Is education the Silver Bullet? Or is the problem simply going to be the simple fact that there's no going to be enough jobs... for anyone... with any level of education?
I've included a link to a NYT article, but basically automation, robotics, software, the internet, globalization, all are creating situations where more and more "work" can be done with fewer and fewer people.
Entire classes of workers are either decimated or all but disappear: typesetters, telephone operators, the secretarial pool, news reporters, middle-management. Automotive assembly lines that once employed hundreds are managed by dozens. Groups of lawyers are replaced with software. Hospital radiology positions are outsourced to Israel.
Health care? Japan is already looking at creating robots to do the menial work like emptying bedpans. Surgeons? With telepresence systems, a doctor can operate on someone in NY from his dacha in Moscow.
I believe society is at a tipping point where there will simply be more people than jobs. Unemployment will be rampant across all levels.
And education won't matter. Learn to do what? Cross-train for what? That job space is filled too.
The best and brightest will have their pick. The rest of us???
"Right, but it has passed the 5 year mark and this is why attention is going back to the pc."
Actually, I think attention is going towards mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad. IIRC, there have been 39 million Xbox 360's sold as of January 2010.
There are over 100 million iOS devices. Games like Infinity Blade and Rage are just the beginning.
"Never mind the actual fact that the form of Government here in the United States is a Representative Republic. Heaven forbid teachers we required to teach things that are factually correct..."
Yeah, start tossing around terms like Democracy and Democratic Process, and people might actually start to think that their votes matter...
"...because Apple's one size fits all philosophy simply cannot make everyone happy."
Yeah, that's why we have iPod nanos, and iPod shuffles, and iPod Touches and iPod Classics. That's why we have MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros in various sizes and configurations. That's why we have iMacs and Mac Minis and Mac Pros. And why we have iPads in multiple RAM configurations and with AT&T and Verizon 3G support.
Because Apple believes that "one size" fits all.
"Apple isn't likely to dominate any markets that actually matter."
Ummm... like iPods? Or music? Or apps? Or tablets? All markets in which they currently dominate?
Yada, yada. If one thing is clear, Apple does in fact listen to it's customers and will in fact reverse decisions when it's clear the market believes otherwise. Apps on the iPhone. Multitasking on the iPhone. Even simple things like the iPad rotation lock.
Whenever Android's "clear" superiority is claimed, widgets and notifications are trotted out as "proof". Well, I'm here to tell you that Apple is listening, and that changes are coming. Soon.
So tell me. If Apple's iOS gains "widgets", where then, is Android superior? Merely because it's "open". Or because the Android Marketplace makes such a great malware distribution point?
One other thing to keep in mind in regard to Apple: They can, and will, cannablize their own products to make room for new ones. Newer, smaller and cheapr iPods ate into sales of older, larger models. Notebooks eat into desktop sales. The iPad is destined to eat into notebook sales.
Many companies are afraid to do this. Apple isn't.
One might also mention that a $600 or $700 iPhone or Android smartphone is even more expensive in the price-to-weight category. And smaller and easier to steal.
Might one then jump to the conclusion that -- by the same logic -- we should also stop buying smartphones?
"If you look at some of the footage of the Challenger right before it blows up, you can see from the smoke trail that the cone is gimballing (looks like a "Z" pattern) to correct for the gases coming out of the leak."
The failure occurred when a [relatively] small amount of exhaust gas blowtorched from the SRB -- into -- the main fuel tank. Venting in that direction would not have caused any significant change in vector. Any change in the smoke trail prior to that point is probably due to wind shear.
Also, the shuttle was originally designed to fly out of Vandenberg (Space Launch Complex 6) as well as the Cape.
Given that, should there have been two different "local" manufacturing facilities? More gravy, after all. Or should, perhaps, we SAVE money and build the SRBs where the contractor already has a plant and facilities?
What? The o-ring on the SRB failed, causing hot exhaust gasses to blowtorch directly onto -- and then into -- the fuel tank. The tank (and fuel) exploded. The orbiter was half blown apart from the blast and the rest disintegrated due to aerodynamic forces. The SRBs went off on their separate ways.
I guess you could say that the orbiter itself didn't explode, but at that point in time the "shuttle", the Space Transportation System, consisted of the orbiter, the main fuel tank, and the two SRBs. And the STS most definitely did explode.
Bullshit. Engineers are people. People make mistakes. Five people can take the same set of data, and each draw different conclusions.
