Woefully for whom? The last few manufacturing jobs in the industry and the people who work them are woeful?

Where the hell is anyone going to get a job other than cleaning rich people's toilets? Hell, there's probably a robot for that.

Shantytowns are illegal most everywhere, so people can't even squat in the mud and eat trash in peace when they lose their livelihoods. Should we just suggest 90% of the planet's human population just get it over with and off itself?

It's not safe to assume. With a computer at the controls, you can never really predict an outcome - the ball doesn't have to bounce if the genie says it doesn't.

Far less. People always judge the worth of a car by its trade in value. They are mistaken; the value is the money *not* spent on a newer car. 1-2 thousand a year in repair is always cheaper than buying a new or new used car. Repairs and maintenance cost about 200 a month, averaged; cost of car payment is your down payment, divided by the use-life in months, plus car payment to bank or finance house, plus extra insurance cost each month for newer car vs old. Even subtracting old car trade-in, you will always be ahead. Good job.

they've turned cars into unfixable iPods on wheels, because that forces everyone to keep getting replacement cars every few years. You won't see a twenty year old hybrid, ever.

Seriously - this is why I drive older vehicles. Pre-1996 black box. As old as I can get - and there still are too many microprocessors in the damned thing. Computers shouldn't run cars. iPods, yes, two ton missiles on city streets, NO.

This was a cute trick, but HERF guns and EMP bombs are much more deadly.

Dunno if a standard car can be Faraday caged. Certainly aren't designed for EM defense.

Electric cars, weirdly enough, if you designed them correctly, could Faraday cage the controllers more easily than a gas car. Gas cars have too many widgets with vulnerable processors on, throughout the body, as it compensates for bad original concept. Electric power paths are designed to take an induced current - mechanical circuit breakers could save the power train. The "brains" could be faradayed with less difficulty, because they could be centralized.

Ultimately, optical data paths would be a lot better. I imagine after a highway of self-driving cars get EMPed into an overpass, we'll notice how vulnerable we've become and start over again.

sorry, messed up the placement, there.

No. You can do it with a min-satellite dish, some capacitors and a battery. Called a HERF gun. Directional EMP.

Here we are, time travelling to tomorrow, and here we are:
http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/12/03/1919230/rf-safe-stop-shuts-down-car-engines-with-radio-pulse
They nuked the car with an EMP pulse.
Not. To be allowed.

http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/12/03/1919230/rf-safe-stop-shuts-down-car-engines-with-radio-pulse

About two weeks ago, yes. They hacked in.
Also, HERF guns to kill the electronics exist, and GPS spoofing and jamming can create fun fun FUN.

This is a bad idea, and the people promulgating it are not the right kind of engineers. You plan for the least probable bad scenario, not the optimum. Millions of PCS driving themselves around on concrete ribbons at 75+ MPH is a recipe for Blue Screen of Mutilated Bodies.

"You're holding it wrong!" does not work in this context. The situation should not exist. Do not give create scenario, do not pass GO, do not collect $200. If you want a safe system for transporting people without drivers, build trains. That's what trains do. You don't put a jet engine on a skateboard.

We used to have things called "trains" for this. Self-driving cars are point-to-point trains for wealthy people.

Always Keep It Simple Stupid. Self-driving car is a oxymoron - if we don't trust people to drive cars - and we should't, 'cause they are the biggest cohort of murderers the world has ever seen - then we should build trains on tracks, or pods on tracks, and get rid of the concrete and asphalt paving nightmare. Car is overkill tech for a simple problem. We're trying to mate the 1950s with a drone. It is a Bad Idea.

Also: dependent on GPS and computers.
Anyone know what a HERF gun is? A EM pulse cannon or gun. Easy to build. Aim and fire, fry the electronics of the car, instant crash.

So is a GPS signal jammer. Some techs had fun with the drones in a test last year - they crashed a hunter killer drone in a test by telling the GPS receiver that the drone was 500 feet higher than it was. It dived into the ground.

