I completely agree with your arguments, I think it is the unseen, anticipated events that will make this system less safe than having a skilled human driver.

That said, no human driver is likely as consistent as such a system could possibly be. But I agree, the 'bugs' that would become evident if such a system were immediately deployed would become cable tv fodder from day one.

For these reasons, I think carpool/HOV lanes should be replaced with automated driving lanes. Start with long distance travel using road trains/grouped motorcades, with human intervention on entrance and exit, and I think this would be a good place to start rather than going straight to automated in-town commutes. It would do much to alleviate public concerns little by little. I want significantly more testing than 190,000 miles by a few cars before I entrust my life to an automated system.

My $0.02.

And you are more than welcome to not pay market price if you do not feel that it is reflective of a particular item or services value or intrinsic value. Given market distortions, that may not be possible or you could be waiting awhile.

Value investing involves the belief that you should not pay more than a stock's intrinsic value (or at least not many multiples of it). Pulbic companies present their financial information for this reason. You can either make an actual assessment of what something is worth, or you can look how the market it pricing it.

It's not a meme, its economics.

From Wikipedia:
Fair market value (FMV) is an estimate of the market value of a property, based on what a knowledgeable, willing, and unpressured buyer would probably pay to a knowledgeable, willing, and unpressured seller in the market.

If someone is willing to pay a given price - that is its market value. Whether the purchaser has determined the price rationally (as in dot-com valuations) is another matter for argument.

Unfortunately, market distortions like speculators, emotional investors, herd mentality, etc. often result in the 'market value' not being reflective of what a rational, knowledgeable individual should pay. Market value is market value though, if you can find someone to buy your ice in arctic, then that is what it is 'worth'.

It would have made their balance sheet look a whole lot better, but it unlikely that they could have revalued intangibles upwards without a firm plan to dispose of them. (In reality - the patents were a large portion of the company's worth, the result of all the past R&D - selling the patents was the end of the company's cash generating assets.)

I don't know they nitty-gritty accounting details around Nortel, but as is usually the case, I'm guessing poor cash flow and eventual insolvency is what finally took them down. The book value of an intangible asset would not affect that.

That all being said, the unfunded pension of former Nortel employees could have used a bigger piece of those patents. I believe there is some ongoing issues with the amount that the pension fund received when Nortel was finally dissolved and as a result many employees have lost or had their benefits significantly reduced.

I actually saw it last night. While not normally a fan of comic book movies, it was fun. Wasn't looking for anything serious. My only real complaint (taking into account I wasn't looking for an Oscar-winner or anything) was that for a 2 hour movie, they spent too much time building up the plot - although this does make sense if you consider it as a prequel to the Avengers movie(s).

I felt like the some of the epic battle scenes were more montages or practically fast-forwarded through and although I'm sure they are expensive to produce, are what I would have expected to see more of from a movie like this.

Mean? Really? This isn't kindergarden. The man help plan and fund a way for other terrorists to fly planes full of people into buildings. You make it sound like he might have some redeeming qualities. Far worse things have been said about far nicer people. Whether it Is a deliberate smear or not, I'd say it's well deserved. Whether it will work or is a good idea strategically is another matter.

Do you need the sitting government to try and expropriate the land under your house for the political arena to affect you?
You seem to be very shortsighted. Hell the country narrowly the potential of being being broken up in the 1995 referendum, would that have affected you?

You seem to take a narrow view of whether the goings on of government affect you. Do you care about the levels you are taxed at? What about the amount of social programs you have access to. All of these can be significantly changed by any sitting government. I understand ignorance and stupidity, but I don't understand apathy in this case. It is your country, you get to (help) decide who runs it and who makes the decisions. To piss that away, you might as well go live in Libya or Iran, as long as you fly under the radar of the sitting despots, you can go about your merry existence, unaffected by all that other stuff.

This has turned into more of a political than an IT debate, so I'll add my $0.02.

I don't particularly like Michael Ignatieff, nor the various scandals the Liberals have gotten themselves into since the 90's but the Conservative party has made them look like angels the last 3-4 years. Not just misappropriation of funds, but complete at utter contempt for the Canadian people, Parliament and the laws of the country.

At this point, I'd probably vote NDP on principle, but because I don't want to vote split and hand the Conservatives a majority, I will be voting Liberal and trying to convince anyone considering otherwise (NDP/Green/Libertarian/Pirate/Marijuana/Hippopotamus/etc.) to vote Liberal because if there is anything this country desperately needs, it is to be rid of Stephen Harper for good.

Recently on the news, they had an energy analyst who explained that from mining to air pollution, coal power kills some 10,000-30,000 depending on whose figures/estimates you believe.

I do not know the annual casualties from nuclear power, but it was reported in the same broadcast to be much less than that.

I think if you look at a potential worst-case scenario, obviously with some reactor designs it will be high and the threat will always be there but over the long-term its a relatively safe method of producing power when you compare the facts.

To some people the word "nucu-ler" is that much more fear-inducing than some smoggy summer days.

Obviously I was too lazy to gather sources, so *citation needed.

Also worthwhile to note two things (probably mentioned elsewhere):

1) Both of the ISP's (telco/cable co.) Now own various portions of media/content producing companies. In the case of Bell, they now own CTV, a national media outlet. One could easily argue that CTV is a competitor to Netflix.

2) There apparently was no capacity argument in the ISP's filing with the CRTC. I do not believe that they argued that the caps/ubb would decrease traffic as if they did, they would have to have demonstrated that their networks are congested, which as I understand it, are not.

Ah yes, I've seen this before...the typical way this is done is to hide the article behind at least three blog posts, thereby decreasing the chance that anyone will actually RTFA.
I believe that's how it usually goes right?

Isn't that the anecdotal definition of insanity? Repeating the same action multiple times and expecting a different result?

A two-party system has never made much sense to me but I know little of the US' electoral history.

Granted in Canada we have a nearly two-party system, but at least the other parties are somewhat legitimate alternatives (and have led at various levels of government).

Now if only I can convince the Chinese government to install one in my boss' office.

Try this site:
http://www.atdhe.net/

Although it can be a bit flaky at times, it allows me to get around some online (Read: US) broadcast restrictions as I am Canadian. Sometimes I can even get the PPV UFC fight to stop being flaky and catch that.

Except that the government is injecting $78 million (if a subsequent poster is accurate) into the economy by funding this mission. Which would partially go to salaries of rocket builders, launch personnel etc. Which would come back into the economy through consumption of other goods. Governments around the world are clamouring for more stimulus funding to kick-start the global economy.

Now if you don't think the $78 million is going to get the best return on investment or the most efficient use of funds, that's another matter.

Yes I realize its a /. faux-pas to reply to a funny comment seriously, but 90% of all posts are just posters trying to be funny.