C.A.R. Hoare's undergraduate degree was in Classics and Philosophy.
And with an extensive working background that lead to be one of the eminent pioneers in CS, at a time when CS wasn't even an established discipline in its own right. Not every Classics and Philosophy major is capable of teaching a modern CS. An outlier does not a general rule make.
With that said, a computer literate Classics/Philosophy major could certainly teach an effective class in computer literacy. But that is distinct from CS, a distinction the DE seems unaware of.
Well they might tell you it's taxable, but good luck trying to enforce it.
And what's to stop people still hanging on to cash and using among themselves? As long as you don't take it to the bank, just keep on using it.
Holy shit dude, do you know economics? If you don't use it, then it depreciates and loses value. So either you use it to purchase things (or investing) or you let it rot. Plus, what would you do with all that cash under your matters if/when no one wants to accept it for a transaction?
And this is different from what it's always been - how?
Because if we meet and we exchange cash, there's no record and no tracking. That's how it's different.
-
Egotistical, I know, but that is the capitalist way, isn't it? "Enlightened self-interest" and all that crap
Forget it, I don't go for that libertarian horsecrap. I'm not a libertarian. That's not what this is about.
And yet money launderers still get caught. I get what you are trying to say, but you are wrong. Small transactions, be them in cash or electronic, governments in general do not give a shit. We are talking about large transactions. Those are the ones that are relevant to this conversation (right or wrong). And those you can track even in cash.
Try passing around $10k in small $100 cash transactions. The very attempt of it is detectable by modest forensic accounting means.
The Constitution's rights only apply to Citizens and permanent legal residents. Tourists and those in the country illegally are at convenience extended Constitutional rights. As far as what you're getting at here with regard to the above article, the Supreme Court has general deferred greatly to executive judgment on who is and isn't allowed into the country. This is also why Donald Trump's idea to ban Muslims is a legal gray area.
Uh, the 1st, 4th, 6th, 7th, 13th amendments also applies to any human being in US soil, regardless of nationality.
"we got a constitution with a wonderful clause that stops those with wealth using it to block laws they don't like"
Which clause would that be? Section 1, the "this constitution can be overridden if you really mean it", or section 33, the other "this constitution can be overridden if you really mean it", or section15, the other "this constitution can be overridden if it benefits nonwhite nonmen"?
"Canada's path to independence worked out far better... for a considerable time Canada wanted and needed British protection"
That is a very dependent sort of independence.
Because of its belligerent neighbor to the south (which is also in his post, and which you so conveniently chose to omit.) Also, he never mentioned that Canada was independent at the time of these events (almost 200 years ago), and its form of governance is not comparable to its current form, which is independent regardless of your exercises in sophistry.
He was 12, talking to another 12 year old, thinking it was a joke between them.
The cops couldn't check the "bomb" begot arresting him and holding him for three days? A 12 year old? Really?
What an asinine comment.
He wasn't making a joke. The kid known to be a bully was taunting him that he was going to accuse him of making a bomb threat (and the bully did indeed make the accusation.)
The story is that he was making a bomb threat, not that there was a bomb. You can make a bomb threat while having only a box of cheerios in your backpack and it's still a bomb threat. The debate between the family and the school/police was whether there really was a bomb threat, a joke of a bomb threat, or a misunderstanding.
Then the next question, do you hold a 12 year old for this without notifying and having parents or guardians notified and present? And the notification must be from the police and not the school, the phone call should be from the police to the parents and not from the parents to the police. And not an excuse "we tried to contact them" without follow through.
And given that it's a 12 year old why treat such a person as an adult? That's absurd. This is more of the zero-tolerance nonsense that's turning schools into daytime detention centers. Let he who is without childhood mistakes cast the first stone.
As per the news, the kid make the threat. A bully accused him of making the threat. You know, context matters, specially when we want to fling shit like monkeys.
I hate that Yahoo's employees are basically screwed. However, I have to say, I love that Yahoo is failing as a company because every time a manager thinks "Maybe we should stop all this telecommuting stuff and go with communal desks" I can point at Yahoo as an example of how well that will work out.
