It goes back further than that. In '95 I did a course - by Microsoft, ironically - on UI design. It stressed the need to make clickable stuff look clickable. It even used the word "affordance"
The order had to come from somewhere. You find who it is, punish them and their immediate supervisor, and maybe a couple of compliance officers. If you can't find out who acted beyond their brief, or if this happened within company guidelines, the CEO and maybe the CTO / CIO or what have you are on the hook. Maybe not jail time but stiff fines at the least... coming out of their personal wallets, not the company coffers.
Be careful what you wish for. We have a similar situation in the Netherlands. The situation was that in principle, the client or the agency was responsible for taxes if the contracter was deemed a "virtual employee" by the IRS. However a contractor could submit a form, detailing his situation, income, nr of clients and other info, upon which the IRS would issue a release (called VAR) that effectively shifted the liability for taxes to the contractor. The upshot of course was that no agency or firm would hire a contractor without that release, since the liability for those extra taxes could be substantial.
Things have changed a little since. The government was concerned about employees (chiefly in construction, health care and delivery) being fired and hired back as contractors with shit rates. They'd earn enough to have around the same net pay, but not enough to get decent insurance or pay into a pension plan, meaning massive savings for the company. The government instituted a new law to fight this, shifting even more responsibility to the hiring party and replacing with the VAR release with a complicated system around so called model contracts. As an IT contractor, I felt this. Early last year I had clients lining up; then the law went into effect and requests fropped to zero. Agencies told me that the only contracts available were with government, or through payroll companies that "employ" you and take a massive bite out of your fee rate.
After many complaints, the law was suspended (though not repealed). And immediately I started getting requests again. So that is what you get if you create uncertainty around the classification of contractors and shift the responsibility to the hiring party: they will find ways to avoid that responsibility, and it's the freelancer who will suffer.
By the way, in our case the new laws were made to prevent corporations from abusing the system at the expense of the contractors / employees. The tax loophole was closed years ago: in a one man company or small firm, the IRS will set a minimum salary that you will have to pay yourself, taxed as regular wages.
Is split second decision making needed at the strategic level though? Even if you are expecting a first strike attack (launched perhaps by another country's iffy AI)? At that level you want a timely warning... which is where a machine learning algorithm (not AI) might screw up.
I dunno. I see AI with decicion making powers happening at the tactical and theatre levels: semi autonomous weapons that are given a mission and the execute it with leeway to adjust along the way, or an AI coordinating troops and autonomous units. Enough options for a rogue AI to cause terrible damage, but not really something that will spark WW3 before humans can intervene.
At the strategic level, AI could well support decision making, but what would be the value of actually putting the AI in charge there? That makes sense only if you need to make split second decisions, or launch a counterstrike even if all meatbag commanders are dead. That's a cold war standoff scenario; I don't see it being really useful for anything else.
Same here in parts of Europe. For a couple of years now, companies are screaming for qualified IT staff, but wages haven't increased with this supposed demand and lack of supply. And more telling: fee rates for IT freelancers haven't increased either.
License cost, license hassles and the Oracle License Death Squad have always been problematic, to the point where a couple of my clients (large corporations) have a "No Oracle" IT policy.
So the guy is dubbed "young man of Chan Hol" (which sounds like the start of a bad limerick), but the two ladies are called Naia and Eve. Were they wearing dog tags or something?
It's pretty hard to destroy land, but it's not all that hard to destroy its value. That land you bought to build a couple of nice houses (and paid a corresponding price for) may lose much of its value if someone decides to build an oil refinery across the road. The good neighborhood you bought your land in might turn to shit. And if you bought land in a shit neighborhood, it might keep its value to some degree, but it can take a very long time to find a buyer when you are ready to sell. Land can be a good investment if you know what you're doing, but you should be able to absorb a loss or to hang on to it longer than you might want to.
Cryptocurrencies may introduce direct competition to this rip-off market at some point, maybe
FTFY. BTC exchanges do exactly the same thing: they charge more for BTC than they pay for them. At a popular exchange here, the difference is about 2.65%. Sending money to someone overseas using BTC has the same problem, plus there's a transaction fee, which gets pretty steep at times if you want a reasonably fast confirmation. Sometimes banks are cheaper.
