The pond is not small (and economics is not a zero sum game). Amazon is just reaching the size of Walmart. Two companies that size fighting each other is vastly better than one alone.
The only thing that happens when inventors sit on their hands and refuse to invent is someone else comes along and produces the same invention anyway. All that are required are circumstance and motivation.
Ah, the evil post-modernist idea that "competence is a myth". That anything could really be done by anyone, that there are no experts except by accident of work history, that no one really has more talent than anyone else. Total crock of shit, of course.
Creative output follows a Pareto Distribution. Whether it's papers published, points scored in professional sports, distribution of bestsellers among authors, or successful CEO founders, a tiny percentage of the people working at it are so far beyond the others in talent that they produce most of the output.
The pool of people able to both innovate and run a company is quite small. Sure, it's larger than the number of people currently doing it, but it's not that much larger.
Anyway, Rand's premise for the book was that all the top talent, all that limited pool conspired to go on strike. Not just the current CEOs, but the few smart people who actually mattered in the big companies too, wherever they were in the hierarchy. It would be a pretty lame labor action if only a few of the workers stopped working, wouldn't it? Not a very realistic premise, but the rest made sense if you granted that set-up.
Ah, you missed the point of my original post - perhaps I was unclear. I'm so hardcore about wanting a responsive UI that I'd like a Linux-based RTOS (at least, soft realtime) just to guarantee a consistently responsive UI.
And you'd be surprised how many unsophisticated users have their system under heavy load - the multiple random antivirus and anti-malware programs can create a heavy load, especially when coupled with the malware that got in anyway.
I sure as hell wouldn't want the GUI to take priority over anything.
On your personal desktop? Why on earth not? It's there for you. When gaming, I want the game to run as well as possible; when editing something, I want the editor to be as smooth as possible.
Being responsive 100% of the time, and the occasional stutter at full load are two very different things. There's a lot of things to call Windows and X11, but unresponsive is not one of them.
What is the "occasional stutter" if not "briefly unresponsive"? I guess I see what you mean, farther down. I see Windows become intermittently unresponsive to mouse and kb input under heavy I/O load somewhat regularly, and I find it quite annoying. Not just the mouse stuttering, but clicks getting dropped,windows not gaining focus, that sort of thing.
Aren't there Linux-based soft realtime OSs that are still pretty close to Linux?
Frankly very few people care if their GUI stutters. Heck I would go the opposite, I'd complain if the GUI was prioritized over something more important that a computer may be wanting to do.
You must hang with an odd crowd. On a desktop machine, nothing is more important that the UI being responsive - because nothing happening on the box is more important than me, the user. A server is very different, of course.
The UI needs realtime "slice" big enough to remain always responsive. On a modern system, that shouldn't take much as a percentage of resources, but the maximum latency between UI thread dispatches needs to be kept in check.
The problem is, elementary "particles" aren't particles in any meaningful way - the term just lingers in the vocabulary for lack of something better. For decades now it's been clear that QFT is right, and everything is a wave. There's no "duality", really, just waves that have some properties somewhat like what we might naively guess particles would have, if there were any particles. Heck, this whole "quantum teleportation" effect relies on the fact that "particle" isn't really correct.
Feeling productive doesn't need to come from monetary employment.
Psychology says otherwise: most people need to feel like they're "lifting a load". Raising children counts, sure, but not hobbies or socializing.
The fulfillment from that sort of thing is much deeper than (say) operating a cash register, or working as a receptionist, just so that you can collect a paycheck.
I'm guessing your IQ is somewhat higher than 90? Being able to do useful work without having it assigned to you in detail (or it being very repetitive) requires a certain IQ. The idea that self-defined work is more fulfilling - sure, for some people that's true, but not everyone, and particularly, not likely the people displaced by current automation.
It might be a very different story 50 years from now.
If you're talking non-genetic factors, then it's mostly nutrition. Not that we can fix that worldwide, despite there being plenty of food. In the US, though, there's both enough nutrition and plentiful access to information for almost everyone. However, IQ still tends to revert to the mean, regardless of the parents.
I doubt there's much in terms of good or bad child raising that actually affects IQ, beyond starvation or denying access to educational resources on the internet.
Coal mining is one of the few jobs you can do with a low-ish IQ (too safety intensive for a very low IQ). That doesn't mean, nor did I say anywhere, that all coal miners have low IQ. Not sure where you got that from. But a significant percentage of people displaced by all sorts of manual labor going away, including coal mining, won't be able to find new jobs. You can't "re-train" someone to a job that needs a higher IQ than they have. If you can find a way to raise adult IQ, there's a $billion market for it, BTW.