An engineer can say, "This is a risk. Don't do it." Another can say, "It's a risk, but it's an acceptable one. The probability of a failure is low. Launch it."
Someone has to make a decision. Sometimes that person is wrong. But all too often we take the stance that ANY potential risk, however unlikely, is unacceptable.
You know driving is a risk, but you do it. You know that texting while driving is an even greater risk, but you probably do it anyway, thinking, "Nothing will happen to me, and this is important."
And then it does.
And then some back seat driver will cry out, "But it was a KNOWN risk! Why did they do it???"
"He demonstrated the know weakness of the booster seals by immersing it in ice-water in fronty of the TV cameras."
So the Challenger boosters were immersed in ice water? OMG! No wonder they failed!
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, isn't it? It's oh so easy for us to second-guess the people making the decisions AFTER something happens.
Look, simply sitting on a million or so gallons of pressurized rocket fuel is a risk. Canceling the launch and defueling and then refueling is a risk. We judge the risks, and we make decisions. Sometimes we're wrong.
The fact remains that the bird had flown under similar conditions before. They believed that it would do so again.
"So far [sic] for the sake of ignorance they paid dearly with their lives."
It's a well know fact that the most dangerous thing you can do today is go get in your car and drive off to work or the supermarket. And yet we take that risk daily.
Look, I'm against "petty patriotism" as much as the next guy... but at least the Challenger astronauts died doing something, as opposed to most of us here whose major contribution to society and scientific advancement is making inane and cowardly comments here on the GoogleWeb.
Question the reason why they were in that situation in the first place all you want, but when a soldier dies under enemy fire attempting save a friend, or when firemen die after rushing into a burning building looking for survivors, or when seven individuals die pushing back the frontiers of knowledge, they, the individuals, the fallen, all deserve our honor and our respect.
Anyone who doesn't get the difference is doing a pretty pale imitation of being human...
I don't suppose you have actual numbers to back up your claims?
I have a friend whose MBP's drive died. He took it to an Apple store last week. They replaced the drive under warrenty, for free. The interesting part is they did so despite the fact that the machine is two years old, out of warranty, and contained an upgraded, non-Apple original hard drive.
Yeah, it's all about getting dollars at each and every service opportunity...
The Retina screen is a proprietary part. The motherboard is custom and proprietary. The battery is custom and proprietary. Just what in the hell are you going to "repair" even if you managed to get the darn thing open?
Which word in "hardware accelleration" do you not understand? If the on-chip parallel decoding lines aren't WebM compatible, a "firmware" patch isn't going to do a damn thing.
"If your name is "Google", you also get the benefit of owning the rights to the codec."
The rights... And the patents.
Everyone is up in arms over the possibility that MPEG-LA might, sometime in the future, start suing everyone over the patents covered by H.264.
Why is it that no one seems to be concerned over the idea that, sometime in the future, Google might change their minds and start enforcing THEIR patents?
Is it just me, or is this a clear double-standard? Google states that they're dropping H.264 in order to support more "open" technologies. Okay, fine. But why, then, are they supporting a proprietary technology (Flash) on their Android devices?
There, and I quote, they say it's because people should be "free to choose".
Sorry, but Google needs to do a dictionary search on their own web site. The word is "hypocrite".
"They also charge outrageous amounts and want to compare the price to the hardcover editions, completely ignoring the fact that per-unit cost is next to nothing compared to even paperback."
Per-unit costs of paperbacks are next to nothing. (The physical book, shipping, etc., come in at less than 50 cents.) Fully half the book price goes to the retailer or store where you buy the book. So for a $7 paperback, that's $3.50 to the store and $0.50 physical costs, which leaves just $3 to the author and to the publisher, who typically fronts the advance to the author. (That would be an "up-front cost" to you.)
Sorry, but $3 for something that takes a year or more to create isn't much money. Especially when the majority of titles only sell ten thousand copies or so. 100,000 copies or more is exceptional. Only a handful sell in the million copy range, and the profits from those help subsidize the vast bulk of a publisher's list.
And if you want to bring up paperback pricing, nearly any book on Amazon in paperback form is available for basically the same price as an ebook, the price again split between Amazon, the publisher, and from there to the author. Not everything is "outrageous".
Finally, I'm tired of people only looking at costs and using that to justify piracy. There's more to any business than per-unit costs. And if you think you're entitled to everything at cost, just go into MacDonalds and try paying a dime (cost) for a Coke.
And just where do we get the money for "basic income"? Who pays?
