Much like the automation efforts of the past, I don't think work will go "away" per se. It will change. The jobs will be different.
We no longer need some guy to stand around for.25 an hour on an assembly line setting screws into mounts so the next guy at.40 an hour can screw them in. We do need someone to do routine maintenance and programming at 20 an hour on the machines that do the job.
I don't think we have in the past, or will in the future, see a dramatic decrease in jobs. What we will see is some jobs going away and some magically appearing.
This exact product has been the core of my home entertainment system for around 3 or 4 years now. A 36" monitor, a massive HD upgrade, and a soundcard upgrade and it serves as a MP3 server, television, DVD Player, TiVO style HD recorder, internet surfing and game playing. I've got to say, I've had very few hiccups and can't say enough good things about PC-ing my entertainment center.... but it's expensive (or was) at around $6,000 for nothing more than a mid-range PC and huge monitor.
Ahh, of course, and the Supreme Court's interpretation of the PGA rule book must be an accurate representation of the motives of those that actually created those rules, right? Umm...wait, that's idiotic...that must not be what you meant....my bad.
How is a professional golfer supposed to earn a living by "purchasing, renting, or borrowing land" on which to play golf? He's a golfer, not an investment banker. And, like it or not, the PGA is the only game in town for professional golfers -- just as the NBA is for pro basketball players. The rules weren't "changed". The PGA was just required to make a reasonable accomodation for a handicapped player. Golf is about hitting a ball into a hole, not about walking and that's what the Supreme Court decided.
The rules absolutely were changed. Carts were expressly forbidden on a PGA tournament course until this disabled golfer imposed his "civil liberties" on them.
As for "How is a professional golfer supposed to earn a living by "purchasing, renting, or borrowing land" on which to play golf?", I don't remember my inalienable right to make a living at professional sports, but I'm sure it's in the constitution, right? I mean, I'd really like to play hockey, but I can't skate, so can I sue to play sans ice? How can I, a professional basketball player, make my living if they insist on placing the hoops too high for my 5'11" ass to slam dunk on? Can I sue to get them lowered?
It's people like you that make life disturbingly difficult for intelligent people.
Which brings you back to the point...make forging the header information illegal, as it is just that, forgery. Don't make spam illegal because it is genuinely abusable by the government. If you don't think that the government WILL abuse its power, review the UCITA and DMCA briefly and see what you think...
The concept behind Mr Mallard is a good idea...a robot that can follow its "mother". Now, if they could just teach my son that, I would have many fewer panic filled afternoons in the mall...
Slashdot readers are not of one common philosophy. We're a community of various people with various beliefs, who live in various countries, who use various software, etc. STOP assuming that we're all one and the same!
Amusingly enough, in a community of zealots, all members get painted with the same brush. Not all Palestinians are running around with "bombs for Allah", but they're all envisioned that way because enough do, and they're the loudest and most obvious.
You are very much judged by the company you keep, and I am utterly tired of this same whiny rant when linux zealotry is pointed out. If it doesn't apply to you, SHUT THE HELL UP. If it does, do something about it.
It's NOT hypocrisy when different people give their opinions on different subjects!
It is too, if those opinions are hypocritical. I don't think hypocrisy means what you think it means.
I'm not saying it's better...I'm not making a judgement call on anyone's culture at all...
I'm saying, your implication that only your concept of culture is truly culture is absurd, elitist, and snobbish. Your assertion that yours is better is even more elitist. Interactivity isn't a measure of culture. I'm sure you wouldn't deny that the opera is culture, yet they frown heavily on interaction from the audience.
Personally, I consider sitting on my back deck, grilling some red meat, suckin down some suds, listening to some music and chatting with friends to be the height of culture...but that's just me. -Jer
Bull, you elitist snob.