They don't want 3Com and Intel because those companies would happily fight this thing to death in court. You got targeted because you are small potatoes, and presumable don't have the stamina or cash to go to court. For a big fish it makes financial sense to fight; for small fry it makes financial sense to pay up, the fee is probably less than your legal bills would be.
Paying to watch something for entertainment is not the same as valueing it. I value science more than many other things, and if the IRS let me pick what to spend a portion of my taxes on, I'd pick science. I'd pay a researcher to do his research... but I wouldn't necessarily pay to watch him do it, or even be interested enough to watch it for free.
Two people punching each other has some entertainment value. I'm not sure what, but apparently plenty of people are willing to pay $100 to watch that. How much entertainment for these people is there to be had from science? Maybe a robot fight or a SpaceX launch. Nothing worth $100. Nothing to enthuse over by the water cooler the next day. It's not about what we value more, or about whom we should reward for a certain service, but about how much money the public will pay for watching you do your stuff. You do something, anything, that makes millions of people fork over $100 for a stream or god knows how much for a ringside seat, and you too can earn that kind of money. And I bet that even in an anti-idiocracy, people still wouldn't pay for live chess matches or quantum physics lecture battles.
In many cases (though I have no idea about this particular one), "poster boy" would be a better word. Companies *love* the publicity that comes with giving a job to an unusually clever young kid. Especially these kinds of companies, it enhances their image of being a young, dynamic community of really clever people where everyone is judged on merit.
Agreed: the OS should prompt for user permission to use even that simple hash function. And iOS guidelines already state that an app should cope when it gets "no" for an answer when asking for access to system features or user data. Sadly most developers want to force you to use the "social shit" since that is what makes their service valuable and a nice candidate to be bought by FB or Google (or at least some idiot VC)
Nope. At least on iOS the app cannot access your address book without you giving it explicit permission (apparently also the case on newer version of Android according to the article). Neither can it access anything else. There also seems to be much less worry about malware on iOS; most BYOD schemes I've seen require virus scanners, sandboxing and/or monitoring software on Android, but only require a strong PIN on iPhones (or the fingerprint scanner)
By the way, accessing the address book in order to find out if any of your friends are making use of the service is a legitimate reason to access the address book. I suspect it's an important reason for WhatsApp to become as popular as it did, since you didn't need to ask your friends if they signed up and what their handle was. But for this very reason you would expect Apple and Google to come up with a way to match friends on your address list without giving them full access, for example by providing a function that gives you a unique (for your service) user ID for each contact, by hashing a phone nr after salting it with the App ID or some such. That way the app can poll the service to see who signed up without requiring access to the actual address book.
Hopefully the market will see someone with sufficient clout to force a good deal with the content providers, similar to what Apple did with the music industry. You don't want to have to license each individual show (or bundle of shows) for a specific region and time frame at a specific price. That's why a lot of stuff disappears from Netflix: if the number of viewers drops below a certain value, the price for a blanket license for that content becomes too high. In an age of digital abundance, that is ridiculous.
What we need is content licensing similar to music streaming: on a per item, per play basis. In that model, it would be in the content providers' best interest to offer as much content as possible (unless they have more profitable competing licensees on different platforms, like with new movies or TV series). And it would be in their interest to offer it to as many streaming services as they can. Sure, there'd be some exclusive deals, but most likely they would be on specific content and for a limited time only. The exception would be "original content" made by the streaming service.
Lots of reasons. Netflix and Hulu let you watch what you want, when you want. HBO is scheduled viewing but they have an on demand service now as well. But the biggest draw (for me) is that the shows are not interrupted by ads. After a couple of years of netflix, HBO (and sure: the Pirate Bay as well), I found cable TV to be unbearable to watch, what with the ridiculous amount of advertising.
It's probably seen as a freebie, considering the price of the package compared to alternative providers. Ziggo offer a €40/m basic cable and 40Mb/s Internet package. KPN offers an Internet-only package for €40 (based on ADSL). T-Mobile's Internet-only package is only €32 for 50Mb/s, but they seem to be quite a bit cheaper overall. I get 200Mb/s up/down, basic cable and VOIP from them for €50/m.
Slashdot Mirror
Was this supposed to be some weird haiku?
