There isn't one simple explanation for why women aren't going into computers, but it might have something to do with men's total lack of restraint in making blatantly sexist and obnoxious comments whenever the subject is raised.
I often try to encourage women friends/relations etc who aren't sure to have a go at "getting into computers" (not because they're female, I try this sort of thing with any people I meet who aren't sure what they want to do with their lives), and I try to help them out as much as possible, and yet the VAST majority of women come back with the same responses over and over: "just not interested", "computers are boring" etc etc. These are adult women who are TELLING ME that they are not interested at all in computers. So I hardly think that its unreasonable that men on slashdot think that women are, well, not interested in computers. I think that women (in general) are not interested in computers BECAUSE WOMEN KEEP TELLING ME THAT. So keep your ridiculous accusations of sexism to yourself.
I know that many of the women I studied CS with were given a bit of a hard time by some of the men, who did make sexist comments etc. But guess what, virtually all of them have been mature enough and confident enough in themselves to know not to take it too seriously. They didn't just burst into tears and drop out immediately like a bunch of pathetic helpless creatures. I think it is sexist to be perpetuating the (old, male-ego-feeding) stereotype that women ARE these pathetic helpless beings. Victims, they are, poor, suffering, victims of this cruel, sexist, male-dominated society. Oh, such drama. Such bollocks. Calling a women "amazingly brave" because she posted on/. about her experiences? Please, give me a break.
Sendo's execs probably got taken in for the same reason people fall victim to other scams, such as MLM schemes, Nigerian hoaxes etc: they get blinded by the (incorrect) thought that they are going to make lots and lots of money.
You can't sue one manufacturer for making a car less secure than the other (as long as both parts followed the rules and regulations involved in making cars)
I remember reading once that McDonalds lost this case because there are actually rules and regulations (FDA, I think) stipulating the maximum temperature at which hot beverages may be served, and that McDonalds was over this limit. I don't know if thats true though.
Why do people always want to assume that Earth is 'something to go by', i.e. that Earth is probably "representative of an average planet with life"? Its the only planet with life on that we know have, making it a sample of size 1, and as such we have absolutely no clue whatsoever where it would lie on any statistical curves. Earth could just as well be a statistical outlier in most things, for all we know. Making any assumptions about other planets, based on Earth, seems like a dicy process to me. Perhaps Earth has been really slow on the evolution scale, i.e. perhaps other planets required much less time for evolution to progress. Or it could be the other way round, perhaps it was really quick. Or perhaps it was just average. Or perhaps in other parts of the universe, other factors play bigger roles, such as 'seeding' of planets. Collectively, we don't yet have enough scientific knowledge and understanding of these processes to even begin to make proper "educated guesses".
Just because Earth is the only planet we've seen, does not mean we can make statistical assumptions about it. Nor can we extend such assumptions to other planets, such as Mars, because for all we know, Mars may also have been a statistical outlier.
Microsoft products all have a similar look and feel and the interfaces are intuitive
If these conditions are what made Microsoft successful (essentially you're making the "MS brought computing to the masses by making it friendly" argument), then we'd all be using Macs today. Mac in the mid-80s was already better than Windows in the first half of the 90s ever was at these things.
The condition is called an oligopoly (when deliberate and purposeful, a http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=cartel">c artel), and it is just one more fairly commonly used method to avoid having to deal with "free-market forces" (i.e, to unfairly eliminate healthy competition). If two large companies (who would normally be in competition) wield considerable control over a market, then they will often just "agree not to compete". In other words, the CEOs realise that they can BOTH make tonnes of money this way, which makes it, in some cases, a much more logical and easy choice than entering into aggressive/risky competition.
There are some well-known of these, such as the RIAA, as well as Visa/Mastercard. Or here in South Africa, there was until recently the Vodacom/MTN cartel that entirely controlled the cellphone market.
Does the Sherman act say anything about oligopolies? Are there are equivalent laws?
One of the tricky things is usually trying to prove that companies have "agreed not to compete".. when a company obviously has a monopoly, thats pretty clear. But if the CEOs and CFOs etc of two large companies have made deals with one another not to compete, its usually fairly easy to hide any evidence of this.
The public often don't seem to be bothered either, because the illusion of competition is usually enough to fool them, and they may not realise that they're being price-gouged because 'for all they know, thats what product XYZ should cost'. (In fact, some companies actually CREATE additional "brands" in order to deliberately *manufacture* the illusion of competition in the market by having two separate brands next to one another on the shelf in the store, and will even do things like have "price wars" with themselves between the brands, to drive up sales. IIRC, the Liqui Fruit and Ceres boxed fruit juice companies ("company") are an example of this. This is a separate issue though)
Incidentally, just like monopolies, the mere existence of a competitor does NOT magically NULLify the condition, since the mono/oligopolies still have "unnatural" powers to control prices or block market entry points (e.g. the existence of BeOS did not imply that MS did not have a monopoly, since MS could still control the major market entry points (the OEMs). In the same way, the existence of small record labels or credit card companies does not "negate" the cartel (and power that comes with it) that the RIAA or that Visa/Mastercard have. With monopolies, the "monopoly condition" may be defined in terms of the percentage of a market that a company controls. I think over here it is 75%, but I may be remembering wrong.
There are many many "sneaky" ways to establish and retain success in a market that have absolutely nothing to do with quality of product, which is why I find the pure-capitalism (unregulated) approach rather naive. People think its all about "building a better mousetrap". I think anyone who thinks this has probably never actually tried to produce and sell a new product. Rhere are many ways to be successful with only a mediocre, overpriced mousetrap, especially if you can block the market entry points of others who might actually have a better mousetrap. "Buying shelf space" is another commonly established practice, in fact, with many retailers, the only way to get onto their shelves is to buy the shelf space. I remember years ago Microsoft used to do "buy shelf space" of software retailers (essentially pay them off) in exchange for keeping Mac and other competing software off the shelves. Microsoft Press made various "exclusionary deals" with a major local bookseller.
Yes, I also found his comment a bit odd. 3D gaming? Software development? Video editing? And he thinks 1 GHz is enough? Either he only does small stuff, or he has a LOT of patience. The codebase for the project I'm working on at work is currently about 170,000 lines, big, but certainly not a "huge" project, and it takes nearly ten minutes to rebuild on a P4 2 GHz. One often has to make changes to header files fairly high up in the dependency chain..:/.. there is only so many times in a day you can "go make coffee" or "check your email". It is very typical for me to have to spend more than 70% of my time in a day just WAITING for the computer to do one thing or another.
