I used to have an account here but I found out quickly that when you are pro-freedom, pro-gun, pro-capitalism and pro-life on slashdot the nutters come out of the woodwork to threaten your family.
???
How can you be both pro-gun and pro-life?
Or, if "pro-life" means anti-abortion, as it commonly does, how can you be both pro-freedom and against freedom for women?
No wonder you got a few harsh comments. Slashdotters tend to like binary logic, the law of tertium exclusum.
Let's take jobs that are vulnerable to being replaced by automation and make them more expensive by mandating high minimum wages and extensive "free" benefits.
Or, you know, revert taxes back to how they were under Reagan, spend a little less on Defense Contractors, and pay everybody a basic income.
Not quite right. Foxconn is part-way along installing a million robots. They're not firing people one-for one, though; just not hiring as many. (To the Chinese, that's OK, because their working-age population is peaking about now. So the people are not there to hire, unless they increase productivity.)
That's not to say that labor-substituting machines are not becoming a serious risk to the current way we organise economic life. They are.
There are jobs that aren't super-skilled but are only instrinsically valuable because they're done by humans.
Haridressing and related trades. Floristry. Funeral directing. Counselling. "Community work" in general. Nannying. Live music and theatre, at the neighborhood level. Performance bartending. Political interest-group street work (think Greenpeace or Senior Citizens). Even things like interior design and landscape design aren't too demanding.
It's not beyond the realm of possibility that we'll think of a lot more personal service type jobs...provided that there's a big enough market for them. And therein lies the rub.
In pre-industrial times, the super-rich employed a lot more people than they needed to, as a way of competing with their peers. That was stable, as long as there weren't too many bad harvests in a row. Perhaps we'll all become trophy assistant under-flunkies.
The union whores with an ever spiraling "living wage" are why Detroit is a third world shithole. Economics, motherfucker, do you speak it?
Yes I do.
Your explanation cannot explain Koeln, Germany. It has strong unions and strong social suppport spending, but it's a better place to live than Montgomery, Alabama (as an example of a city in an anti-union state and therefore a contrast to Detroit).
It also cannot explain Liberia. That country has no union power and no living wage, but it's a worse place to live than Detroit.
The real reasons for Detroit's situation are more to do with racism.
If it were that easy, it would have been done by now.
That's what was said about gay marriage, and civil rights, and decriminalising prostitution, and...
We're dealing here with one of the very deep assumptions and values of our culture--of nearly all settled and agrarian cultures.
Deep culture takes a long time to change. I don't expect a UBI this side of 2113, for that reason. It's a pity: people are really bad at working, but great at playing.
What happened to the days when being a hipster meant wearing a sundial made out of dumpster-dived cardboard, held on your wrist with a bulldog clip and hand-plaited llama hairs from your girlfriend's mother's llama-wool rug?
Oh, right. That was before the GFC, when it was hip to act like you were jobless.
Yes, I am using Linux. Totally agree about 'info' --whatever its technical merits, it embodies the worst elements of NIHism.
I used FreeBSD 2.2.21 for a while (about 2000 to 2001-ish) and the man pages were better definitely much better. And the handbook was good. I also bought 'Grog' Lehey's "Complete FreeBSD, and that was useful too. FreeBSD did have a good documentation team... once upon a time. (But, dammit, I wanted my USB Frobulator to work. Now, today, this minute! Or something like that, anyway; I forget. So I switched to Linux.)
Sigh. No need to get off my lawn; it is sere and withered. Enjoy the broken bottles, rusty cans, and poisonous spiders in the long grass, you young punks.
I thought you might mean it that way, but I couldn't resist the opportunity for a 'gates' pun.
I've thought of another few possible enemies for Microtroy: the Taiwanese computer manufacturers (Acer, Asus, etc.), sick of being shafted by MS; the Japanese ditto, the Korean ditto (especially Samsung), likewise; Dell, HP and Lenovo. Possibly all of them together, like the Greek cities.
Or maybe Elop thinks himself Paris, and wants to award everybody an Apple.
the quality continues to decline.... *money does not solve this problem*.... lack of quality teachers
Are you saying that highly skilled people who might consider becoming teachers don't choose other occupations (PR or management, for example) because they pay better? This is a surprising claim. As such, it needs evidence to support it. So does the claim that quality is in secular decline. (Relative standing in cross-country comparisons doesn't count.)
This is the road we are going down.It's easy to imagine a time when the only things of value are land and energy (and the land and energy required to make something).
And things the value of which lies precisely in the human touch and human relationships. Live entertainment. Restaurants. Tours. Landscape design. Coaching and mentoring. Hairdressing. Fashion design, arts and crafts -- anything creative. Counselling, palliative care and some other health services. Business-to-business sales. Reception and hospitality. Boutique sales. Bribery, government and arms sales. OK, maybe not so much arms sales.
