I own a Kindle paperwhite. Reads perfectly outdoors.
I haven't touched the thing in many months; Why? I don't read outdoors. It's far too bright out there for that kind of activity.
I read on my phone. In moderate lighting. And when I go to bed. When I'm done, I set the phone on its cordless charger, and nod off. I never run out of battery. And I read a *lot*.
Having said that, I'm quite curious as to what Amazon is going to announce. One thing I recall about the paperwhite is how slow it was. It actually disrupted my reading to turn a page. Glacial. Perhaps they've beaten that. Or managed color somewhichway. A full color display readable in full daylight... not so much a Kindle, but a phone or a tablet with that... I'd be interested.
As Tesla expands from the 'enthusiast' into the general automotive market, most people aren't going to way 3-4 years for a car, they'll just buy their next choice.
The thing about that is, if it's a quality electric vehicle you're looking for, there aren't any other choices, and before any other choice could ramp up, your Tesla would probably be on your doorstep.
This probably is very little about "I need to buy a car" whereas it is very much about "I want an electric car."
I want a quality electric vehicle. There's nothing at all wrong with the vehicles we own now that requires me to buy a new vehicle. If a suitable candidate comes out while we're using this group, I will simply wait until I can get one, then go get one, and then decide which of the ICE dinosaurs goes in the tar pit. If not, I will buy new ICEs as required, and continue waiting.
Price is somewhat of an issue for me, mostly as a matter of "I will only pay so much of a premium for an electric vehicle that is otherwise comparable with an ICE vehicle" but much more importantly than that, range and places to recharge are concerns. This car won't do it; and charging stations are not yet in place along the way to most places I want to go, and not at all along the way to the places I must go.
As far as I'm concerned, it's very early days yet. I applaud Musk's efforts. I'd like to be a customer. Likely, at some point, I will be. He gets mad brownie points for doing what needed to be done when no one else was willing to step up to the plate. And if you've ever run into a mad brownie, that's really something you never forget.
Don't capitalize "associated press" any longer. As this organization has been around for some time now and it is common to see these words associated with non-news items, we have now lost interest in them and they are no longer to be considered proper nouns.
Thank you for your attention to this matter, denizens of the Internet. If you'd like to learn more, you are welcome to visit my Web site.
In Trump's case, if he doesn't get the nomination he can always take his toys and his racist followers and screw up the presidential election for the Republicans.
Well, that's a bit too narrow, don't you think? I mean, you're leaving out the xenophobes, the misogynists, the jingoists, the deluded, and those simple souls who are merely pathologically aggressive. Trump enjoys broad support all across these diverse categories.
The office of the president can exert power without the compliance of congress in the following areas:
1) Foreign policy 2) Arbitrary short term military action; "commander in chief" is not just a meaningless phrase 3) Executive orders (which is a pretty broad canvas to paint on...)
All of the above are potential sources of long term consequences in the areas of military action, social change, international trade and relations.
Having said that, I am very confident that no Republican of any stripe can win the presidency this time around. This is due to the torpedo-at-the-waterline that has been, and continues to be, Trump's effect on the Republican party. I see concern about presidential action by Republicans like Cruz and pseudo-Republicans such as Trump as something that be be safely deferred until the Republicans can rebuild their brand from the mess they've made out of it the last six years or so. I also suspect that will take them quite a while.
I do worry about having Clinton in there; she's Trump-lite as far as I'm concerned. It seems pretty clear from the media bias and the disruption of the Republican party's ability to be effective that it will be Clinton we end up with; the American public has a consistent history of going with what the media tells them. For a while, I nursed some hope that the ability to do one's own research becoming available to most via the Internet would change this, but I have seen very few such signs, and it's been around long enough that I think they would have been easily obvious by now if they were actually there.
Sanders still has a chance; but the odds are, at the very least, quite seriously stacked against him.
I'm most interested in the next iteration of congressional elections. Last time around, voter satisfaction was 14%, and re-election rates were 94%. Recent polling puts satisfaction with congress at this point even lower at 11%; I keep asking myself if that might be enough to make people actually realize that the problem is congress in general, and not "the other representatives in congress." I'd like to think so, but last election's set of numbers doesn't make me optimistic about it at all.
Actual wealth is not money itself. Actual wealth is possession and control of resources, and an excellent argument can be made that it is also embodied in the health and welfare of the people.
