This same argument applies to your own IT department though. I'm really not sure which is a greater abuse.
The local IT admin can snoop your data. I suppose the Google employees can do it too. However, I'd imagine the local IT admin would probably have more incentive to look me up. To Google employees, I'm anonymous.
Then there's the issue of trust and security and process. Most of the 'cloud' companies have the money to spend on security and process and guarantees. They also fear potential lawsuits.
While I can't say it definitively, I'd still trust cloud computing over local networking today.
Much like the network going down. Sure if Amazon or Google goes down, we go down too... But in my years of working for companies... our intranet systems go down far more often than the Googles of the world.
Make something yourself or band together with people to make something. That's the difference between the 'market' and 'government'.
Now, in some cases this is simply not possible.. or at least very unlikely. You're probably never going to get the ability to make a nuclear power plant.
But you'd be amazed at what you can actually accomplish in a market if you actually decide to do something about it.
Remember that story a while back about some kid in Africa whose village didn't have electricity... so he started making wind mills to provide power. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8257153.stm
Now contrast that to the maddening people who sit around ranting about big oil and corporations and global warming who just don't do anything... except demand other people do things. If this kid can build wind power with virtually no resources... you don't think most people could organize and get wind power in their own neighborhoods?
You don't think a group of people could organize and provide a decent community software stack... oh I don't know... something like Linux?
Even hardware... most companies still source their companies... and external foundries exist. In this day and age of technology, the internet... you could easily band together to start making your own non-profit computers.
Churches and other religious organization manage to raise billions of dollars. You don't think you could raise money for a common interest? Maybe purchase a chip foundry?
You could even start your own ISP today. Local community internet.
We should all remember just how much people can do via cooperation.
This of course is all possible due to freedom. Not so much with government run system. All it takes is a little effort on your part and a little effort by people to get things done. And I don't mean the OWS effort of complaining. I mean actually doing things cooperatively.
Want to feed the poor? Start a farm. Want to bring good food to inner city neighborhoods? Start a coop grocery store....
All these things are done in various parts of the world. They're not so technologically complex that you couldn't do them with a little effort and cooperation with your fellow human being. And in many cases, your biggest obstacles will in reality be government as in many cases like community internet.
A recent reorg put in a very 'up and coming team' working on new and exciting products. I transferred back to my old team doing some backend service work in the company.
My reasoning.. the reorg cut a lot of staff and they wanted me to the lead/manager of this new team... without talking to me about it before the reorg. I forsaw a lot of extra work. I'm still young but I've seen this before and I've seen what it does to managers and team leads.
Sorry, I'll take my same level of pay... and do work I know is relatively calm. Of course, I'm still friendly with everyone. I never burn bridges. It's just I view it almost purely as a money/time thing. I love software, but I can get my brain stimulation on my own time.
They really tried to keep me. The director pretty much offered me anything (within company guidelines of course)... but I know what's possible and not.
Trust me engineers/IT people... money for time. That's how they view your job. That's how you should view it. Be professional. Be friendly. But never forget this.
It's a complex problem, but the proposed solutions have not been very productive either.
Cap and trade / carbon tax for example TYPICALLY suffers from a huge perception of being a wealth transfer mechanism from regions that produce to nations that don't. The idea of allocating each region some kind of CO2 quota doesn't really make sense.
Let's take a simplistic case. In Canada it is often perceived that such a system would punish the oil producing areas. For example suppose: Alberta and Ontario are granted X units of CO2 to pollute each.
Alberta produces lots of oil, which the world wants to consume, so in a cap n trade system, its payments would then be sent to Ontario. What did Ontario do to get the extra money? Nothing except not being a producer of oil. It's citizens drive cars though:P
Similarly, on a global scale, such taxes/trade schemes would fall on producing countries like the United States and China... and they would just send free money to non-producing states to use up their quotas.
In practice, this is how these schemes are going to play out and its not surprise we've never gotten agreement on them.
We need to shift the financial burden away from regionalism. For example, impose a general carbon tax, but have each region keep their own money. In this manner, companies will still have an incentive to be more efficient, but you won't have this regionalism problem. it will make it much easier to accept politically.
All the world regulator would need to do is make sure that the carbon tax is being levied on the respective polluters.
Alright let me answer this. Let's start with a few differences here.
1. Telecom is a natural monopoly. You don't have free entry and exit. To compare this to other industries like shopping for groceries doesn't apply. Luckily the other 3 examples you give are 'natural monopolies' to a large extent.
2. The is no actual cost/MB on the internet. Well there are transit charges... but for the Big ISPs, this is a non-issue and the costs are minimal. So this doesn't apply to things like driving. For driving, there are fixed costs like building roads... but there is a natural cost/km in terms of gasoline. That gasoline has to be purchased. Similarly for electricity, if you burn fossil fuels or anything, there is a cost/watt.
There is nothing 'natural' about cost/MB. When you go to an amusement park, they charge a single entry fee; you are not charged per ride. When you watch TV, you watch as much as you want. Subscription models are out there a plenty.
3. Yes, most rational people understand that the bandwidth is shared. Most rational people understand congestion. I have worked on designing the routers that power the internet. Congestion IS a real issue. However, the question needs to be answered in terms of how to control congestion and how to fund expansion.
4. I'm not against usage based billing in principle. Theoretically you could take the fixed and operational costs and divide it out on use basis... I am against it in practice. As I said, ISPs typically operate in a natural monopoly environment. The power to abuse their position is always there. Usage based billing is ripe for abuse.
They can start charging significant (above cost) premium for going over the limit. People can find it hard to monitor their accounts. Lord knows with all the auto-updating and synchronization... it is hard to keep track of. And somehow, it's always a challenge getting these companies to stop access after crossing a threshold. I asked my ISP to do that once... simply stop my internet access for the rest of the month if I go over... they wouldn't do it. I know its easily done from a technical level, but they won't. They can start messing with UBB to stomp out competition from internet video...