It goes back further than that. In '95 I did a course - by Microsoft, ironically - on UI design. It stressed the need to make clickable stuff look clickable. It even used the word "affordance"
The order had to come from somewhere. You find who it is, punish them and their immediate supervisor, and maybe a couple of compliance officers. If you can't find out who acted beyond their brief, or if this happened within company guidelines, the CEO and maybe the CTO / CIO or what have you are on the hook. Maybe not jail time but stiff fines at the least... coming out of their personal wallets, not the company coffers.
Be careful what you wish for. We have a similar situation in the Netherlands. The situation was that in principle, the client or the agency was responsible for taxes if the contracter was deemed a "virtual employee" by the IRS. However a contractor could submit a form, detailing his situation, income, nr of clients and other info, upon which the IRS would issue a release (called VAR) that effectively shifted the liability for taxes to the contractor. The upshot of course was that no agency or firm would hire a contractor without that release, since the liability for those extra taxes could be substantial.
Things have changed a little since. The government was concerned about employees (chiefly in construction, health care and delivery) being fired and hired back as contractors with shit rates. They'd earn enough to have around the same net pay, but not enough to get decent insurance or pay into a pension plan, meaning massive savings for the company. The government instituted a new law to fight this, shifting even more responsibility to the hiring party and replacing with the VAR release with a complicated system around so called model contracts. As an IT contractor, I felt this. Early last year I had clients lining up; then the law went into effect and requests fropped to zero. Agencies told me that the only contracts available were with government, or through payroll companies that "employ" you and take a massive bite out of your fee rate.
After many complaints, the law was suspended (though not repealed). And immediately I started getting requests again. So that is what you get if you create uncertainty around the classification of contractors and shift the responsibility to the hiring party: they will find ways to avoid that responsibility, and it's the freelancer who will suffer.
By the way, in our case the new laws were made to prevent corporations from abusing the system at the expense of the contractors / employees. The tax loophole was closed years ago: in a one man company or small firm, the IRS will set a minimum salary that you will have to pay yourself, taxed as regular wages.
Maybe because of this
Is split second decision making needed at the strategic level though? Even if you are expecting a first strike attack (launched perhaps by another country's iffy AI)? At that level you want a timely warning... which is where a machine learning algorithm (not AI) might screw up.
I dunno. I see AI with decicion making powers happening at the tactical and theatre levels: semi autonomous weapons that are given a mission and the execute it with leeway to adjust along the way, or an AI coordinating troops and autonomous units. Enough options for a rogue AI to cause terrible damage, but not really something that will spark WW3 before humans can intervene.
At the strategic level, AI could well support decision making, but what would be the value of actually putting the AI in charge there? That makes sense only if you need to make split second decisions, or launch a counterstrike even if all meatbag commanders are dead. That's a cold war standoff scenario; I don't see it being really useful for anything else.
Seems to me the fix is already in. I've seen so many girl or young black guy hackers in TV series that it's almost becoming a cliché.
Same here in parts of Europe. For a couple of years now, companies are screaming for qualified IT staff, but wages haven't increased with this supposed demand and lack of supply. And more telling: fee rates for IT freelancers haven't increased either.
License cost, license hassles and the Oracle License Death Squad have always been problematic, to the point where a couple of my clients (large corporations) have a "No Oracle" IT policy.
So the guy is dubbed "young man of Chan Hol" (which sounds like the start of a bad limerick), but the two ladies are called Naia and Eve. Were they wearing dog tags or something?
Sure, but we still watch their crummy movies...
Just like TV, millennials (and others) tuned out because of the insane amount of ads and/or other crap, and they are not coming back.
It's pretty hard to destroy land, but it's not all that hard to destroy its value. That land you bought to build a couple of nice houses (and paid a corresponding price for) may lose much of its value if someone decides to build an oil refinery across the road. The good neighborhood you bought your land in might turn to shit. And if you bought land in a shit neighborhood, it might keep its value to some degree, but it can take a very long time to find a buyer when you are ready to sell. Land can be a good investment if you know what you're doing, but you should be able to absorb a loss or to hang on to it longer than you might want to.
Cryptocurrencies may introduce direct competition to this rip-off market at some point, maybe
FTFY. BTC exchanges do exactly the same thing: they charge more for BTC than they pay for them. At a popular exchange here, the difference is about 2.65%. Sending money to someone overseas using BTC has the same problem, plus there's a transaction fee, which gets pretty steep at times if you want a reasonably fast confirmation. Sometimes banks are cheaper.
