OK, let's look at the effect of technology on a society.
The star trek universe has:
1) Replicators capable of creating any material object except gold pressed latinum.
2) Holodecks (presumably a replicated product) that can create any imaginable experience.
3) A seemingly unlimited number of colony worlds where any group can migrate via the magic of ships with warp drive (created via the replicator)
4) Unlimited energy using matter-antimatter.
OK, so in that environment, a capitalistic society is nearly impossible. There's nothing to buy or sell. As replicators themselves are replicated, anything of "value" can be had for virtually nothing. Acquisition, per se, now means nothing. Experiences themselves are similarly cheap, or free. If your neighbors complain, you leave and join the anarcho-syndicalist collective colony on Kaka 4. Where does capitalism fit in with this technology?
Lived there for 7 years in the 90s. Discovered that "New Mexico" was spanish for "eternal poverty." Discovered that my well paid job in San Francisco brought minimum wage in NM. Still, the place is pretty. Good place to visit and commune with nature. At the moment though, the economy is a notch above third world and so was the wealth distribution (i.e. a few rich white folks, a lot of poor white and mexican folks). Santa Fe has this, particularly.
As stated by others, most are in for drug charges.
Nor will this change. Drugs were made illegal as an easy pretext for jailing minorities in the early 20th century when African Americans and Mexicans were the primary users of marijuana. When almost everyone is doing something and you make it illegal, it becomes much easier to control them. Remember prohibition?
So for these guys, I have a lot of sympathy. For violent criminals I have none and would prefer that they all be locked in solitary and dosed heavily with Prozac for the duration of their stay. Allowing them to form ANY sort of social group or interact with their buddies outside is the reason we have gangs, gang culture and all the crap that goes with it. If we can't decide to kill them, we should at least neutralize them.
Well in *my* day, we didn't use any of those fancy dancy text editors! No sir, by golly, we used honest-to-god mechanical switches on a panel to program in our boolean logic and THAT'S THE WAY WE LIKED IT!
is in my garage and three of my closets, if the level of disorder there is any indication. I'm sure there's at least one supermassive black hole in there...
We're talking contractors here. Assuming they *don't* steal your money outright, you're lucky that the shingles stay on at all, much less have well connected, insulated wiring.
Bank in 1999. electricity has been generated in space by dragging a copper tether though the earth's magnetic field (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/astronauts-seek-power-in-space-1319781.html).
Presumably this produced drag. Can't this "drag" be used for some near earth maneuvering using a mesh system to create an electromagnetic sail by which one might tack? Or is the amount of force to small to be useful?
You know I run into your attitude a lot in the geekdom. So tell me, could you get a sewage plant running in a hurry if you had to? How about a nuclear power generation facility? How long would it take you to make a light bulb, or genetically engineered bacteria, or a car, from scratch?
The answer to the above would be, "quite a while, if at all." At a guess, the set of all of these things is NOT within your immediate area of expertise. The fact of the matter is that we can't all be experts in everything (Hint: one subset of everything is "computer operation.")
I'm guessing you experience a smooth, mindless day-to-day enjoyment of automobiles, electricity, disease resistant wheat products, antibiotics, surgery and toilets without a great deal of detailed knowledge of their operation beyond "where the levers and buttons are." My guess is that you wouldn't buy a car that demanded too much operational knowledge of its circuitry, hydraulics and software. Or a toilet that required intimate knowledge of sewage flow rates during autumnal rainstorms.
So what, computer technology is "special?" I think not. I think software company CEOs are cheap, and that programmers like myself tend to be lazy and that so far, we've been able to get away with it. I also think that this happy little situation is unlikely to continue forever.
All your engineering belong to customer service.
on
Bad PC Sales Staff Exposed
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Excellent point. Machines don't matter. People matter. ONLY people matter. Machines exist only to serve humans.
So, the deal is this. They paid money for your POS OS, machine or software. It had better work. Period. End of story. They don't care about closing processes, ending threads, reclaiming memory from the stack, optimizing the sorting algorithm, and so on. What they care about is the when they ask the computer to jump, the only question the computer has is "how high?"
Seriously, computers are about money, provided by users who DO NOT CARE about any of the mechanics any more than you care about the mechanics of your local sewage processing facility. Your job (and mine) as a programmer is to wipe their hineys gently and dispose of the waste, preferably without asking. You may hate it, as I do, but THAT'S YOUR JOB. Get over it. Don't like it? Get a new one.
Slashdot Mirror
it disturbs me.
Sound familiar to anybody? Hope you enjoy that next doctor visit, plane ride, etc.
Hey, I hear they want to make a smart grid! Any takers on reliability? Anybody?
It says we don't eat rocky mountain oysters.
Sort of a "metro-insectual?" (Buh duh BUH!)
Why did my mother macrame? These are questions best left to philosophers.
Infinite copyrights.... the horror.... the horror....
Ordinarily, I'd say it's hard to build a capitalist society solely on booze, but I *do* have Scottish ancestry...
I'm a big proponent of well regulated capitalism that doesn't assume infinite growth is either possible or desirable. Other than that, I'm with you.
