Then what they will be buying themselves, eventually, is civil war. People will not just sit quietly and starve to death or die of exposure when they get evicted because they have no income. They'll turn to crime to feed themselves and their families, and when things get bad enough, someone will rally them together and there will be armed conflict, insurrection against those that are oppressing them and leaving them to die; this is another pattern that repeats itself throughout human history as well: you shit on people's heads enough, they reach a point where all hell breaks loose. I for one believe that at least here in the U.S., and with any luck at all, other 1st-World countries, the government will see what's happening well in advance of things going too far, and will take steps to ensure that the average citizen is not left to fend for themselves. Additionally, while I firmly believe that there are corporations and people out there who really don't give a damn about people in general, so long as they get richer, I also firmly believe that there are companies, corporations, organizations, and people with lots of money who are pro-human, and will voluntarily ensure that workers are people in general are not left out in the cold. There is much evil in the world, but it's not a world entirely ruled by evil, either, there is enough good out there to keep things balanced.
You're not alone, friend. All these people with all their built-in distractions in their cars, giving them excuses to be poor drivers, are what are getting so-called 'self driving cars' eventually forced on us.
So that somehow sets precedent making it okay for, say, Comcast to delay or throttle Netflix packets, or CBS streaming video packets, because they're a competitor? Or to charge an extra fee to consumers so that trottling or delay doesn't happen?
The only 'implementation' of 'Net Neutrality' that is valid, is the one where no data packet gets prioritized or delayed any more than any other data packet. Pretending there's any other definition of 'net neutrality' is at best disingenuous. So far as the so-called 'investment' by ISPs is concerned, they're not 'investing', they're doing what they always have done: grossly 'overbooking' their network capacity, spin-doctoring advertised throughput speeds, and price-gouging everyone in the process, all in the name of more profits.
Welcome to the Trump Administration, everyone, where the average American is worthless chattel, and corporate America is all that matters. So far as this subject goes, hope you all enjoyed the Golden Age of the Internet, because it's now drawing to a close.
I know it's a cliche to say it, but if you outlaw guns, then only outlaws will have guns. People who want to shoot someone bad enough are going to get them anyway. It's a moot point regardless because everyone has a constitutional right to bear arms and the day that the Constitution is changed is the day we'll have bigger problems in this country than who does and does not get to own guns.
See this comment, for starters: https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...
Secondly, most people can shrug off merely paying a fine. Having to sit in a jail cell for a while has more impact and forces you to sit there and think about what put you there in the first place. This guy did something wilfully stupid and someone got injured because of it, and it was sheer luck that she wasn't killed because of it. That's why there's jail time involved. As someone else pointed out in another comment, he's damned lucky she didn't get killed, because if she had his life would be OVER, he'd be spending YEARS in prison. All because he couldn't be more responsible with his toy.
All SORTS of violent crime is highly preventable. Far more people are killed every year, for example, using pipes and clubs or other objects than are killed using "assault" rifles or ANY sort of rifle, shotgun, or other long gun. More people are killed with BARE HANDS than are killed by someone using any kind of long gun.
Exactly. Gun violence makes for better viewer ratings of the news shows, though, because it's more sensational. People who want to commit violent acts against other people will find ways and means to do it, up to and including their bare hands, regardless of how many 'weapons' you ban.
Well if you're going to be like that about it then you may as well advocate for banning any object that can be used as a weapon, which is essentially anything that's not nailed down to a stationary object. Additionally you'd have to outlaw people's bodies, since there are dozens of different martial arts that can be used to injure and kill people -- including just hands around someone's throat, preventing them from breathing.
I want to stop violence!
That's nice, Viriginia; but face it: You have to change hearts and minds to get people to stop treating other people like shit; taking away the implements that can be used for violent acts does nothing, and is just a knee-jerk reaction to the problem, not a well-thought-out solution. Try working to get people to not want to commit violent acts, and to identify people who might be prone to violent acts (mentally/emotionally ill, for instance) and devise ways to 'fix' them or at least prevent them from doing so, because people intent on committing violent acts will find ways and means to do so, regardless of banning any sort of ostensible 'weapons'. Otherwise you live in a world like at the top of this comment, where anything and everything is banned (and everyone is likely watched and guarded like convicts in prison, 24/7/365) just in case someone decides to do something violent against someone else.