Don't just say "the government", because that just takes the question up a level, to where does the government get the money to pay you? Etc.
Actually, I'm all for the government paying anyone and everyone a basic income. Only thing is, to get it you have to do whatever work its is that the government needs done. Roads. Garbage collection. Sanitation. School bus drivers.
If the government is going to pay out money, they should darn well get something for it. Don't want to work at all? Fine. We won't let your kids starve, but you, sir, can eat dirt.
No, the reason for its demise starts with the fact that K-41 processing uses some very nasty chemicals, including cyanide. Only a very few labs were rated to handle it.
And not showing slides didn't impact other E-6 based transparency films like Velvia, Provia, or Ektachrome. Prior to digital, pros used to use plenty of the stuff.
From a Tea Party Republican's perspective, "meaningful" health care reform would entail eliminating Medicare and Medicaid, freeing all employers from having to pay health care benefits, and all insurance companies from having to pay claims.
The "free market" will provide all that is needed.
And why the P2P DNS solution is going to have serious trust issues.
Without a trusted issuing authority or external verification, how to I know that the IP address being returned for PayPal or Amazon is actually pointing to the real PayPal or Amazon?
And not to some site in Russia that's sitting there just waiting to collect credit card numbers?
Hell, how would I know that wikileaks.p2p is even wikileaks? Might as well hijack that one too, and ask for donations.
No, Sun failed to see the writing on the wall, in that they continued to develop and attempted to sell expensive "high performance" SPARC processors and SPARC-based servers.
Unfortunately, they had their own version of the PowerPC problem, in that like Apple, Sun just couldn't couldn't keep up with Intel's R&D, and as such SPARC's performance fell further and further behind.
There was also the minor problem of commodity OS's and servers that grew to eat their lunch. (And breakfast and dinner.)
The only reason they embraced open-source lay in an attempt to keep their hardware relevant. (Java works best on Sun SPARC!)
Slashdot Mirror
Is education the Silver Bullet? Or is the problem simply going to be the simple fact that there's no going to be enough jobs... for anyone... with any level of education?
I've included a link to a NYT article, but basically automation, robotics, software, the internet, globalization, all are creating situations where more and more "work" can be done with fewer and fewer people.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/falling-demand-for-brains/
Entire classes of workers are either decimated or all but disappear: typesetters, telephone operators, the secretarial pool, news reporters, middle-management. Automotive assembly lines that once employed hundreds are managed by dozens. Groups of lawyers are replaced with software. Hospital radiology positions are outsourced to Israel.
Health care? Japan is already looking at creating robots to do the menial work like emptying bedpans. Surgeons? With telepresence systems, a doctor can operate on someone in NY from his dacha in Moscow.
I believe society is at a tipping point where there will simply be more people than jobs. Unemployment will be rampant across all levels.
And education won't matter. Learn to do what? Cross-train for what? That job space is filled too.
The best and brightest will have their pick. The rest of us???
"Right, but it has passed the 5 year mark and this is why attention is going back to the pc."
Actually, I think attention is going towards mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad. IIRC, there have been 39 million Xbox 360's sold as of January 2010.
There are over 100 million iOS devices. Games like Infinity Blade and Rage are just the beginning.
"Never mind the actual fact that the form of Government here in the United States is a Representative Republic. Heaven forbid teachers we required to teach things that are factually correct..."
Yeah, start tossing around terms like Democracy and Democratic Process, and people might actually start to think that their votes matter...
"...because Apple's one size fits all philosophy simply cannot make everyone happy."
Yeah, that's why we have iPod nanos, and iPod shuffles, and iPod Touches and iPod Classics. That's why we have MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros in various sizes and configurations. That's why we have iMacs and Mac Minis and Mac Pros. And why we have iPads in multiple RAM configurations and with AT&T and Verizon 3G support.
Because Apple believes that "one size" fits all.
"Apple isn't likely to dominate any markets that actually matter."
Ummm... like iPods? Or music? Or apps? Or tablets? All markets in which they currently dominate?
"Yet, we're seeing iOS's retarded design limits here. Maemo's widgets...."
Yada, yada. If one thing is clear, Apple does in fact listen to it's customers and will in fact reverse decisions when it's clear the market believes otherwise. Apps on the iPhone. Multitasking on the iPhone. Even simple things like the iPad rotation lock.
Whenever Android's "clear" superiority is claimed, widgets and notifications are trotted out as "proof". Well, I'm here to tell you that Apple is listening, and that changes are coming. Soon.
