Lindberg flew 50 combat missions at age 42 in the pacific-- in both the corsair and the lightning.
The preferred age for pilots then was also very young (19-22) due to reaction speed.
But he not only held his own, but his experience allowed him to change the entire war by recognizing how to improve the mileage of the planes by 300 miles. He also shot down a japanese pilot who had managed to run several younger pilots completely out of ammunition because they were able to fire quickly but lacked the judgement when NOT to fire.
Speed matters. But experience and good judgement also matter and they take time to accumulate.
I don't buy lottery tickets* but I view them as an opportunity to dream of what it would like to be wealthy.
* I have three times in my life as party favors for others and about 20 times as part of an office lottery pool which was really about not being the odd duck refusing to be part of the group. The "winnings" from all of these amounted to under 10% of the cost of the tickets.
I would efile but they wanted 10 bucks. For sending a frickin email attachment???
So I spent 49 cents and mailed it.
I think I would have paid 5 bucks and definitely would have paid 3 bucks if they supported paypal.
I did my taxes manually until two years ago. Too many stock transactions now. Which is a bit of a problem because taxact won't import the txf format output by my broker so I have to run an awk script to reformat the txf file into taxact format.
True for individual churches and smaller independent churches.
Not so true for the larger denominations which can have budgets running in the hundreds of millions to billions.
For example, the mormon's recently purchased and will operate several tens of thousands of farmland as a tax advantaged church business. And they have a really plush HQ. It's similar for the catholics and other large orders.
Seriously? I think a million is conservative. The number of people who will read the header article is more likely to be closer to 4 million.
From the wiki:
In 2012, Slashdot had around 3.7 million unique visitors per month and received over 5300 comments per day.[2] The site has won more than 20 awards, including People's Voice Awards in 2000 for Best Community Site and Best News Site. Occasionally, a story will link to a server causing a large surge of traffic, which can overwhelm some smaller or independent sites. This phenomenon is known as the "Slashdot effect".
(to the other commenter-- this didn't feel like an advertisement to me. But- you could be right. Even if you are wrong- as I said- doing this regularly would result in it being corrupted by business interests- so even if this ISN'T an advertisement- if we do this enough, they would start to be dominated by advertisements).
It's leveling out faster than that. India and China have been experiencing 20% inflation for high skill jobs and 100% inflation for low skill jobs (still making under $5000 a year but... at 100% a year...).
The quality of workers available thru offshoring has been dropping since 2005 BUT-- offshoring companies have a unique advantage in that they can turn on and off large numbers of workers at a given client rapidly. I.e. you have a project that needs 20 developers, 3 analysts, 1 architect-- and on two months notice- you've got it at an agreed upon rate. Turns out you only need 15 developers or you need 25 developers-- and you've got it.
Meanwhile- the private company has interviewed 17 candidates- offered to 5, and gotten 2 to accept. And 1 of those may not work out. And the private company has a shitty reputation for being a sweat shop PLUS no training PLUS layoffs while the offshoring company values programmer candidates (because they are revenue sources unlike at the private company where they were a cost).
But.. don't trust that the offshore people *really* have the skill sets-- probably 15 of the 20 they send you will have no skill set to a 2 month training course and they'll be training them on your dime. And the offshore people tend to say YES to everything-- which management loves-- but which results in expensive failures. I.e. Can you do the impossible and delivery it in 90 days, "YES! We'll do our best!"
Five million dollars later.. a piece of crap is delivered in 90 days. It finally works (maybe) well enough to use after 180 days and isn't really fully functional for a year... or more.
A fundamental problem is the technology in IT is still changing TOO DAMN FAST. When I started- you could learn a skillset (Cobol, JCL, RPG, Vax Assembly) and use it for 10 to 15 years. Now- outside of maybe SQL- there is a new technology every... single... year... If you miss the boat- you quickly become unhireable.
But you can't really master it and you are always working tons of hours on your own time mastering the new languages and tools compared to the management and sales team who is doing maybe 12 hours of fluffly training combined with drinks in vegas and who are making more money and who don't have to work nights, weekends, and holidays (especially holidays since the systems can be quiesced then).
And then- even if you manage to keep up- massive age discrimination at age 50 (some as early as 45. my god- i pity the poor kids) without legal recourse. Infosys for example requires your high school graduation date on the job application. Not that you graduated. I.E. The EXACT date when you were 18. It should be illegal.. but it's not.
I'm glad I was able to make it, retire, and now I only program for fun again like I did back when I was young. But I did that by living on half of what I made (which was a lot thankfully).
