All significant technological advances "destroy" labor.
The printing press destroyed jobs for scribes. The factory destroyed jobs for blacksmiths. The farm combine destroyed jobs for farm workers. Computers destroyed jobs for bank tellers.
The cycle has been going on for ages, and won't stop with "AI."
Every decision any program makes is based on an underlying ethical code. Retrieving data without corrupting it, for example. Faithfully reproducing and transmitting what you type. Retrieving the information that your requested. Making robocalls. These all have ethical underpinnings--either for good or bad.
The operation of software is an expression of the ethics of its programmer. You can't leave out ethics, good or bad, it's baked into the fabric of the code by the programmer.
Faster, more efficient, simpler. They usually do go together! It drives me nuts to see 400 lines of code that could have been written in 50! Worse, those 400 lines all have to be maintained, as long as the software has life. Simplifying code is worth a lot more than just the time it saves in clock cycles.
People have been losing their jobs to automation for centuries. We somehow always seem to find more ways to find work.
Yes, there is stress for people who have to retrain themselves. We tech people have to retrain ourselves every couple of years, as the technology moves on. We know that stress well! But it is possible to learn new things, even for non-tech people, if they really want to. Needing to earn money has a powerful way of motivating people to move on.
That destination star...just make sure you are pointed directly towards it, and you should get enough deceleration to stop before you splash down, right???
This is more true than people realize. Just come in every day, put in an honest day's work. Even if you have only average skills and average education, if you do that much, you'll do just fine. No, you won't be Bill Gates, but that's not really what most of us want. We just want a decent life. And that goal is very attainable...just by showing up.
Actions have consequences. If you don't believe this, you'll fall for articles like this one.
People who say that successful people are "lucky" are, in my experience, mostly just complaining because success wasn't handed to THEM on a silver platter. They seem to think that success somehow falls out of the sky, as this article seems to point out. In reality, success comes from hard work, and repeatedly failing and trying again until you succeed.
For most of us, the saying is very true: "80% of success is just showing up." If you come to the office every day and do your best, even if you aren't very talented, you will be noticed, and you will succeed. You won't be fabulously rich, but you'll do well.
I would agree that luck plays a part in extreme cases, such as Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos or Sam Walton. There are other people similarly talented who did not become billionaires.
But you can't take fringe / edge cases and use them to prove a rule that applies to the vast majority of people.
By definition, most of us fall within 1 standard deviation of "average" in terms of talents, upbringing, and education. Within that group, "grit" and determination do indeed play a large role in success.
It's only at the extreme ends of the spectrum--the very rich and the very poor--that it makes sense to attribute "luck" as a significant factor.
With our current system, we all have to do match to figure out what time it is in India.
If everybody uses UTC, then we all have to do match to figure out when working hours are in India.
So we really don't gain much, except confusion for locals, by all using UTC.
It's kind of like using a GPS. When you're driving, you don't want to see the whole map, oriented with north up. You just want to see the perspective of the road ahead, and whether your next turn is to the right or left. Likewise, as we navigate through our day, we just want to know what the local time is, not taking into account the rest of the world. Our current time zones are a good compromise.
The only people who would like this idea are Unix sysadmins. For the rest of us, it matters that lunch is around noon, that office hours are roughly from 8-5, that people are usually in bed at midnight. We don't care what time it is in Greenwich, UK.
Slashdot Mirror
Now you can get your fake news read out loud to you!
He'd better not go too high, he might bump up against the ceiling!
Wait, that wasn't the headline this time???
Even Windows doesn't have just one way to register settings (INI, config, registry) or install software (windows installer, app store, roll your own).
Good catch. I didn't notice that you could buy the whole set for a discount.
But even at $300...REALLY??? It's just not that awesome of a font!
So, if you'd like all 48 versions of the font, it will set you back at least $1,680. Wow!
Linux desktop won't succeed even if Microsoft DID keep charging $100 for Windows upgrades. It's simply too hard for non-nerds to use.
All significant technological advances "destroy" labor.
The printing press destroyed jobs for scribes.
The factory destroyed jobs for blacksmiths.
