So to me if we want to advance humanity and get towards the post scarcity society we need to get people out of menial jobs like the factories and farms and mining etc. More automation in these jobs would increase quality of life and reduce costs of goods. Yet you try and help people like that and they go and form unions and strike and generally get annoyed at your attempts to improve society.
Or they spend their life in front of soap operas and reality TV shows.
It isn't the scale that is the critical factor. It is the capabilities. Why do we not have (currently) automobile manufacturing factory factories? I.e. why not are the elements of automobile factory manufacturing factories rolling out of factories.
So what you're saying is that every thing went perfect right out of the gate with every R&D project you've ever worked on? There weren't any teething problems or unexpected interactions/consequences/eventualities?
As an airplane homebuilder, the rule of thumb is that you can expect to build three of everything. The first is to understand what it is you're building. The second is to get the skills right. The third is to make a viable airplane piece. I would expect that in pushing hard against the envelope of materials engineering as these guys are, that they would have more failures than they have to overcome the learning curve.
And education is always expensive anyway. Whether your paying an instructor, or trashing raw materials on your way to understanding, you've got to pay for understanding and insight.
If you mean that no Volvo will ever kill anyone. Maybe you can shield the people inside, but IMO it doesn't count unless it won't kill anyone else either, including people in other cars, pedestrians and cyclists.
Obviously, you've never owned a GM. Hard for a car to kill anyone when the mechanic has all its parts spread across a repair bench.
On the drive home yesterday, I top the hill on I-40 at Harrison Ave as I headed from RTP to Cary, NC. You can see at least a half mile ahead at that point, because the highway straightens into a valley then up a steep long hill. The highway is 4 lanes wide, each one is completely full, traffic is progressing a 10mph, and there is less than 8ft between each card.
Think about cramming that many RADAR emitters in that small of an area. To be useful, the RADAR needs to detect cars at a distance. Detecting any usable signal from the resulting noise would be a wireless engineer's worst nightmare on steroids.
Cause he was taking photos of dead things - buildings. Whoever was taking those old photos was taking photos of living people. Living people doing "important things". Meaningful things. Things worth being preserved for posterity.
Those photos don't contrast - they clash.
Umm? You might want to look up the definition of "contrast".
Yeah, it is, and for the same reason. Microsoft has had to add in so many exceptions and workarounds to keep previously poorly written code working, "Windows isn't done until Lotus won't run" types of special checks pushed by marketing, and just plain stupid programming. It is the same mentality share by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. "We can force Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to give loans to people with bad credit, damn the torpedoes." When you start special casing every event, things go to hell in a handbasket really fast.
It's notable that when the income tax was implemented, the claimed intent was that only people wealthy enough to already have an accountant would even need to file. Unfortunately, they didn't have the foresight to pin the tax brackets to inflation, so future politicians could sit back and let the tax slowly creep over everyone without taking the blame.
Never attribute to stupidity what is blatant, obvious and repeated malice.
In North Carolina, they implemented a small and temporary 1% sales tax. Decades later, the tax is 7.5% and the state has now given counties the power of implementing more sales taxes.
You could solve the problem you just described with a simple cost-of-living deduction.
How do you provide a "cost-of-living" deduction on a tax system paid at time of sale?
You give everyone a refund of the taxes they would have paid on necessities. In practice, given a nominal rate of 10% and a poverty line of $12,000, everyone gets a check for $100 each month. Warren Buffet would probably not even bother to cash his. MDillenbeck's mother would use it to keep her family fed. Even if she only made $6,000/yr, she would get the $100 check. It would be a form of welfare, yes, but a just one and well worth it to keep the system simple.
Now, visit www.fairtax.org and learn why you shouldn't be commenting on www.fairtax.org until you read about the Fair Tax, preferably from someplace such as www.fairtax.org.
I doubt that most will actually bother to look it up, so I'll do the leg work this time.
The Fair Tax plan would have the government send a monthly check to every citizen that would equal the amount of tax that would be paid on necessities, using the current poverty level index as the benchmark. Now the poor guy isn't paying taxes on basic necessities. If he wanted to spend his money on a series of bad shoes instead of saving for a good pair, that's his option.
What happens if the company you work for supplies you with a car? My brother-in-law was supplied with a company car, even though he never worked outside the factory. Does that count as income? What if the company buys you lunch, or just subsidizes the corporate lunchroom? Doesn't that offset what you would have to pay for market rates for lunch? What if you are a salesman that entertains clients in your home?