Wirtz even lost his VCR in the deal, and Sylvania Township police debated confiscating his Xbox gaming console, but decided to leave it behind. The officers confiscated his legitimate CD copies of Windows Office and several operating systems, all of his burned CD's, and a security card writing machine instead
Almost sounds like the police were shopping. I have this mental image of cops wandering about a house with a shopping.. "one XBOX for kid for Christmas".. "been wanting to try this new game".. "hmm.. wife asked me to pick up some milk"..
What do you mean "Russia fell apart after Afghanistan"? Still looks OK to me, probably hasn't been better in a very long time.
Or did you mean, "*Communism in Russia* fell apart after Afghanistan", or "The communist government of Russia fell apart after Afghanistan"?
"Russia" didn't fall apart, on the contrary, they're going through a positive process of transformation to a democratic free market system (Chechnia yada yada). Sure there is still poverty, like in many other fledgling democracies change doesn't happen overnight.. but "fell apart"?
Blah, whatever, no matter what we say in a slashdot thread, the world still hates the top dog.
Yeah, sure, all those people are just jealous, right? Just like all those anti-Microsofties are just jealous of all Bill Gates' money, right? What a childish, simplistic viewpoint. Sorry, the world isn't that simple. Whether you want to know it or not, the USA's rise was *not* entirely squeaky clean, & some people actually have legitimate reasons to dislike the US.
his assumes that criminals are rational people. They aren't; most of them are irrational and stupid. You're saying "Trust in the criminal! If you don't carry a gun, he won't hurt you -- he'll just politely take your money and be on his way!"
Criminals are just people. Some of them will. Some of them won't. Some of them will kill you anyway. Some of them would avoid it if they can.
Ah, yes. Better the defenseless family was robbed and possibly murdered by the criminals, eh? Then they can be content in their moral superiority, as their coffins are lowered in the ground.
Obviously not, and you're twisting my views: I very specifically stated that I believe in people having a right to defend themselves, including the right to kill their attackers.
It happens a lot here that the criminals DO shoot first, its not even strange.
Yes these are difficult problems. All I'm saying is that "arming the populace" is NOT the solution that so many people make it out to be, it generates many additional problems itself, and that we should give consideration to such problems, not pretend they don't exist.
One of the problems is that this wonderfully "armed populace" is actually extremely ineffective. When the system "works" as it is "supposed to" (i.e. in the example I gave of the man who killed two armed robbers), it is the exception, not the norm. In the MAJORITY of cases, victims are either (a) murdered LONG before they've managed to get their guns out (criminals always have the element of surprise, and will shoot someone who is trying to get his gun out), and (b) in many cases, the "armed populace" is so inept that the criminal will take the persons gun and shoot them with their own gun.
You cannot just ignore these problems, no matter how badly you want the solution to be "an armed populace". The simple fact is that in reality, this "solution" only works in a small percentage of cases.
Unarming society is impossible. Look to Great Britain's example if you need to: right now, people aren't allowed to defend themselves, and criminals are the only ones with guns
Thats true, but then, look at the USA's example: its one of the countries with the highest homicide rate, much higher than most of the European countries where guns are outlawed. You have to wonder why.
Well, this makes sense if you assume that all people in Zimbabwe are actually one person starving him/herself, but the reality is that that nobody caused "their own" starvation - one group of people (the citizens) are the victims of the actions of another group of people (the corrupt government and the so-called "veterans" which take over the farms). The citizens did NOT "cause their own starvation", they are entirely victims, and we all need to remember this. The situation is precisely akin to that of the people (& especially the women) of Afghanistan. The "people of Afghanistan" did not "cause their own repression", they were victims of the actions of another group, the Taliban.
Comments like yours bother me only because they tend to provide contrived "rationalizations" for people who want to ignore the problem. Its an "easy out" for first-worlders who want to turn their backs, they convince themselves that those very same people brought their situations on themselves, in which case "its their own fault". But the fact is the victims in this did NOT bring the situation on themselves.
This is VERY different to an individual who brought a situation upon himself and now wants help, e.g. some beggar on the street who was lazy and dropped out of school and now can't get a job, or something. He "brought it upon himself". Its not the same, "Zimbabwe" is not an individual.
Note I'm not saying the first world has any obligation to respond, but just don't make oversimplistic BS justifications for why not to respond. Rather, just be honest about it and admit the truth, i.e. say "well we don't want to help because its just plain not our problem, if millions of people die of starvation, well, its not our problem, sorry". And its true, its "not your problem". If you don't want to help, fine. If you do want to help the victims, wonderful.
People often seem to use "it wasn't my/our fault" as a reason/excuse why they're not going to help another person. You hear the same sort of thing all the time here from young white South Africans: "I had nothing to do with apartheid, so why should I lift a finger to help the blacks". This has begun to seem like a silly excuse to me. I had nothing to do with apartheid either, but I don't see why that should somehow *prevent* me from wanting to help uplift these people (by giving up my time to help provide them with better educations etc). If they don't want to help others , fine, but I wish they'd be honest about their reasons: that they just don't give a shit.
It is sad, especially since these days it is not all that difficult to be cross-platform for most types of apps, but most software developers are too stupid/lazy/ignorant/uninformed/apathetic to bother to learn how. And the irony is that these days it is easier than ever to be cross-platform. For 3D, the OpenGL API has never enjoyed such broad support, from Macs to PCs to Linux. And cross-platform libs like SDL can help you forget about most of the rest of the crap too.
For "normal" applications, I recently tried out wxWindows, and I really enjoy using it. Even if you only care about the Win32 platform, I find that using wxWindows anyway is STILL much faster (development time) than using native Win32 or MFC, because the the latter two really suck as APIs. wxWindows doesn't automatically make your app cross-platform, but it can easily take you 90% of the way, especially since they have abstractions for tonnes of non-UI things as well, like files, sockets, threads, timers, and even have other cool lib functions like regular expression parsers.
With Mac and Linux both now being UNIX relatives, many other barriers to being cross-platform are disappearing too.
Just to go off on "even further in the future" tangent.. whenever I ponder what the "inevitable conclusion" to all this might eventually be, I somehow always start thinking of pets. Or rather, the situation they enjoy.
