Posts by Francis Boyle

That's the problem - It isn't.

If the world were fair she would have got superpowers.

Re: More prospectors. More commercial partners.

I, for one, am always up for a low-G bar fight.

Don't you mean

"Yuge mess".

Re: Bill Gates....

I think you've been around long enough to realise that most of us here, as much as we like to hate on Microsoft, are prepared to give credit where credit is due.

Re: Down Range

Are you Aquaman. Because if you're not you have nothing to worry about.

Re: Besides the privacy, not a bad idea

how many forms of dating can a finger provide?.

That's why you should use three.

Re: Serious question.

That's the theory. As usual, the reality is a little messier. Guess when El Reg last reported on a launch gone wrong. That's right it was last Tuesday. (And you'll find plenty more where that came from by clicking on the 'science' tab.)

It's a spectrograph not a camera

It's not like it going to produce anything that will end up on Instagram.

Er, this is ignorance of the fact that someone did something stupid

A slight difference there.

Everything's fallible by default

Human drivers are worst than that.

Yes, that's nicely succint

Though I think ""Go ahead, make my day" has a certain ring to it.

Unfortunately

The inherent bias towards stupidity rules that one out.

I wouldn't use that process

The data always ends up degraded.

Not to mention

those long knobby things sticking out of the water everywhere. I see where the couple got the inspiration.

Billed as the most fun a person can have with a dead fish

But I think they should replace 'person' with 'person who isn't John Cleese'.

I'm not sure

what "extra safety features" have to do with anything. The $3000 option is for the self-driving pack which, unsurprisingly, enables self-driving. It's software that does something useful and you pay for it. Are you arguing that self-driving is so much safer that Tesla are ethically obligated to provide the software for free?

Better version

Self-driving cars Uber executives will always be inferior to good human drivers humans because they cannot think. Humans are able to anticipate potential risks. Self-driving cars Uber executives can only react to the lure of profit.

Nice of you

to suggest that people here wouldn't instantly recognise that picture.

Obviously

Obama's birth certificate is fake and he was really born in Aberdeen. And he probably eats haggis as well, which we all know is classified as a bioweapon.

No B-2s

but plenty of B-52s and other Bs (and Fs and whatever). The military-industrial complex goes back a long way.

er,

I'm sure Oengus is a just god and has space for them too.

Well

two fish-eye lenses might have been better.

Re: And the passenger in the shuttle ?!

Sorry Alistair, but and* Oxford comma goes before a conjunction. I suggest a comma whose absence radically changes the meaning of a sentence be called a Staines comma after your illustrious namesake.

*token mistake as required by all posts concerning grammar.

Why would level 4 be ruled out?

If it turns out that AVs can't cope with pedestrians then restricting them to areas where pedestrians don't have access (which is a subset of level 4) is the obvious solution.

You're missing the point

Nothing I said implies that we need to apply airline service standards to AVs. Motor vehicles as they stand are extremely safe (because of, surprise, rigorous standards) - it's the roads and drivers that kill. The danger is those rigorous standards wont be applied is to the design of the software (because, hey it's just software and it can be fixed later).

Without rigorous standards we'll get consumer grade software running cars which would be a disaster. With it we won't get anything like perfection because roads are inherently unsafe but we can road travel much safer. And why shouldn't we? Something like one in ten thousand people die on the roads every year in developed countries. If those people were dying in a war there would be mass demonstrations. Yet we just accept it. I don't consider that remotely rational given how risk averse we are in other areas of life.

Re: Awesome

I'm not a fan of multiverses myself but you have to remember that there being infinite possibilities doesn't mean everything is possible.

Re: That's all we need

And driven by a bloke named Gene.

You mean this collaboration isn't being called "Project Gene". And will turn out to be all a demented fantasy.

And since the resulting vehicle will almost certainly have four rotors they have to call it a Quattro" won't they.