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Submission + - Google Secretly Tests Autonomous Cars in Traffic (nytimes.com)

Hugh Pickens writes: "Autonomous cars are years from mass production, but technologists who have long dreamed of them believe that they can transform society as profoundly as the Internet has. Now the NY Times reports that Google has been working in secret on vehicles that can drive themselves, using artificial-intelligence software that can sense anything near the car and mimic the decisions made by a human driver. With someone behind the wheel to take control if something went awry and a technician in the passenger seat to monitor the navigation system, seven test cars have driven 1,000 miles without human intervention and more than 140,000 miles with only occasional human control. One even drove itself down Lombard Street in San Francisco, one of the steepest and curviest streets in the nation. The only accident, engineers said, was when one Google car was rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light."

Comment Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! (Score 5, Insightful) 677

Look at what America has become since 9/11.

When I was a kid it was popular to point to various things in the USSR like the inability to travel freely without "showing your papers" as evidence of totalitarian oppression. Here in 2010 "showing your papers" is as American as apple pie! Fuck, kids can't even bring techie looking projects to school without triggering a terror scare and being in danger of prosecution under insane laws that make it a crime to do anything that some uneducated moron might confuse with a terrorist act.

They terrorists HAVE ALREADY WON, no doubt about it.

Comment Re:Is it 30% faster? Does it matter? (Score 1) 383

I was able to reproduce it a moment ago by viewing all the posts for the Favorite Editor poll.

In the process, Firefox 3.5.3 asked me twice "A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete." and I hit continue both times in order to get it to load. My CPU was pegged once the initial part of the page loaded until the page finished loading.

Comment Re:Laser printers (Score 1) 557

My room mate has a Brother 2070N, and while it works fairly well under Linux, it uses a binary blob to convert from what ever format you give it to print to it's custom internal binary format.

I normally don't mind this too much, except they only support x86, and I wanted to install the drivers on an old PPC that I have lying around and use as a server.

Comment Re:Net Neutrality (Score 1) 110

While what you say is true, it doesn't go far enough. Net Neutrality says: not only do they have to allow Skype, they can't charge the company running Skype extra for letting you get to it, or letting you get to it as quickly or as reliably as you do to anything else. Without full end-to-end protection against gotcha-games like this, the situation will hardly improve.

Comment In Soviet Russia... (Score 2, Funny) 337

Ah, back in the Soviet Union days, the social networking at least made sense and didn't leave any incriminating evidence. Back then, after all, "social networking" was just notes on the kitchen table:

"I've gone to the women's activism group at the collective meeting hall. The supper is in the oven. Long live the Party! -Mother."
"I've gone to the Young Pioneer Palace to meet my friends. Long live the Party! -Son."
"I've gone to the political rally in the city. Long live the Party! -Dad."
"I've stolen everything of value in this house. Long live the Party! -Thief."

See? New technology isn't always better.

Comment Re:I'm sorry, but maybe I'm missing the point... (Score 1) 148

I have friends who only communicate reliably by facebook. I tried communicating by email, but they don't check their email often enough for that to work. Monthly is a fair description.

I personally view this as a way that after I have set it up on both ends (because they won't be able to), I can communicate to people I currently can't without giving my information to Facebook. I don't have a facebook account right now because I don't trust facebook.

Comment RTFA (Score 1) 849

This summary is false to the article. ("It's time to show most passwords in clear text as users type them")

The knee jerk reactions by people who read the summary but not the article have all been addressed in the article.

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