China... also becomes the first to phase it out to become fully cashless. But when will this moment come?
If I had to guess, I would say that time is when officials stop accepting bribes and criminals stop trying to sell stolen goods. But the real and final end to cash is when the drug dealers accept cards, don't mind having a fully auditable trail of their transactions and start giving receipts.
So if (or when) this tool "decides" it is safe to release a suspect, who then goes on to commit another crime after release, who is reprimanded? who carries the can? who pays?
Ultimately the responsibility still lies with the police force. It is their tool, the public safety is their responsibility.There needs to be reinforcement of this at every level, so that nobody can shrug their shoulders and say "the computer said it was OK".
there's simply no foolproof way to kill a terrible idea
Sure there is. In business just ask for a fully costed proposal. (This also works for killing perfectly sound ideas, too.). if the proposer ever gets that finished, just tell them it's "interesting" and then shred it.
Outside of the company, in real life, you can associate the idea with something that invokes moral outrage: when someone blurts out a mind-numbingly stupid idea, just whisper in their ear "I wouldn't suggest that, you know the person who came up with it was a child-molester" (or Nazi, or whatever group is currently demonised).
If we're talking about FAKE NEWS, there really is no reason to try to kill it, so long as you are able to insulate yourself from the effects of other people's stupidity: buying gold, taking a contrarian investment, simply ignoring it or just get into the game and come up with something even more fake or exaggerated - it can be great fun if you don't take it seriously.
if you have an evil streak, you could even encourage the FAKE NEWS promoter that it is a really good idea and that they should invest in it - big time. Maybe even telling them that you know a guy and if they just give you a cash payment, you'll pass it on...
I don't buy this. A simple hello world in Java is much more complex and wordy than the same functionality in 50 year-old BASIC. And any language that relies on whitespace to modify the program flow cannot be described as readable.
And many object-oriented programs have so much of their basic functions hidden away in inheritance and class definitions that a printed form of a program is impractical. I would not call that "progress".
As for natural language, it tends to be incredibly imprecise: the meaning is only apparent when the context of its use is taken into account. I would love to see a translator that tried to convert "natural language" sarcasm into executable code. But I wouldn't want it running in my driverless vehicle or airplane.
All this does is spray a foam plastic dome onto a pre-prepared surface.
There are no foundations, no weatherproofing, nothing apart from the foam's natural adhesion to keep it in place. To claim this as some sort of "progress" fails to recognise that a few people could erect a similar sized tent in much less time.
If people know that this scheme will have an end, they will take that into account and not change their behaviour as they would if it was permanent.
Therefore the data collected and the conclusions drawn from this scheme (and all the other UBI pilots that have come and gone) is incomplete. We need to gauge the effect it will have on populations not for a few years, but how will it affect generations? Will a child growing up in a UBI household have a different attitude towards the need to get a job or attend school? Is there even any point in getting an education if you know that the state will provide everything - and that there probably won't be any jobs for you anyway?
A three year experiment won't tell you about the long-term consequences.
any 'major city' in GB was built in the 19th century.
All the little villages that were close to natural resources or advantageously located were the ones that developed into major cities. The move from the countryside and an agrarian life to a city and an industrial life is what made those cities "major".
Did it occur to the surveyors that people might use the term generically for any sort of voice / face based communication. Just like people talk about "googling" instead of searching for something - or say "the wifi" when they mean "the internet"?
... the top cause of unhappiness was being stuck while solving a problem, followed by "time pressure," bad code quality/coding practices, and "under-performing colleague.
In my experience what makes developers unhappy is having to write documentation, perform testing and fixing bugs.
Of course, that might simply define the habits of the "under-performing colleague" that then drags down the happiness of other, more diligent and professional, developers.
The hardware side of all these Pi "clones" is fantastic. They blow past the original Raspberry version all the time. There are varieties that are smaller, cheaper, more powerful, more innovative, more features.
