Sorry. I was hijacking your statement to make another. Of course you are correct that for encryption to be effective it has to be the default for everyone rather than some special thing only criminals, national security types and paranoid people use. Basically using encryption now is like raising a big red flag saying 'look at me look at me I am using encryption!!'

But my point is that even with encryption it does not thwart 95% of the threat from unconstitutional government surveillance or criminal hackers. Sure if Google can make encryption more standard then that would be a great accomplishment, but it is just one small slice of the privacy pie.

Encryption misses the point. Encryption isn't privacy. The major threat to privacy from the US government is not from the content of your communications being read without a warrant it is that your communications are going to be monitored without a warrant so they will be able to monitor all your associations, purchases, communications and movement and locations. Basically it is like having a tail on 24x7 with someone looking over your shoulder... they don't need to know what you are saying until they want to and if they want to then you are past the point where encryption will mean much since they can put a keylogger on your system or maybe even break your 256 bit encryption.

The only protection from the surveillance state is either to eliminate communications technology altogether or to return to the rule of law.

I too have a great deal of respect for your work, Mr. Anonymous Coward. With your fervent idealism combined with nonsensical and sometimes hilarious non-sequiturs and even the occasionally great "First Post!" you have molded, reshaped and reshaped again the core of our Slashdot civilization for eons or even hours to come. Here's to you Mr. Anonymous Coward!

I recall Dean Kamen saying how he agreed to help Coca Cola with their new soda machine that could dispense hundreds of different flavors if they helped him distribute his water purification systems in parts of the world where Coke was one of very few distributors. Win-win. Sometimes people can use companies not just to make money.

It should be the case that the driver is only responsible for the operation of the vehicle when they are actually driving or if they did something to modify the car to make it unsafe. If it is driving around autonomously then it should be the responsibility of the manufacturer for any defective decision making by the car that leads to a collision and damage. Having a car with no manual override clarifies that.

That to me is the point of this car. Besides being an interesting option, this is basically purpose built to demonstrate to state legislators that there should be room under state law to allow fully autonomous cars on the road without requiring a licensed driver always at the ready to take over and avoid collisions.

Something you could have demonstrated in the previous cars by having someone sitting in the passenger seats, but now there is no difference in which seat you sit in. Having autonomous cars with manual overrides left the driver responsible for the operation of the vehicle and liable for accidents... unrealistically so. A driver couldn't reasonably be expected to decide whether the car would avoid a collision or not. That kind of law turns an autonomous navigation system into a dangerous delay in human decision making rather than a life saving safety device. This hybrid approach to liability which retained driver liability was unrealistic and undermined safety. If the driver is driving they should be licensed and liable for mistakes, if the computer is driving then the car and the manufacturer should be licensed and liable.

This car could provide a very important option in the marketplace for those with no ability or desire to drive a car but still need a car for transportation. And by removing manual control completely it clarifies many of the legal issues that our citizen legislator's in most states are grappling with for allowing autonomous cars on the roads. Brilliant move by Google.

And an interesting way to settle the issue of legal liability. If a car without driver controls crashes it is either the fault of the other driver or the manufacturer, unless the owner or driver of the car modifies the vehicle in a way that contributed to the crash. Licensing shouldn't be an issue either since you press a button and tell it where to go. And drunk driving wouldn't be applicable since everyone in the vehicle is a passenger.

The role of fully autonomous cars in preventing drunk driving alone has the potential to save over 10,000 lives per year in the US.

Seems like there is already a middle ground with things like anti-lock brakes, or automatic collision avoidance systems that will break a car before a collision based on proximity sensors, or cars that will park themselves but otherwise won't drive around town. Basically many cars with some limited sensing capabilities are slowly becoming more autonomous at least for specific functions.

But I agree with your point about the benefit of a fully autonomous car being primarily if you can be a passenger and the car drives and not having to sit at the steering wheel ready to take control away from the computer and thus being legally responsible. A driver being at the wheel and responsible for the driving undermines the main purpose of a truly autonomous car.