As far as any criticism of the Bell Curve - sure, the science might have flaws, I dunno, but objecting to it based on the conclusion is irrational. Science doesn't care if you like the answer. IQ predicts the ability to succeed in a given type of job quite well, at a statistical level. If we're talking about problems that groups of people are going to have, I'll stick with ideas with a scientific basis over guesswork and wishful thinking.
There's no evidence that IQ is heritable in that sort of direct way. Whatever the genetic component of IQ is, it's subtle and beyond our understanding for now.
You think there will be any (non-expert) phone support jobs left anywhere in 10 years? I don't. That's low-hanging fruit for the new wave of automation.
IQ is strongly correlated with the kinds of jobs you can hold. Right now, there's almost nothing in the US economy if you're IQ is below about 85 (15% of the population, mostly male). At that IQ, you can only really do repetitive work as instructed in detail. There are a few manual labor jobs left, but automation has nearly eliminated all such jobs already.
In the coming wave of automation, that IQ bar is simply moving up. I expect most of the current simplest jobs - say those doable with n IQ of about 90, to go away. That higher standard will mean 25% of the population will be effectively unemployable.
No one has a good idea what to do about this. Just handing them money is not a great plan - these are people whop, by definition, need a boss and need to be told what to to to be engaged in productive work. And most people need to feel productive in order to maintain mental health.
The Constitution strictly forbids religious tests.
Well, the text of the Constitution doesn't, though there's lots of later precedent. The issue is less clear to me because Islam is a political philosophy as well as a religion.
I have no problem, constitutionally, if the president wants to ban Communists or Fascists. To the subset of Muslims determined to be a problem, the religion includes an overriding political goal. Ideally, we ban people based on that political stance - I think that would be great - somehow without being over-broad in the ban. A ban on the "opposed to our core ideals" politics, not the religion. That seems a narrow needle to thread, however.
Sure, but you could also smash it with a hammer. How many machines have more than one user these days? 1%? 0.01%? Ransomware doesn't need to affect OS files to be effective - the user's files are what's valuable.
Many, perhaps most, Americans are actually pretty comfortable with most people breaking stupid laws most of the time. This idea of rote conformity with whatever laws some assholes in the capitol happen to pass is much to authoritarian for us - sounds like some nazicommie idea.
That's outweighed by their decreasing fatal accidents.
I doubt it. You're probably not counting the increased accidents of all kinds caused by cities shortening the yellow lights to ramp up revenue.
Red-light cameras can be useful if not used for revenue generation - only at the worst intersections, lots of signage warning drivers, normal yellow lights, etc. But that's not how they're sold to cities, and mostly not how they're used.
Neither Windows nor Linux runs stuff as admin/root by default. Both require the user to escalate, in principle. Both have plenty of exploits, in practice. But Linux escalation exploits are more common than Windows these days.
If it's anything like red light cameras, the answer to all questions is "pay the fine, no right to trial, no appeals process of any kind".
I find that the most appalling part of systems like this. They bypass all the usual constitutional protections, and effectively impose a tax at the whim of the state (since if it's a civil or criminal matter, you have constitutional rights to a trial). So it wouldn't surprise me if there isn't a process of any kind to challenge the system if it's mistaken about whether you have insurance.
Likely not. The Windows kernel is quite hardened these days, from being the largest target for so long. That's why almost all of the Windows security problems you read about have nothing to do with a kernel flaw, and tend to be "trick the user into running this thing as admin". Well, almost all flaws are browser attacks anyhow, but I was talking about the remainder.
Maybe that's why YouTube is constantly blaming freeze frames and spinning videos on my local ISP.
Oh, but wait. switching to PornHub, I get 720 and even HD playing flawlessly.
Is it REALLY possible that YouTube is playing more videos that the Porn sites?
No way!
YouTube's back end just sucks [insert PornHub joke here]. I get frozen videos from time to time, and even YT admits its not my ISP when I click on their little tool [insert PornHub joke here].
Slashdot Mirror
The pond is not small (and economics is not a zero sum game). Amazon is just reaching the size of Walmart. Two companies that size fighting each other is vastly better than one alone.
The only thing that happens when inventors sit on their hands and refuse to invent is someone else comes along and produces the same invention anyway. All that are required are circumstance and motivation.