However their operating systems and general support are awful. What little information is available is usually only made known by amateurs who's interest waxes and wanes, The operating systems are largely undocumented, old, and hit'n'miss as to whether they will work on any particular board - and frequently don't have features like SPI implemented, (Although part of this is due to the system config file and its vagaries.)
If the hardware manufacturers put half the development skill into the software as they do into the hardware, they would dominate the world and leave the RPi crushed into a stain on the rug. It is only the support, forums, and large amount of "how to" information that keeps the RaspberryPi viable. If the others ever caught up, the RPi would cease to exist.
the prize money will go to Strategic Machine, a firm founded by the duo.
That seems a little unfair. If I had won, the prize money would not have been given directly to my parents. If a machine wins, it should receive the prize. If it cannot actually spend it, then that would appear to be a rather basic limitation to its AI-ness. But it wouldn't be a problem for the competition or whoever awarded the prize.
You would also hope that the authorities would keep an eye on the money to ensure that whoever had access to the AI didn't defraud it of its winnings. Maybe it is time for machines to have property rights. And if they are going to be awarded assets, maybe they should be taxed on them, too.
I have read the information on the release page
It contains a long list of various stuff that has been updated from one version to another.
It adds some new drivers for a few bits and pieces
It changes from one database to a different one.
But nowhere does it tell me what wonderful new functions I would benefit from using if I installed this "feature" release. In fact, it doesn't mention any "features" at all. Just support for new hardware, which wouldn't be useful to people upgrading on their existing hardware.
If I (assuming I hadOpenElec installed on anything) was going to upgrade to this version, I would want to know what new things I would be able to use it to do. I would want to know what worked better, or faster. I would want to know how I would be more entertained, or find things easier, or become richer, or taller.
But these things, which I expect to be important, are not mentioned. Should I assume that there are some persuasive reasons to upgrade, or is this just a new release for its own sake?
Hopefully the scaled down (from the design target 5 tonne) vehicle will sit in my back yard, get plugged into mains power to recharge itself and take me to work every day.
The type for whom the journey (or development process) is all. They love creating something: code, hardware, paintings. And for them, it is the production that matters, not the the final result. You might call them "perfectionists" because they will never finish anything (until they get bored and just drop it, to start travelling on a different journey) and will constantly be adding new parts, features or functions.
Their favourite saying is "just another couple of weeks" when asked by their team-leader, project supervisor, manager when their assignment will be ready. But 2 weeks later, the answer is still the same. Although they are enthusiastic, their failure mode is that they never produce an end product and their office, lab or home is full of half-completed projects.
it's usually the organization, not its employees, that is to blame
It is incorrect to suggest that only factors related to work are the cause of burnout and that therefore it is a "company" problem. There can be many issues with an individual's personal life (or their finances, children, partners, parents, neighbourhood or many other sources) that means they are more or less susceptible to "burnout".
Even two people doing the same work: subject to the same level of professional stress can have vastly different reactions to it, depending on how pre-stressed they already are, or what coping mechanisms they have developed, or not - or even due to their personalities.
So while the pressures of a job may well add to an already stressed individual's burnout, it is unlikely to be the sole reason for it. Consequently a proper study would have to look at all aspects of a person's life to determine the extent to which their job or their boss or something else caused them to have problems. And therefore it seems reasonable that the solution to a person's recovery could, in many cases, be found outside of their work life, rather than within the company they work for.
After all, we're just like lawyers, librarians, electricians and cab drivers.
Developers are nothing like lawyers (at least, not in my country). Lawyers and other professionals belong to chartered, professional, bodies that uphold standards of behaviour and work-product.
If you want to see IT professionals portrayed as professionals they would need to act in a professional manner. One that instills confidence in their ability, one that stops "amateurs" from being indistinguishable from career IT people - either in approach, quality of work or social standing.
* Every user speaks my language (so my text can all be ASCII), So Y and N are always fine. So everyone's address includes a city.