Hmmm, which gender is traditionally better at the 'human touch' stuff, again?
Yeah, this is one of the big annoyances with *nix man(1) pages.
Between "Name" and "Synopsis", they're all missing the "Typical usage examples" section. I shudder to think how much time has been wasted through this poor design choice.
Well, I am going to defend Stack Overflow here, because I think it fills a very useful niche, which is "what is the best way to do X."
closed as not constructive by XxxxxX Sep 29 '11 at 13:29
As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, visit the help center for guidance.If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.
the difference now is that everybody's used Microsoft's software for a couple of decades, and have decided that they really would rather use something else when given the option.
Yeah, it turns out that people like choice. Who knew?
More fundamentally, there are no economic "network effects" in mobile. Way back when, everybody started using Word and Excel because everybody else was using them. To be able to exchange documents, and to have access to tech support people with teh skillz, you needed to use what everyone else used.
With mobile, the data's all in the cloud, and there're several apps to choose from, on both iOS and Android. And the browser is always there, too. Tech support? Buy another one.
No lock-in, except for any investment in phone apps, which is usually trivial by comparison with what we paid for desktop apps back in the day.
In mobile, the very best Microsoft can hope for is a third of the market, and a perpetual dogfight to keep it. A dogfight in which it's an arthritic poodle.
Slashdot Mirror
I used to have an account here but I found out quickly that when you are pro-freedom, pro-gun, pro-capitalism and pro-life on slashdot the nutters come out of the woodwork to threaten your family.
???
How can you be both pro-gun and pro-life?
Or, if "pro-life" means anti-abortion, as it commonly does, how can you be both pro-freedom and against freedom for women?
No wonder you got a few harsh comments. Slashdotters tend to like binary logic, the law of tertium exclusum.
Because if one company lays off the 250 then they are more profitable.
This means they can undercut your prices by 10%... and every consumer (including you) is going to buy the cheaper product.
They also have easier access to capital since they are more profitable so every investor (including you...) buys their stock.
And then they buy out the competition and spread their practice.
You've just recapitulated Marx's critique of capitalism: it's a Prisoner's Dilemma.
I don't have a good solution-- just giving you some reasons.
Neither did he.
Interesting idea. If I hadn't already commented, I would have "wasted" a mod point on it.
However, unlikely. For the same sorts of reasons that Jim Crow worked in the US South.
Let's take jobs that are vulnerable to being replaced by automation and make them more expensive by mandating high minimum wages and extensive "free" benefits.
Or, you know, revert taxes back to how they were under Reagan, spend a little less on Defense Contractors, and pay everybody a basic income.
Not quite right. Foxconn is part-way along installing a million robots. They're not firing people one-for one, though; just not hiring as many. (To the Chinese, that's OK, because their working-age population is peaking about now. So the people are not there to hire, unless they increase productivity.)
That's not to say that labor-substituting machines are not becoming a serious risk to the current way we organise economic life. They are.
But the realm of asking, "what if" based on only remembered facts, and weak templates will be problematic; for them.
... as it is for most humans.
Remember George Carlin: "think about how the average person, and how dumb they are. Now realize that half of them are dumber than that."
Welcome to 2013, time to pass some more stupid laws to protect those buggy whip makers.
Too late, that was 2008, when those failed banks, insurance companies and auto manufacturers were bailed out.
Capitalism operates through a process of creative destruction. Stop the destruction, and you lapse back into feudalism by way of fascism.
There are jobs that aren't super-skilled but are only instrinsically valuable because they're done by humans.
Haridressing and related trades. Floristry. Funeral directing. Counselling. "Community work" in general. Nannying. Live music and theatre, at the neighborhood level. Performance bartending. Political interest-group street work (think Greenpeace or Senior Citizens). Even things like interior design and landscape design aren't too demanding.
It's not beyond the realm of possibility that we'll think of a lot more personal service type jobs...provided that there's a big enough market for them. And therein lies the rub.
In pre-industrial times, the super-rich employed a lot more people than they needed to, as a way of competing with their peers. That was stable, as long as there weren't too many bad harvests in a row. Perhaps we'll all become trophy assistant under-flunkies.
The union whores with an ever spiraling "living wage" are why Detroit is a third world shithole. Economics, motherfucker, do you speak it?
Yes I do.
Your explanation cannot explain Koeln, Germany. It has strong unions and strong social suppport spending, but it's a better place to live than Montgomery, Alabama (as an example of a city in an anti-union state and therefore a contrast to Detroit).
It also cannot explain Liberia. That country has no union power and no living wage, but it's a worse place to live than Detroit.
The real reasons for Detroit's situation are more to do with racism.
If it were that easy, it would have been done by now.
That's what was said about gay marriage, and civil rights, and decriminalising prostitution, and...