Your definition of culture is about as "avante garde" as I could imagine, and just as wrong. Mass media is culture, local bands are culture, prime time TV is culture, Broadway plays are culture. It's all culture, so stop being a snob and assuming that your culture is better than mine and...worse..that your culture is the ONLY culture. -Jer
You're making the implicit assumption that the interface will allow you to open ports. That's not necessarily a safe assumption to make. Microsoft has been known to do some rather odd things for the sake of "security" or "standards" or "making it easier for the end user". It's no big stretch to assume that they might make it hard or even impossible to open a port by the end user. I can think of a number of ways for them to do this and allow things like web servers that are blessed by MS to work...
Don't you know how firewalls work? Just because every one YOU have used gave you the ability to give ports pass-through capability doesn't mean THIS one will be customizeable at all. -Jer
Re:Never saw the CNN or any other review [OT]
on
The Pledge
·
· Score: 1
Actually, I think that's exactly it...it's very "slashdot" (read: elite) to advocate Open Source or Linux and put down MS and Katz.
For his part, Katz doesn't write anything that is any worse than many of the "informative" articles link by/., but he'll not get a good rap from the/. mob because it's fashionable to hate him. Some of his articles are trite, some are well done. Some are uninformed, some are great pieces of writing.
The easiest way to tell, by the way, that it's "in style" to Katz-bash, is the sheer number of people that post the "get this guy outta here" messages, rather than just filtering him out and letting him fade away.
Just remember when posting:
Linux, BSD, Open Source, Anti-MS = +1 posts and enhanced/. status
Pro-MS, Pro-Katz, Pro-Copyright, Anti-Linux = -1 posts and deteriorating status
Umm...those aren't exactly the facts I was referring to...I was more referring to the back-story. The "why" (or lack thereof) behind it, etc. Again, I'm not taking a personal shot at any of you, I'm just saying that there's a great deal of "he said, she said" involved, and I tend not to put a great deal of faith in any side's representation of a situation when they have a stake in it.
Obviously the site is down. Obviously it's owned by Mr. Sims. It stands to reason that he took it down. The entire rest of the narrative lacks definitive content or evidences of any sort. Sorry, I'm just cynical I guess... -Jer
I don't understand how the author came to the nickel per hour number.
Sure, the cost of the machine boils down to (by his math) a nickle an hour, but that's not the same cost as the company would have to take on.
A company would have to buy the system, hire the IT personnel, cover their benefits, store them, pay for the electricity, pay for the heating/cooling, pay for maintenance, parts if they break, warranties, etc. These (and more) are little things that a home user might not even consider when determining if it's "worth it", and makes the "break even" point much higher than a nickle per hour.
I'd like to see the same breakdown done with some more accurate math.
I think that's precisely the problem. The things that we've found lend themselves well to distributed computing (SETI, cracking encryption) don't lend themselves as well to making money. What company wants to pay for either of the above two, let alone a lot of money?
That's not to say that P2P is already doomed though. I don't think that it's a technical problem at this point, I think it's a business problem. Someone has to figure out a problem that has two attributes: It must lend itself to being more quickly solved via distributed computing, and it must be something with such a high demand that someone is willing to pay big money.
It's very possible that P2P could take off...but I'm not holding my breath. Even if they solve the issue of "what problem is worth the money", there's still the problem of "who will let us use the cycles" and "how do we keep from getting cheated".
The interesting thing about posts like the above is this...it's no more trustworthy than Mike Sims' side of the story.
It's "he said, she said" at its best, and neither Sims' side nor the above sound like they're based entirely in reality. Each person indicates that they did *NOTHING* wrong and a set of events happened independently of them. BS. Something hadda have happened.
It's cool that you opt to believe the above, Seth, but since you'd already left...how do YOU know what happened? -Jer
I felt much the same for a long time. Trackballs just seemed counter-intuitive and, although mice weren't perfect, they seemed best.
When I started travelling more with my busted-all-to-hell laptop with no functional internal pointing device, I started using a Trackman Marble. I've since replaced all mice on all of my computer equipment both at home and at work with one, because I'm more efficient and controlled with a trackball. I've also found that it's alot more comfortable on my poor wrists.