Thanks for being an example to the world of how not to do things, Marissa Mayer!
I love telecommuting when it works, but we now for a fact that Yahoo was laden with thousands of people who never set foot on company premises for years just milking their bi-weekly check by logging here and there from home. I've been in such companies, and I've seen the financial havoc that such practices break on the company.
When telecommuting works, use it. When it doesn't, cut it. Yahoo's case was the later. She did the right call on this.
Am I being naive, or just is this just a way of moving Alibaba into American ownership?
You have two companies, Alibaba (Chinese) and Yahoo (US). Yahoo takes over Alibaba to make one company (US). Yahoo disinvests everything into a different company, call it exactly-what-yahoo-was-before.com (US) and is now a new US company, called Yahoo but being exactly what Alibaba was before.
How can you take a massive foreign company with just a 15% stake? Certainly 15% is much greater (in relative numbers) than Elliot Management 7% activist stake in Citrix (for example.) But I have a hard time believing a 15% stake on a Chinese company the size of Alibaba will somehow translate into American ownership.
I know I'm generalizing, but let's be real - an anti-education, anti-tech, extremely reactionary way of looking at things dominates rural America, specially in the south. They would never do the same things their Japanese counterparts do cuz the interweebz would bring the gay or something.
And that generalization would be wrong. Farmers have a higher high school graduation rate than the rest of the population and for larger operators, are on parity with the rest of the population for college degrees. Why? Because modern farming uses lots of tech and has done so for quite a while. In the 1980s, farmers were the some of the first ones to get personal computers and later dial up Internet access. Why? To manage their businesses and to check on futures markets. The Ag teacher/FFA advisor in those schools usually had a PC before the math department did. Parents in those areas are not anti-education as their kids will need a good education if they want to take over the family business or do something other than be a clerk at the local gas station or grocery store (well, if the parents are not on public assistance...they don't seem to care if their kids get a good education or not since they can just live off the govt teat like they and their grandparents have done since the 60s. In this case, it is more of a class problem, not a rural vs urban problem and is why MS is so bad on many rankings). If you would have said "conservative way of looking at things", you would have been correct.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-p...
The fact that people have a higher HS graduation rate means squat if done from the POV that crush critical thinking. Think how many people graduate from HS thinking evolution is the work of the devil. For Christ' fucking sake, just look at Ben Carson, a renown neuro-surgeon claiming that the pyramids were built for storing grain!
Sorry, graduation rates =/= positive stance on education or advancement. Go travel the world, talk to people, see how they talk, see how they think. It will open your goddamned eyes on how backwards we have it in some areas of the US.
DNA Data From California Newborn Blood Samples Stored, Sold To 3rd Parties
Is the data identifiable? Meaning, can a donor be identified with a sample? That is the crux of the matter (and one the zealots in the interweebz seem keen to ignore.)
Bollocks. Utter bollocks. I admit I didn't read TFA, but this is just bollocks. If a biometric system can identify what seems to be a fingertip (the presentation of which changes every time due to sweat, scars, position of the finger, whatever), it means that system originally stored a model that can match all possible (and reasonable) presentations of said fingerprint. If there is a standard model for representing a fingertip, then you hash that. That is your hash. It might be specific to the system using the "model", and thus incompatible with another system using different models. But this wouldn't be different from a system requiring SHA-512 hashes vs another one that requires MD5.
" "Existing climate models have shown that a global temperature increase to the threshold of human survivability would be reached in some regions of the globe at a point in the distant future..."
This is somehow different than the many areas on the planet where humans should not be trying to live today?
Exactly. I'm almost sure that, when that humid-heating event happens in that region of the world, people there will simply adapt to different work schedules (even like sending kids to school at night, or way early in the morning, for example.) The famous siesta has been a historical adaptation to avoid working during the hottest ours of the day.
Where I'm from, farmers and cattle ranchers would go to work at 4AM just to be out before noon on summers. In general, you do not want to be on the fields between 2 and 4, specially on summers. People adapt. If people could conquer the Arctic or the Kalahari or the Mojave, people will adapt to this.
