"Regardless, a date is always nice, although it doesn't guarentee anything (even with pre-orders)."
Pre-orders eh? Could you tell us here at slashdot how to get one of those? Anything that remotely increases our chances of getting something on a date (or even getting a date in the first place) would be much appreciated.
- if a car engineer lived next door, would they call him every month to fix their car for free? Nope."
etc...
Maybe not, but the tradespeople I know are usually happy to work on easy jobs for goodwill + cost of parts if you know them personally. I'm happy to help out friends/family with computers, but only when I'm not busy and can be there in person not over the phone.
If the job looks dodgy, just tell them to pay a business to fix it so if something goes wrong everyone's covered. You'll still get the goodwill for ten minutes of your time, and no hassle for difficult stuff.
Don't underestimate goodwill, it brings jobs, gifts and tasty food.
The deal here is that security is an end-to-end process. It's not a single lock that gets picked, or a server that gets hacked. It's a whole system, which may involve a large number of human factors. It doesn't matter how security was breached, but if the assets are compromised (in this case game integrity), then there has been a security failure. Even if this didn't involve a direct attack on the server, it's no less of a security failure.
I agree. My experiences of MMORPGs (can't someone find a better acronym?) keep being spoiled by people messing with the server or somehow fscking with the clients. There's only one security solution... keep developers the hell away;)
At the start of The Matrix (the first one) notice the scary bunnies from 'Night of the Lepus' bounding across Mr Anderson's TV screen. Follow the white rabbit. Go on.
Ok, so there are like a million posts in there that I could reply to. Where to start?
At the end, obviously.
CONCLUSION:
Robots can reduce the amount of menial work that people need to do. People only get paid for working. Less menial work = less work = less pay. But less work is nice, as in holiday. Solution? pay people even when they don't work (they still need income, so they can choose how to spend their money). In a highly automated society it makes sense to have a high quality of life even for the unemployed (gasp! socialist!), which implies a decent social welfare system. It's either that, or concentrate the power of the economy in the hands of a few people, and write off the rest of the population as superfluous. Obviously, it should be better to work if you can find a job, so the income of an unemployed person should be slightly less than that of the crappiest non-automated job. The good news is that as more jobs are automated, unemployment doesn't suck as much and everyone ends up on holiday eventually (as technology approaches infinity).
BANKS: Ok, so I'm in New Zealand and people keep on telling me that NZ has the highest EFT-POS (cash-card) usage per capita in the world or something. This appears to be true. The only place where I have to use cash is my favourite cafe, which gives it a nice ritualistic feel that goes well with coffee. I've been into a bank two, maybe three times this year. There are cash machines everywhere if I just need to make a withdrawl, so the bank tellers just end up dealing with inquiries and the like. It works great. Nobody complains about having to interact with faceless uncaring machines that just give them money. Machines are great for dealing with drudgery, the kinds of jobs that people don't really want to do except that it's how they get paid.
FAST FOOD: So why shouldn't fast food be the same? At the moment we need people to cook stuff properly, but I'm sure we'd all be happy if we could just press the Cheeseburger Button whenever we were hungry. There are plenty of other places to find human intraction.
ETERNAL HOLIDAY: When the robots rule the world, will we all get to go on holiday? Doesn't seem likely. The transition between here and there doesn't look fun. I think the problem is that everyone who is displaced by a robot will be unemployed, and someone else will be reaping the rewards of better efficiency. I can't see any reason why jobs should magically appear to replace those that are filled by robots.
It seems to me that the consequence of robotification of our job pool would be to concentrate power in the hands of people who could invest in robots, and leave everyone else on welfare.
LABOUR SAVING DEVICES: I just can't figure out how having robots do menial tasks is meant to give people more free time under the current (capitalist?) system. If you don't need to do boring stuff, you have more time to work, and if you're not working why should you be paid? If we're all going to get an eternal holiday, we need to use some other income mechanism than time == money.
Screw it, this is too long. I'm going to put my conclusion at the top so someone will actually see it. Bye!
Here in New Zealand (Noo Zeeland for you americans) nerd and geek have traditionally had slightly different meanings from their commonly accepted international (or american?) usages.
Nerd: This guy's real smart. He doesn't work very hard at school, but that's because he doesn't NEED to, he already knows it all. He argues with the teacher, and is usually right. Typically non-interactive and non-confrontational due to their minds being on higher things; nerds are tolerated because they don't do any harm, and will probably discover something useful like teflon (created as shielding on space shuttles, but most people use it on frying pans, you get the picture).
Geek: see also:- teacher's pet, nancy boy, try hard. Similar to nerds to the untrained eye, geeks generally achieve similar although slightly lower marks in school. Geek technique depends on doing inordinate amounts of work, in perfect handwriting. Learning is by rote, due to deficiencies in 'talent' and 'clue'. Geeks traditionally participate in a wide range of extra-curricular activities, and win 'personal best' or 'most improved' awards. Geeks tend to attract a cluster of lesser sorts who bludge off the work done by the geek in question. Geeks are shunned by their more socially inclined peers, although geeks can be incessantly cheerful and clingy, and have trouble taking hints (note: there is some intersection between the geek and loser subgroups).
So, you can imagine that running around saying "yay! I'm a geek!" isn't a great plan, not so much becuase geek is derogatory, but because it describes something completely different in this neck of the woods. In the last few years, 'computer geek' has come into more common usage, which is a good thing. It uses geek in the more common internet style.
"It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the Half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor."