If traffic enforcement becomes less of a need, then move part of the budget over to hire more detectives to solve crimes.

Exactly. The Thiokol engineers knew that the air temperature at the launch pad was below the lower range operating temperature of the O Rings which was 40 degrees (or 50 degrees for the system as a whole). The O rings themselves were certified down to 40 degrees but the engineers were bullied by management who wanted proof that the system would fail rather than the other way around and then when the engineers couldn't prove that it would fail they were overruled. I think the comments that it would be "away from goodness" was just a really impotent way of saying something like "there was a potentially increased risk that the rocket would explode that can not be quantified because of lack of data", but saying the rocket might explode in such blunt language was probably a quick ticket to being fired shortly afterwards and the engineers probably knew that.

Language matters and the fact that GM was more worried about getting sued than about engineers accurately conveying concerns over safety is damning. GM is supposedly a new company after bankruptcy. Is it?

I think there is plenty of fault on all sides. From the climate scientists and many environmentalists the attitude has seemingly been once that you prove that humans are causing some climate change that it automatically means that we have to stop whatever is causing that climate change... which seems to be why somewhat cynically many have taken the attitude that in order to respond to the call for drastic, disruptive and destructive change to our industrial and energy base that we have to snipe at the science instead of talking about the holistic costs and benefits.

To me the costs of both continuing to increase greenhouse gases are real, but so too are the costs of cutting back greenhouse gas emissions too abruptly to adequately fill the gaps that are left. And the extreme negatives of sea level rise and climate disruptions must be looked at within the context of the hundreds of years we would have to adapt and compared with other ways in which our biologically diverse ecosystems might be harmed. People might be harmed either way.

To me if the solution to Global Climate change would result in economic hardship and social upheaval with the potential for more wars and civil unrest, then I see the danger of ideal thinking versus the reality that wars could be far more catastrophic to our environment than continuing along our current path towards climate disruption and sea level rise.

If we have the economic resources we can adapt and preserve habitat and improve quality of life for more people, but if we cut back too sharply then we risk depriving ourselves of the natural and economic resources which might enable us to adapt to the coming changes and even what we might be able to accomplish through sacrifice might be futile in the scope of the problem.

To me that is the rational argument we need to get to. Yes Global Climate change appears to be real. Yes, it pales in comparison with the changes that nature can throw at us in any given year... so a single volcanic eruption can cause a big drop in temperatures or some other changes might throw off our math in some other way making years or decades of planning completely irrelevant... but that doesn't mean we don't try to plan out decades from now or even hundreds of years from now.

We have a capacity to put in place the changes now that could make some difference for the better. While I largely agree with those who don't want to make burdensome decisions based on 300 year extrapolations, that doesn't mean we don't do the things that could reasonably benefit us now and in the future with better technology and more adaptability regardless of Global Climate Change.

I think we should all try to agree on habitat protection and setting aside more natural spaces. These natural ecosystems are often carbon sinks and are places where if properly managed and located can help preserve biodiversity. Nuclear I already mentioned and I really wish environmentalists would do the math on radioactive waste which has far more limited effects than even the toxic waste from things like solar panels which require large scale mining, production and very big land use, but certainly things like coal or oil are overall more toxic to our environment than nuclear. So, habitat preservation, nuclear, some wind and rooftop solar, along with better settlement patterns with enough jobs, food production and things to do close to where people live to reduce transportation costs, improve quality of life and reduce waste. There are probably many things like that which over the next thirty years could be win-win propositions for both reducing future Global Climate Change, improving quality of life for people and improving habitat for biodiversity and natural heritage preservation. And I think a rational majority could come to some agreements to make some of these modest changes.