While the gap between the richest and the poor continues to grow, what constitutes the lot of the majority of the poor (those not additionally sub-classed into the terminally disadvantaged because classed as a felon or formally listed as a social pariah) has continued to improve. Food, shelter, sanitation, communications, education, heat, power, entertainment -- the floor of these continues to rise at a respectable rate. They are the core facets of living well.
What this tells me is that the US is in no danger of losing possession or control of resources, or falling into a "ditch", much less sliding down a slippery slope. It is doing better on the health front technology-wise, and looks to be going in the correct direction socially with the ACA; hardly perfect, but definitely improving.
The US is coming up pretty fast on a change in how medium of exchange fits into its society as a proxy for those things. This is where basic income becomes likely to fit into the picture.
Sex bots I don't think would change all that much, although it would be interesting to see how the forces of moral purity would challenge their commercial implementation. Would they try to ban sex bot brothels?
A "sex bot brothel" that did not also offer human or conscious robotic services would be a matter of the customers making personal choices for themselves.
Would people interfere with such personal choices? Consider the current circumstances:
o Laws against various types of consensual sexual acts are widespread ("sodomy laws") o Texas has laws specifically against sex toys o Laws against gambling are widespread o Laws against drug use are widespread o Laws based on pathological definitions of "informed" are widespread
So I think it is clear that laws against "brothels" that utilize non-conscious robotics as sexual tools are extremely likely.
You know what seems creepy to me? The preoccupation many people have with worrying about what other people find personally appealing.
Guy likes his robot. So what?
My personal concerns are what I like and what any partner of mine likes.
Here are the metrics for my concerns with others in this area: Informed consent. That's it. That's all of it. Do issues of informed consent come up with a non-conscious robot? No. Not at all. Ergo, it's only a matter of interest in the sense of here's something in the personal behavior spectrum someone else is interested in... and then considering whether I would be interested in such a thing, or not.
There may be (probably is) a legal issue with Johansson's likeness; I wouldn't consider such an issue valid in terms of "should there be a law", but I would not be the least bit surprised if this was something he ended up having to deal with, because legal systems such as ours and the UK's, quite unlike other people's personal and consensual activities, is inherently creepy.
What you're saying is that mismanagement by choice of one's personal life has consequences (something I am well aware of), and further that suffering those consequences is adequate excuse for abandoning compassion for the unfortunate.
Consequent to experiencing severe legal and social downsides of exiting the state of marriage, I determined that marriage wasn't for me, and decline to enter into it again. I accept that I will continue to suffer those consequences; it was my mistake. I won't repeat it.
However, this in no way inclines me towards abandoning compassion for the unfortunate.
Making spelling mistakes online: First, an indicator your correspondent may be poorly educated. Second, proof they have failed to properly use a spelling checker. Third, a virtual guarantee that at least some of their audience will not read for content. Fourth, sufficient provocation that some of those individuals may disrupt the conversation in turn.
Language is a key means for communicating ideas. How well we use it directly affects how well our communications are received. It is, in fact, an art, like painting. However, also like painting, one can paint ideas like a master or finger-paint them like an addled child. Which do you think will be better received?
Learn to write coherently and correctly. It is well worth it. Knowledge is power. Communications skills are tools to exercise that power.
I don't see any purpose at all in paying a large group of people to exist where they are not being productive to the society since they are not producing anything that I or others can actually consume.
Well, I see it as a matter of compassion. I'm not better than any of those people. They have feelings, needs, hopes, etc. I accept fully that you don't see any value in them. But I do. Even the ones who have outlooks that are not like mine, as you do.
It's not your immaturity. It's that you're past puberty and these things are now truly humorous instead of just the trappings of reflexive adolescent rebellion.
The day that those words cease meaning something of significance to you will be the day they can neuter you without you taking serious notice.
There are hundreds, thousands, millions? of redundant seemingly obvious scientific studies to reaffirm what we as a group conscious believed to be true and nobody bats an eye.
you are talking about increasing taxes on people who are still productive in the economy populated by more and more unproductive people
That's precisely correct. That's exactly what I'm talking about.
I'm just inclined to do it honestly, openly, and at the expense of military adventurism and foreign aid as well as as a tax burden on productivity above the zero level. If everyone has an adequate basic income, no tax on income above that is such a serious burden that they can't live as well as the basic income allows. It doesn't bother me in the least if my taxes support others as they do now; I'm extremely productive, and I enjoy that for its own sake, as do many others. There's nothing about that enjoyment that says to me that only I should benefit from my productivity (and that's why I write software and don't charge for that.) It's also why I, and my SO, are charitable givers. Nothing about basic income will slow my productivity even a little bit, nor retard my inclination towards charitable action.