"digital disruption" is niche and completely unpredictable
What is digital disruption? I've never heard of that.
The rise of the web, and the near death of publishing. Amazon and the death of the mom-and-pop bookstore. Netflix and the death of Blockbuster Videos. Netflix/Amazon VOD/Hulu and what not, which is bringing Cable to its knees contemplating the real possibility of a-la-carte cable (and/or forcing major TV players like HBO to go digital.) Online banking. Online education. The so-called "share economy" (of which I don't think it is that good of a good thing.)
Internet of Things, the mobile revolution, cloud computing, digital disruption, and the perpetual increase of processing power. ('It’s exponential, folks. It’s just growing and growing.') The upshot: If you don’t at least try to think digitally, the digital economy will disrupt you. It will drain your town of young people and leave your business in the dust. Then he switches gears and tries to stiffen their spines with confidence. Start a website, he’ll say. Get on social media.
the Internet of Things is a security disaster, the "mobile revolution" is a farce, cloud computing is outsourcing to people you shouldn't trust, "digital disruption" is niche and completely unpredictable, and the "perpetual increase of processing power" is a lie. starting a website is not always necessary and often a burden. social media is a hellscape of volatile idiots.
people don't need to "think digitally", what they need is to think for themselves.
You almost sounded like you were saying something.
that most normal people actually care about things other than tech. For most average people, tech is just a tool. Most do not care about MHz, or GHz or dual- or quad-core or brand name. What's truly shocking to the younger techies in the bubbles of very large cities is that there are a huge number of normal people all throughout society who do not care about the internet and do not waste their time logging onto it - they get up, go to work, get home and care for the kids, then perhaps watch a little TV and then go to bed, all without thinking about the internet.
Facebook and Twitter are not required for day-to-day life. What Bruce/Caitlyn and the Kardashians are up to is simply not important. People who have jobs in small-town America simply do not need LinkedIn, etc. and going onto the net to look for Pizza is idiotic if you live in a town with one pizza place. Who needs Google Earth when you already know all the local roads you need to drive on to do your job and run the errands you need to run for your family?
I am not being a Luddite here, I personally live a life stuffed full of electronics and code and tethered to the web, but I have many friends and relatives who have simply no use to any of it and I am amazed at how internet-centric so many younger people in big cities have become - to the point of becoming completely ignorant of LIFE in the real world. This is at some level toxic to politics and national policy. I recall that when Obamacare was going public and the young "experts" were tasked with helping people in "fly over country" enroll, one of these morons told an older guy in the midwest to enter his e-mail address on a screen and was met with the question "what's e-mail?". This is driving a large cultural divide and that divide is going to become another political wedge.
It is simply an act of supremely ignorant arrogance to assume that everybody is on the net and that anybody who is not is some sort of ignorant backward hick - lot's of people simply know what's important to them and what's not. For every netizen who sees the non-addict as a knuckle-dragging moron (who is almost certainly automatically also assumed to be racist/sexist/homophobe/etc), there's a normal person with a life who sees a shallow, plastic, soulless zombie with an iPad and no original thoughts in his brain. For many, the remote, tabloid nature of the internet and its data-mining advertizing-centric vapid content is simply less important than the real world all around them and their families.
At the end of your life, which will you regret more: the time you spent with your spouse raising your kids, or the time you spent on the web looking at what other people were doing, or were pretending they were doing?/P
What a sad thing has slashdot become that its posters equate internet access with social media. Internet access is an economic and educational enabler. Regions with poorer internet infrastructure will do worse economically and educationally that regions that have better communication infrastructure. Period. This is not about being on FB all the time.
Countries and regions all over the world recognize this. In Japan where mass urban migration and an aging population are decimating rural towns, there have been very aggressive efforts to counter that trend by providing internet infrastructure (to attract young, well-paid engineers, and their families.) Kamiyama in Tokushima Prefecture is the best example of this. http://ajw.asahi.com/article/b...
Finland is another great example at a national level.
