The last mile of a trip seems like the worst place to employ driverless vehicles. You have the most variety of roadways, delivery docks, other staff, so many ways to go bad. Why not focus on interstate driving and take on the long boring stretches that require trucks large enough to sleep in?

I love the community here on Slashdot, but we're not the ones at risk from AI. We HAVE the experience and skills to know when AI gets it wrong, to know what tasks to ask AI to do, and to fix the problems that it creates. The real risk is to upcoming programmers. When will they be given a chance to learn these things and will we need as many? My son just graduated with a computer science degree and struggled for 5 months to find a job and even then it wasn't strictly programming. Maybe that is the answer that "strictly programming" jobs will become fewer and fewer and the "Software Engineer" will have to adapt to talk to people on a daily basis.

Does anyone have a source for the non-degree holding unemployment rate being 6.9? That's a very interesting piece of the puzzle.

2,000 years may seem like a long time, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to the age of the earth. Even if we limit it to the timespan while mammels have populated the earth 2,000 years barely scratches the surface. It seemsblike such a small and arbitrary number that it makes me suspicious.

As someone who lives in a rural area, even though I'm not rich, I can tell you that the quality of phone lines in rural areas are pretty much crap and you're better off going with a mobile phone. If the phone companies are being paid per active line, this whole thing will go away in a few years anyway.

Speed? Really. You're going with the speed improvements of paper? Wow, how can you stand to be so progressive.

Wow, 4 hours of extra work during initial setup. How do you stand it!? Of course with your course material online, getting setup for the next semester's course should take no time at all. Students are now able to access course material when and wherever they are, and can take their course work with them into the field. But let's focus on the 4 extra hours of work you had to put in

Moodle HQ (run by the founder Martin Dougiamas) manages the project, though MoodleRooms does contribute a lot of code. I wouldn't fear about Moodle going away any time soon.

Well, that's not making a sweeping generalization and failing to think beyond stereotypes. Bravo for your clearly thought out remarks.

I haven't used sans before, but going there and searching for Moodle brought up a list of issues. The most recent was just over a year ago. There were only two in all of 2010, and 4 in 2009. You've got some pretty high standards there dude.

Even if we shut down production now, the "dangers" from nuclear energy are not going anywhere soon. Spent fuel rods stored on-site at the reactors and piles of nuclear waste that don't have a planned home will not go away by shutting down the existing plants. 20% of US power comes from Nuclear and it won't be easily replaced in the short term by renewables, so that means Coal or Natural gas. Neither are a panacea. I recently wrote an article to try and clarify some of these issues for myself and found the research to do it right really informative. Might help clarify some of the angles for people. http://www.baxleys.org/in-defense-of-nuclear-energy/

I call bullshit. Citation?

I'm someone who lives in the sticks and would benefit from this, having only a WISP now that charges $60 for 765k down. I'd love to have some real competition out here. That being said, access from a cell carrier that is capped at 5 GB a month is not something that's viable. Sure it's enough to check your email and surf around, but if you want to watch movies and backup your files with services like Netflix and Mozy, it just won't cut it. I've been contacting my local rep and I'm just not sure what to tell them. How do you think the government (state or national) could better spend to move forward access for everyone?

Wait, I thought child obesity was only a problem in America! There are fat kids in the rest of the world too!?

I have to agree with you. The people who need GPS in a rural area are the people visiting, not those who live there. That's the only thing I can think he meant. Or he assumes that people who live in rural areas get lost easily.