Sure, that all sounds perfectly reasonable and logical. But the alarmists with their sky-is-falling rhetoric are full of crap. Corporations might well choose profits over people, but governments will not. If they don't then there will be riots and maybe even civil war, since people are not going to just sit placidly by and starve to death. Governments will encourage retraining of people, and/or make it less attractive for corporations to fire humans. You can call it 'protectionism' all you want but when it comes right down to it, human beings cannot become 'obsolete', ever, and it's absurd to suggest it. Without humans there is no reason for any automation to exist.
We don't even understand how our own brains work yet, let alone how we're conscious. Until we know that we aren't going to have 'real' artificial intelligence. I talk to people who research these things, that's what they tell me, and they also say that all the media hype is just that: hype. Meaningless. They're mis-using the term 'artificial intelligence'. The average person (media people included) actually believe the fantasies that you see portrayed on TV and in the movies; we're nowhere near any of that, and won't be for a long, long time to come. So as I said above: Everybody needs to CALM DOWN. Like I keep saying: Don't talk to me about 'artificial intelligence' until you can bring me something I can have a full-on, spontaneous, completely random, unscripted, and completely coherent conversation. When that day comes I'll call that thing 'AI', and not before. I'm talking Turing Test, and beyond. Anything short of that is just a poor imitation and I'm not impressed.
I'm getting a bit sick and tired of these bullshit stories. Robots are not going to make humans obsolete. Everyone is not going to lose their jobs to robots. Robots are not going to take over. So-called 'AI' as most people THINK they know it is a creation of media hype. Everybody needs to calm the hell down and just go about your business, nothing to see here, ignore the trolls and the bullshit 'news' stories.
1. I don't use a smartphone, because they are proven time and time again to be easily exploited and compromised, even if you're careful
2. I wouldn't buy a smartphone, for the reasons stated in #1
3. If I found I had no choice but to own a smartphone, all Internet access would be disabled by intentional misconfigure of network settings (and NO, I don't care)
4. #1 through #3 having been said: If I was travelling internationally, I would NEVER bring my actual phone with me, I would get a cheap prepaid phone, put nothing at all on it, and if it was taken to be 'examined' by customs officials or law enforcement, I'd destroy the SIM card and throw the phone away immediately, and get a new one if necessary.
Seriously, folks, if you're going to travel internationally, leave your real phone at home and buy a cheap porepaid phone to take with you. Then the whole issue of having your privacy invaded and/or your phone compromised and/or your phone confiscated becomes moot. Would cost you all of $50 at most plus however many minutes you want to put on it.
I wonder if those guys with the kickstarter have discovered any commands to send over vehicle CANBUS that'll wipe the memory of any collected data? I'd pay for that. Insert a dongle daily that wipes everything.
'4K' TV is one thing (putting aside for a moment the lack of OTA broadcast 4K content), assuming your TV is gigantic, but a 4K display on a phone? Really? How does that even make sense? On the other hand I'm sure wireless companies love the idea, because of how much data you'll use up so fast watching online 4K content on a tiny little phone screen.
Congratulations, YOU understand the situation.:-) Likewise you probably understand that there won't be any 'doomsday' scenario because no country will allow it to happen. Survival is a basic human right. 'Profits' are not.
Nope.:-) Do the basic math: The money doesn't exist for so-called 'UBI' no matter what you do. It's a fantasy being perpetuated by people who are bad at basic math.
Tell you what: Consider how you would react if someone told You're Fired, you're IRRELEVANT, you're OBSOLETE, and no one cares whether you starve to death or not. What are you going to do then? Go quietly into a slow death? LOL no, you'll FIGHT. You've never been homeless or even close to it, you've never been hungry, you've never had to fight for basic survival, have you? You do not have perspective sufficient to really understand what it would be like.
I'm really not counting things that are sold and used like Legos, blocks you just snap together. Most Arduino types don't really seem to learn much about basic electronics and struggle to make an LED blink.
