Indeed, it does seem to be unwise to be the only fat guy in the country AND a likely primary target of any attack. I'd think you'd like to keep your footprint from satellite/drone view to be about the median in this case. Maybe the Fear Leader will realize this and require everyone to wear those goofy sumo wrestler suits around (only to discover the drones also have IR cameras and the big layer of insulation around everyone but him makes them have an even smaller signature - oh well, tough [!!BOOM!!]).
Then you may have a course of action against the wireless company - perhaps a partial refund of past payments or something like that. However, that wouldn't get the evidence excluded from your criminal trial.
Most people never directly use the Pythagorean theorem either (I don't count those in the construction trade who know the "3-4-5 rule" but don't realize why it works as "using it directly"), but we still teach it - should we stop doing that?
I think teaching some programming (not "computer science" as the post seems to confuse it with) in grade school is appropriate. It gives early exposure to students to an area that may be of interest to them. It helps them understand a system where they give an unthinking machine instructions and the unthinking machine follows those instructions faithfully and, if they instructions are "wrong", give the wrong result blindly. It teaches them that details matter on a "larger" project -- too many students that I've worked with in Fourth through Eighth grade think "guessing" is an appropriate response to most any math problem if they don't know the answer, programming will reinforce that "guessing" isn't usually a great way to proceed in such situations. It also helps the student understand why the computer "makes mistakes" (i.e., it's almost always a programmer that made the mistake) and that to make a computer do something "it should be able to do" requires telling it explicitly what to do (I'm leaving out systems that "learn" here -- I don't think we will be trying to, in the near future, teach Fourth Graders how such systems work).
Actually, I think he was referring to the schools teaching programming. I didn't see any indication that he was suggesting requiring you to or restricting you from teaching your kids additional things at home (such as that the devil created computers to enable pagan scientists to create ridiculous models that suggest the Earth and heavens were not just created by a God one fine day).
That is completely nonsense. It is like walking up to a shop with the lights on and no Open or Closed sign or any posted hours and opening the door and entering the shop if the door opens.
I don't recall when I first accessed an anon FTP server, but it was certainly well over 25 years ago and I've used anon access many times. If user 'anonymous' and an arbitrary email address is accepted as a password, it's open for the public to access anything that the user can get to -- everyone knows that and everyone knows that every administrator who configures a system presumably intends it to be that way.
The bank vault analogy is bad - in part because taking money from the vault deprives the bank of the money while copying dental records does not affect access by the person who put them there any more then you reading this response reduces the value to anyone else wishing to read this response.
A better analogy would be if the person responsible for the dental records printed them on flyers and stood on the street corner with a signboard saying "free information" and offered the flyers for free without restrictions to anyone who asked for them.
I don't usually rewrite my programs just because a new machine is installed -- it always just seemed so much more efficient to load the same software on the new machine as the old machine. But then perhaps I'm a bit old fashioned - maybe there's some new fad I missed.
In the case of medicine, if the product is successful (i.e., more effectively or more safely cures, treats, or diagnoses medical conditions), the "poor" do end up with the advantage - just a bit later. However, without the profit motive, the product might never have been developed and deployed to anyone for a long time after it would already be available to the "poor" under the current system.
This is especially true in the case of medications which are often relatively cheap to produce but very expensive to develop (as few even make it to trials and of those that do, few are ever accepted by the FDA). Until patent expiration, these medications are often very expensive to buy (unless another company comes up with a superior product at which time the original company needs to drop their price to make their alternative more attractive). However, after patent expiration the medications can sometimes become very cheap (dropping in price by orders of magnitude) so virtually everyone can afford them. However, if the company that invented the drug had to sell them at low prices at time of introduction, they would go out of business as the revenue from the medication wouldn't even cover the cost of development of that medication, let alone the hundred failed (yet expensive) medications whose sunk development cost needs to be recouped.
Machines such as MRI and CT and Proton Beam Accelerators are quite expensive to build/maintain, but more so in their early years when the learning curve is steep and the technology is evolving more quickly. This, coupled with uncertainty as to how effective the machines will really be in "real life" and the realization that waiting awhile to acquire one may result in being able to get two machines instead of one and both of those two will be more effective than the one would have been, means only facilities with deep pockets and high risk tolerance will acquire the early machines -- which means treatment using the machines will be very expensive and perhaps not available to the poor. However, over time the machines become more effective, cheaper, and less scarce and standard insurance/Medicaid/Medicare can begin to cover use of the machines. However, without the early adopters (and customers willing and able to pay for treatment), the technology would either not be developed at all or be developed much more slowly.
