The Liberal Party, or Grits as they are sometimes called, have been in power since 1993 and no other parties show any sign of maturing to the point of being competition.
But companies are typically taxed on earnings rather than on number of employees. Therefore a company would not save on health costs by outsourcing their labour.
Actually, making the US more of a welfare state might go a long way to placating the unemployed: if a company wants to benefit from the US's legal and financial system, then they have to support some of the US's citizens. (A similar scheme would be to require a certain percentage of employees at US-registered companies to be located in the US.)
Probably the easiest solution is to have the employees working on company machines. Give every telecommuter a laptop, make them understand that they should treat it like a machine at the office, and have your IT people administer it remotely. That way you can provide phone support and not have to worry about employees trying to use obsolete hardware. I even know of companies who provide an Internet connection regardless of whether the employee already has broadband at home: that way you can be more sure that BitTorrent won't be taking up all the bandwidth.
I think you might be on to something there, I remember when the Spice Girls became big (and I believe the same was said of earlier "invasion" bands) some critics accused them of singing in an American accent in order to appeal to the larger market. Of course this sort of thing should be objectively measurable...
I used dialect because I actually was referring to more than just accent -- I believe vocabulary and grammar are starting to differ amongst English speaking countries, as well. However such a discussion is off-topic and you're right to chastise me for implicitly widening the scope and possibily confusing other readers.
As for variation in Canada, I've never experienced it in person, and even on TV it's only Newfies (who joined the Dominion relatively recently) who sound consistently different enough to place them. I think it might be a bit of an urban legend amongst Americans?
As I understand it, Immigration has been tightening things lately. But not because of September 11th! Rather, they're trying to deal with their backlog (caused by poor funding), by retroactively raising the bar (and thereby refusing people without having to process their application).
As much as I enjoy Canadian jokes on American TV, I must point out that no Canadian I've ever met actually talks like that. It's like thinking that all Texans talk like Boomhauer from King of the Hill...
Trailer Styles
on
Decipher
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· Score: 3, Insightful
The author of the book is a screenwriter, so the reviewer was just trying to follow Hollywood's lead with trailers.
But seriously, from what little else we are told about the book, I'm pretty sure the reviewer is doing us all a favour. This sounds like a truly horrid book. Of course I'm not surprised the reviewer liked it. He's got to be, what, 12?
Some people believe the purpose of a college degree is to teach you enough about reasoning that you'd never claim something was a fact without being able to back it up. Others believe that it's so you can actually get promoted after you get hired. Personally, I think they keep people from becoming dumbasses like you.
Gee, with a sig like that I can't imagine why you'd have a bunch of useless certifications and no degree. Here's a tip: get a certification in long term thinking, maybe they'll teach you why your hill-climbing algorithm makes you an asshat.
Of course they have close ties: what kind of idiot would run a backbone through Northern Ontario when you could go through Chicago and Detroit? Supposedly there are so few big Canadian bands out of the West because the bus ride from Winnipeg to Ottawa introduces so much latency as to trigger a timeout.
Actually I've heard that foreign students choose Canada over the US because it's supposed to be the easiest and most useful dialect of English to learn. There is significantly less variation in accent throughout Canada than any other major English country (eg: Texas vs. the Bronx, Cornwall vs. Scotland) and Canadian English is supposedly easier to understand by people with other English accents and even easier to learn for non-English speakers. I have no idea if there's truth to any of this, but I've heard it more than once...
Stocks are routinely bought and sold without any attempt to transfer their physical manifestation. The paper stock is a representation of the abstraction that is the share just as a CD is a representation of the abstraction that is the information.
This is why it makes no difference for an album I own whether I rip the MP3s myself or download copies somebody else made: since I own the information it is insignificant whether I access the original storage medium or a indistinguishable copy of it.
With stocks you can, if you really want to, get the dead tree. I see no reason why this system couldn't act the same way: if you purchase a CD, you can ask the company to smail it to you rather than hold it on your behalf. Of course you'll have to mail it back if you want to sell it.
Hell, look at the ancient Greeks? The upper-classes had so much free time that they invented philosophy, the very essence of not working. And what did it lead to? Lots of gay sex. Until, of course, the Romans marched through and put them back to work.
Are you willing to accept a life of leisure in exchange for gay sex? If so, vote robot.
As less and less people buy the widgets, their price will fall. As their price falls relative to the raw materials, those materials will be used to manufacture something else. Despite the fact that all commerce will be B2B (or robot-to-robot), the economy will chug along just fine. Capitalism doesn't have some teleological purpose beyond the creation of wealth -- it really doesn't matter if there's no one around to enjoy it.