I've got a $5 bet that says automobile manufacturers file for an injuction against them and/or sue them and/or file for a DMCA takedown because they're violating copyright. Regardless of what they're doing being right and good.
Yep. And over the next 4 years (if not 8 or more, may the powers of the Universe save us!) expect more and more of this, as consumer protections are methodically stripped away, and Corporate America is given more and more free reign to Do As They Please, under the guise of it being 'good for the countrys economy'. Regulation? We don't need no stinkin' regulation!
Hello there brother, I've been working in electronics for about 35 years;-)
Back in the '80s, we'd yet to have to deal with SMDs (Surface Mount Components, for the non-techies out there). Everything was through-hole, with the exception of VLSI ICs in PGA (Pin Grid Array) packages soldered into PCBs, all you really needed was a decent soldering iron (variable temperature preferred), and a Soldapullt desoldering tool (or, if you were rich, a desoldering station that used a hollow tip iron and vacuum, like Pace made) to replace just about any component. My first PC-compatible computer was a clone XT, and I spent a weekend socketing all the ICs on the thing; that's how easy it was, comparatively speaking.
Today, however, you rarely see through-hole components at all, and BGA (Bump Grid Array) ICs are the rule, and you need a several-thousand-dollar hot-air repair station to work with them, special training to use it, and even then there's no guarantee you won't wreck the PCB itself removing a (suspected -- more on that in a moment) IC, and a tiny chance of being able to install a replacement successfully (not all solder bumps may adhere properly -- or you may accidentally get two or more shorted); inspection of an newly-installed BGA is impossible unless you have a specialized xray machine, and even then there's no guarantee that 100% of the solder bumps are adhered to the pads correctly. Add to that the fact that PCBs now are multi-layer, layers counting into the double-digits are common, and considering there are buried Vias (plated-through holes that connect traces on different layers, but that aren't on the top or bottom layer and therefore inaccessible) there is usually no way to access all the signals necessary to effectively troubleshoot a PCB -- guys sticking their Xbox motherboards into toaster ovens notwithstanding (they just get lucky)! Even passive components in SMD form can be difficult to deal with (you need a microscope to deal with 0201 form-factor components!), and have you ever seen amateurs trying to even replace a broken SMD USB jack? It's usually a horror show by the time they get done with it.
The above are the major reasons that consumer repair of modern electronics is nigh-unto impossible, not so much corporations wanting to screw consumers out of as much money as possible; it's just not cost-effective to try to repair damaged or defective PCBs, except on a large-scale basis, and in some cases may just not be possible at all. Sadly, aside from the lack of serviceability, this also means that much modern electronics are not 'sustainable' in the environmental sense, either, because they're essentially 'throw-away'; once dead, they can only really be cruched up and recycled, at great cost, and as we've seen in some news stories, often end up shipped around the world just to get rid of them (and eventually dumped somewhere) because it ends up costing more to 'recycle' them than the value of what you can extract from them. 'Trade secrets' are only a small part of why manufacturers don't want anyone 'unauthorized' from having detailed service information on what they manufacture.
Believe you me, I wish things were as easy to work on as they once used to be. There was a time you and I both remember when you could resurrect just about anything from the dead if you wanted to take the time to do it; now it's pretty much impossible unless it's something very simple.
As a footnote to all the above, our advances in electronics technology has also relatively killed electronics as a hobby; you can still get through-hole ICs, but not so much for VLSI or SoC (System on a Chip) ICs, they just don't (or can't) make them in package styles that are accessible to someone with a soldering iron. As a result you only have very simple electronics accessible to the amateur -- and that makes for rather un-exciting projects that just don't spark the imagination of many, especially when so many seem to believe that analog e
See, now, your head is on straight. We are not going to find ourselves living in a world where billions of people have no job and no means of supporting themselves and surviving. It won't be allowed to happen because if it does then that means there will be a War to End All Wars, and the governments of the world won't sit back and let that happen. There will be other jobs. There will not be so-called 'Universal Basic Income', though, as some people (who are very bad at math) claim; there will be meaningful work for people to do so they can support themselves and contribute to society. Anyone who claims otherwise is either suffering from extreme myopia, or is trolling.
