FWIW, I own a Vive, which broke after about 10 months due to sweat damage. I fought with HTC for several months to try and get them to honor their warranty (which explicitly covered damage caused by sweat), however they insisted that the unit had been submerged in water and refused me at every turn. I have not bought and will not buy another HTC product after that experience. So, if Valve wants to try their hand at releasing a product without HTC, more power to them.
Also, Valve developed their SteamVR technology, which, as I understand it, was always meant to be made available to many hardware vendors. I think that aspect of the technology failed, because HTC is the only vendor to use the tech to release a product so far. From that perspective (and given HTC's terrible customer support), I think it makes sense that they would develop the product in-house.
I'm with you that this is terrible, but it's also legal and not uncommon in the restaurant industry. In the US, a "tipped" position (like a waiter) has a minimum wage of $2.13/hour vs. the standard $7.25/hour. If the wage + tips falls below that $7.25/hour mark, the employer has to make up the difference, but it's still a shitty system that allows the employer to depend on tips to cover part of the employees' wages.
It's not just public schools, but also hospitals. Having a measles carrier in a public school would be terrible. Having that same carrier enter a hospital would be catastrophic.
Well, if you think requiring someone to carry a pregnancy to term because some people's religions insist that a fertilized egg is deserving of personhood is a 'purely political issue', then I guess you have a point. You're wrong, but in your warped universe, you're at least consistent. If you don't think that, then you're just wrong.
You must be an awesome guest at dinner parties...
Host: Can you believe that ref at the ball game last night?
You: Yeah, he must be one of those idiots who believes that abortions is only a women's health issue!
Do you want to introduce any other highly contentious issues into this discussion about data privacy? Maybe about how vaccines cause autism or about how we all need to lead clean vegan lifestyles?
I've also got it and find that those same characteristics - voice, gait and stance - are super important for recognizing people. As I'm walking down the street with my coworkers, I'll see someone several blocks away that we know and correctly recognize them, and my coworkers are amazed. Then, at other times, we'll bump into an acquaintance at a restaurant and I'll have no idea who that person is. When they're some ways off and I can see them moving for a bit, I can pick up on who they are pretty well, but in a crowded room when we're face to face, I'm at a loss.
They are compensating you for these things by paying the people who make the content that you're watching so that you don't have to pay for that content. I agree that it's wrong of them to extract this service from you without your knowledge or consent (after all, in a normal commercial transaction, you should know how much something costs before you make the purchase), but I don't see anything wrong with a company offering people media access on the condition that they run mining software while they watch that media - as long as they're upfront about what they're doing.
Goddamn politics and the jerks who derail conversations by introducing them where they're not warranted. I hate it when I'm looking for a discussion about an art project that focuses on income inequality, but I find ad hominem attacks against the guy who runs the company that made the project. As we all know, the personal flaws of a single leader at a company taint everything that that company does, meaning that the company can never produce anything of value.
"once a Tesla starts taking on water I'd imagine it'd sink like a lithum rock."
Which is to say, it would still float? Lithium has a density similar to wood (pine).
Ooh, burn!
You know, because Lithium rapidly oxidizes with water...
They do have a point. You know, whenever someone says "thank you" to me, I always naturally assume that they are working for Citigroup. When it turns out they don't work for Citigroup and they were just saying it to be nice, it confuses the hell out of me. Could everyone please stop abusing registered trademarks like that? Thank you.
A Citigroup lawyer somewhere just read this post, willfully ignored the sarcasm, high-fived the intern who found it, then filed it as evidence in support of their ridiculous trademark...
Let's do a thought experiment with some made up, but representative numbers.
We have French Fries 'r Us, which is open 16 hours per day. Each day, they have 2 employees dedicated to making the french fries (each doing an 8 hour shift), and the owner is considering automation to eliminate the position of Fry Frier. He finds that the French Fry Machine can be purchased for $180k.
Paying each of his 2 full time Fry Friers $15/hour comes to ~$62k per year. So, the machine has a 3 year ROI, what a deal! He decides to eliminate the positions and personally reaps the financial rewards (after 3 years).
Paying each of his 2 full time Fry Friers $10/hour comes to ~$42k per year. So, the machine has about a 4 and a quarter year ROI... what a deal! He decides to eliminate the positions and personally reaps the financial rewards (after 4 and a quarter years).
This is simplified, ignoring things like the costs of employee benefits, employment taxes, the impact of sick days or of employees just not showing up... and maintenance costs for the machine... but you get the point. Automation is coming; every day we build better machines that can do more work, and every day the cost of those machines goes down as we figure out better ways to build them.
