Why don't we put more focus on automated driving? I'd rather not need a license and not waste several hours of my life each day at the wheel, if I could nap, read, get some work done, etc in the back.

I'm pretty sure driving while distracted is already a citationable offense. I don't really care what the nature of your distraction is -- if you're engaging in it, you are endangering other people on and off the road. I can see the rational behind harsher penalties for certain choices, though. Negligent behavior because you're having a conversation with three people in your car is not the same thing as choosing to get drunk and hop on the road or choosing to turn around and discipline your children while doing 65 down the highway.

The problem is we're never willing to impose significant penalties for just about any behavior. Hell, we have a hard time even deciding to take the license away from 90 year old grandmas who hit the accelerator instead of the brake and plow through field of kids playing soccer.

I would rather read the comments at Slashdot and not RTFA than RTFA and not read the comments at The Register. :)

But less so every passing year.

Yes, people who find themselves suddenly facing a driver head-on who has drifted into the wrong lane are at fault for "not paying attention". Same with people going through an intersection when a drunk or texting driver going 80 crosses through a red light.

If it were as simply as "paying attention", we'd have almost no innocent victims of car accidents, as it is.

Let's admit what this is about. They don't give a fuck about seeing you "texting while driving". This is about being able to view as much of the interior of your car as possible without the need to make an excuse to pull you over and justify searching your vehicle.

Agreed. Actively going out to patrol specific violations like this is pretty fucking idiotic. However, when extreme negligence (disciplining your kids, talking on the phone, texting, drinking, etc) is demonstrated by a driver, it should be handled and the penalty should be severe. I have always been baffled, for example, by drunk drivers who have dozens of arrests for it. Why is such a person even out in public? Make the penalties hurt if you want them to stop doing it. First time, suspended license. Second time, permanently suspended license. Third time, jail, because you have proven that you can't be trusted not to put other people's lives at risk. (And driving while suspended counts as one of those violations). Don't want to lose the right to drive for the rest of your life or spend a few months in jail? THEN DON'T FUCKING DRINK AND DRIVE.

Instead, we bitch and moan about how horrible it is, then treat it like a relatively trivial crime.

When you read bussdriver's signature, it really puts the whole rest of the comment into proper context.

It's about revenue generation. Can't bill'em if you can't catch them.

If it was about safety, we'd treat it more seriously. The same way we would treat drunk driving more seriously if we gave a fuck. How many chances do you get to be incredibly negligent and dangerous on the road before we take you out from behind the 4,000lb 60mph metal death box? Make the first penalty a temporary one, the second a permanent one, and the third time in prison (including driving while suspended). Sound tough? How many opportunities do you want to give someone to stray into oncoming traffic and kill an innocent person before you say "you can't be trusted doing this; take the fucking bus"?

I don't know why you'd put your age on your resume, but it doesn't matter, anyway. It's a trivial matter (and probably a required practice) to find your Facebook, G+, Twitter, Youtube, LinkedIn and other accounts online and derive from them your approximate age, marital status, home ownership, prior work history, education, health, financial status, and so on.

There's only so much reasonable adaptation to be done. Nobody with a full time job can "keep up" with the technology that someone whose most recent full time job was four years of keeping up on latest buzzword technology. There's annually a fresh batch of people that just spent four years doing that. However, I don't see how hard it can be for people to stay abreast of things within their own field. For the majority of us, shit isn't changing *that* damn fast. I mean, unless you're in the "buzzword, venture capital, ycombinator" business, I guess.

So the older crowd are stubborn, set in their ways, and lazy -- and probably challenge the young people that you admit know nothing and have no experience for good reason.

And the young people are inexperienced and ignorant, but (when not hanging out on facebook, twitter, or instagramming everything around them in the office) hard workers that can be shaped, molded, and educated. . . . by . . . the . . . older people that aren't there to mentor them?

The world of technology does not seem one where this ageist bullshit can adequately be implemented. This is a field where people from the youngest who aren't even in high school yet to the oldest who was working before a time of personal PCs invent and improve things on a frequent basis and are *in the business* of wanting to know about new things. This isn't a field where people bitch and moan about how these new-fangled sparky-mabobs aren't as good as working on an old IBM Selectronic typewriter.

I work with plenty of people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s and they are the hardest workers who know the most, spend the most time on the clock, are the most available, the most communicative, and stay on top of their game. In my time, I can only really thing of one much older person who really sort of had the "punching the timeclock" mentality -- and even he was more than proficient at the job.

On the other hand, I have been surrounded by people my age (increasing over the years, obviously) who couldn't really be bothered half the time. If you are concerned with age and pay, you are focusing on the wrong values of your potential workforce.

Of course, that comes with the need for working remotely, doesn't it? Those ridiculously low-priced homes in low-cost areas are generally so, because there's not much of a job market, there. People always ask why I've lived in such expensive cities my whole life (San Francisco, Portland, Denver) and the answer is "because that is where the high tech jobs are most abundantly found". I would love to have moved into the middle of fucking-nowhere Kansas where my significant other once bought a gorgeous home for under $100k, but then I'd be subjected to the limitations of that job market, too. (Even though I've telecommuted nearly my whole life, businesses are often constrained by the states they do work in as to where they can employ people -- unless you are truly contracting yourself out).

That's also why working remotely should be seen as an attractive benefit, by employers. The same way health insurance and other things are. I have turned down significantly better paying gigs over the last decade, simply because an extra $20k or so does not compensate for the need to own a car, spend hours every day in it, deal with water-cooler bullshit, and exist under flickering fluorescent lights in a crowded office.

I don't understand how this happens. Are these people not social? Are they not assertive? Do they not push back? I'm a few years away from 40, so I don't think I qualify for that range just yet, but the people I work with who are a good deal older than me are aggressive in voicing their disagreements, pointing out where things are fucked, not accepting shitty practices, and pushing for things to be corrected. They don't sit quietly by while products, processes, or themselves are screwed. Where the younger guys may be timid, the more seasoned among them will firmly tell you your shit is fucked and encourage you (and help, if needed) to unfuck it.

Just because two notable names have made a big deal about it doesn't mean there aren't still plenty of such positions. Asking someone to uproot their entire lives and move across the country to benefit you with their extensive knowledge and experience for work that absolutely does not require your on-site and on-hands presence far exceeds "flexibility".

The press covers what the administration instructs them to cover and they don't have time for investigative journalism, when there's tweets to twitter.