Your last point is key, but given that in the years spent developing this thing you have to figure they already know this, which leads us back to square one of no pretenses, why is DARPA creating this thing if not for immediate military use?
I think when you ask that, it becomes relatively obvious. This is a prototype. Next step is one which can carry 600 pounds. Follow that with the 800lb prototype that goes into use; it has a seat and a gun and suddenly we have a mechanized armor unit that can move in the woods and walk up a rocky mountain side, while being small enough to hide well.
This is the first prototype of the future of armored infantry units, the eventuality being two branches: actual human driven mechs on one side, and land-drones on the other side. If I had to guess because of how succesfull air-drones have been, land-drones would be first, think about it; air-drones only get to identify targets for a short period during fly-by from hundreds of feet away, this thing could study targets for a while from much shorter distances to increase accuracy of going after non-civilian targets.
You suggest they use over 25 different banks for their capital accounts? That sounds likely. 100 banks still puts a vastly larger yield to each bank than small businesses do to any one and I guarantee they don't hold capital accounts in 100 different firms.
If you tell a bank you'll have a baseline of $4bn with revolving withdrawals/deposits and ask what rate they'll give you, do you think they're going to tell you 3% knowing you could just go stick it in another bank. The way banks are structured that's 4bn in fluidity to them, they're going to shit themselves bricks of gold with that, 8% on it when they're making 11%+ average off their internal wealth management team means 3% of 4bn a year. Which is 120m or approximately way more than they make out of the 8% margin after giving a small company 3% of their baseline 500k in revolving funds.
Nice anecdote but that is very rarely the cause. Truth is megacorps CONSTANTLY delay payment of their bills, the smaller the vendor the longer they'll drag their feet, this is deliberate and standard procedure by the financial side of the business which looks at every invoice as getting 8%/yr cheaper every second it's not paid as they're collecting interest while that money's in the bank.
Actually what will happen is the aforementioned army of lawyers will have an injunction against you so fast for contract breach the repo men will be knocking on your door before you get served papers. Their lawyers will conveniently forget to mention their breach and possibly interpret the contract before the judge to say it affords them far greater punitive rights than it does. The law is in the hands of the lawyers, and thus the corporations, not the judiciary or the citizenry.
Just curious, how much energy would it generate given the surface area of power lines strewn along light poles for hundreds of miles.. Would it over those lengths generate enough energy to juice those power lines and power a grid? Or at least to help power it?
Ironic you refute your own statement "taking a day off because of a minor cold, perhaps they should get fired" You apparently don't understand what this article is saying about when people should stay home. You realize that "minor cold" is 100% contagious and could soon be in half your other employees some of which may have poorer immune systems where that cold develops into something serious? You're belief in firing people over this is precisely *why* we don't stay home, meanwhile you're saying you won't get fired?
On a side note, I was fired from a job after a hospital stay had me out past my PTO, 1 week unpaid after the 3 days sick time ran out and they canned me. So sorry but not everywhere will avoid firing people for getting *really* sick, and you're suggesting firing people for getting mildly sick, so frankly, screw off.
It's not even about the work, it's more sterile than that. I had a hospital stay, used up all my (very little) sick time, then was given 1 week of unpaid time after which they it ran into the HR's cut-off where HR rules dictated termination occurs for non-attendance, and thus I was let go. End of story. It's a matter of our culture accepting these ~2-3 days of sick time a year, what a joke. I'm not using that time for a cough, sorry, I might break something between now and the end of the year at which point I'll actually *need* that little bit of time.
..and at the end of the day, bad managers buckle to pressures and force out releases even when engineers guaranteed the product will have serious failures if released without more work. I've seen this in FDA regulated life support software (to be fair it wasn't actually supporting life, it was however supporting diagnoses and writing device prescriptions). This is just the common managerial bullcrap of "I know better than the engineers, they're just lowly payed employees, my MBA dictates I'm the important one here and know more than them!"
there is really no reason a semi-literate person off the street can't be successful with minimal training.
I agree 100% a junior dev is not an unskilled worker, so given that; how bad would the unskilled worker the above poster is suggesting do in the same situation? You and I agree on this point; an unskilled worker cannot do this job to any relevant level, and the above poster is just trying to elevate himself by claiming others to be of such low skill that we engineers are replaceable by the bin man.