The only way to keep those menial jobs around is to *reduce* the minimum wage so that human labor becomes cheaper than automated labor (which is constantly becoming cheaper). And there's a dangerous situation; we are financially incentivizing the degradation of humans, while pulling business away from the people who are inventing better/more efficient machines.
I think that the ideal end-goal is to have a population that is entirely capable of doing interesting, meaningful work... such as improving the automation of menial tasks. Rather than focusing on how to protect menial tasks for our unskilled labor force, let's focus on how those people can live decent lives while developing the skills that they need to actually contribute to society.
To play the devil's (or AI's?) advocate, is this a bad thing? As a prole, why should I care if my overlord is a human or an AI, so long as I am please by the life that I am able to live?
I'm a tech nerd, but I had similar reservations. Up until my first son was 2, we let him watch children's television and generally were the normal American household. A friend of mine told me about Waldorf education and so we went to some seminars at a local school. I'm not really onboard with the spiritual philosophy, but I've been totally won over by their educational philosophy. They stress the importance of social development for young children, introducing scholastic skills later than public schools. They strongly discourage the use of most entertainment technologies during this period, as the human connection is so important to children.
After the seminars, we reduced TV time to 30 minutes per week (one show on Saturday morning). The first week or two were tough, as we all had to develop new routines, but it made a huge difference for us. Our son made very swift leaps in his communication ability and his imaginative play. We're lucky enough to live near a character school that follows the Waldorf educational philosophy, so we've been able to join in a community of like-minded parents. How does this tie into your worry about having internet access or becoming a social outcast? Well, there are communities where the average kid doesn't have that level of internet access, but you do have to find them.
I agree that state-sanctioned killings are disgusting. What about state-sanctioned euthanasia? In addition to being an option for terminal patients, perhaps offer euthanasia as an option to convicts who are undergoing life sentences. I'm not personally sure which is crueler; taking someone's life or forcing them to live in a prison for decades, where they can not contribute to society or even take care of themselves in any realistic fashion.
While we're busy catering to human interests that aren't directly related to the subject matter from the conference, should we get Neil deGrasse Tyson to give a lecture on astronomy, Julie Zeilinger to give a speech on feminism and Anatoly Karpov to talk about the fascinating world of stamp collecting?
I really like the sentiment, but I disagree with that argument because the caliber of weapons (both figuratively and literally) that are available to me as a private citizen are so dwarfed by those weapons that are available to the government that the concept of a militia of citizens standing up against the government is just laughable. It doesn't matter how many shotguns or rifles I own when a Predator drone is lining up a shot...
I think that the problem with your theory is that the government doesn't really care where its money comes from, as it is not an entity. Instead, politicians care where their income money from, and that's mostly from the lobbyists. I've never heard of a normal person hiring a lobbyist, so we're basically already in your situation where the government is only incentivized to take care of the rich/corporations... and it shows.
No... I know the most crazy anti-government person and he'd admit no such thing. He'd suggest that the free market forces would inspire the community to move to a place where corporations can more efficiently satisfy their needs (or that the community should stratify so that only the independently wealthy live in such an expensive place, as they, through their money, are able to take care of themselves in all regards).
What's with all of this elitist livingism. A hundred years ago, we realized that African-Americans deserved the right to vote. A few decades later, we realized that women deserved to vote. When will we, as a country, wake up and realize that everyone in our country is created equal, no matter if they are alive or dead!
These are really good points about forcing the uninformed (and presumably easily swayed by unsubstantive claims) to vote. What about requiring voting, but simply including an "I abstain" option for each category? Those who don't care or who want to protest can select "abstain" but it's now an active choice. No longer can the protest non-vote be explained away as simple laziness. Hell, we could even have another option, "I abstain and I'm pissed" to really drive the point home about how we're feeling about these non-options.
Ah, the state of American politics. It's like being a starving man who is only presented with moldy leftovers. If you choose well, maybe you'll only be disgusted by your choice... choose poorly and you're left with an uncontrollable shit.
To play devil's advocate, when we find that our city streets are congested and fire trucks and ambulances are having trouble getting to their destinations, do we increase the width of the streets or do we implement a policy stating that normal traffic must give way to the emergency services? Admittedly, it's much harder to increase bandwidth in a city street scenario than in a network scenario, but our society has already established that traffic shaping is a good idea in at least one situation.
Running with that comparison, we don't allow Pizza Hut to pay a premium so that they can get red and blue spinners for their delivery fleet though.
Slashdot Mirror
FWIW, I own a Vive, which broke after about 10 months due to sweat damage. I fought with HTC for several months to try and get them to honor their warranty (which explicitly covered damage caused by sweat), however they insisted that the unit had been submerged in water and refused me at every turn. I have not bought and will not buy another HTC product after that experience. So, if Valve wants to try their hand at releasing a product without HTC, more power to them.
Also, Valve developed their SteamVR technology, which, as I understand it, was always meant to be made available to many hardware vendors. I think that aspect of the technology failed, because HTC is the only vendor to use the tech to release a product so far. From that perspective (and given HTC's terrible customer support), I think it makes sense that they would develop the product in-house.
My understanding is that Netflix is the one who decided to end all of these shows abruptly, not Disney.
I'm with you that this is terrible, but it's also legal and not uncommon in the restaurant industry. In the US, a "tipped" position (like a waiter) has a minimum wage of $2.13/hour vs. the standard $7.25/hour. If the wage + tips falls below that $7.25/hour mark, the employer has to make up the difference, but it's still a shitty system that allows the employer to depend on tips to cover part of the employees' wages.
It's not just public schools, but also hospitals. Having a measles carrier in a public school would be terrible. Having that same carrier enter a hospital would be catastrophic.
Well, if you think requiring someone to carry a pregnancy to term because some people's religions insist that a fertilized egg is deserving of personhood is a 'purely political issue', then I guess you have a point. You're wrong, but in your warped universe, you're at least consistent. If you don't think that, then you're just wrong.
You must be an awesome guest at dinner parties...
Host: Can you believe that ref at the ball game last night?
You: Yeah, he must be one of those idiots who believes that abortions is only a women's health issue!
Do you want to introduce any other highly contentious issues into this discussion about data privacy? Maybe about how vaccines cause autism or about how we all need to lead clean vegan lifestyles?
Make sure to wash your hands after you 3d print into the toilet, too.
I've also got it and find that those same characteristics - voice, gait and stance - are super important for recognizing people. As I'm walking down the street with my coworkers, I'll see someone several blocks away that we know and correctly recognize them, and my coworkers are amazed. Then, at other times, we'll bump into an acquaintance at a restaurant and I'll have no idea who that person is. When they're some ways off and I can see them moving for a bit, I can pick up on who they are pretty well, but in a crowded room when we're face to face, I'm at a loss.
They are compensating you for these things by paying the people who make the content that you're watching so that you don't have to pay for that content. I agree that it's wrong of them to extract this service from you without your knowledge or consent (after all, in a normal commercial transaction, you should know how much something costs before you make the purchase), but I don't see anything wrong with a company offering people media access on the condition that they run mining software while they watch that media - as long as they're upfront about what they're doing.
Goddamn politics and the jerks who derail conversations by introducing them where they're not warranted. I hate it when I'm looking for a discussion about an art project that focuses on income inequality, but I find ad hominem attacks against the guy who runs the company that made the project. As we all know, the personal flaws of a single leader at a company taint everything that that company does, meaning that the company can never produce anything of value.
"once a Tesla starts taking on water I'd imagine it'd sink like a lithum rock." Which is to say, it would still float? Lithium has a density similar to wood (pine).
Ooh, burn!
You know, because Lithium rapidly oxidizes with water...
They do have a point. You know, whenever someone says "thank you" to me, I always naturally assume that they are working for Citigroup. When it turns out they don't work for Citigroup and they were just saying it to be nice, it confuses the hell out of me. Could everyone please stop abusing registered trademarks like that? Thank you.
A Citigroup lawyer somewhere just read this post, willfully ignored the sarcasm, high-fived the intern who found it, then filed it as evidence in support of their ridiculous trademark...
Let's do a thought experiment with some made up, but representative numbers.
We have French Fries 'r Us, which is open 16 hours per day. Each day, they have 2 employees dedicated to making the french fries (each doing an 8 hour shift), and the owner is considering automation to eliminate the position of Fry Frier. He finds that the French Fry Machine can be purchased for $180k.
Paying each of his 2 full time Fry Friers $15/hour comes to ~$62k per year. So, the machine has a 3 year ROI, what a deal! He decides to eliminate the positions and personally reaps the financial rewards (after 3 years).
Paying each of his 2 full time Fry Friers $10/hour comes to ~$42k per year. So, the machine has about a 4 and a quarter year ROI... what a deal! He decides to eliminate the positions and personally reaps the financial rewards (after 4 and a quarter years).
This is simplified, ignoring things like the costs of employee benefits, employment taxes, the impact of sick days or of employees just not showing up... and maintenance costs for the machine... but you get the point. Automation is coming; every day we build better machines that can do more work, and every day the cost of those machines goes down as we figure out better ways to build them.