* It doesn't matter that error codes are meaningless, or that the same catch-all message appears for several different conditions.
* Every user will know what "enter a 6 character alphanumeric field" or "please assign a unique key" means
* Using technical jargon in user interfaces is good, Plain English is for WIMPS
* it doesn't need documenting, it's obvious how to use it.
* The website doesn't need a description of the product, everybody knows what it is
(So let's make the first page a user will encounter a list of the change log, or a name-check for everyone who worked on the project, instead)
Linux that works without constant under-the-hood tweaking (ala early Windows flavors, 3.1, 95/98). Does such an OS exist? For the record, I am not an IT tech. I just need something to work with the mechanical equipment it controls. Any recommendations?
In short, there isn't one and will never be one.
Linux distributions are based on the assumption that there will always be someone, somewhere, who can interpret the misleading, technically dense, and often incomprehensible data, conditions and messages that Linux: both the O/S and the applications it runs, constantly throws at its users.
The best possibility is to find a version of Linux that does what you want it to, install it, then keep it far away from any and all internet connections. That is the only hope you have that it won't try to update itself, install new versions or discover that external stuff it expected to find has mysteriously been moved or deleted by the notional owner.
corporations are some of the worst entities when it comes to actually paying taxes
The real problem is that corporations can easily move to countries where the tax burden is lighter. And if their entire operation: whether manufacturing, services or simply annoying people by phoning them up - is automated, it becomes even easier. These corporations are not "sticky": they are not bound to a specific geography, unlike people who tend to put down roots, dislike disrupting their kids' education by moving school, dislike moving to other countries where they don't speak the language and generally dislike change in general.
So for those companies, they can effectively play one tax-collecting country against another: getting deals, moving to the lowest tax-rate region, engaging in "creative" practices. There is already a question among economists of why corporation taxes are already non-zero (ans: probably because political stability, low corruption, "friendly" laws and lack of a nearby war are attributes worth paying for). It would seem reasonable that companies would seek to minimise any robo-tax they were subject to. Especially as it would be difficult for a single country to implement - they'd just see all roboticised industries leave.
I suppose the next thing would be for corporations to buy their own, independent, islands and set themselves up as sovereign states.
This is just another aspect of de-skilling. Since the 1990's the fad has been for people to perform "processes" rather than jobs. The idea being that so long as you adhere to the "process", all your actions will be of the same high quality as your co-irkers. Ha!
But as soon as you are able to write down a formal description of your job, you have effectively written a computer program for doing it. So the most easily replaceable jobs will be the ones that require little judgement, little experience (esp. when there is no possibility of having to deal with exceptions) and simple interfaces to other "cogs" in the great machine.
So if you can replace a personnel officer with a computer, then companies will do it. Just feed in the parameters for the sort of people you wish to hire. Merely give the machine stock replies to the most common workplace complaints. Give it an algorithm for employee assessment - and let it it do its thing. It won't replace the entire personnel dept. But if it can perform the mundane operations, it should considerably cut the number of actual people required to support the company.
And it it this reduction - rather than complete replacement - of mid-level and managerial posts that is where the job losses will occur.
Yesterday I d/l'd Armbian Jessie (v 5.25). Installed it on a good quality micro-SD card. Connected the board to a good quality power supply and it came up first time and every time since then.
Almost all the problems with these boards are due to lousy power supplies and the rest seem to be due to crappy SD cards.
But I do agree: all the distros seem to be stuck on 2 or 3 year-old software, with little support or interest from the suppliers. If all the wannabe *-Pi manufacturers invested time and effort into easing people's experience they would wipe RPi's off the map with their lower price and better on-board facilities such as eMMC and (compared to the RPi Zero) availability.
Slashdot Mirror
China ... also becomes the first to phase it out to become fully cashless. But when will this moment come?