Slashdot Mirror
"Regardless, a date is always nice, although it doesn't guarentee anything (even with pre-orders)."
.
Pre-orders eh? Could you tell us here at slashdot how to get one of those? Anything that remotely increases our chances of getting something on a date (or even getting a date in the first place) would be much appreciated
*grin*
"It goes against everything the industry has been fighting against."
Hooray! It's a good thing it doesn't go against everything the industry's been fighting for - then they'd really be in trouble.
Moraelin wrote:
"Let me put this in perspective:
- if a car engineer lived next door, would they call him every month to fix their car for free? Nope."
etc...
Maybe not, but the tradespeople I know are usually happy to work on easy jobs for goodwill + cost of parts if you know them personally. I'm happy to help out friends/family with computers, but only when I'm not busy and can be there in person not over the phone.
If the job looks dodgy, just tell them to pay a business to fix it so if something goes wrong everyone's covered. You'll still get the goodwill for ten minutes of your time, and no hassle for difficult stuff.
Don't underestimate goodwill, it brings jobs, gifts and tasty food.
I agree. My experiences of MMORPGs (can't someone find a better acronym?) keep being spoiled by people messing with the server or somehow fscking with the clients. There's only one security solution... keep developers the hell away
-1 Offtopic, +4 Matrix reference
At the start of The Matrix (the first one) notice the scary bunnies from 'Night of the Lepus' bounding across Mr Anderson's TV screen. Follow the white rabbit. Go on.
Ok, so there are like a million posts in there that I could reply to. Where to start?
At the end, obviously.
CONCLUSION:
Robots can reduce the amount of menial work that people need to do. People only get paid for working. Less menial work = less work = less pay. But less work is nice, as in holiday. Solution? pay people even when they don't work (they still need income, so they can choose how to spend their money). In a highly automated society it makes sense to have a high quality of life even for the unemployed (gasp! socialist!), which implies a decent social welfare system. It's either that, or concentrate the power of the economy in the hands of a few people, and write off the rest of the population as superfluous. Obviously, it should be better to work if you can find a job, so the income of an unemployed person should be slightly less than that of the crappiest non-automated job. The good news is that as more jobs are automated, unemployment doesn't suck as much and everyone ends up on holiday eventually (as technology approaches infinity).
BANKS:
Ok, so I'm in New Zealand and people keep on telling me that NZ has the highest EFT-POS (cash-card) usage per capita in the world or something. This appears to be true. The only place where I have to use cash is my favourite cafe, which gives it a nice ritualistic feel that goes well with coffee. I've been into a bank two, maybe three times this year. There are cash machines everywhere if I just need to make a withdrawl, so the bank tellers just end up dealing with inquiries and the like. It works great. Nobody complains about having to interact with faceless uncaring machines that just give them money. Machines are great for dealing with drudgery, the kinds of jobs that people don't really want to do except that it's how they get paid.
FAST FOOD:
So why shouldn't fast food be the same? At the moment we need people to cook stuff properly, but I'm sure we'd all be happy if we could just press the Cheeseburger Button whenever we were hungry. There are plenty of other places to find human intraction.
ETERNAL HOLIDAY:
When the robots rule the world, will we all get to go on holiday? Doesn't seem likely. The transition between here and there doesn't look fun. I think the problem is that everyone who is displaced by a robot will be unemployed, and someone else will be reaping the rewards of better efficiency. I can't see any reason why jobs should magically appear to replace those that are filled by robots.
It seems to me that the consequence of robotification of our job pool would be to concentrate power in the hands of people who could invest in robots, and leave everyone else on welfare.
LABOUR SAVING DEVICES:
I just can't figure out how having robots do menial tasks is meant to give people more free time under the current (capitalist?) system. If you don't need to do boring stuff, you have more time to work, and if you're not working why should you be paid? If we're all going to get an eternal holiday, we need to use some other income mechanism than time == money.
Screw it, this is too long. I'm going to put my conclusion at the top so someone will actually see it. Bye!
Here in New Zealand (Noo Zeeland for you americans) nerd and geek have traditionally had slightly different meanings from their commonly accepted international (or american?) usages.
Nerd: This guy's real smart. He doesn't work very hard at school, but that's because he doesn't NEED to, he already knows it all. He argues with the teacher, and is usually right. Typically non-interactive and non-confrontational due to their minds being on higher things; nerds are tolerated because they don't do any harm, and will probably discover something useful like teflon (created as shielding on space shuttles, but most people use it on frying pans, you get the picture).
Geek: see also:- teacher's pet, nancy boy, try hard. Similar to nerds to the untrained eye, geeks generally achieve similar although slightly lower marks in school. Geek technique depends on doing inordinate amounts of work, in perfect handwriting. Learning is by rote, due to deficiencies in 'talent' and 'clue'. Geeks traditionally participate in a wide range of extra-curricular activities, and win 'personal best' or 'most improved' awards. Geeks tend to attract a cluster of lesser sorts who bludge off the work done by the geek in question. Geeks are shunned by their more socially inclined peers, although geeks can be incessantly cheerful and clingy, and have trouble taking hints (note: there is some intersection between the geek and loser subgroups).
So, you can imagine that running around saying "yay! I'm a geek!" isn't a great plan, not so much becuase geek is derogatory, but because it describes something completely different in this neck of the woods. In the last few years, 'computer geek' has come into more common usage, which is a good thing. It uses geek in the more common internet style.
"It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the Half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor."