What is odd though is that this is not an enviable market to be in. People spend all kinds of money on things they don't need or replacing things that work perfectly well.

Even with something as expensive as cars, many people just want a newer car for the simple reason that it is newer. Their old car works perfectly well. But hey,,, time to buy a new car.

People spend so much money eating out or on coffee and snacks... yet think twice before spending $1.99 or some app.

People replace clothes all the time just because they're bored of it.

Apple has probably been the most visible in its ability to get people to think of the computing market like they do the rest of life.

I often catch myself thinking about my purchases. I'll be cheap about my computer or worry about spending money on a game that takes so much skill to make (so many programmers, graphic artists, managers...). Then I'll go out and spend $50.00 at a restaurant or blow $50 on a pair of jeans that probably cost $5 to make and rest is all show.

Current PCs are good enough, but it is sad how poorly we treat the field relative to the rest of life.

yeah, a PC is just a tool... and that's the problem.
A cup of coffee is just a cup of coffee.
A pair of jeans is just clothing.

Somehow many other fields manage to make it more than that and that keeps the money going.

As a Canadian, I always find our ability to blame everything on America quite interesting.

Anything that is not some liberal utopian ideal is BECAUSE AMERICA.

We talk about drug laws in Canada... and it's those damn Americans who force us into the war on drugs. Of course Canada's history isn't full of old conservative white folks who feared Chinese workers and their opium.

We talk about sexuality and its the damn American influence that prevents us from being a nudist paradise.
We don't have any history of conservatism or banning Madonna for too much sexuality. All that must come from the US.

We talk of wars and it's always those damn Americans and their war machine. No hint of Canada's history of war.

And yes, when it comes to spying or betraying its own citizens... it's always those darn Americans. Canada didn't have anything to do with Japanese internment because Canada has human rights. The US doesn't. Canada has never had to spy on its citizens. Surely Canada didn't spy on the various Quebec separatist movement historically.

At the end of the day, it's as if people don't realize that historically Canada and the USA are very similar. Both led by old Europeans. Sure there are differences. And much has changed post WW2. But still remarkably the same.

I worked for a company that dealt with health records. In Canada mind you, but our main customers were in the US.

From my view, there are basically 2 main goals for electronic health records.

1. So patient data is portable. People see different health professionals, they move, they show up at the ER...

2. So everything can be put into a code of some sort and easily used for data. Be it for research, insurance, statistics...

My problem with the whole this is you can get really bogged down in 2. I mean really bogged down with all levels of access and control and what to classify things as. It's a whole mess.

But as far as direct patient activity is concerned, only 1 is really of much use.

I always wondered why they didn't just have a simple container format to store everything and then gradually move to standard inner format.

In its simplest form for example of moving from a paper office to an electronic health record, the record could simply be a PDF scan of the paper notes and raw formats for medical images, diagnostic results... I want to emphasize, this would just be a first step... but insanely practical.

Confidentiality and access are of course issues. Only doctors would have access and their access would be logged. Perhaps another encrypted folder requiring your you or you family GP code/passphrase to access for sensitive things (Sexual...).

I think sometimes medical security gets a little too bogged down. Even today, vast numbers of health professionals can simply get your data. It's all in files. It just takes a phone call. What really keeps medical information private is the professionalism of the medical profession. There are legal consequences to such things.

As long as access is logged and patients have the right to see their data (and the logs), there are some pretty good checks in place.

All this attempt to make the system perfect for access is rather silly when in the end, medical professionals can do what they do now... which is call up their buddy or colleague and ask for the record.

Let us imagine for a second that the technology for the autonomous weapons becomes so advanced that they actually lead to a LOWER on average casualty count for civilians.

This could easily be the case as they would not be so affected by emotions, fear, revenge...

This is very much the case given for robotic cars. On average, they will get into fewer accidents.

However, what we really fear is the loss of control for individual circumstances. The lone child chasing after a ball on the street and the robotic car swerves to avoid the ball and his the girl.
Or the family approaching an autonomous weapons system in a war zone while they're arguing about dinner and the weapon system takes that as a threat and starts firing.