You're right about one thing, though: having a bunch of unemployed humans sitting around is wasteful. Hmm, I wonder what our robot masters will do with us?
Actually it is an idea I've mused over before: at the very least, political leaders should be making computer-assisted decisions and receiving advice from automated sources (like polls). At the most extreme, you could train a neural net to satisfy most of the people most of the time and let it be their representative.
I look forward to the day when my region becomes a technocracy. All hail SkyNey!
Using it while sitting on the couch right beside your desk isn't exactly a revolution. Once upon a time we believed that Bluetooth would provide Internet access in trains and coffee shops -- just like WiFi does now.
Bluetooth is a false idol. There is no networking but WiFi.
Riots only happen if the jobs disappear quickly. As long as the proletariat are slowly eased into their welfare existence, they won't bother to rebel. By the time it occurs to them, it'll be too late: they'll be incapable of running the society without the robots.
What do you think the US's jobless recovery is? Productivity gains are allowing the economy to recover while unemployment increases. Now imagine if progress continues at this rate for decades.
Besides, even if they do rebel they won't necessarily be successful: we got Ned Ludd, didn't we?
Would it make you happier if I used "markets" instead of "captialism"? Natural selection is a market for genes, capitalism is a market for capital and labour. Capitalism is the lowest-energy state of an economy.
That's been part of the teaching style of the humanities for a long time now: go read this paper or book by some smart dead dude (readings), then I'll tell you what I think about it (lecture), then we can discuss (tutorial).
It's pretty obvious that a lecture can be converted to a meta-reading and put online, but the big question right now is whether tutorials can also be as effective online. Of course, never underestimate a university student's desire to be passive: many would rather snooze through a two-hour lecture than spend that time reading. And tutorials at anything below an advanced level are pretty dismal, at least at my alma matter: two students team up with the professor to mock the one student who will actually voice a minority opinion, while the rest snooze.
If the Internet can fix any of this, I'm all for it.
But the customers who waste their money on human-produced products will be less fit than those who buy the cheaper and better robot-produced widgets. So those unscrupulous customers will take over, until eventually they lose their jobs to robots and cease to be customers.
Slashdot Mirror
The Liberal Party, or Grits as they are sometimes called, have been in power since 1993 and no other parties show any sign of maturing to the point of being competition.
But companies are typically taxed on earnings rather than on number of employees. Therefore a company would not save on health costs by outsourcing their labour.
Actually, making the US more of a welfare state might go a long way to placating the unemployed: if a company wants to benefit from the US's legal and financial system, then they have to support some of the US's citizens. (A similar scheme would be to require a certain percentage of employees at US-registered companies to be located in the US.)
Probably the easiest solution is to have the employees working on company machines. Give every telecommuter a laptop, make them understand that they should treat it like a machine at the office, and have your IT people administer it remotely. That way you can provide phone support and not have to worry about employees trying to use obsolete hardware. I even know of companies who provide an Internet connection regardless of whether the employee already has broadband at home: that way you can be more sure that BitTorrent won't be taking up all the bandwidth.
I think you might be on to something there, I remember when the Spice Girls became big (and I believe the same was said of earlier "invasion" bands) some critics accused them of singing in an American accent in order to appeal to the larger market. Of course this sort of thing should be objectively measurable...
I used dialect because I actually was referring to more than just accent -- I believe vocabulary and grammar are starting to differ amongst English speaking countries, as well. However such a discussion is off-topic and you're right to chastise me for implicitly widening the scope and possibily confusing other readers.
As for variation in Canada, I've never experienced it in person, and even on TV it's only Newfies (who joined the Dominion relatively recently) who sound consistently different enough to place them. I think it might be a bit of an urban legend amongst Americans?
As I understand it, Immigration has been tightening things lately. But not because of September 11th! Rather, they're trying to deal with their backlog (caused by poor funding), by retroactively raising the bar (and thereby refusing people without having to process their application).
As much as I enjoy Canadian jokes on American TV, I must point out that no Canadian I've ever met actually talks like that. It's like thinking that all Texans talk like Boomhauer from King of the Hill...
The author of the book is a screenwriter, so the reviewer was just trying to follow Hollywood's lead with trailers.
But seriously, from what little else we are told about the book, I'm pretty sure the reviewer is doing us all a favour. This sounds like a truly horrid book. Of course I'm not surprised the reviewer liked it. He's got to be, what, 12?
