Assuming your parole observations are applicable in most places in the country, which is way uncertain, it still doesn't mean everybody can get a job.
There are some jobs around where you can get personally abused, work in a hazardous environment, and get paid minimum wage with no benefits, if that. These are often open, and individual people can get them. I really really doubt there are four million of those unfilled crappy jobs. There can be enough to absorb parolees and not enough for the general population.
In other words, I should have expressed myself better. Lots of unemployed people (probably well over half) are unable to be matched to available jobs on a 1-1 basis.
While no encryption with a reasonable-sized key is completely trustworthy, it's reasonable to trust AES-256 or similar ciphers. If you're selling the drive (alone or as part of a system), which is the subject here, you won't be opening the files on your computer, and nobody's going to hit you with a wrench. AES-256 has some potential weaknesses when the encryption is done, but there's no known feasible attacks (feasible for a Kardashev Type II civilization, anyway) once the data has been encrypted and is sitting there.
Censorship is when you prevent someone from communicating in some way. Calling the speaker names isn't censorship, and attempting to stop people from doing that is censorship. There's nothing stopping anyone from posting something on Slashdot, and no matter how many people post replies that are just insults and ad hominems, the post is still there.
Apple didn't patent an intent. Apple patented a potential feature, which they might or might not implement, and if they did implement it we don't know if they'd do it on all their phones.
AI is here. Next year we'll have better AI, and even better in the year after. We don't have "strong AI". I think it's only a matter of time and effort, but not everybody agrees.
However, it is easier to get people freaking out about things they don't have experience with. Very few people have any significant contact with mass shooters, so people freak out nationwide about the occasional shooting that raises the number of US gun deaths by 50% that day. Most people have experience with drinking and driving, so nobody freaks about drunk drivers, despite the fact that you're far more likely to be killed by a drunk driver than someone shooting a rifle.
You're assuming that you can arbitrarily stuff people into jobs, and that just doesn't happen. Glancing at the open jobs at my company, I'm seeing very few that don't require specialized skills and frequently experience (the rest require more general skills that not everyone has). People with the right skills never need worry about being out of work, but Joe who's been told by his parole officer to get a job isn't going to have much luck here.
A large number of listed jobs are going to require such skills and experience. If we needed to hire someone with no particular abilities, we'd post that job and get it filled fast, then remove the posting. We've had postings for jobs with certain skills up more or less permanently, because we can't get enough of people with those skills. If you've got the skills, great, and if not you can look at a long list of jobs and not find one you qualify for.
So, if there's four million unemployed people (which I'm positive is an underestimate) and six million job openings, you're not going to be able to find jobs for all the people, because maybe five million of the jobs will require skills not many of the four million applicants have.
That's a danger, yes. However, a cab driver does have an unusually good opportunity to commit certain crimes, much more than the typical office worker, and background checks make more sense for them. There's much to be said for the EU "right to be forgotten" (despite the technical and moral complications).
The other danger with safety regulations is that it's politically dangerous to loosen them, particularly if they're not too onerous to too many people.
The US government has full control over commerce not conducted in a single state (and the Constitutional provision has been seriously abused to permit Federal control on a more local basis). The US government has a responsibility to regulate businesses that aren't entirely in one state.
The original claim was that anyone can learn to do anything. Now, you say that people are doing very successfully on specific things given improved instruction techniques. Those aren't the same things.
If there were ways to turn out people as good at software engineering as I am, without having unusual potential, somebody would apply those ways and get a reputation, then more students, and then copycats. We'd notice things like this. We wouldn't notice improvements in specific skills in the same way.
I don't see any real need for human calculators. I can do complex calculations in my head, but I prefer to use my calculator app because I'm lazy and the app is less error-prone. The advantage I get from doing a very rough pre-calculation is that I can often find if I screwed up. This doesn't necessarily lead to anything more.
Quite a few years ago, my son was interested in an advanced mathematics program at the local university for kids fifth-grade and up. The kids needed a teacher recommendation to get into the initial test. There were a large number of children taking the test, and the racial makeup was very heavily Oriental. The test was designed to measure ability rather than education, and as it turned out the racial makeup of the kids accepted to the program was a lot closer to the mix around here (many fewer blacks, unfortunately). My guess is that the Oriental kids had had a better math education, likely with high parental support, so they excelled in their classes disproportionately to their raw ability.
No. Pit droids of various head colors, body colors, and tools come from somewhere, and you have to lay down tiles to direct them to their destinations. Some tiles just change their direction, some divert every Nth pit droid, some do things based on head color, body color, or tool. There's lots of puzzles to solve (including a fiendishly difficult one by a friend of mine who worked for Lucas Learning at the time).
