When you take away people's jobs, they have two options. Find a new job, or become homeless.
There is also a humane third option: the Basic Income Guarantee, or "negative income tax", which preserves work incentives by providing everybody just enough redistributed commonwealth to meet their needs.
This is an idea put forth by many nobel laureate economists as the best way to eliminate poverty today (in 1st-world countries at least), and will be the ONLY 'fair' way as increased robotic automation efficiencies puts millions more people out of work. We're not that far away from driver-less trucks & cabs, pilot-less airliners, self-checkout / self-stocking Wal-Marts, etc. There will be fewer and fewer service-level shitjobs that require an expensive warm human body, and the disproportionate producitivy gains shouldn't be going to just the wealthy elite simply because they're lucky enough to be capital owners before the shit hit the fan.
I got tired of micromanaging and losing bookmarks long ago, so now I just use Google to store my bookmarks and use my brain to store the short keywords that matter.
Not keeping tons of bookmarks is also a good way to reduce info-overload: you only remember the stuff that matters. No more feeling compelled to check up on hundreds of old links (and then cleaning house of the dead ones yet again).
Simply because the torrent websites no longer have to host the.torrent files, or run the tracker, doesn't mean that the RIAA/MPAA can't still sue the domain owner(s) for technically offering pointers to pointers (unless you're untouchable in, say, the netherlands). So BT is now a little more distributed, like eDonkey, but that didn't stop ShareReactor, ShareConnector, or FileNexus from being shutdown either.
What's needed is some kind of distributed HTTP overnet that works; that can handle dynamic content semi-intelligently, and MUCH faster than freenet/frost sites.
Anybody's who ever played with a pedometer knows how easy it is to shake it to fake footsteps. True couch potatos -- especially fat kids whose parents force this on them -- would just cheat using by shaking their shoes to keep watching TV without having to move the ass. Bigger arms tho...
You know why newspapers are written in multiple columns, instead of flowing to fill the page? It's faster, easier reading when your eyes only have a short distance to dart to get to the next line.
This is the #1 (valid) reason people still use fixed width designs when they could use a completely liquid layout instead. It's hell to read a 100% width article on a large monitor even after blowing up the fontsize. The preferred solution is to use use min-/max-width CSS.
MSFT being in the DOW 30, and the bankers being old establishment-types might be a large part of the reason. The recent potential exploits in the news that made Firefox look 2% as bad as IE was enough justification to ban the 'commie' software.
If you want free as in speech & FREE as in beer (some people use capitalization to differentiate), then you'll just have to wait for the heretical nanotechnology which makes that possible.
You just need four things:
Energy to make the beer: from FREE solar from arrays you self-assembled from free plans.
Matter which composes the object, which in this case is almost entirely recycled H2O along with the component molecules that make up the other minor ingredients (like hops); freely available in your trash, the atmosphere, and in the common earth beneath your feet.
Design of your beer preference: you need to make or download a FREE/free molecular blueprint of just one representative microliter of your favorite beer (or, you can warez budweiser.3dobject.tgz if you like pisswater).
Combine with Molecular Assembler not regulated by the Manufacturing Industry Association of America == MMmmmmmm... Free Beer.
We know where this is all heading, Tom Hanks gave us a ugly example of in Castaway (does anyone NOT remember the glaring American Express placement?)
You mean Acme Express? In my version of the movie the blatant product placement was removed by using a fancy Edit Decision script that overlays, blurs, skips, etc. (not really, but THAT'S where this headed if it gets worse.) So, the christians can download their "anti sex&violence" edits, just as everybody else can download there "anti product placement" and "anti JarJar" edits.:)
You don't see the problem with that? DVD releases of television shows are a huge cash-cow
I have a problem with ANY cashcow, but especially the artificially scarce variety. "Intellectual property" is a perpetual monopoly which doesn't play nice with free markets (or promoting progress for that matter).
I'm paying TimeWarner $120/mo for cable+internet, and I too view "illegal downloads" as part of the package.
I simply have Azureus setup to monitor the torrent RSS feed @ btefnet (which, oddly enough, is down right now for the first time in a long time), and automatically download a few shows that match my filters: The Daily Show, Enterprise, Penn&Teller's Bullshit!, Stargate, etc.
Usually the shows were encoded from an HDTV source, so it looks much better on my monitor than on my old tivo-less 27" SDTV.
