I'm old enough to know when slide rules were the only calculators even possible in the classroom. When I graduated, I figured I couldn't justify spending $400 on a calculator, so I bought myself a very nice slide rule. Turns out I never could justify spending $400 on a calculator, but I haven't used the slide rule in a long, long time.
Depends on whether you want to use them correctly or not. I have lousy hammer technique. It works for my purposes, but if I were putting a structure together with nails I'd be really handicapped by it.
What I don't understand is why people don't think it's polite to not address people the way they want to be addressed. With a very few exceptions, I don't give a crap about other people's sex organs or gender or whatever, so why not call people what they want to be called?
Most people don't care about telemetry. It's widely publicized here because we're largely geeks, many of whom are interested in computer security and privacy. Any large-scale disabling of Windows Update was caused by other things.
Sure I've heard of TeX. Everybody in the mathematics and computer science departments has. My default format for writing stuff was LaTeX. Get into the less technical departments, and people haven't heard about it, and don't know what to do with it. TeX is great if your professor wants a hard copy or a PDF. It isn't if your professor wants a Word file.
A lot of expensive hardware runs on software that essentially can't be upgraded. We're talking about hardware upgrades costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Microsoft is still selling software they know has defects. Every software vendor is. Software made to NASA standards would cost far more, and it wouldn't surprise me to find defects in NASA software.
There are no laws saying that abandoned or orphaned copyrights aren't copyrights.
I saw one proposal, but it looked like it could be incredibly abused. According to that proposal, if I wanted to use a copyrighted work without permission I'd have to conduct a good-faith search for the owner. In practice, searches that are required to be conducted in good faith have failed to find the University of Minnesota even with the address of the administration building attached. What would happen is that company A would find something copyrighted with my name on it, conduct a good faith search ("Fred, have you ever met a guy named david_thornley? Okay, search finished.") and use my work without compensation, and then drag their feet when I came after them.
An economic obligation won't work. People won't want to pay more for software that might possibly have a problem that might turn serious in ten years or more. There's no reason a business can't try to negotiate a contract that includes guaranteed 20-year support and code in escrow.
Similarly, individual hospitals and hospital systems (even the size of the NHS) don't have the clout to force software upgrades on their medical equipment. Those upgrades are expensive and risky, and vendors would charge a lot for that service, and health care providers tend to run on fairly narrow margins.
... have policies in place that prevent mission-critical systems from being proprietary, dependent on one vendor, insecure, not updated and open to being messed up by clueless users who click on links and download and install everything they can lay their hands on.
A lot of mission-critical equipment comes with a proprietary OS (typically some version of Microsoft Windows). Some can't be updated without losing their certification. Individual companies that implemented your policies would go broke.
If the OS is open source anyway, no need to do anything. If it isn't, then it's likely to share a lot of code with more modern versions, and it's likely to use third-party code that the OS vendor doesn't have the right to open source.
We're talking about a society with a UBI, so people can support themselves without needing a job.
The goal is to take care of people who can't get a job, for whatever reason (if we start imposing conditions other than age and citizenship and the like, the administrative costs go up fast), and to allow them to get the best jobs they can. Combine this with universal health care, like almost all the developed world has, and people can take risks in the job market, and overall become more productive.
If automation does indeed make a lot of people economically obsolete, we're going to need something like this anyway.
The UBI is about reshuffling money, not creating it in very large quantities. Suppose it provided an income of $30K/year*, and income taxes were adjusted to raise taxes enough (it would subsume a lot of existing government payments, so we wouldn't have to raise taxes as much as you might think). Suddenly everyone has at least $30K/year, and most people have more, although not as much more as they would have had. The amount of money people in general get is about the same. How is that going to cause massive inflation?
I'd benefit from lower cost health care because I can afford health care. If Learjets got cheaper, it wouldn't directly affect my standard of living at all. If people somehow or other have money to afford things, then dropping prices helps them. If they're unemployed and desperate, reduced costs of things they can no longer afford isn't going to help them.
If I have a realistic option not to work, I don't have to exercise it. I can't be forced into a crap job for crap pay. Employers would have to pay well for crap jobs, or do without. (If they can't do without, then the job is important, and should be paid more anyway.) I can take risks with my employment, such as working for a startup or pursuing a career in art. We'd have people just free-riding on the UBI, but we have people free-riding now (I'm going to be free-riding in a few years, when I retire).
I'm at a loss as to why you think it's desirable to be forced to work. Could you explain?
And in no case you've listed has the government changed how it calculates the unemployment rate. If you return to school because you can't find a job, that's counted as leaving the employment pool now, and it counted the same in 1960. If you got discouraged and dropped out in 1960, it got counted the exact same way it does today.
This means that the unemployment rates published mean different things based on what the economy is doing (the same unemployment rate means different things at the start of a recession and near the end), but that's the nature of employment. It's complicated.
Boomers are retiring. If you were born in 1946 and decided to retire at 65, it would be in 2011, Obama's first term. I'm not sure the labor force participation rate is all that useful, since it will vary a lot with changing demographics.
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Why are you using a singular designation for a plurality?
I'm old enough to know when slide rules were the only calculators even possible in the classroom. When I graduated, I figured I couldn't justify spending $400 on a calculator, so I bought myself a very nice slide rule. Turns out I never could justify spending $400 on a calculator, but I haven't used the slide rule in a long, long time.