By the same token, I do still have a few mice kicking around for when I play any FPS, because a trackball just doesn't do the trick. -Jer
You truly are one dumb son-of-a-bitch, eh? First, the footprint is almost EXACTLY the same as Netscape 4.7x. Second, and more amusing, running in minimalist-mode, it's smaller than Opera in memory use (in my head-to-head comparison).
I know you've never checked (based on the really poor sounding explanation you've given), so I've just been trolled, but I could hardly let such a blatant disregard for logic and English go unmentioned.
Hell maybe you don't remember the days when ALL browsers cost money, but I do,
Umm...when would this have been....since the start of WWW "browsers" there have always been free alternatives. I've never had to pay for a browser, and I'm not about to start now.
I've found, after bitching about Netscape for the longest time, then bitching about Mozilla...then getting a crappy Netscape 6 and bitching about that, that IE works great for my purposes. It's reasonably small, fast, fairly standards compliant, fast, stable, fast, and works well. On my Linux boxes, I run Netscape 4.7x and deal with it...
I for one just want the best OS for me, I don't care who else uses it... If to attain that we need to get the masses using it, so be it. But it's not a goal in itself.
That's a bit short-sighted and simplistic in my (less than humble) opinion. Linux users want popular games, software, DVDs, ad nauseam. Much of this won't happen until the OS hits "critical mass", or, until it reaches a point where the companies making these things see that it is a OS that they can make money from.
I desperately would like to see Linux and/or BSD become more user friendly and more used, so that I can ditch Windows solutions completely and use one or both exclusively.
Well now...as witty and urbane as that might have seemed, I'm left unimpressed. If you're going to attempt an insult post, it would be nice if you'd take the time to rise beyond the third grade level with it.
I mean, come on people, it's not difficult to flame someone, it's not even that difficult to do it well...but lets make the effort here, huh?
As it is, I can't imagine anyone being actually insulted by such an infantile attempt at a witticism. I actually find it rather pleasing...my logic is so airtight that you are forced into a pathetic personal attack rather than an attack on the logic upon which my post is based. Thank you:)
Lesse, just scrolling through the front page right now, I see the following "news" articles to offset that which you term "non-news":
U.S. Allows Sale of Half-Meter Satellite Photos
Jupiter Moon Ganymede May Have An Ocean
AOL-TW Merger: FCC May Require AIM Compatibility
Blackjack: Ultra-Accurate GPS Measurement
Now, just for fun, how about this...a definition of news:
News
a : a report of recent events
b : previously unknown information
Now, whether or not you're interested in the contents of this article, by definition, it's certainly news.
If you don't like the subject matter here...why are you reading? Obviously something here catches your fancy. Is it some of the articles or just the chance to whine about something in front of a group? *shrug* The world may never know...
No, he's right. If you post off topic and you have an auto +2, you should do the rest of the community the courtesy of moderating yourself with the "No Score +1 Bonus" button on the comment post form; as I've done with this off-topic statement.
And, for your amusement, garcia *DID* moderate himself down by checking off the aforementioned button. Do you feel like an uninformed jackass yet?
Even a Palm V could a year ago. I had our CEO's Palm V syncing to his (crappy) Sony Vaio USB-only piece of trash around January 2000 via a USB.
I think what they added was native USB support, not serial-via-USB like Handspring and Palm had previously used.
At least, I hope that's what they mean.
Re:reverse engineering
on
EULA In Games
·
· Score: 3
...the EULA screen is attempting to coerce an agreement by holding hostage software that you already own.
Actually, EULAs have been upheld legally in the US and at least 2 European countries that I'm aware of, so in point of fact, it is a legally binding agreement.
Aside from that, a EULA is hardly the only place you'll find "post-purchase terms" being thrust on the customer. I'm sure you're using an ISP, and you'll find that one of the terms in your TOS is that any and all terms in the TOS are subject to change at any time. If they change, you're faced with the choice of discontinuing your use or agreeing with the changes...all of this AFTER YOU BOUGHT THE SERVICE!!!!