Ultimately, computers (whatever form(s) they may take in the future) are going to "make humans obsolete", at least in the sense that, sooner or later, we will figure out how to make computers that are at least as intelligent as us, and probably more so. At that point, something VERY dramatic must shift in the way the world works, because suddenly our entire viewpoint on the world changes. Instead of visiting a human doctor, we'll WANT to visit robot doctors, because they will be much more intelligent and much better than us. Instead of human researchers, we'll want robot researchers, because they'll be better than us. For political decision makers the same will probably apply, as well as to software programmers, whatever job you name, the machines will be able to do it better than us. Not being as fragile and sensitive to environmental extremes as us, they will be able to better tolerate the conditions necessary for essentially the ultimate goal of colonising the galaxy. Whether they will be sentient or is irrelevent, as long as they are up to the task and 'want' to do it. (We have been on top so long, we take it for granted that there is nothing more intelligent than us. One day, this will dramatically change, our perception of ourselves will be reduced to second-best, for good).
Anyway, that appears to me to be the logical eventual conclusion to this continual, unrelenting "march of progress". In fact, it seems inevitable to me, by a bit of simple logic: (a) humans are not the most intelligent machine possible, and so (b) it is theoretically possible to have machines more intelligent than humans and (c) our technology is going to get good enough to achieve this theoretical possibility - probably within 200 years.
Science fiction authors and Hollywood and so on would immediately assume the worst of such a scenario, that the robots would realise we are redundant, extinguish us, and take over. Our purpose would have been served. I was pondering this scenario, and wondering if it would be at all possible that we *could* continue to live alongside such vastly superior robots indefinitely. And I realised that essentially, this is the situation that our pets (dogs, cats etc) enjoy right now. We currently work hard to maintain the infrastructure and grow food. At the end of the day, we provide food and shelter for our pets. They can literally lounge around and do nothing, while we slave away all day to feed them. Replace the pets with us, and us with the robots, and we could theoretically "enjoy" the same situation, where the robots do all the work, and we sit around by the pool all day, with them willingly bringing us food. That would almost be the "ideal" "pinnacle" of human civilisation, the ultimate goal. What hundreds of generations appear to be working towards. Whether or not people, who love *building* things, would actually really enjoy living in a world where everything to achieve had already been achieved, and also whether or not people would accept essentially the role of domestic animals, are open questions. But what it did make realise, is that not *all* the options (of technological progress) necessarily lead to gloom and doom. We *do* appear to at least have the option of "building the perfect world", but we would have to play our cards right.
Anyway, just some random thoughts. Not directly related to RFID tags, but indirectly so, in a far-off way.
Gun control legislation only makes it safer for criminals to go about their business, as they can be confident their victims are unarmed.
True, but then your gun control system has to work properly, i.e. to ensure that criminals do not get hold of guns. In the US it is way too easy to get illegal guns. The result of this is criminals also walking around, better armed than the populace. This means that: (a) the criminals are equivalently armed to the people they attack, but (b) they will always have the element of surprise, and (c) since they are scummier, they are less likely to hesitate to kill someone, especially if they don't want to be killed or go to jail, and thus (d) are more likely to just SHOOT FIRST in any potential conflict situation.
Yes, an armed populace is very likely a deterrent to MANY would-be criminals. But on the other hand, you also have to look at the effect it has on the remaining, scummier criminals.
Pretend you are a criminal with a gun, which you probably obtained illegally. Now pretend you want to mug someone. You only really want their money, you don't want to kill them, but you will if you feel you are in danger. Now, as you approach your victim, you realise that that person may be carrying a gun. This mere awareness HEIGHTENS the conflict that is about to occur. You become edgy, nervous - you don't know what to expect. As you are about to attack, you realise just how high the risk really is - you may even get shot in the back while running away! There is only one sure-fire way to minimize the risk to essentially zero: shoot first! You didn't want to kill the person, but you got frightened by the intensity of this conflict situation, the risk just seemed too large.
Now pretend you are the same criminal, who also has a gun illegally, but you know you can pretty much safely assume that your victim is unarmed. As you approach your victim, you realise that they are pretty much powerless against you, you don't have to worry. You are more at ease. You just bop them over the head with the gun, grab their money, and run away, knowing that they cannot do a thing as they lie there, stunned.
I've thought about this issue a lot now, living in South Africa, where the crime rate is very high at the moment. There was a recent incident where four *armed* robbers attacked a man in his driveway, the mans two daughters were with him. He pulled out his gun and shot two of the robbers dead, on his lawn, in front of his daughters. The other two ran away. In your view, a perfect example of why an armed populace works.
But thinking it through a little more, is that really the case? For various reasons, the two robbers (who have guns) who ran away after seeing their friends shot dead, are unlikely to stop being robbers. Chances are they are living in poverty, can't get jobs, and probably have a drug habit to support. They are LIKELY to try again on someone else. But the next time round, they will have learnt their lesson: don't hesitate, shoot first. They know their lives are more important (to them) than their victims' lives. And chances are, they also feel a little bloodlust from wanting revenge for the death of their friends.
As for our "hero" who shot the two robbers dead, who we instinctively want to cheer, I doubt he even feels like a hero. Not only has he just killed two people on his own garden lawn (something very few people can claim they would not feel terrible about, regardless of the circumstances), but his two teenage daughters watched the whole thing. They watched their father blow a hole in a mans face, and a hole in the chest of another, watched the two men drop dead on the grass. This must have been highly traumatising for all of them.
And the incident heightens the fear of everyone in the country. Everyone becomes more afraid of becoming a victim, so people buy more guns. The criminals become more afraid, because they realise the risks of their enterprise are much higher. So they learn to shoot first. So the people become even more afraid, and also start learning, if in doubt, shoot first. They barracade themselves indoors. They enclose off *entire neighbourhoods*. Everyone is suspicuous of everyone. With each cycle, the conflict is heightened and intensified.
This is just how human conflict works, and in fact, primate conflict in general. Each side raises the bar, thinking they will have the upper hand. But the other side always raises the bar also, in response, so as not to be the underdog. You see this primate conflict dynamic play out in situations from ordinary road rage incidents, to bar fights, to Middle East politics, to Bush/N. Korea tension etc etc. Bush senses a threat from (N) Korea, calls them an "axis of evil". Kim (power-wise, the underdog) hears this, and (rightly, i.e. rationally) perceives it as potential aggression, so he publically announces he has a nuke - similar, if you will, to the innocent civilian arming himself, and sending a message to those around him "I am armed, don't attack me". Bush, who is now deeply uncertain of whether Korea's motives are aggressive or just defensive, will no doubt predictably respond with something along the lines of issuing an ultimatum to Korea that if they don't destroy their nuke program, the US will attack them. Kim, who has been suspecting that Bush WANTS to attack ever since they were called an "axis of evil", will inevitably just see this as proof that his suspicions were correct, and that this whole thing was designed by Bush to create the excuse to attack. Kim now 'knows' a (perceived) "imperialist" superpower wants to attack his country. Each cycle, the conflict has just been heightened. Tensions are high. He has a nuke. Decisions, decisions..