Computers have purposes appropriate to their ability to fail. You don't use them to drive cars. A plane, yes, as there are two pilots who will dive on the controls if something fails. Voting - no, too many ways for a motivated man-on-the-inside to rig an election undetected. Tested and dusted. Cars will, if the electronics fail and the driver isn't instantly engaged, will crash and take a highway of cars with them. I know we all love shiny things, but for once, think about this before it happens.

It will come to every ISP on the planet. The curtain is falling. To monitor sexual thought, "national security", enforcement of eternally granted imaginary property, blasphemy, badthink, The Children, and any other damned thing they can think of, we are going for full metal police state. Ladies and gentlemen, we are in a prison and they are sounding the bell for final lockup. Tech solutions will be temporary at best because they will be declared illegal, or compromised, as soon as they pop up.

-toldyaso

Where was all this concern about the debt when Reagan and Bush W. were cutting taxes, emptying the Social Security trust fund, and spending madly on military and spy agencies? When Reagan took office, the debt was 3 trillion. When Bush took office, it was 6 trillion. Clinton actually paid the debt down a half trillion in his final year: Bush immediately declared the surplus the people's money and gave the surplus back - then raised spending until he left the country another extra six 6 trillion in debt, with obligations to pay for wars and refund the money stolen from the SS trust fund since 1984. Republicans cut taxes and raise spending, run up the debt, have a rich man's party, then step back and let Democrats take all the blame and make the spending cuts and tax increases to try to repair the damage. This has been a thirty+ year tax-cut-based robbery. And always, always an excuse to cut aid to the poor, never the rich.

This isn't a bug; it's a feature.

If you don't want to be spied on, or digitally robbed (or have digitized voting results and elections changed with laughable ease), go manual and physical. At least then they have to break into your house, or hire someone to friend you up to get into your home or business or doctor's office. Makes 'em work hard. At least make them take a personal interest, rather than just vacuuming up everyone's life indiscriminately and sorting through the mess at will later to nail people they don't like. And if they go hands-on in Watergating your life, you possibly can catch them, flashlights in hand, and crack them upside the head with a baseball bat. As they deserve, being liars, thieves, backstabbing enemies and potential blackmailers. Reference the story today about a Canadian woman being denied access to the US because they've read her private medical records and found she was clinically depressed. Thieves. Bastards.

Arms inspector Scott Ritter, who called Bush and company liars. Immediately monitored to hell and back, reputation ruined by mysterious surveillance forces within months of taking the fight to Bush's people. Being right was no excuse; he was never allowed on Oprah again, or anywhere else. We invaded Iran under false pretense. He's in prison after the second round of surveillance.

As for the charges, which they ultimately nailed him with? Dunno. Why does everyone assume that computers can't lie? Once you set up the premise that we are catching lots of bad men, it's child's play to make you a bad man - just invent some logs, some chat, and boom goes the dynamite. I don't trust electrons when they are under the control of people who would bomb 60,000 people to death for oil and conflating brown people with other brown people.

And talking to girls online is a crime they can hang on a lot of men, anyway. He didn't *do* anything. Except piss the right people off. On the other hand, Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Ashcroft and Rice are rich and free after stealing trillions in oil, starting two endless wars, and killing over a hundred thousand people.

Assume that people are watching you, listening to you - retroactively - if you annoy the right people. They can indeed hang you with six lines. Hell, I do now christen this "Richelieuing".

It's a valid, universal observation that geeks tend not to be those dating the girls that don't date geeks. Truth is okay.

There are a few of you geeks who aren't like that - bless you for choosing attractive parents; but stereotypes exist for a reason. Those who are introverted, and/or unattractive, and find fulfillment behind keyboards, aren't extroverts. They are not the same kind of people, tho of course they exist on a spectrum. Introverts = not dating as much, Extrovert = dating more than that.

Thanks be to Aphrodite that women have entered the geekly professions - or have those who have not have gained respect for men in them - or we geek males could have died out by 2050. Female geeks? Whole different story - they rule both worlds.