So tell me. If Apple's iOS gains "widgets", where then, is Android superior? Merely because it's "open". Or because the Android Marketplace makes such a great malware distribution point?
One other thing to keep in mind in regard to Apple: They can, and will, cannablize their own products to make room for new ones. Newer, smaller and cheapr iPods ate into sales of older, larger models. Notebooks eat into desktop sales. The iPad is destined to eat into notebook sales.
Many companies are afraid to do this. Apple isn't.
Ditto.
One might also mention that a $600 or $700 iPhone or Android smartphone is even more expensive in the price-to-weight category. And smaller and easier to steal.
Might one then jump to the conclusion that -- by the same logic -- we should also stop buying smartphones?
"and they have even set up a Web site for people to cast their votes."
Yep. Counting noses is the very essence of the scientific process.
"If you look at some of the footage of the Challenger right before it blows up, you can see from the smoke trail that the cone is gimballing (looks like a "Z" pattern) to correct for the gases coming out of the leak."
The failure occurred when a [relatively] small amount of exhaust gas blowtorched from the SRB -- into -- the main fuel tank. Venting in that direction would not have caused any significant change in vector. Any change in the smoke trail prior to that point is probably due to wind shear.
Also, the shuttle was originally designed to fly out of Vandenberg (Space Launch Complex 6) as well as the Cape.
Given that, should there have been two different "local" manufacturing facilities? More gravy, after all. Or should, perhaps, we SAVE money and build the SRBs where the contractor already has a plant and facilities?
What? The o-ring on the SRB failed, causing hot exhaust gasses to blowtorch directly onto -- and then into -- the fuel tank. The tank (and fuel) exploded. The orbiter was half blown apart from the blast and the rest disintegrated due to aerodynamic forces. The SRBs went off on their separate ways.
I guess you could say that the orbiter itself didn't explode, but at that point in time the "shuttle", the Space Transportation System, consisted of the orbiter, the main fuel tank, and the two SRBs. And the STS most definitely did explode.
Bullshit. Engineers are people. People make mistakes. Five people can take the same set of data, and each draw different conclusions.
An engineer can say, "This is a risk. Don't do it." Another can say, "It's a risk, but it's an acceptable one. The probability of a failure is low. Launch it."
Someone has to make a decision. Sometimes that person is wrong. But all too often we take the stance that ANY potential risk, however unlikely, is unacceptable.
You know driving is a risk, but you do it. You know that texting while driving is an even greater risk, but you probably do it anyway, thinking, "Nothing will happen to me, and this is important."
And then it does.
And then some back seat driver will cry out, "But it was a KNOWN risk! Why did they do it???"
Why indeed?
"He demonstrated the know weakness of the booster seals by immersing it in ice-water in fronty of the TV cameras."
So the Challenger boosters were immersed in ice water? OMG! No wonder they failed!
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, isn't it? It's oh so easy for us to second-guess the people making the decisions AFTER something happens.
Look, simply sitting on a million or so gallons of pressurized rocket fuel is a risk. Canceling the launch and defueling and then refueling is a risk. We judge the risks, and we make decisions. Sometimes we're wrong.
The fact remains that the bird had flown under similar conditions before. They believed that it would do so again.
"So far [sic] for the sake of ignorance they paid dearly with their lives."
It's a well know fact that the most dangerous thing you can do today is go get in your car and drive off to work or the supermarket. And yet we take that risk daily.
Who's ignorant?
Look, I'm against "petty patriotism" as much as the next guy... but at least the Challenger astronauts died doing something, as opposed to most of us here whose major contribution to society and scientific advancement is making inane and cowardly comments here on the GoogleWeb.
Question the reason why they were in that situation in the first place all you want, but when a soldier dies under enemy fire attempting save a friend, or when firemen die after rushing into a burning building looking for survivors, or when seven individuals die pushing back the frontiers of knowledge, they, the individuals, the fallen, all deserve our honor and our respect.
Anyone who doesn't get the difference is doing a pretty pale imitation of being human...
"... vanishingly small..."
I don't suppose you have actual numbers to back up your claims?
I have a friend whose MBP's drive died. He took it to an Apple store last week. They replaced the drive under warrenty, for free. The interesting part is they did so despite the fact that the machine is two years old, out of warranty, and contained an upgraded, non-Apple original hard drive.
Yeah, it's all about getting dollars at each and every service opportunity...