Slashdot Mirror
Then what they will be buying themselves, eventually, is civil war. People will not just sit quietly and starve to death or die of exposure when they get evicted because they have no income. They'll turn to crime to feed themselves and their families, and when things get bad enough, someone will rally them together and there will be armed conflict, insurrection against those that are oppressing them and leaving them to die; this is another pattern that repeats itself throughout human history as well: you shit on people's heads enough, they reach a point where all hell breaks loose. I for one believe that at least here in the U.S., and with any luck at all, other 1st-World countries, the government will see what's happening well in advance of things going too far, and will take steps to ensure that the average citizen is not left to fend for themselves. Additionally, while I firmly believe that there are corporations and people out there who really don't give a damn about people in general, so long as they get richer, I also firmly believe that there are companies, corporations, organizations, and people with lots of money who are pro-human, and will voluntarily ensure that workers are people in general are not left out in the cold. There is much evil in the world, but it's not a world entirely ruled by evil, either, there is enough good out there to keep things balanced.
You're not alone, friend. All these people with all their built-in distractions in their cars, giving them excuses to be poor drivers, are what are getting so-called 'self driving cars' eventually forced on us.
So that somehow sets precedent making it okay for, say, Comcast to delay or throttle Netflix packets, or CBS streaming video packets, because they're a competitor? Or to charge an extra fee to consumers so that trottling or delay doesn't happen?
The only 'implementation' of 'Net Neutrality' that is valid, is the one where no data packet gets prioritized or delayed any more than any other data packet. Pretending there's any other definition of 'net neutrality' is at best disingenuous.
So far as the so-called 'investment' by ISPs is concerned, they're not 'investing', they're doing what they always have done: grossly 'overbooking' their network capacity, spin-doctoring advertised throughput speeds, and price-gouging everyone in the process, all in the name of more profits.
Welcome to the Trump Administration, everyone, where the average American is worthless chattel, and corporate America is all that matters. So far as this subject goes, hope you all enjoyed the Golden Age of the Internet, because it's now drawing to a close.
I know it's a cliche to say it, but if you outlaw guns, then only outlaws will have guns. People who want to shoot someone bad enough are going to get them anyway. It's a moot point regardless because everyone has a constitutional right to bear arms and the day that the Constitution is changed is the day we'll have bigger problems in this country than who does and does not get to own guns.
See this comment, for starters: https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...
Secondly, most people can shrug off merely paying a fine. Having to sit in a jail cell for a while has more impact and forces you to sit there and think about what put you there in the first place. This guy did something wilfully stupid and someone got injured because of it, and it was sheer luck that she wasn't killed because of it. That's why there's jail time involved. As someone else pointed out in another comment, he's damned lucky she didn't get killed, because if she had his life would be OVER, he'd be spending YEARS in prison. All because he couldn't be more responsible with his toy.
All SORTS of violent crime is highly preventable. Far more people are killed every year, for example, using pipes and clubs or other objects than are killed using "assault" rifles or ANY sort of rifle, shotgun, or other long gun. More people are killed with BARE HANDS than are killed by someone using any kind of long gun.
Exactly. Gun violence makes for better viewer ratings of the news shows, though, because it's more sensational. People who want to commit violent acts against other people will find ways and means to do it, up to and including their bare hands, regardless of how many 'weapons' you ban.
I want to stop violence!
That's nice, Viriginia; but face it: You have to change hearts and minds to get people to stop treating other people like shit; taking away the implements that can be used for violent acts does nothing, and is just a knee-jerk reaction to the problem, not a well-thought-out solution. Try working to get people to not want to commit violent acts, and to identify people who might be prone to violent acts (mentally/emotionally ill, for instance) and devise ways to 'fix' them or at least prevent them from doing so, because people intent on committing violent acts will find ways and means to do so, regardless of banning any sort of ostensible 'weapons'. Otherwise you live in a world like at the top of this comment, where anything and everything is banned (and everyone is likely watched and guarded like convicts in prison, 24/7/365) just in case someone decides to do something violent against someone else.
