I should say... my above comment is mainly in reference to my own country Canada.
If other countries have managed to cultivate a better scientific community, more power to them.
But in the case of Canada, and probably the US as well... scientists are simply not pursuers of science and truth, especially when they are in politically attached bodies.
Scientists are more than free to study and research anything. They just might not get the funding taken forcefully taken from everyone's pocket book to fund their research.
And yes, speaking of where data comes from... What about the mandatory long form census. Do you wonder where that data comes from? From threats and violence against citizens. Threats of fines and jail time if they don't fill in the mandatory long form census.
If that's the case, then science is at war with freedom and I'll take the side of freedom any day of the week.
Considering scientists have become advocates of specific policies and ideologies instead of simply doing research, I'm in favor of defunding them as well.
If all scientists did was provide the data on things like the fishery or global warming, more power to them. The moment they come in support of carbon taxes or any kind of policy, they are not doing science any longer.
Isn't it strange how government scientists almost never push for any policies that might result in less government even when the data supports it.
For example, in healthcare, it has been largely shown that prevention does not reduce healthcare costs. Prevention has lots of benefits, but basically, most healthcare costs are in old age. The longer you live in old age, the greater healthcare costs. As a matter of fact, the prevention probably increases healthcare costs as people live longer in old age.
But when was the last time these 'scientists' took on politicians who make claims about using prevention to reduce healthcare costs. From Obama to Dalton McGuinty to Mayor Bloomberg and a million others all trump up the benefits of prevention. Where are these brave scientists and advocates of truth and reason?
Why don't they speak up? Why aren't they researching the total cost of policies?
Scientists being on the government payroll and being involved in politics has ruined any notion of objective science. Sure, science is still valid in depoliticized fields... but in anything where policy is concerned, scientists have not shown themselves to be concerned with science and truth as much as ideology and policy.
Cut their funding I say in any field where policy is concerned.
I would argue that ever since the industrial revolution it has been possible to 'organize' society so that we all have 'enough'.
There's a reason communism came about when it did. Academics and others thought if only we could organize people, we could have them produce enough, and we could live in utopia.
It didn't turn out well.
The increased use of automation can be considered an extension of this task.
It can pretty much go either way. Whether automation leads to utopia or hell.
But let's look at the evidence of how out society at large is functioning.
1. As the need for labor lessens, the work is NOT being redistributed, so we all work less. It doesn't matter what country it is. People hang on to what is theirs. The engineer, teacher, nurse, doctor, accountant, banker wants to keep their above average lifestyle. In Europe, where having a good government job is great, million sit out of work... some land in immigrant ghettos. In my own home of Ontario, Canada, there are thousands of unemployed teachers, while others rake in the good job. No redistribution. So, as the number of paid jobs decreases due to automation, this problem could potentially get much worse leading to significant social strife. This is perhaps the biggest issue so far. There so many entrenched people used to a higher standard of living and they show no signs of willing to redistribute the work load. Nowhere is this more dangerous than in those whose entrenched power is due to the government; such as public sector unions, doctors, lawyers. Heck, again in Ontario, it is damn near impossible for them to take a paycut to save their own jobs today. The unions would rather have them lay off 5% of the nurses at a hospital than cut 5% of their salary. So you know it is going to be hard redistributing the workload in these highly unionized or professional areas. Our record so far... failure.
2. Governments/bankers are unwilling to let deflation occur. Imagine a world where no body had to worry about shelter. Everyone owned their own home mortgage free. Utopia? Pretty much every government/banker today will call it a disaster. The collapse of the housing market. Deflation in housing... Our entire economic system is based on infinite economic growth and debt. Transitioning from that is going to be difficult at best. It will mean fighting the bankers, pension funds, public sector workers... Our record here... failure.
3. Dependence on underclass There are entire cities dependent on an underclass. Places like New York, Toronto... would collapse if there wasn't rampant immigration and an underclass. Despite the perverse notion that these are 'leftist' areas, they remain financial capitals dependent on growth... and this mainly comes today from financial games (We saw how that turned out) and immigration. This is not a problem in other areas like more suburban or rural areas or the Scandinavian areas.
4. Governments are unwilling to give us spare time Instead, they invent work. There was no such thing as benign communism which just wanted to give people a good life. The government wanted people working hard building military equipment, being soldiers, going to space. Today we invent work in finance, law, healthcare, education... to keep people on the treadmill of life. Afterall, the planners of society aren't really interested in giving people an easy life. They have greater goals. Much like the lords of old pushed people to slavery to build Pyramids or Temples, today's lord push for their own agenda. Now granted some of them might help the people in some ways (healthcare, education)... but many times people would rather rest than get excessive healthcare or education.
One of the things that has been missed in the progressive enlargement of government by both the left and right is that the constitution has not been updated.
At a general level, the constitution is an agreement on HOW the people agree to be government.
So for things like say police powers, we have pretty good laws on it. There are problems here and there, but the DISCUSSION is always around the limits.
We grant the police the power to enforce the law, but we impose various limits on them (need warrants, trails, juries...)
Yet, when the progressive mentality took over on both the left and right, they made the argument that the constitution held back what people wanted government to do. Whether true or not, it left a vacuum. Government took over power in new areas without any constraints on itself. In all the 'new' areas, government can basically do whatever it wants. The only recourse people have is the ballot box. This might work for big issues, but not so much for all the little issues that ultimately affect government.
Government have begun using regulations to control people's behavior to a large extent. Again, whether you agree with it or not is not important. What is important is what are the regulation ON government to make sure it is acting in the correct interest.
Here's an example of the kind of constraints on government to regulate it to help it acts correctly.
1. All fines shall go to a fund used solely to compensate victims of such activity. So all traffic fines go to traffic victims. This pretty much removes the incentive governments have to use fines as revenue. Heck, I don't even think fines should pay for the regulating agency. I have a saying that goes like this: "If something is worth regulating, it is worth regulating via general taxation"
While not law in Sweden, Sweden has experimented with having a lottery for traffic fine revenue... again... a much better system of making sure the law is not being used for revenue and creates an incentive for drivers to follow the regulation. If you are not caught speeding, you are entered into a lottery to win the money collected by the fines.
But like I said, as the progressives on both the left and right moved towards expanding the power of government, they skipped any amendments to the constitution in favor of a living constitution, and thus skipped the process of setting any regulations on themselves in the new areas.
Worrying about the people who made such a decision is hardly an effective mechanism. Democracy has many such short comings. Part of the reason we have rights and regulations on governments and other such items, so that we are not simply at the mercy of elected politicians.
I'd be more worried about those that created the highway traffic act and other such rule books without any concern for regulating government itself.
I sadly thought I don't build a bomb and blow a bomb because I have a certain moral sense that tells me not to.
Apparently, it is because the law would severely punish me.
But since we're on the topic of bomb control. Bomb control doesn't work. Somehow, the Boston bombers were able to build a bomb and use it to kill people.
The bad guys who want to use bombs in a harmful manner seem to able to make and use them.
Gun control doesn't work either. Guns are too easy to make. Just like bombs. The difference of course is that people see a valid reason to have a gun, and so a lot of people have them. Most of them don't go around killing people though.
Countries with gun control and low gun crime tend to have high quality citizens. That Swiss have a high rate of gun ownership, but they don't have all the gun deaths. So does Finland.
You cannot control bombs/guns/drugs. You have to focus on making sure you people don't want to abuse them.
You can certainly try and control more complex items. While a gun is easy to produce, an F16 is much more complex. So you certainly control the proliferation of F16s among the citizenry.
Let's talk about this from the point of view of running a software development business and by extension being a software developer.
We have got to be the only field in the world that gets upset on mass about things that are good for our business.
Sure, there are few police officers and prison guards who feel bad for the war on drugs, but most don't say anything while on the job, because they know where their bread is buttered.