5. The other thing about the internet that is different is the ability for the ISP to fully control its network. This is different from say the road congestion. With roads, we fundamentally can't control when people drive, the route they take, how they drive, the speed they drive, how often they drive...
With the internet, we can fully control how the data flows. This is especially true with DSL. They can perfectly control their networks by throttling users. They all have the equipment to do this. They have to... as when their network are actually congested, they have to do something about it:P
And so I have always proposed the following for such networks that is both fair to users and fair to the ISPs. 1. No usage based billing. 2. Companies may throttle users... but not independent protocols 3. Companies can sell different tiers of service. For example 'GOLD' users get throttled last if congestion happens. Or they can sell different maximum speeds.
Simple regulation always works best. And this is simple. No need for the government to sit around trying to compute the cost/MB in complex environments.
Given the natural monopoly status of telecom, I think this is a very reasonable regulation.
You'll never get a proper scientific trial. There are whole areas of medicine we only know because evil regimes like the Nazi Germany conducted experiments without care.
But you can certainly make a best effort. Inject 1000 random people with either drug, placebo...
They do whatever they do. They can engage in risky behavior. They can wear condoms. Whatever is. As an experiment, you just assume their behavior is randomly distributed among the 1000 people.
At the end of the trial, you call them back and see what percentage has AIDS/HIV. If all those who received the drug don't have it, and SOME of the ones without it did have HIV/AIDS, then you can say there is a high probability the drug works.
As I said, statistically you just have to assume that behaviors were distributed evenly among the 1000 person sample.
If no one comes back with HIV/AIDS... by some miracle that 1000 person trial... everyone suddenly behaves nicely and stops having unprotected sex, no one gets raped... well then the experiment is a failure, but at least 1000 people are not living a good life... so it's a human success.
In some ideal fantasy world focused purely on safety and low of traffic, the ideal action would be that when the system detects detects someone is about to run a light, it keeps the light yellow for longer and/or delays turning the cross traffic light from red to green.. Allowing the driver to pass safely and keeping cross traffic stopped.
Of course it could just be used punitively to gain more money:P
And of course if people ever got wind that this was implemented, they might casually run more red lights.
But I especially like the idea of delaying the cross traffic light turning green to prevent collision... regardless of wheather you ticking the red light runner.
No one said business as usual. No one said we shouldn't do anti-pollution efforts.
But we should put more money upfront to combat the immediate effects.
We can then just take longer to handle the long term problem. We have 1000 years until we get to the 70M rise:P There's a balance in there somewhere even if you don't see it.
Well that's the point. Let's suppose we have the following conditions.
1. The US has 1 trillion dollars to spend for global warming 2. No matter how much we reduce pollution, sea levels are going to rise by 3 meters devastating the coasts like Florida
Where do we spend the trillion dollars?
Do we spend it converting to better non-carbon sources fighting a futile battle... that in the end sea levels will rise by 3 meters and major coastal cities flood regardless of our pollution efforts.
Or do we spend it building flood protection, evacuating cities... preparing to deal with the inevitable impacts. Just like it will take 30-40 years to convert the infrastructure, it will take decades to deal with flood protection.
Now of course, ideally we do both:P But money and time are limited. What should be our priority? At this point, I'd say preparing to deal with the impacts. We can then deal with the pollution problem in a slower manner.
No one is saying we shouldn't try and stop pollution. But given the choice between say flood protection and building highspeed rail... which do you think california should be embarking on?
1. There have been reports that we really can't stop global warming anyways. It is "too late".
2. In as much as there are downsides to global warming (floods, heat deaths...), there are benefits (more usable land up north, easier shipping, fewer cold deaths...)
It might be a good idea to just start dealing with a warmer planet. Embrace the good effects. Try to counter the bad ones (build levies/flood protection, move from low lying area...) and address our pollution as technology and time permits.
What will happen to the planet 100 years from now? I really don't think the planet will be in devastating shape... even with a few degrees warming. Life will go on. Don't think I'm underestimating here. I"m sure many parts of the world will feel the huge impacts, especially coastal cities when sea levels rise. But life will go on and we will adapt, even if we have to evacuate Miami.
"If you do something routine, simple, and repetitive, you can and will be replaced by a machine."
Which means 95% of all work will be replaced. Not that that is a bad thing mind you. But if you think that just means factory workers, you're kidding yourself.
There's a wide variety of educated jobs that when you get down to it are routine, simple, and repetitive. People like to imagine they add value with their judgment and analysis... but often don't.
Often, a computer program can and will do their job just as well (good enough for most of the population). Now granted in many areas there are protections for people... often for 'quality' reason. But supposing there were not, you'd see massive replacement in other fields.
It's also getting harder and harder to justify the protections educated workers receive when their response to manufacturing workers was always 'suck it up... you've been replaced or outsourced. Anyone can do what you do'
The growth of things like ETFs and index investing in the finance sector is a good example. A few very skilled finance people do the analysis, write the program (weighing companies, profits, dividends...) and then that is good enough for 99% of the population. Actively managed funds just don't do much better.
We could get rid of almost the entire accounting field if we simplified our tax code.
Even things like healthcare. Radiologists who are some of the best paid health professionals, could be replaced via image recognition. Perhaps only there to confirm before surgery is done. You'd only need a few skilled ones globally to detail what to look for.
Even family doctors themselves. I have a few friends who are doctors, and they're just amazed at the routine of it all. They don't get to spend hours with a patient... so they develop their our pretty standard set of questions-answers-tests-referrals. This could be easily automated.