I like the Fair Tax, because it erases most of these gray areas. You pay a tax for all retail items. Everyone receives a monthly check to insure that no one is paying taxes on basic necessities. Normal citizens don't have to become accountants for two weeks out of every year. Things are just simpler. 'Course, it will never happen and the current code will never be simplified for two reasons:
1) People will KNOW how much they pay in taxes. People don't really no right now, because the money is taken before they ever see it. Ask the average American how much they paid in Federal taxes last year, and the only thing they will know is how much of a refund they got. There would be a popular uprising if people really felt how much they were actually paying.
2) Congress ain't about to willingly give up the power they have. They can pretty much jerk the populace around as they please with the current system. It is complicated enough that the rich (which is what the Congress is drawn from) don't really pay any meaningful taxes. They've got the loopholes for themselves, and can afford to pay people to make sure they fit through them.
even if it was patented and the patent expired, there's no guarantee anyone else would want to pick it up and start manufacturing it. It could have easily been overlooked because the original patent holder didn't make any money off it (until now).
And even if all the information was leafletted at your local mall, there is still the issue of if anyone has the industrial resources to produce it. Just because you know how to do something doesn't mean you can do it in a profitable manner in and industrial scale. For instance, producing high-grade silicon wafers is theoretically simple 8*)
There was the "you and 600 of your closest friends" class. It was Psych 101, for me. It had one of the PhD candidates acting as an aid to give a presentation of what was clearly delineated in the book. The class was a waste of time.
There was the "watch the unintelligible professor mumble at the blackboard while scribbling stuff" class. I had the pleasure to sit through that for Calculus 3. I'm still not sure what all that scribbling on the board was. Very little of it looked like anything in the text book.
And who can forget the "professor is a complete moron" class. The class was supposed to be Argumentation and Logic, but I had to listen to racist dribble about how Nicole Simpson was a cheating whore and OJ should have cut her head off (Sorry for the US centric reference, but suffice it to say that it had nothing to do about argumentation or logic.)
Then there were the group project classes that were supposed to simulate real world working environments, except there was not project lead and no peer review. The result is that it was really a "big project for me, because I don't want these lamers busting my GPA" class.
All that said, like you I learned more from other students and books than from teachers. Giving more tech to the professors* will do nothing to increase the transfer of knowledge. It just gives the professors new toys to play with while continuing to ignore students.
*professors, not teachers. Teachers are a different animal, one that tries to convey rather than just present knowledge.
Doing the faction in terms of volume-over-distance is better in comparing fuel efficiency because it makes it obvious where to focus efforts in efficiency increases.
Not to discount your point, but WHO CARES?
The engineers care, because it is actually something they can affect. But the subset of the population that gives a flyin' flip basically ends there.
Now, who cares if we go changing how the data is presented? The >99% of the population that is not engineering vehicles for efficiency and would prefer not to have to suffer the trouble of reworking their deeply ingrained thinking of how mpg works. A's mpg is greater than B's mpg. Everybody understands what that means to within an order of magnitude, which suits their needs. Society at large won't be changing up just to satisfy a small group of nerds that have what they believe is aBetterWay.
If you're the CEO of an international energy conglomerate, you might end up with a multi-million dollar payout, only a few million a year in salary, and a job in Siberia. Poor Tony.
To back this up, as a developer it irks me to no end when a manager comes up to me and asks me to write a program from a design he wrote on a paper napkin over lunch at the Burger King.
First off, with as much money as he makes...eat lunch at a real restaurant!!
Second, my response is that you're going to get a crappy program unless you give a real design, or I do the job you want me to automate long enough from me to actually understand it. I CAN'T AUTOMATE WHAT I DON'T UNDERSTAND!! Finished. End of story.
I have a piece of work that I have to use everyday that was written by a web developer brought in to help "automate" my job. It is such a POS, that it makes the easy stuff hard, and completely ignores the hard stuff. It is not the developer's fault. He didn't understand what I was doing, and just flew off the handle, creating automation where he saw possibilities.
bberens is correct. The people who REALLY know the business, are the one that automate it (correctly).
2. we MUST do something DRASTIC AND IMMEDIATE to stop it
And where the hell did anyone propose that?
Let's see. There was Kyoto and Washington to begin with. Obama ran overseas with a bunch of other political leaders, so they could all do it at the same time. Al Gore proposed it in that fictional movie he created. That should get you started.
Slashdot Mirror
Really DIY baby monitor you consider complicated? Turn in that geek card.
Really? You think he was ever issued one?
How would he feel about people building their own airplanes?
So to me if we want to advance humanity and get towards the post scarcity society we need to get people out of menial jobs like the factories and farms and mining etc. More automation in these jobs would increase quality of life and reduce costs of goods.
Yet you try and help people like that and they go and form unions and strike and generally get annoyed at your attempts to improve society.
Or they spend their life in front of soap operas and reality TV shows.