The last year has been one of the best of my life. I'm playing ultimate frisbee again, time to frolic with the girlfriend and time to spend with the grandkids. Life is Good.
He's actually providing an editorial service for millions of other people. Conservatively, he freed up a million people to spend 5 minutes thinking about important issues.
That's just under 10 years of total time they can think about important issues.
And that's ignoring the time/money savings resulting from those who select the app.
He's justified a significant portion of his existence with just the one post.
Lots of non-profits pay their executives salaries between 150,000 and 650,000 dollars. Plus lots of benny's like free gala's every month, travel, etc.
And, just thought of this: Churches are non-profit and make millions or even billions of dollars, their executives travel and drive really nice cars and have plush offices (not to mention owning tons of land).
Still, we do gain herd immunity from social media speed programs like Waze and Trapster (which no longer works on my ancient 2 year old phone- boo!).
First, you get reports of where speed traps are repeatedly. Second, you get live reports of where the police are. Third, if you don't have it running and 60% of the drivers around you suddenly slow from 85 to 65, you slow down with them, pass the cops 3 miles later, and then speed up 1 mile past the cops.
I use a Magic Jack and I can't recommend them as your only line. I have about 98% uptime-- perfect service and then it just stops working for a few hours or even once a couple days.
I think they may not t have enough servers on their end.
Unplugging the majic jack and rebooting my cable modem fixes the problem most of the time but people trying to call me call me bounce until I notice the line is down.
But as a backup for a cell phone- it's awesome. Saves a lot of minutes on calls to landlines and on daytime calls to numbers I'm not sure is a landline or a mobile.
All good intermediary fixes but useless in the face of the real problem-- MASSIVE ubiquitous automation of jobs with any new jobs created also subject to rapid automation.
I.e. the inability of a large (10%? 25%?) part of the population unable to trade their labor at any price for "money".
And once the file is renamed to "Naughty Cheerleaders Club.mp4"?
Or how about if I have multiple files titled, "Naughty.Cheerleaders.Club.PROPER.XXX.720p.WEBRiP.x264-TBP" but which all contain different data- one a picture of flowers, another a text file with a script for the empire strikes back, and another a video of some highschool cheerleaders?
And if a half dozen other people have access to my computer, then who do you fine?
I'm assuming none of these are criminal cases where the standard is beyond a reasonable doubt because some of the total BS the anti-piracy groups have pulled would not stand up in court today as people become aware just how ludicrous their technical statements are.
However- IF you had a file AND it most to all of the actual "NC Club" movie, that should pass in a civil trial. If a hash of the film were the same as those distributed through pirate channels, then it's probably sufficient for a criminal trial.
For many professions, the cost to automate is LESS than the current poverty level.
Hell- robots and automation are replacing chinese workers who make under a third of the first world poverty level.
This time is different. Unless we finally really allow deflation to occur- there is not a wage at which humans can survive that robotic labor and automation won't be able to replace.
The consequences for allowing deflation to start are pretty huge too.
Robots make sense even if they cost more than the minimum wage because they don't have all the knock on costs of having a human either.
The real problem is- when most jobs are done by robots and automation-- who do you sell to? How do you justify giving food to them when there is literally nothing they can do to earn money?
The fact is that most of the luddites were right-- they mostly died horrible homeless deaths of starvation. The fact is, they asked for training on the new machines and were refused (much as employers are today refusing to train employees). They were not just blindly rejecting new machines. The fact is they could see they were going to suffer terribly if the industrialists were allowed to go to the new technology with no social safety net for the luddites.
I think there are too many people for it to be as quiet this time.
And it is coming- it is unstoppable. It *could* be a utopia but it probably won't.
Space is too expensive to be a realistic proposition for more than a fraction of a percent of humans (a fraction of a fraction of a fraction). It's more about species survival than an SF wonderland of colonies with heavy meatsacks lifted out of the gravity well.
The automation coming on line *right now* is cheaper than human poverty level wages and can duplicate much of their labor. If so- with the exchange of labor for wages broken- you are looking at a fundamental challenge to the capitalist model.
Actually, the lawyer field is collapsing due to offshoring, oversupply and to a lesser extent automation.
I think this is going to be a general problem going forward. As automation and robotics wipe out entire fields (btw. security guards are next due to a really cool security guard robot that costs less than a human, works 3 shifts a day, and replaces 95% of the positions) people swamp the remaining fields.
I think inflation will fix the offshoring problem eventually but automation and robotics cost less than poverty level human wages (and are even replacing low paid chinese workers) so I see that as something genuinely new.