You'd think our leaders would be intelligent enough to realise what they're doing, but they're just essentially uncontrollably responding to their gut primate instincts, no better than animals.
Oops, went a little bit on a tangent there.
I used to avidly share your opinions, but now I'm not so sure. I do still believe in my own right to be armed. Instinctively, I feel as though I should have that right to defend myself in a situation. But slowly I'm starting to have second thoughts about whether this really is better for society at large. Once the cliched old "cycle of conflict" begins, it just seems to inevitably spiral quickly upward. You just need to get into a "road rage incident" to have seen this. People get shot and killed in petty road rage incidents over nothing, which itself is proof of just how powerful this upward spiral is, and how little we really seem to do to stop it when in the situation.
Better to just avoid the situation completely. Don't let the cycle even begin. And that means unarming society - especially the criminals, but also the populace.
Wow, good thing society has intelligent people like you in it, who are willing to analyze situations.
Come on, think about it logically for just two seconds: RFID needs a standard. The company that makes such a standard will make a LOT of money. Thus, there are groups investing heavily to try become *that* one company. Now, pretend you are one of those investors: do you think you are NOT going to want to heavily market and push your standard in any way possible in order to succeed?
If you really think about it, its actually highly unlikely that world DOESN'T "work like that". Its just logic. Its what anyone, you or me, would do in the same situation.
But oh yeah, 'the world is really this rosy place that nothing bad is ever going to happen to so all the freaks who think that bad things could happen are just paranoid'. Sure. Every human civilisation, and there have been hundreds, in the whole of history has collapsed or been destroyed by something (except perhaps for the Chinese). But oh yeah, 'ours is an exception, you can safely put tens of millions of people out of jobs and magically new jobs will re-appear, because things don't change in OUR civilisation, they're stable'.
Would you like to debunk any particular parts of my post, or rather just take a general "I don't want to think about anything" stance? Come on, if you don't agree with something I said, lets have some civilised debate: give me your *reason* to disagree.
"RFID Journal is an independent online magazine. We are not part of a large, stultifying publishing company. Nor do we receive funding from any organization or company. We depend on paid subscriptions to provide timely news and information about on radio frequency identification and its business applications."
"The Journal was launched on March 1, 2002, in the belief that radio frequency identification, or RFID, is poised for a major breakthrough that will make it possible to put microchips with a unique serial number on anything from automobile drive trains to bars of soap. Some think that's far-fetched. We think it's not far off."
"The folks at the Auto-ID Center are working with Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and other global companies to create low-cost RF tags and readers and an Internet-like infrastructure for tracking goods as they flow through the supply chain. We think their goal of replacing barcodes with RF tags is not only achievable but inevitable."
I have my doubts about the "independent" part, they are probably sponsored by many different groups though, not to any particular one, as I thought. Something does seem a little "off" about the whole thing though.
The "journal" is probably completely "sponsored" by the groups actively creating and pushing this. If you read the article you'll notice that Gillette has "sponsored the development of" Alien's RFID technology, so it sounds like Gillette is a major investor, and probably one of the "sponsors" of this "journal". That would also explain the "Gillette is so cool" angle.
The "independent" journal has probably been created to help market the concept to retailers and other customers, but naturally biased towards the sponsors of the journal. In other words, the journal is advertising material disguised as independent reporting. I can't imagine what independent group would be creating a journal like this.
Judging by their FAQ, it sounds like this area has been quite competitive for a while, in terms of different companies trying to come up with low-cost RFID tags, and different companies creating different standards. But the world is going to pretty much need ONE standard for this to work. And naturally, the company that gets their standard in place is set to make incredibly huge truckloads of $$$ further down the line, once this is implemented on a large scale. Thus it makes sense for investors like Gillette, who appear to want to be in on the deal, to sponsor such a journal. I am of course speculating, but it makes a lot of sense to me.
They even mention on the page an alliance with a group working with SAP to integrate this technology with SAP software, which would then just extend this automation of supply chain management even further. The system would be able to do things like automatically "alert staff" if buying trends indicate that a retailer is running out of stock of a particular item.
Essentially, the gist of all this is that managers realise that most of the jobs in a retail store can be automated, and that all you really need is a few managers using the right software and hardware tools. You don't need human cashiers when the customer can just put his trolley of goods under a scanner that tallies his entire shopping cart in under a second and automatically bills his credit card. What this is probably going to mean, 10 or 20 years from now, is that HUGE numbers of people in retail and distributing are going to lose their jobs to these little tags.
The biggest joke of all is how they seem to avoid mentioning this issue in the "journal". To quote the FAQ: "The aim of most auto-ID systems is to increase efficiency, reduce data entry errors, and free up staff to perform more value-added functions". Yeah right, more like "free up staff to perform more value-added functions, like collecting unemployment".
This technology is probably inevitable though. As technology improves, more and more people can have their jobs replaced by computers. I know somebody is going to reply by saying "but it just shifts the jobs to somewhere else, e.g. the people who create these tags and create and maintain the software". Sure, to a degree, but if you follow the trends to their logical conclusion, you get to a point where millions of low-paying jobs are getting lost and being replaced by maybe a couple thousand higher paying jobs. At some point, something will have to give.. all those people who end up losing their jobs will be the retailers customers themselves, so their business drops.
Hehe.. the inverse may sometimes apply too. I normally start documenting parts of my job (regardless of whether or not I'm asked to) when I want to get RID of those tasks, and they are things that I'm the only one in the company can currently do. Being able to delegate some of these tasks to newcomers frees up time for me to get more serious C++ development work done. Most recently, I pro-actively wrote a lengthy document describing how to administer the SourceSafe databases, and all the pains that go along with it.
Slashdot Mirror
There isn't one simple explanation for why women aren't going into computers, but it might have something to do with men's total lack of restraint in making blatantly sexist and obnoxious comments whenever the subject is raised.
