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User: LordLimecat

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  1. Re:more leisure time for humans! on Foxconn Replacing Workers With Robots · · Score: 1

    For example, much wealth in the early days of the US was built on the backs of the slaves. That's not capitalism.

    ...And wiped out in the great depression, and rebuilt in World War 2. That IS capitalism.

    For the record, the North had quite the booming economy even without slave labor, even before slavery was abolished.

  2. Re:more leisure time for humans! on Foxconn Replacing Workers With Robots · · Score: 2

    Communism relies on a breed of human that doesnt exist: One that is perfectly rational, selfless, and lacking any sort of vice.

    When you find one of those, maybe we can start talking about communism.

  3. Re:more leisure time for humans! on Foxconn Replacing Workers With Robots · · Score: 1

    How many times do you have to hear someone say "hey I have a great idea", and listen to him, and then watch a million people starve to death, before you're just being an idiot for listening to them?

    Appealing to some mythological communism that apparently hasnt been gotten right after some dozen attempts and some 100 million dead in the process doesnt engender a whole lot of trust that you'll pull it off the next time.

    And for the record, int he past 150 years (or even the past 50 years) the average salary, standard of living, level of education, and level of technology have all drastically risen. We havent hit a problem yet despite 150 years of luddites decrying the end of the world as we know it.

  4. Re:more leisure time for humans! on Foxconn Replacing Workers With Robots · · Score: 1

    I dont think you have the knack of how technological progress interacts with standards of living. You seem to think that increased efficiency necessitates an increase in poverty, when historically the opposite has been true.

    Alternatively: Panama canal engineers deign to use heavy machinery rather than workers equipped with spoons! How will ditch diggers make a living?!?!?!

  5. Re:It's here already? on The AI Boss That Deploys Hong Kong's Subway Engineers · · Score: 1

    The Australia project, on the other hand, is not meant to be communist

    Lets see...

      * Everyone gets an equal share. The only semblence of an economy is the fact that everyone gets 1000 credits.
      * Everyone controls the means of production
      * No one is required to do a specific amount of work: its all "whatever you can chip in"

    That sounds a lot like communism to me.

    Saying "dont call it communism, cause that conjures up all the horrific attempts at it in the real world" is a bit too idealistic for me. Looking at the track record for an idea and its implementation seems like a pretty good indicator of how healthy it is.

  6. Re:It's here already? on The AI Boss That Deploys Hong Kong's Subway Engineers · · Score: 1

    There were lots of benefits to the plug-in setup. The primary social justification for the setup was to prevent bad behavior/crime.

    That anyone can hear / say something like that without shudders running up their spine is amazing to me. I would be doubly dumbfounded if you told me you had read 1984.

    Reeducation is one of those things that sounds great in theory, until you get down to what it would actually entail.

  7. Re:It's here already? on The AI Boss That Deploys Hong Kong's Subway Engineers · · Score: 1

    If you're using the word "good" (in the moral sense) to mean "things that benefit me", you have made it meaningless. People talk of the holocaust being "bad", even if it did not personally affect them; but by your meaning you simply wouldnt attach any moral judgement to it unless you happened to be a Jew or Romani.

  8. Re:It's here already? on The AI Boss That Deploys Hong Kong's Subway Engineers · · Score: 1

    Its a strange thing that Communism tends to be espoused by folks who seem to be well informed and intelligent, but who invariably miss the fact that it attracts the sort of people who make it not work (authoritarians).

    Also, Communist China came close. It failed for MANY reasons, and authoritarianism wasnt it. Farmland was redistributed so that farmers could do their farming for all, but farmers tended to sell the farmland for a quick payout. Communal kitchens were set up, but they tended to lower the quality of life for people involved. Systems for generating vast quantities of steel were implemented, but because there was no output--earning link, the steel tended to be worthless pig iron.

    People keep saying "it just hasnt been done right" but communism was happening in a very pure form in China for several years after the revolution and it simply doesnt work; people starve to death, well before the Big Bad Authoritarians come in. The fact that they come in eventually is a symptom of the underlying illness. And the worst of the atrocities are due to the fact that Communism requires EVERYONE to buy into the system, which results in things like the killing fields or the Cultural Revolution, necessary to purge those nasty subversive capitalist tendencies.

    Theres no way you can cut it where Communism isnt a plague on humanity. People are not fluffy bunnies who have lost their way; they are self-interested, and generally not good folk, and appealing to an economic system that requires selfless devotion to the greater good is a delusional pipe dream.

  9. Re:Incoming international flights on TSA Prohibits Taking Discharged Electronic Devices Onto Planes · · Score: 1

    That shouldnt be a problem. I mean, who would have their laptop run out of batteries on a 14 hour flight? Thats absurd.

  10. Re:It's here already? on The AI Boss That Deploys Hong Kong's Subway Engineers · · Score: 2

    Its from the story he linked. It posits a future where AI runs the American economy, leading to decidedly mediocre standards for everyone. The alternative posited is "the Australia project' which is basically continent-wide communism due to robot labor, renewable energy, and no pollution.

