Why did the remove Chik-Fil-A?

Funny that you make that lovely blanket statement when it's someone with opinions like yours that recently killed two people who tried to stop him from spewing his hatred at a girl who did nothing to him.

But you don't see me saying that all right wing white men are violent bigots, do you? Because that's absurd. Condensing all people in a broad group (be it race, sexuality, gender, or anything else) into a single statement is ridiculous.

I guess some have forgotten that the crusades were by christians to fight muslims for control of Jerusalem and other holy places.

Go Intamin said:

That's why I started eating there, honestly

Edit to be clear: I don't hate any of those groups, but I just think they've gotten out of hand. They are the only people I can't think of that are more entitled than enthusiasts, every time they're denied stuff they pull the talransgender/gay card, and I have other rather private personal encounters that jaded my view of transgenders as a whole.

Let's be clear. First, I had a sneaking suspicion this thread would take a turn of this nature, and that is 100% fine. Racism is alive and well. Sexism is alive and well. Bigotry is alive and well. Who knows if it will ever truly be extinguished to a degree we as a society can really be proud of, but make no mistake; in comparison to many countries on this planet, we suck at equality. We suck at politics. We suck at health care. We suck at education. The reason I would mention equality first is that without that, those other wonderful things simply cannot follow. We excel at treating each other as less-thans based off of differences we are either 1) frightened of, or 2) because some perverted version of a religion has told us it is the right thing to do, or 3) both.

I was tempted to let the above post go, and quite frankly I reach points where I am simply too tired or exhausted to respond in an eloquent way. But it's the above post that turned the thread, and since it has seen other detours.

But the point remains the same.

Bigotry and discrimination have no wiggle room in our world. To know it exists in such mass quantities in our own borders is beyond disheartening, and to know we elected a leader who gives such thinkers some type of validation...well...you get the idea.

We are not a country of "us" and "them"....we are not a country of "those people" and "my people"....but we have, for whatever reason, watched this happen to a simply scary degree in my lifetime.

Using language like that says a lot about how someone views the reality around him/her. No one pulls out a card of any kind. Human beings with lives, and love, and children and families simply stand up for what's right, and I am damn proud to know so many people, much braver than I am, who live every frickin' day of their lives flat-out demanding nothing less than trying to make this little United States a more accepting place.

I'm a white, upper-middle class male with a wife and 2 kids. Despite my own hardships growing up, you know what? I was born a lap ahead of my wife in life simply because I had a penis. I was born two laps ahead of a lot of others because of something as stupid as my skin color. Thank the lord I wasn't gay, or maybe that would have taken off a lap...or maybe I could have just pretended to be straight just to be treated like a normal ****ing human being like a few souls I know.

Walk a mile in someone else's shoes to get to know what they deal with every day. Befriend someone, and it might just change your life. It sure as hell changed mine.

And let's all agree on one thing. No one, and I mean NO ONE, carries a bigger sense of entitlement than a group of enthusiasts attending a park-sponsored event.

TerraCoaster said:

...whereas there are countless recent acts of terror linked to and apparently motivated by Islam.

And why are you so eager to defend Muslims? Do the oppressive, violent tendencies of followers of Islam line up with your values?

Thank you for proving my point. You don't "believe" that non-Muslims are motivated by religion, but present as fact that all Muslims are.

I'm always eager to defend those that are being unfairly maligned. The vast majority of Muslims live their lives the way you do. They get up, they go to work, they have dinner, they play with the kids...

Ok, sooooo..........where can you get a good tasting chicken sandwich in the park?

There's such a thing as a good tasting chicken sandwich? :-p

I have no idea. When I'm in the park, I'm all about chili cheese fries, best enjoyed, as noted elsewhere, while sitting under the Sky Ride and watching people.

Why not give Melt a try? If it's like most Melts they have a pretty extensive Build Your Own menu, which I'm sure includes chicken.

XS NightClub said:

..... Google maps is just plain wrong too often for me to let them even drive me to the closest 7-11

I distrust GPS for the same reason. My favorite example being a person I was talking to; she lives in Kentucky, set her GPS for a location in Indiana, and didn't realize her GPS had taken her far astray until she was an hour into Ohio.

Call me old, but I'll rely on my trusty Rand McNally road atlas.

Excuse me, I have to go yell at those damn kids on my lawn.

Even semi-autonomous cars are statistically safer, resulting in 40% fewer crashes. That's not speculation, that's fact based on use of Tesla's first generation Autopilot, reported by the National Highway Safety Administration. Your fear, distrust or speculation about autonomous cars is incorrect.

I tried frontier inn again yesterday, twice. First time at 230p with tenders and fries was great, second time at 830p the sandwich was great as well. Their problem is that they are hit or miss, esp when busy. They have the potential to be very good but dont always live up to it day to day.

It is not fear or distrust in technology, I've been in IT for too long to even think about distrusting technology. Autonomous driving technology is nowhere near developed enough, and will not be for a long time, to make it practical for the way most people use their cars. Tesla's autopilot is a good example. It works much of the time and even encourages people to use it in ways not recommended by the manufacturer. And that causes complacency and inattention as proven by the person who was killed when the autopilot couldn't recognize a white semi-trailer and the car smashed right into it. Tesla's autopilot is an assistance technology but some people tend to forget that and use it like a fully autonomous vehicle with sometimes disastrous results.

