when Microsoft, the company complaining about the worker shortage, fired 6,000 people
What Microsoft really wants is more choice without paying for choice. They have a picky hiring process and want what they want. They don't care about society issues or trade-imbalances, that's somebody's else' problem. They just want cheap young choice, and lobby heavily for it.
I don't suggest doing away with the current system; just adding a new service. Maybe it can be pioneered by universities, and then when others see how it greatly reduces junk, they too will join.
One half? High standards! That's like saying a car "only bursts into flames on Tuesdays now". It's a fucked up system; it just went from being mega-fucked down to hyper-fucked. I guess if you are used to being mega-fucked, then hyper-fucked seems better.
The real fix is to charge for email. To send an email, have a 2 cent charge. 1 cent goes to the ISP, and the other to a governing and enforcement body -- the ePost Office.
Spammers right now send for almost free. If they had to pay two cents for each recipient, it would put most out of business.
And they'd have to leave a money trail, making it easier to find and bust them.
The artifacts of compression are quite visible in some of the photos. We'll have to wait several months before the non-lossy views come back, due to the distance.
Okay, I guess that makes sense. They model how long it would take to settle that way.
But SOMETHING has been heating both bodies fairly recently. A collision is not likely to affect both at the same time and cause those valleys. A single large body is unlikely to hit both, and lots of small ones are unlikely to create the kind of rifts we see on both.
Let's look at a hypothetical extreme case. Suppose AI got as smart as an average human and easily took over most jobs we know now. Almost nobody would have a job, barring entertainers perhaps, and nearly all the revenue and profits would flow to the owners (the 1%). They have few or no human workers to pay.
Now, under this, how does the middle and lower class get money to buy stuff? (All the wonderful stuff created by the bots.)
I'll describe what I think would happen, but I want to hear your take first.
Consumers have money to consume things because they are producers first.
If they cannot find a job because bots took them, they don't have the opportunity to be "producers". We need to find a way to provide MORE opportunities to be producers to match the opportunity levels of the past.
As far as "luxury goods", you seem to be using a diff working definition than I do. Yes, USA middle class may be "upper class" by some country's standards, but I'm looking at the USA right now and how things used to work in the USA versus how they do now.
It could be Charon is a relatively new part of Pluto's family, and before they both settled into the current tidal lock, tidal forces baked both, accounting for the newish (non-cratered) surface and mountains.
The other side of Pluto even appears to have an Io-style volcano. Unfortunately, I don't think that side was in range for close-ups.
I'm just focusing on the economy in general here, as traditionally viewed. As far as the philosophy of work, waste, and allocation goes, that's a whole nother big topic(s).
In other words, we can buy more with our unemployment checks?
If consumers are the bottleneck, then who's buying to create the taxable profits in the first place?
Before the revenue and profits would flow back into the middle class. Now they get logjammed at the top. Even if the pie stagnates or shrinks (due to less consumption), a larger percent of that pie goes to the 1%. The slice they get is still bigger than before even if the overall pie is not. Remember, ultimately they only care about the size of the slice they get, not the size of the overall pie.
dBASE (AKA "xBase") also integrated the programming language with the database, and I was super-productive under that language for a good many tasks. The bloated database API's used now are just eye and finger clutter and wasted busy-work and causes of Carpel Tunnel.
xBASE was not suited for formal "enterprise" applications or if you wanted fine control over the UI, but for smaller projects I could crank out apps in a snap. True, it was not always the easiest to maintain if not written carefully, but that's true with just about anything.
At least if you had to reinvent the wheel, the reinvention process was quick. Reuse and DB brand swap-ability is over-rated if it costs too much up front to get it.
Maybe there is a middle ground somewhere between "modern" languages and data-oriented languages. I really really miss the productivity of the integration. I hope it comes back in some incarnation.
Back then I often used the browser's "switch graphics off" option for most sites since I didn't come to the Web for pics...well okay...maybe a tad of porn.
It's hard to switch graphics off in newer browsers. It's deeper in the menu tree or a plug-in.
I want that feature back for mobile devices, because they often either have 1990's speeds and/or have expensive bytes.
But back then it was clear what the new jobs were. We don't see anything equivalent now, at least not in the volume needed to replace those lost to automation or offshoring.
Cars were labor-intensive to build, repair, wash, find fuel for, etc*.
Maybe eventually the replacement jobs will become apparent, but should people wait and suffer until the expected correction comes?
And it may not. Patterns of the past are not necessarily patterns of the future.
Slashdot Mirror
Just say "No" to Unicode.
What Microsoft really wants is more choice without paying for choice. They have a picky hiring process and want what they want. They don't care about society issues or trade-imbalances, that's somebody's else' problem. They just want cheap young choice, and lobby heavily for it.
Gates wanted MS to be the Post-Office
I don't suggest doing away with the current system; just adding a new service. Maybe it can be pioneered by universities, and then when others see how it greatly reduces junk, they too will join.
"640 spams a day oughta be enough for anybody."
