"If you have an apartment that costs millions I'm pretty certain you have a garage you can use and charge in."
My ~1000 sq ft apartment doesn't cost millions while it's not cheap either (quite centric on a major city), I have a garage (rented) but still no power outlet anywhere near nor, probably, any chance to get it without non-trivial investments. Probably just like the millions of people leaving in cities.
"Or do you believe that we'll always find something new for humans to do no matter how automated our world becomes?"
Maybe yes, after all.
Asimov (surely not the only one) envisioned the end result of that trend in the Solaria-style worlds (10.000 robots per human and very low human population density): you see, it seems countries tend to reduce their natality rates as they progress social and economically so, as long as the "robot revolution" doesn't happen overnight if may very well happen that as more and more jobs are automated, the more the population gets reduced.
"In Marxism, you work or starve. Since you have no capital of your own, you are totally reliant on the State to feed you."
So, by your own confession, In Marxism is obviously NOT that you work or starve. You could try something along the lines of "In Marxism, you do what the State tells you or you starve" and then, the State will tell you to work, or to praise the wonders of the Marxist system, or to stay at home all day watching the government propaganda. But you are too biased for even such a simple rational process.
"The morality of: 99% votes to take the most from 1% is obvious for what it is - highway robbery. Under such circumstances any methods of fighting against this oppression are justified."
OR, we can make the 99% to own the means of production instead of just 1% and therefore those 99% will not be taking an unfair share from the 1% but will take from their already owned 99%.
"Let people build new companies"
Yes. And then allow the people to own them. Taxes (at its current levels) can be used to build roads, pay for foreign wars... and also to build companies.
So, while my automated factory dismantles the solar system to build my trillion robot army, where you expect to get your resources from? Only those with a massive lack of imagination (like, say, Marxists) believe there are plenty of resources."
I'm one of those marxists and before you could start your robot army we already built one (is good to have a whole country's resources at your disposal) and crushed you.
One can think that human race will learn sooner or later and my marxist country will be an utopian land of freedom, or we can think we won't learn and my marxist country will be something resembling a mix of Stalin's USSR misery with China's modern efficiency. Nevertheless, you Mr Lone Ranger, will be crushed anyway.
"I read the article, and failed to see how this had anything to do with IoT"
The robots, of course, are things, right? But how the robots know their position within the warehouse? How they know they are picking the right package? Maybe because the robots, the shelves and the packages have microchips (i.e. RFID) that allows them to interact, both among themselves and the central provisioning systems?
"If someone in a role is is important to the success of the company, then you can't do without someone in that role."
Good try, but no candy.
On one hand, you are confusing the role being important with the one in that role being important. Yes, if you are not important you have no leverage to ask for anything. No news.
On the other, we were talking here explicitly about someone being important because of his talents, not because of his role: "I'm sick of the way this industry requires the best people to work eighty or more hours a week." remember? The best, by its very definition can't just be replaced "with a different one".
Again: if you have no leverage to ask for decent labour conditions, you are not important, no matter what you think.
"If there were other employees available, then we'd hire them. Instead, the most critical people can't take time off since there is work that must be done."
"You have it backwards. If someone is important to the success of the company, then you can't do without them."
I already said in a previous message: you are an idiot, IIIIIIIIIIDIOT.
*YOU* have it backwards: If someone is important to the success of the company, then they can't do without them and, therefore, they will need to abide to any requirement from such a person, or else the company risks losing him and their own success along with him.
If you are not allowed to do something it's a clear sign that they have the upper hand and you are not so important as you thought.
"In order to make a mars colony viable, then you need to make people WANT to go there and not just the few crazies."
Hummm... maybe that's the hidden agenda of some politicians... Just making this planet less and less palatable (wars, global warming, famine, religious bigotry...) so people WANT to go to somewhere even as inhospitable as Mars.
"in a world where any fact you want is at your fingertips on demand?"
Facts outside your brain are of no value. In order to get value as nodes to tie connections in between you need to already have them in your brain.
"The facts you need will be memorized along the way."
Are you sure?
Just like Homer's use of epithets basically made them into a single substantive, it seems USA is changing "memory" into "rotten memory" as if it were a single word. It isn't: memory is a most useful tool, and exercising it is only good for growing minds. Change your education system to avoid rote memorization but don't make the mistake of thinking that all memorization is rotten.
"You misunderstand... I'm willing to change if the change is reasonable..."
No, *you* misunderstand. It requires no "willing" to change to the obviously financially better.
You argue that there will be people that wouldn't change even if it were better financially-wise for them. So be it: that still doesn't make you "all for clean power", not by far, not at all.
"That isn't true at all, nor is it a reasonable or fair thing to say..."
Well, you say so... The case is that your interaction with the grid system basically limits to two things: your billing and the system's reliability and you already confessed not going to take a hit in any of those two.
"Example... I recently spent over $400 buying LED bulbs for my house [...] they are much, much cheaper to run"...and then you even have the guts of saying that, even if something is going to save you money in the long run, you won't do it if it "takes too long".
So you are all for clean power except for each and every thing about clean power the might hit you. No, man: you are not at all about clean power: you are all about saving your money, don't fool yourself.
"Pollution sucks. [...] Someone who argues for it is arguing that pollution is OK. It is not."
I wish things were so simple.
Yes: pollution sucks. But shutting down my AC in the middle of summer or my heater in the middle of winter also sucks and both my AC and my heating pollute. So the point is how much it sucks one versus the other. And, of course, there probably won't be an easy agreement about the sweet spot. Moreso, the sweetspot probably will change as costs prices and technologies change.
"Putting a large database in a computer, and computerizing very mental tasks like matching photographs or fingerprints, are not always well understood."
You are changing the target. The original process *is* well understood, to the point of it being done daily by the human operators. Maybe the problem is that you (the provider) don't know how to do it on a computer: that's not your customer's problem; you sold him you knew how to do it, right?
"The inputs are the original warehouse and human workers; the output is a computerized database that hopefully allows people to do work much more quickly or accurately or both."
Wrong! Those are your deliverables. The input are the fingerprints and the output is whatever the human operator do with them. And you already have that. You are conflating the service you sold your customer (a computer program that do this or that) with the process you are going to substitute (looking at pictures or fingerprints to find this or that). That's wrong, very wrong: *your* R&D is not your customer's concern. The problem here is that your customer perfectly knows what he's doing, but it is you the one that doesn't know how to do his job (with a computer). That's what Subject Matter Experts are for, not Agilism. And again, you already have all the info you need: the human operator's output: you (internally) work with it till your program is as good or better at doing whatever the human operator is doing and you will use the human operator's output to test it.
Point it case: Papanicolau test. Do you know what is it? In case you don't, is a method of cervical screening used to detect potentially pre-cancerous and cancerous processes in the cervix (opening of the uterus or womb). The human operator basically looks at a microscope field and tells if he sees cancer cells or not. It's been automated. Direct users's input? Zero. You just take thousands of past photographs and their operator's associated results and you replicate them with a program. After that, you do the same in parallel to the operator and see what happens. Once you achieve the expected results, you present your product to your customer.
"It seems to me that your defining-down of when agile is useful is a capitulation to Zed A. Shaw's restatement of the value of "customer collaboration" to really mean that agilistas value "bleeding clients dry""
It seems to me that you already made your mind for whatever reasons (maybe you are certified on a competing process and you don't want your investment to lose value -I still didn't here a word from you on what would be a process better than the one you are despising) and you just repeat your tantrum no matter if it makes sense or not. But still, it can't be "bleeding clients dry" when the client can get out every two weeks with something of value for him. You yourself could very well being the customer on an agile project: would you allow your provider to bleed you out? Probably not since by the end of the second sprint you would tell your provider "you don't know what are you doing: you are fired starting now". Compare that with learning that your provider doesn't know what he's doing anyways, only after a full year is payed and you see the full results being crap.
"If I'm replacing a warehouse full of fingerprints or photographs, and want a computerized database that will do preliminary matches, should I avoid agile?"
Why would you need it? You already have a clear understandment of both process and inputs/outputs: you just need to plan, execute and deliver it.
"If I want a messaging system that will replace (in whole or in part) walking down the hall for a chat, inter-office memos, or email, I should avoid agile?"
Just the same as above: you already know inputs, outputs and process, no need for a special customer involvement along the building process. Even more: the two processes you talk about (and so many others more or less similar) can't benefit of an iterative delivery because, being the process already in place, your customer has no advantage in migrating to the new one till full feature parity is achieved. You may claim, for instance in the second case, your new development could only partially substitute the old one but that only means you were wrong about your project's scope: it was not a single project but one per isolated (sub)process and for this to be done, you'd better make a good forefront analysis -against the very root of agile.
In both cases a methodology alike to (maybe iterative) waterfall will add minimal cruft and bureaucracy and will deliver in minimal time and cost.
"If those are not good cases for agile, exactly what is agile good for?"
Agile is good for cases were the problem realm is unknown or ill defined even for the customer (or product owner) and/or relative value of outputs are unknown. There are a lot of projects within this definition, but there are a lot others that are not.
"Also, your claim that "Priorities are set by the customer. It's up to him to decide what's the most useful output as of today." is a total capitulation to Zed A. Shaw's claim that that particular agile tenet is really about valuing "Instability and plausible deniability"."
Probably yes, if you think about it as an "us versus them" scenario. If you think about it as a "we" scenario, giving the owner of the service the saying on what should go functionally-wise and what shouldn't is nothing but aligning authority and responsibility.
The part of instability is nothing but the recognition that the world the service is meant to go to is unstable.
But if you are going with the "us versus them" scenario, you should remember that every time you put something in written you are playing the "plausible deniability" card so Shaw's cynical claim is empty of value: full specs before writting a single line of code? What for? Maybe in order for you to be able to say "yes, there's no door in this house: show me were did you ask for a door". No specs? Maybe in order to deny that something was ever said. Adapting specs as the problem realm's knowledge grows? Maybe in order to deflect blame after the fourth change of priorities...
Slashdot Mirror
"If you have an apartment that costs millions I'm pretty certain you have a garage you can use and charge in."
My ~1000 sq ft apartment doesn't cost millions while it's not cheap either (quite centric on a major city), I have a garage (rented) but still no power outlet anywhere near nor, probably, any chance to get it without non-trivial investments. Probably just like the millions of people leaving in cities.
"You leave a 100k car on the street while you are 6 floors up each night??"
No, I rent a parking place under my building. But then, I have not to worry to re-supply it overnight.
"If you live in a 6th floor flat, a $100K+ electric car that goes 650 miles on a charge is not for you, anyway, obviously."
Still, how is it that a $100K gas car is?
"You go home, you charge it overnight."
I don't see any Tesla going upstairs to my 6th floor flat for a recharge anytime soon.
"Or do you believe that we'll always find something new for humans to do no matter how automated our world becomes?"
Maybe yes, after all.
Asimov (surely not the only one) envisioned the end result of that trend in the Solaria-style worlds (10.000 robots per human and very low human population density): you see, it seems countries tend to reduce their natality rates as they progress social and economically so, as long as the "robot revolution" doesn't happen overnight if may very well happen that as more and more jobs are automated, the more the population gets reduced.
"In Marxism, you work or starve. Since you have no capital of your own, you are totally reliant on the State to feed you."
So, by your own confession, In Marxism is obviously NOT that you work or starve. You could try something along the lines of "In Marxism, you do what the State tells you or you starve" and then, the State will tell you to work, or to praise the wonders of the Marxist system, or to stay at home all day watching the government propaganda. But you are too biased for even such a simple rational process.
"During the last century the worst ugliness was caused by the mandatory "sharing" that you propose as the solution."
Uhhh... People living in Northern Europe probably will disagree.
"The morality of: 99% votes to take the most from 1% is obvious for what it is - highway robbery. Under such circumstances any methods of fighting against this oppression are justified."
OR, we can make the 99% to own the means of production instead of just 1% and therefore those 99% will not be taking an unfair share from the 1% but will take from their already owned 99%.
"Let people build new companies"
Yes. And then allow the people to own them. Taxes (at its current levels) can be used to build roads, pay for foreign wars... and also to build companies.
So, while my automated factory dismantles the solar system to build my trillion robot army, where you expect to get your resources from?
Only those with a massive lack of imagination (like, say, Marxists) believe there are plenty of resources."
I'm one of those marxists and before you could start your robot army we already built one (is good to have a whole country's resources at your disposal) and crushed you.
One can think that human race will learn sooner or later and my marxist country will be an utopian land of freedom, or we can think we won't learn and my marxist country will be something resembling a mix of Stalin's USSR misery with China's modern efficiency. Nevertheless, you Mr Lone Ranger, will be crushed anyway.
"I read the article, and failed to see how this had anything to do with IoT"
The robots, of course, are things, right?
But how the robots know their position within the warehouse? How they know they are picking the right package? Maybe because the robots, the shelves and the packages have microchips (i.e. RFID) that allows them to interact, both among themselves and the central provisioning systems?
"If someone in a role is is important to the success of the company, then you can't do without someone in that role."
Good try, but no candy.
On one hand, you are confusing the role being important with the one in that role being important. Yes, if you are not important you have no leverage to ask for anything. No news.
On the other, we were talking here explicitly about someone being important because of his talents, not because of his role: "I'm sick of the way this industry requires the best people to work eighty or more hours a week." remember? The best, by its very definition can't just be replaced "with a different one".
Again: if you have no leverage to ask for decent labour conditions, you are not important, no matter what you think.
"You can't outsource a mechanic's job because he needs to be where the cars are."
But you can reduce them to minimal wage parts exchangers and button punchers and that's exactly what's happening.
"If there were other employees available, then we'd hire them. Instead, the most critical people can't take time off since there is work that must be done."
Or else?
"You have it backwards. If someone is important to the success of the company, then you can't do without them."
I already said in a previous message: you are an idiot, IIIIIIIIIIDIOT.
*YOU* have it backwards: If someone is important to the success of the company, then they can't do without them and, therefore, they will need to abide to any requirement from such a person, or else the company risks losing him and their own success along with him.
If you are not allowed to do something it's a clear sign that they have the upper hand and you are not so important as you thought.
" I'm sick of the way this industry requires the best people to work eighty or more hours a week."
And you are one of those "best", ain't you?
I sadly have to inform you that you are an idiot. I-D-I-O-T.
It might be the case that you are an idiot savant, in which case I feel sorry for you, but most probably you are just idiot.
Just a hint for you: best people are required instead of anything being required from them.
"I think 2 Trillion is a fair over-under cost."
What's that? Three years worth of military budget? Four?
"In order to make a mars colony viable, then you need to make people WANT to go there and not just the few crazies."
Hummm... maybe that's the hidden agenda of some politicians... Just making this planet less and less palatable (wars, global warming, famine, religious bigotry...) so people WANT to go to somewhere even as inhospitable as Mars.
"What, exactly, is useful about memorizing facts"
They are the bricks to build comprehension.
"in a world where any fact you want is at your fingertips on demand?"
Facts outside your brain are of no value. In order to get value as nodes to tie connections in between you need to already have them in your brain.
"The facts you need will be memorized along the way."
Are you sure?
Just like Homer's use of epithets basically made them into a single substantive, it seems USA is changing "memory" into "rotten memory" as if it were a single word. It isn't: memory is a most useful tool, and exercising it is only good for growing minds. Change your education system to avoid rote memorization but don't make the mistake of thinking that all memorization is rotten.
"You misunderstand... I'm willing to change if the change is reasonable..."
No, *you* misunderstand. It requires no "willing" to change to the obviously financially better.
You argue that there will be people that wouldn't change even if it were better financially-wise for them. So be it: that still doesn't make you "all for clean power", not by far, not at all.
"That isn't true at all, nor is it a reasonable or fair thing to say..."
Well, you say so... The case is that your interaction with the grid system basically limits to two things: your billing and the system's reliability and you already confessed not going to take a hit in any of those two.
"Example... I recently spent over $400 buying LED bulbs for my house [...] they are much, much cheaper to run" ...and then you even have the guts of saying that, even if something is going to save you money in the long run, you won't do it if it "takes too long".
So you are all for clean power except for each and every thing about clean power the might hit you. No, man: you are not at all about clean power: you are all about saving your money, don't fool yourself.
"I'm all for clean power, to a point..."
If you are "all for clean power" except if it's more expensive, you are not for clean power, at all.
"Pollution sucks. [...] Someone who argues for it is arguing that pollution is OK. It is not."
I wish things were so simple.
Yes: pollution sucks. But shutting down my AC in the middle of summer or my heater in the middle of winter also sucks and both my AC and my heating pollute. So the point is how much it sucks one versus the other. And, of course, there probably won't be an easy agreement about the sweet spot. Moreso, the sweetspot probably will change as costs prices and technologies change.
So, sorry, things are not so simple.
"Putting a large database in a computer, and computerizing very mental tasks like matching photographs or fingerprints, are not always well understood."
