A "free market" is one based on voluntary interactions and non-force-based interference, private property, and a legal system that recognizes these rights and attempts to protect *from* force-based interference with free/voluntary trade and protect private property rights. It has never been tried anywhere - not even closely. E.g. laws against sex work, for example, are a severe force-based interference on free/voluntary trade. This is just one small example of the massive amounts of force in the system, from fiat currency laws, exchange regulations, customs, border controls, patents and other "Intellectual Property" laws, protectionism, visa and other laws against freedom of movement, immigration law, etc. We live and breathe force in our current "market system" in every way, every day.
the poor won't be able to afford AI to work for them. Right now, if I needed an AI to do anything, I just couldn't afford it
Your tenses are mixed up - you jump from future to present but juxtapose them as if inaffordability "right now" implies inaffordability decades from now.
Imagine you made this comment in 1970: "The poor won't be able to afford mobile phones. Right now, if I needed a mobile phone, I couldn't afford it" - AC 1970. That's what you just did.
A person can be highly competent at something that people don't value. How would that situation be handled?
My dog can jump through hoops. He's great at it, but nobody really cares. His masters still feed and house him. So the trick is to program our new robot "masters" to feed and house us.. or something like that. Dogs don't really have "jobs". They don't "go to work". We are to them, like robots will be to us.
Your cynicism is misplaced, but not lacking in point entirely: In certain respects, the future can and probably will be post-scarcity - e.g. I suspect things like 'food, water and basic housing' will be possible to produce at relatively tiny marginal cost once largely automated - possibly even some kind of replication for food.
What will NOT be easy "post-scarcity" will be *land allocation* - rich people will live in the most beautiful, prime locations - e.g. scenic seaside areas - so you will have your free food, free 'basic house', free running water - but the area itself will probably be less than wonderful, unless you were fortunate enough to have inherited enough wealth to live in a nice area.
This is mostly similar to today, come to think of it, except for the post-scarcity part.
Most people seem to be missing the historical significance of this. Today it's just a plastic wrench, yes. In another 50 or 100 or 500 years? 3D-printing (or 'custom local manufacturing', or a 'replicator', or whatever you want to call it) is going to play an important part in all our extra-planetary exploration endeavors - and historically, humans of the future will be looking back at this crappy plastic wrench as the first real-world example of a 'replicator' producing something in space.
1. There are NO active projects anywhere to build space elevators. The technology doesn't exist. @GP AC: Nobody is spending your tax money on space elevators, so stop hysterically hyper-ventilating about non-existent straw-men.
2. In the long run, colonizing other planets and star systems will be the single-most important achievement we'll ever make as a species. Ever. Nothing can top it - it will be the most historical event in human history, bar none. It takes a small mind not to grasp this. Contrast that against the tiny budget we allocate to it, it's actually absurd. We spend more on booze each year.
3. The idea we should cancel all space programs because "wow, we found a new species of fish at >8000m!" is retarded.
4. Unlike finding a new type of fish, being a multi-planetery species will help ensure our survival - there are many potential Earth-wide human-extinction events that will eventually statistically occur - not "might occur", but *will occur* - e.g. asteroids have wiped out most life on earth *multiple times* in the planet's history.
One of the problems is that the majority of the American public still think the space program sinks a significant portion of the federal budget. Reality is it's less than 0.5% of expenditure - we could cancel every last bit of space-related research and it would hardly even register as a blip in terms of increased money available to spend on anything else.
To be fair, Android/iOS are not exactly innovative either - they just managed to get themselves in the 'right place and right time' for the smartphone trend - but if you look at "innovation", the only thing they've innovated, is the business models (e.g. "app store" distribution cartels that reap 30% from ISVs).
Microsoft haven't done squat in the past, but they have a new CEO with a very new approach - I'll be watching them closely. This is not the Microsoft of old. And Google has already become the new Microsoft, engaging in the same dirty tactics Microsoft used to.