Ah, the evil post-modernist idea that "competence is a myth". That anything could really be done by anyone, that there are no experts except by accident of work history, that no one really has more talent than anyone else. Total crock of shit, of course.
Creative output follows a Pareto Distribution. Whether it's papers published, points scored in professional sports, distribution of bestsellers among authors, or successful CEO founders, a tiny percentage of the people working at it are so far beyond the others in talent that they produce most of the output.
The pool of people able to both innovate and run a company is quite small. Sure, it's larger than the number of people currently doing it, but it's not that much larger.
Anyway, Rand's premise for the book was that all the top talent, all that limited pool conspired to go on strike. Not just the current CEOs, but the few smart people who actually mattered in the big companies too, wherever they were in the hierarchy. It would be a pretty lame labor action if only a few of the workers stopped working, wouldn't it? Not a very realistic premise, but the rest made sense if you granted that set-up.
Ah, you missed the point of my original post - perhaps I was unclear. I'm so hardcore about wanting a responsive UI that I'd like a Linux-based RTOS (at least, soft realtime) just to guarantee a consistently responsive UI.
And you'd be surprised how many unsophisticated users have their system under heavy load - the multiple random antivirus and anti-malware programs can create a heavy load, especially when coupled with the malware that got in anyway.
I sure as hell wouldn't want the GUI to take priority over anything.
On your personal desktop? Why on earth not? It's there for you. When gaming, I want the game to run as well as possible; when editing something, I want the editor to be as smooth as possible.
Being responsive 100% of the time, and the occasional stutter at full load are two very different things. There's a lot of things to call Windows and X11, but unresponsive is not one of them.
What is the "occasional stutter" if not "briefly unresponsive"? I guess I see what you mean, farther down. I see Windows become intermittently unresponsive to mouse and kb input under heavy I/O load somewhat regularly, and I find it quite annoying. Not just the mouse stuttering, but clicks getting dropped,windows not gaining focus, that sort of thing.
Aren't there Linux-based soft realtime OSs that are still pretty close to Linux?
Frankly very few people care if their GUI stutters. Heck I would go the opposite, I'd complain if the GUI was prioritized over something more important that a computer may be wanting to do.
You must hang with an odd crowd. On a desktop machine, nothing is more important that the UI being responsive - because nothing happening on the box is more important than me, the user. A server is very different, of course.
The UI needs realtime "slice" big enough to remain always responsive. On a modern system, that shouldn't take much as a percentage of resources, but the maximum latency between UI thread dispatches needs to be kept in check.
The problem is, elementary "particles" aren't particles in any meaningful way - the term just lingers in the vocabulary for lack of something better. For decades now it's been clear that QFT is right, and everything is a wave. There's no "duality", really, just waves that have some properties somewhat like what we might naively guess particles would have, if there were any particles. Heck, this whole "quantum teleportation" effect relies on the fact that "particle" isn't really correct.
Feeling productive doesn't need to come from monetary employment.
Psychology says otherwise: most people need to feel like they're "lifting a load". Raising children counts, sure, but not hobbies or socializing.
The fulfillment from that sort of thing is much deeper than (say) operating a cash register, or working as a receptionist, just so that you can collect a paycheck.
I'm guessing your IQ is somewhat higher than 90? Being able to do useful work without having it assigned to you in detail (or it being very repetitive) requires a certain IQ. The idea that self-defined work is more fulfilling - sure, for some people that's true, but not everyone, and particularly, not likely the people displaced by current automation.
It might be a very different story 50 years from now.
If you're talking non-genetic factors, then it's mostly nutrition. Not that we can fix that worldwide, despite there being plenty of food. In the US, though, there's both enough nutrition and plentiful access to information for almost everyone. However, IQ still tends to revert to the mean, regardless of the parents.
I doubt there's much in terms of good or bad child raising that actually affects IQ, beyond starvation or denying access to educational resources on the internet.
Coal mining is one of the few jobs you can do with a low-ish IQ (too safety intensive for a very low IQ). That doesn't mean, nor did I say anywhere, that all coal miners have low IQ. Not sure where you got that from. But a significant percentage of people displaced by all sorts of manual labor going away, including coal mining, won't be able to find new jobs. You can't "re-train" someone to a job that needs a higher IQ than they have. If you can find a way to raise adult IQ, there's a $billion market for it, BTW.