Farmers and ranchers do indeed depend on the internet. But you don't really need high speed fiber for what they do; that's reserved for people who want to stream videos all day.
But the article makes some very good points. Think about it, there's no real reason so many "coders" need to live in Silicon Valley. The work could be done just as well from a small town in Mississippi - without the high rent, traffic jams, and water shortages. And I am speaking from first hand experience here. I live in a very rural area of Appalachia, finally got DSL a couple of years ago so now i can work from home. It's about ten miles to the nearest grocery store, but there's only one traffic light to get through and no traffic to speak of (other than the suicidal white tailed deer to watch out for). I don't watch TV, can't get any reception here in the mountains and cable isn't out this far anyway:^)
Uh, there is a real reason to live in the Valley (or in any tech hub.). It is to network and, hopefully, work in the latest shit. Obviously that is not true for all, nor it is a real reason for others who would prefer to live in a more secluded area. But a reason, yep, there is one. Our reasons for living where we live are not entirely objective regardless of what we tell to ourselves.
The internet can attract jobs back to rural areas. In Japan a number of internet based companies have their main operations to rural areas. Cheaper housing and business premesis, a nice environment, and it doesn't really matter where your warehouse is. IIRC one business was a second hand book store, and another was a craft goods company selling through Rakuten.
There are a lot of jobs that could move to rural areas if they had good internet access. A lot of engineering consultancy jobs, for example, are mostly done remotely. An architect might have to travel to clients and sites now and then, but that's true if they live in a city or not, and the rest can be done from an office in a rural area as long as they have fast broadband for file uploads, big email attachments and Skype.
With my wife being from Japan, I've been half-seriously considering moving my family to Japan, to one of the small, half-depopulated small rural towns not far from Tokyo. There is a push for small towns like that to throw fiber optic, or whatever, to entice developers to move with their families. For some, it is working.
Then I'v considered if that same move would work in the US. And the answer would be know IMO. Those small towns in Japan are being very progressive and forward looking their attempts. Sadly that is not how your typical American small town operates. I know I'm generalizing, but let's be real - an anti-education, anti-tech, extremely reactionary way of looking at things dominates rural America, specially in the south. They would never do the same things their Japanese counterparts do cuz the interweebz would bring the gay or something.
I don't know about you, but I prefer that. If I weren't too old to buy property in Japan, I would have relocated my family and I to Tokyo a long time ago.
Waiting for the "Mericuh, Right or Wrong" branch of the KKK to doxx you to Anonymous now.
Funny how the economy became frozen in time when they stopped becoming more productive.
If by funny you mean untrue, then yes. The economy froze because of the big real state bubble apocalypse of the late 1980s, an ineffective government economic policy (not a problem specific to private enterprises) and currently a population decline. Have you ever been to Japan? I have. Internally they are doing fine, more than fine. Quality of life and purchasing power for the average individual has not decreased, and it will remain high for at least 30 more years (by various estimates.)
Shit, I wish we could say the same.
The thing that has become frozen in Japan is international expansion. Internally, the economy is doing well. And Japanese companies will always be less effective than, say, American companies (when we measure them from a cost-savings POV) because Japanese companies, large or small, see themselves as providers of jobs, first and foremost (profit generation comes second.) Japanese companies will not lay off people the way we do. They'll try cut benefits or cut hours. In general they'll prefer to go down with the ship than to try to save the company by laying off employees.
They stick to that, and so far it still has worked well for them. I don't know about you, but I prefer that. If I weren't too old to buy property in Japan, I would have relocated my family and I to Tokyo a long time ago.
I mean, FFSK! This is what my wife uses in MS Word to write Kanji and Kana. I've set up her laptop (and somewhat similar in her Android tablet) to allow her to write Kanji:
Slashdot Mirror
C.A.R. Hoare's undergraduate degree was in Classics and Philosophy.
And with an extensive working background that lead to be one of the eminent pioneers in CS, at a time when CS wasn't even an established discipline in its own right. Not every Classics and Philosophy major is capable of teaching a modern CS. An outlier does not a general rule make.
