Roman concrete is still around. Not as many thousands of years, but modern concrete is not made to last as long as possible. Some ancient concrete was.

Slashdot should have an IQ test to post comments.

(But not articles, since then, there wouldn't ever be any.)

Yes, they will. But that's not what Google wants, or has shown as demos.. The only reason that's what will happen is that the California DMV is smarter than Google.

And dude, when CA DMV is smarter than you, you are stupid.

I agree. But that's not Google's plan, if they can get away with it. They're arrogant enough to think that their toys are ready for public roads.

Signing a contract with the specific intention of violating it can be. It can also be a felony, depending on the amount of money involved. If Uber is involved in coordinating this, in theory, they could end up facing RICO charges as a criminal syndicate.

The kind of thinking that leads to this kind of dishonesty is why the taxi industry has been so tightly regulated for so long.

If they're willing to do this to each other, to cost each other money, imagine what they're willing to do to you, the fare, who have money for them to take.

That Google thinks their self driving cars are ready for the open road isn't the issue. The issue is that they think they are ready to go straight from traditional cars to cars with no ability for the human passenger to take control if the new, unproven technology fails. That, by itself, convinces me that Google's judgment is flawed, and cannot be trusted. Were I making this decision, I wouldn't let Google's cars on public roads at all until they show some evidence that they understand why this is a bad idea.

Free is, indeed, a fine business model when the real purpose of providing cloud storage is to data mine it for targeted advertising, which has always been Google's business model, and is increasingly Amazon's, as well. 95% of Google's revenue is from advertising, and getting you, and me and everyone else, to store all their documents in Google Drive is well worth the cost to increase ad rates. Amazon's business model is a little different, but is getting more and more like Google's lately, with their announcement that they're working on their own ad network to replace Google's.

Everything that both companies have done lately - and that Google has ever done, has been to stuff that profile database as full as possible on everyone human being on the planet.

If you think you can go better, you should contact the show's producers. It's a very time consuming show to produce.

That'd be season one (Kari Byron), season two (Tory Belleci) and season three (Grant Imahara). There were maybe two episodes without at least one of the three (and one of the ones you especially dislike) in season one.

They wanted an hour long show. The five of them have been spending 48 weeks out of every year filming to get ten episodes per season. With 60% less on-screen talent, it will be a completely different show. Perhaps better, perhaps worse, but not at all the same.

Except, of course, the show's been on for 11 years, not seven. The newest of the B team is Imahara, who joined in 2005, nine years ago. They've already renegotiated contracts at least once.

Either they demanded more money, the ratings are down enough to want to cut costs, or they've got something else planned - they may get their own show.

Or, of course, they may all just be tired of filming 48 weeks out of every year, to get ten episodes.

Depends on whether or not you consider a deterrent to criminal copyright infringement an improvement. This being Slashdot, discouraging crime that let's them get free stuff is, of course, evil, bad, and totally unacceptable. But normal people might not agree.

Or someone who no longer has a legitimate bank account or job decides to take up crime as a career instead of a hobby.

Close. It's really more like "No crime that I'd like to commit myself if only I had the balls should have any form of punishment at all, especially crimes that let me get free stuff."

What is being called trolling here is inherent to web based discussions, and pretty much all moderated discussions. The reason it is inherent is that there cannot be an objective definition of trolling (or, to use web forum terminology, offensive posts) that is meaningful. It is inherently subjective, and to be enforced, there must be enforcers, i.e., moderators. And moderators are a biased as anybody - and everybody is - and the moment there is more than one moderator, the "trolls" will play them off against each other.

What you end up with, and I've seen this every single time in every single forum, no matter how lightly or heavily it is supposed to be moderated, is that people the moderators like - those who suck up to the mods - are allowed to do things that people the mods don't like. Every. Single. Time..

I saw a guy in one forum banned for refusing to say something that would have gotten him banned - the mod acknowledged this in the post announcing the ban. I've gotten an account suspended for reporting offensive behavior (by one of the mod's bootlickers) in exactly the say that mod had told me to do.

This isn't a problem with web forums, though. It's a problem with human nature. You get a group of people over a certain size, it will fragment in to cliques, and they will come in to conflict with each other. That's how people are. So any attempt to create an online forum with no trolls is either a pie-in-the-sky fantasy by someone without a clue, or it's pure snake oil. Either way, it's doom to fail, fail, fail, and then fail some more.

I have, many times.

In fact, I have been referred to as a troll god more than once. I've also been referred to as being like the polio vaccine, only with more asshole.