As far as any criticism of the Bell Curve - sure, the science might have flaws, I dunno, but objecting to it based on the conclusion is irrational. Science doesn't care if you like the answer. IQ predicts the ability to succeed in a given type of job quite well, at a statistical level. If we're talking about problems that groups of people are going to have, I'll stick with ideas with a scientific basis over guesswork and wishful thinking.
There's no evidence that IQ is heritable in that sort of direct way. Whatever the genetic component of IQ is, it's subtle and beyond our understanding for now.
And, yes, I think genocide is bad, m'kay?
You think there will be any (non-expert) phone support jobs left anywhere in 10 years? I don't. That's low-hanging fruit for the new wave of automation.
IQ is strongly correlated with the kinds of jobs you can hold. Right now, there's almost nothing in the US economy if you're IQ is below about 85 (15% of the population, mostly male). At that IQ, you can only really do repetitive work as instructed in detail. There are a few manual labor jobs left, but automation has nearly eliminated all such jobs already.
In the coming wave of automation, that IQ bar is simply moving up. I expect most of the current simplest jobs - say those doable with n IQ of about 90, to go away. That higher standard will mean 25% of the population will be effectively unemployable.
No one has a good idea what to do about this. Just handing them money is not a great plan - these are people whop, by definition, need a boss and need to be told what to to to be engaged in productive work. And most people need to feel productive in order to maintain mental health.
Man, that sure was a wall of text to say "but I like stealing".
The Constitution strictly forbids religious tests.
Well, the text of the Constitution doesn't, though there's lots of later precedent. The issue is less clear to me because Islam is a political philosophy as well as a religion.
I have no problem, constitutionally, if the president wants to ban Communists or Fascists. To the subset of Muslims determined to be a problem, the religion includes an overriding political goal. Ideally, we ban people based on that political stance - I think that would be great - somehow without being over-broad in the ban. A ban on the "opposed to our core ideals" politics, not the religion. That seems a narrow needle to thread, however.
Sure, I was addressing the poster, and his posting history, not this specific example.
Yeah, I've never understood the "laws are useless because criminals break laws" approach.
Well, that's you. I've never understood the "solution to every problem is more government" approach you totalitarians love, myself.
Sure, but you could also smash it with a hammer. How many machines have more than one user these days? 1%? 0.01%? Ransomware doesn't need to affect OS files to be effective - the user's files are what's valuable.
Many, perhaps most, Americans are actually pretty comfortable with most people breaking stupid laws most of the time. This idea of rote conformity with whatever laws some assholes in the capitol happen to pass is much to authoritarian for us - sounds like some nazicommie idea.
That's outweighed by their decreasing fatal accidents.
I doubt it. You're probably not counting the increased accidents of all kinds caused by cities shortening the yellow lights to ramp up revenue.
Red-light cameras can be useful if not used for revenue generation - only at the worst intersections, lots of signage warning drivers, normal yellow lights, etc. But that's not how they're sold to cities, and mostly not how they're used.
Neither Windows nor Linux runs stuff as admin/root by default. Both require the user to escalate, in principle. Both have plenty of exploits, in practice. But Linux escalation exploits are more common than Windows these days.
If it's anything like red light cameras, the answer to all questions is "pay the fine, no right to trial, no appeals process of any kind".
I find that the most appalling part of systems like this. They bypass all the usual constitutional protections, and effectively impose a tax at the whim of the state (since if it's a civil or criminal matter, you have constitutional rights to a trial). So it wouldn't surprise me if there isn't a process of any kind to challenge the system if it's mistaken about whether you have insurance.
It makes a *lot* less than Windows...
Likely not. The Windows kernel is quite hardened these days, from being the largest target for so long. That's why almost all of the Windows security problems you read about have nothing to do with a kernel flaw, and tend to be "trick the user into running this thing as admin". Well, almost all flaws are browser attacks anyhow, but I was talking about the remainder.
Paging DocRuby. DocRuby to the green phone please.
Where's /.'s resident chirotroller when we need him?
C'mon, their motto is "Don't, be evil!". It's not like they're hiding it.
Maybe that's why YouTube is constantly blaming freeze frames and spinning videos on my local ISP.
Oh, but wait. switching to PornHub, I get 720 and even HD playing flawlessly.
Is it REALLY possible that YouTube is playing more videos that the Porn sites?
No way!
YouTube's back end just sucks [insert PornHub joke here]. I get frozen videos from time to time, and even YT admits its not my ISP when I click on their little tool [insert PornHub joke here].
Get your CDN act together Google.