It's all an interesting dilemma even if the technology works much better for the overall goals.
The loss of human control for individual circumstances is something we definitely fear a lot.
Validly perhaps.

What is our obsession with the Middle Class?
There are plenty of definitions for it, but basically it boils down to being 'better' than those in the lower or working class.

The old teacher or factory worker was middle class because they could dine at a restaurant where lower class people work. They could travel overseas to Mexico and live like kings for a week using cheap Mexican labor.

Those who focus on the income gap as a measure of the middle class will have to justify why our society NEEDS to have a lower class. In their metrics, its almost impossible for all of us to be middle class. If we all earned the same amount of money, we'd all be equally poor... as if we all earned minimum wage and you know how they rail against that.

However, we stop thinking in terms of the income gap and start thinking in terms of making sure we ALL have a decent life. That is what technology has done and continues to do.

Yes, technology and automation is going to kill mass jobs in my view. There will be jobs for innovators and some highly skilled people... but these jobs are miniscule compared to the 6-7 billion people on Earth.

The technology and social conditions (most of us aren't plopping out 10 kids anymore) in the Western world today easily allows us to all have decent food, decent housing, decent communications, decent free time.

We should be working less hours, sharing the regular jobs we have. By regular jobs, I mean jobs that are routine that people could simply train to do. They don't need to be innovative. Teaching, nursing, construction, agriculture...

We should be forcussing less on articifical markets meant to create life disparities simply for growth. Things like housing have become expensive simply so people can live in the hot area. Is this really a good use of our labor... so can outbid one another?

I don't pretend this will be easy by any stretch of the imagination. So much of our society is based on growth for both the left and right, that it will be a huge stretch to get over this. But it is where we need to be.

We're too efficient and that is a very good thing.

Unfortunately, this is another example where software developers are not a profession.

One could argue that Intel isn't going to spend the time and money to do all those things. They require man power to fund, and so they're not likely to do them.

Microsoft was/is one of the better companies in this regard and they mainly did it because you were locked into their platform and APIs. Their whole money making scheme was based around software being made for their platform.

But ultimately, this gap is what differentiates a profession from a regular job. A profession mandates certain behavior and standards. It's not all about money or efficiency.

Yes, as a professional, you might tell someone to fck off is they just handed you a bare spec and a compiler. Just like a lawyer might tell you to fck off if you handed them some contract scribbled written by pen and paper by your cousin on a napkin.

There was a time this was done more in certain fields. I have co-workers who used to work for some of the older telecoms. They complain about the amount of documentation and verification they used to have to provide internally. But that is what made things professional to some extent.

But we're not professionals. We might like to act like them and some of us manage to get away with it because we really are that valuable. But in the end, we're just worker bees. We suck it up and deal with the lack of professionalism. We will hack something to work. We will do our own performance tests and verification instead of demanding the professionals on the other end do their job. Most of all, we'll pride ourselves on being able to make it all work in the end and mock anyone who has better expectation of the field as not being to hack it.

Pretty much any political ideology has it's followers as children who just don't want to do thing or be responsible.

But the actual ideology itself is generally pretty academic. Whether it is communism or progressivism or classical liberalism/libertarianism...

What is particularly annoying about Stross and people like him who detest BitCoin is they take it as a given that progressivism/capitalism is the only real way. Anything else is just for stupid rebellious children.

It's as if the whole enlightenment and people like Adam Smith, John Locke, Jean-Baptiste Say, Thomas Malthus... were just children in the basement.

It's as if he cannot see that every point he makes is actually a very big positive for many people.

As for me, I'm rather blah about political ideologies.

Not really. If you take a step be, you quickly see most people belief's in anything they care about resemble religion.

People talk about their political beliefs, their love for LRT transit, technology, art, their healthcare career... with all the good and bad of religion.

I sometimes find when people talk about these things, they're actually more passionate in both the good and bad way, than religious people are.

I would assume this is because religion is pretty vague and many things are left for the unseen. Hell is a concept, but its all imaginary as far as we can see.