Sure, doctors know they could lower the cost of healthcare by using more computing and making better uses of nurses... but most will oppose it because they know how their bread is buttered.
Sure, lawyers and accountants know we could improve society 1000 fold if we simplified the tax and legal code... but most will oppose it because they know how their bread is buttered....
Yes, one of cloud computing's biggest advantages for 'us' is the ability to have constant cash-flow. Without it many people won't upgrade. Or if they do upgrade, it will be because of even more sinister and wasteful reasons. Things made purposefully not compatible, forced into complex license agreements...
When you get down to it and compare what we do in software (license agreements, cloud computing...) to hold people in our business, it's really not that bad. We barely use the government and barely
If people don't upgrade, the company loses cash-flow and possibly goes out of business. Not only is this bad for business, it is also bad for the knowledge base. The domain level knowledge is very important. The training of new software developers also suffers...
Now Adobe in this case, might be pushing its luck too far. Trying to control too much. Charging too much. It might backfire on them. Yet, a reasonably priced cloud application... something like NetFlix... would do quite well and generate constant cash-flow.
I also agree with less work hours, job sharing... basically reaping the benefits of automation.
However... the how we get there is the hard part... and the most socially disruptive.
I should have mentioned this as well in my list... but I'll add it here. Taking on established interests in society is the hardest part of any transition.
If we are to move to more egalitarian work sharing kind of environment, then certain special interests will have to be tackled. Right now, for example, it is taken as a given that certain jobs are good jobs (bankers, public sector worker...). Will these people be willing to give up their special privileges so others can be more egalitarian?
How about pension funds and the banking sector which depend on economic growth?
It's a very tough social and political challenge. Try taking on big union, big banking... and just shake your head. I'm Canadian... and in the private sector, we've just seen labor laws diminished. Rather than working less, those of us in the private sector are working harder and harder. That's not moving in the right direction?
It is in reality the 'how we get there' that is the hardest part. I think most sensible people can see the utopia automation brings. But the how we get there part should not be overlooked.
Things are always the same... until they're different.
Here's just a few consideration on why this automated future becomes more problematic than before.
1. For most of the industrial revolution, people wanted good/services just to make life tolerable. The result was that people were willing to work really hard to achieve those good/services. We're talking things like running water, electricity, roads, rail, food at the super market. You can see this phenomenon today in Asia where the Chinese, typically from rural areas, work like crazy just get here. Western people did this in previous times too. But once you have a achieved such a standard of living, people aren't willing to work for that next level of 'stuff'. Don't get me wrong... we all *want* that next level of stuff. But we're not willing to really work for it. I want a Ferarri, but I'm not willing to work for it. I want clean drinking water, and I am willing to work for it.
2. Deflation. Deflation is many things. Many are bad... especially if you view the growth economy. But one way to look at it is as a sign that people's needs as an aggregate are satisfied. Consider for example a world where everyone owns their own home. A utopia for many. Homelessness ended. Shelter solved. Now take a step back and look at how our society would handle such a utopia. The collapse of the entire housing and mortgage market. It would be seen as one of the most horrific events. And well... the recent housing crisis basically shows this. Instead of seeing cheaper housing as a good thing... it has been painted as a bad thing.
3. 'people services' are increasingly public services. Just what 'people services' do you think people are actually willing to pay for? Healthcare? Education? Those are the two main big ones. And in most countries... even the US, they are heavily if not totally government run. This was not the case in previous changes. Both the horse buggy and the automobile were private ventures. So with government services now, they are heavily paid for via taxation or mandates. To replace the demand of physical goods, governments are going to have to replace it with higher taxation and redistribution. Not just on the rich, but think of it as a forced service. A poor person working at mcdonalds is going to face higher taxes as he is 'forced' to purchase (via taxation or mandates) expensive healthcare services. Don't think for a second there are enough 'rich' people to provide this... the math doesn't work. This is not just a simple change in the economy from horse and buggy to car... it's a major social and political challenge. If the government is basically going to run the future economy, then it must treat all workers fairly. Guaranteeing them equal access to work... It's a very complicated problem.
Again, this goes back 1 where what are people willing to work for to get. One can imagine world where I sit around paying for yoga classes. But if I had the choice to work hard and get yoga classes versus work less and not get yoga classes... most people will choose to work less. Again... rephrase that around the older industrial revolution. Work hard and get clean drinking water, or work less and suffer disease and poor health... Notice the difference. People services are really overrated... as is the general service economy.
4. The new industries require less and less work. The previous changes still required loads of people to operate. The change from horse and buggy to car still required many auto workers. The introduction of the telephone initially requires lots of switch operators. Increasingly new industries need a few highly skilled people to roll out. Some high quality engineers and technicians. The rest is automated. So while there are new jobs... there are not enough new jobs in the new industries for the masses. A small populations might be okay... but a large country like the US with 300 million people... there's enough jobs for everyone.
5. Women in the workforce. Not a problem... but a reality that we've basically doubled the number of jobs required to be created at at time when automation is getting rid of jobs.
HTML afterall was written back when they just wanted to show people documents. It 'hardly' worked in every situation. It worked in the very limited case of presenting a documenting.
Then people wanted to do more with these documents and we end up with what we have now.
It's really not unlike the various attempts to make word processors interactive.
The author's point that many have chosen to ignore is that the actual 'markup' part of HTML is pretty much good enough. I think he is saying to leave the current HTML spec as is. Freeze it and use that as a standard.
Everything 'new' has basically moved into CSS, javascript/DOM...
In a sense, most of the new development has been in creating a unified framework to be used by everyone. Kind of like getting the world to use QT or.NET or whatever.
We can then have any more HTML 'tags' be left to the end developer,
For example, the web components framework by Google basically allows one to use 'custom' tags to use premade 'objects'.
Something like this:
This does something great
Rather than being added to the HTML spec. It is 'linked' in or included as an object.
I think it is more inline with what the 'web' programming environment has become... that is a general programming framework. And most such frameworks allow you to define your own 'objects' and bring in other libraries...
I'm going to take issue with the 'we don't need 100% employment'.
We do in fact need 100% employment. What we don't need is people working so hard and so many hours.
Allow me to explain. There is a mentality that we simply tax people more and then provide other people with welfare (generalized term for people on EI). That works if there are few people on welfare.
But as the welfare rolls increase, you are going to be taking a large chunk of money from the working people.
This is one the biggest resistances to the welfare state. Consider the modern private sector professional who would be a net source of taxation - working long hours - very skilled work - little or no job security - no defined benefit government backed pension...
Now you want to take a large chunk of this person's salary and give it to people on welfare? They're going to fight that because well... they have a sense of fairness.
Now if you make their work more tolerable/enjoyable/stable, then they don't mind higher taxes or spreading the wealth.
Rather than having a shrinking pool of net contributing workers whom we take more and more and more from, we should be spreading the work around, so no one gets a free ride and no one is being extorted of their labor.
Some jobs are hard to split, but most jobs are pretty reasonable. There are consequences to this. Your best might not be doing a lot of the work for example... But the social stability aspect is much better.
Spread the work... Don't tax and redistribute. With enough work shared, you can then be free to pursue your free time with what ever tickles your fancy. We still have a long way to go before 'all work' is enjoyable. There's still plenty of work that needs to be done... and while that's the case, people should share in it.
Anything can be 'money'. Money is just a means of representative value.
The main downfall of fiat money is that money creation is highly centralized. This means, the value of the money you have can be arbitrarily changed by the whims of the people in charge of the money supply (central bankers, government...).
It also means that those in charge of the money supply get to decide who gets the benefit of created money. That might be big bankers, governments... but it's generally not the average person.
The benefit of BitCoin and even the Gold Standard in this respect is that the generation of new money is not centralized. Rather, anyone can go out there and work to create new money. You go mine gold or spend computing resources with BitCoin.