Finally, Windows will run fast enough to be useful.
Hmmm. Hard to say on that one. Perhaps intellectual property is all that's left. Could you survive on public domain literature and music? Probably.
OK, let's look at the effect of technology on a society.
The star trek universe has:
1) Replicators capable of creating any material object except gold pressed latinum.
2) Holodecks (presumably a replicated product) that can create any imaginable experience.
3) A seemingly unlimited number of colony worlds where any group can migrate via the magic of ships with warp drive (created via the replicator)
4) Unlimited energy using matter-antimatter.
OK, so in that environment, a capitalistic society is nearly impossible. There's nothing to buy or sell. As replicators themselves are replicated, anything of "value" can be had for virtually nothing. Acquisition, per se, now means nothing. Experiences themselves are similarly cheap, or free. If your neighbors complain, you leave and join the anarcho-syndicalist collective colony on Kaka 4. Where does capitalism fit in with this technology?
Lived there for 7 years in the 90s. Discovered that "New Mexico" was spanish for "eternal poverty." Discovered that my well paid job in San Francisco brought minimum wage in NM. Still, the place is pretty. Good place to visit and commune with nature. At the moment though, the economy is a notch above third world and so was the wealth distribution (i.e. a few rich white folks, a lot of poor white and mexican folks). Santa Fe has this, particularly.
Bottom line: Anyone's "cloud" is inherently insecure and it's reliability is outside your control.
Sure thing. And how do you propose to do that? Effectively, that is.
As stated by others, most are in for drug charges.
Nor will this change. Drugs were made illegal as an easy pretext for jailing minorities in the early 20th century when African Americans and Mexicans were the primary users of marijuana. When almost everyone is doing something and you make it illegal, it becomes much easier to control them. Remember prohibition?
So for these guys, I have a lot of sympathy. For violent criminals I have none and would prefer that they all be locked in solitary and dosed heavily with Prozac for the duration of their stay. Allowing them to form ANY sort of social group or interact with their buddies outside is the reason we have gangs, gang culture and all the crap that goes with it. If we can't decide to kill them, we should at least neutralize them.
Well in *my* day, we didn't use any of those fancy dancy text editors! No sir, by golly, we used honest-to-god mechanical switches on a panel to program in our boolean logic and THAT'S THE WAY WE LIKED IT!
Now get off my lawn!
is in my garage and three of my closets, if the level of disorder there is any indication. I'm sure there's at least one supermassive black hole in there...
We're talking contractors here. Assuming they *don't* steal your money outright, you're lucky that the shingles stay on at all, much less have well connected, insulated wiring.
Bank in 1999. electricity has been generated in space by dragging a copper tether though the earth's magnetic field (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/astronauts-seek-power-in-space-1319781.html).
Presumably this produced drag. Can't this "drag" be used for some near earth maneuvering using a mesh system to create an electromagnetic sail by which one might tack? Or is the amount of force to small to be useful?
Personally, I think I'll set up a Van DeGraff generator. Really adds to the mad scientist lair effect too.
You know I run into your attitude a lot in the geekdom. So tell me, could you get a sewage plant running in a hurry if you had to? How about a nuclear power generation facility? How long would it take you to make a light bulb, or genetically engineered bacteria, or a car, from scratch?
The answer to the above would be, "quite a while, if at all." At a guess, the set of all of these things is NOT within your immediate area of expertise. The fact of the matter is that we can't all be experts in everything (Hint: one subset of everything is "computer operation.")
I'm guessing you experience a smooth, mindless day-to-day enjoyment of automobiles, electricity, disease resistant wheat products, antibiotics, surgery and toilets without a great deal of detailed knowledge of their operation beyond "where the levers and buttons are." My guess is that you wouldn't buy a car that demanded too much operational knowledge of its circuitry, hydraulics and software. Or a toilet that required intimate knowledge of sewage flow rates during autumnal rainstorms.
So what, computer technology is "special?" I think not. I think software company CEOs are cheap, and that programmers like myself tend to be lazy and that so far, we've been able to get away with it. I also think that this happy little situation is unlikely to continue forever.
Cheers!
My unofficial title for years now.
Excellent point. Machines don't matter. People matter. ONLY people matter. Machines exist only to serve humans.
So, the deal is this. They paid money for your POS OS, machine or software. It had better work. Period. End of story. They don't care about closing processes, ending threads, reclaiming memory from the stack, optimizing the sorting algorithm, and so on. What they care about is the when they ask the computer to jump, the only question the computer has is "how high?"
Seriously, computers are about money, provided by users who DO NOT CARE about any of the mechanics any more than you care about the mechanics of your local sewage processing facility. Your job (and mine) as a programmer is to wipe their hineys gently and dispose of the waste, preferably without asking. You may hate it, as I do, but THAT'S YOUR JOB. Get over it. Don't like it? Get a new one.
Or better still, uncles, a type of ant that fights network ants, scattering them and making them useless.
That's overladies to you buddy. Hello from your ant Mabel.