You are changing the target. The original process *is* well understood, to the point of it being done daily by the human operators. Maybe the problem is that you (the provider) don't know how to do it on a computer: that's not your customer's problem; you sold him you knew how to do it, right?
"The inputs are the original warehouse and human workers; the output is a computerized database that hopefully allows people to do work much more quickly or accurately or both."
Wrong! Those are your deliverables. The input are the fingerprints and the output is whatever the human operator do with them. And you already have that. You are conflating the service you sold your customer (a computer program that do this or that) with the process you are going to substitute (looking at pictures or fingerprints to find this or that). That's wrong, very wrong: *your* R&D is not your customer's concern. The problem here is that your customer perfectly knows what he's doing, but it is you the one that doesn't know how to do his job (with a computer). That's what Subject Matter Experts are for, not Agilism. And again, you already have all the info you need: the human operator's output: you (internally) work with it till your program is as good or better at doing whatever the human operator is doing and you will use the human operator's output to test it.
Point it case: Papanicolau test. Do you know what is it? In case you don't, is a method of cervical screening used to detect potentially pre-cancerous and cancerous processes in the cervix (opening of the uterus or womb). The human operator basically looks at a microscope field and tells if he sees cancer cells or not. It's been automated. Direct users's input? Zero. You just take thousands of past photographs and their operator's associated results and you replicate them with a program. After that, you do the same in parallel to the operator and see what happens. Once you achieve the expected results, you present your product to your customer.
"It seems to me that your defining-down of when agile is useful is a capitulation to Zed A. Shaw's restatement of the value of "customer collaboration" to really mean that agilistas value "bleeding clients dry""
It seems to me that you already made your mind for whatever reasons (maybe you are certified on a competing process and you don't want your investment to lose value -I still didn't here a word from you on what would be a process better than the one you are despising) and you just repeat your tantrum no matter if it makes sense or not. But still, it can't be "bleeding clients dry" when the client can get out every two weeks with something of value for him. You yourself could very well being the customer on an agile project: would you allow your provider to bleed you out? Probably not since by the end of the second sprint you would tell your provider "you don't know what are you doing: you are fired starting now". Compare that with learning that your provider doesn't know what he's doing anyways, only after a full year is payed and you see the full results being crap.
"If I'm replacing a warehouse full of fingerprints or photographs, and want a computerized database that will do preliminary matches, should I avoid agile?"
Why would you need it? You already have a clear understandment of both process and inputs/outputs: you just need to plan, execute and deliver it.
"If I want a messaging system that will replace (in whole or in part) walking down the hall for a chat, inter-office memos, or email, I should avoid agile?"
Just the same as above: you already know inputs, outputs and process, no need for a special customer involvement along the building process. Even more: the two processes you talk about (and so many others more or less similar) can't benefit of an iterative delivery because, being the process already in place, your customer has no advantage in migrating to the new one till full feature parity is achieved. You may claim, for instance in the second case, your new development could only partially substitute the old one but that only means you were wrong about your project's scope: it was not a single project but one per isolated (sub)process and for this to be done, you'd better make a good forefront analysis -against the very root of agile.
In both cases a methodology alike to (maybe iterative) waterfall will add minimal cruft and bureaucracy and will deliver in minimal time and cost.
"If those are not good cases for agile, exactly what is agile good for?"
Agile is good for cases were the problem realm is unknown or ill defined even for the customer (or product owner) and/or relative value of outputs are unknown. There are a lot of projects within this definition, but there are a lot others that are not.
"Also, your claim that "Priorities are set by the customer. It's up to him to decide what's the most useful output as of today." is a total capitulation to Zed A. Shaw's claim that that particular agile tenet is really about valuing "Instability and plausible deniability"."
Probably yes, if you think about it as an "us versus them" scenario. If you think about it as a "we" scenario, giving the owner of the service the saying on what should go functionally-wise and what shouldn't is nothing but aligning authority and responsibility.
The part of instability is nothing but the recognition that the world the service is meant to go to is unstable.
But if you are going with the "us versus them" scenario, you should remember that every time you put something in written you are playing the "plausible deniability" card so Shaw's cynical claim is empty of value: full specs before writting a single line of code? What for? Maybe in order for you to be able to say "yes, there's no door in this house: show me were did you ask for a door". No specs? Maybe in order to deny that something was ever said. Adapting specs as the problem realm's knowledge grows? Maybe in order to deflect blame after the fourth change of priorities...