The farm combine destroyed jobs for farm workers.
Computers destroyed jobs for bank tellers.
The cycle has been going on for ages, and won't stop with "AI."
Every decision any program makes is based on an underlying ethical code. Retrieving data without corrupting it, for example. Faithfully reproducing and transmitting what you type. Retrieving the information that your requested. Making robocalls. These all have ethical underpinnings--either for good or bad.
The operation of software is an expression of the ethics of its programmer. You can't leave out ethics, good or bad, it's baked into the fabric of the code by the programmer.
Faster, more efficient, simpler. They usually do go together! It drives me nuts to see 400 lines of code that could have been written in 50! Worse, those 400 lines all have to be maintained, as long as the software has life. Simplifying code is worth a lot more than just the time it saves in clock cycles.
Yes, of course there could be unknown risks. Everything has unknown risks. You don't pass laws making things illegal because of unknown risks!
This is compared to cigarettes, with very well-known and deadly risks.
If they want to make e-cigs illegal, do the research first!
Gateway? My son was already smoking cigarettes. He switched to vaping. I think that's a good move. Quitting would be even better, of course.
If only I had that much influence over my 24-year-old!
How does that make sense?
I don't smoke at all, but my 24-year-old son did, until e-cigarettes became popular.
First, no tar. And no stench.
I'd a lot rather he puff on those candy things than the old-fashioned smoky ones.
Would it be better if he didn't do any of them? Yes. But if I had to choose, I'd choose the e-cigs any day.
People have been losing their jobs to automation for centuries. We somehow always seem to find more ways to find work.
Yes, there is stress for people who have to retrain themselves. We tech people have to retrain ourselves every couple of years, as the technology moves on. We know that stress well! But it is possible to learn new things, even for non-tech people, if they really want to. Needing to earn money has a powerful way of motivating people to move on.
Why, the Crystalline Entity, of course!
I didn’t read the article
You must be a regular here! Who reads the articles anyway!
That destination star...just make sure you are pointed directly towards it, and you should get enough deceleration to stop before you splash down, right???
This is more true than people realize. Just come in every day, put in an honest day's work. Even if you have only average skills and average education, if you do that much, you'll do just fine. No, you won't be Bill Gates, but that's not really what most of us want. We just want a decent life. And that goal is very attainable...just by showing up.
Actions have consequences. If you don't believe this, you'll fall for articles like this one.
People who say that successful people are "lucky" are, in my experience, mostly just complaining because success wasn't handed to THEM on a silver platter. They seem to think that success somehow falls out of the sky, as this article seems to point out. In reality, success comes from hard work, and repeatedly failing and trying again until you succeed.
For most of us, the saying is very true: "80% of success is just showing up." If you come to the office every day and do your best, even if you aren't very talented, you will be noticed, and you will succeed. You won't be fabulously rich, but you'll do well.
I would agree that luck plays a part in extreme cases, such as Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos or Sam Walton. There are other people similarly talented who did not become billionaires.
But you can't take fringe / edge cases and use them to prove a rule that applies to the vast majority of people.
By definition, most of us fall within 1 standard deviation of "average" in terms of talents, upbringing, and education. Within that group, "grit" and determination do indeed play a large role in success.
It's only at the extreme ends of the spectrum--the very rich and the very poor--that it makes sense to attribute "luck" as a significant factor.
I'd like to know the first pi x 10 trillion digits!
Notice I didn't say anything about solar noon.
With our current system, we all have to do match to figure out what time it is in India.
If everybody uses UTC, then we all have to do match to figure out when working hours are in India.
So we really don't gain much, except confusion for locals, by all using UTC.
It's kind of like using a GPS. When you're driving, you don't want to see the whole map, oriented with north up. You just want to see the perspective of the road ahead, and whether your next turn is to the right or left. Likewise, as we navigate through our day, we just want to know what the local time is, not taking into account the rest of the world. Our current time zones are a good compromise.
The only people who would like this idea are Unix sysadmins. For the rest of us, it matters that lunch is around noon, that office hours are roughly from 8-5, that people are usually in bed at midnight. We don't care what time it is in Greenwich, UK.