Automation and tools can reduce, or perhaps, eventually eliminate a need for labor. We are not there yet, so that does not yet apply, and, currently, you need workers.
If something as messy and complicated as the US agricultural industry can run with 5% of its former workforce, and do it very cost-efficiently and safely, then other labor-intensive sectors will follow suit.
And when all sectors of the economy are all automated and no workers are needed ( really, before then... ) what are things going to look like? Ugly, as you state above, I think.
VNC (using the term in a very generic sense, not specifying or ruling out any particular vendor or protocol) takes surprisingly little bandwidth. Two ISDN B-channels (128 kbps) is almost enough to get useful work done without tearing your hair out.
If your hotel or 3G provider doesn't give you enough bandwidth to run a VNC-like terminal, your problem is not with the abstract notion of a thin client, or whatever hardware you're running it on. Your problem is with your choice of hotel or 3G provider.
No one has anything like the way of driving revenue after the sale of the device itself like Apple has with the App Store that was established for the iPhone before the iPad came out.
Interestingly, the App Store was established for the iPad. That's how Apple was able to pull it out of thin air, seemingly overnight, when people rejected their initial web-apps-only strategy and started jailbreaking their iPhones. The App Store was already in the works, but they had no intention of supporting the iPhone with it.
Referring to my above, could you get robots with all capital and no workers? No. You could with all workers and no capital. Workers make things, capital controls what is made, when it is made, by whom it is made, &c. But you *have* to have workers. Capital is optional, but usually controlling.
The farmers said the same thing. In 1900, 41% of the US work force was employed in agriculture. That percentage is now 1.9%.
There is no reason not to believe that most other industrial sectors will experience the same upheaval. So, yes, it's not only entirely possible, but very damned likely, that the people you call "capitalists" will be able to get by with a negligible fraction of the workforce they've historically employed.
That is going to make for a very interesting century. The historical references to the French revolution or the Bolsheviks that many underaged, overeducated commenters in this thread are making will be of no predictive power whatsoever.
Awesome. FF beta 8 now has an "Add-on Bar" at the bottom that's even thicker than the old status bar was. Naturally, this "Add-on Bar" is empty of anything but a 'Close' icon.
It looks like the inmates are running the asylum over at Mozilla these days.
It takes a little getting used to - my eyes were used to looking down for the URL - but it works well
No, it doesn't. Many URLs are longer than the 25-30 characters that typically fit to the right of the arrow in the URL bar. Sometimes this is important.
They need to put the damn status bar back. Nobody asked for this new 'feature.'
Do people really have problems with this kind of thing?
Yes. I don't feel any "safer" when I'm awakened by a dump truck backing up a quarter of a mile away. Do you?
Consider the rapid growth of hybrid/electric cars' market share. If the same epsilon-minus bureaucrats responsible for backup beeper regulations have anything to do with this law, it will almost be worth moving out of the city to avoid the racket.
No kidding. I'm sure the law will end up requiring beepers that can be heard 2000 feet away, just like the ones that supposedly keep people from being accidentally backed over by garbage trucks.
Sure new websites would pop up using the incorrect.com, but they could be taken down, or just deregistered, but realy, what benefit would there be to a porn content provider to use a.com ?
If any company suddenly ceased to exist, someone else would instantly take their place.
But not in a country like the one you mentioned you came from... which brings us full-circle. Collectivist volunteerism works fine for open-source software development but if you want nice hardware to run it on, the government has to get out of the way and let the market do its thing.
I have watched people without ANY healthcare at all come out to DENOUNCE any treatment for themselves, watch them practically break out the pitchforks for actually offering to help them in any way
You know, I'm not saying this is the case, or anything, but if someone actually did believe, in principle, that the powers of the Federal government should be limited to those reserved to it in the Constitution, I can almost imagine them voting for those principles, even at substantial personal cost.
Nah, living and voting according to personally-held principles... that's just crazy talk. What am I thinking. They're just a bunch of dumbshit MSM-duped libertarian rednecks, is all.
The whole "if X didn't exist, you could not enjoy Y" argument just simply does not work in a free market. If there is a demand for Y, someone would fill the X, no matter if X exists or not.
Sure. Point being, somebody had to build a billion fast machines, and it damned sure showed no signs of happening on the *nix guys' watch.
Point being, it wasn't Linux that made it possible for you and me and a billion other people to own their own 1000 MHz+ personal computer. It was those evil corporations, and nobody else.
I would miss Microsoft and Apple, and so would you, unless you can afford to pay tens of thousands of dollars for the computer you're using now (or, more likely, one about a thousandth as capable.)
Well, he damned sure won't retain power if he sets off a nuke. His regime's lifetime will be measured in minutes at that point.
The only context in which it makes sense for the DPRK to threaten nuclear war is if they actually want to be taken over by a coalition of Chinese and South Korean forces. What else could it mean, when they adopt tactics and rhetoric that leave their neighbors no other responsible option?
Slashdot Mirror
Automation and tools can reduce, or perhaps, eventually eliminate a need for labor. We are not there yet, so that does not yet apply, and, currently, you need workers.
If something as messy and complicated as the US agricultural industry can run with 5% of its former workforce, and do it very cost-efficiently and safely, then other labor-intensive sectors will follow suit.
And when all sectors of the economy are all automated and no workers are needed ( really, before then... ) what are things going to look like? Ugly, as you state above, I think.
Yeah, I'm guessing so, at least for awhile.
VNC (using the term in a very generic sense, not specifying or ruling out any particular vendor or protocol) takes surprisingly little bandwidth. Two ISDN B-channels (128 kbps) is almost enough to get useful work done without tearing your hair out.