Yeah, like that brilliant 2 lane wide tunnel tram.
They don't want 3Com and Intel because those companies would happily fight this thing to death in court. You got targeted because you are small potatoes, and presumable don't have the stamina or cash to go to court. For a big fish it makes financial sense to fight; for small fry it makes financial sense to pay up, the fee is probably less than your legal bills would be.
Paying to watch something for entertainment is not the same as valueing it. I value science more than many other things, and if the IRS let me pick what to spend a portion of my taxes on, I'd pick science. I'd pay a researcher to do his research... but I wouldn't necessarily pay to watch him do it, or even be interested enough to watch it for free.
Two people punching each other has some entertainment value. I'm not sure what, but apparently plenty of people are willing to pay $100 to watch that. How much entertainment for these people is there to be had from science? Maybe a robot fight or a SpaceX launch. Nothing worth $100. Nothing to enthuse over by the water cooler the next day. It's not about what we value more, or about whom we should reward for a certain service, but about how much money the public will pay for watching you do your stuff. You do something, anything, that makes millions of people fork over $100 for a stream or god knows how much for a ringside seat, and you too can earn that kind of money. And I bet that even in an anti-idiocracy, people still wouldn't pay for live chess matches or quantum physics lecture battles.
In many cases (though I have no idea about this particular one), "poster boy" would be a better word. Companies *love* the publicity that comes with giving a job to an unusually clever young kid. Especially these kinds of companies, it enhances their image of being a young, dynamic community of really clever people where everyone is judged on merit.
Agreed: the OS should prompt for user permission to use even that simple hash function. And iOS guidelines already state that an app should cope when it gets "no" for an answer when asking for access to system features or user data. Sadly most developers want to force you to use the "social shit" since that is what makes their service valuable and a nice candidate to be bought by FB or Google (or at least some idiot VC)
Nope. At least on iOS the app cannot access your address book without you giving it explicit permission (apparently also the case on newer version of Android according to the article). Neither can it access anything else. There also seems to be much less worry about malware on iOS; most BYOD schemes I've seen require virus scanners, sandboxing and/or monitoring software on Android, but only require a strong PIN on iPhones (or the fingerprint scanner)
By the way, accessing the address book in order to find out if any of your friends are making use of the service is a legitimate reason to access the address book. I suspect it's an important reason for WhatsApp to become as popular as it did, since you didn't need to ask your friends if they signed up and what their handle was. But for this very reason you would expect Apple and Google to come up with a way to match friends on your address list without giving them full access, for example by providing a function that gives you a unique (for your service) user ID for each contact, by hashing a phone nr after salting it with the App ID or some such. That way the app can poll the service to see who signed up without requiring access to the actual address book.
Hopefully the market will see someone with sufficient clout to force a good deal with the content providers, similar to what Apple did with the music industry. You don't want to have to license each individual show (or bundle of shows) for a specific region and time frame at a specific price. That's why a lot of stuff disappears from Netflix: if the number of viewers drops below a certain value, the price for a blanket license for that content becomes too high. In an age of digital abundance, that is ridiculous.
What we need is content licensing similar to music streaming: on a per item, per play basis. In that model, it would be in the content providers' best interest to offer as much content as possible (unless they have more profitable competing licensees on different platforms, like with new movies or TV series). And it would be in their interest to offer it to as many streaming services as they can. Sure, there'd be some exclusive deals, but most likely they would be on specific content and for a limited time only. The exception would be "original content" made by the streaming service.
Lots of reasons. Netflix and Hulu let you watch what you want, when you want. HBO is scheduled viewing but they have an on demand service now as well. But the biggest draw (for me) is that the shows are not interrupted by ads. After a couple of years of netflix, HBO (and sure: the Pirate Bay as well), I found cable TV to be unbearable to watch, what with the ridiculous amount of advertising.
It's probably seen as a freebie, considering the price of the package compared to alternative providers. Ziggo offer a €40/m basic cable and 40Mb/s Internet package. KPN offers an Internet-only package for €40 (based on ADSL). T-Mobile's Internet-only package is only €32 for 50Mb/s, but they seem to be quite a bit cheaper overall. I get 200Mb/s up/down, basic cable and VOIP from them for €50/m.