There are a lot of things we can do to fiat currency to increase the trust level. Things like:
1. Any new printed money gets given directly to people on a per capita basis. The bank prints 1 trillion dollars, that trillion dollars is given to each American on a per capita basis. This removes the benefit of money creation from special interest groups.
2. Focus on inflation control. This *was* the mian focus of many central banks for a while. Though they don't appear to have the will to maintain it in bad times. Often messing with CPI figures in all kinds of ways.. including and excluding various things, reducing the impact of rising home prices..
3. A political change so people don't feel created money is going to be spent by government (via cheap debt) and the benefits going mainly to special interest groups. Things like guaranteed income, guaranteed government jobs...
BitCoin itself is money with the explicit intention of being money. It definitely is better in the decentralized money creation area. But aside from that, it is not clearly better.
"4. If you didn't see Delenn & Sheridan coming from day 1 of her chrysalis emergence, then I dunno what to say. The flirting was obvious, and it developed over quite a period of time...the watching of the faces during sleep, the crowd of Minbari outside their door ("Whoopee?"), etc..."
Perhaps I wasn't clear what I was saying. Yes, it was clear Sheriden and Delenn would be together from a plot perspective. That was my point... it was absolutely clear as being tied to the greater plot. It's like someone with a checklist went down a list of things to make them in love (flirting, precarious situation, one of the lost and returns)... and they just went through the list inserting them episode after episode in order.
It offered little emotional attachment on its own or any long term emotional depth. It's like they were just meant to be for the plot line. Great for story arch lovers, not so good for the love story on its own.
5. Fantasy tends to do it less. For example, in LOTR, when the Ent Forest is destroyed, there is a theme of protecting the environment and industrialization there. But the point is not hammered explicitly. It is just left as is. Passing the torch is not a problem. I have no issue with the greater story arch of the vorlons/shadows passing on. But the humans in LOTR don't treat the elves like infants in a grand speech.
I wonder if Netflix really understands its own benefit to its customers.
1. Anyone can get any show they want from 'illegal' areas like torrents or various streaming websites.
In short, if I actually wanted to get illegal content, I, like everyone else out there can already do it.
The reason we go with Netflex is because it is very convenient to not have to sit around searching torrents, encoding/decoding video files, dealing with crappy hosting websites, dealing with suspicious malware, hacking around with javascript...
Netflix is cheap enough to get paid for convenience. It is the convenience we are paying for with Netflix.
So what exactly is NetFlix trying to prevent us from doing with DRM? I have no idea. If we want to go through all that trouble, we'd be torrenting anyways.
You method of control is pretty simple netflix. Track users and what they are watching. If you see too many people using the same account from different countries or whatever, then you know someone is sharing the account. I'm assuming they can do this in HTML5... or maybe I'm mistaken.
To be fair, there are very few sci-fi shows that manage to get the acting/story line part to connect with a large segment of society.
I've probably watched the whole B5 series at least 8 times over the years.
Each time, I am amazed at the over-arching story line that gets the nerd in me excited. How everything ties together.
But watching the show episode after episode, I'm reminded of why the average person probably dislikes sci-fi tv.
1. Poor portrayal of women. Whether its B5, or Star Trek, TNG, or Voyager... they all seem to want to make a point about women. It's almost forced on people. In B5, we females shown to be tough and kick-ass... think Badger in Gropos. Or in Voyager trying to showcase Janeway as a female captain. They can never just portray women as being equal to men as they want to show. It's always excessive to make a point. Note, there are regular women on these shows (Ivonova, Doctor Crusher...). But funny enough, these aren't the characters they choose to showcase when pushing women's issues:P
2. Horrible portrayal of 'regular people.' On in B5... see big guy in down below... oh he's a thug. Give me your money kind of thug. You don't get more basic than this. You see the same theme running throughout Star Trek as well... 'regular' society is simplistic.
3. Pointless Space Jargon. I get that we're in space and you're probably going to talk about things like phasers, PPG, ion cannons, time travel... but sometimes entertainment is more important that scientific jargon. For example, we all know our measurement of time differs based on where we are. 5:00 in Toronto is different from 5:00 in London. But how many times do they have to stress this in B5? Every time they mention time, it's "I'll meet you in 5 of their Earth hours" or something like that.
4. Undeveloped love stories... that have to be there. Riker/Worf and Deanna, sheriden and delenn... They all want to throw in a love story. But they never do it as well as even the most basic regular tv show. I'm watching B5, and it seems like Sheriden and delenn are just meant to be together to fit the story line... as opposed to seeing any kind of real development between the characters. I'm left wondering... when did they fall so strongly in love? Did I miss something? Compare this to even the most simplistic sitcom like say Friends... where the love interest between say Ross and Rachel spans entire seasons.
5. Needless Moralizing. Some shows are better than other at this, but sci-fi seems to want to make a point. Rather than letting the point stand on its own as part of the story, they often try to make it explicit. In b5, think Sheriden making his grand speech to the vorlons and shadows about their time is past and they should 'get the hell out of our galaxy'. Really... these are superior races with thousands or maybe even millions of years of advancement on the human race, and sheriden talks to them like weeee infants... and the writers make them speak like little infants? Or for that matter any speech by Janeway. Picard on TNG was probably the best at not doing this, but even that show resorted to it on many occasions.
Then you begin to see how many of these issues are rectified in more modern sci-fi like BSG. They're not perfect, but they make for more excellent TV if less sci-fi.
By your post, you only see the 'free-market' as lowering wages... when in reality in lowers wages and costs.
There are basically 2 'utopian' visions of how we are going to 'work' in the future.
1. The free market continues finding efficiencies; reducing work and lowering costs. More wal-marts and amazons and gigs. The result is you don't have to work as much as things cost less. In this case, the GIG economy is not a problem. In this world, most people are egalitarian as really...
2. The government sees the shortage of work and puts people to work enforcing an economy. Government becomes a greater and greater part of the economy especially employing huge numbers of people in healthcare and education and transit. The people not employed or tied to the government work in the service industry serving those employed by the government.
There are huge problems with both models and it is ripe with social strife in either case. For example, in the case of 1, it is unlikely governments are going to cutback, so things like healthcare and education will become extreme burdens. So your cost of living will not be allowed to go that low given property taxes, income taxes, tolls, fees... The result will be a high cost of living and little or low wage work. It is also deeply unnerving to not have work and not know when your next pay cheque will come. You also have to worry if you will be able to get any kid of work. How will work be distributed in such a system. Ideally, as more people are able to work, people choose to work less. What prevents a big contractor from working hard and keeping a lot of jobs, leaving many people completely unemployed?
The problem with 2 is a two-tier economy with those working for the government having good jobs for life. The rest of society serving them in a servile manner. This again is ripe for social strife.
In short, both visions are pretty ripe for protest. While you see the free-market is making people servile... a lot of us see a government run economy as equally service... because we know a lot of us won't be a part of the government.
1. During university, we used to try and do old exams. The further back we went, the harder the exams got. Trying to do an exam from like 10 years ago was ridiculously hard. Fast forward today as I deal with coop students and see their topics of study... and no doubt they have it easier as well.
2. Years of experience makes a huge deal. Also the current stock of 'older' workers grew up in the ATT, Bells, Xerox, Nortels... companies which used to have real engineer departments. The amount of overall training a new engineer gets today in terms of mentorship and real management and career management is ridiculously low.
3. The off shore effect. The best of today's youth in the western world are not going into electrical engineering. Whereas many of the best in India/China... are as it is a good career option for them. Our best would rather do finance, medicine, law, government... So you have our mid tier competing against their much more hungry top tier.
You get a lot of leeway with a 'monopoly' over a market.