I've worked extensively with both, and while.NET is much faster to develop applications in (developer-productivity-wise), C/C++ still makes for much better *client application performance*. For simpler applications, this doesn't matter so much. But for any relatively complex application, it becomes important.
This doesn't mean Java is "killing".NET because it neglects an important factor: Most the Java jobs are probably for smartphone development and most the.NET jobs are probably for desktop app development. Smartphones are inherently a bigger "ecosystem" by the absolute numbers, simply because the ratio of smartphones to desktop computers is high, but that doesn't mean desktop computers are going away at all in the in-some-ways-still-more-important "getting real work done STILL needs a desktop computer" segment.
If it's sentient, it will be a "life form". The tricky part is devising a scientific test for sentience - that's beyond our current level of knowledge - however, it might not be in future.
But, anyone will be able to build a robot (unless they are bogged down with bullshit patents or something). You won't need the "man who own's the robots" robot, if you simply have your own robot too. Every local community, every individual, every farm, every school, every business, they could all have robots. The robots could help build more robots - you'd only need enough access to another man's robot, to build your own (plus a little raw material). There is no *natural* scarcity on robots. We could even open source the damn plans, like Arduino designs are.
I like the idea of a basic income (funded on the back of robot-based production), and I think it will become increasingly necessary in order to evolve toward our post-scarcity star-trek-like "utopia" peacefully.
You got -1 trolled, but alas, I don't think you were trolling - the opinions you post are commonly held by many, and it's important to counter them with valid arguments. It's silly to refer to "surplus labor" in a world where there is literally still a virtually infinite amount of things to accomplish that require such labor - from solar system exploration and colonization to helping cure human disease - there is NO shortage of things that we could be doing with so-called "surplus" labor - what we should be doing is structuring society in an ethical way that brings those "surplus" laborers on board in a positive way, allowing them to nonetheless contribute.
Alongside that interest were the usual peddlers of hype and hysteria...But never mind, soon we would have video cameras on every street corner, matching every passing face to enforcers' databases of millions of criminals... Despite the noise, which might lead a cynic to think that it's all hype, facial recognition has improved over the years
Did it even occur to you the "hype and hysteria" was from those who actually realized the technology would improve? We are actually much, MUCH closer now than we were 5 or 10 years ago to video cameras on street corners being able to automatically identify most passersby, and in another 5 or 10 years, it will be straightforward. You even admit yourself the technology has 'improved over the years', and yet you call it 'hype and hysteria' from those who (effectively just) predicted it would improve.
Facebook does a near-perfect job of identifying just about everybody I know in every photo I see posted. Of course, they are helped along with contextual information provided by social networking (e.g. no doubt how closely connected you are to someone factors into the weighting algorithms) - however, it won't be long before governments too have databases like that.
Dismissing the "paranoid fearmongers" is stupid and unproductive - rather, one should listen to their genuine concerns, and then ensure measures are in place that these technologies are used to improve our lives in ethical ways.
What is a "Space Nutter"? Is that supposed to like insult and silence fans of space-related research and exploration? It just sounds like an ad-hominem troll post, and not even relevant to the topic.
Bingo. In spite of it being trendy to criticize them, NASA are actually doing some pretty impressive science in spite of their limited budgets, if anyone cares to look.
Just as expected. The rocket program it was designed for had been canceled in 2010.
I'd like to know how it can be "just as expected" when NASA do not have a crystal ball telling them by what random amount their budget will get cut each following year.. in all likelihood, they didn't *want* to cancel that project in the first place.
It's simply not realistically possible to always perfectly plan multiple complex multi-year projects, when every your budget gets cut a little further, and you never know -- it's a roll of the dice -- if or how much it's going to get cut by -- then there is the secondary knock-on effect that of the small budget that remains*, the managers need to very carefully decide where to constantly try shift things around to try keep remaining projects going. The rocket program canceled in 2010 was probably canceled due to budget cuts. NASA's budget has consistently been cut, what, every year for the past 15 years? You can't entirely blame NASA - nobody can plan properly under those circumstances. Nobody, not you, or me, could end up not wasting any of it as a result of the constant shunting around.