I often try to encourage women friends/relations etc who aren't sure to have a go at "getting into computers" (not because they're female, I try this sort of thing with any people I meet who aren't sure what they want to do with their lives), and I try to help them out as much as possible, and yet the VAST majority of women come back with the same responses over and over: "just not interested", "computers are boring" etc etc. These are adult women who are TELLING ME that they are not interested at all in computers. So I hardly think that its unreasonable that men on slashdot think that women are, well, not interested in computers. I think that women (in general) are not interested in computers BECAUSE WOMEN KEEP TELLING ME THAT. So keep your ridiculous accusations of sexism to yourself.
I know that many of the women I studied CS with were given a bit of a hard time by some of the men, who did make sexist comments etc. But guess what, virtually all of them have been mature enough and confident enough in themselves to know not to take it too seriously. They didn't just burst into tears and drop out immediately like a bunch of pathetic helpless creatures. I think it is sexist to be perpetuating the (old, male-ego-feeding) stereotype that women ARE these pathetic helpless beings. Victims, they are, poor, suffering, victims of this cruel, sexist, male-dominated society. Oh, such drama. Such bollocks. Calling a women "amazingly brave" because she posted on /. about her experiences? Please, give me a break.
Some more food for thought: http://smile.jcon.org/sustain/b1/introduction/para dise/ParadiseLost_Part3.html.
May seem a bit paranoid, unless you actually start thinking about it a bit. Read the whole thing for best perspective.
"We have met the enemy and he is us."
Sendo's execs probably got taken in for the same reason people fall victim to other scams, such as MLM schemes, Nigerian hoaxes etc: they get blinded by the (incorrect) thought that they are going to make lots and lots of money.
Or: "What, is Moore's Law dead *again*?"
You can't sue one manufacturer for making a car less secure than the other (as long as both parts followed the rules and regulations involved in making cars)
I remember reading once that McDonalds lost this case because there are actually rules and regulations (FDA, I think) stipulating the maximum temperature at which hot beverages may be served, and that McDonalds was over this limit. I don't know if thats true though.
Vredefort is in South Africa, which is nowhere near central Africa.
http://vredefortdome.co.za/
If earth is anything to go by
Why do people always want to assume that Earth is 'something to go by', i.e. that Earth is probably "representative of an average planet with life"? Its the only planet with life on that we know have, making it a sample of size 1, and as such we have absolutely no clue whatsoever where it would lie on any statistical curves. Earth could just as well be a statistical outlier in most things, for all we know. Making any assumptions about other planets, based on Earth, seems like a dicy process to me. Perhaps Earth has been really slow on the evolution scale, i.e. perhaps other planets required much less time for evolution to progress. Or it could be the other way round, perhaps it was really quick. Or perhaps it was just average. Or perhaps in other parts of the universe, other factors play bigger roles, such as 'seeding' of planets. Collectively, we don't yet have enough scientific knowledge and understanding of these processes to even begin to make proper "educated guesses".
Just because Earth is the only planet we've seen, does not mean we can make statistical assumptions about it. Nor can we extend such assumptions to other planets, such as Mars, because for all we know, Mars may also have been a statistical outlier.
Microsoft products all have a similar look and feel and the interfaces are intuitive
If these conditions are what made Microsoft successful (essentially you're making the "MS brought computing to the masses by making it friendly" argument), then we'd all be using Macs today. Mac in the mid-80s was already better than Windows in the first half of the 90s ever was at these things.
when deliberate and purposeful, a http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=cartel">c artel)
Damn, that'll teach me to use "preview" next time. c artel
What a horribly long post. I went on a bit of a tangent there :/
The condition is called an oligopoly (when deliberate and purposeful, a http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=cartel">c artel), and it is just one more fairly commonly used method to avoid having to deal with "free-market forces" (i.e, to unfairly eliminate healthy competition). If two large companies (who would normally be in competition) wield considerable control over a market, then they will often just "agree not to compete". In other words, the CEOs realise that they can BOTH make tonnes of money this way, which makes it, in some cases, a much more logical and easy choice than entering into aggressive/risky competition.
There are some well-known of these, such as the RIAA, as well as Visa/Mastercard. Or here in South Africa, there was until recently the Vodacom/MTN cartel that entirely controlled the cellphone market.
Does the Sherman act say anything about oligopolies? Are there are equivalent laws?
One of the tricky things is usually trying to prove that companies have "agreed not to compete".. when a company obviously has a monopoly, thats pretty clear. But if the CEOs and CFOs etc of two large companies have made deals with one another not to compete, its usually fairly easy to hide any evidence of this.
The public often don't seem to be bothered either, because the illusion of competition is usually enough to fool them, and they may not realise that they're being price-gouged because 'for all they know, thats what product XYZ should cost'. (In fact, some companies actually CREATE additional "brands" in order to deliberately *manufacture* the illusion of competition in the market by having two separate brands next to one another on the shelf in the store, and will even do things like have "price wars" with themselves between the brands, to drive up sales. IIRC, the Liqui Fruit and Ceres boxed fruit juice companies ("company") are an example of this. This is a separate issue though)
Incidentally, just like monopolies, the mere existence of a competitor does NOT magically NULLify the condition, since the mono/oligopolies still have "unnatural" powers to control prices or block market entry points (e.g. the existence of BeOS did not imply that MS did not have a monopoly, since MS could still control the major market entry points (the OEMs). In the same way, the existence of small record labels or credit card companies does not "negate" the cartel (and power that comes with it) that the RIAA or that Visa/Mastercard have. With monopolies, the "monopoly condition" may be defined in terms of the percentage of a market that a company controls. I think over here it is 75%, but I may be remembering wrong.
There are many many "sneaky" ways to establish and retain success in a market that have absolutely nothing to do with quality of product, which is why I find the pure-capitalism (unregulated) approach rather naive. People think its all about "building a better mousetrap". I think anyone who thinks this has probably never actually tried to produce and sell a new product. Rhere are many ways to be successful with only a mediocre, overpriced mousetrap, especially if you can block the market entry points of others who might actually have a better mousetrap. "Buying shelf space" is another commonly established practice, in fact, with many retailers, the only way to get onto their shelves is to buy the shelf space. I remember years ago Microsoft used to do "buy shelf space" of software retailers (essentially pay them off) in exchange for keeping Mac and other competing software off the shelves. Microsoft Press made various "exclusionary deals" with a major local bookseller.
And of course, video editing is much worse...
Yes, I also found his comment a bit odd. 3D gaming? Software development? Video editing? And he thinks 1 GHz is enough? Either he only does small stuff, or he has a LOT of patience. The codebase for the project I'm working on at work is currently about 170,000 lines, big, but certainly not a "huge" project, and it takes nearly ten minutes to rebuild on a P4 2 GHz. One often has to make changes to header files fairly high up in the dependency chain .. :/ .. there is only so many times in a day you can "go make coffee" or "check your email". It is very typical for me to have to spend more than 70% of my time in a day just WAITING for the computer to do one thing or another.