I'm pretty sure we could automate vaccinations and giving injections. They exist in the farming industry:P
Education? Lesson plans designed once, shared globally. Videotaped lessons. Teachers reduced to supervising kids.
It's a good thing that we will have less work to do. But don't assume this is just going to affect manufacturing workers. In a 'true free market' automation is going to affect 90%+ of the jobs.
The 'creative class', the 'innovation economy' was a hail Mary pass created by people to try and keep anything going. We've created a system dependent on growth (pensions, public debt...)
Do you what the key component of the 'innovation' age is? It doesn't need a lot of people to service the world.
A few thousands engineers/marketting/sales people can handle all the digital distribution for the entire world. Contrast that against all the jobs in local communities that used to be there when each neighborhood had its own blockbuster.
Computing, automation, and globalization mean there really aren't that many jobs to do. Especially with software, once something is built, that's it. There's no manufacturing cost or labor for additional people serviced.
Oh I'm sure there will be huge advancements in technology. The problem... they won't create that many jobs.
The 'creative class' and its advocates are ignorant progressives who live in a bubble. They live in silicon valley or at university campuses. It doesn't occur to them that there are 300 million Americans. Over 6 billion people in the world. There aren't enough innovative 'good' jobs available because design oriented jobs DO NOT SCALE with the population.
The innovation economy bares a good resemblance to Hollywood. And it pulls in plenty of suckers it seems. You might laugh at young people wanting to become actors or musicians... thinking their chances of making it big are 1 in a million. Yet, looking at it in scale, that one movie or big musicians services a large population and gets very wealthy. That's what makes it such a dynamic field.
Yet, that is exactly what the innovation economy is... and they've managed to actually pull the drapes over the entire American population... if not the world.
It's a world where innovation ensures rapid change, few jobs. It has nothing to do with patents or copyright.
Anyone who thinks innovation will 'power' the American economy is an idiot who doesn't understand scale. Innovation might be enough for a really small country... of a few million. Maybe Singapore or Sweden... think if Silicon Valley was its own country. We'd all be in awe. Yet they only make it rich by being a small population with massive exports. Not every country can be an exporter.
So next time someone talks about the innovation economy... try and think of the 300 million Americans and 6 billion people on Earth... and see how they fit into your 'innovation economy'. The reality is this
1. There will be a few innovative creative class jobs as there have always been. 2. Most people will be in regular jobs doing regular things
Great moralizing. It's not about ME, ME, ME. It's about US, US, US. I've got a good job and probably will for the rest of my life. I worry about the industry we work in, the next generation of engineers, the future of innovation.
Let me know when we wake up in a Ron Paul Libertarian paradise where there are no medical monopolies, no teacher unions, a simple tax system, simplified legal system, a gold standard, a sane patent industry..
We don't live in that world, and yes, I refuse to be the sacrificial industry. I prefer to do the good I can and that means protecting this tech part of society. I don't see your path being of the 'good'. It leads to the decimation of industries, people out of stable work, an abandoning of the high tech sector by large numbers of western youth...
We don't operate in a vacuum and you have to look at the greater whole of society. If you were to start a revolution and bring liberty to the world... great. Until that time, given the world we have, I don't particularly see protecting our industry or providing stable employment, professionalism, and knowledge transfer as being morally wrong.
I think you're being a little pessimistic on the US here.
I have no idea on the economics of it all, but it doesn't seem like this should bother the US. The people on the ship would most likely be the high-tech worker... so nothing the US would be against. It most likely be funded by the tech startups and big companies who would have no interest in using the ship as a platform to smuggle in undesirable immigrants. They simply travel to the US when needed, like most business people do.
I'm well aware of efficiency and wealth. I just don't think we're in balance in software... or engineering in general.
I don't think the world would come to a stand-still if we focused a bit more on jobs. The medical profession is highly job protective. Yet they still manage to advance. Slower than perhaps a truly liberated medical field would... but life still goes on.
I'd venture to say we're about the only group of workers who actually obsess over being efficient and maximizing wealth... often not our own:)
I don't forsee myself ever out of the job. I am still very good at what I do and I actually do still enjoy it. But we can see the effects of the lack of secure/stable jobs as it relates to the field.
We don't operate in isolation. If 'top' students have a chance at a secure, lucrative career in another field, that is where they will go. They will become lawyers, accountants, nurses, teachers, doctors...
I'm pretty sure you've seen it as well. 2 of my friends who I went to university with decided to enter law school for IP this past year. Many other move to business or anything else.
That is the world we live and we might actually end up less wealthy and less productive as a society by the reality of people choosing to be in 'breaking window' professions.
Well I think this particular CEO is only saying internal employee-employee emails should go.
Which in reality, might provide better legal cover. As you rightly say: software developers are blunt when talking internally. It's probably best not to have any record of what they say.
That way, you rely only on the actual business contracts, legal teams, and actual results.
It's kind of like the advice engineers are often given in regards to patents. Don't go looking if you infringe a patent. That can actually be used against you or something like that. Leave it up to the lawyers to figure out and play with.
Not saying that was his motivation... but I'm pretty sure the CEO took into account legal issues. Large companies skimp on many things... but legal and finance tend not to be them:P
Also of note is good collaboration tools do provide a history. If not just for legal reasons, but for real productive reasons. Not sure how legally relevant they are, but they do exist. I certainly wouldn't use facebook for internal collaboration. But there are loads of software out there (confluence, sharepoint, lotus connections...)
For internal stuff, I wish it was used more. But as much as we try as always come back to email:P People don't monitor those collab spaces as much as they monitor email. And notifications tend to be either too much or too little. And no one uses the direct messages of those tools... as you might as well just use email.
Let us remember that the money comes from somewhere.
Let us remember that most of the open source movement comes from a time where software was subsidized by other selling points.
A lot of software was developed by the old BELLs. They ran huge research facilities knowing they had constant cash flow. The government broke up the monopoly, spawned off the R&D labs... the rest is history.
Other kinds of open source eco-systems can from companies selling hugely expensive hardware.
You have to look at how your industry is funded.
Professionals like Doctors and lawyers protect their field via regulation and ensure their jobs and quality. Heck, you can't even write a prescription. Now, you can write a thousands pages on why this is done for quality... but it always seem to work out financially for them as well:P
Governments around the world basically gave a big 'screw you' to engineers. The exception being the military industry in the US.
The result is... what funds your industry? Proprietary software, licenses, strong arm business tactics of the evil corporation. There's a reason MS employes nearly 100K engineers, and has world class research facilities.
While people mock their suing of Android phone, I embrace it. Why on Earth do we, as an industry want less money coming into our industry? Free software... less money coming into our field... less jobs...
I don't pretend for one second to think corporations can about people. But a rich corporation which good stable cashflow keeps its employees well off.
And for anyone who talks about efficiency... let me just say... I don't care at this point. The world is not all about efficiency. Making a good living seems like a better idea. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, teachers, nurses, insurance people, bankers, trades people... all protect their field as much as possible. I'm not going to be the martyr in this world.
Broken window fallacy? Screw it. If everyone else is breaking windows to fund their field... I want to break windows as well to fund my field.
Under the current system... you are darn right... open source kills jobs.
Now for a little Hollywood. In the movie Kingdom of Heaven, this was essential to the plot.
Of course in the movie, it was the Christians who were "praying and leaving it up to fare". It was Saladin and the Muslims who believed in forging their own fate. Well not really as Saladin says something along the lines of
"The results of battles ARE determined by God, but also by preparation, numbers, the absence of disease, and the availability of water. One cannot maintain a siege with the enemy behind. How many battles did God win for the Muslims before I came... that is, before God determined that I should come? "
The idea of 'fate' is not intrinsic to Islam any more than other concepts are in other religions. At university, I ran into a grad student from Iran who said that fate is just God knowing everything. We went on about we as humans only exist in the 'current time', but we know space and time are just dimensions, and God simply exists outside those dimensions. God knowing the outcome, doesn't mean much as it relates to your actions.
And while you dilly dally in the history for the last few centuries, history is a lot longer. All kinds of empires have risen and fallen. It would be hard to argue this is not a 'low-point' for Islam. But to suggest any kind of permanence or ingrained doctrine is just silly. In time Muslims will change. They may reform Islam. They may choose another understanding of Islam from older scholors. They may simply become less religious.
For all you know, the West itself could collapse. You know perhaps a certain financial crises triggers some major changes. Then a certain Hitler like figure rises... but this time he wins throwing the West into a dark age. If happened to a very educated Germany... there nothing to say it won't happen again.
Who knows. History is pretty insane. Try not to think History is just the past 50 years.
Unfortunately, that is where real world data and experience comes into play.
GIVEN that their procedures were shit, maintenance actually made things worse and thus cased Chernobyl.
Now theoretically, you just need better procedures to make maintenance be a net positive. However, that doesn't change the advice that you shouldn't do such maintenance... GIVEN that your procedures are bad.
Given that humans are error prone and the IT procedures are shit, it is probably good advice to not do the maintenance.
Technically, diamonds require millions of years to form as well... except we have this wonderful thing called technology that allows us to speed things up in artificial conditions.
Probably the biggest problem to addressing the 'population issue' is that the areas of the world where environment movements tend to exist tend to also exist alongside groups which love population growth.
Big cities like New York, Toronto, London... tend to have a lot of 'green movements'. Yet they're also places which keep advocating high immigration rates for both political reasons (diversity...) as well as special economic reasons (prop up the housing industry, cheap immigrant labor...). More often than not the same groups in the green movement are the same who love increasing population.
It's one of the reasons why things like pollution/Capita are tricky. A lot of people seem to think per Capita measures are the ultimate measure. But it doesn't take into account societal and cultural choices.
For example, we compare two societies.
1. A huge population like India where the consumption/capita is very low. (545 kg in oil equivalence) 2. A sparsely population country like Iceland with high consumption/capita (17338 kg)
Now many who just look at the per capita measures like to rant how inefficient and wasteful western people are. Yet don't look at the per capita numbers alone. Look at the society as a whole.
Icelandic society provides a high standard of living for everyone and keeps its population reasonable. That each Icelandic person lives much better than an Indian is not a problem... as the Icelandic society has managed to keep its population small.
Put simply... is the solution to shove everyone in to a city and make everyone live like they're in Tokyo? Only for those who like to measure everything in per capita use and don't want to look at the greater functioning of society.
Almost everything is renewable. It's the cost of renewing it.
I'm sure we could burn fossil fuels, capture the emissions from the air, send it to some plant, combine with energy and other things, and recreate the fossil fuel.
"Everyone is saying IT is immune from the economy"
who is saying that? The only people who say that are those who profit from saying it. Educational institutions who want more business. CEOs and others who want more cheap labor. Governments who have become dependent on infinite economic growth to fuel their spending.
Talk to regular people, regular engineers... and we all say IT is just as vulnerable. With free trade and a globally educated work force... most of IT is as expendable as manual labor is. Sure if you're in the top 1% of your field, you might always have a job...but that's pretty much true of any active field.
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This same argument applies to your own IT department though. I'm really not sure which is a greater abuse.
The local IT admin can snoop your data. I suppose the Google employees can do it too. However, I'd imagine the local IT admin would probably have more incentive to look me up. To Google employees, I'm anonymous.
Then there's the issue of trust and security and process. Most of the 'cloud' companies have the money to spend on security and process and guarantees. They also fear potential lawsuits.