I see no significant value in forcing unproductive people to take unwilling part in the economy; when someone sees the task as too hard or too unrewarding, let them go, and give the task to someone who wants to do it well for the sake of doing it well and the personal rewards that brings. I no more insist on people who don't like being productive attempt productive tasks than I would insist that a fingerless person make finger paintings.
The thing is, we're a very rich country in terms of both consumable / renewable resources and physical space. The idea that we can't support a large segment of our population based on the idea that sharing is somehow antithetical is not something I can get behind. And the fact is, many already don't participate. We've not been ruined by it. It's a known functional operating model. The fact that some people whine about it notwithstanding.
As for eliminating government, there are some tasks that are just too big for the states, never mind private enterprise. Roads, national defense, (not implying any support for international offense, mind you), distributing the cost of dealing events of injury and disease evenly enough that US residents never go without adequate high quality care, ensuring that the states conform to some sort of explicit formal mechanism supporting individual liberty, those sorts of things. Consequently I am highly confident that we need an entity at that level. I agree in principle that today it is too big and has its hand into far too many pies, and that it is presently in a highly anti-liberty mode of operation in its current form of an oligarchy driven by 545 opinions ungoverned by any higher authority.
But I see no change coming in that model. Not even a hint of it. Whatever chance we ever had at reaching the goal of becoming a constitutional republic, I see no sign of such a thing any longer. That ship has sailed.
Back to basic income; the ideal, as I see it, is that it is instantiated at a low but reasonable level; then as technology increases our leverage, and as the idea becomes embedded in the national mindset, the basic income is increased, raising everyone's standard of living, while the available ceiling for what is presently unlimited acquisition of wealth drops. For example, the ceiling might be that you can have up to 500 times the basic income yourself, but above that, everything goes in the pot. A little further along, that ceiling drops to 400, then 300, and so on, all the time the basic income is rising.
In the end, everyone could live very well. The idea that no productivity will exist under that scenario is not something I can take seriously. Nor are the ideas that there might no longer be any billionaires, or that no one might own a yacht, anything that upset me at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Giant batteries charged by the evap/precip cycle. Green.
There's pumped storage, of course, but that's not nearly as common as it could be. Now that is the equivalent of a battery.
It's a walled garden. It just has slightly different walls.
I own a Kindle paperwhite. Reads perfectly outdoors.
I haven't touched the thing in many months; Why? I don't read outdoors. It's far too bright out there for that kind of activity.
I read on my phone. In moderate lighting. And when I go to bed. When I'm done, I set the phone on its cordless charger, and nod off. I never run out of battery. And I read a *lot*.
Having said that, I'm quite curious as to what Amazon is going to announce. One thing I recall about the paperwhite is how slow it was. It actually disrupted my reading to turn a page. Glacial. Perhaps they've beaten that. Or managed color somewhichway. A full color display readable in full daylight... not so much a Kindle, but a phone or a tablet with that... I'd be interested.
The thing about that is, if it's a quality electric vehicle you're looking for, there aren't any other choices, and before any other choice could ramp up, your Tesla would probably be on your doorstep.
This probably is very little about "I need to buy a car" whereas it is very much about "I want an electric car."
I want a quality electric vehicle. There's nothing at all wrong with the vehicles we own now that requires me to buy a new vehicle. If a suitable candidate comes out while we're using this group, I will simply wait until I can get one, then go get one, and then decide which of the ICE dinosaurs goes in the tar pit. If not, I will buy new ICEs as required, and continue waiting.
Price is somewhat of an issue for me, mostly as a matter of "I will only pay so much of a premium for an electric vehicle that is otherwise comparable with an ICE vehicle" but much more importantly than that, range and places to recharge are concerns. This car won't do it; and charging stations are not yet in place along the way to most places I want to go, and not at all along the way to the places I must go.
As far as I'm concerned, it's very early days yet. I applaud Musk's efforts. I'd like to be a customer. Likely, at some point, I will be. He gets mad brownie points for doing what needed to be done when no one else was willing to step up to the plate. And if you've ever run into a mad brownie, that's really something you never forget.
Don't capitalize "associated press" any longer. As this organization has been around for some time now and it is common to see these words associated with non-news items, we have now lost interest in them and they are no longer to be considered proper nouns.
Thank you for your attention to this matter, denizens of the Internet. If you'd like to learn more, you are welcome to visit my Web site.