That has turned out to be a pretty bad way to go. Different people know different people, and have different views of human nature. It's sometimes difficult to run studies, but they frequently have results that surprise people.
You were the one who claimed that most women who have had abortions mourn their fetuses. You provided more evidence. From what you say, prejudiced sources say what you'd expect them to, and neutral sources are inconclusive. Your claim is therefore not supported by the evidence, since the results that are not apparently fixed do not support what you say. I'd be willing to bet that you haven't examined several hundred case studies selected with sufficient randomness to try to avoid systemic error, which is what "looking into the primary data for yourself" means here. Again, I haven't seen anything reliable supporting your claim, and you have presented evidence that it's unfounded.
I don't need sources for everything. I act according to my own knowledge and judgment. However, if you're going to tell me something I'm doubtful about, I'm going to need sources to be convinced. I may investigate unfounded claims by random pseudonymous people on the Internet, but I'm not going to accept them at face value.
And, apparently, I am "inexcusably wrong" because I ask you for support for your claims. Interesting.
Many places have had background checks for cab drivers for a long time. Without doing any research, I'd guess that is because some cities had a crime problem once that could be addressed with background checks. If the policy has been in place for a long time, what we know is how many applicants fail the check, and the current taxi-related crime rates. We don't know how many more people would apply if there were no background checks (presumably these are people who'd fail the check) and what the crime rates would be without the background check. It may be that there's no current need for the checks, but the only way to verify that would be to remove them for some time and see what happened, which means that, if the checks were useful, more crime for some time to come. Some regulations are there because they probably help, and nobody can really tell for sure. (After my heart attack, my cardiologist told me that he knew some of the drugs he was prescribing would help, and thought it worthwhile prescribing the others even though he was less sure of them.)
Also, congrats on writing your representatives. That's an important part of democracy.
Once an artillery piece is fired, the shell is going to do what the shell is going to do. Once a land or sea mine is laid, ditto, and some of those are a bit intelligent in programming. Once an armed autonomous aircraft is given a mission, it's going to do what it's going to do. The moral decision is still human, even if it's made in advance of the action (such as a mine). The thing may make a mistake and shoot at the wrong thing, but that's also true of shells and mines.
There's really no moral difference between an AI-piloted fighter and a land mine here. Both involve decisions made by humans that may result in people getting killed later without further human intervention.
Windows 8, probably worth upgrading. Older Windows 7 computers may have problems with Windows 10. There's the spyware, but reportedly Microsoft's been putting it into Windows 7 and 8. You lose a media player, IIRC, with Windows 10, and you lose a lot of control over updates, but if it's a gaming machine that shouldn't be a concern.
Dropping the appeal means that Microsoft lost in court and decided not to lose in a higher court. The original decision is a precedent, although a non-binding one. (Note: I am a pseudonymous guy on Slashdot who has never studied law.)
There is, as far as I know, no class action lawsuit. This means that everyone who actually kept the receipt has to individually sue Microsoft. Even in small claims court, it's probably not financially advantageous.
Technically, it's always been harder to install Linux than it has been to just use the version of Windows the computer came with. I've had slightly less trouble installing Linux than Windows, when I did the installation.
There's a non-binding precedent that Microsoft is liable for harm caused by such OS changes. There's no precedent whatsoever that says that it causes harm in all cases.
To be precise, downloading is a copyright violation, but not criminal copyright infringement. Uploading to something that is generally available on the Internet is. So, while downloading is not a crime, it's still something the copyright holder can sue for.
For criminal proceedings, the accused is legally innocent until proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. For civil proceedings, the defendant can lose due to a preponderance of evidence, which is pretty much on a "more likely than not" basis.
That would require a law saying that the owner of a connection is liable for all copyright violations on his or her connection. Unless you run a service that exists primarily to facilitate copyright violation, and an internet connection doesn't qualify, you aren't liable for copyright violations just because they're from your connection. (Note: IANAL. Of course, this being Slashdot, ramblings from pseudonymous unqualified people substitute nicely for actual legal advice.)
Parking violations are usually just sent to the vehicle owner, without further ado. (You can, of course, contest them, but it's usually preferable to just pay them.) In my state, that's perfectly legal. Moving violations have consequences beyond fines, and the driver must be identified. Red-light cameras ran into legal trouble here, since they didn't positively identify the driver and were trying to ticket for moving violations.
There's various levels of evidence. The car shouldn't be enough evidence to convict, but it's probably enough evidence to justify a search warrant. IIRC, in the publicized Internet piracy trials, the main evidence has been what was on the defendant's computer, obtained through legal processes based on probable cause.
Slashdot Mirror
Assuming your parole observations are applicable in most places in the country, which is way uncertain, it still doesn't mean everybody can get a job.
