We ran Linux and FreeBSD on production servers - well I started administering them it was in late 1999. Back in those days you chose the components of your servers carefully to get supported hardware and you weren't surprised when something not listed as being explicitly supported didn't work, and yes you would wait for a couple of months or longer for new drivers to come out.
Watching FreeBSD build itself over the internet from a single boot floppy was an experience verging on the mystical; and ports at the time had no comparison to any software distribution system. You could download, compile and build software with three commands, it was pure magic.
I know of people that were running headless Linux servers from about 1996 onwards, for things like file and mail distribution and as firewalls. And to compare it to the offerings of the time from Microsoft or Novell - they were pretty damn good.
While corporate hate is hip right now I am sure that Microsoft would have preferred that their Nokia venture worked rather than flopping so hard, so given that they gave it a good shot and it didn't work what else does Microsoft owe Finland? Perhaps the Finnish shouldn't have sold Nokia in the first place.
There's always money for public works, you just have to print more. Sure that will essentially be a tax hike for everyone who is still earning but it is a method to make public works possible.
You don't quite get it; capitalism is not idiotic, it's intelligence neutral. It's also morally neutral, it's amoral. Which means we need a system of morality to go along with it. True capitalism is not a system, it's the lack of a system.
There is an alternative to GBI, and that's public works - the government makes sure that if there are 200 million people that there are 200 million public works jobs available. They could range from childcare to visual arts and engineering. Anything at all that requires a person rather than a machine. Then people have to apply for the positions. This would inspire a little bit of competition and could help satisfy the notion of 'work ethic' that some people have (and seem to want to enforce on other people). The obvious drawback is that it would mean a massivly centralised and centrally controlled government, but hey if a superior AI is contoling everything that might be a good thing.
In the future 'employment' may well become a euphemism for being rewarded for doing things that do you don't want to do, while the rest of everyone gets to peruse their dreams and ambitions decoupled from the need to earn to live. Well that would be the utopian view anyway.
What's he going to do about the mass unemployment he will create?
People don't live to work, people have to work to live. At least until work is no longer required. Then we'll need a new system of distribution. One that does not couple work output to income. Because soon enough work will be the scarce resource.
Not good, but not worth chucking civilization for...
Sometimes I wonder how different our lives are really comparing back before the industrial revolution and how different they would be after, if it should peter out.
Eventually, given enough time 'should of' will become 'shouldof' and then probably eventually something like 'shudov' because when the constituent components of a phrase don't make any sense any more but the phrase itself has meaning it makes more sense to contract the phrase into a word, which does have meaning.
Don wori it wil al be in da NewSpeek dicshonry ov 2052.
Why should I subsidize the non workers/non producers,
Well because for the first time in the history of mankind we're looking at a possible future where paid work itself is a scarce resource. To put it another way, if aliens came down from the sky tomorrow and gave us machines that provided us with everything we could ever need would it make sense to exclude people that didn't work from benefiting? The truth is that work for most people would cease to be a meaningful endeavour, it simply won't be needed when we have machines that produce and distribute the commodities that make society work.
It's hard to imagine what we're going to do with all these idle people, but it's a complete paradigm shift in how society works. Obviously if all low skilled jobs are replaced by machines we're going to have to work out what to do with the people that used to rely on these positions otherwise our country will degrade either into a crime ridden dystopia that will make current violent third world countries look like paradises or there will be a violent uprising and revolution which will have either one of two outcomes - either:
a) The implementation of a basic living allowance so that everyone has access to the share property that our country produces or,
b) A revolution where those privileged enough to have a job and or capital are put to the sword, and all the machines are broken to ensure that there is a need for a workforce.
Now option b seems like a real disaster for me, I can't see the point in breaking the machines just because we aren't capable of sharing with our fellow man just because of some sense of entitlement we have because we feel superior just because we have the capacity to perform paid work after most other jobs have been replaced by the machines.
>Any of them that might be inclined not to, for whatever reason, will be out-competed in very short order and subsequently fail.
Unless it gives them a competitive advantage, like come here to experience service from an actual human, rather than pulling your food off a robot tray.
The automobile industry overtaking the horse carriage industry did not doom everyone in the old industry to a lifetime of unemployment.