Even a lot of the innovation of the early days of computing and networking was due to monopolies. Heck, C++ was invented by ATT/Bell labs. And of course ATT operated under a telecom monopoly.
This of course died when ATT ended its monopoly and split out its lab division on its own. And the innovation was never heard from again.
I fully understand the idea of creative destruction and being free to innovate and competition. That is the mark of our current startup culture.
However, I think it is equally important not to overlook professionalism and long term companies, long term scientific careers.
We've had several articles on slashdot in the past about 'shallow innovation'. The idea that our 'best' minds are creating twitter and facebook instead of real deep problems.
Well, given the startup culture... which do you think makes more sense? For a young bright kid to start a venture on shallow knowedge; that is knowledge that make take them a year or so to learn (web development). Or go to school and study on their own for 7+ years learning some obscure abstract science... and then go out hunting for funding... and starting some company? Yeah, shallow innovation rules. And any deep innovation is going to come from university offshoots.
The longer term innovative companies as we said operate from some kind of basic cash-cow to subsidize the other part. Heck, even the 'glory' days of open source were heavily subsidized by ridiculously over priced hardware or a monopoly position in some market.
These mainly come in places where you have a huge cash cow in some kind of 'monopoly' position. Microsoft Research, Google 20%, ATT labs...
After looking at it for a while, I'm much less against such cash-cows/monopolies/vertical integration than I used to be. With monopolies, you can either try and encourage competition or you can regulate them.
Worst of all, most people can see this applying to 'manual' labor jobs. Heck, many people are so dismissive and even appear to think it moral that manual labor jobs are done. Ever hear people talk about auto workers or manufacturing jobs or low-wage warehouse work.
There's a huge class of people who rant along the lines of "Can't stop progress. You should have gotten an education to better yourself. You don't deserve as much money because I went to school for 4 years..."
Yet, as you rightly point out, 95% of people have jobs that could be very easily automated to a large degree if you were to look at results.
At its most basic level, most of financial services/accounting could be pretty easily replaced by computer systems. As many people say, our tax system can be automated to a large degree. Some countries already prefill tax forms. Simplify the tax code and the entire process becomes null and void. Let's not even get into the vast majority of the underlings in financial services who basically just apply a few formulas they learned blindly. Some of the top people might have some judgment though. But most anyone else just ends up with simple work... or at best... they are a sales person.
Even something like education. We are talking about something that is taught to pretty much every single child. Although a very personal relationship, on the whole, most classes teach the same thing. A grade 9 math class is a grade 9 math class. You could pretty much record the lesson and play it back. A teacher relegated to classroom control. Just put in perspective of the numbers... and you as a student are not that unique... and neither is your teacher.
Even many skilled jobs... like a family doctor. Most spend their ACTUAL time with patients in a very simple pattern. The process could generally be automated in terms of diagnosis and scheduling tests and prescriptions.
But most 'educated' jobs have protected themsevles in one way or another, but its changing as well.
Much like the automated car, people have this perception of enhanced human intelligence, but we all *KNOW* that on average, when the automated car becomes reality, it will be better than 95% of human drivers. Sure you as a person might be able to react better in that 0.0001% case that the computer was not programmed for. But compare that against all the times a human is not behaving better than the regular tasked computer.
It's that they choose to do it so it makes it easier to deal with patients.
The irony of professional regulation is that we restrict medical professionals, grant them monopolies, impose excess educational requirements... and then it turns out most of them don't practice to that level.
Sure your family doctor might theoretically be better than say a nurse practitioner, but most barely spend any time with you to actually be better (at least in Canada).
Sure theoretically, they are guardians of the medical system, but they will prescribe antibiotics when not needed, sign fraudulent sick/massage forms...
The same goes for lawyers, engineers....
Once in a while, one is held accountable, but in general there's enough power in place to make sure it doesn't happen all that often.
What you need to do is list your potential pool of customers and then see how you can make money from them.
Hobbyist and College kids toying with graphics: They're not going to pay. Accept it as a reality. They will hack your tool if you try. At best, use them as means to make your tool popular. Some might buy it, but most won't.
Large graphic shop: They will pay as long as it is illegal to use it otherwise. So don't release your product for 'free'. If you want, have a free version for non-commerical use and emphasize it in the tool that if it is used in a commercial setting, they must pay. Alternatively, have a simple serial number thing. It adds more authenticity to the agreement where you are purchasing licenses:P The lawyers will make sure a legit copy is made. I've worked for numerous software companies and the large ones have a team of lawyers running around. Now, a lot of the time people do use random software, but more often than not, the company will buy licenses. Really whats $10-$20 expensed for the company? I don't know what kind of deal my company makes with them, but we have legitimate versions of many pieces of 'shareware' products.
Small to medium Graphic Shop: These may pay and some may not. What can you do to help bring them over to the paying side? 1. Make it easy to pay. Sign up for a reputable app delivery service. easy for the smart phone market. Harder on a pc.
We should be designing cars that don't require the user to belt themselves in... maybe the car automatically belts you in?
We should be building cars with the technology that avoids crashing into a tree at 100 kph...collision avoidance systems are starting to become a reality BTW.
Now in the case of a car, we can arguably say that the technology has not been there YET to make sure driving is safe and thus we must rely on humans to be trained properly. In 100 years time (probably earlier) when we have computers capable of self-driving, we will probably prefer to focus on automatic driving systems, instead of improving human driving ability.
In the case of the computer, it is not a matter of technology and more a matter of implementation and organization that makes the web insecure. Poor programming practice, lack of standards, varying browser ability, lack of rule of law regarding storage of user data...
Money would be much better spend education developers, law makers... on security and rightfully so.
There's actually an interesting free-trade angle to all this.
Supposedly, the value of having a higher dollar is that you can purchase goods more cheaply and thus can have a higher standard of living or be more productive.
Software and media producers have tended to push for region based pricing, so the advantage is gone.
For example, a movie costs $20 in America. Let us suppose that price is just not going to get any market penetration in India as most families can't afford it. A more appropriate price range is $5.
What would happen in a 'normal' market is the movie distributor does some math and calculates the number of potential buyers in India vs US and pricing and comes to a movie price of lets say $7 to maximize profits.
The consequence of this is the poor in America actually get to pay less for movies and they can enjoy more.
This example is just for the consumer end, but it works equally well on the business end. Buying development software...
You even see the same thing with prescription drugs. Drugs in America cost much more than drugs overseas. The main reason is other countries, like mine (Canada) have universal healthcare and won't sell an expensive drug or they won't approve it for use without a reduced price. Or the country is so poor they can't afford the high priced drug. So the drug companies give out special deals to other countries and then use the law to keep US pricing high.
In reality, they should be forced once again to only have one price... balance the potential demand with the price and give charity where charity is due.
In a free-trade world, i wonder why such regional price discrimination exists.
People can call Obama what they want, but I don't see him as hiding his agenda. Read his books.
He is a progressive, through and through. Government is good. If there are problems, it just means we haven't found the right bureaucratic apparatus to solve it. Expert panels. Management of people lives. People working for the state for the benefit of the society at large.
In reality, he is more intellectually consistent that those who criticize him.
Half the people here probably support universal healthcare and expert run panels to determine healthcare outcomes. They probably support public education and all kinds of mandates
Well... you entrust the government to do so much good with your heathcare, with your children... why wouldn't you do the same with your security and finances?
I think far too many people put their own vision on what Obama stands for instead of actually listening to the man in his speeches and his writings.
Slashdot Mirror
I should say... my above comment is mainly in reference to my own country Canada.
If other countries have managed to cultivate a better scientific community, more power to them.
But in the case of Canada, and probably the US as well... scientists are simply not pursuers of science and truth, especially when they are in politically attached bodies.
It's not a war on science.
Scientists are more than free to study and research anything. They just might not get the funding taken forcefully taken from everyone's pocket book to fund their research.