The EULA is not significantly different, save for the fact that it's easy to stop paying for your ISP and not TOO difficult (in my experience) to get that last month's payment back. It's much harder to get your money back as a result of disliking the terms of a EULA.
Here's something I want to know...legally, doesn't it make sense that if I read a EULA, disagree, try to return it and am unable to that the EULA is null and void? I mean, if the writer of the 'contract' doesn't honor the contract, do I have to? Can I just work my way down the EULA, point by point, and break each term with impunity because they nullified their own contract? I dunno, IANAL, but it sounds damn nice to me.
Slashdot Mirror
Much like the automation efforts of the past, I don't think work will go "away" per se. It will change. The jobs will be different.
.25 an hour on an assembly line setting screws into mounts so the next guy at .40 an hour can screw them in. We do need someone to do routine maintenance and programming at 20 an hour on the machines that do the job.
We no longer need some guy to stand around for
I don't think we have in the past, or will in the future, see a dramatic decrease in jobs. What we will see is some jobs going away and some magically appearing.
Who had a job programming 50 years ago?
This exact product has been the core of my home entertainment system for around 3 or 4 years now. A 36" monitor, a massive HD upgrade, and a soundcard upgrade and it serves as a MP3 server, television, DVD Player, TiVO style HD recorder, internet surfing and game playing. I've got to say, I've had very few hiccups and can't say enough good things about PC-ing my entertainment center.... but it's expensive (or was) at around $6,000 for nothing more than a mid-range PC and huge monitor.
Ahh, of course, and the Supreme Court's interpretation of the PGA rule book must be an accurate representation of the motives of those that actually created those rules, right? Umm...wait, that's idiotic...that must not be what you meant....my bad.
How is a professional golfer supposed to earn a living by "purchasing, renting, or borrowing land" on which to play golf? He's a golfer, not an investment banker. And, like it or not, the PGA is the only game in town for professional golfers -- just as the NBA is for pro basketball players. The rules weren't "changed". The PGA was just required to make a reasonable accomodation for a handicapped player. Golf is about hitting a ball into a hole, not about walking and that's what the Supreme Court decided.
The rules absolutely were changed. Carts were expressly forbidden on a PGA tournament course until this disabled golfer imposed his "civil liberties" on them.
As for "How is a professional golfer supposed to earn a living by "purchasing, renting, or borrowing land" on which to play golf?", I don't remember my inalienable right to make a living at professional sports, but I'm sure it's in the constitution, right? I mean, I'd really like to play hockey, but I can't skate, so can I sue to play sans ice? How can I, a professional basketball player, make my living if they insist on placing the hoops too high for my 5'11" ass to slam dunk on? Can I sue to get them lowered?
It's people like you that make life disturbingly difficult for intelligent people.
Which brings you back to the point...make forging the header information illegal, as it is just that, forgery. Don't make spam illegal because it is genuinely abusable by the government. If you don't think that the government WILL abuse its power, review the UCITA and DMCA briefly and see what you think...
The concept behind Mr Mallard is a good idea...a robot that can follow its "mother". Now, if they could just teach my son that, I would have many fewer panic filled afternoons in the mall...
Amusingly enough, in a community of zealots, all members get painted with the same brush. Not all Palestinians are running around with "bombs for Allah", but they're all envisioned that way because enough do, and they're the loudest and most obvious.
You are very much judged by the company you keep, and I am utterly tired of this same whiny rant when linux zealotry is pointed out. If it doesn't apply to you, SHUT THE HELL UP. If it does, do something about it.
It is too, if those opinions are hypocritical. I don't think hypocrisy means what you think it means.
-Jer
If not java (which WAS one of the three compared languages) then faster than what?
-Jer
I'm not saying it's better...I'm not making a judgement call on anyone's culture at all...
I'm saying, your implication that only your concept of culture is truly culture is absurd, elitist, and snobbish. Your assertion that yours is better is even more elitist. Interactivity isn't a measure of culture. I'm sure you wouldn't deny that the opera is culture, yet they frown heavily on interaction from the audience.