The horses would disagree with you there, and that's what we're talking about. People are being replaced by robots, this is not just a way to help fewer people work more effectively and efficiently; it is their replacement.
Well, typing those games into the computer was a stepping stone to writing my own games. I made a game which was a Samurai adventure game with random monster encounters, which was really neat because as a kid I discovered the need for programming constructs and structures before I knew they existed. Which is a really nice way to learn.
After BASIC I kept going with programming through my teen years with Pascal, at uni I thought I wanted to study chemistry but had an elective in computer science, and soon after transferred to that degree. I've since been working in IT for the last15 or so years and have released games on mobile phone and PC. I haven't made anything amazing yet but I'm still trying:)
So, although I have a long way to go I guess I am on the path.
I used to spend hours looking a the cover of the BATTLEGAMES one wishing that one day I could play a game like that, imagining that one day an airoplane wouldn't simply be a square on the screen.
Yeah but if everything had to have a cause, then the thing that caused everything also would need to have a cause. And then you also have a problem of infinite regression of cause; if everything has a cause then there can be no base case that started the whole chain of events. And if there is no base case then how did anything start?
>You need to look at all violent crime, because most criminals are not going to stop being violent just because they have to use a different kind of weapon.
Actually this is not entirely true. Some criminals if they can't use a firearm won't do the crime. The firearm is the great leveler between enemies; a much weaker person can take on a stronger opponent with a firearm.
Additionally other weapons are much less lethal meaning that attacks end up as attempted murder with non-firearm weapons rather than murder in a far greater percentage of cases.
>at the cost of the next election,
Actually it had nothing to do with the results of the next election. Gun ownership just isn't that big of a deal here. In fact I knew people that were happy to trade in their old semi automatics - and to this day you can still by manual action rifles and shotguns if you're licensed.
Slashdot Mirror
XP on ATMs? Wow.
We ran Linux and FreeBSD on production servers - well I started administering them it was in late 1999. Back in those days you chose the components of your servers carefully to get supported hardware and you weren't surprised when something not listed as being explicitly supported didn't work, and yes you would wait for a couple of months or longer for new drivers to come out. Watching FreeBSD build itself over the internet from a single boot floppy was an experience verging on the mystical; and ports at the time had no comparison to any software distribution system. You could download, compile and build software with three commands, it was pure magic. I know of people that were running headless Linux servers from about 1996 onwards, for things like file and mail distribution and as firewalls. And to compare it to the offerings of the time from Microsoft or Novell - they were pretty damn good.
While corporate hate is hip right now I am sure that Microsoft would have preferred that their Nokia venture worked rather than flopping so hard, so given that they gave it a good shot and it didn't work what else does Microsoft owe Finland? Perhaps the Finnish shouldn't have sold Nokia in the first place.
There's always money for public works, you just have to print more. Sure that will essentially be a tax hike for everyone who is still earning but it is a method to make public works possible.
Perhaps I am naive but surely with enough money there will be no homeless people because you know, we can give them homes and enough to live on.
You don't quite get it; capitalism is not idiotic, it's intelligence neutral. It's also morally neutral, it's amoral. Which means we need a system of morality to go along with it. True capitalism is not a system, it's the lack of a system.
There is an alternative to GBI, and that's public works - the government makes sure that if there are 200 million people that there are 200 million public works jobs available. They could range from childcare to visual arts and engineering. Anything at all that requires a person rather than a machine. Then people have to apply for the positions. This would inspire a little bit of competition and could help satisfy the notion of 'work ethic' that some people have (and seem to want to enforce on other people). The obvious drawback is that it would mean a massivly centralised and centrally controlled government, but hey if a superior AI is contoling everything that might be a good thing.
In the future 'employment' may well become a euphemism for being rewarded for doing things that do you don't want to do, while the rest of everyone gets to peruse their dreams and ambitions decoupled from the need to earn to live. Well that would be the utopian view anyway.
What's he going to do about the mass unemployment he will create?
People don't live to work, people have to work to live. At least until work is no longer required. Then we'll need a new system of distribution. One that does not couple work output to income. Because soon enough work will be the scarce resource.
Agreed. I mean from time to time you can still see horses on the roads. Most people don't ride them anymore, sure, but some people just love 'em.