Also, *all* large organizations have at least some expenditure that in hindsight was wasted. Hindsight is always 20/20. Look at the R&D allocations for any large organization, public or private, and you'll always find plenty of projects that went nowhere - whether it's an IT company or a mining operation or a shipyard or energy utility etc.
* NASA budget is less than 0.5% of the total federal budget. We're really going to nitpick over this while literally trillions get regularly poured into completely wasteful military destruction? We're being played and manipulated by articles like this - look carefully who *benefits* from articles like this that attempt to portray the real bad guys (spending-wise) as those who take less than 0.5% of the budget.
Not only that, but hiring an H1B involves large delays in when they can start, and it's far from a given that the visa will even be granted at all (I think fewer than 50% are granted each year). Americans have a huge 'home ground' advantage over H1B applicants - you have to be seriously "uncompetitive" if you can't compete with all the extra costs and extra delays and extra risks involved in hiring an H1B. The H1B's I know are extremely hard-working (and all earn well over 100k/year).
Actually, Google are decidedly fearful of DNT being on by default, because unlike muggers, they have to obey the law - they can't actually willfully violate expressed user preference without risking a major class action of sorts. That's why they fought so hard to effectively kill any hope of DNT being useful (remember, they were part of the standards committee for standardizing it - the wolf guarding the henhouse).
Because the info sent is used by some sites to determine how to deliver content to you... and when several websites stop working in the latest browser, the users will be the first to say 'what a crappy browser, I'm going to use a different browser'.
Slashdot Mirror
Your humor-detection unit is bust
A "free market" is one based on voluntary interactions and non-force-based interference, private property, and a legal system that recognizes these rights and attempts to protect *from* force-based interference with free/voluntary trade and protect private property rights. It has never been tried anywhere - not even closely. E.g. laws against sex work, for example, are a severe force-based interference on free/voluntary trade. This is just one small example of the massive amounts of force in the system, from fiat currency laws, exchange regulations, customs, border controls, patents and other "Intellectual Property" laws, protectionism, visa and other laws against freedom of movement, immigration law, etc. We live and breathe force in our current "market system" in every way, every day.
the poor won't be able to afford AI to work for them. Right now, if I needed an AI to do anything, I just couldn't afford it
Your tenses are mixed up - you jump from future to present but juxtapose them as if inaffordability "right now" implies inaffordability decades from now.
Imagine you made this comment in 1970: "The poor won't be able to afford mobile phones. Right now, if I needed a mobile phone, I couldn't afford it" - AC 1970. That's what you just did.
A person can be highly competent at something that people don't value. How would that situation be handled?
My dog can jump through hoops. He's great at it, but nobody really cares. His masters still feed and house him. So the trick is to program our new robot "masters" to feed and house us .. or something like that. Dogs don't really have "jobs". They don't "go to work". We are to them, like robots will be to us.
Your cynicism is misplaced, but not lacking in point entirely: In certain respects, the future can and probably will be post-scarcity - e.g. I suspect things like 'food, water and basic housing' will be possible to produce at relatively tiny marginal cost once largely automated - possibly even some kind of replication for food.
What will NOT be easy "post-scarcity" will be *land allocation* - rich people will live in the most beautiful, prime locations - e.g. scenic seaside areas - so you will have your free food, free 'basic house', free running water - but the area itself will probably be less than wonderful, unless you were fortunate enough to have inherited enough wealth to live in a nice area.
This is mostly similar to today, come to think of it, except for the post-scarcity part.