And yes, speaking of where data comes from...
What about the mandatory long form census. Do you wonder where that data comes from? From threats and violence against citizens. Threats of fines and jail time if they don't fill in the mandatory long form census.
If that's the case, then science is at war with freedom and I'll take the side of freedom any day of the week.
Considering scientists have become advocates of specific policies and ideologies instead of simply doing research, I'm in favor of defunding them as well.
If all scientists did was provide the data on things like the fishery or global warming, more power to them. The moment they come in support of carbon taxes or any kind of policy, they are not doing science any longer.
Isn't it strange how government scientists almost never push for any policies that might result in less government even when the data supports it.
For example, in healthcare, it has been largely shown that prevention does not reduce healthcare costs. Prevention has lots of benefits, but basically, most healthcare costs are in old age. The longer you live in old age, the greater healthcare costs. As a matter of fact, the prevention probably increases healthcare costs as people live longer in old age.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2008/02/05/unhealthy-study.html
But when was the last time these 'scientists' took on politicians who make claims about using prevention to reduce healthcare costs. From Obama to Dalton McGuinty to Mayor Bloomberg and a million others all trump up the benefits of prevention. Where are these brave scientists and advocates of truth and reason?
Why don't they speak up? Why aren't they researching the total cost of policies?
Scientists being on the government payroll and being involved in politics has ruined any notion of objective science. Sure, science is still valid in depoliticized fields... but in anything where policy is concerned, scientists have not shown themselves to be concerned with science and truth as much as ideology and policy.
Cut their funding I say in any field where policy is concerned.
I would argue that ever since the industrial revolution it has been possible to 'organize' society so that we all have 'enough'.
There's a reason communism came about when it did. Academics and others thought if only we could organize people, we could have them produce enough, and we could live in utopia.
It didn't turn out well.
The increased use of automation can be considered an extension of this task.
It can pretty much go either way. Whether automation leads to utopia or hell.
But let's look at the evidence of how out society at large is functioning.
1. As the need for labor lessens, the work is NOT being redistributed, so we all work less. It doesn't matter what country it is. People hang on to what is theirs. The engineer, teacher, nurse, doctor, accountant, banker wants to keep their above average lifestyle. In Europe, where having a good government job is great, million sit out of work... some land in immigrant ghettos. In my own home of Ontario, Canada, there are thousands of unemployed teachers, while others rake in the good job. No redistribution.
So, as the number of paid jobs decreases due to automation, this problem could potentially get much worse leading to significant social strife. This is perhaps the biggest issue so far. There so many entrenched people used to a higher standard of living and they show no signs of willing to redistribute the work load. Nowhere is this more dangerous than in those whose entrenched power is due to the government; such as public sector unions, doctors, lawyers. Heck, again in Ontario, it is damn near impossible for them to take a paycut to save their own jobs today. The unions would rather have them lay off 5% of the nurses at a hospital than cut 5% of their salary. So you know it is going to be hard redistributing the workload in these highly unionized or professional areas.
Our record so far... failure.
2. Governments/bankers are unwilling to let deflation occur. Imagine a world where no body had to worry about shelter. Everyone owned their own home mortgage free. Utopia? Pretty much every government/banker today will call it a disaster. The collapse of the housing market. Deflation in housing... Our entire economic system is based on infinite economic growth and debt. Transitioning from that is going to be difficult at best. It will mean fighting the bankers, pension funds, public sector workers...
Our record here... failure.
3. Dependence on underclass
There are entire cities dependent on an underclass. Places like New York, Toronto... would collapse if there wasn't rampant immigration and an underclass. Despite the perverse notion that these are 'leftist' areas, they remain financial capitals dependent on growth... and this mainly comes today from financial games (We saw how that turned out) and immigration. This is not a problem in other areas like more suburban or rural areas or the Scandinavian areas.
4. Governments are unwilling to give us spare time
Instead, they invent work. There was no such thing as benign communism which just wanted to give people a good life. The government wanted people working hard building military equipment, being soldiers, going to space. Today we invent work in finance, law, healthcare, education... to keep people on the treadmill of life.
Afterall, the planners of society aren't really interested in giving people an easy life. They have greater goals.
Much like the lords of old pushed people to slavery to build Pyramids or Temples, today's lord push for their own agenda. Now granted some of them might help the people in some ways (healthcare, education)... but many times people would rather rest than get excessive healthcare or education.
One of the things that has been missed in the progressive enlargement of government by both the left and right is that the constitution has not been updated.
At a general level, the constitution is an agreement on HOW the people agree to be government.
So for things like say police powers, we have pretty good laws on it. There are problems here and there, but the DISCUSSION is always around the limits.
We grant the police the power to enforce the law, but we impose various limits on them (need warrants, trails, juries...)
Yet, when the progressive mentality took over on both the left and right, they made the argument that the constitution held back what people wanted government to do. Whether true or not, it left a vacuum. Government took over power in new areas without any constraints on itself. In all the 'new' areas, government can basically do whatever it wants. The only recourse people have is the ballot box. This might work for big issues, but not so much for all the little issues that ultimately affect government.
Government have begun using regulations to control people's behavior to a large extent. Again, whether you agree with it or not is not important. What is important is what are the regulation ON government to make sure it is acting in the correct interest.
Here's an example of the kind of constraints on government to regulate it to help it acts correctly.
1. All fines shall go to a fund used solely to compensate victims of such activity. So all traffic fines go to traffic victims. This pretty much removes the incentive governments have to use fines as revenue. Heck, I don't even think fines should pay for the regulating agency.
I have a saying that goes like this: "If something is worth regulating, it is worth regulating via general taxation"
While not law in Sweden, Sweden has experimented with having a lottery for traffic fine revenue... again... a much better system of making sure the law is not being used for revenue and creates an incentive for drivers to follow the regulation. If you are not caught speeding, you are entered into a lottery to win the money collected by the fines.
But like I said, as the progressives on both the left and right moved towards expanding the power of government, they skipped any amendments to the constitution in favor of a living constitution, and thus skipped the process of setting any regulations on themselves in the new areas.
Worrying about the people who made such a decision is hardly an effective mechanism. Democracy has many such short comings. Part of the reason we have rights and regulations on governments and other such items, so that we are not simply at the mercy of elected politicians.
I'd be more worried about those that created the highway traffic act and other such rule books without any concern for regulating government itself.
I sadly thought I don't build a bomb and blow a bomb because I have a certain moral sense that tells me not to.
Apparently, it is because the law would severely punish me.
But since we're on the topic of bomb control.
Bomb control doesn't work.
Somehow, the Boston bombers were able to build a bomb and use it to kill people.
The bad guys who want to use bombs in a harmful manner seem to able to make and use them.
Gun control doesn't work either. Guns are too easy to make. Just like bombs. The difference of course is that people see a valid reason to have a gun, and so a lot of people have them. Most of them don't go around killing people though.
Countries with gun control and low gun crime tend to have high quality citizens. That Swiss have a high rate of gun ownership, but they don't have all the gun deaths. So does Finland.
You cannot control bombs/guns/drugs.
You have to focus on making sure you people don't want to abuse them.
You can certainly try and control more complex items. While a gun is easy to produce, an F16 is much more complex. So you certainly control the proliferation of F16s among the citizenry.
Let's talk about this from the point of view of running a software development business and by extension being a software developer.
We have got to be the only field in the world that gets upset on mass about things that are good for our business.
Sure, there are few police officers and prison guards who feel bad for the war on drugs, but most don't say anything while on the job, because they know where their bread is buttered.
Sure, doctors know they could lower the cost of healthcare by using more computing and making better uses of nurses... but most will oppose it because they know how their bread is buttered.
Sure, lawyers and accountants know we could improve society 1000 fold if we simplified the tax and legal code... but most will oppose it because they know how their bread is buttered. ...
