"in Europe, logistics companies are not yet able to offer dirt cheap delivery options"
I've driven there. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that so many of the roads were designed before Columbus could sail, and are just wide enough for an ox cart (and a lot of the newer ones aren't much wider).
". . . there aren't enough uneducated people in Western Europe . . . "
With a birthrate so far below the replenishment rate, it's probably more accurate to say: ". . . there are not enough people in Western Europe to do most anything at a reasonable price (except be snarky) . . . "
This would have been an interesting observation:
"The malls are replacing retail shops with services and entertainment. The roads are littered with abandoned retail shops except those catering purely to poor people lacking credit cards or novelty. The decline is very obvious to an outsider."
Except that going to malls is generally not very convenient. People went for the wide variety of selection and that is no longer the best place to find it if that is your main reason for going. Many malls are thriving with a mix of shops and entertainment, but this is because they are draws in their own right and are not competing directly with online stores solely on the basis of price or variety. You do see lot of abandoned retail shops but this is at least partly due to the fact that developers will invariable overdevelop, given the room to do so (which they don't really have in Western Europe).
And yes,some of it is change, and it probably is rather more obvious to an outsider . . . but then you had to call it a decline. Dinosaurs, had they survived much longer than they did (and had a few more brain cells to rub together), would probably regard their own evolution into birds, along with the rise of mammals, as being a kind of decline as well.
Of course, we've already automated a lot of the brawn, now we are automating the brains. Whether we can automate what's left once that takes off is an open question but the general suspicion is that we won't find enough jobs for them that pay anything like a living wage.
How many actors, golf pros, hostesses, and politicians are we going to have?
I put up a series of enterprise apps a few years ago. Just me and another guy (that left once they were up). For an organization of 1500, they wiped out about 80 administrative positions (what used to be called clerks and secretaries). The people in them left through attrition and transfers, but those jobs aren't coming back. Not when a couple of programmers, even making a low six figures each (3 times what the admins were getting), and a couple of servers, are so much less expensive, not to mention that on-time rates (call it efficiency) jumped from 35% to 99%.
That's just the way things have to be. Been that way since somebody way back slapped a yoke on an ox, hitched a plow to a mule, or built the first water-mill.
A big part of nuclear deterrence is numbers but not because more of them might do more damage. Above a certain point, numbers are mainly for the psychological effect on the enemy's willingness to engage -- which is really the only reason for a rational society to even have nuclear weapons in the first place, these days. So numbers are important.
Number of nukes isn't really the whole story though. I've seen the CEPs (the circles where the things might hit). Russia might aim at New York but the circle where the thing might hit is big enough to hit anywhere for hundreds of miles in any direction (I know, I know, no one wants it coming down ANYWHERE, but that's not the point. The US wants to throw a nuke at Moscow and the question is more like: "What's the address and how high above that do you want it to detonate?"
When both sides know these facts, it doesn't take as many nukes to get the same psychological effect on the enemy as greater numbers might get.
On the charge of hypocrisy in advocating no further countries with nuclear weapons when a country already has them? Less nuclear weapons in the world (to a point) is a good thing, so is fewer countries having them. The problem with additional countries getting them is they DO NOT need them to preclude the use of nuclear weapons against them. One of more of the existing nuclear armed countries would swat anyone who tried. So they don't need a nuclear counterattack capability of their own and they definitely don't need a nuclear attack capability so yes, it is not a hypocritical for any country, whether is already has them or not, to seek to discourage any more countries from having them. It is in the best interests of the human race that no additional countries gain the capability, or build the bombs.
Driving an invisible car is not an option, nor should it be. If we really had an inalienable right to do that, then every license plate would just read "Road Tax Paid."
But hacking computers, tapping phone lines, intercepting cell phone data, no knock SWAT raids (on the basis of a single phone call), and seizing cash, laptops, and cell phones, all without a court order? Those are the kind of things where we would be better off drawing the line should be drawn and defended. Don't talk about slippery slopes, either. If people can't ever compromise on anything, and everything is an absolute, we wouldn't need judges or legislators or any of that.