Most people seem to be missing the historical significance of this. Today it's just a plastic wrench, yes. In another 50 or 100 or 500 years? 3D-printing (or 'custom local manufacturing', or a 'replicator', or whatever you want to call it) is going to play an important part in all our extra-planetary exploration endeavors - and historically, humans of the future will be looking back at this crappy plastic wrench as the first real-world example of a 'replicator' producing something in space.
A few other brief points:
1. There are NO active projects anywhere to build space elevators. The technology doesn't exist. @GP AC: Nobody is spending your tax money on space elevators, so stop hysterically hyper-ventilating about non-existent straw-men.
2. In the long run, colonizing other planets and star systems will be the single-most important achievement we'll ever make as a species. Ever. Nothing can top it - it will be the most historical event in human history, bar none. It takes a small mind not to grasp this. Contrast that against the tiny budget we allocate to it, it's actually absurd. We spend more on booze each year.
3. The idea we should cancel all space programs because "wow, we found a new species of fish at >8000m!" is retarded.
4. Unlike finding a new type of fish, being a multi-planetery species will help ensure our survival - there are many potential Earth-wide human-extinction events that will eventually statistically occur - not "might occur", but *will occur* - e.g. asteroids have wiped out most life on earth *multiple times* in the planet's history.
One of the problems is that the majority of the American public still think the space program sinks a significant portion of the federal budget. Reality is it's less than 0.5% of expenditure - we could cancel every last bit of space-related research and it would hardly even register as a blip in terms of increased money available to spend on anything else.
To be fair, Android/iOS are not exactly innovative either - they just managed to get themselves in the 'right place and right time' for the smartphone trend - but if you look at "innovation", the only thing they've innovated, is the business models (e.g. "app store" distribution cartels that reap 30% from ISVs).
Microsoft haven't done squat in the past, but they have a new CEO with a very new approach - I'll be watching them closely. This is not the Microsoft of old. And Google has already become the new Microsoft, engaging in the same dirty tactics Microsoft used to.
I've worked extensively with both, and while .NET is much faster to develop applications in (developer-productivity-wise), C/C++ still makes for much better *client application performance*. For simpler applications, this doesn't matter so much. But for any relatively complex application, it becomes important.
This doesn't mean Java is "killing" .NET because it neglects an important factor: Most the Java jobs are probably for smartphone development and most the .NET jobs are probably for desktop app development. Smartphones are inherently a bigger "ecosystem" by the absolute numbers, simply because the ratio of smartphones to desktop computers is high, but that doesn't mean desktop computers are going away at all in the in-some-ways-still-more-important "getting real work done STILL needs a desktop computer" segment.
I'm pretty sure there's plenty of walls and other 'handles' to hold onto on the ISS and use for "leverage".
What *would* be disturbing is if this printing of a wrench was due to literally *not having a wrench* at all anywhere on the ISS.
Your comment is so wrong on so many levels, it's fractally wrong. I don't even know where to start.
If it's sentient, it will be a "life form". The tricky part is devising a scientific test for sentience - that's beyond our current level of knowledge - however, it might not be in future.
No, the man who owns the bot wont let that happen
But, anyone will be able to build a robot (unless they are bogged down with bullshit patents or something). You won't need the "man who own's the robots" robot, if you simply have your own robot too. Every local community, every individual, every farm, every school, every business, they could all have robots. The robots could help build more robots - you'd only need enough access to another man's robot, to build your own (plus a little raw material). There is no *natural* scarcity on robots. We could even open source the damn plans, like Arduino designs are.
I like the idea of a basic income (funded on the back of robot-based production), and I think it will become increasingly necessary in order to evolve toward our post-scarcity star-trek-like "utopia" peacefully.
You got -1 trolled, but alas, I don't think you were trolling - the opinions you post are commonly held by many, and it's important to counter them with valid arguments. It's silly to refer to "surplus labor" in a world where there is literally still a virtually infinite amount of things to accomplish that require such labor - from solar system exploration and colonization to helping cure human disease - there is NO shortage of things that we could be doing with so-called "surplus" labor - what we should be doing is structuring society in an ethical way that brings those "surplus" laborers on board in a positive way, allowing them to nonetheless contribute.