In 2003, you could get a masters degree quality indian programmer for a third of the price of an american bachelors degree.
Then it was a "bachelor's degree 'A' student" about 2006.
By 2010, the quality was lower but the price was cheaper.
In 2011, we started seeing a new scam around the "L" visa. These indians were physically here but legally still in india. They could work 6 months in each calendar year then had to return home.
Two years ago, inflation ran over 20% in india and over 30% in china (and over 50%-- up to 100% at non technical jobs) for these jobs and Infosys started changing it's business model.
The typical offshore programmer in 2013- always said yes, delivered exactly to the specs- even if the specs were clearly insane/wrong/incomplete, was still willing to work 60 hour weeks but less so than in the past.
And the turnover was insane. Entire teams of people would just be gone replaced by new people every six months. And you realized the outsourcing company was training people at our expense. And our american managers LOVED the concept that programmers are generic glorp to begin with so they bit really hard on the concept that process documentation would allow an offshore programmer to be instantly productive the second they walked in the door. You can imagine the actual results in reality. Regardless of the level of documentation (which wasn't as good as promised), it was a multi *million* line system. In reality, it took years to learn how things hooked together.
The sneaky thing is the always saying "yes". An american manager asks an american programmer to do something and they know what is desired and say "can't do it on this set of constraints" while the indian programmer says "I'll do my best". "I'll do my best" is code for "can't do it on this set of constraints". But the managers bit on it every single time. And then had us working 70+ hour weeks to try and make up the difference/fix it.
Glad I was able to retire having saving half what I made since 1990. Now when I program, it will be for fun like it used to be.
Slashdot Mirror
Lindberg flew 50 combat missions at age 42 in the pacific-- in both the corsair and the lightning.
The preferred age for pilots then was also very young (19-22) due to reaction speed.
But he not only held his own, but his experience allowed him to change the entire war by recognizing how to improve the mileage of the planes by 300 miles. He also shot down a japanese pilot who had managed to run several younger pilots completely out of ammunition because they were able to fire quickly but lacked the judgement when NOT to fire.
Speed matters. But experience and good judgement also matter and they take time to accumulate.
I don't buy lottery tickets* but I view them as an opportunity to dream of what it would like to be wealthy.
* I have three times in my life as party favors for others and about 20 times as part of an office lottery pool which was really about not being the odd duck refusing to be part of the group. The "winnings" from all of these amounted to under 10% of the cost of the tickets.
THIS!
I would efile but they wanted 10 bucks. For sending a frickin email attachment???
So I spent 49 cents and mailed it.
I think I would have paid 5 bucks and definitely would have paid 3 bucks if they supported paypal.
I did my taxes manually until two years ago. Too many stock transactions now. Which is a bit of a problem because taxact won't import the txf format output by my broker so I have to run an awk script to reformat the txf file into taxact format.
True for individual churches and smaller independent churches.
Not so true for the larger denominations which can have budgets running in the hundreds of millions to billions.
For example, the mormon's recently purchased and will operate several tens of thousands of farmland as a tax advantaged church business. And they have a really plush HQ. It's similar for the catholics and other large orders.
Seriously? I think a million is conservative. The number of people who will read the header article is more likely to be closer to 4 million.
From the wiki:
In 2012, Slashdot had around 3.7 million unique visitors per month and received over 5300 comments per day.[2] The site has won more than 20 awards, including People's Voice Awards in 2000 for Best Community Site and Best News Site. Occasionally, a story will link to a server causing a large surge of traffic, which can overwhelm some smaller or independent sites. This phenomenon is known as the "Slashdot effect".
(to the other commenter-- this didn't feel like an advertisement to me. But- you could be right. Even if you are wrong- as I said- doing this regularly would result in it being corrupted by business interests- so even if this ISN'T an advertisement- if we do this enough, they would start to be dominated by advertisements).
It's leveling out faster than that. India and China have been experiencing 20% inflation for high skill jobs and 100% inflation for low skill jobs (still making under $5000 a year but... at 100% a year...).
The quality of workers available thru offshoring has been dropping since 2005 BUT-- offshoring companies have a unique advantage in that they can turn on and off large numbers of workers at a given client rapidly. I.e. you have a project that needs 20 developers, 3 analysts, 1 architect-- and on two months notice- you've got it at an agreed upon rate. Turns out you only need 15 developers or you need 25 developers-- and you've got it.
Meanwhile- the private company has interviewed 17 candidates- offered to 5, and gotten 2 to accept. And 1 of those may not work out. And the private company has a shitty reputation for being a sweat shop PLUS no training PLUS layoffs while the offshoring company values programmer candidates (because they are revenue sources unlike at the private company where they were a cost).