While I can't say it definitively, I'd still trust cloud computing over local networking today.
Much like the network going down. Sure if Amazon or Google goes down, we go down too... But in my years of working for companies... our intranet systems go down far more often than the Googles of the world.
Make something yourself or band together with people to make something. That's the difference between the 'market' and 'government'.
Now, in some cases this is simply not possible.. or at least very unlikely. You're probably never going to get the ability to make a nuclear power plant.
But you'd be amazed at what you can actually accomplish in a market if you actually decide to do something about it.
Remember that story a while back about some kid in Africa whose village didn't have electricity... so he started making wind mills to provide power. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8257153.stm
Now contrast that to the maddening people who sit around ranting about big oil and corporations and global warming who just don't do anything... except demand other people do things. If this kid can build wind power with virtually no resources... you don't think most people could organize and get wind power in their own neighborhoods?
You don't think a group of people could organize and provide a decent community software stack... oh I don't know... something like Linux?
Even hardware... most companies still source their companies... and external foundries exist. In this day and age of technology, the internet... you could easily band together to start making your own non-profit computers.
Churches and other religious organization manage to raise billions of dollars. You don't think you could raise money for a common interest? Maybe purchase a chip foundry?
You could even start your own ISP today. Local community internet.
We should all remember just how much people can do via cooperation.
This of course is all possible due to freedom. Not so much with government run system. All it takes is a little effort on your part and a little effort by people to get things done. And I don't mean the OWS effort of complaining. I mean actually doing things cooperatively.
Want to feed the poor? Start a farm. ...
Want to bring good food to inner city neighborhoods? Start a coop grocery store.
All these things are done in various parts of the world. They're not so technologically complex that you couldn't do them with a little effort and cooperation with your fellow human being. And in many cases, your biggest obstacles will in reality be government as in many cases like community internet.
Damn right.
A recent reorg put in a very 'up and coming team' working on new and exciting products. I transferred back to my old team doing some backend service work in the company.
My reasoning.. the reorg cut a lot of staff and they wanted me to the lead/manager of this new team... without talking to me about it before the reorg. I forsaw a lot of extra work. I'm still young but I've seen this before and I've seen what it does to managers and team leads.
Sorry, I'll take my same level of pay... and do work I know is relatively calm. Of course, I'm still friendly with everyone. I never burn bridges. It's just I view it almost purely as a money/time thing. I love software, but I can get my brain stimulation on my own time.
They really tried to keep me. The director pretty much offered me anything (within company guidelines of course)... but I know what's possible and not.
Trust me engineers/IT people... money for time. That's how they view your job. That's how you should view it. Be professional. Be friendly. But never forget this.
It's a complex problem, but the proposed solutions have not been very productive either.
Cap and trade / carbon tax for example TYPICALLY suffers from a huge perception of being a wealth transfer mechanism from regions that produce to nations that don't. The idea of allocating each region some kind of CO2 quota doesn't really make sense.
Let's take a simplistic case. In Canada it is often perceived that such a system would punish the oil producing areas. For example suppose:
Alberta and Ontario are granted X units of CO2 to pollute each.
Alberta produces lots of oil, which the world wants to consume, so in a cap n trade system, its payments would then be sent to Ontario. What did Ontario do to get the extra money? Nothing except not being a producer of oil. It's citizens drive cars though :P
Similarly, on a global scale, such taxes/trade schemes would fall on producing countries like the United States and China... and they would just send free money to non-producing states to use up their quotas.
In practice, this is how these schemes are going to play out and its not surprise we've never gotten agreement on them.
We need to shift the financial burden away from regionalism. For example, impose a general carbon tax, but have each region keep their own money. In this manner, companies will still have an incentive to be more efficient, but you won't have this regionalism problem. it will make it much easier to accept politically.
All the world regulator would need to do is make sure that the carbon tax is being levied on the respective polluters.
yes. Especially what extreme cold/heat does to the human body.
Alright let me answer this.
Let's start with a few differences here.
1. Telecom is a natural monopoly. You don't have free entry and exit. To compare this to other industries like shopping for groceries doesn't apply. Luckily the other 3 examples you give are 'natural monopolies' to a large extent.
2. The is no actual cost/MB on the internet. Well there are transit charges... but for the Big ISPs, this is a non-issue and the costs are minimal. So this doesn't apply to things like driving. For driving, there are fixed costs like building roads... but there is a natural cost/km in terms of gasoline. That gasoline has to be purchased. Similarly for electricity, if you burn fossil fuels or anything, there is a cost/watt.
There is nothing 'natural' about cost/MB. When you go to an amusement park, they charge a single entry fee; you are not charged per ride. When you watch TV, you watch as much as you want. Subscription models are out there a plenty.
3. Yes, most rational people understand that the bandwidth is shared. Most rational people understand congestion. I have worked on designing the routers that power the internet. Congestion IS a real issue. However, the question needs to be answered in terms of how to control congestion and how to fund expansion.
4. I'm not against usage based billing in principle. Theoretically you could take the fixed and operational costs and divide it out on use basis... I am against it in practice. As I said, ISPs typically operate in a natural monopoly environment. The power to abuse their position is always there. Usage based billing is ripe for abuse.
They can start charging significant (above cost) premium for going over the limit. People can find it hard to monitor their accounts. Lord knows with all the auto-updating and synchronization... it is hard to keep track of. And somehow, it's always a challenge getting these companies to stop access after crossing a threshold. I asked my ISP to do that once... simply stop my internet access for the rest of the month if I go over... they wouldn't do it. I know its easily done from a technical level, but they won't. They can start messing with UBB to stomp out competition from internet video...
5. The other thing about the internet that is different is the ability for the ISP to fully control its network. This is different from say the road congestion. With roads, we fundamentally can't control when people drive, the route they take, how they drive, the speed they drive, how often they drive...