The Retina screen is a proprietary part. The motherboard is custom and proprietary. The battery is custom and proprietary. Just what in the hell are you going to "repair" even if you managed to get the darn thing open?
The whole thing is overblown.
Which word in "hardware accelleration" do you not understand? If the on-chip parallel decoding lines aren't WebM compatible, a "firmware" patch isn't going to do a damn thing.
"If your name is "Google", you also get the benefit of owning the rights to the codec."
The rights... And the patents.
Everyone is up in arms over the possibility that MPEG-LA might, sometime in the future, start suing everyone over the patents covered by H.264.
Why is it that no one seems to be concerned over the idea that, sometime in the future, Google might change their minds and start enforcing THEIR patents?
Is it just me, or is this a clear double-standard? Google states that they're dropping H.264 in order to support more "open" technologies. Okay, fine. But why, then, are they supporting a proprietary technology (Flash) on their Android devices?
There, and I quote, they say it's because people should be "free to choose".
Sorry, but Google needs to do a dictionary search on their own web site. The word is "hypocrite".
"They also charge outrageous amounts and want to compare the price to the hardcover editions, completely ignoring the fact that per-unit cost is next to nothing compared to even paperback."
Per-unit costs of paperbacks are next to nothing. (The physical book, shipping, etc., come in at less than 50 cents.) Fully half the book price goes to the retailer or store where you buy the book. So for a $7 paperback, that's $3.50 to the store and $0.50 physical costs, which leaves just $3 to the author and to the publisher, who typically fronts the advance to the author. (That would be an "up-front cost" to you.)
Sorry, but $3 for something that takes a year or more to create isn't much money. Especially when the majority of titles only sell ten thousand copies or so. 100,000 copies or more is exceptional. Only a handful sell in the million copy range, and the profits from those help subsidize the vast bulk of a publisher's list.
And if you want to bring up paperback pricing, nearly any book on Amazon in paperback form is available for basically the same price as an ebook, the price again split between Amazon, the publisher, and from there to the author. Not everything is "outrageous".
Finally, I'm tired of people only looking at costs and using that to justify piracy. There's more to any business than per-unit costs. And if you think you're entitled to everything at cost, just go into MacDonalds and try paying a dime (cost) for a Coke.
And just where do we get the money for "basic income"? Who pays?
Don't just say "the government", because that just takes the question up a level, to where does the government get the money to pay you? Etc.
Actually, I'm all for the government paying anyone and everyone a basic income. Only thing is, to get it you have to do whatever work its is that the government needs done. Roads. Garbage collection. Sanitation. School bus drivers.
If the government is going to pay out money, they should darn well get something for it. Don't want to work at all? Fine. We won't let your kids starve, but you, sir, can eat dirt.
Whom, precisely, does the OP pay to fix this problem on his phone?
No, the reason for its demise starts with the fact that K-41 processing uses some very nasty chemicals, including cyanide. Only a very few labs were rated to handle it.
And not showing slides didn't impact other E-6 based transparency films like Velvia, Provia, or Ektachrome. Prior to digital, pros used to use plenty of the stuff.
From a Tea Party Republican's perspective, "meaningful" health care reform would entail eliminating Medicare and Medicaid, freeing all employers from having to pay health care benefits, and all insurance companies from having to pay claims.
The "free market" will provide all that is needed.
Until the government, like China, starts blocking specific IP addresses.
And why the P2P DNS solution is going to have serious trust issues.
Without a trusted issuing authority or external verification, how to I know that the IP address being returned for PayPal or Amazon is actually pointing to the real PayPal or Amazon?
And not to some site in Russia that's sitting there just waiting to collect credit card numbers?
Hell, how would I know that wikileaks.p2p is even wikileaks? Might as well hijack that one too, and ask for donations.
"Anyone who wants to flay is a terrorist. "
A little light flogging and now I'm suddenly a terrorist? Sheesh.
No, Sun failed to see the writing on the wall, in that they continued to develop and attempted to sell expensive "high performance" SPARC processors and SPARC-based servers.
Unfortunately, they had their own version of the PowerPC problem, in that like Apple, Sun just couldn't couldn't keep up with Intel's R&D, and as such SPARC's performance fell further and further behind.
There was also the minor problem of commodity OS's and servers that grew to eat their lunch. (And breakfast and dinner.)
The only reason they embraced open-source lay in an attempt to keep their hardware relevant. (Java works best on Sun SPARC!)
Didn't work.