While somewhat similar, not replacing the delivery guy with a robot isn't the same thing as protecting the window repairman by breaking windows. Now, one could argue that developing and installing windows equipped with non-breakable glass puts some window repairman out of work in a similar manner in the long-term. Unlike the delivery guy, the window repairman probably isn't just repairing windows. He likely is also installing, replacing through upgrades and as prompted by age, and maintaining windows much of the time. The delivery guy is doing one thing, delivering packages.
Some would argue that the out-of-work delivery guy can just be trained for and move into a role associated with the drone such as design, maintenance, sales, and logistical support. While it is true that some of them can move to jobs created by the drone roll-out, all won't be capable of learning and understanding what is needed. Plus, there is "never" a one-for-one job replacement as processes are automated. A big reason why businesses automate is to reduce costs through reduction of human labor. Big Business isn't likely to knowingly replace the cost of human-based delivery with an equal or greater cost associated with operating the delivery-by-drone program. With reduced costs, budgets may not even support the creation and existence of a job for every unemployed delivery guy that pays a livable, let alone, comperable wage.
That big, brown truck is operated by a human and, thus, makes for the need to employ one. Society needs for business to need human labor, and moves like this one by Amazon is reducing this need. A side from this, a damn "intelligent" UAV isn't going to be as versitile as a human. Sure, the delivery drone isn't ever going to replace all delivery people. I'd rather it not replace any of them, so we can avoid losing yet more jobs.
Incorrect, we can all profit, just not at insane amounts. I like lemons but can't grow them in my climate but you can and I have something you want. We trade, we both profit. That is unless you got greedy and squeezed all the lemons before hand and just sold me the rind without telling. Then took the liquid and sold lemonade to other people.
That is not profiting and merely is trading two things of value. Let's say I paid $1000 dollars to plant, grow, pick, and package those lemons. Let's also say that you paid $800 to get that widget I need. If we trade, you have gained $200, and I have lost $200.
> If they're not trying to destroy the economy by introducing socialism, they're trying to destroy society by seeking the maximisation of profit!
Uh, you apparently have forgotten a few things. An ecomony is merely a system made possible by the ongoing exchange of something of value. This system tends to be made more flexible through monetary units. If anything, that Liberal you seem to dislike would rather minimize profit by the few to allow for more redistribution of wealth to the many.
> If I buy a loaf of bread for $1, who gains and who loses? I lose $1 and gain a loaf of bread. The baker gains $1 and loses a load of bread.
You have failed to make reference to the key part in my two statements, profit. There is a "finite" amount of money in the economy at any given time. This is much like energy and its place within the universe. Energy and money can only move around. There is no way that everyone and every company can take profit since this would need for more money to exist than what actually exists.
As for your baker... The baker has a true cost associated with getting that loaf to the market and through its sell that must be covered by his or her pricing. The true cost is more complex than materials and labor. He or she also likely has a desire to earn a profit. In an ideal market, the baker would sell the loaf at cost-plus-profit with the pricing in line with the customer's buying power. If his total overhead is $1, he makes no profit on a loaf sold at $1. If, on the other hand, his cost is $0.50, he's earned quite the profit.
Let's say his cost rises and/or the customer can no longer pay $1 for a loaf of bread. Let's also say he is too attached to the profit of 50 cents on the dollar he's had to-date. So, what does the baker do? He finds a way to cut his costs. Sometimes this achieved through improvements in efficiencies that that doesn't impact others. Now, I'd argue that all change has impact. He could skimp or otherwise change the recipe in such a way that lowers quality. Who loses to allow the baker to gain? The customer. Let's say he choses to cut bakery staff to reduce costs so that he can gain. Who loses? The workers and anyone dependent on the workers' income lose. The society also loses, because the workers have less or no money to spend. Society might also lose further by having to pay for social safety net services to be used by the workers until the income can be replaced. Let's say the baker raises the price of the loaf to protect his profit. Who loses here? The customer and quite possibly society again. Let's say the baker choses to not pay his suppliers, landlord, and/or for utilties to reduce his costs. Who loses? The company that has been shorted loses, and their employees might lose in time due to the company's drop in revenue.
