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Wrong on just about every account. It is not a matter of the alternative, it's a matter of what happens when an incident occurs and how a human is still the fail safe. Under many circumstances I would agree that auto-pilot is better. Long boring drives where the weather is good and the car operates normally being one of those. Where the automatic goodies fail is always when the unexpected occurs. A deer jumps out of the trees in front of the car, road debris too small for sensors or human eyes destroy a tire, weak pavement gives way, a patch of ice on a stretch road, etc.. etc.. We see the exact same thing in flight, and interestingly people here attribute a crashing plane to the human even when the human had to intervene because the plane was crashing despite automatic controls.

One day all of these exceptions can be built into software making the computers reaction better, but we are not there yet. TFA is not talking about having untrained people in cars in a decade, it's equating with current technology. So are you by the way. Arguing that we have all of these things covered in autopilot is provably false. Google cars can't drive today in poor weather, and a blowing paper bag is see as the same thing as a concrete block to sensors.

As I said below you can't compare automating complex issues like this to figuring how the physics for how lift works. It is not the same thing and not the same level of complexity.

We've seen enough corporate sociopathy to accurately answer that question.

Why didn't they just go with BSD?

Figuring out the laws of physics required for lift is not the same thing as automating a complex task that limited numbers of humans can perform. I gave the example in automation, and you simply plucked something out of the air to say "nuh uh".

Show me where automating flight has been perfected to the point where we no longer require humans. We have not done so, and that is the measure we need to make.

No, we don't. We have pilots with training who can take over in an emergency. Landing in the Hudson is probably the most famous case, but plenty of similar less dramatic events have occurred.

And if the nation has no laws against those crimes? Because the people in charge of the laws are the people who committed the action? And yes, that does happen. Frequently. I'm not even going to give examples, because if you can't think of them, you really need to open a history text sometime.

No offense, but the idea that a country can't prosecute someone for anything they did outside the country is just plain stupid.

No.

You do not get to go to some Asian country to rape little kids because its legal there, then come back to the states and live your normal life. Sorry senator, we've already said no to that idea. You don't get to go to Europe and get stoned off your ass and come home to no worries.

People get by with it because they don't make it obvious and in full public view.

Wrong.

You don't get in trouble in New Jersey if you don't go to new Jersey and make it obvious you did something entirely against their laws. New Jersey will still arrest you if they find out you did something horrible elsewhere even if it wasn't technically illegal in that other jurisdiction.

If you don't like the laws of New Jersey, DON'T GO TO NEW JERSEY.

This guy is, frankly, a fucking moron for working pretty much anywhere in the middle east. And more than that, he's a fucking moron for posting it all over a VERY PUBLIC website and then being shocked when he found out when he got home. He's an idiot in multiple ways.

Still the self driving car, should allow for manual control at least enough to allow you to safely park the car to the side of the street.

A lot of these issues they have brought up as vehicle error was actually human error. "runaway acceleration, unexpected braking" That sounds like the person may have temporarily got their mind twisted and hit the accelerator where they wanted to hit the break, and vice versa. Most of the time when our brains get twisted, we quickly resolve the issue. But I remember resting my hand on a Soda Bottle while driving, a car with automatic transmission, and when I was driving after hearing the engine at a particular RPM with my left foot I tried to reach for a non-existent clutch, my right food off the accelerator. I hadn't drove a car with manual transmission for about 5 years, but a particular set of sentence tactile, audio, visual. Triggered a reaction that I wanted to change gears.
The problem is a temporary lapse in judgment, can cause particular effects. And there are enough people who will be too afraid to admit that they made a mistake would blame the technology.

If by for some reason your car is having runaway acceleration, instead of driving a herroing tail at high speeds like in the movie Speed 2 but only with a land base motor vehicle and not a boat, you shift the car in neutral, and break/parking(emergancy) break. You can do this while the car is in motion for Standard, Automatic, even Hybrid Cars.

You know for women who suffer from breast cancer.

Years ago, I had to move about $2K between two banks every week. The banks were only about 3 blocks apart. If I wrote a check, it could be delayed by up to a week.

After a few weeks of that, I decided to just walk into the first bank, withdraw the cash, walk to the second bank and deposit it. Every single fucking time I did it, there was always some hassle.

On several occasions, I explained to both bank managers and various middle managers, why I was doing it (because they both sucked). Something would always get it hung up. What should have taken about 10 minutes total could take up to 2 hours.

They are both in the top 10 largest banks in the US. Because of their repeated incompetence, I will never willingly do business with again. I can go in there to take money away from them (legally, of course). I will never have an account with them again.

He didn't. This is a standard bit of Blackberry astroturfing. Instead of innovating, this is what BB does now.

You should know better than to make false assertions when we have plenty of evidence countering your assertion that technology will ever be this good. Since the 1960s we have been automating space travel and airlines, and still need pilots and astronauts because when the shit hits the proverbial fan humans are required to intervene. Sometimes to correct problems with the technology, and sometimes to bypass it and fly by hand.

Drones require people to pilot them too, so don't try to go down a bad path.

I don't see this as a problem of litigation, I see it as the only sensible approach to having technology. Nothing, and that is an absolutely nothing, has ever been made by man which has been perfect. We try for "the best we can" but stuff breaks and the unexpected does occur. With an estimated 250,000,000 cars on the road chances are high that something will go wrong pretty damn fast. With motor vehicles already being the number one killer in the US annually, we want human intervention early and often. That means trained drivers behind the wheel.

As stated above, a half a century has not perfected "self driving" anything else. It's much better today than 50plus years ago but not even close to the point where you can fly without a human.

Ubuntu's phone OS has one extremely attractive feature that if adopted by microsoft and working with intel could make for an absolute winner of a phone. What I want is to be able to get a functional and attractive smart phone, plug it into a dock and have a fully fledged computer, with a desktop keyboard and mouse that I can installl intel standard windows software on. It would require intel to pick up their game, but it would be awesome. Not a cut down RT nonsense windows that forces me to use a reduced catalogue of windows app, but a full blown windows OS with all the bells and whistles. Note, Apple could do this too, as I'm probably more comfortable on a mac than windows these days.

Actually, there is, sort of. You can refuse to accept cash: however, they are valid legal payment for the debt, so if you refuse the payment, you are either de facto implying the debt no longer exists (because you're not accepting repayment for it), or you're breaking the law by refusing legal payment. You cannot refuse repayment in cash and then claim the debt still exists. IANAL, so I'm sure there are subtleties involved with, for e.g., contracts (i.e. you agree to give them 10 widgets later in exchange for 5 doohickeys now, offering cash instead would be a violation of the contract), but generally, creditors must accept cash in repayment of debts.

Larry Niven as well. Was it the third or fourth Ringworld book that went on at great length about various humanoid species fucking?