Proton Beam Accelerators are an excellent example of this - the early high powered machines were incredibly expensive, it was uncertain how effective they would really be, and they were not as effective as today's newest machines. They still seem to be a high end product, but they are becoming more economical and effective as time goes on.
The UK provides an interesting case study in central government planned systems vs. more agile decentralized planning systems such as in the US where many players (some of them state funded universities) make relatively independent decisions. There are no high powered proton beam accelerator treatment centers in the UK right now but the US has over 15 centers in operation now and, in fact, at least one early center has been closed down because, in part, its equipment is now obsolete. In the US, two centers have opened just this year. The UK government, on the other hand, launched an initiative in 2013 to bring two centers online in 2018 - however these will be earlier generation machines. Interestingly, though, a private health provider in the UK announced in 2015 that they were going to bring a center online in 2017 -- and it is a newer system that is anticipated to be one-third smaller and one-fifth the cost and more sophisticated than the NHS sponsored systems. So, yes, those "poor" patients (everyone relying on the national health care system) in the UK who will benefit the MOST from the therapy will finally get access to an old version of it in a couple years while private patients will get access to a better version a year earlier (obviously, wealthy people who would benefit from such therapy have probably been hopping on planes and coming to the US for such treatment for the past decade or so which probably helped embarrass the NHS into deciding to, at glacial speed, finally adopt the technology).
No, I don't attempt to establish a significant relationship with a worker at the front counter of a fast food outlet who I will likely never see again and who, due to productivity pressure, can only spend a few tens of seconds interacting with me and then only from a script. Nor do they attempt to establish such a relationship with me. I'm not rude or unfriendly to them, but I also don't attempt to engage them in conversation beyond the transaction at hand -- doing so is rude to them as if they spend too much time with customers chit-chatting they may be disciplined or fired. Honestly, why would I care if they "Have a nice day" (or they I), anymore than I (or they) would feel the same about the other 7 billion people on Earth?
Why would you not want to order your food before you arrive and have it ready the moment you arrive? Do you lack and crave human contact so badly you really want to talk to a bored, disinterested, guy behind the counter who may, or may not, get your order right and who is difficult to understand due to his accent? You do know that when he says "Have a nice day." or "Enjoy your meal", he rarely means it -- he is just supposed to say that.
99% of the time when I can use self checkout at a store I do -- I catch way more errors of "shelf price doesn't match scanned price" or "discount not taken" errors and get them fixed that way. Since these are computer, not human, problems, the same errors must happen at the manned checkouts but it's hard to stay as aware of what is going on when someone else is doing it.
Safety issues also work the other way - a robot "injured" by hot oil is cheap to repair, skin grafts and time in a burn ward is very expensive -- of course, the odds are that the robot wouldn't do whatever stupid thing a drug addled or drunk or just clueless employee did to get burned with oil in the first place.
There have been very few serious robot accidents in the US in the last thirty years -- esp. when compared to the injuries and deaths to workers (often due to them or their colleagues not following procedures).
Overall, safety is probably a net win for the robots -- they have been used in manufacturing environments for over 30 years and we know a lot about making them safe.
What "public backlash" do you anticipate? I don't know anyone who, for example, complains that the products they buy that require welding are welded better and more cheaply because robots have taken over most tedious "mass production" welding.
What are the "legal issues"? The staff reductions in fast food will probably just be done via reduction in hours and attrition -- it's a high turnover field. Not much risk of lawsuits over layoffs.
We were pleased to receive your recent letter. As you may, or may not, be aware, we are currently negotiating with BurgerRobotTM for replacing your equipment in our restaurants. They have already committed to providing machines and service at a much reduced cost. We are happy that your letter validated our decision to consider other vendors.
If you want to discuss this, please contact me at KissMyAssAndGrovel@McDonalds.com.