"wigged nuke" :)
But I make the very best buggy whips!
Yes, and replaced him with... another douchebag.
Well, that's a bit too narrow, don't you think? I mean, you're leaving out the xenophobes, the misogynists, the jingoists, the deluded, and those simple souls who are merely pathologically aggressive. Trump enjoys broad support all across these diverse categories.
The office of the president can exert power without the compliance of congress in the following areas:
1) Foreign policy
2) Arbitrary short term military action; "commander in chief" is not just a meaningless phrase
3) Executive orders (which is a pretty broad canvas to paint on...)
All of the above are potential sources of long term consequences in the areas of military action, social change, international trade and relations.
Having said that, I am very confident that no Republican of any stripe can win the presidency this time around. This is due to the torpedo-at-the-waterline that has been, and continues to be, Trump's effect on the Republican party. I see concern about presidential action by Republicans like Cruz and pseudo-Republicans such as Trump as something that be be safely deferred until the Republicans can rebuild their brand from the mess they've made out of it the last six years or so. I also suspect that will take them quite a while.
I do worry about having Clinton in there; she's Trump-lite as far as I'm concerned. It seems pretty clear from the media bias and the disruption of the Republican party's ability to be effective that it will be Clinton we end up with; the American public has a consistent history of going with what the media tells them. For a while, I nursed some hope that the ability to do one's own research becoming available to most via the Internet would change this, but I have seen very few such signs, and it's been around long enough that I think they would have been easily obvious by now if they were actually there.
Sanders still has a chance; but the odds are, at the very least, quite seriously stacked against him.
I'm most interested in the next iteration of congressional elections. Last time around, voter satisfaction was 14%, and re-election rates were 94%. Recent polling puts satisfaction with congress at this point even lower at 11%; I keep asking myself if that might be enough to make people actually realize that the problem is congress in general, and not "the other representatives in congress." I'd like to think so, but last election's set of numbers doesn't make me optimistic about it at all.
Interesting times, anyway.
You're citing journalism, which is basically the American version of Russia Today. Propaganda machine.
FTFY
Actual wealth is not money itself. Actual wealth is possession and control of resources, and an excellent argument can be made that it is also embodied in the health and welfare of the people.
While the gap between the richest and the poor continues to grow, what constitutes the lot of the majority of the poor (those not additionally sub-classed into the terminally disadvantaged because classed as a felon or formally listed as a social pariah) has continued to improve. Food, shelter, sanitation, communications, education, heat, power, entertainment -- the floor of these continues to rise at a respectable rate. They are the core facets of living well.
What this tells me is that the US is in no danger of losing possession or control of resources, or falling into a "ditch", much less sliding down a slippery slope. It is doing better on the health front technology-wise, and looks to be going in the correct direction socially with the ACA; hardly perfect, but definitely improving.
The US is coming up pretty fast on a change in how medium of exchange fits into its society as a proxy for those things. This is where basic income becomes likely to fit into the picture.
My answer is not one of percentage, or debt.
My answer is it depends on the good that can be done according to my ability to do it.
We will not see eye to eye on this.
A "sex bot brothel" that did not also offer human or conscious robotic services would be a matter of the customers making personal choices for themselves.
Would people interfere with such personal choices? Consider the current circumstances:
o Laws against various types of consensual sexual acts are widespread ("sodomy laws")
o Texas has laws specifically against sex toys
o Laws against gambling are widespread
o Laws against drug use are widespread
o Laws based on pathological definitions of "informed" are widespread
So I think it is clear that laws against "brothels" that utilize non-conscious robotics as sexual tools are extremely likely.
You know what seems creepy to me? The preoccupation many people have with worrying about what other people find personally appealing.
Guy likes his robot. So what?
My personal concerns are what I like and what any partner of mine likes.
Here are the metrics for my concerns with others in this area: Informed consent. That's it. That's all of it. Do issues of informed consent come up with a non-conscious robot? No. Not at all. Ergo, it's only a matter of interest in the sense of here's something in the personal behavior spectrum someone else is interested in... and then considering whether I would be interested in such a thing, or not.
There may be (probably is) a legal issue with Johansson's likeness; I wouldn't consider such an issue valid in terms of "should there be a law", but I would not be the least bit surprised if this was something he ended up having to deal with, because legal systems such as ours and the UK's, quite unlike other people's personal and consensual activities, is inherently creepy.