With the internet, we can fully control how the data flows. This is especially true with DSL. They can perfectly control their networks by throttling users. They all have the equipment to do this. They have to... as when their network are actually congested, they have to do something about it :P
And so I have always proposed the following for such networks that is both fair to users and fair to the ISPs.
1. No usage based billing.
2. Companies may throttle users... but not independent protocols
3. Companies can sell different tiers of service. For example 'GOLD' users get throttled last if congestion happens. Or they can sell different maximum speeds.
Simple regulation always works best. And this is simple. No need for the government to sit around trying to compute the cost/MB in complex environments.
Given the natural monopoly status of telecom, I think this is a very reasonable regulation.
You'll never get a proper scientific trial. There are whole areas of medicine we only know because evil regimes like the Nazi Germany conducted experiments without care.
But you can certainly make a best effort. Inject 1000 random people with either drug, placebo...
They do whatever they do. They can engage in risky behavior. They can wear condoms. Whatever is. As an experiment, you just assume their behavior is randomly distributed among the 1000 people.
At the end of the trial, you call them back and see what percentage has AIDS/HIV.
If all those who received the drug don't have it, and SOME of the ones without it did have HIV/AIDS, then you can say there is a high probability the drug works.
As I said, statistically you just have to assume that behaviors were distributed evenly among the 1000 person sample.
If no one comes back with HIV/AIDS... by some miracle that 1000 person trial... everyone suddenly behaves nicely and stops having unprotected sex, no one gets raped... well then the experiment is a failure, but at least 1000 people are not living a good life... so it's a human success.
This is actually an interesting question.
In some ideal fantasy world focused purely on safety and low of traffic, the ideal action would be that when the system detects detects someone is about to run a light, it keeps the light yellow for longer and/or delays turning the cross traffic light from red to green.. Allowing the driver to pass safely and keeping cross traffic stopped.
Of course it could just be used punitively to gain more money :P
And of course if people ever got wind that this was implemented, they might casually run more red lights.
But I especially like the idea of delaying the cross traffic light turning green to prevent collision... regardless of wheather you ticking the red light runner.
No one said business as usual.
No one said we shouldn't do anti-pollution efforts.
But we should put more money upfront to combat the immediate effects.
We can then just take longer to handle the long term problem. We have 1000 years until we get to the 70M rise :P There's a balance in there somewhere even if you don't see it.
Well that's the point. Let's suppose we have the following conditions.
1. The US has 1 trillion dollars to spend for global warming
2. No matter how much we reduce pollution, sea levels are going to rise by 3 meters devastating the coasts like Florida
Where do we spend the trillion dollars?
Do we spend it converting to better non-carbon sources fighting a futile battle... that in the end sea levels will rise by 3 meters and major coastal cities flood regardless of our pollution efforts.
Or do we spend it building flood protection, evacuating cities... preparing to deal with the inevitable impacts. Just like it will take 30-40 years to convert the infrastructure, it will take decades to deal with flood protection.
Now of course, ideally we do both :P But money and time are limited. What should be our priority? At this point, I'd say preparing to deal with the impacts. We can then deal with the pollution problem in a slower manner.
No one is saying we shouldn't try and stop pollution. But given the choice between say flood protection and building highspeed rail... which do you think california should be embarking on?
I'm neither a politician or an industrialist...
1. There have been reports that we really can't stop global warming anyways. It is "too late".
2. In as much as there are downsides to global warming (floods, heat deaths...), there are benefits (more usable land up north, easier shipping, fewer cold deaths...)
It might be a good idea to just start dealing with a warmer planet. Embrace the good effects. Try to counter the bad ones (build levies/flood protection, move from low lying area...) and address our pollution as technology and time permits.
What will happen to the planet 100 years from now? I really don't think the planet will be in devastating shape... even with a few degrees warming. Life will go on. Don't think I'm underestimating here. I"m sure many parts of the world will feel the huge impacts, especially coastal cities when sea levels rise. But life will go on and we will adapt, even if we have to evacuate Miami.
"If you do something routine, simple, and repetitive, you can and will be replaced by a machine."
Which means 95% of all work will be replaced. Not that that is a bad thing mind you. But if you think that just means factory workers, you're kidding yourself.
There's a wide variety of educated jobs that when you get down to it are routine, simple, and repetitive. People like to imagine they add value with their judgment and analysis... but often don't.
Often, a computer program can and will do their job just as well (good enough for most of the population). Now granted in many areas there are protections for people... often for 'quality' reason. But supposing there were not, you'd see massive replacement in other fields.
It's also getting harder and harder to justify the protections educated workers receive when their response to manufacturing workers was always 'suck it up... you've been replaced or outsourced. Anyone can do what you do'
The growth of things like ETFs and index investing in the finance sector is a good example. A few very skilled finance people do the analysis, write the program (weighing companies, profits, dividends...) and then that is good enough for 99% of the population. Actively managed funds just don't do much better.
We could get rid of almost the entire accounting field if we simplified our tax code.
Even things like healthcare. Radiologists who are some of the best paid health professionals, could be replaced via image recognition. Perhaps only there to confirm before surgery is done. You'd only need a few skilled ones globally to detail what to look for.
Even family doctors themselves. I have a few friends who are doctors, and they're just amazed at the routine of it all. They don't get to spend hours with a patient... so they develop their our pretty standard set of questions-answers-tests-referrals. This could be easily automated.
I'm pretty sure we could automate vaccinations and giving injections. They exist in the farming industry :P
Education? Lesson plans designed once, shared globally. Videotaped lessons. Teachers reduced to supervising kids.