If your hotel or 3G provider doesn't give you enough bandwidth to run a VNC-like terminal, your problem is not with the abstract notion of a thin client, or whatever hardware you're running it on. Your problem is with your choice of hotel or 3G provider.
This was true up until the iPad was released. VNC is the iPad's killer app, if there ever was one.
No one has anything like the way of driving revenue after the sale of the device itself like Apple has with the App Store that was established for the iPhone before the iPad came out.
Interestingly, the App Store was established for the iPad. That's how Apple was able to pull it out of thin air, seemingly overnight, when people rejected their initial web-apps-only strategy and started jailbreaking their iPhones. The App Store was already in the works, but they had no intention of supporting the iPhone with it.
Referring to my above, could you get robots with all capital and no workers? No. You could with all workers and no capital. Workers make things, capital controls what is made, when it is made, by whom it is made, &c. But you *have* to have workers. Capital is optional, but usually controlling.
The farmers said the same thing. In 1900, 41% of the US work force was employed in agriculture. That percentage is now 1.9%.
There is no reason not to believe that most other industrial sectors will experience the same upheaval. So, yes, it's not only entirely possible, but very damned likely, that the people you call "capitalists" will be able to get by with a negligible fraction of the workforce they've historically employed.
That is going to make for a very interesting century. The historical references to the French revolution or the Bolsheviks that many underaged, overeducated commenters in this thread are making will be of no predictive power whatsoever.
A.C.: Have fun in hell then.
This must be some of that "free will" stuff I keep hearing about.
You don't understand real estate agencies, they exist solely to wall off information and make you go through them to get it.
Sounds like they've got some natural synergies with Apple.
Awesome. FF beta 8 now has an "Add-on Bar" at the bottom that's even thicker than the old status bar was. Naturally, this "Add-on Bar" is empty of anything but a 'Close' icon.
It looks like the inmates are running the asylum over at Mozilla these days.
New stuff comes out so regularly we're practically numb to advances now. Innovation seems to be moving along at a pretty decent clip.
Every time a patent suit is settled or adjudicated without a finding of willful infringement, the patent system has failed to promote innovation.
Interesting. Some of them show some effects greater than placebo.
That will always happen if you run enough tests on a Gaussian variable.
Plenty of people were complaining that, in comparison to Chrome, Firefox used a lot of screen space for its UI.
[Citation needed]
It takes a little getting used to - my eyes were used to looking down for the URL - but it works well
No, it doesn't. Many URLs are longer than the 25-30 characters that typically fit to the right of the arrow in the URL bar. Sometimes this is important.
They need to put the damn status bar back. Nobody asked for this new 'feature.'
Do people really have problems with this kind of thing?
Yes. I don't feel any "safer" when I'm awakened by a dump truck backing up a quarter of a mile away. Do you?
Consider the rapid growth of hybrid/electric cars' market share. If the same epsilon-minus bureaucrats responsible for backup beeper regulations have anything to do with this law, it will almost be worth moving out of the city to avoid the racket.
No kidding. I'm sure the law will end up requiring beepers that can be heard 2000 feet away, just like the ones that supposedly keep people from being accidentally backed over by garbage trucks.
I'm a Firefox developer. I understand that it can seem that way, but trust me, a lot of thought goes into each change we make.
Like getting rid of the status line at the bottom of a browser, so that I can only see about the first 25 characters of the URL I'm hovering over?
Don't do us any more favors.
Sure new websites would pop up using the incorrect .com, but they could be taken down, or just deregistered, but realy, what benefit would there be to a porn content provider to use a .com ?
What's porn?
If any company suddenly ceased to exist, someone else would instantly take their place.
But not in a country like the one you mentioned you came from... which brings us full-circle. Collectivist volunteerism works fine for open-source software development but if you want nice hardware to run it on, the government has to get out of the way and let the market do its thing.
I have watched people without ANY healthcare at all come out to DENOUNCE any treatment for themselves, watch them practically break out the pitchforks for actually offering to help them in any way
You know, I'm not saying this is the case, or anything, but if someone actually did believe, in principle, that the powers of the Federal government should be limited to those reserved to it in the Constitution, I can almost imagine them voting for those principles, even at substantial personal cost.
Nah, living and voting according to personally-held principles... that's just crazy talk. What am I thinking. They're just a bunch of dumbshit MSM-duped libertarian rednecks, is all.
Dropbox.com is the new Zombo.com. You can drop anything at Dropbox.com.
The whole "if X didn't exist, you could not enjoy Y" argument just simply does not work in a free market. If there is a demand for Y, someone would fill the X, no matter if X exists or not.
Sure. Point being, somebody had to build a billion fast machines, and it damned sure showed no signs of happening on the *nix guys' watch.
Point being, it wasn't Linux that made it possible for you and me and a billion other people to own their own 1000 MHz+ personal computer. It was those evil corporations, and nobody else.
I would miss Microsoft and Apple, and so would you, unless you can afford to pay tens of thousands of dollars for the computer you're using now (or, more likely, one about a thousandth as capable.)
And how many Googles, Microsofts, Red Hats, and Apples were started in your country?
Well, he damned sure won't retain power if he sets off a nuke. His regime's lifetime will be measured in minutes at that point.
The only context in which it makes sense for the DPRK to threaten nuclear war is if they actually want to be taken over by a coalition of Chinese and South Korean forces. What else could it mean, when they adopt tactics and rhetoric that leave their neighbors no other responsible option?
Those Apache helicopters with 12000-foot guns also have 1200-mile logistics chains.
Just saying, is all.