Personally, I consider sitting on my back deck, grilling some red meat, suckin down some suds, listening to some music and chatting with friends to be the height of culture...but that's just me.
-Jer
Bull, you elitist snob. Your definition of culture is about as "avante garde" as I could imagine, and just as wrong. Mass media is culture, local bands are culture, prime time TV is culture, Broadway plays are culture. It's all culture, so stop being a snob and assuming that your culture is better than mine and...worse..that your culture is the ONLY culture.
-Jer
You're making the implicit assumption that the interface will allow you to open ports. That's not necessarily a safe assumption to make. Microsoft has been known to do some rather odd things for the sake of "security" or "standards" or "making it easier for the end user". It's no big stretch to assume that they might make it hard or even impossible to open a port by the end user. I can think of a number of ways for them to do this and allow things like web servers that are blessed by MS to work...
Don't you know how firewalls work? Just because every one YOU have used gave you the ability to give ports pass-through capability doesn't mean THIS one will be customizeable at all.
-Jer
Actually, I think that's exactly it...it's very "slashdot" (read: elite) to advocate Open Source or Linux and put down MS and Katz.
For his part, Katz doesn't write anything that is any worse than many of the "informative" articles link by /., but he'll not get a good rap from the /. mob because it's fashionable to hate him. Some of his articles are trite, some are well done. Some are uninformed, some are great pieces of writing.
The easiest way to tell, by the way, that it's "in style" to Katz-bash, is the sheer number of people that post the "get this guy outta here" messages, rather than just filtering him out and letting him fade away.
Just remember when posting:
-Jer
Umm...those aren't exactly the facts I was referring to...I was more referring to the back-story. The "why" (or lack thereof) behind it, etc. Again, I'm not taking a personal shot at any of you, I'm just saying that there's a great deal of "he said, she said" involved, and I tend not to put a great deal of faith in any side's representation of a situation when they have a stake in it.
Obviously the site is down. Obviously it's owned by Mr. Sims. It stands to reason that he took it down. The entire rest of the narrative lacks definitive content or evidences of any sort. Sorry, I'm just cynical I guess...
-Jer
I don't understand how the author came to the nickel per hour number.
Sure, the cost of the machine boils down to (by his math) a nickle an hour, but that's not the same cost as the company would have to take on.
A company would have to buy the system, hire the IT personnel, cover their benefits, store them, pay for the electricity, pay for the heating/cooling, pay for maintenance, parts if they break, warranties, etc. These (and more) are little things that a home user might not even consider when determining if it's "worth it", and makes the "break even" point much higher than a nickle per hour.
I'd like to see the same breakdown done with some more accurate math.
-Jer
I think that's precisely the problem. The things that we've found lend themselves well to distributed computing (SETI, cracking encryption) don't lend themselves as well to making money. What company wants to pay for either of the above two, let alone a lot of money?
That's not to say that P2P is already doomed though. I don't think that it's a technical problem at this point, I think it's a business problem. Someone has to figure out a problem that has two attributes: It must lend itself to being more quickly solved via distributed computing, and it must be something with such a high demand that someone is willing to pay big money.
It's very possible that P2P could take off...but I'm not holding my breath. Even if they solve the issue of "what problem is worth the money", there's still the problem of "who will let us use the cycles" and "how do we keep from getting cheated".
-Jer
The interesting thing about posts like the above is this...it's no more trustworthy than Mike Sims' side of the story.
It's "he said, she said" at its best, and neither Sims' side nor the above sound like they're based entirely in reality. Each person indicates that they did *NOTHING* wrong and a set of events happened independently of them. BS. Something hadda have happened.
It's cool that you opt to believe the above, Seth, but since you'd already left...how do YOU know what happened?
-Jer
I felt much the same for a long time. Trackballs just seemed counter-intuitive and, although mice weren't perfect, they seemed best.
When I started travelling more with my busted-all-to-hell laptop with no functional internal pointing device, I started using a Trackman Marble. I've since replaced all mice on all of my computer equipment both at home and at work with one, because I'm more efficient and controlled with a trackball. I've also found that it's alot more comfortable on my poor wrists.