With that said, a computer literate Classics/Philosophy major could certainly teach an effective class in computer literacy. But that is distinct from CS, a distinction the DE seems unaware of.
Well they might tell you it's taxable, but good luck trying to enforce it. And what's to stop people still hanging on to cash and using among themselves? As long as you don't take it to the bank, just keep on using it.
Holy shit dude, do you know economics? If you don't use it, then it depreciates and loses value. So either you use it to purchase things (or investing) or you let it rot. Plus, what would you do with all that cash under your matters if/when no one wants to accept it for a transaction?
And this is different from what it's always been - how?
Because if we meet and we exchange cash, there's no record and no tracking. That's how it's different.
-
Egotistical, I know, but that is the capitalist way, isn't it? "Enlightened self-interest" and all that crap
Forget it, I don't go for that libertarian horsecrap. I'm not a libertarian. That's not what this is about.
And yet money launderers still get caught. I get what you are trying to say, but you are wrong. Small transactions, be them in cash or electronic, governments in general do not give a shit. We are talking about large transactions. Those are the ones that are relevant to this conversation (right or wrong). And those you can track even in cash.
Try passing around $10k in small $100 cash transactions. The very attempt of it is detectable by modest forensic accounting means.
The Constitution's rights only apply to Citizens and permanent legal residents. Tourists and those in the country illegally are at convenience extended Constitutional rights. As far as what you're getting at here with regard to the above article, the Supreme Court has general deferred greatly to executive judgment on who is and isn't allowed into the country. This is also why Donald Trump's idea to ban Muslims is a legal gray area.
Uh, the 1st, 4th, 6th, 7th, 13th amendments also applies to any human being in US soil, regardless of nationality.
"we got a constitution with a wonderful clause that stops those with wealth using it to block laws they don't like"
Which clause would that be? Section 1, the "this constitution can be overridden if you really mean it", or section 33, the other "this constitution can be overridden if you really mean it", or section15, the other "this constitution can be overridden if it benefits nonwhite nonmen"?
"Canada's path to independence worked out far better ... for a considerable time Canada wanted and needed British protection"
That is a very dependent sort of independence.
Because of its belligerent neighbor to the south (which is also in his post, and which you so conveniently chose to omit.) Also, he never mentioned that Canada was independent at the time of these events (almost 200 years ago), and its form of governance is not comparable to its current form, which is independent regardless of your exercises in sophistry.
It wasn't even homemade, it was a commercial product with a phone charger in it.
Should the lesson be "doing anything remotely suspicious while brown is punishable, and suspicious is what officials want it to be"?
And on top of that, a bully falsely accused the other kid of having made a bomb threat.
He was 12, talking to another 12 year old, thinking it was a joke between them. The cops couldn't check the "bomb" begot arresting him and holding him for three days? A 12 year old? Really? What an asinine comment.
He wasn't making a joke. The kid known to be a bully was taunting him that he was going to accuse him of making a bomb threat (and the bully did indeed make the accusation.)
The story is that he was making a bomb threat, not that there was a bomb. You can make a bomb threat while having only a box of cheerios in your backpack and it's still a bomb threat. The debate between the family and the school/police was whether there really was a bomb threat, a joke of a bomb threat, or a misunderstanding.
Then the next question, do you hold a 12 year old for this without notifying and having parents or guardians notified and present? And the notification must be from the police and not the school, the phone call should be from the police to the parents and not from the parents to the police. And not an excuse "we tried to contact them" without follow through.
And given that it's a 12 year old why treat such a person as an adult? That's absurd. This is more of the zero-tolerance nonsense that's turning schools into daytime detention centers. Let he who is without childhood mistakes cast the first stone.
As per the news, the kid make the threat. A bully accused him of making the threat. You know, context matters, specially when we want to fling shit like monkeys.
I hate that Yahoo's employees are basically screwed. However, I have to say, I love that Yahoo is failing as a company because every time a manager thinks "Maybe we should stop all this telecommuting stuff and go with communal desks" I can point at Yahoo as an example of how well that will work out.