The only way to keep those menial jobs around is to *reduce* the minimum wage so that human labor becomes cheaper than automated labor (which is constantly becoming cheaper). And there's a dangerous situation; we are financially incentivizing the degradation of humans, while pulling business away from the people who are inventing better/more efficient machines.
I think that the ideal end-goal is to have a population that is entirely capable of doing interesting, meaningful work... such as improving the automation of menial tasks. Rather than focusing on how to protect menial tasks for our unskilled labor force, let's focus on how those people can live decent lives while developing the skills that they need to actually contribute to society.
To play the devil's (or AI's?) advocate, is this a bad thing? As a prole, why should I care if my overlord is a human or an AI, so long as I am please by the life that I am able to live?
I'm a tech nerd, but I had similar reservations. Up until my first son was 2, we let him watch children's television and generally were the normal American household. A friend of mine told me about Waldorf education and so we went to some seminars at a local school. I'm not really onboard with the spiritual philosophy, but I've been totally won over by their educational philosophy. They stress the importance of social development for young children, introducing scholastic skills later than public schools. They strongly discourage the use of most entertainment technologies during this period, as the human connection is so important to children.
After the seminars, we reduced TV time to 30 minutes per week (one show on Saturday morning). The first week or two were tough, as we all had to develop new routines, but it made a huge difference for us. Our son made very swift leaps in his communication ability and his imaginative play. We're lucky enough to live near a character school that follows the Waldorf educational philosophy, so we've been able to join in a community of like-minded parents. How does this tie into your worry about having internet access or becoming a social outcast? Well, there are communities where the average kid doesn't have that level of internet access, but you do have to find them.
I agree that state-sanctioned killings are disgusting. What about state-sanctioned euthanasia? In addition to being an option for terminal patients, perhaps offer euthanasia as an option to convicts who are undergoing life sentences. I'm not personally sure which is crueler; taking someone's life or forcing them to live in a prison for decades, where they can not contribute to society or even take care of themselves in any realistic fashion.
While we're busy catering to human interests that aren't directly related to the subject matter from the conference, should we get Neil deGrasse Tyson to give a lecture on astronomy, Julie Zeilinger to give a speech on feminism and Anatoly Karpov to talk about the fascinating world of stamp collecting?
I really like the sentiment, but I disagree with that argument because the caliber of weapons (both figuratively and literally) that are available to me as a private citizen are so dwarfed by those weapons that are available to the government that the concept of a militia of citizens standing up against the government is just laughable. It doesn't matter how many shotguns or rifles I own when a Predator drone is lining up a shot...
I think that the problem with your theory is that the government doesn't really care where its money comes from, as it is not an entity. Instead, politicians care where their income money from, and that's mostly from the lobbyists. I've never heard of a normal person hiring a lobbyist, so we're basically already in your situation where the government is only incentivized to take care of the rich/corporations... and it shows.
No... I know the most crazy anti-government person and he'd admit no such thing. He'd suggest that the free market forces would inspire the community to move to a place where corporations can more efficiently satisfy their needs (or that the community should stratify so that only the independently wealthy live in such an expensive place, as they, through their money, are able to take care of themselves in all regards).
What's with all of this elitist livingism. A hundred years ago, we realized that African-Americans deserved the right to vote. A few decades later, we realized that women deserved to vote. When will we, as a country, wake up and realize that everyone in our country is created equal, no matter if they are alive or dead!
These are really good points about forcing the uninformed (and presumably easily swayed by unsubstantive claims) to vote. What about requiring voting, but simply including an "I abstain" option for each category? Those who don't care or who want to protest can select "abstain" but it's now an active choice. No longer can the protest non-vote be explained away as simple laziness. Hell, we could even have another option, "I abstain and I'm pissed" to really drive the point home about how we're feeling about these non-options.
Those damn kids had better get off your lawn!
Ah, the state of American politics. It's like being a starving man who is only presented with moldy leftovers. If you choose well, maybe you'll only be disgusted by your choice... choose poorly and you're left with an uncontrollable shit.
They don't want to set the world on fire. They just want to start... a flame in your heart!
To play devil's advocate, when we find that our city streets are congested and fire trucks and ambulances are having trouble getting to their destinations, do we increase the width of the streets or do we implement a policy stating that normal traffic must give way to the emergency services? Admittedly, it's much harder to increase bandwidth in a city street scenario than in a network scenario, but our society has already established that traffic shaping is a good idea in at least one situation.
Running with that comparison, we don't allow Pizza Hut to pay a premium so that they can get red and blue spinners for their delivery fleet though.