It's a good thing that we will have less work to do. But don't assume this is just going to affect manufacturing workers. In a 'true free market' automation is going to affect 90%+ of the jobs.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2464050&cid=37638428
Oh please.
The 'creative class', the 'innovation economy' was a hail Mary pass created by people to try and keep anything going. We've created a system dependent on growth (pensions, public debt...)
Do you what the key component of the 'innovation' age is? It doesn't need a lot of people to service the world.
A few thousands engineers/marketting/sales people can handle all the digital distribution for the entire world. Contrast that against all the jobs in local communities that used to be there when each neighborhood had its own blockbuster.
Computing, automation, and globalization mean there really aren't that many jobs to do. Especially with software, once something is built, that's it. There's no manufacturing cost or labor for additional people serviced.
Oh I'm sure there will be huge advancements in technology. The problem... they won't create that many jobs.
The 'creative class' and its advocates are ignorant progressives who live in a bubble. They live in silicon valley or at university campuses. It doesn't occur to them that there are 300 million Americans. Over 6 billion people in the world. There aren't enough innovative 'good' jobs available because design oriented jobs DO NOT SCALE with the population.
The innovation economy bares a good resemblance to Hollywood. And it pulls in plenty of suckers it seems. You might laugh at young people wanting to become actors or musicians... thinking their chances of making it big are 1 in a million. Yet, looking at it in scale, that one movie or big musicians services a large population and gets very wealthy. That's what makes it such a dynamic field.
Yet, that is exactly what the innovation economy is... and they've managed to actually pull the drapes over the entire American population... if not the world.
It's a world where innovation ensures rapid change, few jobs. It has nothing to do with patents or copyright.
As a matter of reality, in the eyes of politicians and economists, these are probably one of the few tools to create jobs. Whether or not you agree with it or not, it is what they think.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/intellectual-property-a-new-kind-of-arms-race-with-patents-as-ammo/article2190761/
Anyone who thinks innovation will 'power' the American economy is an idiot who doesn't understand scale. Innovation might be enough for a really small country... of a few million. Maybe Singapore or Sweden... think if Silicon Valley was its own country. We'd all be in awe. Yet they only make it rich by being a small population with massive exports. Not every country can be an exporter.
So next time someone talks about the innovation economy... try and think of the 300 million Americans and 6 billion people on Earth... and see how they fit into your 'innovation economy'. The reality is this
1. There will be a few innovative creative class jobs as there have always been.
2. Most people will be in regular jobs doing regular things
Great moralizing. It's not about ME, ME, ME.
It's about US, US, US. I've got a good job and probably will for the rest of my life. I worry about the industry we work in, the next generation of engineers, the future of innovation.
Let me know when we wake up in a Ron Paul Libertarian paradise where there are no medical monopolies, no teacher unions, a simple tax system, simplified legal system, a gold standard, a sane patent industry..
We don't live in that world, and yes, I refuse to be the sacrificial industry. I prefer to do the good I can and that means protecting this tech part of society. I don't see your path being of the 'good'. It leads to the decimation of industries, people out of stable work, an abandoning of the high tech sector by large numbers of western youth...
We don't operate in a vacuum and you have to look at the greater whole of society. If you were to start a revolution and bring liberty to the world... great. Until that time, given the world we have, I don't particularly see protecting our industry or providing stable employment, professionalism, and knowledge transfer as being morally wrong.
I think you're being a little pessimistic on the US here.
I have no idea on the economics of it all, but it doesn't seem like this should bother the US. The people on the ship would most likely be the high-tech worker... so nothing the US would be against. It most likely be funded by the tech startups and big companies who would have no interest in using the ship as a platform to smuggle in undesirable immigrants. They simply travel to the US when needed, like most business people do.
I'm well aware of efficiency and wealth. I just don't think we're in balance in software... or engineering in general.
I don't think the world would come to a stand-still if we focused a bit more on jobs. The medical profession is highly job protective. Yet they still manage to advance. Slower than perhaps a truly liberated medical field would... but life still goes on.
I'd venture to say we're about the only group of workers who actually obsess over being efficient and maximizing wealth... often not our own :)
I don't forsee myself ever out of the job. I am still very good at what I do and I actually do still enjoy it. But we can see the effects of the lack of secure/stable jobs as it relates to the field.
We don't operate in isolation. If 'top' students have a chance at a secure, lucrative career in another field, that is where they will go. They will become lawyers, accountants, nurses, teachers, doctors...
I'm pretty sure you've seen it as well. 2 of my friends who I went to university with decided to enter law school for IP this past year. Many other move to business or anything else.
That is the world we live and we might actually end up less wealthy and less productive as a society by the reality of people choosing to be in 'breaking window' professions.
Just some food for thought.
Well I think this particular CEO is only saying internal employee-employee emails should go.
Which in reality, might provide better legal cover. As you rightly say: software developers are blunt when talking internally. It's probably best not to have any record of what they say.
That way, you rely only on the actual business contracts, legal teams, and actual results.
It's kind of like the advice engineers are often given in regards to patents. Don't go looking if you infringe a patent. That can actually be used against you or something like that. Leave it up to the lawyers to figure out and play with.
Not saying that was his motivation... but I'm pretty sure the CEO took into account legal issues. Large companies skimp on many things... but legal and finance tend not to be them :P
Also of note is good collaboration tools do provide a history. If not just for legal reasons, but for real productive reasons. Not sure how legally relevant they are, but they do exist. I certainly wouldn't use facebook for internal collaboration. But there are loads of software out there (confluence, sharepoint, lotus connections...)
For internal stuff, I wish it was used more. But as much as we try as always come back to email :P People don't monitor those collab spaces as much as they monitor email. And notifications tend to be either too much or too little. And no one uses the direct messages of those tools... as you might as well just use email.
Let us remember that the money comes from somewhere.