Sure, that all sounds perfectly reasonable and logical. But the alarmists with their sky-is-falling rhetoric are full of crap. Corporations might well choose profits over people, but governments will not. If they don't then there will be riots and maybe even civil war, since people are not going to just sit placidly by and starve to death. Governments will encourage retraining of people, and/or make it less attractive for corporations to fire humans. You can call it 'protectionism' all you want but when it comes right down to it, human beings cannot become 'obsolete', ever, and it's absurd to suggest it. Without humans there is no reason for any automation to exist.
Leave a comment if you, too, are getting sick and bloody well tired of all these ridiculous so-called 'AI' 'news stories'.
We don't even understand how our own brains work yet, let alone how we're conscious. Until we know that we aren't going to have 'real' artificial intelligence. I talk to people who research these things, that's what they tell me, and they also say that all the media hype is just that: hype. Meaningless. They're mis-using the term 'artificial intelligence'. The average person (media people included) actually believe the fantasies that you see portrayed on TV and in the movies; we're nowhere near any of that, and won't be for a long, long time to come. So as I said above: Everybody needs to CALM DOWN. Like I keep saying: Don't talk to me about 'artificial intelligence' until you can bring me something I can have a full-on, spontaneous, completely random, unscripted, and completely coherent conversation. When that day comes I'll call that thing 'AI', and not before. I'm talking Turing Test, and beyond. Anything short of that is just a poor imitation and I'm not impressed.
I'm getting a bit sick and tired of these bullshit stories. Robots are not going to make humans obsolete. Everyone is not going to lose their jobs to robots. Robots are not going to take over. So-called 'AI' as most people THINK they know it is a creation of media hype. Everybody needs to calm the hell down and just go about your business, nothing to see here, ignore the trolls and the bullshit 'news' stories.
1. I don't use a smartphone, because they are proven time and time again to be easily exploited and compromised, even if you're careful
2. I wouldn't buy a smartphone, for the reasons stated in #1
3. If I found I had no choice but to own a smartphone, all Internet access would be disabled by intentional misconfigure of network settings (and NO, I don't care)
4. #1 through #3 having been said: If I was travelling internationally, I would NEVER bring my actual phone with me, I would get a cheap prepaid phone, put nothing at all on it, and if it was taken to be 'examined' by customs officials or law enforcement, I'd destroy the SIM card and throw the phone away immediately, and get a new one if necessary.
Seriously, folks, if you're going to travel internationally, leave your real phone at home and buy a cheap porepaid phone to take with you. Then the whole issue of having your privacy invaded and/or your phone compromised and/or your phone confiscated becomes moot. Would cost you all of $50 at most plus however many minutes you want to put on it.
I wonder if those guys with the kickstarter have discovered any commands to send over vehicle CANBUS that'll wipe the memory of any collected data? I'd pay for that. Insert a dongle daily that wipes everything.
'4K' TV is one thing (putting aside for a moment the lack of OTA broadcast 4K content), assuming your TV is gigantic, but a 4K display on a phone? Really? How does that even make sense? On the other hand I'm sure wireless companies love the idea, because of how much data you'll use up so fast watching online 4K content on a tiny little phone screen.
Congratulations, YOU understand the situation. :-) Likewise you probably understand that there won't be any 'doomsday' scenario because no country will allow it to happen. Survival is a basic human right. 'Profits' are not.
Nope. :-) Do the basic math: The money doesn't exist for so-called 'UBI' no matter what you do. It's a fantasy being perpetuated by people who are bad at basic math.
Tell you what: Consider how you would react if someone told You're Fired, you're IRRELEVANT, you're OBSOLETE, and no one cares whether you starve to death or not. What are you going to do then? Go quietly into a slow death? LOL no, you'll FIGHT. You've never been homeless or even close to it, you've never been hungry, you've never had to fight for basic survival, have you? You do not have perspective sufficient to really understand what it would be like.
I'm really not counting things that are sold and used like Legos, blocks you just snap together. Most Arduino types don't really seem to learn much about basic electronics and struggle to make an LED blink.
I've got a $5 bet that says automobile manufacturers file for an injuction against them and/or sue them and/or file for a DMCA takedown because they're violating copyright. Regardless of what they're doing being right and good.