From my perspective the "debate" over climate change is a red herring on both sides to avoid agreement because perpetuating the dispute itself has become an industry with its own constituency. And this is a problem in a lot of areas of political dispute. Where perpetuating a dispute gains its own constituency.

This implies that stopping greenhouse emissions cold turkey doesn't have real costs that outweigh the potential problems you cite. So far all the solutions that are proposed by the most active main stream environmentalists like cap and trade or solar and wind build outs either won't make a dent in Global Climate Change and/or taken as holistic solutions would cause massive disruptions to the economy with some very negative consequences that would very likely outweigh the benefits.

In the US, we have spent the last 40 years on conservation and pollution controls and the result has been an export of much of our industrial base to China where they pollute more freely with a coal based economy and then ship back those cheaper goods on great big ships, trains and trucks. Has it even made a dent Globally or just moved the problems of pollution to China? Possibly, that historic movement of production partly based on cheap labor, but also partly based on US environmentalism, has even accelerated CO2 emissions. Certainly, the US is somewhat less polluted especially in some urban and downwind areas which is good. But thinking Globally means we can't just think of short term localized benefits when we tally up the good and the bad for the bottom line.

We could be 100% greenhouse free in 20 years if we embraced a mix of solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and most importantly nuclear. But without nuclear it is going to be fracked Natural Gas, Oil and Coal providing the majority of our base load for our electric grid and the majority of fuel for our cars and trucks. The good news is that natural gas is less polluting than coal and oil and might fill the gap and slow down CO2 emissions while we reassess our collective priorities, but the bad news for Global Climate change is that a change to natural gas from oil and coal just slows down Global Warming a bit and it isn't a longer term solution and we will be back to coal not too long after that if we don't get to a more sustainable energy system.

If people on all sides get serious about Global Climate change and want to slam on the breaks to try and simply lock in a few feet of sea level rise and some slightly warmer temperatures in the next three hundred years, then the way to do that is with a tripling of nuclear power capacity with existing technology and much bigger multi-Billion dollar investments in new nuclear power technologies, along with some solar and wind power to supplement.

Otherwise much of what many in the environmental movement have been talking about for the last few decades has been a meaningless distraction from the engineers task of making more efficient use of our resources to support the largest population in human history as best we can. Both sides need to get real if we are going to make the world a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable place for billions of people.

That was my point. I guess it was not fleshed out properly. That the suggestion that Tesla just become a battery company was motivated as a response to Toyota dropping Tesla as a supplier. But the example of Samsung/Apple and many others is that competitors often buy products and parts from one another when they need to. Even in the extreme case of Samsung and Apple where they are engaged in a very public Global legal battle Apple is still buying key components from Samsung. So if Tesla builds the best car batteries at the lowest price, then car companies will either buy them or not be able to compete in the plug in electric car market.

The point is probably because car competitors don't want to buy batteries from a competitor... which is just a fact of life in many areas of industry. Apple probably doesn't want to buy parts from Samsung, etc. But if the product is better than other competitor products, then companies will choose to to buy from Tesla in self interest, if not and someone comes along with a better battery then the battery business was probably a bad exclusive bet anyway.

Good points. Protecting lives is important, but Liberty is what we fight for, it is what generations have killed and died for, it is what, God willing, we leave to our children. When Lincoln talked over the freshly dug graves of Gettysburg he couldn't say they were fighting to save lives because that would have rung hollow amidst so much death and destruction. When he said "shall not perish from this Earth" he wasn't talking about his life or the lives of his fallen countrymen he was talking about the battle so that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

We can't have a government of the people, by the people or for the people if we have a government spying without warrant on all the people. Making a mockery of the rights enshrined in our constitution and the real abuses of government power that those constitutional rights are intended to prohibit.

Buttle or Tuttle? The movie "Brazil" seems like a foretelling documentary of the NSA and the US Federal Government and what happens when you turn the fight against terror into an issue of "Information Retrieval". Government "Big Data" is the new Big Brother.