Let us remember that most of the open source movement comes from a time where software was subsidized by other selling points.
A lot of software was developed by the old BELLs. They ran huge research facilities knowing they had constant cash flow. The government broke up the monopoly, spawned off the R&D labs... the rest is history.
Other kinds of open source eco-systems can from companies selling hugely expensive hardware.
You have to look at how your industry is funded.
Professionals like Doctors and lawyers protect their field via regulation and ensure their jobs and quality. Heck, you can't even write a prescription. Now, you can write a thousands pages on why this is done for quality... but it always seem to work out financially for them as well :P
Governments around the world basically gave a big 'screw you' to engineers. The exception being the military industry in the US.
The result is... what funds your industry? Proprietary software, licenses, strong arm business tactics of the evil corporation. There's a reason MS employes nearly 100K engineers, and has world class research facilities.
While people mock their suing of Android phone, I embrace it. Why on Earth do we, as an industry want less money coming into our industry? Free software... less money coming into our field... less jobs...
I don't pretend for one second to think corporations can about people. But a rich corporation which good stable cashflow keeps its employees well off.
And for anyone who talks about efficiency... let me just say... I don't care at this point. The world is not all about efficiency. Making a good living seems like a better idea. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, teachers, nurses, insurance people, bankers, trades people... all protect their field as much as possible. I'm not going to be the martyr in this world.
Broken window fallacy? Screw it. If everyone else is breaking windows to fund their field... I want to break windows as well to fund my field.
Under the current system... you are darn right... open source kills jobs.
Now for a little Hollywood. In the movie Kingdom of Heaven, this was essential to the plot.
Of course in the movie, it was the Christians who were "praying and leaving it up to fare". It was Saladin and the Muslims who believed in forging their own fate. Well not really as Saladin says something along the lines of
"The results of battles ARE determined by God, but also by preparation, numbers, the absence of disease, and the availability of water. One cannot maintain a siege with the enemy behind. How many battles did God win for the Muslims before I came... that is, before God determined that I should come? "
The idea of 'fate' is not intrinsic to Islam any more than other concepts are in other religions. At university, I ran into a grad student from Iran who said that fate is just God knowing everything. We went on about we as humans only exist in the 'current time', but we know space and time are just dimensions, and God simply exists outside those dimensions. God knowing the outcome, doesn't mean much as it relates to your actions.
And while you dilly dally in the history for the last few centuries, history is a lot longer. All kinds of empires have risen and fallen. It would be hard to argue this is not a 'low-point' for Islam. But to suggest any kind of permanence or ingrained doctrine is just silly. In time Muslims will change. They may reform Islam. They may choose another understanding of Islam from older scholors. They may simply become less religious.
For all you know, the West itself could collapse. You know perhaps a certain financial crises triggers some major changes. Then a certain Hitler like figure rises... but this time he wins throwing the West into a dark age. If happened to a very educated Germany... there nothing to say it won't happen again.
Who knows. History is pretty insane. Try not to think History is just the past 50 years.
Unfortunately, that is where real world data and experience comes into play.
GIVEN that their procedures were shit, maintenance actually made things worse and thus cased Chernobyl.
Now theoretically, you just need better procedures to make maintenance be a net positive. However, that doesn't change the advice that you shouldn't do such maintenance... GIVEN that your procedures are bad.
Given that humans are error prone and the IT procedures are shit, it is probably good advice to not do the maintenance.
There's no issue with currency rigging.
How much people get paid is: (wage) *(value of currency)
If China devalues its currency by 10%, you can completely make up to that by cutting your salary 10%.
It just so happens that currency rigging is much easier to do politically and more inline with an inflationary economic system.
Technically, diamonds require millions of years to form as well... except we have this wonderful thing called technology that allows us to speed things up in artificial conditions.
Probably the biggest problem to addressing the 'population issue' is that the areas of the world where environment movements tend to exist tend to also exist alongside groups which love population growth.
Big cities like New York, Toronto, London... tend to have a lot of 'green movements'.
Yet they're also places which keep advocating high immigration rates for both political reasons (diversity...) as well as special economic reasons (prop up the housing industry, cheap immigrant labor...). More often than not the same groups in the green movement are the same who love increasing population.
It's one of the reasons why things like pollution/Capita are tricky. A lot of people seem to think per Capita measures are the ultimate measure. But it doesn't take into account societal and cultural choices.
For example, we compare two societies.
1. A huge population like India where the consumption/capita is very low. (545 kg in oil equivalence)
2. A sparsely population country like Iceland with high consumption/capita (17338 kg)
source: http://www.google.ca/publicdata (energy use per capita).
Now many who just look at the per capita measures like to rant how inefficient and wasteful western people are. Yet don't look at the per capita numbers alone. Look at the society as a whole.
Icelandic society provides a high standard of living for everyone and keeps its population reasonable. That each Icelandic person lives much better than an Indian is not a problem... as the Icelandic society has managed to keep its population small.
Put simply... is the solution to shove everyone in to a city and make everyone live like they're in Tokyo? Only for those who like to measure everything in per capita use and don't want to look at the greater functioning of society.
Almost everything is renewable. It's the cost of renewing it.
I'm sure we could burn fossil fuels, capture the emissions from the air, send it to some plant, combine with energy and other things, and recreate the fossil fuel.
"Everyone is saying IT is immune from the economy"
who is saying that?
The only people who say that are those who profit from saying it. Educational institutions who want more business. CEOs and others who want more cheap labor. Governments who have become dependent on infinite economic growth to fuel their spending.
Talk to regular people, regular engineers... and we all say IT is just as vulnerable. With free trade and a globally educated work force... most of IT is as expendable as manual labor is. Sure if you're in the top 1% of your field, you might always have a job...but that's pretty much true of any active field.