Some people believe the purpose of a college degree is to teach you enough about reasoning that you'd never claim something was a fact without being able to back it up. Others believe that it's so you can actually get promoted after you get hired. Personally, I think they keep people from becoming dumbasses like you.
Gee, with a sig like that I can't imagine why you'd have a bunch of useless certifications and no degree. Here's a tip: get a certification in long term thinking, maybe they'll teach you why your hill-climbing algorithm makes you an asshat.
Of course they have close ties: what kind of idiot would run a backbone through Northern Ontario when you could go through Chicago and Detroit? Supposedly there are so few big Canadian bands out of the West because the bus ride from Winnipeg to Ottawa introduces so much latency as to trigger a timeout.
Actually I've heard that foreign students choose Canada over the US because it's supposed to be the easiest and most useful dialect of English to learn. There is significantly less variation in accent throughout Canada than any other major English country (eg: Texas vs. the Bronx, Cornwall vs. Scotland) and Canadian English is supposedly easier to understand by people with other English accents and even easier to learn for non-English speakers. I have no idea if there's truth to any of this, but I've heard it more than once...
Stocks are routinely bought and sold without any attempt to transfer their physical manifestation. The paper stock is a representation of the abstraction that is the share just as a CD is a representation of the abstraction that is the information.
This is why it makes no difference for an album I own whether I rip the MP3s myself or download copies somebody else made: since I own the information it is insignificant whether I access the original storage medium or a indistinguishable copy of it.
With stocks you can, if you really want to, get the dead tree. I see no reason why this system couldn't act the same way: if you purchase a CD, you can ask the company to smail it to you rather than hold it on your behalf. Of course you'll have to mail it back if you want to sell it.
Are you willing to accept a life of leisure in exchange for gay sex? If so, vote robot.
nm
nm
Testing to direct content is a great idea. I wish teachers would do that instead of wasting our time with stuff they expect us to not understand...
As less and less people buy the widgets, their price will fall. As their price falls relative to the raw materials, those materials will be used to manufacture something else. Despite the fact that all commerce will be B2B (or robot-to-robot), the economy will chug along just fine. Capitalism doesn't have some teleological purpose beyond the creation of wealth -- it really doesn't matter if there's no one around to enjoy it.
You're right about one thing, though: having a bunch of unemployed humans sitting around is wasteful. Hmm, I wonder what our robot masters will do with us?
So the airports and restaurants you frequent actually provide Internet access via Bluetooth? Is it free? I must say I'm impressed.
Actually it is an idea I've mused over before: at the very least, political leaders should be making computer-assisted decisions and receiving advice from automated sources (like polls). At the most extreme, you could train a neural net to satisfy most of the people most of the time and let it be their representative.
I look forward to the day when my region becomes a technocracy. All hail SkyNey!
Using it while sitting on the couch right beside your desk isn't exactly a revolution. Once upon a time we believed that Bluetooth would provide Internet access in trains and coffee shops -- just like WiFi does now.
Bluetooth is a false idol. There is no networking but WiFi.
Riots only happen if the jobs disappear quickly. As long as the proletariat are slowly eased into their welfare existence, they won't bother to rebel. By the time it occurs to them, it'll be too late: they'll be incapable of running the society without the robots.
What do you think the US's jobless recovery is? Productivity gains are allowing the economy to recover while unemployment increases. Now imagine if progress continues at this rate for decades.
Besides, even if they do rebel they won't necessarily be successful: we got Ned Ludd, didn't we?
Would it make you happier if I used "markets" instead of "captialism"? Natural selection is a market for genes, capitalism is a market for capital and labour. Capitalism is the lowest-energy state of an economy.
That's been part of the teaching style of the humanities for a long time now: go read this paper or book by some smart dead dude (readings), then I'll tell you what I think about it (lecture), then we can discuss (tutorial).
It's pretty obvious that a lecture can be converted to a meta-reading and put online, but the big question right now is whether tutorials can also be as effective online. Of course, never underestimate a university student's desire to be passive: many would rather snooze through a two-hour lecture than spend that time reading. And tutorials at anything below an advanced level are pretty dismal, at least at my alma matter: two students team up with the professor to mock the one student who will actually voice a minority opinion, while the rest snooze.
If the Internet can fix any of this, I'm all for it.
But the customers who waste their money on human-produced products will be less fit than those who buy the cheaper and better robot-produced widgets. So those unscrupulous customers will take over, until eventually they lose their jobs to robots and cease to be customers.