get his or her act together.

The system just needs a rapid manual override and a little common sense from the driver.

I see self driving cars as an evolution of cruise control. Just as cruise control gets out of your way as soon as you manually press the accelerator or brake the auto drive system should get out of your way as soon as you move the steering wheel.

Also, drivers should take responsibility when they feel it's safe to engage the auto drive. I wouldn't use cruise control on a narrow mountain road, neither would I use auto drive. I would love to be able kick on auto drive on a long boring highway though and focus on a phone call or whatever.

Try DavMail and Thunderbird with Lightning. The closest I've ever had to the Outlook experience on Linux.

Hope it's true.

https://twitter.com/PlayStation/status/235824711601360898

I also vote for DS9, my wife loved the series for the same reasons the parent pointed out and got her interested in other scifi shows.

If I was trying to get one of my buddies into Star Trek I might not go for DS9 though, it's pretty slow in the action department. It's going to depend on the person, there is probably no best fit series or movie for everyone.

I've used Supermicro equipment for years. Their 1U Atom based systems work great for firewalls, routers, or any other kind of Linux network device. Low power, mostly fanless (power supply has a fan), expansion slots, decently priced. You can go up the line to full blown Xeon based systems with all the redundancy you need.

Their support is good also. You get to talk to knowledgeable people who speak English.

Supermicro website

The various browser implementations of HTML5 still haven't matured enough to reliably replace browser plugins in all cases. Specifically video playback support is still a mess due to all the codec patent issues. A recent project I worked on required us to encode the video in three different formats to cover all the major browsers. If we used Flash we would have only had to encode once. There is also no DRM solution for HTML5 video. This is a non-starter for many streaming companies like Netflix.

HTML5 get better everyday though, it's only a matter of time.

Would make sense if the rumors of a Steam Box are true.

With just a tag? No, not possible. In combination with javascript? Very possible.

There are plenty of javascript libraries out there that might get you most of the way there, like this one here.

A short-term survival advantage would be making a game-changing discovery like extraterrestrial life or some form of cheap energy (H3 maybe?). It's presumptuous to assume there is nothing out there that can't help us right now this very instant. Earth is but a tiny sample of the what the Universe has to offer us. Who knows what is out there that could solve our current problems and radically change the world. The short expeditions we've taken into our solar system haven't even scratch the surface. It's only through long term human presence in space that we can even begin to understand how it will effect society as a whole. Exploration is human nature for a good reason. The benefits often outweigh the risks.