Well its for a good cause after all :)
Wirtz even lost his VCR in the deal, and Sylvania Township police debated confiscating his Xbox gaming console, but decided to leave it behind. The officers confiscated his legitimate CD copies of Windows Office and several operating systems, all of his burned CD's, and a security card writing machine instead
Almost sounds like the police were shopping. I have this mental image of cops wandering about a house with a shopping .. "one XBOX for kid for Christmas" .. "been wanting to try this new game" .. "hmm .. wife asked me to pick up some milk" ..
For those who don't feel like cut n pasting (esp with that dang silly /. space in there)
http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/mac/HIGuidelin es/HIGuidelines-2.html
What do you mean "Russia fell apart after Afghanistan"? Still looks OK to me, probably hasn't been better in a very long time.
Or did you mean, "*Communism in Russia* fell apart after Afghanistan", or "The communist government of Russia fell apart after Afghanistan"?
"Russia" didn't fall apart, on the contrary, they're going through a positive process of transformation to a democratic free market system (Chechnia yada yada). Sure there is still poverty, like in many other fledgling democracies change doesn't happen overnight .. but "fell apart"?
Blah, whatever, no matter what we say in a slashdot thread, the world still hates the top dog.
Yeah, sure, all those people are just jealous, right? Just like all those anti-Microsofties are just jealous of all Bill Gates' money, right? What a childish, simplistic viewpoint. Sorry, the world isn't that simple. Whether you want to know it or not, the USA's rise was *not* entirely squeaky clean, & some people actually have legitimate reasons to dislike the US.
his assumes that criminals are rational people. They aren't; most of them are irrational and stupid. You're saying "Trust in the criminal! If you don't carry a gun, he won't hurt you -- he'll just politely take your money and be on his way!"
Criminals are just people. Some of them will. Some of them won't. Some of them will kill you anyway. Some of them would avoid it if they can.
Ah, yes. Better the defenseless family was robbed and possibly murdered by the criminals, eh? Then they can be content in their moral superiority, as their coffins are lowered in the ground.
Obviously not, and you're twisting my views: I very specifically stated that I believe in people having a right to defend themselves, including the right to kill their attackers.
It happens a lot here that the criminals DO shoot first, its not even strange.
Yes these are difficult problems. All I'm saying is that "arming the populace" is NOT the solution that so many people make it out to be, it generates many additional problems itself, and that we should give consideration to such problems, not pretend they don't exist.
One of the problems is that this wonderfully "armed populace" is actually extremely ineffective. When the system "works" as it is "supposed to" (i.e. in the example I gave of the man who killed two armed robbers), it is the exception, not the norm. In the MAJORITY of cases, victims are either (a) murdered LONG before they've managed to get their guns out (criminals always have the element of surprise, and will shoot someone who is trying to get his gun out), and (b) in many cases, the "armed populace" is so inept that the criminal will take the persons gun and shoot them with their own gun.
You cannot just ignore these problems, no matter how badly you want the solution to be "an armed populace". The simple fact is that in reality, this "solution" only works in a small percentage of cases.
Unarming society is impossible. Look to Great Britain's example if you need to: right now, people aren't allowed to defend themselves, and criminals are the only ones with guns
Thats true, but then, look at the USA's example: its one of the countries with the highest homicide rate, much higher than most of the European countries where guns are outlawed. You have to wonder why.
They caused thier own starvation
Well, this makes sense if you assume that all people in Zimbabwe are actually one person starving him/herself, but the reality is that that nobody caused "their own" starvation - one group of people (the citizens) are the victims of the actions of another group of people (the corrupt government and the so-called "veterans" which take over the farms). The citizens did NOT "cause their own starvation", they are entirely victims, and we all need to remember this. The situation is precisely akin to that of the people (& especially the women) of Afghanistan. The "people of Afghanistan" did not "cause their own repression", they were victims of the actions of another group, the Taliban.
Comments like yours bother me only because they tend to provide contrived "rationalizations" for people who want to ignore the problem. Its an "easy out" for first-worlders who want to turn their backs, they convince themselves that those very same people brought their situations on themselves, in which case "its their own fault". But the fact is the victims in this did NOT bring the situation on themselves.
This is VERY different to an individual who brought a situation upon himself and now wants help, e.g. some beggar on the street who was lazy and dropped out of school and now can't get a job, or something. He "brought it upon himself". Its not the same, "Zimbabwe" is not an individual.
Note I'm not saying the first world has any obligation to respond, but just don't make oversimplistic BS justifications for why not to respond. Rather, just be honest about it and admit the truth, i.e. say "well we don't want to help because its just plain not our problem, if millions of people die of starvation, well, its not our problem, sorry". And its true, its "not your problem". If you don't want to help, fine. If you do want to help the victims, wonderful.
People often seem to use "it wasn't my/our fault" as a reason/excuse why they're not going to help another person. You hear the same sort of thing all the time here from young white South Africans: "I had nothing to do with apartheid, so why should I lift a finger to help the blacks". This has begun to seem like a silly excuse to me. I had nothing to do with apartheid either, but I don't see why that should somehow *prevent* me from wanting to help uplift these people (by giving up my time to help provide them with better educations etc). If they don't want to help others , fine, but I wish they'd be honest about their reasons: that they just don't give a shit.
It is sad, especially since these days it is not all that difficult to be cross-platform for most types of apps, but most software developers are too stupid/lazy/ignorant/uninformed/apathetic to bother to learn how. And the irony is that these days it is easier than ever to be cross-platform. For 3D, the OpenGL API has never enjoyed such broad support, from Macs to PCs to Linux. And cross-platform libs like SDL can help you forget about most of the rest of the crap too.
For "normal" applications, I recently tried out wxWindows, and I really enjoy using it. Even if you only care about the Win32 platform, I find that using wxWindows anyway is STILL much faster (development time) than using native Win32 or MFC, because the the latter two really suck as APIs. wxWindows doesn't automatically make your app cross-platform, but it can easily take you 90% of the way, especially since they have abstractions for tonnes of non-UI things as well, like files, sockets, threads, timers, and even have other cool lib functions like regular expression parsers.
With Mac and Linux both now being UNIX relatives, many other barriers to being cross-platform are disappearing too.
