I didn't pick the "free internet schooling" because I know first hand how much online classes suck. Take them for annoying requisites like spanish, but NOT your core/major classes. You will be sorry.

They only suck if you lack discipline. I'd love to get cheap online degrees with the same weight as formal ones if they were an option.

Lol. This almost makes me want to repeat my last post, but I won't. The air is a gigantic (largely empty) place. People driving cars rarely crash alone, and it's rather difficult to crash into... nothing. Transportation by car will always be unsafe, unless it becomes fully automated. Developing that technology would be possibly the most useless thing ever. Regulating licenses would help, but you can't keep stupid people from having drivers' licenses and still have a functional USA, so that wouldn't be very effective either.


As for the online education:
Agreed. And I do. My high school offered pretty much no information technology courses, so I took 3 programming courses online. I managed a 4 on the AP CompSci exam somehow, and waived some college credit because of it. Because of that, though, I missed a bunch of core concepts and have trouble sometimes. I could see a class being reasonably beneficial if it was more rigid, but basically everything is open notes and the due date structure was lax, so I did basically no work. You do meet some interesting characters, though, because of the nature of an online (inter)national course.

I also learn quite a lot just by browsing on Wikipedia whenever I have an assignment to procrastinate on.

And then you'd never take another one again.
If you have that kind of discipline, you can already makes use of all the free information already available.

Picky, but: they would be proportional, but not similar There would still be far more driving accidents because there are far more vehicles on the road than airplanes in the air. And less retarded people pilot. I'm serious about that last one. I've seen the person in front of me attempting to read/look at a newspaper while driving.

You tried a semantic argument and failed.
Rates are proportions, therefor they would be similar.

Encourage positive media depictions of engineers and scientists
I voted this because it sounded the stupidest.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Oct 1 2009, 12:47 am by dumbducky. Reason: Forgot a bracket!

Keep in mind that a small problem in the air can kill you. Air conditioning not working in a commercial plane is enough to ground it because cabin pressurization really heats things up; An engine failure in a car means you pull over, while an engine failure in a plane means you find something soft and inexpensive to land on within your glide distance. If it's not on fire.

How much do you know about FAA regulations on pilot's licenses? In order to keep one, you have to repeatedly pass the flight test. You have to be physically fit to fly: No blind, slow, unhealthy people allowed. If you break the rules, you really get hammered. Can you imagine what that could do to our roads?

As for the bolded area... Doesn't that sort of contradict your entire safety argument?

And as for not having a functional country, it would be plenty functional, and those who couldn't drive would just have to use alternative means of transportation, i.e. public transit, biking, walking, etc. If you look at it this way, license regulation could do a lot more than just clean up the roads.

Less traffic = less pollution, less oil consumption.

Win-Win.

Yes... dramatizing it doesn't change the numbers, airplane accidents are still incredibly rare.

The point was more that cars are not should not be the way of the future, so spending ridiculous sums of money to develop technology that won't be remotely useful compared to what could otherwise be developed is a foolish decision. This is also assuming that cars lose their oil dependency, which isn't really happening and is just even more technology that would have to be developed.

I agree, but a very large number of people rely on cars for commuting, and public transportation is most often not available. My dad, for example, used to drive an hour or so into New Hampshire for work every day. If he failed the test for whatever reason he'd be out of a job. Or worse, if he failed a renewal he'd have to quit cold turkey, which looks terrible on a resume. I'm very sure he's not a member of some small minority, basically everyone in a suburb is in the exact same situation. Would it promote new forms of public transportation, yes, but not in the effective or revolutionary manner warranted.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Oct 1 2009, 5:55 am by FaZ-.

The test on drivers' licenses doesn't have to be as difficult as a pilot's test. But you're right about people who don't have any other means of transportation. Millions of Americans live in suburbs with inefficient or no public transportation available in their area.

You make it sound as if corporate conglomerates care about 'usefulness' and 'efficiency' (just enough is enough for many). They care more about what sells more, and what could get them more money. And since cars sell more than bus do, they would obviously make more cars then buses.
Plus its cheaper and more affordable. And cars are luxurious. People love things that are luxurious.

I think theres a reason why. Public transportation requires a set amount of population within that area to be of profit within a set amount of time. Suburban areas don't count as one.

Why useless? Do you really think that kind of technology only applies to cars? Wtf?

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Oct 2 2009, 9:55 am by BeDazed.

This project isn't one discussing reality, I'm allowed to be an idealist and pretend that people aren't complete pieces of shit and that there's more to an investment than potential profit. I think you missed that point.

As for automatic driving: yes, I do think that technology would prove to be of limited usefulness in other fields. Trains are already pretty much automatic at this point, and efficient public transportation will almost undoubtedly be done by rail. So after we abandon cars, you tell me where that technology is going.

Ok.
Faster, more efficient wifi (initially for inter-car communication).
Motion detection and extrapolation (for obstacle avoidance).
IRL pathing AI (for finding the most efficient route possible).
Collision avoidance systems.

As you can see, there are plenty of components that would be used for automated driving that could be used elsewhere. You also seem to be under the assumption that cars will always run off of oil or otherwise non-renewable resources, which is simply not true.

Well, this project does discuss reality- because idealists don't live in utopias, they have to consider reality. If they do not, they aren't idealists. They're dumb hags. It has to or it cannot be done.
Since this is a massive non-profit project, encouraging public transportation can be done- or atleast in some way. But if you take a look at America, and the sheer size of its land mass- no non-profit project would be enough for it. Hell, if it were that easy- the government would've done it by now. I mean, if you think about the tax your government receives- it wouldn't even take 0.0001% to beat any non-profit fund.

First I'd like to say, technologies aren't considered efficient or not. Technologies have pros and cons, and each are invaluable to an immeasurable degree- and often are a support beam for even more advanced technologies. So no, you cannot, no you do not even have the right to say a technology is useless.

Also, are technologies like this, automated driving limited to cars? No they are not. These kind of technologies you refer to are pathing, reflex, and logic computing using the features cars have. The car part isn't the hard part. Computing is harder- but it has more applications than automated cars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_car
These kind of technologies could possibly lead to a far more advanced form of artificial intelligences, which would be 'useful'.

Plus 'FaZ', I consider convenience better than 'efficiency' as a whole. If you can have both, then all the better. Its because we're human, not machines. We have to consider ourselves too.