There are some jobs around where you can get personally abused, work in a hazardous environment, and get paid minimum wage with no benefits, if that. These are often open, and individual people can get them. I really really doubt there are four million of those unfilled crappy jobs. There can be enough to absorb parolees and not enough for the general population.
In other words, I should have expressed myself better. Lots of unemployed people (probably well over half) are unable to be matched to available jobs on a 1-1 basis.
While no encryption with a reasonable-sized key is completely trustworthy, it's reasonable to trust AES-256 or similar ciphers. If you're selling the drive (alone or as part of a system), which is the subject here, you won't be opening the files on your computer, and nobody's going to hit you with a wrench. AES-256 has some potential weaknesses when the encryption is done, but there's no known feasible attacks (feasible for a Kardashev Type II civilization, anyway) once the data has been encrypted and is sitting there.
Censorship is when you prevent someone from communicating in some way. Calling the speaker names isn't censorship, and attempting to stop people from doing that is censorship. There's nothing stopping anyone from posting something on Slashdot, and no matter how many people post replies that are just insults and ad hominems, the post is still there.
You may have a long wait. There's a big gap between patenting something and deciding it should go into a product.
Apple didn't patent an intent. Apple patented a potential feature, which they might or might not implement, and if they did implement it we don't know if they'd do it on all their phones.
AI is here. Next year we'll have better AI, and even better in the year after. We don't have "strong AI". I think it's only a matter of time and effort, but not everybody agrees.
However, it is easier to get people freaking out about things they don't have experience with. Very few people have any significant contact with mass shooters, so people freak out nationwide about the occasional shooting that raises the number of US gun deaths by 50% that day. Most people have experience with drinking and driving, so nobody freaks about drunk drivers, despite the fact that you're far more likely to be killed by a drunk driver than someone shooting a rifle.
You're assuming that you can arbitrarily stuff people into jobs, and that just doesn't happen. Glancing at the open jobs at my company, I'm seeing very few that don't require specialized skills and frequently experience (the rest require more general skills that not everyone has). People with the right skills never need worry about being out of work, but Joe who's been told by his parole officer to get a job isn't going to have much luck here.
A large number of listed jobs are going to require such skills and experience. If we needed to hire someone with no particular abilities, we'd post that job and get it filled fast, then remove the posting. We've had postings for jobs with certain skills up more or less permanently, because we can't get enough of people with those skills. If you've got the skills, great, and if not you can look at a long list of jobs and not find one you qualify for.
So, if there's four million unemployed people (which I'm positive is an underestimate) and six million job openings, you're not going to be able to find jobs for all the people, because maybe five million of the jobs will require skills not many of the four million applicants have.
That's a danger, yes. However, a cab driver does have an unusually good opportunity to commit certain crimes, much more than the typical office worker, and background checks make more sense for them. There's much to be said for the EU "right to be forgotten" (despite the technical and moral complications).
The other danger with safety regulations is that it's politically dangerous to loosen them, particularly if they're not too onerous to too many people.
The US government has full control over commerce not conducted in a single state (and the Constitutional provision has been seriously abused to permit Federal control on a more local basis). The US government has a responsibility to regulate businesses that aren't entirely in one state.
The original claim was that anyone can learn to do anything. Now, you say that people are doing very successfully on specific things given improved instruction techniques. Those aren't the same things.
If there were ways to turn out people as good at software engineering as I am, without having unusual potential, somebody would apply those ways and get a reputation, then more students, and then copycats. We'd notice things like this. We wouldn't notice improvements in specific skills in the same way.
I don't see any real need for human calculators. I can do complex calculations in my head, but I prefer to use my calculator app because I'm lazy and the app is less error-prone. The advantage I get from doing a very rough pre-calculation is that I can often find if I screwed up. This doesn't necessarily lead to anything more.
Quite a few years ago, my son was interested in an advanced mathematics program at the local university for kids fifth-grade and up. The kids needed a teacher recommendation to get into the initial test. There were a large number of children taking the test, and the racial makeup was very heavily Oriental. The test was designed to measure ability rather than education, and as it turned out the racial makeup of the kids accepted to the program was a lot closer to the mix around here (many fewer blacks, unfortunately). My guess is that the Oriental kids had had a better math education, likely with high parental support, so they excelled in their classes disproportionately to their raw ability.
No. Pit droids of various head colors, body colors, and tools come from somewhere, and you have to lay down tiles to direct them to their destinations. Some tiles just change their direction, some divert every Nth pit droid, some do things based on head color, body color, or tool. There's lots of puzzles to solve (including a fiendishly difficult one by a friend of mine who worked for Lucas Learning at the time).
