When the signs and lane markers are covered by snow and ice it will just default to using the same markers everyone else is using; the crashed cars driven by idiot humans who thought they could see the lane markers.

Seriously though, no autonomous vehicle would be dependent on lane markers as the sole feature for positioning, you need to use a multitude of inputs ranging from using markers to using LIDAR to map geometry of the area, through projection of probable trajectories and even to using prior knowledge or map data of the road. You have to have a multitude of independent systems cooperating, validating and agreeing on the most likely model for the current reality. Any autonomous vehicle deemed safe enough to actually operate autonomously should be significantly more capable of reliably assessing the situation than the average human. If any climate presents a difficulty for the detection and navigation part (as opposed to purely physical performance limitations) for an autonomous car it should not be allowed into traffic as it's obviously nowhere near capable enough to trust with human lives.

I consider it an opt-out, because if you just click Next, your previous settings are changed.

I'm really concerned that it might give children autism! I mean, imagine surviving an almost guaranteed fatal case of hemorrhagic fever, and the becoming autistic?

I think we have to ask ourselves "Would Jenny McCarthy give her ebola-stricken child this vaccine?"

Whatever MS's justification, they do actually ask you if you want to change your current apps for certain functions during the final stage of the upgrade phase. What I don't like is that it is essentially an "opt-out" rather than an "opt-in".

When I upgraded to Windows 10 yesterday, there was a screen that came up that asked me if I wanted to reset the default apps. I said no for my browser and media player, and when it completed, Chrome and VLC were still the default applications. I think it's a little underhanded, but not as underhanded as the article suggests.

He feeds idiots who think having an all 'libre' laptop is important. I'm not really seeing a problem with that. He's a poacher of fanboys who can't think critically.

Both sides win in that deal. The fanboy get to rant on about their Stallman fetishes and Todd gets to part them of their money.

The way I see it, its a match made in heaven, they deserve each other.

Contrary to what you believe, its not meant to replace RAM, its meant to replace spinning rust.

... You do realize there was proof (we sold them to him) and that he was bragging about it on national TV in order to keep Iran from walking all over his ass right?

Take your ignorance and shove it up your ass, your political agenda and reality are two entirely different things. It is possible to disagree with war and not have to make up a bullshit excuse for why you disagree, especially when you continue to drive your Ford Explorer around cheap gas because of it.

Because you told them that because they looked at one image in a magazine that they were addicted. You set them up to answer that way, likely by saying 'Are you addicted to porn' while shaking your head yes at them suggestively.

A 12-13 year old has no fucking clue what addiction is, even if they were. I'm fairly certain based on its usage here that no one involved in the study or conversation about the study knows what addiction actually is to.

Infatuation is not addiction morons.

Actually its 100%, but the other 82% were smart enough not to mention the shit they've seen mommy and daddy do. The real world sucks, if they can't cope with 'upsetting images' then porn is the least of your concern and hiding the kid in a card board box for the rest of his/her life so they don't have to survive on their own might be your best bet.

And 0% Use it because the parents aren't the ones that are freaked out about their kids looking at porn.

How sad is your world view when you think see two people do something entirely natural and REQUIRED FOR THE SURVIVAL OF OUR SPECIES and it offends you. And then to top it off, you have to freak out and project your personal issues with seeing boobies on to 12-13 year olds and convince them they are 'addicted' to something. 12-14 year olds are addicted to EVERYTHING THATS TABOO. If you told them it was dirty and sexual to brush their teeth 4 times a day, England would suddenly have the worlds healthiest teeth in the 12-13 year old group.

This kind of ignorance is spewed from some jack ass who doesn't have a kid (or isn't actually a parent to the kid) and doesn't realize that it will actually make MORE kids look at MORE porn.

How the fuck do people get old and totally forget what being a kid was like. It blows me away.

The issue is significantly more nuanced than that. Most people, and certainly most biologists and behavioral experts agree that there are certain animals that demonstrate sentience in a fashion at least analogous to the way humans think and feel. The great apes, and chimps, in particular, are among that rather rare group who share a significant number of emotional and cognitive traits with humans (little wonder, we're only separated by a few million years of evolution). So the idea here, so far as I understand it, is that those similarities are significant enough that chimps should enjoy, if not human rights, then at least some rights elevated from other far less human animals.

I tend to weigh on the side that sentient animals should receive protections similar to the protections we give to children or to adults deemed legally incompetent. That means they can't exercise many of the rights that we recognize adult humans have, but neither can they be wantonly exploited, physically or psychologically harmed.

But to pursue this in the courts is ludicrous. Personhood is fairly well defined in most, if not all, jurisdictions and it pretty much explicitly excludes anyone who isn't a member of H. sapiens. This is going to need to be something that is dealt with at the legislative level, and it's going to be a long fight.

A few years ago the U.S. military were evaluating a new hybrid vehicle to replace the Hummer. Their main interest was logistics, since Hummers aren't the most economical vehicles to operate. They couldn't help but notice that in electric mode their new vehicle was quiet.

Around here the Toyotas are positively noisy. The Teslas, on the other hand, only make a faint whirr from their tires.

...laura

We are primarily a government contractor, and our main contract had a Siebel-based client management system (only a government would have the combination of money and stupidity to invest in an ancient technology like that, but oh well), and up until late last year, we had to run IE in the lowest security mode and IE7 compatibility mode just to make the ActiveX components function. The new version is by and large HTML5 compatible, and though they recommend Firefox, we've had only a few bumps running Chrome. I doubt more than a handful of our staff even use IE now.

Yes, well, we often hurt the ones we love.

About the only place I still see IE is on some web-based applications from the late 90s thru the mid-00s that were built using IE 5 and 6's very insecure ActiveX architecture. Up until last year, we were forced to use such software on one of our government contracts, and it literally meant viewing the site in Compatibility Mode with security settings cranked down to nothing. They finally updated the underlying Siebel engine to the HTML5 version, and after that everyone just seemed to go to Chrome. I suppose at that point where we start rolling out Win10 desktops, Edge might end up being used, but I have a feeling that MS has missed the bus here, and Chrome is king.

I think Firefox dealt it the mortal blow, and then Chrome finished the job.