Thanks for being an example to the world of how not to do things, Marissa Mayer!
I love telecommuting when it works, but we now for a fact that Yahoo was laden with thousands of people who never set foot on company premises for years just milking their bi-weekly check by logging here and there from home. I've been in such companies, and I've seen the financial havoc that such practices break on the company.
When telecommuting works, use it. When it doesn't, cut it. Yahoo's case was the later. She did the right call on this.
Am I being naive, or just is this just a way of moving Alibaba into American ownership?
You have two companies, Alibaba (Chinese) and Yahoo (US). Yahoo takes over Alibaba to make one company (US). Yahoo disinvests everything into a different company, call it exactly-what-yahoo-was-before.com (US) and is now a new US company, called Yahoo but being exactly what Alibaba was before.
How can you take a massive foreign company with just a 15% stake? Certainly 15% is much greater (in relative numbers) than Elliot Management 7% activist stake in Citrix (for example.) But I have a hard time believing a 15% stake on a Chinese company the size of Alibaba will somehow translate into American ownership.
But she got rid of all those unproductive work-at-home employees! Surely that would have turned them around!
As from the many internal communications that came out of many Yahoo employees' mouths, she did the right call with this one.
> s/devops/scrum/g
Invalid sed expression. Two completely different things.
cat /lost+found/*sarcasm* | sed 's/you/whoosh/g'
of existing chips of course.
Here in 'Murika people used to dismissively say the same about Japanese electronics in the 60's. See how well that hubris worked for us.
I know I'm generalizing, but let's be real - an anti-education, anti-tech, extremely reactionary way of looking at things dominates rural America, specially in the south. They would never do the same things their Japanese counterparts do cuz the interweebz would bring the gay or something.
And that generalization would be wrong. Farmers have a higher high school graduation rate than the rest of the population and for larger operators, are on parity with the rest of the population for college degrees. Why? Because modern farming uses lots of tech and has done so for quite a while. In the 1980s, farmers were the some of the first ones to get personal computers and later dial up Internet access. Why? To manage their businesses and to check on futures markets. The Ag teacher/FFA advisor in those schools usually had a PC before the math department did. Parents in those areas are not anti-education as their kids will need a good education if they want to take over the family business or do something other than be a clerk at the local gas station or grocery store (well, if the parents are not on public assistance...they don't seem to care if their kids get a good education or not since they can just live off the govt teat like they and their grandparents have done since the 60s. In this case, it is more of a class problem, not a rural vs urban problem and is why MS is so bad on many rankings). If you would have said "conservative way of looking at things", you would have been correct. http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-p...
The fact that people have a higher HS graduation rate means squat if done from the POV that crush critical thinking. Think how many people graduate from HS thinking evolution is the work of the devil. For Christ' fucking sake, just look at Ben Carson, a renown neuro-surgeon claiming that the pyramids were built for storing grain!
Sorry, graduation rates =/= positive stance on education or advancement. Go travel the world, talk to people, see how they talk, see how they think. It will open your goddamned eyes on how backwards we have it in some areas of the US.
DNA Data From California Newborn Blood Samples Stored, Sold To 3rd Parties
Is the data identifiable? Meaning, can a donor be identified with a sample? That is the crux of the matter (and one the zealots in the interweebz seem keen to ignore.)
Is the data identifiable, then?
Yes: problem.
No: no problem.
. Fingerprints cannot be hashed.
Bollocks. Utter bollocks. I admit I didn't read TFA, but this is just bollocks. If a biometric system can identify what seems to be a fingertip (the presentation of which changes every time due to sweat, scars, position of the finger, whatever), it means that system originally stored a model that can match all possible (and reasonable) presentations of said fingerprint. If there is a standard model for representing a fingertip, then you hash that. That is your hash. It might be specific to the system using the "model", and thus incompatible with another system using different models. But this wouldn't be different from a system requiring SHA-512 hashes vs another one that requires MD5.
" "Existing climate models have shown that a global temperature increase to the threshold of human survivability would be reached in some regions of the globe at a point in the distant future..."