Assistance devices like semi-autonomous braking with collision avoidance, adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning, etc. is useful technology that does reduce crashes, mainly because so many drivers just suck at driving. But a practical, fully autonomous car that can give people rides to where ever they want to go in all weather conditions and handle all exceptions encountered on the route 100% of the time is still a pipe dream.

noggin said:
My favorite example being a person I was talking to; she lives in Kentucky, set her GPS for a location in Indiana, and didn't realize her GPS had taken her far astray until she was an hour into Ohio.

It may have made sense to go into Ohio depending on where in Kentucky she started and where in Indiana she wanted to go. Maybe she was the one who was astray:)

Pete said:

Autonomous driving technology is nowhere near developed enough, and will not be for a long time, to make it practical for the way most people use their cars.

This is verifiably incorrect. It will also change the way people use their cars, so if you bother to own one at all, it won't have to sit idle when you're not using it, and it can go out into the world, pick people up and make money. Every Tesla sold today has the hardware, and the software is just about there. They'll start doing cross-country trials later this year.

XS NightClub said:

You ate at a KFC by choice?

In Tokyo...

I mean, have you had the "new" zingers? Those are flippin sweet.

While technology never ceases to amaze me it is the human factor that concerns me especially those with nefarious intent. Lasers aimed at pilots, devices that can knock out drones, USB Killer, all sorts of things easily created to cause havoc and destruction. Plans easily available on the internet and all you need is a soldering iron and an Amazon account to get everything you need delivered in two days.

In my mind it is not a question of is the technology capable of doing the job but is it robust enough that it can't be thwarted? I can just imagine driving up Route 4 on the way to CP and being hit with randsomware on my in car display, "Kindly transfer $300 in bitcoin to restart your engine."

That is the thing, the technology has to be much more robust than what it has shown in trials and beta testing. Lots of companies are trying to develop a robust enough technology in addition to Tesla: Ford, GM, VW-Audi, Volvo, Google, Intel and others. Uber has even a limited test in Pittsburgh with it's self driving technology. The caveat with Uber is that every car contains a driver to take over when it messes up or gets confused. As far as Tesla, they have a risky approach with only cameras, no lidar or radar sensors. Musk believes they can do it with only cameras, but we will see. Radar or lidar has a much greater chance of success in poor visibility than just camera vision alone.

And, even though the thought of using a car to make money through Uber like services when the owner is not using the car is a good one, in practice it sucks. Chances are high the certain riders will vandalize the car without a driver to watch them. Drunks will puke. People will abuse the interior out of carelessness and disrespect. Some may even try to steal the entire vehicle. No thank you, I'm not sending out my expensive piece of hardware to be abused for 77 cents per mile or less of income.

I drive about 40,000 miles per year in both good and horrendous weather conditions and in both cities and rural areas. Been doing that for many years and never had a wreck. I'm sure I'm not typical though. Maybe I'll eat my words, but I would be highly surprised if an autonomous vehicle will be able to provide me with the kind of transportation, reliability and safety I now have.

I think looking to rail services is a good sample. Ocean vessels and planes are other options for comparison. None of those vehicles have anywhere near the level of immediate vicinity inputs and yet they are not autonomous yet.

Wait... SpaceX has a rocket that autonomously lands on a boat in the middle of the ocean that is also autonomous. And you think that the daily commute is hard? Really?

All of your objections about technology are, as I've said, irrelevant. A 40% improvement in crash avoidance with just Level 2 autonomy that has logged a half billion miles. There's little doubt that nefarious intent could interfere with that, sure, but to ignore a 40% improvement based on fringe cases when so many lives could be saved is immoral. When Level 5 autonomy arrives, within 2 years by Musk's estimate, the reduction could be 90%. When the machines no longer have to drive among the humans, the crash rate could quite literally be a rounding error.

Also, the mistrust of GPS is wholly irrelevant. Tesla's fleet has logged nearly 2 billion miles of sensor data, so it knows when a road has changed before Google Maps does. It drives their navigation system.

The statistics and science are what they are, an no manner of doubt on your part undermines the numbers. I've let my car drive me at 75 mph. The future is already here.

Actually, landing a rocket on a boat is probably many times easier than the daily commute because there are absolutely no variables that haven't been pre-planned with the exception of the wind. Airliners are able to auto land, that is probably a better comparison of the difficulty of the task with the main difference in what provides lift and the changes to flight control required for either wings or rocket engines.

With a daily commute, the automation would have to handle rogue pedestrians, school busses, closed roads, traffic cops, deer, bad weather, snow and ice, fog and a variety of other things that just pop up unexpectedly.

Level 2 on the freeway is fairly easy, just adaptive cruise control with full braking capability and lane keeping​ assistance tied together with more advanced software. Level 5 is much harder with a lot more obstacles in the way.

You can't be serious. If landing a 150-foot tall rocket on a small platform after entering space and going several times the speed of sound was easy, it would have been done decades ago. The engineers compare it to fling a pencil off of a skyscraper and having it land upright on a postage stamp.

Everything you're describing was mostly working seven months ago: https://vimeo.com/192179727

Read this, it's only a few weeks old:
https://electrek.co/2017/04/29/elon-musk-tesla-plan-level-5-full-au...s-driving/