That has turned out to be a pretty bad way to go. Different people know different people, and have different views of human nature. It's sometimes difficult to run studies, but they frequently have results that surprise people.
You were the one who claimed that most women who have had abortions mourn their fetuses. You provided more evidence. From what you say, prejudiced sources say what you'd expect them to, and neutral sources are inconclusive. Your claim is therefore not supported by the evidence, since the results that are not apparently fixed do not support what you say. I'd be willing to bet that you haven't examined several hundred case studies selected with sufficient randomness to try to avoid systemic error, which is what "looking into the primary data for yourself" means here. Again, I haven't seen anything reliable supporting your claim, and you have presented evidence that it's unfounded.
I don't need sources for everything. I act according to my own knowledge and judgment. However, if you're going to tell me something I'm doubtful about, I'm going to need sources to be convinced. I may investigate unfounded claims by random pseudonymous people on the Internet, but I'm not going to accept them at face value.
And, apparently, I am "inexcusably wrong" because I ask you for support for your claims. Interesting.
Many places have had background checks for cab drivers for a long time. Without doing any research, I'd guess that is because some cities had a crime problem once that could be addressed with background checks. If the policy has been in place for a long time, what we know is how many applicants fail the check, and the current taxi-related crime rates. We don't know how many more people would apply if there were no background checks (presumably these are people who'd fail the check) and what the crime rates would be without the background check. It may be that there's no current need for the checks, but the only way to verify that would be to remove them for some time and see what happened, which means that, if the checks were useful, more crime for some time to come. Some regulations are there because they probably help, and nobody can really tell for sure. (After my heart attack, my cardiologist told me that he knew some of the drugs he was prescribing would help, and thought it worthwhile prescribing the others even though he was less sure of them.)
Also, congrats on writing your representatives. That's an important part of democracy.
Once an artillery piece is fired, the shell is going to do what the shell is going to do. Once a land or sea mine is laid, ditto, and some of those are a bit intelligent in programming. Once an armed autonomous aircraft is given a mission, it's going to do what it's going to do. The moral decision is still human, even if it's made in advance of the action (such as a mine). The thing may make a mistake and shoot at the wrong thing, but that's also true of shells and mines.
There's really no moral difference between an AI-piloted fighter and a land mine here. Both involve decisions made by humans that may result in people getting killed later without further human intervention.
Windows 8, probably worth upgrading. Older Windows 7 computers may have problems with Windows 10. There's the spyware, but reportedly Microsoft's been putting it into Windows 7 and 8. You lose a media player, IIRC, with Windows 10, and you lose a lot of control over updates, but if it's a gaming machine that shouldn't be a concern.
Dropping the appeal means that Microsoft lost in court and decided not to lose in a higher court. The original decision is a precedent, although a non-binding one. (Note: I am a pseudonymous guy on Slashdot who has never studied law.)
There is, as far as I know, no class action lawsuit. This means that everyone who actually kept the receipt has to individually sue Microsoft. Even in small claims court, it's probably not financially advantageous.
Technically, it's always been harder to install Linux than it has been to just use the version of Windows the computer came with. I've had slightly less trouble installing Linux than Windows, when I did the installation.
There's a non-binding precedent that Microsoft is liable for harm caused by such OS changes. There's no precedent whatsoever that says that it causes harm in all cases.
Which is an example of the illegal acts mentioned in the summary.
To be precise, downloading is a copyright violation, but not criminal copyright infringement. Uploading to something that is generally available on the Internet is. So, while downloading is not a crime, it's still something the copyright holder can sue for.
For criminal proceedings, the accused is legally innocent until proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. For civil proceedings, the defendant can lose due to a preponderance of evidence, which is pretty much on a "more likely than not" basis.
That would require a law saying that the owner of a connection is liable for all copyright violations on his or her connection. Unless you run a service that exists primarily to facilitate copyright violation, and an internet connection doesn't qualify, you aren't liable for copyright violations just because they're from your connection. (Note: IANAL. Of course, this being Slashdot, ramblings from pseudonymous unqualified people substitute nicely for actual legal advice.)
Parking violations are usually just sent to the vehicle owner, without further ado. (You can, of course, contest them, but it's usually preferable to just pay them.) In my state, that's perfectly legal. Moving violations have consequences beyond fines, and the driver must be identified. Red-light cameras ran into legal trouble here, since they didn't positively identify the driver and were trying to ticket for moving violations.
There's various levels of evidence. The car shouldn't be enough evidence to convict, but it's probably enough evidence to justify a search warrant. IIRC, in the publicized Internet piracy trials, the main evidence has been what was on the defendant's computer, obtained through legal processes based on probable cause.