If I had to guess, I would say that time is when officials stop accepting bribes and criminals stop trying to sell stolen goods. But the real and final end to cash is when the drug dealers accept cards, don't mind having a fully auditable trail of their transactions and start giving receipts.
So if (or when) this tool "decides" it is safe to release a suspect, who then goes on to commit another crime after release, who is reprimanded? who carries the can? who pays?
Ultimately the responsibility still lies with the police force. It is their tool, the public safety is their responsibility.There needs to be reinforcement of this at every level, so that nobody can shrug their shoulders and say "the computer said it was OK".
there's simply no foolproof way to kill a terrible idea
Sure there is. In business just ask for a fully costed proposal. (This also works for killing perfectly sound ideas, too.). if the proposer ever gets that finished, just tell them it's "interesting" and then shred it.
Outside of the company, in real life, you can associate the idea with something that invokes moral outrage: when someone blurts out a mind-numbingly stupid idea, just whisper in their ear "I wouldn't suggest that, you know the person who came up with it was a child-molester" (or Nazi, or whatever group is currently demonised).
If we're talking about FAKE NEWS, there really is no reason to try to kill it, so long as you are able to insulate yourself from the effects of other people's stupidity: buying gold, taking a contrarian investment, simply ignoring it or just get into the game and come up with something even more fake or exaggerated - it can be great fun if you don't take it seriously.
if you have an evil streak, you could even encourage the FAKE NEWS promoter that it is a really good idea and that they should invest in it - big time. Maybe even telling them that you know a guy and if they just give you a cash payment, you'll pass it on ...
I don't buy this. A simple hello world in Java is much more complex and wordy than the same functionality in 50 year-old BASIC. And any language that relies on whitespace to modify the program flow cannot be described as readable.
And many object-oriented programs have so much of their basic functions hidden away in inheritance and class definitions that a printed form of a program is impractical. I would not call that "progress".
As for natural language, it tends to be incredibly imprecise: the meaning is only apparent when the context of its use is taken into account. I would love to see a translator that tried to convert "natural language" sarcasm into executable code. But I wouldn't want it running in my driverless vehicle or airplane.
There are no foundations, no weatherproofing, nothing apart from the foam's natural adhesion to keep it in place. To claim this as some sort of "progress" fails to recognise that a few people could erect a similar sized tent in much less time.
Therefore the data collected and the conclusions drawn from this scheme (and all the other UBI pilots that have come and gone) is incomplete. We need to gauge the effect it will have on populations not for a few years, but how will it affect generations? Will a child growing up in a UBI household have a different attitude towards the need to get a job or attend school? Is there even any point in getting an education if you know that the state will provide everything - and that there probably won't be any jobs for you anyway?
A three year experiment won't tell you about the long-term consequences.
I can still write FORTRAN programs in any of the many, many, languages I use today.
any 'major city' in GB was built in the 19th century.
All the little villages that were close to natural resources or advantageously located were the ones that developed into major cities. The move from the countryside and an agrarian life to a city and an industrial life is what made those cities "major".
So yes, the OP was correct, indirectly.
Did it occur to the surveyors that people might use the term generically for any sort of voice / face based communication. Just like people talk about "googling" instead of searching for something - or say "the wifi" when they mean "the internet"?
... the top cause of unhappiness was being stuck while solving a problem, followed by "time pressure," bad code quality/coding practices, and "under-performing colleague.
In my experience what makes developers unhappy is having to write documentation, perform testing and fixing bugs.
Of course, that might simply define the habits of the "under-performing colleague" that then drags down the happiness of other, more diligent and professional, developers.
The hardware side of all these Pi "clones" is fantastic. They blow past the original Raspberry version all the time. There are varieties that are smaller, cheaper, more powerful, more innovative, more features.
However their operating systems and general support are awful. What little information is available is usually only made known by amateurs who's interest waxes and wanes, The operating systems are largely undocumented, old, and hit'n'miss as to whether they will work on any particular board - and frequently don't have features like SPI implemented, (Although part of this is due to the system config file and its vagaries.)