Yes, one of cloud computing's biggest advantages for 'us' is the ability to have constant cash-flow. Without it many people won't upgrade. Or if they do upgrade, it will be because of even more sinister and wasteful reasons. Things made purposefully not compatible, forced into complex license agreements...
When you get down to it and compare what we do in software (license agreements, cloud computing...) to hold people in our business, it's really not that bad. We barely use the government and barely
If people don't upgrade, the company loses cash-flow and possibly goes out of business. Not only is this bad for business, it is also bad for the knowledge base. The domain level knowledge is very important. The training of new software developers also suffers...
Now Adobe in this case, might be pushing its luck too far. Trying to control too much. Charging too much. It might backfire on them. Yet, a reasonably priced cloud application... something like NetFlix... would do quite well and generate constant cash-flow.
I actually fully agree with what you just said.
I also agree with less work hours, job sharing... basically reaping the benefits of automation.
However... the how we get there is the hard part... and the most socially disruptive.
I should have mentioned this as well in my list... but I'll add it here. Taking on established interests in society is the hardest part of any transition.
If we are to move to more egalitarian work sharing kind of environment, then certain special interests will have to be tackled.
Right now, for example, it is taken as a given that certain jobs are good jobs (bankers, public sector worker...). Will these people be willing to give up their special privileges so others can be more egalitarian?
How about pension funds and the banking sector which depend on economic growth?
It's a very tough social and political challenge.
Try taking on big union, big banking... and just shake your head. I'm Canadian... and in the private sector, we've just seen labor laws diminished. Rather than working less, those of us in the private sector are working harder and harder. That's not moving in the right direction?
It is in reality the 'how we get there' that is the hardest part. I think most sensible people can see the utopia automation brings. But the how we get there part should not be overlooked.
Things are always the same... until they're different.
Here's just a few consideration on why this automated future becomes more problematic than before.
1. For most of the industrial revolution, people wanted good/services just to make life tolerable. The result was that people were willing to work really hard to achieve those good/services. We're talking things like running water, electricity, roads, rail, food at the super market. You can see this phenomenon today in Asia where the Chinese, typically from rural areas, work like crazy just get here. Western people did this in previous times too. But once you have a achieved such a standard of living, people aren't willing to work for that next level of 'stuff'. Don't get me wrong... we all *want* that next level of stuff. But we're not willing to really work for it. I want a Ferarri, but I'm not willing to work for it. I want clean drinking water, and I am willing to work for it.
2. Deflation. Deflation is many things. Many are bad... especially if you view the growth economy. But one way to look at it is as a sign that people's needs as an aggregate are satisfied. Consider for example a world where everyone owns their own home. A utopia for many. Homelessness ended. Shelter solved. Now take a step back and look at how our society would handle such a utopia. The collapse of the entire housing and mortgage market. It would be seen as one of the most horrific events. And well... the recent housing crisis basically shows this. Instead of seeing cheaper housing as a good thing... it has been painted as a bad thing.
3. 'people services' are increasingly public services. Just what 'people services' do you think people are actually willing to pay for? Healthcare? Education? Those are the two main big ones. And in most countries... even the US, they are heavily if not totally government run. This was not the case in previous changes. Both the horse buggy and the automobile were private ventures. So with government services now, they are heavily paid for via taxation or mandates. To replace the demand of physical goods, governments are going to have to replace it with higher taxation and redistribution. Not just on the rich, but think of it as a forced service. A poor person working at mcdonalds is going to face higher taxes as he is 'forced' to purchase (via taxation or mandates) expensive healthcare services. Don't think for a second there are enough 'rich' people to provide this... the math doesn't work. This is not just a simple change in the economy from horse and buggy to car... it's a major social and political challenge.
If the government is basically going to run the future economy, then it must treat all workers fairly. Guaranteeing them equal access to work... It's a very complicated problem.
Again, this goes back 1 where what are people willing to work for to get. One can imagine world where I sit around paying for yoga classes. But if I had the choice to work hard and get yoga classes versus work less and not get yoga classes... most people will choose to work less. Again... rephrase that around the older industrial revolution. Work hard and get clean drinking water, or work less and suffer disease and poor health... Notice the difference. People services are really overrated... as is the general service economy.
4. The new industries require less and less work. The previous changes still required loads of people to operate. The change from horse and buggy to car still required many auto workers. The introduction of the telephone initially requires lots of switch operators. Increasingly new industries need a few highly skilled people to roll out. Some high quality engineers and technicians. The rest is automated. So while there are new jobs... there are not enough new jobs in the new industries for the masses. A small populations might be okay... but a large country like the US with 300 million people... there's enough jobs for everyone.
5. Women in the workforce. Not a problem... but a reality that we've basically doubled the number of jobs required to be created at at time when automation is getting rid of jobs.
sorry... the google web component part appears to have been consumed by slashdot comment.
It looks something like this:
The 'web' works as well as ever.
HTML afterall was written back when they just wanted to show people documents. It 'hardly' worked in every situation. It worked in the very limited case of presenting a documenting.
Then people wanted to do more with these documents and we end up with what we have now.
It's really not unlike the various attempts to make word processors interactive.
The author's point that many have chosen to ignore is that the actual 'markup' part of HTML is pretty much good enough. I think he is saying to leave the current HTML spec as is. Freeze it and use that as a standard.
Everything 'new' has basically moved into CSS, javascript/DOM...
In a sense, most of the new development has been in creating a unified framework to be used by everyone. Kind of like getting the world to use QT or .NET or whatever.
We can then have any more HTML 'tags' be left to the end developer,
For example, the web components framework by Google basically allows one to use 'custom' tags to use premade 'objects'.
Something like this:
This does something great
Rather than being added to the HTML spec. It is 'linked' in or included as an object.
I think it is more inline with what the 'web' programming environment has become... that is a general programming framework. And most such frameworks allow you to define your own 'objects' and bring in other libraries...
I'm going to take issue with the 'we don't need 100% employment'.
We do in fact need 100% employment. What we don't need is people working so hard and so many hours.
Allow me to explain.
There is a mentality that we simply tax people more and then provide other people with welfare (generalized term for people on EI). That works if there are few people on welfare.
But as the welfare rolls increase, you are going to be taking a large chunk of money from the working people.
This is one the biggest resistances to the welfare state. ...
Consider the modern private sector professional who would be a net source of taxation
- working long hours
- very skilled work
- little or no job security
- no defined benefit government backed pension
Now you want to take a large chunk of this person's salary and give it to people on welfare? They're going to fight that because well... they have a sense of fairness.
Now if you make their work more tolerable/enjoyable/stable, then they don't mind higher taxes or spreading the wealth.
Rather than having a shrinking pool of net contributing workers whom we take more and more and more from, we should be spreading the work around, so no one gets a free ride and no one is being extorted of their labor.
Some jobs are hard to split, but most jobs are pretty reasonable. There are consequences to this. Your best might not be doing a lot of the work for example... But the social stability aspect is much better.
Spread the work... Don't tax and redistribute.
With enough work shared, you can then be free to pursue your free time with what ever tickles your fancy.
We still have a long way to go before 'all work' is enjoyable. There's still plenty of work that needs to be done... and while that's the case, people should share in it.
Anything can be 'money'.
Money is just a means of representative value.
The main downfall of fiat money is that money creation is highly centralized. This means, the value of the money you have can be arbitrarily changed by the whims of the people in charge of the money supply (central bankers, government...).
It also means that those in charge of the money supply get to decide who gets the benefit of created money. That might be big bankers, governments... but it's generally not the average person.
The benefit of BitCoin and even the Gold Standard in this respect is that the generation of new money is not centralized. Rather, anyone can go out there and work to create new money. You go mine gold or spend computing resources with BitCoin.
There are a lot of things we can do to fiat currency to increase the trust level. Things like:
1. Any new printed money gets given directly to people on a per capita basis. The bank prints 1 trillion dollars, that trillion dollars is given to each American on a per capita basis. This removes the benefit of money creation from special interest groups.
2. Focus on inflation control. This *was* the mian focus of many central banks for a while. Though they don't appear to have the will to maintain it in bad times. Often messing with CPI figures in all kinds of ways.. including and excluding various things, reducing the impact of rising home prices..
3. A political change so people don't feel created money is going to be spent by government (via cheap debt) and the benefits going mainly to special interest groups. Things like guaranteed income, guaranteed government jobs...
BitCoin itself is money with the explicit intention of being money. It definitely is better in the decentralized money creation area. But aside from that, it is not clearly better.
"4. If you didn't see Delenn & Sheridan coming from day 1 of her chrysalis emergence, then I dunno what to say. The flirting was obvious, and it developed over quite a period of time...the watching of the faces during sleep, the crowd of Minbari outside their door ("Whoopee?"), etc..."
Perhaps I wasn't clear what I was saying.
Yes, it was clear Sheriden and Delenn would be together from a plot perspective. That was my point... it was absolutely clear as being tied to the greater plot.
It's like someone with a checklist went down a list of things to make them in love (flirting, precarious situation, one of the lost and returns)... and they just went through the list inserting them episode after episode in order.
It offered little emotional attachment on its own or any long term emotional depth. It's like they were just meant to be for the plot line. Great for story arch lovers, not so good for the love story on its own.
5. Fantasy tends to do it less.
For example, in LOTR, when the Ent Forest is destroyed, there is a theme of protecting the environment and industrialization there. But the point is not hammered explicitly. It is just left as is.
Passing the torch is not a problem. I have no issue with the greater story arch of the vorlons/shadows passing on. But the humans in LOTR don't treat the elves like infants in a grand speech.
I wonder if Netflix really understands its own benefit to its customers.
1. Anyone can get any show they want from 'illegal' areas like torrents or various streaming websites.
In short, if I actually wanted to get illegal content, I, like everyone else out there can already do it.
The reason we go with Netflex is because it is very convenient to not have to sit around searching torrents, encoding/decoding video files, dealing with crappy hosting websites, dealing with suspicious malware, hacking around with javascript ...
Netflix is cheap enough to get paid for convenience.
It is the convenience we are paying for with Netflix.
So what exactly is NetFlix trying to prevent us from doing with DRM? I have no idea. If we want to go through all that trouble, we'd be torrenting anyways.
You method of control is pretty simple netflix. Track users and what they are watching. If you see too many people using the same account from different countries or whatever, then you know someone is sharing the account. I'm assuming they can do this in HTML5... or maybe I'm mistaken.
But DRM? You have no need for it NetFlix.
To be fair, there are very few sci-fi shows that manage to get the acting/story line part to connect with a large segment of society.
I've probably watched the whole B5 series at least 8 times over the years.
Each time, I am amazed at the over-arching story line that gets the nerd in me excited. How everything ties together.
But watching the show episode after episode, I'm reminded of why the average person probably dislikes sci-fi tv.
1. Poor portrayal of women. Whether its B5, or Star Trek, TNG, or Voyager... they all seem to want to make a point about women. It's almost forced on people. In B5, we females shown to be tough and kick-ass... think Badger in Gropos. Or in Voyager trying to showcase Janeway as a female captain. They can never just portray women as being equal to men as they want to show. It's always excessive to make a point. Note, there are regular women on these shows (Ivonova, Doctor Crusher...). But funny enough, these aren't the characters they choose to showcase when pushing women's issues :P
2. Horrible portrayal of 'regular people.' On in B5... see big guy in down below... oh he's a thug. Give me your money kind of thug. You don't get more basic than this. You see the same theme running throughout Star Trek as well... 'regular' society is simplistic.
3. Pointless Space Jargon. I get that we're in space and you're probably going to talk about things like phasers, PPG, ion cannons, time travel... but sometimes entertainment is more important that scientific jargon. For example, we all know our measurement of time differs based on where we are. 5:00 in Toronto is different from 5:00 in London. But how many times do they have to stress this in B5? Every time they mention time, it's "I'll meet you in 5 of their Earth hours" or something like that.
4. Undeveloped love stories... that have to be there. Riker/Worf and Deanna, sheriden and delenn... They all want to throw in a love story. But they never do it as well as even the most basic regular tv show. I'm watching B5, and it seems like Sheriden and delenn are just meant to be together to fit the story line... as opposed to seeing any kind of real development between the characters. I'm left wondering... when did they fall so strongly in love? Did I miss something? Compare this to even the most simplistic sitcom like say Friends... where the love interest between say Ross and Rachel spans entire seasons.
5. Needless Moralizing.
Some shows are better than other at this, but sci-fi seems to want to make a point. Rather than letting the point stand on its own as part of the story, they often try to make it explicit. In b5, think Sheriden making his grand speech to the vorlons and shadows about their time is past and they should 'get the hell out of our galaxy'. Really... these are superior races with thousands or maybe even millions of years of advancement on the human race, and sheriden talks to them like weeee infants... and the writers make them speak like little infants? Or for that matter any speech by Janeway. Picard on TNG was probably the best at not doing this, but even that show resorted to it on many occasions.
Then you begin to see how many of these issues are rectified in more modern sci-fi like BSG. They're not perfect, but they make for more excellent TV if less sci-fi.
By your post, you only see the 'free-market' as lowering wages... when in reality in lowers wages and costs.
There are basically 2 'utopian' visions of how we are going to 'work' in the future.
1. The free market continues finding efficiencies; reducing work and lowering costs. More wal-marts and amazons and gigs. The result is you don't have to work as much as things cost less. In this case, the GIG economy is not a problem. In this world, most people are egalitarian as really...
2. The government sees the shortage of work and puts people to work enforcing an economy. Government becomes a greater and greater part of the economy especially employing huge numbers of people in healthcare and education and transit.
The people not employed or tied to the government work in the service industry serving those employed by the government.
There are huge problems with both models and it is ripe with social strife in either case.
For example, in the case of 1, it is unlikely governments are going to cutback, so things like healthcare and education will become extreme burdens. So your cost of living will not be allowed to go that low given property taxes, income taxes, tolls, fees... The result will be a high cost of living and little or low wage work. It is also deeply unnerving to not have work and not know when your next pay cheque will come. You also have to worry if you will be able to get any kid of work. How will work be distributed in such a system. Ideally, as more people are able to work, people choose to work less. What prevents a big contractor from working hard and keeping a lot of jobs, leaving many people completely unemployed?
The problem with 2 is a two-tier economy with those working for the government having good jobs for life. The rest of society serving them in a servile manner. This again is ripe for social strife.
In short, both visions are pretty ripe for protest.
While you see the free-market is making people servile... a lot of us see a government run economy as equally service... because we know a lot of us won't be a part of the government.
Both cases.
1. During university, we used to try and do old exams. The further back we went, the harder the exams got. Trying to do an exam from like 10 years ago was ridiculously hard. Fast forward today as I deal with coop students and see their topics of study... and no doubt they have it easier as well.
2. Years of experience makes a huge deal. Also the current stock of 'older' workers grew up in the ATT, Bells, Xerox, Nortels... companies which used to have real engineer departments. The amount of overall training a new engineer gets today in terms of mentorship and real management and career management is ridiculously low.
3. The off shore effect. The best of today's youth in the western world are not going into electrical engineering. Whereas many of the best in India/China... are as it is a good career option for them. Our best would rather do finance, medicine, law, government... So you have our mid tier competing against their much more hungry top tier.
Absolutely agree.
You get a lot of leeway with a 'monopoly' over a market.