Alongside that interest were the usual peddlers of hype and hysteria ...But never mind, soon we would have video cameras on every street corner, matching every passing face to enforcers' databases of millions of criminals ... Despite the noise, which might lead a cynic to think that it's all hype, facial recognition has improved over the years
Did it even occur to you the "hype and hysteria" was from those who actually realized the technology would improve? We are actually much, MUCH closer now than we were 5 or 10 years ago to video cameras on street corners being able to automatically identify most passersby, and in another 5 or 10 years, it will be straightforward. You even admit yourself the technology has 'improved over the years', and yet you call it 'hype and hysteria' from those who (effectively just) predicted it would improve.
Facebook does a near-perfect job of identifying just about everybody I know in every photo I see posted. Of course, they are helped along with contextual information provided by social networking (e.g. no doubt how closely connected you are to someone factors into the weighting algorithms) - however, it won't be long before governments too have databases like that.
Dismissing the "paranoid fearmongers" is stupid and unproductive - rather, one should listen to their genuine concerns, and then ensure measures are in place that these technologies are used to improve our lives in ethical ways.
What is a "Space Nutter"? Is that supposed to like insult and silence fans of space-related research and exploration? It just sounds like an ad-hominem troll post, and not even relevant to the topic.
Bingo. In spite of it being trendy to criticize them, NASA are actually doing some pretty impressive science in spite of their limited budgets, if anyone cares to look.
Just as expected. The rocket program it was designed for had been canceled in 2010.
I'd like to know how it can be "just as expected" when NASA do not have a crystal ball telling them by what random amount their budget will get cut each following year .. in all likelihood, they didn't *want* to cancel that project in the first place.
It's simply not realistically possible to always perfectly plan multiple complex multi-year projects, when every your budget gets cut a little further, and you never know -- it's a roll of the dice -- if or how much it's going to get cut by -- then there is the secondary knock-on effect that of the small budget that remains*, the managers need to very carefully decide where to constantly try shift things around to try keep remaining projects going. The rocket program canceled in 2010 was probably canceled due to budget cuts. NASA's budget has consistently been cut, what, every year for the past 15 years? You can't entirely blame NASA - nobody can plan properly under those circumstances. Nobody, not you, or me, could end up not wasting any of it as a result of the constant shunting around.
Also, *all* large organizations have at least some expenditure that in hindsight was wasted. Hindsight is always 20/20. Look at the R&D allocations for any large organization, public or private, and you'll always find plenty of projects that went nowhere - whether it's an IT company or a mining operation or a shipyard or energy utility etc.
* NASA budget is less than 0.5% of the total federal budget. We're really going to nitpick over this while literally trillions get regularly poured into completely wasteful military destruction? We're being played and manipulated by articles like this - look carefully who *benefits* from articles like this that attempt to portray the real bad guys (spending-wise) as those who take less than 0.5% of the budget.
Not only that, but hiring an H1B involves large delays in when they can start, and it's far from a given that the visa will even be granted at all (I think fewer than 50% are granted each year). Americans have a huge 'home ground' advantage over H1B applicants - you have to be seriously "uncompetitive" if you can't compete with all the extra costs and extra delays and extra risks involved in hiring an H1B. The H1B's I know are extremely hard-working (and all earn well over 100k/year).
Actually, Google are decidedly fearful of DNT being on by default, because unlike muggers, they have to obey the law - they can't actually willfully violate expressed user preference without risking a major class action of sorts. That's why they fought so hard to effectively kill any hope of DNT being useful (remember, they were part of the standards committee for standardizing it - the wolf guarding the henhouse).
Because the info sent is used by some sites to determine how to deliver content to you ... and when several websites stop working in the latest browser, the users will be the first to say 'what a crappy browser, I'm going to use a different browser'.