If the hardware manufacturers put half the development skill into the software as they do into the hardware, they would dominate the world and leave the RPi crushed into a stain on the rug. It is only the support, forums, and large amount of "how to" information that keeps the RaspberryPi viable. If the others ever caught up, the RPi would cease to exist.
Just wait until they patent seats and doors
the prize money will go to Strategic Machine, a firm founded by the duo.
That seems a little unfair. If I had won, the prize money would not have been given directly to my parents. If a machine wins, it should receive the prize. If it cannot actually spend it, then that would appear to be a rather basic limitation to its AI-ness. But it wouldn't be a problem for the competition or whoever awarded the prize.
You would also hope that the authorities would keep an eye on the money to ensure that whoever had access to the AI didn't defraud it of its winnings. Maybe it is time for machines to have property rights. And if they are going to be awarded assets, maybe they should be taxed on them, too.
I have read the information on the release page
It contains a long list of various stuff that has been updated from one version to another.
It adds some new drivers for a few bits and pieces
It changes from one database to a different one.
But nowhere does it tell me what wonderful new functions I would benefit from using if I installed this "feature" release. In fact, it doesn't mention any "features" at all. Just support for new hardware, which wouldn't be useful to people upgrading on their existing hardware.
If I (assuming I hadOpenElec installed on anything) was going to upgrade to this version, I would want to know what new things I would be able to use it to do. I would want to know what worked better, or faster. I would want to know how I would be more entertained, or find things easier, or become richer, or taller.
But these things, which I expect to be important, are not mentioned. Should I assume that there are some persuasive reasons to upgrade, or is this just a new release for its own sake?
Hopefully the scaled down (from the design target 5 tonne) vehicle will sit in my back yard, get plugged into mains power to recharge itself and take me to work every day.
What archetypes, if any, are we missing?
The type for whom the journey (or development process) is all. They love creating something: code, hardware, paintings. And for them, it is the production that matters, not the the final result. You might call them "perfectionists" because they will never finish anything (until they get bored and just drop it, to start travelling on a different journey) and will constantly be adding new parts, features or functions.
Their favourite saying is "just another couple of weeks" when asked by their team-leader, project supervisor, manager when their assignment will be ready. But 2 weeks later, the answer is still the same. Although they are enthusiastic, their failure mode is that they never produce an end product and their office, lab or home is full of half-completed projects.
I have trouble with this "full genome" unit.
Then you should have just read the preceding bit that tells you it is 2 petabytes - if that is any more meaningful to you
it's usually the organization, not its employees, that is to blame
It is incorrect to suggest that only factors related to work are the cause of burnout and that therefore it is a "company" problem. There can be many issues with an individual's personal life (or their finances, children, partners, parents, neighbourhood or many other sources) that means they are more or less susceptible to "burnout".
Even two people doing the same work: subject to the same level of professional stress can have vastly different reactions to it, depending on how pre-stressed they already are, or what coping mechanisms they have developed, or not - or even due to their personalities.
So while the pressures of a job may well add to an already stressed individual's burnout, it is unlikely to be the sole reason for it. Consequently a proper study would have to look at all aspects of a person's life to determine the extent to which their job or their boss or something else caused them to have problems. And therefore it seems reasonable that the solution to a person's recovery could, in many cases, be found outside of their work life, rather than within the company they work for.
After all, we're just like lawyers, librarians, electricians and cab drivers.
Developers are nothing like lawyers (at least, not in my country). Lawyers and other professionals belong to chartered, professional, bodies that uphold standards of behaviour and work-product.
If you want to see IT professionals portrayed as professionals they would need to act in a professional manner. One that instills confidence in their ability, one that stops "amateurs" from being indistinguishable from career IT people - either in approach, quality of work or social standing.