But.. don't trust that the offshore people *really* have the skill sets-- probably 15 of the 20 they send you will have no skill set to a 2 month training course and they'll be training them on your dime. And the offshore people tend to say YES to everything-- which management loves-- but which results in expensive failures. I.e. Can you do the impossible and delivery it in 90 days, "YES! We'll do our best!"
Five million dollars later.. a piece of crap is delivered in 90 days. It finally works (maybe) well enough to use after 180 days and isn't really fully functional for a year... or more.
A fundamental problem is the technology in IT is still changing TOO DAMN FAST. When I started- you could learn a skillset (Cobol, JCL, RPG, Vax Assembly) and use it for 10 to 15 years. Now- outside of maybe SQL- there is a new technology every... single... year... If you miss the boat- you quickly become unhireable.
But you can't really master it and you are always working tons of hours on your own time mastering the new languages and tools compared to the management and sales team who is doing maybe 12 hours of fluffly training combined with drinks in vegas and who are making more money and who don't have to work nights, weekends, and holidays (especially holidays since the systems can be quiesced then).
And then- even if you manage to keep up- massive age discrimination at age 50 (some as early as 45. my god- i pity the poor kids) without legal recourse. Infosys for example requires your high school graduation date on the job application. Not that you graduated. I.E. The EXACT date when you were 18. It should be illegal.. but it's not.
I'm glad I was able to make it, retire, and now I only program for fun again like I did back when I was young. But I did that by living on half of what I made (which was a lot thankfully).
The last year has been one of the best of my life. I'm playing ultimate frisbee again, time to frolic with the girlfriend and time to spend with the grandkids. Life is Good.
Oh.. and way too much minecraft.
It would be nice to have this for every category of thing.
Of course, if we did it on a regular basis, it would be coopted or corrupted by businesses in some way.
He's actually providing an editorial service for millions of other people. Conservatively, he freed up a million people to spend 5 minutes thinking about important issues.
That's just under 10 years of total time they can think about important issues.
And that's ignoring the time/money savings resulting from those who select the app.
He's justified a significant portion of his existence with just the one post.
Lots of non-profits pay their executives salaries between 150,000 and 650,000 dollars. Plus lots of benny's like free gala's every month, travel, etc.
And, just thought of this: Churches are non-profit and make millions or even billions of dollars, their executives travel and drive really nice cars and have plush offices (not to mention owning tons of land).
Still, we do gain herd immunity from social media speed programs like Waze and Trapster (which no longer works on my ancient 2 year old phone- boo!).
First, you get reports of where speed traps are repeatedly.
Second, you get live reports of where the police are.
Third, if you don't have it running and 60% of the drivers around you suddenly slow from 85 to 65, you slow down with them, pass the cops 3 miles later, and then speed up 1 mile past the cops.
From the article... assuming this is a real quote- here's at least one cop who admits bias.
'Unless you have the I.D. in hand when (not if) I stop you,' says one cop, 'no love will be shown.'"
Some human strains may have adapted to this and need it to be healthy.
We already have a similar adaption to worm parasites and without a worm infection those people suffer until they get one.
I like this concept.
However, it would probably drive the companies bankrupt.
(Imagine supporting win 3.1, win 98, win me, win nt, win vista, win xp, win 7, and win 8 all at the same time because they share copyrighted code.
I use a Magic Jack and I can't recommend them as your only line. I have about 98% uptime-- perfect service and then it just stops working for a few hours or even once a couple days.
I think they may not t have enough servers on their end.
Unplugging the majic jack and rebooting my cable modem fixes the problem most of the time but people trying to call me call me bounce until I notice the line is down.
But as a backup for a cell phone- it's awesome. Saves a lot of minutes on calls to landlines and on daytime calls to numbers I'm not sure is a landline or a mobile.
The point is that some things you accept easily would create an uproar here and somethings that we accept easily would create an uproar there.
And really, it's more about change period and the total picture of other taxes and history than it is about the particular change.
We already have apple picking robots (and several other fruits as well).
Apples are recent (2013) but lettuce is a done deal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Especially when you only have one arm.
All good intermediary fixes but useless in the face of the real problem-- MASSIVE ubiquitous automation of jobs with any new jobs created also subject to rapid automation.
I.e. the inability of a large (10%? 25%?) part of the population unable to trade their labor at any price for "money".
Your point is valid.
And once the file is renamed to "Naughty Cheerleaders Club.mp4"?