Gains and losses aren't always measurable in currency. Lowering product and service quality to maintain or increase gain also has a corresponding loss. Examples of correlated gain and loss are available through out our economy at all levels and life in general. Some gains by one are so great that the burden of a corresponding loss is felt by many. I don't want to step on another to get ahead. A person or company that is gaining more than they are losing are stepping on someone to get ahead.
I block ads, because they lessen too much the user experience. Early on, ads weren't a nuisance, really, because we were only subjected to mostly static banner ads. Ads have evolved to be much more active employing animation, video, and/or audio. They have also gotten larger and incorporate other nuisance-causing tactics like page-over and content-shifting mechanisms to increase impressions. The videos in particular, especially the auto-run videos are the most annoying to me and resource demanding. Ads using audio are the runner-up. I am often listening to music through the computer as I work at the computer, so the audio interferes with this. No, I am not listing to ad-supported streaming services. I actually buy CDs and listen to the ripped MP3s I've created from them.
I wish we'd move away from the free, ad-supported, and data-sharing business model and find a way for the content and services to be pay-access-only without subscriptions. Yes, I do realize that this means many sites and services, especially those catering to a niche, will be lost. I do know that some are subsidized by revenue earned elsewhere. In the end, I may decide the loss isn't worth the improvement in user experience gained through the removal of ads or at least the pull-back of ads. Society is already paying indirectly for all this "free" stuff, because we are paying for something that funds the marketing budgets that are buying the ad space.
That often is my gripe. Too many companies and executives aren't satisfied with making a reasonable profit and keeping good people employed. Instead, they want to pursue unreasonable profit and goals with a shortsighted mindset and no concern for how such a business strategy is to affect their employees and society as a whole.
We all can't profit. One's gain is only made possible by another's loss.
I did run for a long time at with a similar solution. I did this up until I installed an ad-blocker for the first time back over the summer. I used the HOSTS file to point a long list of domains to a Linux box on my network that served a page through Apache via the 404 error. The error occured, because the ad's URL was never valid when applied to my server. The page used JavaScript to match the iFrame's parent's background color and showed "AD BLOCKED". While this didn't work for all ads, it did for many and improved my experience.
It doesn't matter if Yahoo is or isn't a big player. They aren't the only player looking for methods to combat ad-blocking, and moves like this will be made by others in time. Even if this specific approach hasn't been thought of by anyone else, the press is sharing the concept with the world more and more with each new article.
Measuring true cost isn't always easy. I suppose measuring true value is hard as well. Think long-term cost and value. Labor is just part of the cost. Quality of work can be a cost when it is low and convey value when it is high. I can go on and on about aspects like this that should be measured and considered sufficiently by a business when they are planning staffing strategies. I will say that a business that sees an employee as nothing more than a dispensible warm body acting as a means to revenue and, thus, profit should expect said employee to care less even when not caring goes against his or her nature.
My company does bill me out at something like $149/hr as for out-of-scope work. This rate is meant to cover the costs of the back-end people and processes that supposedly support my role. There are standard rates that apply to other resources. I bet never more than 1/5 of the billed rate is being paid entirely to the one person doing the work requested by the customer.
I do understand that contractors are paid high hourly rates. I suppose much of this is meant to cover the risk of down-time and that customers must pay for this to avoid the cost of having a regular employee. Some of the rates are also to cover the contractor's travel by car costs and other incidentals.
How do you propose society manage the kids that don't have parents or guardians that care enough to get the kid into and kept in one of the many private schools that would exist and fit the kid's educational needs? Are you going to step in to help these kids? Probably not. How would you manage the kid's need to get to and from school even when the private school that fits is located across town? Are you going to give these kids a ride to their school? Probably not.
A public school system can and certainly does generally remove many of the burdens of educating our children. It can also accomplish this at real cost, not cost-plus-profit. It seems to me that the private sector normally operates with earning a profit as the highest priority. There are and will always be many kids that come into the world that would have to go it alone if not for society providing assistance through programs paid for by someone else. It doesn't matter if it tax-derived or private dollars or paid for through higher prices charged to those that can pay. These kids and those that got lucky at birth all are society's future. I believe it is in society's best interest to do what society can to prepare every kid, within reason, for said future.