Next thing we'll hear the MPAA going after porn torrents... I mean assuming they're out there.
That they are. The "suprnova" of the porn torrent sites is Empornium. Pro: leeching is limited by ratio and you cant just create new leech accounts, so the download rates usually saturate your connection. Con: the admins are arrogant assholes.
Why... just the other day I invented an amazing shaving razor that utilizes relatively simple nanotechnology to keep the blade sharp for decades. This will save millions of people billions of dollars and much hassle! I plan to bring it to market once I get Gillette's pesky hitmen off my tail.
Instantaneous back/forward (with mouse-rocker) navigation is one of the major killer features that has kept me using Opera as my main browser for years now. And if the tab switching and general snappiness of Firefox v1.1 has also improved to Opera's level, as some attest, then I can ditch Opera for good...
...well, as soon as Firefox gets the one last feature I can't live without: opera-like image AND text zooming (+/-), instead of just text scaling (Ctrl+/-).
Yep. That's it. I can live without the rest of the kitchen sink.
If you provide something useful to someone, they pay you.
Yes, but my point was that the percentage of (economically) "useless" people will only increase as automation efficiency increases, so there would be no reason to trade with them.
As fewer and fewer humans are necessary to do the REAL work that supplies most of mankinds "unlimited" needs & wants, there's a choice to be made: either you leave the less fortunate to starve, and eventually revolt, so you can enjoy your righteously deserved disproportionate wealth (dog-eat-dog), or you can spread the wealth in the form of a living wage. There's still an incentive, though, for the technologically unemployed "useless" people to find some way of providing unique value in order to get more than just sustenance.
Abundance changes everything... Capitalism doesn't work well with it (see: "intellectual property").
A better system would be to provide a living wage (as opposed to the welfare dirty word) to those people whose jobs are increasingly replaced by automation and cheap labor. If you're one of the lucky few who still does USEFUL work in exchange for something, then you get extra incentive gravy for your WANTS, while those not so lucky/smart/quickly-adaptable get enough redistributed gravy to meet their NEEDS. Nobody should have to live in mortal fear of losing their job (unless you're one of those asshole sadists who believes that keeping the serfs suffering is a great motivator and makes it easier to keep control (and if so, fuck you)).
Robotics, IA/AI, nanotechnology, and other exponentially advancing technology will inevitably lead to this kind of world. "It's different this time". We can either choose a humane leisure society fed by intelligent automated production & fair redistribution, or we can choose to continue the greedy ratrace to the bottom as the wealth gap widens.
(I'm sure a lot of people who worship at the alter of dog-eat-dog hyper-capitalism and "globalism" will just write me off as some kind of idealistic-socialist-commie-hippie or whatever. Oh, and I am one of the "lucky" ones, but I've also got a conscience.)
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There is also a humane third option: the Basic Income Guarantee, or "negative income tax", which preserves work incentives by providing everybody just enough redistributed commonwealth to meet their needs.
This is an idea put forth by many nobel laureate economists as the best way to eliminate poverty today (in 1st-world countries at least), and will be the ONLY 'fair' way as increased robotic automation efficiencies puts millions more people out of work. We're not that far away from driver-less trucks & cabs, pilot-less airliners, self-checkout / self-stocking Wal-Marts, etc. There will be fewer and fewer service-level shitjobs that require an expensive warm human body, and the disproportionate producitivy gains shouldn't be going to just the wealthy elite simply because they're lucky enough to be capital owners before the shit hit the fan.
Not keeping tons of bookmarks is also a good way to reduce info-overload: you only remember the stuff that matters. No more feeling compelled to check up on hundreds of old links (and then cleaning house of the dead ones yet again).
What's needed is some kind of distributed HTTP overnet that works; that can handle dynamic content semi-intelligently, and MUCH faster than freenet/frost sites.
Anybody's who ever played with a pedometer knows how easy it is to shake it to fake footsteps. True couch potatos -- especially fat kids whose parents force this on them -- would just cheat using by shaking their shoes to keep watching TV without having to move the ass. Bigger arms tho...
It's just like with kids these days - we don't want to hurt their precious feelings or self-esteem, so... everybody's a (pussified) winner!
I thought that was the definition of the "free trade" euphemism, where only the U.S. is allowed to be a hypocrite.