I'm aware of that; but why are the more affluent not having children? It's because they have the option and choose not to, why do they choose not to? Because they know well that they will get no support for the extra cost (the child tax credit doesn't count, seriously that pays for ~1 month of having the kid for the whole year) or the extra time it takes to properly raise the child.
Same here, fun times making what was great money as a lad, but what I knew how to do then was an absolute joke compared to what I know how to do now. There is a definite scale to this shit and making stuff last and reworkable takes a skillset all it's own only learned through years of practice, and frankly many people with years of practice still can't do it. The extra money is because it's bloody hard to find someone who can do this stuff well and won't be a bigger pain than they're worth.
the "Quit complaining and count your blessings" demands are what we've been getting told for decades by those at the top, "Cry me a river", the sad part is now we repeat it to eachother, ignorant of the fact that they were merely telling us that crap to protect their own raising income. Look at the year-over-year income rise % since the 60s, it is amazingly ridiculous how much CEO income raises have gone up in % over the years, not in total. Also look at the % of population in the middle class vs. % of population in the lower class since the 60s. Come back when you think we should all just keep sucking it up and aren't convinced if we continue to "Quit complaining" the middle class won't be gone altogether.
Last quarter the economy's profits grew quite a bit over previous quarters, however hiring remained flat. Quit complaining and work more hours, at least you've got a job right?
Actually birthrates are at a 90 year low, no longer making up for population loss. That is actually a much bigger problem than population gain, and is endemic of the lowering % of americans who are capable of being in the middle class and lack of social programs to support families which have taught people having children is more trouble than it's worth.
Spoken like someone who's never seen a successful software company go under because years of junior developers made the system more and more impossible to maintain to the point that clients had to be told their defects were either unfixable or would take 6 months to fix at which point the clients went somewhere else. Yeah, unskilled workers can do the job just greeaaaat.... Good luck with that.
Look further back and you'll see the middle class has been basically flat since ~60s. It's not the presidents, it's the congress (though I admit the presidents mostly haven't helped). Meanwhile the upper classes have had constantly huge increases in % of income compared to the middle class. Moreover the % of americans who are middle class has dropped significantly over that period.
Simple fact is the economy has slowly been pressed into restructuring over the past 50 years by a bunch of wankers in congress, it's no wonder we're seeing so many extremists these days, look at other countries with middle classes equally small and you'll see the same thing.
Exactly. We shouldn't have to fight tooth and nail to be shown appreciation for our skills. If the company doesn't give you raises and promotions when you do well for them, they don't care about you, so it's time to jump to another place that might, and get a plump raise while you're at it. Unfortunately the huge swath of MBAs from the 90s when everyone was understanding that's the way to go are in management these days and they were trained back then it's their job to be important and specifically not appreciate others, so you're more likely to end up somewhere else that doesn't appreciate you.
MS fanboyism has been relegated to the realm of linux fanboyism circa '99 who remembers hearing this mentioning linux back then: "Why would anyone use that crap?"
I'm not speaking to the value of releasing product, you said he could write great code in a "perfect code" contest, I would say that's ignorant. A junior engineer fresh from college which whips up things quickly and gets them out the door may be a great asset but that doesn't make him a great _programmer_ and it definitely doesn't mean he could win any code competitions. As far as I'm concerned this is all we've seen from Notch as far as coding goes, yes he has a valuable skill; but that skill isn't programming, perhaps it's managing his time or expectations or whatever else, but writing code? Nope.
If you think "good at programming" means "Get's something to market" you must think there's no difference between a college grad and a 10 year vet and that the best programmer is in fact a marketing person. You sir apparently don't know what the act of "Programming" is, you appear to have it confused with marketing, or, "Bringing things to market which people want", that's basically the definition of marketing. Also why are you sure he could do as well as most people in a "Perfect code" contest when the only example we have is poorly written? Honestly, you have apparantly abandoned all logic in these statements, objectively with one example that is bad you would claim the source could do something great, and you appear to be lacking the definition of either good or programming.
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Your last point is key, but given that in the years spent developing this thing you have to figure they already know this, which leads us back to square one of no pretenses, why is DARPA creating this thing if not for immediate military use?