If you want to take it to the kind of extremes where recording a license plate number is illegal, you might just as well outlaw collection and storage of fingerprints and DNA.
I think it's great if they can figure out that a certain vehicle has been nearby on every occasion that a serial killer has struck.
While it may seem that there is nothing inherently wrong with taking a contract position, the sheer magnitude of this expectation by industry that highly skilled workers in very specific disciplines should come out of the woodwork when they are called, be grateful for whatever they can get, and then quietly slink away to try to find and compete for an opportunity to work another six months somewhere else, indicates deeper problems. In essence, it's a big win for the firm that avoids hiring an employee (and the staffing firm that takes a big cut for doing very little) and this comes at the expense of the individual.
These aren't traditional contract jobs of yore, where a contractor could expect to get the big bucks and make enough to carry them through the gap. The expectation now is that they will take these jobs, many paying no more than what is comparable for employees, and like it.
Why it's a very bad trend for workers is complex but it wouldn't have become so prevalent if the workforce wasn't increasingly (and alarmingly) at the mercy of the employers.
Just consider the way some dubious employers of unskilled labor will take a truck down to a locale used as a gathering place for illegal aliens or indigents and ask who among them wants to work that day. See any similarities?
These "gig" contract engagements tend to be bad economic choices in the same way that "rent-to-own" is a bad way to furnish your home.
As one science fiction author once said, "Think of it as evolution in action."
With no social life and little chance for a decent income, they are far less likely to reproduce than the rest of the population. I used to have this recurring dream of the future where I would drive through what had been a very nice neighborhood in the evening and all I could see was peeling paint and weed choked, overgrown yards. Flickering lights from inside told me everyone was indoors and online every waking moment.
In nature, whenever any species population gets too high, there is a tendency for a catastrophe (a virus or some such) to seriously crash its numbers. Nuclear weapons, insecticides, global warming, plagues, famines, asteroids, volcanoes, etc. be damned; maybe this is ours. It would be more fun and involve less pain, at least, so there's that.
On a personal note, went through this with my kids some years ago and they are now quite functional grown-ups, well educated and employed. I had to make it clear that when there are things that have to be done, then those have to take priority (like leaving a game because the house is burning down and you won't be able to play if you are dead). Likewise, doing poorly in school, followed by a low paying job, means you are going to have to work many more hours and have less time in your life for playing. It also means you won't even have enough money to get the good computers with the nice internet plans. That had to be made very, very clear.
I occasionally get addicted to a video game myself. When that happens I let myself go at completely (other than covering the priorities, work, family, hygiene, sleep although that last might suffer a bit). Eventually you get sick of it and move on. This may not work for everyone but, then again, though the issue might seem in doubt to an outside observer at the time, not everyone who goes to college, not even if it's a party school, winds up as an alcoholic.
Earth also likely has a lot more radioactive materials in its core that are decaying and producing heat . . . possibly an even higher percentage than our planet's size would indicate due to the probable nature of the collision that created the Moon (it got the light stuff, we kept the heavier stuff). The Moon also creates a tide (even in the Earth's core) which probably helps keep things moving to produce the magnetosphere.
Yep, a bit over a third of one percent of the speed of light. Which means that on a space station orbiting it, the rate of time would be so slow that, for each 365 days that pass on Earth, they would only experience around 364 days, 23 hours, and 55.5 minutes.
Over a period of a million years their clocks would fall behind ours by about 6.83 years! Everyone get the same math?
I have this box full of old hard drives and cell phones going back 15 years. This is why. I should really do something with it one of these days, but at least I know for certain no one is looking at them.
It's why aircrew evaluations are typically performed by an office called standardization and evaluation (often abbreviated to standboard). The goal isn't to ensure every pilot it as good as they can possibly be; it's to ensure every pilot meets the standards . . . which apparently includes knowing this checklist. Blame all around if true.