VP Technology Development and Deployment, McDonald's
Most of the order takers will soon be gone. They will be replaced by a combination of kiosks, apps for regular customers, and web based ordering for customers who don't want to install an app but want to use their phone rather than the kiosk (possibly because they want to order from their car and pickup at drive through or walk into the store to pickup with it's ready). I, as a customer, would rejoice at this -- I would know the order was placed correctly and I wouldn't have to decipher a foreign accent during the process.
The machine doesn't need to be trained when the prior machine quits. The machine works all three shifts a day and doesn't need a lunch or coffee break. The machine doesn't take maternity leave (although, if it did, that might be an advantage - you have to rent another robot for 12 weeks off but then you have two robots 12 weeks later might be a good deal). The machine is probably able to produce exactly the right number of fries at the right time because it isn't distracted by having two jobs. The machine probably responds much more accurately to "discard stale fries" rules and algorithms that request smaller batches of fries because demand is low.
(I'm pretty sure I've had quite a few fries at two in the morning at rest stops along toll roads on the way to my destination from a delayed flight that would have been much better if a machine ran the process as it would have applied the "rules" for stale fries which, obviously, the highly unmotivated worker behind the counter didn't.)
During probably ten years of my career I wouldn't have stopped working if I won $1B dollars (I might have taken a short break to line up advisors to manage it though) because I loved my development job -- startup companies can be a lot of fun. I really couldn't imagine anything more fun than those jobs - real enterprise customers, real solid software built from scratch, spirited debate within/between development/marketing/sales/support, a new puzzle (often attached to a crisis) on a regular basis. What's not to love?
Although, I might have begun to have a car and driver or a helicopter take me to/from work discreetly (the commute part certainly wasn't a part I liked).
As for the rest of my career, I would have probably quit and maybe started my own startup (or not -- depending on what ideas I could come up with).
And you will want to be especially careful around 03:14:07 UTC on 19 January 2038 -- in fact, you might not want to be anywhere a car or truck could possibly reach.
A false positive can result in additional testing such as CT scans, PET scans, and/or biopsies which were unneeded and expose the patient to risks such as increased risk of actually getting cancer due to increased exposure to radiation or infection or other complications from surgery/anesthesia.
Congress, using their power to regulate interstate commerce, can pass laws that require any retailer to collect sales tax on an item based on its shipping, billing, or other relevant address and to remit that tax to the taxing authority (state, county, city...) that that address is in. Congress, however, has not chosen to pass such laws.
Satellite TV is pretty useful for people who live in an area not served by good broadband or cable or someone who travel in an RV a lot. These people are not "dumb", it's just the best option for them.
The legal question isn't if the proposal is good or bad policy, the question is if the Congress granted the FCC the power to make such a regulation.
Consider if the EPA was to issue a regulation requiring that all employers provide sexual harassment training annually for every employee. In that case there would be no question that the regulation was not something within the EPA's charter and would (and should) be struck down by the courts even though it might be a good policy. There might even be another agency that did have the power to issue such a regulation, but that wouldn't make the EPA's regulation legal.
If the FCC doesn't have the power to issue this regulation, the fact that it is good or bad policy is immaterial as are the motivations of the plaintiffs challenging the FCC. In a Federal courtroom, it's extremely unlikely that any question of the motivation of the plaintiff would be allowed as it would be a waste of the court's time. Such questions are no more relevant than questioning if the CEOs were left or right handed.
Tell me, if people can just leave their jobs, how the fuck do they put up with "time banks", pay cuts (in spite of executive bonus increases), and 2 weeks a year off?
They do this because they have no unique skills that are relevant and many can be replaced by a machine or someone better suited for the job. Much like someone with an IQ of 50 can't get a job on their merits.
If we want to implement a "basic income", it should also require that the recipient is available 40 hours a week to work in a labor pool -- first for local/state/federal government (which can replace union workers), then as a free labor pool for private industry (who are paying taxes to support the "basic income"). Obviously, some controls for abuse are needed and individuals can get a few hours a month off (and can bank them) for job interviews. As well, those in the "basic income" pool can get tuition assistance for GEDs etc -- although, once they fail to improve their test scores by an appropriate amount, they have to take a "time out" of perhaps five years.
And don't give me that they want to do this. Which CEO would take the same shit?
Do you think Microsoft would be where they are if Bill Gates had decided to accept the government stipend, how about Jobs and Apple, how about Intel and Groves and Moore?