So, let's say government does get out of the business of running schools and needs to only focus on regulating all of the existing and new private schools. Might it just be possible that the cost of regulation could be pretty high? A government-run public school system doesn't need the same level of oversight and regulating given that the system likely is as it specifies. Consequently, the cost of the self-oversight and self-regulation would be lower. In your system, the tax payer is still paying for the education of every kid through scholorships[I read vouchers] and also paying to regulate where they hadn't needed before. Government probably is also still funding much of the transportation costs since someone must pay to get the kids to and from school.
Again, I believe it is in society's best interest to do what society can to prepare every kid, within reason, for the future. I believe the better prepared a kid is, the less likely the kid is to be burden to society down the road. Burdens of all types cost money and, in many cases, more than what society would pay through the public school system. Just consider the costs associated with policing, prosecution, and imprisoning.
You seem to be responding to something for which I didn't advocate. I believe parents should be expected to and to actually raise their kids. This is separate from the approach, whatever it happens to be, taken in a school setting to educate a kid. Parents can still contribute to the kid's learning even when we have a public school system, and they should since there is so much to know about life that can never be covered completely in any State-defined curriculum.
A problem with your approach is that a parent can only employ your so-called solution for his or her own kids. He or she can't also send someone else's kids to a private school. Yet, these other kids are also to be a part of society's future and, potentially, shaping it in a significant way. So, the better approach is to address situations such as this textbook one in Texas so that the majority of kids learn what's right and real and not just the few that, purely by chance, were born into a situation that supported the attending of a private school.
Shooting would be a problem when bad intel results in a raid of the wrong place. Plus, a dead bad guy can't assist the investigation until we can download the brain.
If your numbers are correct, at least 30% of ads in circulation at any given time will never be presented to me. I don't use Facebook or Twitter, and neither appeals to me. Actually, as a general rule, none of the social web sies and services are of interest to me.
Yes, Windows does have a hosts file, and this can be modified by a user with local admin rights. I expect content providers to eventually serve ads from their domain. They will move the targeting to the web server. We will still be tracked, and it will just be the server that asks the ad network for a targeted ad that is then served to you from the same domain. Right now, we can use the hosts file to manage much of the ad content, because they are served from a different domain from the content we want to see. We won't be able to do this once the HREF domain is the same for both. Ad blocking may then move to a filtering mechanism provided by a proxy server that analyzes and changes everything as the browser asks for page content. We may even subscribe to a proxy service in place of deploying our own.
Frankly, we shouldn't be blowing money on trips to the moon, Mars, or anywhere else not within Ionosphere. All that funding should be directed to more earthly endeavors. The exception is the research that leads technology and understanding that allows to put satellites up there. NASA's funding would be better spent on advancing green-themed initiatives so that we can maybe remain on this planet longer.
I very much have a social calendar and don't have to clear it to watch anything, because I have a DVR. Oh, I am at least able to post here. Yes, I know you were joking.
Dear music industry and companies trying to fix something that's not in need,
The CD is NOT a broken method of distribution. While physical distribution has had and will continue having to give way to online sales through services such as iTunes, replacing CDs with something that still requires a person to get off their ass and venture in to the brick-n-mortor world isn't going to increase sales in this space.
I only buy CDs and then immediately rip them to MP3s for listening at home and via my iPod. I buy CDs for a couple of reasons. The main reason is that I always have it in the closet for ripping again in the format of my choice in the event I need to do so. I also like getting something I can touch when I fork money over for something that's not purely a service.
Distributing anything on flash memory in place of much cheaper and environmentally friendly optical discs is irresponsible. Plus, it makes no sense financially in my mind for a company to elect the particular method covered by this article.
I too preferred Robotica, and I wish it would make a come back. Battlebots is mainly about the fight and damage and less about bot design and operator skill. I kind of equate Battlebots to soap opera style wrestling and Robotica to a chess match. Robot Wars is/was the worst, because the house bots always got involved which ruined it for me even though the studio audience seemed to like it when the 2 ton Sarge or whatever the name of that monster house bot would roll in and pick up the competitor bots as if they were a feather.
Slashdot Mirror
Broken Window Fallacy
While somewhat similar, not replacing the delivery guy with a robot isn't the same thing as protecting the window repairman by breaking windows. Now, one could argue that developing and installing windows equipped with non-breakable glass puts some window repairman out of work in a similar manner in the long-term. Unlike the delivery guy, the window repairman probably isn't just repairing windows. He likely is also installing, replacing through upgrades and as prompted by age, and maintaining windows much of the time. The delivery guy is doing one thing, delivering packages.