I think when you ask that, it becomes relatively obvious. This is a prototype. Next step is one which can carry 600 pounds. Follow that with the 800lb prototype that goes into use; it has a seat and a gun and suddenly we have a mechanized armor unit that can move in the woods and walk up a rocky mountain side, while being small enough to hide well.
This is the first prototype of the future of armored infantry units, the eventuality being two branches: actual human driven mechs on one side, and land-drones on the other side. If I had to guess because of how succesfull air-drones have been, land-drones would be first, think about it; air-drones only get to identify targets for a short period during fly-by from hundreds of feet away, this thing could study targets for a while from much shorter distances to increase accuracy of going after non-civilian targets.
You suggest they use over 25 different banks for their capital accounts? That sounds likely. 100 banks still puts a vastly larger yield to each bank than small businesses do to any one and I guarantee they don't hold capital accounts in 100 different firms.
I too would very much like to smoke a beaver, where would I find rolling papers for this?
If you tell a bank you'll have a baseline of $4bn with revolving withdrawals/deposits and ask what rate they'll give you, do you think they're going to tell you 3% knowing you could just go stick it in another bank. The way banks are structured that's 4bn in fluidity to them, they're going to shit themselves bricks of gold with that, 8% on it when they're making 11%+ average off their internal wealth management team means 3% of 4bn a year. Which is 120m or approximately way more than they make out of the 8% margin after giving a small company 3% of their baseline 500k in revolving funds.
Nice anecdote but that is very rarely the cause. Truth is megacorps CONSTANTLY delay payment of their bills, the smaller the vendor the longer they'll drag their feet, this is deliberate and standard procedure by the financial side of the business which looks at every invoice as getting 8%/yr cheaper every second it's not paid as they're collecting interest while that money's in the bank.
Actually what will happen is the aforementioned army of lawyers will have an injunction against you so fast for contract breach the repo men will be knocking on your door before you get served papers. Their lawyers will conveniently forget to mention their breach and possibly interpret the contract before the judge to say it affords them far greater punitive rights than it does. The law is in the hands of the lawyers, and thus the corporations, not the judiciary or the citizenry.
Because you're a train?
Just curious, how much energy would it generate given the surface area of power lines strewn along light poles for hundreds of miles.. Would it over those lengths generate enough energy to juice those power lines and power a grid? Or at least to help power it?
Welcome to America, every protection is halfway, I fell into one of the two exemptions.
Haha, AC fight. This thread is hilarious. Like watching 3 smashed frat boys argue.
Ironic you refute your own statement "taking a day off because of a minor cold, perhaps they should get fired" You apparently don't understand what this article is saying about when people should stay home. You realize that "minor cold" is 100% contagious and could soon be in half your other employees some of which may have poorer immune systems where that cold develops into something serious? You're belief in firing people over this is precisely *why* we don't stay home, meanwhile you're saying you won't get fired?
On a side note, I was fired from a job after a hospital stay had me out past my PTO, 1 week unpaid after the 3 days sick time ran out and they canned me. So sorry but not everywhere will avoid firing people for getting *really* sick, and you're suggesting firing people for getting mildly sick, so frankly, screw off.
It's not even about the work, it's more sterile than that. I had a hospital stay, used up all my (very little) sick time, then was given 1 week of unpaid time after which they it ran into the HR's cut-off where HR rules dictated termination occurs for non-attendance, and thus I was let go. End of story. It's a matter of our culture accepting these ~2-3 days of sick time a year, what a joke. I'm not using that time for a cough, sorry, I might break something between now and the end of the year at which point I'll actually *need* that little bit of time.
..and at the end of the day, bad managers buckle to pressures and force out releases even when engineers guaranteed the product will have serious failures if released without more work. I've seen this in FDA regulated life support software (to be fair it wasn't actually supporting life, it was however supporting diagnoses and writing device prescriptions). This is just the common managerial bullcrap of "I know better than the engineers, they're just lowly payed employees, my MBA dictates I'm the important one here and know more than them!"
Word, screw this internet thing. What a waste of tax payer dollars, it's helped no one succeed in life.
there is really no reason a semi-literate person off the street can't be successful with minimal training.