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed, it does seem to be unwise to be the only fat guy in the country AND a likely primary target of any attack. I'd think you'd like to keep your footprint from satellite/drone view to be about the median in this case. Maybe the Fear Leader will realize this and require everyone to wear those goofy sumo wrestler suits around (only to discover the drones also have IR cameras and the big layer of insulation around everyone but him makes them have an even smaller signature - oh well, tough [!!BOOM!!]).
Then you may have a course of action against the wireless company - perhaps a partial refund of past payments or something like that. However, that wouldn't get the evidence excluded from your criminal trial.
Most people never directly use the Pythagorean theorem either (I don't count those in the construction trade who know the "3-4-5 rule" but don't realize why it works as "using it directly"), but we still teach it - should we stop doing that?
I think teaching some programming (not "computer science" as the post seems to confuse it with) in grade school is appropriate. It gives early exposure to students to an area that may be of interest to them. It helps them understand a system where they give an unthinking machine instructions and the unthinking machine follows those instructions faithfully and, if they instructions are "wrong", give the wrong result blindly. It teaches them that details matter on a "larger" project -- too many students that I've worked with in Fourth through Eighth grade think "guessing" is an appropriate response to most any math problem if they don't know the answer, programming will reinforce that "guessing" isn't usually a great way to proceed in such situations. It also helps the student understand why the computer "makes mistakes" (i.e., it's almost always a programmer that made the mistake) and that to make a computer do something "it should be able to do" requires telling it explicitly what to do (I'm leaving out systems that "learn" here -- I don't think we will be trying to, in the near future, teach Fourth Graders how such systems work).
Actually, I think he was referring to the schools teaching programming. I didn't see any indication that he was suggesting requiring you to or restricting you from teaching your kids additional things at home (such as that the devil created computers to enable pagan scientists to create ridiculous models that suggest the Earth and heavens were not just created by a God one fine day).
That is completely nonsense. It is like walking up to a shop with the lights on and no Open or Closed sign or any posted hours and opening the door and entering the shop if the door opens.
I don't recall when I first accessed an anon FTP server, but it was certainly well over 25 years ago and I've used anon access many times. If user 'anonymous' and an arbitrary email address is accepted as a password, it's open for the public to access anything that the user can get to -- everyone knows that and everyone knows that every administrator who configures a system presumably intends it to be that way.
Unfortunately, none seem to have anything to do with cars. What has /. degraded to?
The bank vault analogy is bad - in part because taking money from the vault deprives the bank of the money while copying dental records does not affect access by the person who put them there any more then you reading this response reduces the value to anyone else wishing to read this response.
A better analogy would be if the person responsible for the dental records printed them on flyers and stood on the street corner with a signboard saying "free information" and offered the flyers for free without restrictions to anyone who asked for them.
I don't usually rewrite my programs just because a new machine is installed -- it always just seemed so much more efficient to load the same software on the new machine as the old machine. But then perhaps I'm a bit old fashioned - maybe there's some new fad I missed.
In the case of medicine, if the product is successful (i.e., more effectively or more safely cures, treats, or diagnoses medical conditions), the "poor" do end up with the advantage - just a bit later. However, without the profit motive, the product might never have been developed and deployed to anyone for a long time after it would already be available to the "poor" under the current system.
This is especially true in the case of medications which are often relatively cheap to produce but very expensive to develop (as few even make it to trials and of those that do, few are ever accepted by the FDA). Until patent expiration, these medications are often very expensive to buy (unless another company comes up with a superior product at which time the original company needs to drop their price to make their alternative more attractive). However, after patent expiration the medications can sometimes become very cheap (dropping in price by orders of magnitude) so virtually everyone can afford them. However, if the company that invented the drug had to sell them at low prices at time of introduction, they would go out of business as the revenue from the medication wouldn't even cover the cost of development of that medication, let alone the hundred failed (yet expensive) medications whose sunk development cost needs to be recouped.
Machines such as MRI and CT and Proton Beam Accelerators are quite expensive to build/maintain, but more so in their early years when the learning curve is steep and the technology is evolving more quickly. This, coupled with uncertainty as to how effective the machines will really be in "real life" and the realization that waiting awhile to acquire one may result in being able to get two machines instead of one and both of those two will be more effective than the one would have been, means only facilities with deep pockets and high risk tolerance will acquire the early machines -- which means treatment using the machines will be very expensive and perhaps not available to the poor. However, over time the machines become more effective, cheaper, and less scarce and standard insurance/Medicaid/Medicare can begin to cover use of the machines. However, without the early adopters (and customers willing and able to pay for treatment), the technology would either not be developed at all or be developed much more slowly.