. . . before someone figures out that Loch Ness contains more water than than all the lakes in England and Wales combined and tries to pipe it away. Of course, it's rather murky stuff from all the peat, hopefully it would never be worth it.
Heh, you nailed it. I hadn't yet singled out that word when I suggested he wants to put chains and leg restraints on everyone at birth. I just don't like his tone, his attitude, his viewpoint, and think he should retire as he has clearly stepped over the edge when he is challenging our freedoms, rather than defending them.
It's like the head of the AMA seriously suggesting we should start something like The Purge every year in order to thin the human herd (for it's own good, of course). I would like to think he would soon find himself locked out of his own office and with a restraining order against going anywhere near the place.
Most people react to change in one of two ways: they resist it or they look for opportunities in it.
The challenge people seem most concerned with arises from shifting the balance of earned income further from wage-based and more towards capital-based. That presents challenges (and opportunities), but resisting automation is not going to be way to meet them.
Loved Halo 1 and 2 . . . because they were on my pc. Tried Halo 3 repeatedly on my Xbox. Nope. It wasn't that I couldn't play it there, it was because I didn't LIKE to play it there.
Like they imply in the source article, if you are putting unsweetened organic oat bran cereal in the same category as chicken nuggets, the only conclusion we can draw is that junk food is bad for us. Anyone who's been keeping up knew that decades ago.
It might actually be better to target certain insects for complete extinction via the new CRISPR-based technologies. These would be the specific insects that people are trying so hard to poison right now. Removing the economic motive for indiscriminate use of insecticide might just help save the others. Research would be needed to see if this could be effective, just don't take too long.
Slashdot Mirror
Or is too little too late for them?
"in Europe, logistics companies are not yet able to offer dirt cheap delivery options"
I've driven there. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that so many of the roads were designed before Columbus could sail, and are just wide enough for an ox cart (and a lot of the newer ones aren't much wider).
". . . there aren't enough uneducated people in Western Europe . . . "
With a birthrate so far below the replenishment rate, it's probably more accurate to say: ". . . there are not enough people in Western Europe to do most anything at a reasonable price (except be snarky) . . . "
This would have been an interesting observation: "The malls are replacing retail shops with services and entertainment. The roads are littered with abandoned retail shops except those catering purely to poor people lacking credit cards or novelty. The decline is very obvious to an outsider."
Except that going to malls is generally not very convenient. People went for the wide variety of selection and that is no longer the best place to find it if that is your main reason for going. Many malls are thriving with a mix of shops and entertainment, but this is because they are draws in their own right and are not competing directly with online stores solely on the basis of price or variety. You do see lot of abandoned retail shops but this is at least partly due to the fact that developers will invariable overdevelop, given the room to do so (which they don't really have in Western Europe).
And yes,some of it is change, and it probably is rather more obvious to an outsider . . . but then you had to call it a decline. Dinosaurs, had they survived much longer than they did (and had a few more brain cells to rub together), would probably regard their own evolution into birds, along with the rise of mammals, as being a kind of decline as well.
Good point.
Of course, we've already automated a lot of the brawn, now we are automating the brains. Whether we can automate what's left once that takes off is an open question but the general suspicion is that we won't find enough jobs for them that pay anything like a living wage.
How many actors, golf pros, hostesses, and politicians are we going to have?
I put up a series of enterprise apps a few years ago. Just me and another guy (that left once they were up). For an organization of 1500, they wiped out about 80 administrative positions (what used to be called clerks and secretaries). The people in them left through attrition and transfers, but those jobs aren't coming back. Not when a couple of programmers, even making a low six figures each (3 times what the admins were getting), and a couple of servers, are so much less expensive, not to mention that on-time rates (call it efficiency) jumped from 35% to 99%.
That's just the way things have to be. Been that way since somebody way back slapped a yoke on an ox, hitched a plow to a mule, or built the first water-mill.
Keep their tummies full and their internet connections up, give 'em a few toys. They won't revolt. It takes a lot to get to that point.