If not, then don't call it 'artificial intelligence'.
Yep. And over the next 4 years (if not 8 or more, may the powers of the Universe save us!) expect more and more of this, as consumer protections are methodically stripped away, and Corporate America is given more and more free reign to Do As They Please, under the guise of it being 'good for the countrys economy'. Regulation? We don't need no stinkin' regulation!
Hello there brother, I've been working in electronics for about 35 years ;-)
Back in the '80s, we'd yet to have to deal with SMDs (Surface Mount Components, for the non-techies out there). Everything was through-hole, with the exception of VLSI ICs in PGA (Pin Grid Array) packages soldered into PCBs, all you really needed was a decent soldering iron (variable temperature preferred), and a Soldapullt desoldering tool (or, if you were rich, a desoldering station that used a hollow tip iron and vacuum, like Pace made) to replace just about any component. My first PC-compatible computer was a clone XT, and I spent a weekend socketing all the ICs on the thing; that's how easy it was, comparatively speaking.
Today, however, you rarely see through-hole components at all, and BGA (Bump Grid Array) ICs are the rule, and you need a several-thousand-dollar hot-air repair station to work with them, special training to use it, and even then there's no guarantee you won't wreck the PCB itself removing a (suspected -- more on that in a moment) IC, and a tiny chance of being able to install a replacement successfully (not all solder bumps may adhere properly -- or you may accidentally get two or more shorted); inspection of an newly-installed BGA is impossible unless you have a specialized xray machine, and even then there's no guarantee that 100% of the solder bumps are adhered to the pads correctly. Add to that the fact that PCBs now are multi-layer, layers counting into the double-digits are common, and considering there are buried Vias (plated-through holes that connect traces on different layers, but that aren't on the top or bottom layer and therefore inaccessible) there is usually no way to access all the signals necessary to effectively troubleshoot a PCB -- guys sticking their Xbox motherboards into toaster ovens notwithstanding (they just get lucky)! Even passive components in SMD form can be difficult to deal with (you need a microscope to deal with 0201 form-factor components!), and have you ever seen amateurs trying to even replace a broken SMD USB jack? It's usually a horror show by the time they get done with it.
The above are the major reasons that consumer repair of modern electronics is nigh-unto impossible, not so much corporations wanting to screw consumers out of as much money as possible; it's just not cost-effective to try to repair damaged or defective PCBs, except on a large-scale basis, and in some cases may just not be possible at all. Sadly, aside from the lack of serviceability, this also means that much modern electronics are not 'sustainable' in the environmental sense, either, because they're essentially 'throw-away'; once dead, they can only really be cruched up and recycled, at great cost, and as we've seen in some news stories, often end up shipped around the world just to get rid of them (and eventually dumped somewhere) because it ends up costing more to 'recycle' them than the value of what you can extract from them. 'Trade secrets' are only a small part of why manufacturers don't want anyone 'unauthorized' from having detailed service information on what they manufacture.
Believe you me, I wish things were as easy to work on as they once used to be. There was a time you and I both remember when you could resurrect just about anything from the dead if you wanted to take the time to do it; now it's pretty much impossible unless it's something very simple.
As a footnote to all the above, our advances in electronics technology has also relatively killed electronics as a hobby; you can still get through-hole ICs, but not so much for VLSI or SoC (System on a Chip) ICs, they just don't (or can't) make them in package styles that are accessible to someone with a soldering iron. As a result you only have very simple electronics accessible to the amateur -- and that makes for rather un-exciting projects that just don't spark the imagination of many, especially when so many seem to believe that analog e
My oh my, someone is mad!
See, now, your head is on straight. We are not going to find ourselves living in a world where billions of people have no job and no means of supporting themselves and surviving. It won't be allowed to happen because if it does then that means there will be a War to End All Wars, and the governments of the world won't sit back and let that happen. There will be other jobs. There will not be so-called 'Universal Basic Income', though, as some people (who are very bad at math) claim; there will be meaningful work for people to do so they can support themselves and contribute to society. Anyone who claims otherwise is either suffering from extreme myopia, or is trolling.