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Tux Can Even Milk Cows!
GuitarNeophyte writes "If you're a cow, you want to get milked when you want to get milked. And if you were a dairy farmer, you want to make your cow happy. So what do you do? Set up a machine that gives the cow control of its milking schedule. Oh yeah, of course, it runs on Linux. It identifies the cow, then finds the udders, milks the cow, cleans it's undercarriage, and lets it go."
And in the old days we called them milk maids. Got to wonder how much of it is a true advancement and how much is simply replacing a minimum wage job with technology? At what point does replacing a ten grand a year employee with a 100 grand machine become impractical? Farm jobs actually don't fall under minimum wage laws or more to the point they have a seperate lower wage. 90% of the advances I'm quite sure are improvements but at some point I have to wonder if humans aren't more efficent than machines at certain jobs? A machine breaks down you repair it or buy another one. With minimum wage labor you hire another one. By simply creating technology to replace workers are we really improving things? You can call it survival of the fittest but that doesn't stop out of work people from breaking into your car or house to feed their families. The trick is balance and put the effort where it's really needed. Isn't food production a factory enough at this stage? We already have warehouses full of beakless tumor ridden chickens just to make sure there's a ready supply of cheap McNuggests. Personally I buy free range for a reason.
Yet one more everday thing computers can be applied to! jesus, computers can solve problems outside of the relm of computers??? thats amazing, lets put it on slashdot!