A big part of nuclear deterrence is numbers but not because more of them might do more damage. Above a certain point, numbers are mainly for the psychological effect on the enemy's willingness to engage -- which is really the only reason for a rational society to even have nuclear weapons in the first place, these days. So numbers are important.
Number of nukes isn't really the whole story though. I've seen the CEPs (the circles where the things might hit). Russia might aim at New York but the circle where the thing might hit is big enough to hit anywhere for hundreds of miles in any direction (I know, I know, no one wants it coming down ANYWHERE, but that's not the point. The US wants to throw a nuke at Moscow and the question is more like: "What's the address and how high above that do you want it to detonate?"
When both sides know these facts, it doesn't take as many nukes to get the same psychological effect on the enemy as greater numbers might get.
On the charge of hypocrisy in advocating no further countries with nuclear weapons when a country already has them? Less nuclear weapons in the world (to a point) is a good thing, so is fewer countries having them. The problem with additional countries getting them is they DO NOT need them to preclude the use of nuclear weapons against them. One of more of the existing nuclear armed countries would swat anyone who tried. So they don't need a nuclear counterattack capability of their own and they definitely don't need a nuclear attack capability so yes, it is not a hypocritical for any country, whether is already has them or not, to seek to discourage any more countries from having them. It is in the best interests of the human race that no additional countries gain the capability, or build the bombs.
Driving an invisible car is not an option, nor should it be. If we really had an inalienable right to do that, then every license plate would just read "Road Tax Paid."
But hacking computers, tapping phone lines, intercepting cell phone data, no knock SWAT raids (on the basis of a single phone call), and seizing cash, laptops, and cell phones, all without a court order? Those are the kind of things where we would be better off drawing the line should be drawn and defended. Don't talk about slippery slopes, either. If people can't ever compromise on anything, and everything is an absolute, we wouldn't need judges or legislators or any of that.
If you want to take it to the kind of extremes where recording a license plate number is illegal, you might just as well outlaw collection and storage of fingerprints and DNA. I think it's great if they can figure out that a certain vehicle has been nearby on every occasion that a serial killer has struck.
While it may seem that there is nothing inherently wrong with taking a contract position, the sheer magnitude of this expectation by industry that highly skilled workers in very specific disciplines should come out of the woodwork when they are called, be grateful for whatever they can get, and then quietly slink away to try to find and compete for an opportunity to work another six months somewhere else, indicates deeper problems. In essence, it's a big win for the firm that avoids hiring an employee (and the staffing firm that takes a big cut for doing very little) and this comes at the expense of the individual.
These aren't traditional contract jobs of yore, where a contractor could expect to get the big bucks and make enough to carry them through the gap. The expectation now is that they will take these jobs, many paying no more than what is comparable for employees, and like it.
Why it's a very bad trend for workers is complex but it wouldn't have become so prevalent if the workforce wasn't increasingly (and alarmingly) at the mercy of the employers.
Just consider the way some dubious employers of unskilled labor will take a truck down to a locale used as a gathering place for illegal aliens or indigents and ask who among them wants to work that day. See any similarities?
These "gig" contract engagements tend to be bad economic choices in the same way that "rent-to-own" is a bad way to furnish your home.
As one science fiction author once said, "Think of it as evolution in action."
With no social life and little chance for a decent income, they are far less likely to reproduce than the rest of the population. I used to have this recurring dream of the future where I would drive through what had been a very nice neighborhood in the evening and all I could see was peeling paint and weed choked, overgrown yards. Flickering lights from inside told me everyone was indoors and online every waking moment.
In nature, whenever any species population gets too high, there is a tendency for a catastrophe (a virus or some such) to seriously crash its numbers. Nuclear weapons, insecticides, global warming, plagues, famines, asteroids, volcanoes, etc. be damned; maybe this is ours. It would be more fun and involve less pain, at least, so there's that.