Some would argue that the out-of-work delivery guy can just be trained for and move into a role associated with the drone such as design, maintenance, sales, and logistical support. While it is true that some of them can move to jobs created by the drone roll-out, all won't be capable of learning and understanding what is needed. Plus, there is "never" a one-for-one job replacement as processes are automated. A big reason why businesses automate is to reduce costs through reduction of human labor. Big Business isn't likely to knowingly replace the cost of human-based delivery with an equal or greater cost associated with operating the delivery-by-drone program. With reduced costs, budgets may not even support the creation and existence of a job for every unemployed delivery guy that pays a livable, let alone, comperable wage.
That big, brown truck is operated by a human and, thus, makes for the need to employ one. Society needs for business to need human labor, and moves like this one by Amazon is reducing this need. A side from this, a damn "intelligent" UAV isn't going to be as versitile as a human. Sure, the delivery drone isn't ever going to replace all delivery people. I'd rather it not replace any of them, so we can avoid losing yet more jobs.
Incorrect, we can all profit, just not at insane amounts. I like lemons but can't grow them in my climate but you can and I have something you want. We trade, we both profit. That is unless you got greedy and squeezed all the lemons before hand and just sold me the rind without telling. Then took the liquid and sold lemonade to other people.
That is not profiting and merely is trading two things of value. Let's say I paid $1000 dollars to plant, grow, pick, and package those lemons. Let's also say that you paid $800 to get that widget I need. If we trade, you have gained $200, and I have lost $200.
> Is there no end to the evil caused by liberals?
> If they're not trying to destroy the economy by introducing socialism, they're trying to destroy society by seeking the maximisation of profit!
Uh, you apparently have forgotten a few things. An ecomony is merely a system made possible by the ongoing exchange of something of value. This system tends to be made more flexible through monetary units. If anything, that Liberal you seem to dislike would rather minimize profit by the few to allow for more redistribution of wealth to the many.
> If I buy a loaf of bread for $1, who gains and who loses? I lose $1 and gain a loaf of bread. The baker gains $1 and loses a load of bread.
You have failed to make reference to the key part in my two statements, profit. There is a "finite" amount of money in the economy at any given time. This is much like energy and its place within the universe. Energy and money can only move around. There is no way that everyone and every company can take profit since this would need for more money to exist than what actually exists.
As for your baker...
The baker has a true cost associated with getting that loaf to the market and through its sell that must be covered by his or her pricing. The true cost is more complex than materials and labor. He or she also likely has a desire to earn a profit. In an ideal market, the baker would sell the loaf at cost-plus-profit with the pricing in line with the customer's buying power. If his total overhead is $1, he makes no profit on a loaf sold at $1. If, on the other hand, his cost is $0.50, he's earned quite the profit.
Let's say his cost rises and/or the customer can no longer pay $1 for a loaf of bread. Let's also say he is too attached to the profit of 50 cents on the dollar he's had to-date. So, what does the baker do? He finds a way to cut his costs. Sometimes this achieved through improvements in efficiencies that that doesn't impact others. Now, I'd argue that all change has impact. He could skimp or otherwise change the recipe in such a way that lowers quality. Who loses to allow the baker to gain? The customer. Let's say he choses to cut bakery staff to reduce costs so that he can gain. Who loses? The workers and anyone dependent on the workers' income lose. The society also loses, because the workers have less or no money to spend. Society might also lose further by having to pay for social safety net services to be used by the workers until the income can be replaced. Let's say the baker raises the price of the loaf to protect his profit. Who loses here? The customer and quite possibly society again. Let's say the baker choses to not pay his suppliers, landlord, and/or for utilties to reduce his costs. Who loses? The company that has been shorted loses, and their employees might lose in time due to the company's drop in revenue.
Gains and losses aren't always measurable in currency. Lowering product and service quality to maintain or increase gain also has a corresponding loss. Examples of correlated gain and loss are available through out our economy at all levels and life in general. Some gains by one are so great that the burden of a corresponding loss is felt by many. I don't want to step on another to get ahead. A person or company that is gaining more than they are losing are stepping on someone to get ahead.
