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Comment: The US is not the pollution bad guy (Score 1) 327

by magarity (#47418187) Attached to: Blueprints For Taming the Climate Crisis

I just got back from Shanghai where the pollution haze limits visibility to a couple of miles. In Beijing it's down to a few hundred yards most days. Let me know how the relative climate impact of electric cars in the US vs the economic impact and compare with the climate impact of 1/3 of all cars sold worldwide being in China in 5 or 6 years from now and I bet almost all of them will be gasoline powered. The international economic competitive impact to all electric in the US would be huge compared to the relative environmental impact.

Comment: Re:Cry Me A River (Score 4, Insightful) 516

by causality (#47415533) Attached to: Normal Humans Effectively Excluded From Developing Software

But the real problem is this impression that you have to be born 80% as smart as Einstein to get into this field, and that the learning curve is impossible for regular people. That's totally wrong. Average intelligence plus persistence is all you need.

What you really need is to deal with this anti-intellectualism that's so popular in the culture today, and replace it with genuine curiosity, a joy of discovery, and a delight at learning new things.

Do that, and the rest will naturally follow, and not just in software development.

Comment: Re:Modern Day Anti-Evolutionists (Score 2) 345



So, to people 100 years from now. What did we do? Keep a powerful economy so you can have flying cars and autodocs, or weaken and hobble is so you don't?

We are the people in 1900 looking to hobble ourselves to "help" those way off in the future...of 2014.

Thanks for the "help".

Comment: Criteria (Score 1) 274


Created a programming language?
Written a book (on programming)?
Created a program that was somehow valuable or meaningful?
Educated other programmers?

Comment: Re:Misused? Murder is intrinsic in communism. (Score 1) 521

by gfxguy (#47408191) Attached to: Foxconn Replacing Workers With Robots
The problem with your assessment is that everyone wants to do music, art, entertainment, science, research and experimentation... nobody wants to clean the bathrooms, haul trash, unclog the shit in the sewers... we need all those people, too. What's their "motivation?" Let's face it, MOST jobs are shit. People might find it rewarding to create new serums, materials, hardware or software, music and entertainment... who finds it rewarding to flip burgers?

Comment: Re:Imperial Police (Score 2) 175

by physicsphairy (#47407695) Attached to: US Arrests Son of Russian MP In Maldives For Hacking

Respecting territorial sovereignty is for when other countries can do something about it. A small island nation of a few hundred thousand people need not apply.

Still, it seems a bit excessive to do an extradition raid for someone who is apparently accused of hacking into zoo and deli websites. His relation to the Russian MP is probably what has earned him the special attention, part of Obama's plan to punish Russia. The message is clear, "Invade its allies and America will spoil your vacation."

What do you suppose the probability is that after some further negotiations the MP's son and Snowden trade places?

Comment: Re:If everyone loses their jobs... (Score 1) 521

by physicsphairy (#47405225) Attached to: Foxconn Replacing Workers With Robots

Let's say everybody does lose their jobs and is unable to buy goods or services. Is it more likely they will (a) resign to slowly starve or (b) start growing and trading for food amongst each other, providing each other the services they can't get from the robot elite, band together for social protection, etc.?

Shutting someone out from one economy just puts in them in another economy.

Ultimately, even if it costs the unsophisticated people more in time and investment to produce the same goods, the robot elitists don't care about *that* cost, they only care how many of the newly minted Robot Supreme Data Coins the poor humans want in exchange for the same service. That's an arbirtary quantity and the poor humans can always offer a lower bid than the robot automation centers.

But, remember, this whole problem came about because we found such an incredibly cheap and efficient way to produce all our resources. So, even though the humans are going to be forced to trade for what the robot elitists consider virtually nothing, for them it will have vast purchasing power since goods are now so cheap.

In general, I don't think keeping people employed is ever going to be a problem. What the onset of robot workers actually means is that relative income for human workers is increasing to where it is too costly for manufacturing companies to compete for their services compared to the other opportunities they have.

The real problem with super-efficient resource generation is its effect on political dynamics. One person controlling half the economy may be perfectly harmless up to the point where they realize they can use that vast wealth to dictate what laws will be passed. But, who knows, maybe at that point we'll all be so well off that it will actually be harder to buy votes and loyalty than it is today.

Comment: Re:better than what we have now (Score 4, Insightful) 245

I am not sure what planet you're yabbering from. They made a request. This is the opposite of hijacking.

From DC's point of view, it's called being nice. They need only send a letter agreeing to it, and they get good will. If they are tied up in exclusivity contracts, you have a quick conference call with those other businesses and explain the following: At this point, I would be in favor of an organized boycot of the upcoming Superman/Batman movie
