Well, close...

FTFA:

I gotta admit, I'm curious why the NASA mission flying on there couldn't have been done on ISS...

Have you looked here?

And I assume there are a couple of pilots on the flight who could easily verify if this was the case.

Well, the issue would be is that $59 that you're paying at least "revenue neutral" (i.e., the city government isn't losing money).

The complaint about having the government be an ISP is that they can afford to operate at a loss because they can use your tax dollars to fill in the gaps. I can understand the argument--remember the Space Shuttle and the effect it had on commercial launches in the US? That said, private businesses are not providing service because they claim they can't do it profitably (even with government subsidies to build out infrastructure). So if they're not interested, find someone else who is.

In my opinion, I have no problem with the city owning the wires that connect to my house and go to the central office. I'm a little leery about having them be a full-blown ISP, providing the service, though. I think it's better for them to open up those wires to any company that wants to provide that service on the city owned wires.

"The South's Gonna Do It Again!!"
"Do what? Lose?"

I wouldn't say it's worse than useless. But it may not be the panacea that we expect.

First, I have my doubts about the whole "A.I. Can Handle Anything" theory. Weather, accidents, and construction can create very creative roadways where you will want a driver behind the wheel who'll be able to figure out and work with human beings on the scene (for example, a cop doing traffic control around an accident).

So you'll still want drivers. The question is, how many drivers will you need?

Consider long-haul trucks, which are the ones that are really ripe for automation. They usually have two drivers so that they can run 24 hours at a stretch. I believe--and I may be off--that the rules for these people require that they drive no more than 12 hours. It might be 10 hours, I don't remember. But in any event, the reason you have two drivers is so that you don't have a truck spending 12-14 hours sitting by the side of the road while the single driver sleeps.

You could get rid of one driver right there. A long haul truck with one driver who can sleep for 12 hours and will only be woken up if something weird is going on that the truck can't handle so it pulled off to the side of the road. That's still saving money versus having two drivers and is certainly not "worse than useless."

First, they needed women.

Maybe you should apply...

...and if not, does it make a sound?

Well, here's an interesting question...

If I hack their website such that I can give myself 93,000,000 air-miles, why should I tell United so that they'll give me "up to a million" air-miles?

CIgxNlLIZkWuDS8JcvqjwzXAqjVADEDwwCBml6tbrEaUF5aR42XNlbjwBLwtTC+38yBXvxm9fSpE/Hi0
FwJ1tk2R4aCmvulqMYX3mexWd6Gc2oKQVkcAGh/Q+cPfDUO5sgPlphSoO5fuBNl6dhZFjQ

Same here. Anyone that says, "We need your e-mail address and we promise we won't spam you" gets the AOL account. I check it, maybe, once every few months.

"Lose" money? I don't think so. They get money from being on Spotify.

The question is, do they get as much as they could/should?

I wouldn't say it's an asinine question.

My "office" (i.e., my cube) does not have a window. There is one big window for everybody, but where I am, I don't get any particular benefit out of the window. If it was covered tomorrow, I doubt I'd even notice.

As long as I have Internet access and something to amuse me, I don't really care if the car has windows or not. If I can watch movies or TV shows or video chat with people or whatever, why would I look out the window?

Now this makes an assumption that my car is always in auto-drive and I am always a passenger. If I'm ever expected to drive the car, I definitely need windows. And I doubt we're going to see the day, at least in the near future, where that won't be the case.

Okay, wait a second!

Here we have all these people saying that they wouldn't trust an automated car but they're fine with automated turrets? What happens when that asshole in the left lane takes out your turret? Then you got nothin'!

I agree. You need gunports--at least a backup.

Well, let's see.

Make 1 million cars without windows at a cost of x. Make 1 million cars with windows at a cost of y. Sell out of the cars with windows. Don't sell a single car without windows. Hope that your profit margin on the cars with windows is enough to pay for all the sales you didn't make on the other cars.

While I agree that it's worth considering whether you need windows in a car, it's probably more fiscally prudent to do some research and figure it out rather than waste the time, effort, and money designing and building a product that nobody wants.

Measure twice. Cut once.