By the same token, I do still have a few mice kicking around for when I play any FPS, because a trackball just doesn't do the trick.
-Jer
You truly are one dumb son-of-a-bitch, eh? First, the footprint is almost EXACTLY the same as Netscape 4.7x. Second, and more amusing, running in minimalist-mode, it's smaller than Opera in memory use (in my head-to-head comparison).
I know you've never checked (based on the really poor sounding explanation you've given), so I've just been trolled, but I could hardly let such a blatant disregard for logic and English go unmentioned.
Umm...when would this have been....since the start of WWW "browsers" there have always been free alternatives. I've never had to pay for a browser, and I'm not about to start now.
I've found, after bitching about Netscape for the longest time, then bitching about Mozilla...then getting a crappy Netscape 6 and bitching about that, that IE works great for my purposes. It's reasonably small, fast, fairly standards compliant, fast, stable, fast, and works well. On my Linux boxes, I run Netscape 4.7x and deal with it...
I desperately would like to see Linux and/or BSD become more user friendly and more used, so that I can ditch Windows solutions completely and use one or both exclusively.
Well now...as witty and urbane as that might have seemed, I'm left unimpressed. If you're going to attempt an insult post, it would be nice if you'd take the time to rise beyond the third grade level with it.
:)
I mean, come on people, it's not difficult to flame someone, it's not even that difficult to do it well...but lets make the effort here, huh?
As it is, I can't imagine anyone being actually insulted by such an infantile attempt at a witticism. I actually find it rather pleasing...my logic is so airtight that you are forced into a pathetic personal attack rather than an attack on the logic upon which my post is based. Thank you
Lesse, just scrolling through the front page right now, I see the following "news" articles to offset that which you term "non-news":
- U.S. Allows Sale of Half-Meter Satellite Photos
- Jupiter Moon Ganymede May Have An Ocean
- AOL-TW Merger: FCC May Require AIM Compatibility
- Blackjack: Ultra-Accurate GPS Measurement
Now, just for fun, how about this...a definition of news:Now, whether or not you're interested in the contents of this article, by definition, it's certainly news.
If you don't like the subject matter here...why are you reading? Obviously something here catches your fancy. Is it some of the articles or just the chance to whine about something in front of a group? *shrug* The world may never know...
No, he's right. If you post off topic and you have an auto +2, you should do the rest of the community the courtesy of moderating yourself with the "No Score +1 Bonus" button on the comment post form; as I've done with this off-topic statement.
And, for your amusement, garcia *DID* moderate himself down by checking off the aforementioned button. Do you feel like an uninformed jackass yet?
Even a Palm V could a year ago. I had our CEO's Palm V syncing to his (crappy) Sony Vaio USB-only piece of trash around January 2000 via a USB.
I think what they added was native USB support, not serial-via-USB like Handspring and Palm had previously used.
At least, I hope that's what they mean.
Actually, EULAs have been upheld legally in the US and at least 2 European countries that I'm aware of, so in point of fact, it is a legally binding agreement.
Aside from that, a EULA is hardly the only place you'll find "post-purchase terms" being thrust on the customer. I'm sure you're using an ISP, and you'll find that one of the terms in your TOS is that any and all terms in the TOS are subject to change at any time. If they change, you're faced with the choice of discontinuing your use or agreeing with the changes...all of this AFTER YOU BOUGHT THE SERVICE!!!!
The EULA is not significantly different, save for the fact that it's easy to stop paying for your ISP and not TOO difficult (in my experience) to get that last month's payment back. It's much harder to get your money back as a result of disliking the terms of a EULA.
Here's something I want to know...legally, doesn't it make sense that if I read a EULA, disagree, try to return it and am unable to that the EULA is null and void? I mean, if the writer of the 'contract' doesn't honor the contract, do I have to? Can I just work my way down the EULA, point by point, and break each term with impunity because they nullified their own contract? I dunno, IANAL, but it sounds damn nice to me.