I block ads, because they lessen too much the user experience. Early on, ads weren't a nuisance, really, because we were only subjected to mostly static banner ads. Ads have evolved to be much more active employing animation, video, and/or audio. They have also gotten larger and incorporate other nuisance-causing tactics like page-over and content-shifting mechanisms to increase impressions. The videos in particular, especially the auto-run videos are the most annoying to me and resource demanding. Ads using audio are the runner-up. I am often listening to music through the computer as I work at the computer, so the audio interferes with this. No, I am not listing to ad-supported streaming services. I actually buy CDs and listen to the ripped MP3s I've created from them.
I wish we'd move away from the free, ad-supported, and data-sharing business model and find a way for the content and services to be pay-access-only without subscriptions. Yes, I do realize that this means many sites and services, especially those catering to a niche, will be lost. I do know that some are subsidized by revenue earned elsewhere. In the end, I may decide the loss isn't worth the improvement in user experience gained through the removal of ads or at least the pull-back of ads. Society is already paying indirectly for all this "free" stuff, because we are paying for something that funds the marketing budgets that are buying the ad space.
That often is my gripe. Too many companies and executives aren't satisfied with making a reasonable profit and keeping good people employed. Instead, they want to pursue unreasonable profit and goals with a shortsighted mindset and no concern for how such a business strategy is to affect their employees and society as a whole.
We all can't profit. One's gain is only made possible by another's loss.
I did run for a long time at with a similar solution. I did this up until I installed an ad-blocker for the first time back over the summer. I used the HOSTS file to point a long list of domains to a Linux box on my network that served a page through Apache via the 404 error. The error occured, because the ad's URL was never valid when applied to my server. The page used JavaScript to match the iFrame's parent's background color and showed "AD BLOCKED". While this didn't work for all ads, it did for many and improved my experience.
It doesn't matter if Yahoo is or isn't a big player. They aren't the only player looking for methods to combat ad-blocking, and moves like this will be made by others in time. Even if this specific approach hasn't been thought of by anyone else, the press is sharing the concept with the world more and more with each new article.
Measuring true cost isn't always easy. I suppose measuring true value is hard as well. Think long-term cost and value. Labor is just part of the cost. Quality of work can be a cost when it is low and convey value when it is high. I can go on and on about aspects like this that should be measured and considered sufficiently by a business when they are planning staffing strategies. I will say that a business that sees an employee as nothing more than a dispensible warm body acting as a means to revenue and, thus, profit should expect said employee to care less even when not caring goes against his or her nature.
My company does bill me out at something like $149/hr as for out-of-scope work. This rate is meant to cover the costs of the back-end people and processes that supposedly support my role. There are standard rates that apply to other resources. I bet never more than 1/5 of the billed rate is being paid entirely to the one person doing the work requested by the customer.
I do understand that contractors are paid high hourly rates. I suppose much of this is meant to cover the risk of down-time and that customers must pay for this to avoid the cost of having a regular employee. Some of the rates are also to cover the contractor's travel by car costs and other incidentals.
...and you are doing what [as a one worker vendor] for $125 per hour?
How do you propose society manage the kids that don't have parents or guardians that care enough to get the kid into and kept in one of the many private schools that would exist and fit the kid's educational needs? Are you going to step in to help these kids? Probably not. How would you manage the kid's need to get to and from school even when the private school that fits is located across town? Are you going to give these kids a ride to their school? Probably not.
A public school system can and certainly does generally remove many of the burdens of educating our children. It can also accomplish this at real cost, not cost-plus-profit. It seems to me that the private sector normally operates with earning a profit as the highest priority. There are and will always be many kids that come into the world that would have to go it alone if not for society providing assistance through programs paid for by someone else. It doesn't matter if it tax-derived or private dollars or paid for through higher prices charged to those that can pay. These kids and those that got lucky at birth all are society's future. I believe it is in society's best interest to do what society can to prepare every kid, within reason, for said future.