Even a lot of the innovation of the early days of computing and networking was due to monopolies. Heck, C++ was invented by ATT/Bell labs. And of course ATT operated under a telecom monopoly.
This of course died when ATT ended its monopoly and split out its lab division on its own. And the innovation was never heard from again.
I fully understand the idea of creative destruction and being free to innovate and competition. That is the mark of our current startup culture.
However, I think it is equally important not to overlook professionalism and long term companies, long term scientific careers.
We've had several articles on slashdot in the past about 'shallow innovation'. The idea that our 'best' minds are creating twitter and facebook instead of real deep problems.
Well, given the startup culture... which do you think makes more sense? For a young bright kid to start a venture on shallow knowedge; that is knowledge that make take them a year or so to learn (web development).
Or go to school and study on their own for 7+ years learning some obscure abstract science... and then go out hunting for funding... and starting some company?
Yeah, shallow innovation rules.
And any deep innovation is going to come from university offshoots.
The longer term innovative companies as we said operate from some kind of basic cash-cow to subsidize the other part. Heck, even the 'glory' days of open source were heavily subsidized by ridiculously over priced hardware or a monopoly position in some market.
These mainly come in places where you have a huge cash cow in some kind of 'monopoly' position. Microsoft Research, Google 20%, ATT labs...
After looking at it for a while, I'm much less against such cash-cows/monopolies/vertical integration than I used to be. With monopolies, you can either try and encourage competition or you can regulate them.
They don't need to plan that far ahead in government.
But they know they will get a new way to get revenue.
As electric cars become more common... gas tax revenues will drop... already you hear talk of tolls, gps tracking per mile...
Sure, autonomous cars means less ticket revenue.. .suddenly driver registration fees or tolls go up. ...
This is absolutely true.
Worst of all, most people can see this applying to 'manual' labor jobs. Heck, many people are so dismissive and even appear to think it moral that manual labor jobs are done. Ever hear people talk about auto workers or manufacturing jobs or low-wage warehouse work.
There's a huge class of people who rant along the lines of "Can't stop progress. You should have gotten an education to better yourself. You don't deserve as much money because I went to school for 4 years..."
Yet, as you rightly point out, 95% of people have jobs that could be very easily automated to a large degree if you were to look at results.
At its most basic level, most of financial services/accounting could be pretty easily replaced by computer systems. As many people say, our tax system can be automated to a large degree. Some countries already prefill tax forms. Simplify the tax code and the entire process becomes null and void. Let's not even get into the vast majority of the underlings in financial services who basically just apply a few formulas they learned blindly. Some of the top people might have some judgment though. But most anyone else just ends up with simple work... or at best... they are a sales person.
Even something like education. We are talking about something that is taught to pretty much every single child. Although a very personal relationship, on the whole, most classes teach the same thing. A grade 9 math class is a grade 9 math class. You could pretty much record the lesson and play it back. A teacher relegated to classroom control. Just put in perspective of the numbers... and you as a student are not that unique... and neither is your teacher.
Even many skilled jobs... like a family doctor.
Most spend their ACTUAL time with patients in a very simple pattern. The process could generally be automated in terms of diagnosis and scheduling tests and prescriptions.
But most 'educated' jobs have protected themsevles in one way or another, but its changing as well.
Much like the automated car, people have this perception of enhanced human intelligence, but we all *KNOW* that on average, when the automated car becomes reality, it will be better than 95% of human drivers. Sure you as a person might be able to react better in that 0.0001% case that the computer was not programmed for. But compare that against all the times a human is not behaving better than the regular tasked computer.
Of course they know better.
It's that they choose to do it so it makes it easier to deal with patients.
The irony of professional regulation is that we restrict medical professionals, grant them monopolies, impose excess educational requirements... and then it turns out most of them don't practice to that level.
Sure your family doctor might theoretically be better than say a nurse practitioner, but most barely spend any time with you to actually be better (at least in Canada).
Sure theoretically, they are guardians of the medical system, but they will prescribe antibiotics when not needed, sign fraudulent sick/massage forms...
The same goes for lawyers, engineers....
Once in a while, one is held accountable, but in general there's enough power in place to make sure it doesn't happen all that often.
The right question is how do I make money.
What you need to do is list your potential pool of customers and then see how you can make money from them.
Hobbyist and College kids toying with graphics:
They're not going to pay. Accept it as a reality. They will hack your tool if you try. At best, use them as means to make your tool popular. Some might buy it, but most won't.
Large graphic shop: :P The lawyers will make sure a legit copy is made. I've worked for numerous software companies and the large ones have a team of lawyers running around. Now, a lot of the time people do use random software, but more often than not, the company will buy licenses. Really whats $10-$20 expensed for the company? I don't know what kind of deal my company makes with them, but we have legitimate versions of many pieces of 'shareware' products.
They will pay as long as it is illegal to use it otherwise. So don't release your product for 'free'. If you want, have a free version for non-commerical use and emphasize it in the tool that if it is used in a commercial setting, they must pay. Alternatively, have a simple serial number thing. It adds more authenticity to the agreement where you are purchasing licenses
Small to medium Graphic Shop:
These may pay and some may not. What can you do to help bring them over to the paying side?
1. Make it easy to pay. Sign up for a reputable app delivery service. easy for the smart phone market. Harder on a pc.
Well actually... yes.
We should be designing cars that don't require the user to belt themselves in... maybe the car automatically belts you in?
We should be building cars with the technology that avoids crashing into a tree at 100 kph...collision avoidance systems are starting to become a reality BTW.
Now in the case of a car, we can arguably say that the technology has not been there YET to make sure driving is safe and thus we must rely on humans to be trained properly. In 100 years time (probably earlier) when we have computers capable of self-driving, we will probably prefer to focus on automatic driving systems, instead of improving human driving ability.
In the case of the computer, it is not a matter of technology and more a matter of implementation and organization that makes the web insecure. Poor programming practice, lack of standards, varying browser ability, lack of rule of law regarding storage of user data...
Money would be much better spend education developers, law makers... on security and rightfully so.
There's actually an interesting free-trade angle to all this.
Supposedly, the value of having a higher dollar is that you can purchase goods more cheaply and thus can have a higher standard of living or be more productive.
Software and media producers have tended to push for region based pricing, so the advantage is gone.
For example, a movie costs $20 in America.
Let us suppose that price is just not going to get any market penetration in India as most families can't afford it. A more appropriate price range is $5.
What would happen in a 'normal' market is the movie distributor does some math and calculates the number of potential buyers in India vs US and pricing and comes to a movie price of lets say $7 to maximize profits.
The consequence of this is the poor in America actually get to pay less for movies and they can enjoy more.
This example is just for the consumer end, but it works equally well on the business end. Buying development software...
You even see the same thing with prescription drugs.
Drugs in America cost much more than drugs overseas. The main reason is other countries, like mine (Canada) have universal healthcare and won't sell an expensive drug or they won't approve it for use without a reduced price. Or the country is so poor they can't afford the high priced drug. So the drug companies give out special deals to other countries and then use the law to keep US pricing high.
In reality, they should be forced once again to only have one price... balance the potential demand with the price and give charity where charity is due.
In a free-trade world, i wonder why such regional price discrimination exists.
People can call Obama what they want, but I don't see him as hiding his agenda. Read his books.
He is a progressive, through and through.
Government is good. If there are problems, it just means we haven't found the right bureaucratic apparatus to solve it. Expert panels. Management of people lives. People working for the state for the benefit of the society at large.
In reality, he is more intellectually consistent that those who criticize him.
Half the people here probably support universal healthcare and expert run panels to determine healthcare outcomes. They probably support public education and all kinds of mandates
Well... you entrust the government to do so much good with your heathcare, with your children... why wouldn't you do the same with your security and finances?
I think far too many people put their own vision on what Obama stands for instead of actually listening to the man in his speeches and his writings.