It isn't the scale that is the critical factor. It is the capabilities. Why do we not have (currently) automobile manufacturing factory factories? I.e. why not are the elements of automobile factory manufacturing factories rolling out of factories.
Unions.
So what you're saying is that every thing went perfect right out of the gate with every R&D project you've ever worked on? There weren't any teething problems or unexpected interactions/consequences/eventualities?
As an airplane homebuilder, the rule of thumb is that you can expect to build three of everything. The first is to understand what it is you're building. The second is to get the skills right. The third is to make a viable airplane piece. I would expect that in pushing hard against the envelope of materials engineering as these guys are, that they would have more failures than they have to overcome the learning curve.
Yeah, but I can afford more hookers there.
And education is always expensive anyway. Whether your paying an instructor, or trashing raw materials on your way to understanding, you've got to pay for understanding and insight.
If you mean that no Volvo will ever kill anyone. Maybe you can shield the people inside, but IMO it doesn't count unless it won't kill anyone else either, including people in other cars, pedestrians and cyclists.
Obviously, you've never owned a GM. Hard for a car to kill anyone when the mechanic has all its parts spread across a repair bench.
On the drive home yesterday, I top the hill on I-40 at Harrison Ave as I headed from RTP to Cary, NC. You can see at least a half mile ahead at that point, because the highway straightens into a valley then up a steep long hill. The highway is 4 lanes wide, each one is completely full, traffic is progressing a 10mph, and there is less than 8ft between each card.
Think about cramming that many RADAR emitters in that small of an area. To be useful, the RADAR needs to detect cars at a distance. Detecting any usable signal from the resulting noise would be a wireless engineer's worst nightmare on steroids.
So, you're saying it is a 3yr old Ford?
That's funny. You obviously don't understand how the airline industry works.
You'll start with hotel amenities. You'll end with shoving them in like cattle and charging to ship their baggage.
Sure, anyone can get hold of the records.
http://www.surfacestations.org/
GIGO
Cause he was taking photos of dead things - buildings. Whoever was taking those old photos was taking photos of living people.
Living people doing "important things". Meaningful things. Things worth being preserved for posterity.
Those photos don't contrast - they clash.
Umm? You might want to look up the definition of "contrast".
Yeah, it is, and for the same reason. Microsoft has had to add in so many exceptions and workarounds to keep previously poorly written code working, "Windows isn't done until Lotus won't run" types of special checks pushed by marketing, and just plain stupid programming. It is the same mentality share by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. "We can force Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to give loans to people with bad credit, damn the torpedoes." When you start special casing every event, things go to hell in a handbasket really fast.
It's notable that when the income tax was implemented, the claimed intent was that only people wealthy enough to already have an accountant would even need to file. Unfortunately, they didn't have the foresight to pin the tax brackets to inflation, so future politicians could sit back and let the tax slowly creep over everyone without taking the blame.
Never attribute to stupidity what is blatant, obvious and repeated malice.
In North Carolina, they implemented a small and temporary 1% sales tax. Decades later, the tax is 7.5% and the state has now given counties the power of implementing more sales taxes.
You could solve the problem you just described with a simple cost-of-living deduction.
How do you provide a "cost-of-living" deduction on a tax system paid at time of sale?
You give everyone a refund of the taxes they would have paid on necessities. In practice, given a nominal rate of 10% and a poverty line of $12,000, everyone gets a check for $100 each month. Warren Buffet would probably not even bother to cash his. MDillenbeck's mother would use it to keep her family fed. Even if she only made $6,000/yr, she would get the $100 check. It would be a form of welfare, yes, but a just one and well worth it to keep the system simple.
Now, visit www.fairtax.org and learn why you shouldn't be commenting on www.fairtax.org until you read about the Fair Tax, preferably from someplace such as www.fairtax.org.
I doubt that most will actually bother to look it up, so I'll do the leg work this time.
The Fair Tax plan would have the government send a monthly check to every citizen that would equal the amount of tax that would be paid on necessities, using the current poverty level index as the benchmark. Now the poor guy isn't paying taxes on basic necessities. If he wanted to spend his money on a series of bad shoes instead of saving for a good pair, that's his option.
What happens if the company you work for supplies you with a car? My brother-in-law was supplied with a company car, even though he never worked outside the factory. Does that count as income? What if the company buys you lunch, or just subsidizes the corporate lunchroom? Doesn't that offset what you would have to pay for market rates for lunch? What if you are a salesman that entertains clients in your home?