He meant to say `very low lumens per watt efficiency.'
I was having a flashback of something similar. :)
This is the #1 (valid) reason people still use fixed width designs when they could use a completely liquid layout instead. It's hell to read a 100% width article on a large monitor even after blowing up the fontsize. The preferred solution is to use use min-/max-width CSS.
MSFT being in the DOW 30, and the bankers being old establishment-types might be a large part of the reason. The recent potential exploits in the news that made Firefox look 2% as bad as IE was enough justification to ban the 'commie' software.
I don't understand why anyone would wish death on our glorious president. That's too merciful. Return of the pretzels. Muhahah.
You just need four things:
You mean Acme Express? In my version of the movie the blatant product placement was removed by using a fancy Edit Decision script that overlays, blurs, skips, etc. (not really, but THAT'S where this headed if it gets worse.) So, the christians can download their "anti sex&violence" edits, just as everybody else can download there "anti product placement" and "anti JarJar" edits. :)
So you're one of the 2000 toadies in the #bt IRC channel eh?
I have a problem with ANY cashcow, but especially the artificially scarce variety. "Intellectual property" is a perpetual monopoly which doesn't play nice with free markets (or promoting progress for that matter).
So... alternatives?
I simply have Azureus setup to monitor the torrent RSS feed @ btefnet (which, oddly enough, is down right now for the first time in a long time), and automatically download a few shows that match my filters: The Daily Show, Enterprise, Penn&Teller's Bullshit!, Stargate, etc.
Usually the shows were encoded from an HDTV source, so it looks much better on my monitor than on my old tivo-less 27" SDTV.
That they are. The "suprnova" of the porn torrent sites is Empornium. Pro: leeching is limited by ratio and you cant just create new leech accounts, so the download rates usually saturate your connection. Con: the admins are arrogant assholes.
Why... just the other day I invented an amazing shaving razor that utilizes relatively simple nanotechnology to keep the blade sharp for decades. This will save millions of people billions of dollars and much hassle! I plan to bring it to market once I get Gillette's pesky hitmen off my tail.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Yeah, Ctrl-Shift-N/M, but it's way too slow to be usable; takes about 3 seconds to zoom in/out each step (and I've got 2GHz to burn.)
YES! Finally!
Instantaneous back/forward (with mouse-rocker) navigation is one of the major killer features that has kept me using Opera as my main browser for years now. And if the tab switching and general snappiness of Firefox v1.1 has also improved to Opera's level, as some attest, then I can ditch Opera for good...
Yep. That's it. I can live without the rest of the kitchen sink.
Yes, but my point was that the percentage of (economically) "useless" people will only increase as automation efficiency increases, so there would be no reason to trade with them.
As fewer and fewer humans are necessary to do the REAL work that supplies most of mankinds "unlimited" needs & wants, there's a choice to be made: either you leave the less fortunate to starve, and eventually revolt, so you can enjoy your righteously deserved disproportionate wealth (dog-eat-dog), or you can spread the wealth in the form of a living wage. There's still an incentive, though, for the technologically unemployed "useless" people to find some way of providing unique value in order to get more than just sustenance.
Abundance changes everything... Capitalism doesn't work well with it (see: "intellectual property").
A better system would be to provide a living wage (as opposed to the welfare dirty word) to those people whose jobs are increasingly replaced by automation and cheap labor. If you're one of the lucky few who still does USEFUL work in exchange for something, then you get extra incentive gravy for your WANTS, while those not so lucky/smart/quickly-adaptable get enough redistributed gravy to meet their NEEDS. Nobody should have to live in mortal fear of losing their job (unless you're one of those asshole sadists who believes that keeping the serfs suffering is a great motivator and makes it easier to keep control (and if so, fuck you)).
Robotics, IA/AI, nanotechnology, and other exponentially advancing technology will inevitably lead to this kind of world. "It's different this time". We can either choose a humane leisure society fed by intelligent automated production & fair redistribution, or we can choose to continue the greedy ratrace to the bottom as the wealth gap widens.
(I'm sure a lot of people who worship at the alter of dog-eat-dog hyper-capitalism and "globalism" will just write me off as some kind of idealistic-socialist-commie-hippie or whatever. Oh, and I am one of the "lucky" ones, but I've also got a conscience.)
DBDesigner4 is opensource and does arbitrary scaling just fine...