I'm self employed because I hate putting up with the BS involved in being an employee. I am not getting rich but I have a LOT more free time. For me it is a freedom issue.

"Real journalists" have a conflict of interest. They want to keep their jobs and their access to government sorces. As a result, they become stenographers for government PR people.

The media owners also have a conflict of interest. They are intimidated by the government and demand that the journalists do what it takes to keep the midia owners business safe. They are also intimidated by the threat of lawsuits.

As a result the media has become garbage. I am sad to say that there is no high quality media in the United States today. Better coverage can be had from foreign sources and bloggers.

Politicians and insurance companies will come up with new creative ways to screw the peasants (You and me). If engineers can be creative at what they do, why can't crooks like politicians and insurance companies?

How does a human driver react to the polite driver, the impatient driver or the insane driver? When I notice an unsafe driver I give them extra room so no matter how they drive I will have time to stop. I don't see why similar behavior could not be programmed. The simple rule of making sure you have time to stop no matter what the other cars do should handle most of that.

The hardest challenge would be hackers, smart people who want to throw a monkey wrench in the system. Maybe they like seeing accidents or maybe they just want to shut down the system. It would probably be possible interfere with a cars detection systems.

On the whole, I think the benefits of a driver less car would outweigh drawbacks.

Insurance is not a problem. Automakers will estimate the liability risk and add that to the price of the car. Insurance companies will not want to lose the revenue stream so they will figure out a way to keep selling insurance to drivers.

In the end it will be the consumer who picks up the tab for liability. Just like it is now.

You can still drive very old cars that don't have the latest safety technology today. Cars from the 50's don't have seat belts or dual brake lines or smog controls.

I don't see why this is a problem. It is simple programming to notice that the brakes have been activated and the car is not slowing at the required rate and to shift into low, turn on the emergency flashers, possibly send a signal indicating 'Car out of control to nearby cars'. When the car has slowed sufficiently, it could pull over to the side and wait for a tow. In other words it would do what a skillful driver would do.

Most likely the car would have redundant braking systems as most cars do today. I wonder what portion of drivers today know if the brakes fail, to downshift and to use the parking brake.

In addition to redundancy for critical systems, there would need to be robust diagnostic routines to detect for example that the brakes are not operating properly.

I see the most difficult problem as getting the software to a very reliable state and keeping it there. If your android has a bug and one function doesn't work no one dies.

Thanks for the info. I will make it a point to buy / recommend Leveno products. I want to reward this behavior.

The best way to rob a bank is to own one.

Pong to Atari 8 bit
Atari to MS Dos
MS Dos to Windows
Windows to Linux (in progress)

Some of us loved that obsolete software.

All of these programs ran in MS DOS, itself on of the great programs. Sorry, Microsoft haters, but at that point in my life, DOS was they only operating system I knew.

Q&A was a word processor and database (sort of). It had the totally cool feature of being able to add a list of figures in a document! It did macros.

Borland C After giving up on Microsoft C, someone gave me a copy of Borland C which had the advantage that it actually worked.

Telix was a full featured shareware comm program that was written by 17 year old! It was the best one out there at the time.

Norton Disk Doctor and Spinrite to keep the hard drive going.

Dirmagic was a program that handled files and directories instead of using the clunk dos commands.

Lemmings - Just plain fun.

Star Control 2 Great space game that told a story

DesqView and QEMM Allowed you to multitask in DOS.

The ick of making friends with someone who's visibly old. ???? Most of us old farts don't wear adult diapers, don't have old man smell, and if you actually talked to us, you might just find out that we have insights and ideas worth hearing.

Think about this. Someday you will be old. When that day comes, do you want people to think of you as "Icky"??

Neither of the candidates represent me. I am a liberal who wants maximum freedom. While I will vote peace and freedom, I have much more in common with both the peace and freedom part and the libertarian party than either the democrats or the republicans.

Both the democrats and the republicans are owned by special interests (read people richer that 99% of the people). It's not even a secret. the solicit campaign contributions (bribes) openly.

So why give either one your vote?

I think you are mistaking George for Santorum!