Depends on whether you want to use them correctly or not. I have lousy hammer technique. It works for my purposes, but if I were putting a structure together with nails I'd be really handicapped by it.
When I was a grad student, there seemed to be a rule in place that grad students and faculty would address each other by their first names.
There are appropriate times for using abbreviations like "u" for "you". There are a lot of inappropriate times for that level of informality.
What I don't understand is why people don't think it's polite to not address people the way they want to be addressed. With a very few exceptions, I don't give a crap about other people's sex organs or gender or whatever, so why not call people what they want to be called?
We raised my son with love, respect, and expectations. People commented on how well-behaved he was.
Most people don't care about telemetry. It's widely publicized here because we're largely geeks, many of whom are interested in computer security and privacy. Any large-scale disabling of Windows Update was caused by other things.
Sure I've heard of TeX. Everybody in the mathematics and computer science departments has. My default format for writing stuff was LaTeX. Get into the less technical departments, and people haven't heard about it, and don't know what to do with it. TeX is great if your professor wants a hard copy or a PDF. It isn't if your professor wants a Word file.
Admin mode for Windows is not the same as full control. There's stuff Microsoft locked down for the purposes of enforcing DRM.
If you're not a consumer of some things, you're dead.
If you're living a life that's a creative act with no free time, you're dead. (Sleep is a necessity.)
If you don't care about ephemera, you're dead. (That car won't be speeding down that street for more than a few minutes; hence, ephemera).
A lot of expensive hardware runs on software that essentially can't be upgraded. We're talking about hardware upgrades costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Microsoft is still selling software they know has defects. Every software vendor is. Software made to NASA standards would cost far more, and it wouldn't surprise me to find defects in NASA software.
There are no laws saying that abandoned or orphaned copyrights aren't copyrights.
I saw one proposal, but it looked like it could be incredibly abused. According to that proposal, if I wanted to use a copyrighted work without permission I'd have to conduct a good-faith search for the owner. In practice, searches that are required to be conducted in good faith have failed to find the University of Minnesota even with the address of the administration building attached. What would happen is that company A would find something copyrighted with my name on it, conduct a good faith search ("Fred, have you ever met a guy named david_thornley? Okay, search finished.") and use my work without compensation, and then drag their feet when I came after them.
An economic obligation won't work. People won't want to pay more for software that might possibly have a problem that might turn serious in ten years or more. There's no reason a business can't try to negotiate a contract that includes guaranteed 20-year support and code in escrow.
Similarly, individual hospitals and hospital systems (even the size of the NHS) don't have the clout to force software upgrades on their medical equipment. Those upgrades are expensive and risky, and vendors would charge a lot for that service, and health care providers tend to run on fairly narrow margins.
A lot of mission-critical equipment comes with a proprietary OS (typically some version of Microsoft Windows). Some can't be updated without losing their certification. Individual companies that implemented your policies would go broke.
If the OS is open source anyway, no need to do anything. If it isn't, then it's likely to share a lot of code with more modern versions, and it's likely to use third-party code that the OS vendor doesn't have the right to open source.
You like ad hominems, don't you?
We're talking about a society with a UBI, so people can support themselves without needing a job.
The goal is to take care of people who can't get a job, for whatever reason (if we start imposing conditions other than age and citizenship and the like, the administrative costs go up fast), and to allow them to get the best jobs they can. Combine this with universal health care, like almost all the developed world has, and people can take risks in the job market, and overall become more productive.
If automation does indeed make a lot of people economically obsolete, we're going to need something like this anyway.
The UBI is about reshuffling money, not creating it in very large quantities. Suppose it provided an income of $30K/year*, and income taxes were adjusted to raise taxes enough (it would subsume a lot of existing government payments, so we wouldn't have to raise taxes as much as you might think). Suddenly everyone has at least $30K/year, and most people have more, although not as much more as they would have had. The amount of money people in general get is about the same. How is that going to cause massive inflation?
I'd benefit from lower cost health care because I can afford health care. If Learjets got cheaper, it wouldn't directly affect my standard of living at all. If people somehow or other have money to afford things, then dropping prices helps them. If they're unemployed and desperate, reduced costs of things they can no longer afford isn't going to help them.
A sufficiently high UBI, combined with adjustment of income taxes, could make sure everybody has enough. It could solve poverty.
If I have a realistic option not to work, I don't have to exercise it. I can't be forced into a crap job for crap pay. Employers would have to pay well for crap jobs, or do without. (If they can't do without, then the job is important, and should be paid more anyway.) I can take risks with my employment, such as working for a startup or pursuing a career in art. We'd have people just free-riding on the UBI, but we have people free-riding now (I'm going to be free-riding in a few years, when I retire).
I'm at a loss as to why you think it's desirable to be forced to work. Could you explain?
And in no case you've listed has the government changed how it calculates the unemployment rate. If you return to school because you can't find a job, that's counted as leaving the employment pool now, and it counted the same in 1960. If you got discouraged and dropped out in 1960, it got counted the exact same way it does today.
This means that the unemployment rates published mean different things based on what the economy is doing (the same unemployment rate means different things at the start of a recession and near the end), but that's the nature of employment. It's complicated.
Boomers are retiring. If you were born in 1946 and decided to retire at 65, it would be in 2011, Obama's first term. I'm not sure the labor force participation rate is all that useful, since it will vary a lot with changing demographics.