Just to go off on "even further in the future" tangent .. whenever I ponder what the "inevitable conclusion" to all this might eventually be, I somehow always start thinking of pets. Or rather, the situation they enjoy.
Ultimately, computers (whatever form(s) they may take in the future) are going to "make humans obsolete", at least in the sense that, sooner or later, we will figure out how to make computers that are at least as intelligent as us, and probably more so. At that point, something VERY dramatic must shift in the way the world works, because suddenly our entire viewpoint on the world changes. Instead of visiting a human doctor, we'll WANT to visit robot doctors, because they will be much more intelligent and much better than us. Instead of human researchers, we'll want robot researchers, because they'll be better than us. For political decision makers the same will probably apply, as well as to software programmers, whatever job you name, the machines will be able to do it better than us. Not being as fragile and sensitive to environmental extremes as us, they will be able to better tolerate the conditions necessary for essentially the ultimate goal of colonising the galaxy. Whether they will be sentient or is irrelevent, as long as they are up to the task and 'want' to do it. (We have been on top so long, we take it for granted that there is nothing more intelligent than us. One day, this will dramatically change, our perception of ourselves will be reduced to second-best, for good).
Anyway, that appears to me to be the logical eventual conclusion to this continual, unrelenting "march of progress". In fact, it seems inevitable to me, by a bit of simple logic: (a) humans are not the most intelligent machine possible, and so (b) it is theoretically possible to have machines more intelligent than humans and (c) our technology is going to get good enough to achieve this theoretical possibility - probably within 200 years.
Science fiction authors and Hollywood and so on would immediately assume the worst of such a scenario, that the robots would realise we are redundant, extinguish us, and take over. Our purpose would have been served. I was pondering this scenario, and wondering if it would be at all possible that we *could* continue to live alongside such vastly superior robots indefinitely. And I realised that essentially, this is the situation that our pets (dogs, cats etc) enjoy right now. We currently work hard to maintain the infrastructure and grow food. At the end of the day, we provide food and shelter for our pets. They can literally lounge around and do nothing, while we slave away all day to feed them. Replace the pets with us, and us with the robots, and we could theoretically "enjoy" the same situation, where the robots do all the work, and we sit around by the pool all day, with them willingly bringing us food. That would almost be the "ideal" "pinnacle" of human civilisation, the ultimate goal. What hundreds of generations appear to be working towards. Whether or not people, who love *building* things, would actually really enjoy living in a world where everything to achieve had already been achieved, and also whether or not people would accept essentially the role of domestic animals, are open questions. But what it did make realise, is that not *all* the options (of technological progress) necessarily lead to gloom and doom. We *do* appear to at least have the option of "building the perfect world", but we would have to play our cards right.
Anyway, just some random thoughts. Not directly related to RFID tags, but indirectly so, in a far-off way.
Gun control legislation only makes it safer for criminals to go about their business, as they can be confident their victims are unarmed.
True, but then your gun control system has to work properly, i.e. to ensure that criminals do not get hold of guns. In the US it is way too easy to get illegal guns. The result of this is criminals also walking around, better armed than the populace. This means that: (a) the criminals are equivalently armed to the people they attack, but (b) they will always have the element of surprise, and (c) since they are scummier, they are less likely to hesitate to kill someone, especially if they don't want to be killed or go to jail, and thus (d) are more likely to just SHOOT FIRST in any potential conflict situation.
Yes, an armed populace is very likely a deterrent to MANY would-be criminals. But on the other hand, you also have to look at the effect it has on the remaining, scummier criminals.
Pretend you are a criminal with a gun, which you probably obtained illegally. Now pretend you want to mug someone. You only really want their money, you don't want to kill them, but you will if you feel you are in danger. Now, as you approach your victim, you realise that that person may be carrying a gun. This mere awareness HEIGHTENS the conflict that is about to occur. You become edgy, nervous - you don't know what to expect. As you are about to attack, you realise just how high the risk really is - you may even get shot in the back while running away! There is only one sure-fire way to minimize the risk to essentially zero: shoot first! You didn't want to kill the person, but you got frightened by the intensity of this conflict situation, the risk just seemed too large.
Now pretend you are the same criminal, who also has a gun illegally, but you know you can pretty much safely assume that your victim is unarmed. As you approach your victim, you realise that they are pretty much powerless against you, you don't have to worry. You are more at ease. You just bop them over the head with the gun, grab their money, and run away, knowing that they cannot do a thing as they lie there, stunned.
I've thought about this issue a lot now, living in South Africa, where the crime rate is very high at the moment. There was a recent incident where four *armed* robbers attacked a man in his driveway, the mans two daughters were with him. He pulled out his gun and shot two of the robbers dead, on his lawn, in front of his daughters. The other two ran away. In your view, a perfect example of why an armed populace works.
But thinking it through a little more, is that really the case? For various reasons, the two robbers (who have guns) who ran away after seeing their friends shot dead, are unlikely to stop being robbers. Chances are they are living in poverty, can't get jobs, and probably have a drug habit to support. They are LIKELY to try again on someone else. But the next time round, they will have learnt their lesson: don't hesitate, shoot first. They know their lives are more important (to them) than their victims' lives. And chances are, they also feel a little bloodlust from wanting revenge for the death of their friends.
As for our "hero" who shot the two robbers dead, who we instinctively want to cheer, I doubt he even feels like a hero. Not only has he just killed two people on his own garden lawn (something very few people can claim they would not feel terrible about, regardless of the circumstances), but his two teenage daughters watched the whole thing. They watched their father blow a hole in a mans face, and a hole in the chest of another, watched the two men drop dead on the grass. This must have been highly traumatising for all of them.
And the incident heightens the fear of everyone in the country. Everyone becomes more afraid of becoming a victim, so people buy more guns. The criminals become more afraid, because they realise the risks of their enterprise are much higher. So they learn to shoot first. So the people become even more afraid, and also start learning, if in doubt, shoot first. They barracade themselves indoors. They enclose off *entire neighbourhoods*. Everyone is suspicuous of everyone. With each cycle, the conflict is heightened and intensified.