One half? High standards! That's like saying a car "only bursts into flames on Tuesdays now". It's a fucked up system; it just went from being mega-fucked down to hyper-fucked. I guess if you are used to being mega-fucked, then hyper-fucked seems better.
The real fix is to charge for email. To send an email, have a 2 cent charge. 1 cent goes to the ISP, and the other to a governing and enforcement body -- the ePost Office.
Spammers right now send for almost free. If they had to pay two cents for each recipient, it would put most out of business.
And they'd have to leave a money trail, making it easier to find and bust them.
That news makes me so happy, I'm gonna send a check to that Nigerian Prince needing help getting his money out of a foreign bank.
You didn't appear to address the question.
And yes, the situation was hypothetical. That's why it was called "hypothetical".
They don't know if the activity is ongoing, or from a recent one-time (or periodic) event. What we have is a mystery.
The artifacts of compression are quite visible in some of the photos. We'll have to wait several months before the non-lossy views come back, due to the distance.
Okay, I guess that makes sense. They model how long it would take to settle that way.
But SOMETHING has been heating both bodies fairly recently. A collision is not likely to affect both at the same time and cause those valleys. A single large body is unlikely to hit both, and lots of small ones are unlikely to create the kind of rifts we see on both.
Addendum,
Let's look at a hypothetical extreme case. Suppose AI got as smart as an average human and easily took over most jobs we know now. Almost nobody would have a job, barring entertainers perhaps, and nearly all the revenue and profits would flow to the owners (the 1%). They have few or no human workers to pay.
Now, under this, how does the middle and lower class get money to buy stuff? (All the wonderful stuff created by the bots.)
I'll describe what I think would happen, but I want to hear your take first.
If they cannot find a job because bots took them, they don't have the opportunity to be "producers". We need to find a way to provide MORE opportunities to be producers to match the opportunity levels of the past.
As far as "luxury goods", you seem to be using a diff working definition than I do. Yes, USA middle class may be "upper class" by some country's standards, but I'm looking at the USA right now and how things used to work in the USA versus how they do now.
How do they know they both locked up early?
(I didn't hear that in the feed. Perhaps I clicked on an edited version.)
He probably has Comcast, and non-compressed tunes take too long.
It could be Charon is a relatively new part of Pluto's family, and before they both settled into the current tidal lock, tidal forces baked both, accounting for the newish (non-cratered) surface and mountains.
The other side of Pluto even appears to have an Io-style volcano. Unfortunately, I don't think that side was in range for close-ups.
I'm just focusing on the economy in general here, as traditionally viewed. As far as the philosophy of work, waste, and allocation goes, that's a whole nother big topic(s).
In other words, we can buy more with our unemployment checks?
Before the revenue and profits would flow back into the middle class. Now they get logjammed at the top. Even if the pie stagnates or shrinks (due to less consumption), a larger percent of that pie goes to the 1%. The slice they get is still bigger than before even if the overall pie is not. Remember, ultimately they only care about the size of the slice they get, not the size of the overall pie.
dBASE (AKA "xBase") also integrated the programming language with the database, and I was super-productive under that language for a good many tasks. The bloated database API's used now are just eye and finger clutter and wasted busy-work and causes of Carpel Tunnel.
xBASE was not suited for formal "enterprise" applications or if you wanted fine control over the UI, but for smaller projects I could crank out apps in a snap. True, it was not always the easiest to maintain if not written carefully, but that's true with just about anything.
At least if you had to reinvent the wheel, the reinvention process was quick. Reuse and DB brand swap-ability is over-rated if it costs too much up front to get it.
Maybe there is a middle ground somewhere between "modern" languages and data-oriented languages. I really really miss the productivity of the integration. I hope it comes back in some incarnation.
Beats Comcast still.
NASA usually has screw-ball acronyms for probe and instrument names. Does "New Horizons" have one?
Non-Earth-Wayward-Historical-Oort-Reaching-(and)-Identifying-Zenith-Oriented-NASA-System or the like? Give 5 pts. to the best guess...
(Mine probably won't pass, I know)
There are two potential Kuiper-belt objects the probe could explore, based on remaining propellant. Both are rather small, though.
I've read the power system will hold out until about 2030, although some instruments may not function very well before that with lower power.
Back then I often used the browser's "switch graphics off" option for most sites since I didn't come to the Web for pics...well okay...maybe a tad of porn.
It's hard to switch graphics off in newer browsers. It's deeper in the menu tree or a plug-in.
I want that feature back for mobile devices, because they often either have 1990's speeds and/or have expensive bytes.
But back then it was clear what the new jobs were. We don't see anything equivalent now, at least not in the volume needed to replace those lost to automation or offshoring.
Cars were labor-intensive to build, repair, wash, find fuel for, etc*.
Maybe eventually the replacement jobs will become apparent, but should people wait and suffer until the expected correction comes?
And it may not. Patterns of the past are not necessarily patterns of the future.
* Kind of like Microsoft Windows