Proton Beam Accelerators are an excellent example of this - the early high powered machines were incredibly expensive, it was uncertain how effective they would really be, and they were not as effective as today's newest machines. They still seem to be a high end product, but they are becoming more economical and effective as time goes on.
The UK provides an interesting case study in central government planned systems vs. more agile decentralized planning systems such as in the US where many players (some of them state funded universities) make relatively independent decisions. There are no high powered proton beam accelerator treatment centers in the UK right now but the US has over 15 centers in operation now and, in fact, at least one early center has been closed down because, in part, its equipment is now obsolete. In the US, two centers have opened just this year. The UK government, on the other hand, launched an initiative in 2013 to bring two centers online in 2018 - however these will be earlier generation machines. Interestingly, though, a private health provider in the UK announced in 2015 that they were going to bring a center online in 2017 -- and it is a newer system that is anticipated to be one-third smaller and one-fifth the cost and more sophisticated than the NHS sponsored systems. So, yes, those "poor" patients (everyone relying on the national health care system) in the UK who will benefit the MOST from the therapy will finally get access to an old version of it in a couple years while private patients will get access to a better version a year earlier (obviously, wealthy people who would benefit from such therapy have probably been hopping on planes and coming to the US for such treatment for the past decade or so which probably helped embarrass the NHS into deciding to, at glacial speed, finally adopt the technology).
Working at a startup never stopped me from chasing women - you're doing it wrong if it does!
No, I don't attempt to establish a significant relationship with a worker at the front counter of a fast food outlet who I will likely never see again and who, due to productivity pressure, can only spend a few tens of seconds interacting with me and then only from a script. Nor do they attempt to establish such a relationship with me. I'm not rude or unfriendly to them, but I also don't attempt to engage them in conversation beyond the transaction at hand -- doing so is rude to them as if they spend too much time with customers chit-chatting they may be disciplined or fired. Honestly, why would I care if they "Have a nice day" (or they I), anymore than I (or they) would feel the same about the other 7 billion people on Earth?
Why would you not want to order your food before you arrive and have it ready the moment you arrive? Do you lack and crave human contact so badly you really want to talk to a bored, disinterested, guy behind the counter who may, or may not, get your order right and who is difficult to understand due to his accent? You do know that when he says "Have a nice day." or "Enjoy your meal", he rarely means it -- he is just supposed to say that.
99% of the time when I can use self checkout at a store I do -- I catch way more errors of "shelf price doesn't match scanned price" or "discount not taken" errors and get them fixed that way. Since these are computer, not human, problems, the same errors must happen at the manned checkouts but it's hard to stay as aware of what is going on when someone else is doing it.
Safety issues also work the other way - a robot "injured" by hot oil is cheap to repair, skin grafts and time in a burn ward is very expensive -- of course, the odds are that the robot wouldn't do whatever stupid thing a drug addled or drunk or just clueless employee did to get burned with oil in the first place.
There have been very few serious robot accidents in the US in the last thirty years -- esp. when compared to the injuries and deaths to workers (often due to them or their colleagues not following procedures).
Overall, safety is probably a net win for the robots -- they have been used in manufacturing environments for over 30 years and we know a lot about making them safe.
What "public backlash" do you anticipate? I don't know anyone who, for example, complains that the products they buy that require welding are welded better and more cheaply because robots have taken over most tedious "mass production" welding.
What are the "legal issues"? The staff reductions in fast food will probably just be done via reduction in hours and attrition -- it's a high turnover field. Not much risk of lawsuits over layoffs.
Sure they could, if they used robots to make them. FoxConn knows how to do this!
Dear RoboFlipperTM:
We were pleased to receive your recent letter. As you may, or may not, be aware, we are currently negotiating with BurgerRobotTM for replacing your equipment in our restaurants. They have already committed to providing machines and service at a much reduced cost. We are happy that your letter validated our decision to consider other vendors.
If you want to discuss this, please contact me at KissMyAssAndGrovel@McDonalds.com.