This is somehow different than the many areas on the planet where humans should not be trying to live today?
Exactly. I'm almost sure that, when that humid-heating event happens in that region of the world, people there will simply adapt to different work schedules (even like sending kids to school at night, or way early in the morning, for example.) The famous siesta has been a historical adaptation to avoid working during the hottest ours of the day.
Where I'm from, farmers and cattle ranchers would go to work at 4AM just to be out before noon on summers. In general, you do not want to be on the fields between 2 and 4, specially on summers. People adapt. If people could conquer the Arctic or the Kalahari or the Mojave, people will adapt to this.
"digital disruption" is niche and completely unpredictable
What is digital disruption? I've never heard of that.
The rise of the web, and the near death of publishing. Amazon and the death of the mom-and-pop bookstore. Netflix and the death of Blockbuster Videos. Netflix/Amazon VOD/Hulu and what not, which is bringing Cable to its knees contemplating the real possibility of a-la-carte cable (and/or forcing major TV players like HBO to go digital.) Online banking. Online education. The so-called "share economy" (of which I don't think it is that good of a good thing.)
Should I go on?
Internet of Things, the mobile revolution, cloud computing, digital disruption, and the perpetual increase of processing power. ('It’s exponential, folks. It’s just growing and growing.') The upshot: If you don’t at least try to think digitally, the digital economy will disrupt you. It will drain your town of young people and leave your business in the dust. Then he switches gears and tries to stiffen their spines with confidence. Start a website, he’ll say. Get on social media.
the Internet of Things is a security disaster, the "mobile revolution" is a farce, cloud computing is outsourcing to people you shouldn't trust, "digital disruption" is niche and completely unpredictable, and the "perpetual increase of processing power" is a lie. starting a website is not always necessary and often a burden. social media is a hellscape of volatile idiots.
people don't need to "think digitally", what they need is to think for themselves.
You almost sounded like you were saying something.
that most normal people actually care about things other than tech. For most average people, tech is just a tool. Most do not care about MHz, or GHz or dual- or quad-core or brand name. What's truly shocking to the younger techies in the bubbles of very large cities is that there are a huge number of normal people all throughout society who do not care about the internet and do not waste their time logging onto it - they get up, go to work, get home and care for the kids, then perhaps watch a little TV and then go to bed, all without thinking about the internet.
Facebook and Twitter are not required for day-to-day life. What Bruce/Caitlyn and the Kardashians are up to is simply not important. People who have jobs in small-town America simply do not need LinkedIn, etc. and going onto the net to look for Pizza is idiotic if you live in a town with one pizza place. Who needs Google Earth when you already know all the local roads you need to drive on to do your job and run the errands you need to run for your family?
I am not being a Luddite here, I personally live a life stuffed full of electronics and code and tethered to the web, but I have many friends and relatives who have simply no use to any of it and I am amazed at how internet-centric so many younger people in big cities have become - to the point of becoming completely ignorant of LIFE in the real world. This is at some level toxic to politics and national policy. I recall that when Obamacare was going public and the young "experts" were tasked with helping people in "fly over country" enroll, one of these morons told an older guy in the midwest to enter his e-mail address on a screen and was met with the question "what's e-mail?". This is driving a large cultural divide and that divide is going to become another political wedge.
It is simply an act of supremely ignorant arrogance to assume that everybody is on the net and that anybody who is not is some sort of ignorant backward hick - lot's of people simply know what's important to them and what's not. For every netizen who sees the non-addict as a knuckle-dragging moron (who is almost certainly automatically also assumed to be racist/sexist/homophobe/etc), there's a normal person with a life who sees a shallow, plastic, soulless zombie with an iPad and no original thoughts in his brain. For many, the remote, tabloid nature of the internet and its data-mining advertizing-centric vapid content is simply less important than the real world all around them and their families.
At the end of your life, which will you regret more: the time you spent with your spouse raising your kids, or the time you spent on the web looking at what other people were doing, or were pretending they were doing?/P
What a sad thing has slashdot become that its posters equate internet access with social media. Internet access is an economic and educational enabler. Regions with poorer internet infrastructure will do worse economically and educationally that regions that have better communication infrastructure. Period. This is not about being on FB all the time.