Easy just turn the autobahns into great big slotcar sets. Seriously don't know why anyone isn't proposing this.
Not good, but not worth chucking civilization for...
Sometimes I wonder how different our lives are really comparing back before the industrial revolution and how different they would be after, if it should peter out.
Please, don't confuse illiteracy with 'vernacular'.
Although illiteracy is not the same as vernacular or dialect, it is often a starting point...
Eventually, given enough time 'should of' will become 'shouldof' and then probably eventually something like 'shudov' because when the constituent components of a phrase don't make any sense any more but the phrase itself has meaning it makes more sense to contract the phrase into a word, which does have meaning.
Don wori it wil al be in da NewSpeek dicshonry ov 2052.
You're not looking far enough ahead.
Why should I subsidize the non workers/non producers,
Well because for the first time in the history of mankind we're looking at a possible future where paid work itself is a scarce resource. To put it another way, if aliens came down from the sky tomorrow and gave us machines that provided us with everything we could ever need would it make sense to exclude people that didn't work from benefiting? The truth is that work for most people would cease to be a meaningful endeavour, it simply won't be needed when we have machines that produce and distribute the commodities that make society work.
It's hard to imagine what we're going to do with all these idle people, but it's a complete paradigm shift in how society works. Obviously if all low skilled jobs are replaced by machines we're going to have to work out what to do with the people that used to rely on these positions otherwise our country will degrade either into a crime ridden dystopia that will make current violent third world countries look like paradises or there will be a violent uprising and revolution which will have either one of two outcomes - either:
a) The implementation of a basic living allowance so that everyone has access to the share property that our country produces or,
b) A revolution where those privileged enough to have a job and or capital are put to the sword, and all the machines are broken to ensure that there is a need for a workforce.
Now option b seems like a real disaster for me, I can't see the point in breaking the machines just because we aren't capable of sharing with our fellow man just because of some sense of entitlement we have because we feel superior just because we have the capacity to perform paid work after most other jobs have been replaced by the machines.
>Any of them that might be inclined not to, for whatever reason, will be out-competed in very short order and subsequently fail.
Unless it gives them a competitive advantage, like come here to experience service from an actual human, rather than pulling your food off a robot tray.
The automobile industry overtaking the horse carriage industry did not doom everyone in the old industry to a lifetime of unemployment.
The horses would disagree with you there, and that's what we're talking about. People are being replaced by robots, this is not just a way to help fewer people work more effectively and efficiently; it is their replacement.
Well, typing those games into the computer was a stepping stone to writing my own games. I made a game which was a Samurai adventure game with random monster encounters, which was really neat because as a kid I discovered the need for programming constructs and structures before I knew they existed. Which is a really nice way to learn.
:)
After BASIC I kept going with programming through my teen years with Pascal, at uni I thought I wanted to study chemistry but had an elective in computer science, and soon after transferred to that degree. I've since been working in IT for the last15 or so years and have released games on mobile phone and PC. I haven't made anything amazing yet but I'm still trying
So, although I have a long way to go I guess I am on the path.
I used to spend hours looking a the cover of the BATTLEGAMES one wishing that one day I could play a game like that, imagining that one day an airoplane wouldn't simply be a square on the screen.
No, he means four dimensions of space.
Yeah but if everything had to have a cause, then the thing that caused everything also would need to have a cause. And then you also have a problem of infinite regression of cause; if everything has a cause then there can be no base case that started the whole chain of events. And if there is no base case then how did anything start?
Thank you so much.
>You need to look at all violent crime, because most criminals are not going to stop being violent just because they have to use a different kind of weapon.
Actually this is not entirely true. Some criminals if they can't use a firearm won't do the crime. The firearm is the great leveler between enemies; a much weaker person can take on a stronger opponent with a firearm.
Additionally other weapons are much less lethal meaning that attacks end up as attempted murder with non-firearm weapons rather than murder in a far greater percentage of cases.
>at the cost of the next election,
Actually it had nothing to do with the results of the next election. Gun ownership just isn't that big of a deal here. In fact I knew people that were happy to trade in their old semi automatics - and to this day you can still by manual action rifles and shotguns if you're licensed.