We're dealing here with one of the very deep assumptions and values of our culture--of nearly all settled and agrarian cultures.
Deep culture takes a long time to change. I don't expect a UBI this side of 2113, for that reason. It's a pity: people are really bad at working, but great at playing.
Wow, you're a sad, bitter, defensive asshole, aren't you?
Being hip doesnt come cheap!
What happened to the days when being a hipster meant wearing a sundial made out of dumpster-dived cardboard, held on your wrist with a bulldog clip and hand-plaited llama hairs from your girlfriend's mother's llama-wool rug?
Oh, right. That was before the GFC, when it was hip to act like you were jobless.
Yes, I am using Linux. Totally agree about 'info' --whatever its technical merits, it embodies the worst elements of NIHism.
I used FreeBSD 2.2.21 for a while (about 2000 to 2001-ish) and the man pages were better definitely much better. And the handbook was good. I also bought 'Grog' Lehey's "Complete FreeBSD, and that was useful too. FreeBSD did have a good documentation team ... once upon a time. (But, dammit, I wanted my USB Frobulator to work. Now, today, this minute! Or something like that, anyway; I forget. So I switched to Linux.)
Sigh. No need to get off my lawn; it is sere and withered. Enjoy the broken bottles, rusty cans, and poisonous spiders in the long grass, you young punks.
I thought you might mean it that way, but I couldn't resist the opportunity for a 'gates' pun.
I've thought of another few possible enemies for Microtroy: the Taiwanese computer manufacturers (Acer, Asus, etc.), sick of being shafted by MS; the Japanese ditto, the Korean ditto (especially Samsung), likewise; Dell, HP and Lenovo. Possibly all of them together, like the Greek cities.
Or maybe Elop thinks himself Paris, and wants to award everybody an Apple.
... literally trillions ... absolutely insane amount .
Hyperbole weakens the credibility of assertions.
the quality continues to decline. ... *money does not solve this problem*.... lack of quality teachers
Are you saying that highly skilled people who might consider becoming teachers don't choose other occupations (PR or management, for example) because they pay better? This is a surprising claim. As such, it needs evidence to support it. So does the claim that quality is in secular decline. (Relative standing in cross-country comparisons doesn't count.)
Never mind the Ghirardelli, I'm still hung up on the idea of Google keeping thin mint girl scouts in the fridge.
*Re-reads original post*
Oh. Damn.
... which worked fine when I ran it.
This is the road we are going down.It's easy to imagine a time when the only things of value are land and energy (and the land and energy required to make something).
And things the value of which lies precisely in the human touch and human relationships. Live entertainment. Restaurants. Tours. Landscape design. Coaching and mentoring. Hairdressing. Fashion design, arts and crafts -- anything creative. Counselling, palliative care and some other health services. Business-to-business sales. Reception and hospitality. Boutique sales. Bribery, government and arms sales. OK, maybe not so much arms sales.
Hmmm, which gender is traditionally better at the 'human touch' stuff, again?
So who is Elop working for, if Nokia is a Trojan horse being dragged inside Microsoft's, uh, gates?
The telcos? Oracle? Google? Amazon? Seattle Computer Products? (Revenge is a dish best served cold.)
Yeah, this is one of the big annoyances with *nix man(1) pages.
Between "Name" and "Synopsis", they're all missing the "Typical usage examples" section. I shudder to think how much time has been wasted through this poor design choice.
Well, I am going to defend Stack Overflow here, because I think it fills a very useful niche, which is "what is the best way to do X."
closed as not constructive by XxxxxX Sep 29 '11 at 13:29
As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, visit the help center for guidance.If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.
the difference now is that everybody's used Microsoft's software for a couple of decades, and have decided that they really would rather use something else when given the option.
Yeah, it turns out that people like choice. Who knew?
More fundamentally, there are no economic "network effects" in mobile. Way back when, everybody started using Word and Excel because everybody else was using them. To be able to exchange documents, and to have access to tech support people with teh skillz, you needed to use what everyone else used.
With mobile, the data's all in the cloud, and there're several apps to choose from, on both iOS and Android. And the browser is always there, too. Tech support? Buy another one.
No lock-in, except for any investment in phone apps, which is usually trivial by comparison with what we paid for desktop apps back in the day.
In mobile, the very best Microsoft can hope for is a third of the market, and a perpetual dogfight to keep it. A dogfight in which it's an arthritic poodle.
Never mind. People have made suggestions up-thread, while I was looking at the squirrel.
Please carry on.
But there will be a third shoe when he becomes CEO of Microsoft. They deserve each other.
I'm curious: Elop's special skill is selling the companies he (nominally) runs. Macromedia to Adobe, and now Nokia to Microsoft.
Who would he sell Microsoft to, if he got to be Microsoft's CE? Anyone have ideas?
No, Victoria, two turkeys can't make an eagle.