    Its all great sounding stuff, but its also complete nonsense.

  11. Re:It's here already? on The AI Boss That Deploys Hong Kong's Subway Engineers · · Score: 1

    Its kind of hard to take seriously a story that basically talks about how communism will fix everything. We tried it; before it was called "the Australia Project", it went by "the China project" and "the Soviet project".

    I wont spoil the endings; you can read about it on wikipedia.

  12. Re:A question is a question on Microsoft Opens 'Transparency Center' For Governments To Review Source Code · · Score: 1

    You're criticizing the name of an appropriately named cryptographic technique with no knowledge of what it does, why it was named, or who named it. I would say that that deserves criticism; slashdot does not need more armchair experts weighing in on things they dont understand-- theres way too much BS as it is now.

  13. Re:blame outsourced work / contractors / subontrac on Ask Slashdot: How Often Should You Change Jobs? · · Score: 1

    Right up until personal responsibility is required, at which point the difference between gov employees and contractors becomes clear.

    Hint: Govvies arent the ones who take responsibility.

  14. Re: Grrrl on 3D Printed PiGRRL - Raspberry Pi Gameboy · · Score: 2

    Epic AC fight here, tickets $5.

    Dude are you gonna take that from him?

  15. Re:google doens't need to stir up dissent on Google Reinstating Some 'Forgotten' Links · · Score: 1

    Everytime you remind them of examples, they mutter something about Godwin.

  16. Re:blame outsourced work / contractors / subontrac on Ask Slashdot: How Often Should You Change Jobs? · · Score: 1

    Im a contractor, and have been my entire career. At my first employer, i had a list of clients that did not change substantially over nearly a decade. At my current employer, I've been at one location for 2 years.

    This discussion is filled with rampant speculation and incorrectness.

  17. Re:We can thank corporate America on Ask Slashdot: How Often Should You Change Jobs? · · Score: 2

    Its also incredibly toxic, ask Greece or Italy how the universal golden parachute is working out.

  18. Re:Google shows they're Republicans again... on Google Reinstating Some 'Forgotten' Links · · Score: 1

    1) If you think Google leans to the right, you arent paying any attention to politics, their donations, or their policies. Like most tech sector companies, they lean to the left.
    2) Theyre not doing it gleefully, theyre doing it to comply with the law in Europe-- which, I would note, is quite a bit to the left of the US.
    3) Theyre also not complying as rapidly as the EU might want; theyre complying with the law, but requiring takedown requests to be specific and limited, and using a manual review process. Theres no automatic takedown, AFAIK.

    Good rant though, aside from the gross factual inaccuracies.

  19. Re:Did you still get the links outside Europe on Google Reinstating Some 'Forgotten' Links · · Score: 2

    Google isnt deciding to, theyre being legally obligated to. Its not our rights, but theirs, and the danger to free speech when that is permitted.

  20. Re:google doens't need to stir up dissent on Google Reinstating Some 'Forgotten' Links · · Score: 2

    There are a lot of europeans on reddit and slashdot who heartily defend this law.

  21. Re:More likely people in marketing on Microsoft Opens 'Transparency Center' For Governments To Review Source Code · · Score: 1

    No, its not "just like that", theyre two entirely different things. WEP was a cipher, and as with all ciphers (other than XOR OTP) can have weaknesses, and will eventually be reduced in complexity by improvements in computation. It was also a remarkably weak cipher.

    PFS is not a cipher, its a principle that isolates the encryption keys between sessions so that getting a court order and sniffing traffic may compromise one session, but you will need to do that for each session because they all use different, non-recreatable keys.

    See cbhacking's answer above.

    In short, if you dont know anything about cryptography, please refrain from speculating about it on slashdot. Trite comments about their eventual hacking add nothing to the conversation, and are often wrong-- cryptographers are not dumb, and they undoubtedly know a lot more about potential weaknesses than you do.

  22. Re:Non-story. on Goldman Sachs Demands Google Unsend One of Its E-mails · · Score: 1

    Was there a court order, or not? Reuters does not make that clear.

  23. Re:Who thinks up these names? on Microsoft Opens 'Transparency Center' For Governments To Review Source Code · · Score: 1

    People who get paid to study cryptography come up with the name.

    Eventually something is going to be more "perfect" even if the thing is quite good.

    Actually in this case, perfect refers to the fact that compromising one session's key provides no advantage in cracking another session. You cannot improve that aspect of it, if it is implemented properly.

    Ironic you should speak of hubris.

  24. Re:Uh... Yeah? on Court Allowed NSA To Spy On All But 4 Countries · · Score: 1

    Thats true, and its not what this is about. A US court cant force a foreign company to do jack.

  25. Re:Uh... Yeah? on Court Allowed NSA To Spy On All But 4 Countries · · Score: 1

    Arguing that its not "OK" for russia to spy on us is very strange.

    What do you mean by "OK"-- that you dont approve? Thats both obvious, and irrelevant. That its morally wrong? I fail to see how intelligence gathering is amoral. That it violates some implicit agreement between the nations? Thats naieve-- everyone knows this stuff is going on.