* Every user speaks my language (so my text can all be ASCII), So Y and N are always fine. So everyone's address includes a city.
* It doesn't matter that error codes are meaningless, or that the same catch-all message appears for several different conditions.
* Every user will know what "enter a 6 character alphanumeric field" or "please assign a unique key" means
* Using technical jargon in user interfaces is good, Plain English is for WIMPS
* it doesn't need documenting, it's obvious how to use it.
* The website doesn't need a description of the product, everybody knows what it is
(So let's make the first page a user will encounter a list of the change log, or a name-check for everyone who worked on the project, instead)
Linux that works without constant under-the-hood tweaking (ala early Windows flavors, 3.1, 95/98). Does such an OS exist? For the record, I am not an IT tech. I just need something to work with the mechanical equipment it controls. Any recommendations?
In short, there isn't one and will never be one.
Linux distributions are based on the assumption that there will always be someone, somewhere, who can interpret the misleading, technically dense, and often incomprehensible data, conditions and messages that Linux: both the O/S and the applications it runs, constantly throws at its users.
The best possibility is to find a version of Linux that does what you want it to, install it, then keep it far away from any and all internet connections. That is the only hope you have that it won't try to update itself, install new versions or discover that external stuff it expected to find has mysteriously been moved or deleted by the notional owner.
corporations are some of the worst entities when it comes to actually paying taxes
The real problem is that corporations can easily move to countries where the tax burden is lighter. And if their entire operation: whether manufacturing, services or simply annoying people by phoning them up - is automated, it becomes even easier. These corporations are not "sticky": they are not bound to a specific geography, unlike people who tend to put down roots, dislike disrupting their kids' education by moving school, dislike moving to other countries where they don't speak the language and generally dislike change in general.
So for those companies, they can effectively play one tax-collecting country against another: getting deals, moving to the lowest tax-rate region, engaging in "creative" practices. There is already a question among economists of why corporation taxes are already non-zero (ans: probably because political stability, low corruption, "friendly" laws and lack of a nearby war are attributes worth paying for). It would seem reasonable that companies would seek to minimise any robo-tax they were subject to. Especially as it would be difficult for a single country to implement - they'd just see all roboticised industries leave.
I suppose the next thing would be for corporations to buy their own, independent, islands and set themselves up as sovereign states.
The Moravec's paradox of jobs
This is just another aspect of de-skilling. Since the 1990's the fad has been for people to perform "processes" rather than jobs. The idea being that so long as you adhere to the "process", all your actions will be of the same high quality as your co-irkers. Ha!
But as soon as you are able to write down a formal description of your job, you have effectively written a computer program for doing it. So the most easily replaceable jobs will be the ones that require little judgement, little experience (esp. when there is no possibility of having to deal with exceptions) and simple interfaces to other "cogs" in the great machine.
So if you can replace a personnel officer with a computer, then companies will do it. Just feed in the parameters for the sort of people you wish to hire. Merely give the machine stock replies to the most common workplace complaints. Give it an algorithm for employee assessment - and let it it do its thing. It won't replace the entire personnel dept. But if it can perform the mundane operations, it should considerably cut the number of actual people required to support the company.
And it it this reduction - rather than complete replacement - of mid-level and managerial posts that is where the job losses will occur.
This seems to assume that the camera can see an individual's lips.
it works on precisely zero of the distros I tried
Yesterday I d/l'd Armbian Jessie (v 5.25). Installed it on a good quality micro-SD card. Connected the board to a good quality power supply and it came up first time and every time since then.
Almost all the problems with these boards are due to lousy power supplies and the rest seem to be due to crappy SD cards. But I do agree: all the distros seem to be stuck on 2 or 3 year-old software, with little support or interest from the suppliers. If all the wannabe *-Pi manufacturers invested time and effort into easing people's experience they would wipe RPi's off the map with their lower price and better on-board facilities such as eMMC and (compared to the RPi Zero) availability.