I like the Fair Tax, because it erases most of these gray areas. You pay a tax for all retail items. Everyone receives a monthly check to insure that no one is paying taxes on basic necessities. Normal citizens don't have to become accountants for two weeks out of every year. Things are just simpler. 'Course, it will never happen and the current code will never be simplified for two reasons:
1) People will KNOW how much they pay in taxes. People don't really no right now, because the money is taken before they ever see it. Ask the average American how much they paid in Federal taxes last year, and the only thing they will know is how much of a refund they got. There would be a popular uprising if people really felt how much they were actually paying.
2) Congress ain't about to willingly give up the power they have. They can pretty much jerk the populace around as they please with the current system. It is complicated enough that the rich (which is what the Congress is drawn from) don't really pay any meaningful taxes. They've got the loopholes for themselves, and can afford to pay people to make sure they fit through them.
Here is something more unbelievable. The software that the company is lobbying for is little more than a glorified spreadsheet.
Call your representative about the Fair Tax, and lets remove the need to make every citizen a friggin' accountant.
even if it was patented and the patent expired, there's no guarantee anyone else would want to pick it up and start manufacturing it. It could have easily been overlooked because the original patent holder didn't make any money off it (until now).
And even if all the information was leafletted at your local mall, there is still the issue of if anyone has the industrial resources to produce it. Just because you know how to do something doesn't mean you can do it in a profitable manner in and industrial scale. For instance, producing high-grade silicon wafers is theoretically simple 8*)
Why is there an open forced access port/back door?
Have you ever forgotten a password? What are they supposed to do when the typical user forgets their password? Send out a tech at $75/hour?
Verizon can't hold the typical user's hand, unless they hold onto the typical user's hand.
You missed out, Yvanhoe.
There was the "you and 600 of your closest friends" class. It was Psych 101, for me. It had one of the PhD candidates acting as an aid to give a presentation of what was clearly delineated in the book. The class was a waste of time.
There was the "watch the unintelligible professor mumble at the blackboard while scribbling stuff" class. I had the pleasure to sit through that for Calculus 3. I'm still not sure what all that scribbling on the board was. Very little of it looked like anything in the text book.
And who can forget the "professor is a complete moron" class. The class was supposed to be Argumentation and Logic, but I had to listen to racist dribble about how Nicole Simpson was a cheating whore and OJ should have cut her head off (Sorry for the US centric reference, but suffice it to say that it had nothing to do about argumentation or logic.)
Then there were the group project classes that were supposed to simulate real world working environments, except there was not project lead and no peer review. The result is that it was really a "big project for me, because I don't want these lamers busting my GPA" class.
All that said, like you I learned more from other students and books than from teachers. Giving more tech to the professors* will do nothing to increase the transfer of knowledge. It just gives the professors new toys to play with while continuing to ignore students.
*professors, not teachers. Teachers are a different animal, one that tries to convey rather than just present knowledge.
Doing the faction in terms of volume-over-distance is better in comparing fuel efficiency because it makes it obvious where to focus efforts in efficiency increases.
Not to discount your point, but WHO CARES?
The engineers care, because it is actually something they can affect. But the subset of the population that gives a flyin' flip basically ends there.
Now, who cares if we go changing how the data is presented? The >99% of the population that is not engineering vehicles for efficiency and would prefer not to have to suffer the trouble of reworking their deeply ingrained thinking of how mpg works. A's mpg is greater than B's mpg. Everybody understands what that means to within an order of magnitude, which suits their needs. Society at large won't be changing up just to satisfy a small group of nerds that have what they believe is aBetterWay.
If you're the CEO of an international energy conglomerate, you might end up with a multi-million dollar payout, only a few million a year in salary, and a job in Siberia. Poor Tony.
To back this up, as a developer it irks me to no end when a manager comes up to me and asks me to write a program from a design he wrote on a paper napkin over lunch at the Burger King.
First off, with as much money as he makes...eat lunch at a real restaurant!!
Second, my response is that you're going to get a crappy program unless you give a real design, or I do the job you want me to automate long enough from me to actually understand it. I CAN'T AUTOMATE WHAT I DON'T UNDERSTAND!! Finished. End of story.
I have a piece of work that I have to use everyday that was written by a web developer brought in to help "automate" my job. It is such a POS, that it makes the easy stuff hard, and completely ignores the hard stuff. It is not the developer's fault. He didn't understand what I was doing, and just flew off the handle, creating automation where he saw possibilities.
bberens is correct. The people who REALLY know the business, are the one that automate it (correctly).
2. we MUST do something DRASTIC AND IMMEDIATE to stop it
And where the hell did anyone propose that?
Let's see. There was Kyoto and Washington to begin with. Obama ran overseas with a bunch of other political leaders, so they could all do it at the same time. Al Gore proposed it in that fictional movie he created. That should get you started.