You're looking at this the wrong way. The problem is their customer not being able to access the services they wish to in a reasonable manner.

You do realize that the whole point of the internet is to connect to servers, clients, and peers of an unverified nature, right? And if they co-locate for any of their clients, they already deal with this issue on a daily basis? Go ahead and google Verizon colocation services, just for fun.

Well, the benefit to their other customers would be that their connection to other servers outside of Verizon's network wouldn't be impeded by the congestion of their customers who would like to stream said movies. Keep in mind, the customer who wants to watch movies on Netflix have exactly as many rights as the customer who wants to play MMOs, or the one who wants to send emails. This benefits all their customers - just not their RedBox business.

It must be a source of relief to you to know that all those services that you use are vitally important to all the other Verizon customers. Or just maybe those other customers' service fees pay for those services they use, on average.

And then the company who developed the software will be sued for negligent homicide, and the trucking and software companies will be on the hook for a preventable accident with no risk of human life on their side of the scale. Any software that is designed to have a preference to save the cargo of an unmanned vehicle versus not hitting a potentially manned vehicle will likely be ruled as failing to take action to prevent an accident (which will also be provable from the video recordings). There will be plenty of lawyers and jurors who will be happy to say robots are evil and the faceless companies should pay.

The two more likely scenarios are that a) the software will not be able to prevent all accidents, and hence loss of life, and b) people who are recorded engaging in reckless behaviour which causes massive loss of cargo will be summarily sued out of existence (if they survived in the first place). Tthe combination of the two will mean that there will be a spate of people doing stupid things, and then being reasonably cautious around unmanned cargo vehicles, at much the same levels as today.

Well, I can't honestly say I'm worried about hot button issues, and I wouldn't say I strayed from facts, either.

You are correct, little things like ethics, and 'doing the right thing' often have a financial cost, however small it might be. Just as not 'doing the right thing' will have a social cost, which can be surprisingly large at times. This, coupled with the irrational belief that a free market is any better than communism, does lead to some ridiculous discussions. See, communism and the free market do have at least one thing in common: they're both models which look good on paper, but do not take human flaws into consideration. And if you don't take those flaws into consideration, they will show themselves, usually in the most horrible ways.

For a look at the failings of the free (or unregulated) market, take a moment to read about a little thing called phossy jaw. And in response to the comment "Ah, but that wasn't truly a free market - the consumers didn't have enough information or influence." First, the problem was known (and solved!) for at least 5 decades, with employees dying on a regular basis before changes were made to improve employee health. Second, when the problem was first addressed, the companies in question were making about 20% dividends, and the industry is still around a century after they stopped poisoning their employees (mainly due to regulation). Third, please find me a free market today that works the way the model predicts, and isn't literally destroying people in the process, merely to maximize profits.

Models are wonderful things, even bad (or incomplete) models. But using models with known flaws doesn't lead to happy endings.

So, a thief who steals as much as an HFT corporation is also fine? Without the metric of social value, there is little or no point to many of the laws we have, especially the ones we think of as 'good'. I'd posit that if the social value of HFT is on par with grand theft, it should be outlawed, and for the same reason.

Okay, you really gotta pick one. Use whatever term you like, but either you can be depressed and then no longer be depressed, or once you get depressed you will remain depressed for the rest of your life.

I agree, far too many pharmaceuticals are made with the primary (or sole) intention of making profits, which probably includes using them where they shouldn't be. But as you said, they can be effective in extreme cases.

Well, having been extremely depressed, if this is, "marginally less shitty", I'll take it. I believe I feel pretty damned good (but what basis do I have to make that distinction on). As for normal, that's not something I was ever aiming for. ;)

What it comes down to for me is, if you have a problem, deal with it. Pharmaceuticals may be the solution for some people. If it isn't working, stop taking it! If it's done its job, stop taking it! If you still need it to function normally (or what passes for it), keep taking it! That can be applied to any situation you can find yourself in. "If you act like an ass whenever you drink, maybe you should stop drinking." "If you can't stand the pain without a having a joint, maybe you should have one." "If that anti-depressant isn't making standing in front of a bus look like a bad idea, maybe you need to do something else (but don't stand in front of a bus!)."

For the record, I find most psychologists and psychiatrists to be a waste of time. My anti-depressant was prescribed by my GP. The other things I had to help deal with my depression was coping mechanisms I had developed for myself over decades of undiagnosed major clinical depression (the label my doctor gave me on our second discussion).

P.S. The poorest test for depression is asking "How often do you think about suicide?" and taking anything but a number over a time span as an answer. Depressed people often have no idea how often is normal, so "Not very" doesn't mean very much at all.

If he's anything like the average salesman, only improvements could have occurred.

Society has been pretty much unbearable since more than one person has been in a group. Before that, loneliness was unbearable. And yet, most people aren't clinically depressed.

Depression can be cured, or let's call it remission if you want. Maybe not for everyone, maybe not forever, but life is pretty malleable, and no single state seems to last a lifetime.

As you said, depression is a very multifaceted condition, which makes it very hard to determine what treatments are effective. One of the biggest problems in this area is that we still have very little idea how the brain works. Sadly, a lot of the treatment plans for depression seem to be keep throwing things at it and see if something sticks. Sometimes a combination of things helps synergistically, other times nothing short of drastic measures seems to have any effect at all. I remember a documentary about a guy who had to go for quarterly electro-shock therapy to treat his depression. He found that somewhat more desirable than committing suicide. Until we have a better picture of what's really happening, what's causing depression in a given circumstance, any treatment is going to be very ineffective in general. That doesn't mean it won't be effective for everyone.

Good thing that never happens with the pharmacological options.

BUT, most people are more dangerous when driving while texting or using a cell phone. Adding that makes them less safe.

Damn, now I want a PS3 for my car!

First, the 3547 were terrorist attacks, not traffic accidents. Second, If you want to compare intentional attacks of terrorism versus intentional attacks of car accidents, the number to beat is 5 or 6, not the number of deaths by terrorist attack. Third, presuming combating terrorism is worthy of our time and efforts, the next step would be to determine how best to do that. So far, the two most effective things that are done with respect to airplanes are to lock the cockpit and for the passengers to not sit on their hands if someone tries to hijack or blow up the plane. Patting down children seems to be a little lower on the scale of effectiveness. Another thing that is known to be effective is to have a known agent on the plane to subdue any hijackers or bombers. Air marshals seem to once again be pretty much a thing of the past, presumably due to cost. Given that having an air marshal on every plane would require no more than 10000 (there are apparently 5000 flights at any given time, with 1/3 being passenger flights, which means there would be 2 air marshals for every flight), and assuming these people get paid a hefty wage of $50k, we're looking at $500M per year. Given the DHS budget of $60B, and the relative ineffectiveness of some of their operations, this seems far more reasonable than almost all the other efforts they engage in (with the exception of non-invasive scanning of passengers, and perhaps some others I haven't heard of).

So actively dropping the median is okay, then. Gotcha.

While I suspect Wayne Gretzky is still a better hockey player than I am, I doubt he's anything like he was 20 years ago. Skills fade. Unused skills fade faster.

You mean psychology students aren't required to do experiments with 5000 subjects to reduce statistical errors? I'm shocked and disappointed! Well, they may be able to get by with 1200. What?! Not even 1200!

You have have the battery today...by hooking a number of batteries in series, in a modular fashion.