What you're saying is that mismanagement by choice of one's personal life has consequences (something I am well aware of), and further that suffering those consequences is adequate excuse for abandoning compassion for the unfortunate.
Consequent to experiencing severe legal and social downsides of exiting the state of marriage, I determined that marriage wasn't for me, and decline to enter into it again. I accept that I will continue to suffer those consequences; it was my mistake. I won't repeat it.
However, this in no way inclines me towards abandoning compassion for the unfortunate.
Please elaborate; what is the typo you refer to? I am perfectly willing to learn. :)
Making spelling mistakes online: First, an indicator your correspondent may be poorly educated. Second, proof they have failed to properly use a spelling checker. Third, a virtual guarantee that at least some of their audience will not read for content. Fourth, sufficient provocation that some of those individuals may disrupt the conversation in turn.
Language is a key means for communicating ideas. How well we use it directly affects how well our communications are received. It is, in fact, an art, like painting. However, also like painting, one can paint ideas like a master or finger-paint them like an addled child. Which do you think will be better received?
Learn to write coherently and correctly. It is well worth it. Knowledge is power. Communications skills are tools to exercise that power.
Well, I see it as a matter of compassion. I'm not better than any of those people. They have feelings, needs, hopes, etc. I accept fully that you don't see any value in them. But I do. Even the ones who have outlooks that are not like mine, as you do.
Pentagon's "Hack The Hackers" program opens for voluntary self-incrimination.
Come one, come all.
It's not your immaturity. It's that you're past puberty and these things are now truly humorous instead of just the trappings of reflexive adolescent rebellion.
The day that those words cease meaning something of significance to you will be the day they can neuter you without you taking serious notice.
Don't worry, the kids can't write c anyway. It's PHP all the way down.
consciously
You are very confused.
That's precisely correct. That's exactly what I'm talking about.
I'm just inclined to do it honestly, openly, and at the expense of military adventurism and foreign aid as well as as a tax burden on productivity above the zero level. If everyone has an adequate basic income, no tax on income above that is such a serious burden that they can't live as well as the basic income allows. It doesn't bother me in the least if my taxes support others as they do now; I'm extremely productive, and I enjoy that for its own sake, as do many others. There's nothing about that enjoyment that says to me that only I should benefit from my productivity (and that's why I write software and don't charge for that.) It's also why I, and my SO, are charitable givers. Nothing about basic income will slow my productivity even a little bit, nor retard my inclination towards charitable action.
I see no significant value in forcing unproductive people to take unwilling part in the economy; when someone sees the task as too hard or too unrewarding, let them go, and give the task to someone who wants to do it well for the sake of doing it well and the personal rewards that brings. I no more insist on people who don't like being productive attempt productive tasks than I would insist that a fingerless person make finger paintings.
The thing is, we're a very rich country in terms of both consumable / renewable resources and physical space. The idea that we can't support a large segment of our population based on the idea that sharing is somehow antithetical is not something I can get behind. And the fact is, many already don't participate. We've not been ruined by it. It's a known functional operating model. The fact that some people whine about it notwithstanding.
As for eliminating government, there are some tasks that are just too big for the states, never mind private enterprise. Roads, national defense, (not implying any support for international offense, mind you), distributing the cost of dealing events of injury and disease evenly enough that US residents never go without adequate high quality care, ensuring that the states conform to some sort of explicit formal mechanism supporting individual liberty, those sorts of things. Consequently I am highly confident that we need an entity at that level. I agree in principle that today it is too big and has its hand into far too many pies, and that it is presently in a highly anti-liberty mode of operation in its current form of an oligarchy driven by 545 opinions ungoverned by any higher authority.
But I see no change coming in that model. Not even a hint of it. Whatever chance we ever had at reaching the goal of becoming a constitutional republic, I see no sign of such a thing any longer. That ship has sailed.
Back to basic income; the ideal, as I see it, is that it is instantiated at a low but reasonable level; then as technology increases our leverage, and as the idea becomes embedded in the national mindset, the basic income is increased, raising everyone's standard of living, while the available ceiling for what is presently unlimited acquisition of wealth drops. For example, the ceiling might be that you can have up to 500 times the basic income yourself, but above that, everything goes in the pot. A little further along, that ceiling drops to 400, then 300, and so on, all the time the basic income is rising.
In the end, everyone could live very well. The idea that no productivity will exist under that scenario is not something I can take seriously. Nor are the ideas that there might no longer be any billionaires, or that no one might own a yacht, anything that upset me at all.