On a personal note, went through this with my kids some years ago and they are now quite functional grown-ups, well educated and employed. I had to make it clear that when there are things that have to be done, then those have to take priority (like leaving a game because the house is burning down and you won't be able to play if you are dead). Likewise, doing poorly in school, followed by a low paying job, means you are going to have to work many more hours and have less time in your life for playing. It also means you won't even have enough money to get the good computers with the nice internet plans. That had to be made very, very clear.
I occasionally get addicted to a video game myself. When that happens I let myself go at completely (other than covering the priorities, work, family, hygiene, sleep although that last might suffer a bit). Eventually you get sick of it and move on. This may not work for everyone but, then again, though the issue might seem in doubt to an outside observer at the time, not everyone who goes to college, not even if it's a party school, winds up as an alcoholic.
Earth also likely has a lot more radioactive materials in its core that are decaying and producing heat . . . possibly an even higher percentage than our planet's size would indicate due to the probable nature of the collision that created the Moon (it got the light stuff, we kept the heavier stuff). The Moon also creates a tide (even in the Earth's core) which probably helps keep things moving to produce the magnetosphere.
0.37% speed of light
Yep, a bit over a third of one percent of the speed of light. Which means that on a space station orbiting it, the rate of time would be so slow that, for each 365 days that pass on Earth, they would only experience around 364 days, 23 hours, and 55.5 minutes.
Over a period of a million years their clocks would fall behind ours by about 6.83 years! Everyone get the same math?
Resistance is futile.
Wonder what I will play it on?
I have this box full of old hard drives and cell phones going back 15 years. This is why. I should really do something with it one of these days, but at least I know for certain no one is looking at them.
It's why aircrew evaluations are typically performed by an office called standardization and evaluation (often abbreviated to standboard). The goal isn't to ensure every pilot it as good as they can possibly be; it's to ensure every pilot meets the standards . . . which apparently includes knowing this checklist. Blame all around if true.
. . . before someone figures out that Loch Ness contains more water than than all the lakes in England and Wales combined and tries to pipe it away. Of course, it's rather murky stuff from all the peat, hopefully it would never be worth it.
Heh, you nailed it. I hadn't yet singled out that word when I suggested he wants to put chains and leg restraints on everyone at birth. I just don't like his tone, his attitude, his viewpoint, and think he should retire as he has clearly stepped over the edge when he is challenging our freedoms, rather than defending them.
It's like the head of the AMA seriously suggesting we should start something like The Purge every year in order to thin the human herd (for it's own good, of course). I would like to think he would soon find himself locked out of his own office and with a restraining order against going anywhere near the place.
Why not just put permanent handcuffs and leg restraints on everyone as they are born? Oh, and install an internal tracker as well, of course.
Logically, that would make it even harder for people to do bad things and evade law enforcement.
Seriously, this man has tunnel vision. It's past time for him to retire.
It's all fun and games until Godzilla shows up!
Most people react to change in one of two ways: they resist it or they look for opportunities in it.
The challenge people seem most concerned with arises from shifting the balance of earned income further from wage-based and more towards capital-based. That presents challenges (and opportunities), but resisting automation is not going to be way to meet them.
Loved Halo 1 and 2 . . . because they were on my pc. Tried Halo 3 repeatedly on my Xbox. Nope. It wasn't that I couldn't play it there, it was because I didn't LIKE to play it there.
If the great Pooh bear lives long enough he may find himself being replaced by these girls.
Kohler already makes an 8 thousand dollar toilet that occasionally has to be rebooted. We are heading for the internet of things (IoT) are we not?
Like they imply in the source article, if you are putting unsweetened organic oat bran cereal in the same category as chicken nuggets, the only conclusion we can draw is that junk food is bad for us. Anyone who's been keeping up knew that decades ago.
It might actually be better to target certain insects for complete extinction via the new CRISPR-based technologies. These would be the specific insects that people are trying so hard to poison right now. Removing the economic motive for indiscriminate use of insecticide might just help save the others. Research would be needed to see if this could be effective, just don't take too long.