Countries and regions all over the world recognize this. In Japan where mass urban migration and an aging population are decimating rural towns, there have been very aggressive efforts to counter that trend by providing internet infrastructure (to attract young, well-paid engineers, and their families.) Kamiyama in Tokushima Prefecture is the best example of this. http://ajw.asahi.com/article/b...
Finland is another great example at a national level.
Please turn your geek card at your convenience.
Farmers and ranchers do indeed depend on the internet. But you don't really need high speed fiber for what they do; that's reserved for people who want to stream videos all day.
But the article makes some very good points. Think about it, there's no real reason so many "coders" need to live in Silicon Valley. The work could be done just as well from a small town in Mississippi - without the high rent, traffic jams, and water shortages. And I am speaking from first hand experience here. I live in a very rural area of Appalachia, finally got DSL a couple of years ago so now i can work from home. It's about ten miles to the nearest grocery store, but there's only one traffic light to get through and no traffic to speak of (other than the suicidal white tailed deer to watch out for). I don't watch TV, can't get any reception here in the mountains and cable isn't out this far anyway :^)
Uh, there is a real reason to live in the Valley (or in any tech hub.). It is to network and, hopefully, work in the latest shit. Obviously that is not true for all, nor it is a real reason for others who would prefer to live in a more secluded area. But a reason, yep, there is one. Our reasons for living where we live are not entirely objective regardless of what we tell to ourselves.
The internet can attract jobs back to rural areas. In Japan a number of internet based companies have their main operations to rural areas. Cheaper housing and business premesis, a nice environment, and it doesn't really matter where your warehouse is. IIRC one business was a second hand book store, and another was a craft goods company selling through Rakuten.
There are a lot of jobs that could move to rural areas if they had good internet access. A lot of engineering consultancy jobs, for example, are mostly done remotely. An architect might have to travel to clients and sites now and then, but that's true if they live in a city or not, and the rest can be done from an office in a rural area as long as they have fast broadband for file uploads, big email attachments and Skype.
With my wife being from Japan, I've been half-seriously considering moving my family to Japan, to one of the small, half-depopulated small rural towns not far from Tokyo. There is a push for small towns like that to throw fiber optic, or whatever, to entice developers to move with their families. For some, it is working.
Then I'v considered if that same move would work in the US. And the answer would be know IMO. Those small towns in Japan are being very progressive and forward looking their attempts. Sadly that is not how your typical American small town operates. I know I'm generalizing, but let's be real - an anti-education, anti-tech, extremely reactionary way of looking at things dominates rural America, specially in the south. They would never do the same things their Japanese counterparts do cuz the interweebz would bring the gay or something.
Funny and sad at the same time.
Waiting for the "Mericuh, Right or Wrong" branch of the KKK to doxx you to Anonymous now.
Hmmm, mkay, then?
Funny how the economy became frozen in time when they stopped becoming more productive.
If by funny you mean untrue, then yes. The economy froze because of the big real state bubble apocalypse of the late 1980s, an ineffective government economic policy (not a problem specific to private enterprises) and currently a population decline. Have you ever been to Japan? I have. Internally they are doing fine, more than fine. Quality of life and purchasing power for the average individual has not decreased, and it will remain high for at least 30 more years (by various estimates.)
Shit, I wish we could say the same.
The thing that has become frozen in Japan is international expansion. Internally, the economy is doing well. And Japanese companies will always be less effective than, say, American companies (when we measure them from a cost-savings POV) because Japanese companies, large or small, see themselves as providers of jobs, first and foremost (profit generation comes second.) Japanese companies will not lay off people the way we do. They'll try cut benefits or cut hours. In general they'll prefer to go down with the ship than to try to save the company by laying off employees.
They stick to that, and so far it still has worked well for them. I don't know about you, but I prefer that. If I weren't too old to buy property in Japan, I would have relocated my family and I to Tokyo a long time ago.
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