I agree 100% a junior dev is not an unskilled worker, so given that; how bad would the unskilled worker the above poster is suggesting do in the same situation? You and I agree on this point; an unskilled worker cannot do this job to any relevant level, and the above poster is just trying to elevate himself by claiming others to be of such low skill that we engineers are replaceable by the bin man.
I'm aware of that; but why are the more affluent not having children? It's because they have the option and choose not to, why do they choose not to? Because they know well that they will get no support for the extra cost (the child tax credit doesn't count, seriously that pays for ~1 month of having the kid for the whole year) or the extra time it takes to properly raise the child.
Same here, fun times making what was great money as a lad, but what I knew how to do then was an absolute joke compared to what I know how to do now. There is a definite scale to this shit and making stuff last and reworkable takes a skillset all it's own only learned through years of practice, and frankly many people with years of practice still can't do it. The extra money is because it's bloody hard to find someone who can do this stuff well and won't be a bigger pain than they're worth.
the "Quit complaining and count your blessings" demands are what we've been getting told for decades by those at the top, "Cry me a river", the sad part is now we repeat it to eachother, ignorant of the fact that they were merely telling us that crap to protect their own raising income. Look at the year-over-year income rise % since the 60s, it is amazingly ridiculous how much CEO income raises have gone up in % over the years, not in total. Also look at the % of population in the middle class vs. % of population in the lower class since the 60s. Come back when you think we should all just keep sucking it up and aren't convinced if we continue to "Quit complaining" the middle class won't be gone altogether.
Last quarter the economy's profits grew quite a bit over previous quarters, however hiring remained flat. Quit complaining and work more hours, at least you've got a job right?
Actually birthrates are at a 90 year low, no longer making up for population loss. That is actually a much bigger problem than population gain, and is endemic of the lowering % of americans who are capable of being in the middle class and lack of social programs to support families which have taught people having children is more trouble than it's worth.
Spoken like someone who's never seen a successful software company go under because years of junior developers made the system more and more impossible to maintain to the point that clients had to be told their defects were either unfixable or would take 6 months to fix at which point the clients went somewhere else. Yeah, unskilled workers can do the job just greeaaaat.... Good luck with that.
Look further back and you'll see the middle class has been basically flat since ~60s. It's not the presidents, it's the congress (though I admit the presidents mostly haven't helped). Meanwhile the upper classes have had constantly huge increases in % of income compared to the middle class. Moreover the % of americans who are middle class has dropped significantly over that period.
Simple fact is the economy has slowly been pressed into restructuring over the past 50 years by a bunch of wankers in congress, it's no wonder we're seeing so many extremists these days, look at other countries with middle classes equally small and you'll see the same thing.
Exactly. We shouldn't have to fight tooth and nail to be shown appreciation for our skills. If the company doesn't give you raises and promotions when you do well for them, they don't care about you, so it's time to jump to another place that might, and get a plump raise while you're at it. Unfortunately the huge swath of MBAs from the 90s when everyone was understanding that's the way to go are in management these days and they were trained back then it's their job to be important and specifically not appreciate others, so you're more likely to end up somewhere else that doesn't appreciate you.
MS fanboyism has been relegated to the realm of linux fanboyism circa '99 who remembers hearing this mentioning linux back then: "Why would anyone use that crap?"
How the tables have turned.
I'm not speaking to the value of releasing product, you said he could write great code in a "perfect code" contest, I would say that's ignorant. A junior engineer fresh from college which whips up things quickly and gets them out the door may be a great asset but that doesn't make him a great _programmer_ and it definitely doesn't mean he could win any code competitions. As far as I'm concerned this is all we've seen from Notch as far as coding goes, yes he has a valuable skill; but that skill isn't programming, perhaps it's managing his time or expectations or whatever else, but writing code? Nope.
If you think "good at programming" means "Get's something to market" you must think there's no difference between a college grad and a 10 year vet and that the best programmer is in fact a marketing person. You sir apparently don't know what the act of "Programming" is, you appear to have it confused with marketing, or, "Bringing things to market which people want", that's basically the definition of marketing. Also why are you sure he could do as well as most people in a "Perfect code" contest when the only example we have is poorly written? Honestly, you have apparantly abandoned all logic in these statements, objectively with one example that is bad you would claim the source could do something great, and you appear to be lacking the definition of either good or programming.