VP Technology Development and Deployment, McDonald's
Most of the order takers will soon be gone. They will be replaced by a combination of kiosks, apps for regular customers, and web based ordering for customers who don't want to install an app but want to use their phone rather than the kiosk (possibly because they want to order from their car and pickup at drive through or walk into the store to pickup with it's ready). I, as a customer, would rejoice at this -- I would know the order was placed correctly and I wouldn't have to decipher a foreign accent during the process.
The machine doesn't need to be trained when the prior machine quits. The machine works all three shifts a day and doesn't need a lunch or coffee break. The machine doesn't take maternity leave (although, if it did, that might be an advantage - you have to rent another robot for 12 weeks off but then you have two robots 12 weeks later might be a good deal). The machine is probably able to produce exactly the right number of fries at the right time because it isn't distracted by having two jobs. The machine probably responds much more accurately to "discard stale fries" rules and algorithms that request smaller batches of fries because demand is low.
(I'm pretty sure I've had quite a few fries at two in the morning at rest stops along toll roads on the way to my destination from a delayed flight that would have been much better if a machine ran the process as it would have applied the "rules" for stale fries which, obviously, the highly unmotivated worker behind the counter didn't.)
During probably ten years of my career I wouldn't have stopped working if I won $1B dollars (I might have taken a short break to line up advisors to manage it though) because I loved my development job -- startup companies can be a lot of fun. I really couldn't imagine anything more fun than those jobs - real enterprise customers, real solid software built from scratch, spirited debate within/between development/marketing/sales/support, a new puzzle (often attached to a crisis) on a regular basis. What's not to love?
Although, I might have begun to have a car and driver or a helicopter take me to/from work discreetly (the commute part certainly wasn't a part I liked).
As for the rest of my career, I would have probably quit and maybe started my own startup (or not -- depending on what ideas I could come up with).
And you will want to be especially careful around 03:14:07 UTC on 19 January 2038 -- in fact, you might not want to be anywhere a car or truck could possibly reach.
A false positive can result in additional testing such as CT scans, PET scans, and/or biopsies which were unneeded and expose the patient to risks such as increased risk of actually getting cancer due to increased exposure to radiation or infection or other complications from surgery/anesthesia.
Congress, using their power to regulate interstate commerce, can pass laws that require any retailer to collect sales tax on an item based on its shipping, billing, or other relevant address and to remit that tax to the taxing authority (state, county, city...) that that address is in. Congress, however, has not chosen to pass such laws.
Satellite TV is pretty useful for people who live in an area not served by good broadband or cable or someone who travel in an RV a lot. These people are not "dumb", it's just the best option for them.
The legal question isn't if the proposal is good or bad policy, the question is if the Congress granted the FCC the power to make such a regulation.
Consider if the EPA was to issue a regulation requiring that all employers provide sexual harassment training annually for every employee. In that case there would be no question that the regulation was not something within the EPA's charter and would (and should) be struck down by the courts even though it might be a good policy. There might even be another agency that did have the power to issue such a regulation, but that wouldn't make the EPA's regulation legal.
If the FCC doesn't have the power to issue this regulation, the fact that it is good or bad policy is immaterial as are the motivations of the plaintiffs challenging the FCC. In a Federal courtroom, it's extremely unlikely that any question of the motivation of the plaintiff would be allowed as it would be a waste of the court's time. Such questions are no more relevant than questioning if the CEOs were left or right handed.
They do this because they have no unique skills that are relevant and many can be replaced by a machine or someone better suited for the job. Much like someone with an IQ of 50 can't get a job on their merits.
If we want to implement a "basic income", it should also require that the recipient is available 40 hours a week to work in a labor pool -- first for local/state/federal government (which can replace union workers), then as a free labor pool for private industry (who are paying taxes to support the "basic income"). Obviously, some controls for abuse are needed and individuals can get a few hours a month off (and can bank them) for job interviews. As well, those in the "basic income" pool can get tuition assistance for GEDs etc -- although, once they fail to improve their test scores by an appropriate amount, they have to take a "time out" of perhaps five years.
Do you think Microsoft would be where they are if Bill Gates had decided to accept the government stipend, how about Jobs and Apple, how about Intel and Groves and Moore?
...a Musk bus meets a Google car?