This is just how human conflict works, and in fact, primate conflict in general. Each side raises the bar, thinking they will have the upper hand. But the other side always raises the bar also, in response, so as not to be the underdog. You see this primate conflict dynamic play out in situations from ordinary road rage incidents, to bar fights, to Middle East politics, to Bush/N. Korea tension etc etc. Bush senses a threat from (N) Korea, calls them an "axis of evil". Kim (power-wise, the underdog) hears this, and (rightly, i.e. rationally) perceives it as potential aggression, so he publically announces he has a nuke - similar, if you will, to the innocent civilian arming himself, and sending a message to those around him "I am armed, don't attack me". Bush, who is now deeply uncertain of whether Korea's motives are aggressive or just defensive, will no doubt predictably respond with something along the lines of issuing an ultimatum to Korea that if they don't destroy their nuke program, the US will attack them. Kim, who has been suspecting that Bush WANTS to attack ever since they were called an "axis of evil", will inevitably just see this as proof that his suspicions were correct, and that this whole thing was designed by Bush to create the excuse to attack. Kim now 'knows' a (perceived) "imperialist" superpower wants to attack his country. Each cycle, the conflict has just been heightened. Tensions are high. He has a nuke. Decisions, decisions ..
You'd think our leaders would be intelligent enough to realise what they're doing, but they're just essentially uncontrollably responding to their gut primate instincts, no better than animals.
Oops, went a little bit on a tangent there.
I used to avidly share your opinions, but now I'm not so sure. I do still believe in my own right to be armed. Instinctively, I feel as though I should have that right to defend myself in a situation. But slowly I'm starting to have second thoughts about whether this really is better for society at large. Once the cliched old "cycle of conflict" begins, it just seems to inevitably spiral quickly upward. You just need to get into a "road rage incident" to have seen this. People get shot and killed in petty road rage incidents over nothing, which itself is proof of just how powerful this upward spiral is, and how little we really seem to do to stop it when in the situation.
Better to just avoid the situation completely. Don't let the cycle even begin. And that means unarming society - especially the criminals, but also the populace.
Wow, good thing society has intelligent people like you in it, who are willing to analyze situations.
Come on, think about it logically for just two seconds: RFID needs a standard. The company that makes such a standard will make a LOT of money. Thus, there are groups investing heavily to try become *that* one company. Now, pretend you are one of those investors: do you think you are NOT going to want to heavily market and push your standard in any way possible in order to succeed?
If you really think about it, its actually highly unlikely that world DOESN'T "work like that". Its just logic. Its what anyone, you or me, would do in the same situation.
But oh yeah, 'the world is really this rosy place that nothing bad is ever going to happen to so all the freaks who think that bad things could happen are just paranoid'. Sure. Every human civilisation, and there have been hundreds, in the whole of history has collapsed or been destroyed by something (except perhaps for the Chinese). But oh yeah, 'ours is an exception, you can safely put tens of millions of people out of jobs and magically new jobs will re-appear, because things don't change in OUR civilisation, they're stable'.
Would you like to debunk any particular parts of my post, or rather just take a general "I don't want to think about anything" stance? Come on, if you don't agree with something I said, lets have some civilised debate: give me your *reason* to disagree.
According to their "about" section:
"RFID Journal is an independent online magazine. We are not part of a large, stultifying publishing company. Nor do we receive funding from any organization or company. We depend on paid subscriptions to provide timely news and information about on radio frequency identification and its business applications."
"The Journal was launched on March 1, 2002, in the belief that radio frequency identification, or RFID, is poised for a major breakthrough that will make it possible to put microchips with a unique serial number on anything from automobile drive trains to bars of soap. Some think that's far-fetched. We think it's not far off."
"The folks at the Auto-ID Center are working with Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and other global companies to create low-cost RF tags and readers and an Internet-like infrastructure for tracking goods as they flow through the supply chain. We think their goal of replacing barcodes with RF tags is not only achievable but inevitable."
I have my doubts about the "independent" part, they are probably sponsored by many different groups though, not to any particular one, as I thought. Something does seem a little "off" about the whole thing though.
The "journal" is probably completely "sponsored" by the groups actively creating and pushing this. If you read the article you'll notice that Gillette has "sponsored the development of" Alien's RFID technology, so it sounds like Gillette is a major investor, and probably one of the "sponsors" of this "journal". That would also explain the "Gillette is so cool" angle.
The "independent" journal has probably been created to help market the concept to retailers and other customers, but naturally biased towards the sponsors of the journal. In other words, the journal is advertising material disguised as independent reporting. I can't imagine what independent group would be creating a journal like this.
Judging by their FAQ, it sounds like this area has been quite competitive for a while, in terms of different companies trying to come up with low-cost RFID tags, and different companies creating different standards. But the world is going to pretty much need ONE standard for this to work. And naturally, the company that gets their standard in place is set to make incredibly huge truckloads of $$$ further down the line, once this is implemented on a large scale. Thus it makes sense for investors like Gillette, who appear to want to be in on the deal, to sponsor such a journal. I am of course speculating, but it makes a lot of sense to me.
They even mention on the page an alliance with a group working with SAP to integrate this technology with SAP software, which would then just extend this automation of supply chain management even further. The system would be able to do things like automatically "alert staff" if buying trends indicate that a retailer is running out of stock of a particular item.
Essentially, the gist of all this is that managers realise that most of the jobs in a retail store can be automated, and that all you really need is a few managers using the right software and hardware tools. You don't need human cashiers when the customer can just put his trolley of goods under a scanner that tallies his entire shopping cart in under a second and automatically bills his credit card. What this is probably going to mean, 10 or 20 years from now, is that HUGE numbers of people in retail and distributing are going to lose their jobs to these little tags.
The biggest joke of all is how they seem to avoid mentioning this issue in the "journal". To quote the FAQ: "The aim of most auto-ID systems is to increase efficiency, reduce data entry errors, and free up staff to perform more value-added functions". Yeah right, more like "free up staff to perform more value-added functions, like collecting unemployment".
This technology is probably inevitable though. As technology improves, more and more people can have their jobs replaced by computers. I know somebody is going to reply by saying "but it just shifts the jobs to somewhere else, e.g. the people who create these tags and create and maintain the software". Sure, to a degree, but if you follow the trends to their logical conclusion, you get to a point where millions of low-paying jobs are getting lost and being replaced by maybe a couple thousand higher paying jobs. At some point, something will have to give .. all those people who end up losing their jobs will be the retailers customers themselves, so their business drops.
Reminds me of this despair.com poster: http://www.despair.com/motivation.html
Hehe .. the inverse may sometimes apply too. I normally start documenting parts of my job (regardless of whether or not I'm asked to) when I want to get RID of those tasks, and they are things that I'm the only one in the company can currently do. Being able to delegate some of these tasks to newcomers frees up time for me to get more serious C++ development work done. Most recently, I pro-actively wrote a lengthy document describing how to administer the SourceSafe databases, and all the pains that go along with it.