So, let's say government does get out of the business of running schools and needs to only focus on regulating all of the existing and new private schools. Might it just be possible that the cost of regulation could be pretty high? A government-run public school system doesn't need the same level of oversight and regulating given that the system likely is as it specifies. Consequently, the cost of the self-oversight and self-regulation would be lower. In your system, the tax payer is still paying for the education of every kid through scholorships[I read vouchers] and also paying to regulate where they hadn't needed before. Government probably is also still funding much of the transportation costs since someone must pay to get the kids to and from school.
Again, I believe it is in society's best interest to do what society can to prepare every kid, within reason, for the future. I believe the better prepared a kid is, the less likely the kid is to be burden to society down the road. Burdens of all types cost money and, in many cases, more than what society would pay through the public school system. Just consider the costs associated with policing, prosecution, and imprisoning.
You seem to be responding to something for which I didn't advocate. I believe parents should be expected to and to actually raise their kids. This is separate from the approach, whatever it happens to be, taken in a school setting to educate a kid. Parents can still contribute to the kid's learning even when we have a public school system, and they should since there is so much to know about life that can never be covered completely in any State-defined curriculum.
A problem with your approach is that a parent can only employ your so-called solution for his or her own kids. He or she can't also send someone else's kids to a private school. Yet, these other kids are also to be a part of society's future and, potentially, shaping it in a significant way. So, the better approach is to address situations such as this textbook one in Texas so that the majority of kids learn what's right and real and not just the few that, purely by chance, were born into a situation that supported the attending of a private school.
Matt Damon might still be useful. When did Good Will Hunting come out?
That was my thought. If possible, I would disable the wireless NIC, and I would not have the wired NIC connected.
Shooting would be a problem when bad intel results in a raid of the wrong place. Plus, a dead bad guy can't assist the investigation until we can download the brain.
If your numbers are correct, at least 30% of ads in circulation at any given time will never be presented to me. I don't use Facebook or Twitter, and neither appeals to me. Actually, as a general rule, none of the social web sies and services are of interest to me.
Yes, Windows does have a hosts file, and this can be modified by a user with local admin rights. I expect content providers to eventually serve ads from their domain. They will move the targeting to the web server. We will still be tracked, and it will just be the server that asks the ad network for a targeted ad that is then served to you from the same domain. Right now, we can use the hosts file to manage much of the ad content, because they are served from a different domain from the content we want to see. We won't be able to do this once the HREF domain is the same for both. Ad blocking may then move to a filtering mechanism provided by a proxy server that analyzes and changes everything as the browser asks for page content. We may even subscribe to a proxy service in place of deploying our own.
My money is on a near removal of mouse and keypress based control in favor of voice control. Just tell Cortana what you want to do.
Frankly, we shouldn't be blowing money on trips to the moon, Mars, or anywhere else not within Ionosphere. All that funding should be directed to more earthly endeavors. The exception is the research that leads technology and understanding that allows to put satellites up there. NASA's funding would be better spent on advancing green-themed initiatives so that we can maybe remain on this planet longer.
Later,
-Slashdot Junky
I very much have a social calendar and don't have to clear it to watch anything, because I have a DVR. Oh, I am at least able to post here. Yes, I know you were joking.
Later,
Slashdot Junky
Dear music industry and companies trying to fix something that's not in need,
The CD is NOT a broken method of distribution. While physical distribution has had and will continue having to give way to online sales through services such as iTunes, replacing CDs with something that still requires a person to get off their ass and venture in to the brick-n-mortor world isn't going to increase sales in this space.
I only buy CDs and then immediately rip them to MP3s for listening at home and via my iPod. I buy CDs for a couple of reasons. The main reason is that I always have it in the closet for ripping again in the format of my choice in the event I need to do so. I also like getting something I can touch when I fork money over for something that's not purely a service.
Distributing anything on flash memory in place of much cheaper and environmentally friendly optical discs is irresponsible. Plus, it makes no sense financially in my mind for a company to elect the particular method covered by this article.
Later,
Slashdot Junky
I too preferred Robotica, and I wish it would make a come back. Battlebots is mainly about the fight and damage and less about bot design and operator skill. I kind of equate Battlebots to soap opera style wrestling and Robotica to a chess match. Robot Wars is/was the worst, because the house bots always got involved which ruined it for me even though the studio audience seemed to like it when the 2 ton Sarge or whatever the name of that monster house bot would roll in and pick up the competitor bots as if they were a feather.