Or how about if I have multiple files titled, "Naughty.Cheerleaders.Club.PROPER.XXX.720p.WEBRiP.x264-TBP" but which all contain different data- one a picture of flowers, another a text file with a script for the empire strikes back, and another a video of some highschool cheerleaders?
And if a half dozen other people have access to my computer, then who do you fine?
I'm assuming none of these are criminal cases where the standard is beyond a reasonable doubt because some of the total BS the anti-piracy groups have pulled would not stand up in court today as people become aware just how ludicrous their technical statements are.
However- IF you had a file AND it most to all of the actual "NC Club" movie, that should pass in a civil trial. If a hash of the film were the same as those distributed through pirate channels, then it's probably sufficient for a criminal trial.
For many professions, the cost to automate is LESS than the current poverty level.
Hell- robots and automation are replacing chinese workers who make under a third of the first world poverty level.
This time is different. Unless we finally really allow deflation to occur- there is not a wage at which humans can survive that robotic labor and automation won't be able to replace.
The consequences for allowing deflation to start are pretty huge too.
Robots make sense even if they cost more than the minimum wage because they don't have all the knock on costs of having a human either.
The real problem is- when most jobs are done by robots and automation-- who do you sell to? How do you justify giving food to them when there is literally nothing they can do to earn money?
The fact is that most of the luddites were right-- they mostly died horrible homeless deaths of starvation. The fact is, they asked for training on the new machines and were refused (much as employers are today refusing to train employees). They were not just blindly rejecting new machines. The fact is they could see they were going to suffer terribly if the industrialists were allowed to go to the new technology with no social safety net for the luddites.
I think there are too many people for it to be as quiet this time.
And it is coming- it is unstoppable. It *could* be a utopia but it probably won't.
Space is too expensive to be a realistic proposition for more than a fraction of a percent of humans (a fraction of a fraction of a fraction). It's more about species survival than an SF wonderland of colonies with heavy meatsacks lifted out of the gravity well.
The automation coming on line *right now* is cheaper than human poverty level wages and can duplicate much of their labor. If so- with the exchange of labor for wages broken- you are looking at a fundamental challenge to the capitalist model.
No seriously...
In most cases, you can't prove the copy on the disk is illegitimate.
You can legally record TV programs and radio/TV songs and transcribe books to text files.
A file sitting on the disk is not innately proof of a violation.
Sure- if it is still in theatres you might have an argument.
Actually, the lawyer field is collapsing due to offshoring, oversupply and to a lesser extent automation.
I think this is going to be a general problem going forward. As automation and robotics wipe out entire fields (btw. security guards are next due to a really cool security guard robot that costs less than a human, works 3 shifts a day, and replaces 95% of the positions) people swamp the remaining fields.
I think inflation will fix the offshoring problem eventually but automation and robotics cost less than poverty level human wages (and are even replacing low paid chinese workers) so I see that as something genuinely new.
In 2003, you could get a masters degree quality indian programmer for a third of the price of an american bachelors degree.
Then it was a "bachelor's degree 'A' student" about 2006.
By 2010, the quality was lower but the price was cheaper.
In 2011, we started seeing a new scam around the "L" visa. These indians were physically here but legally still in india. They could work 6 months in each calendar year then had to return home.
Two years ago, inflation ran over 20% in india and over 30% in china (and over 50%-- up to 100% at non technical jobs) for these jobs and Infosys started changing it's business model.
The typical offshore programmer in 2013- always said yes, delivered exactly to the specs- even if the specs were clearly insane/wrong/incomplete, was still willing to work 60 hour weeks but less so than in the past.
And the turnover was insane. Entire teams of people would just be gone replaced by new people every six months. And you realized the outsourcing company was training people at our expense. And our american managers LOVED the concept that programmers are generic glorp to begin with so they bit really hard on the concept that process documentation would allow an offshore programmer to be instantly productive the second they walked in the door. You can imagine the actual results in reality. Regardless of the level of documentation (which wasn't as good as promised), it was a multi *million* line system. In reality, it took years to learn how things hooked together.
The sneaky thing is the always saying "yes". An american manager asks an american programmer to do something and they know what is desired and say "can't do it on this set of constraints" while the indian programmer says "I'll do my best". "I'll do my best" is code for "can't do it on this set of constraints". But the managers bit on it every single time. And then had us working 70+ hour weeks to try and make up the difference/fix it.
Glad I was able to retire having saving half what I made since 1990. Now when I program, it will be for fun like it used to be.
It's true even comparing "old" U.S. to "new" U.S.
Many of the original states are the size of counties in the later states.
I think it gives them over representation in the Senate these days.