But the earthly things people care about are huge and they carry real life consequences. If you have political beliefs, you see the consequences right away. Poor people, wars, infringements of freedom...

If you care about transit. You see the consequences every day. Traffic jams, taxes, crowded busses and subways, late for work...

And if you care about code, you see the consequences every day. Bugs and bugs, performance problems, documentation, crashes, rewriting bad code...

When you get down to it, most people are far more religious about such things than religious people are about religion.

Well this affects a lot of people. You'll often hear American Democrats say the 'poor' vote against their self interest.

That's actually a remarkably arrogant statement. As if they 'know' Democratic policies benefit the poor.

In reality, it is much more complex.

1. I'm in Canada and a lot of poor people anecdotally have changed to either vote NDP (very left) or conservative. Their reasons are that the Liberals (more similar to Democrats in the US) aren't working for their interests. They work for the public sector unions and special interests groups... Some have enough hope in government and vote NDP. Other say screw it, the government will never care about the poor and just vote conservative hoping to at least keep what they can.

2. A lot of people really do wish to be left alone. It's not against their interests, if their goal is to be left alone. I grew up in Africa. One thing I can tell you is that apart from the violence, I liked the life down there. I don't know what my poverty level was, but it was probably pretty poor. The thing is, we had a roof on our head and lived pretty much okay. I suspect a lot of people in 'red states' might appreciate the independent living and simple life more than those in other states. You can live very cheaply in red states. It might not be the best life. It might not have the best healthcare. It might not bring them above certain poverty threshold numbers. But they can live in their own home and do their own thing.

I honestly couldn't picture myself poor in a 'blue state' I'm currently in a city (Toronto) in Canada. I certainly couldn't bring myself to live poorly here. Housing and property taxes up the wazoo. Fees, fees, and more fees.

If I ever lost my job or became poor, I would also seek the best way to reduce my cost of living and live a simple life. I'd move out to the boonies somewhere.

I know this is not everyone's cup of tea. But it is what it is.

3. The US is not some socialist state that helps the poor. I think Canadians are starting to see this in their own policies as well. If you look at Europe and others, you'll start to see the same thing as money gets tight. But it's especially true in the US. The Democrats aren't 'left' enough to really help the poor. Much like in Canada, they really just help the public sector unions, and a few sectors like the auto industry and healthcare... They're not out there giving poor people jobs. Sure, they speak in the name of the poor. But people have heard that before.

4. This last point, I think is more on the values level for the red-state. They know everything has a cost and things will have to be paid for. Also values play an interesting role. You mentioned the 'multi-coloured worker-bees vote left'. Well think about that from the red-state American. These 'colored' people are leaving their ghetto country and have ghetto leftist values that made their country ghetto. If we need to keep America prosperous, we need the values that made America great.

Again, I'm not saying I agree with that, but let it sink in for a second. Red-states aren't getting immigrants on mass from Finland/Germany. They're getting it from Mexico.

The interesting thing is that the real test of ObamaCare will not be in this website.

Yes, I suppose anti-ObamaCare people can say they couldn't even get the website right. The rest of it must be a disaster.

On the other hand, we have pro-ObamaCare people cheering when the website gets fixed or more people sign up.

I dare say, all this website stuff will be worked out eventually. It's all rather irreleevant. The real test of ObamaCare will be in its costs, subsidies, who it affects business/people, payments to medical providers, how it impacts MediCare, how it impacts innovation, how it impacts rationing, how it affects current insurance plans, how it distorts the labor market, how it reduces costs, how it provides better healthcare...

You know, all the important stuff.

I taught high school computer science for a while and I an a software developer.

I think almost anyone will agree that teaching how to think, understand and create algorithms, and critical thinking is the goal of computer science.

However, how do you express those thoughts? You could do it through the use of abstract mathematical symbols or perhaps pseudo-code.

Or you can express thoughts same thoughts via a programming language.

Better still, using a programming language lets you see the actual results of what you programmed, debug, find problems, view variable contents...

People who criticize the teaching of computer science always seem to hate on the choice of programming language. Look, I agree sometimes schools pick a practical or industry used programming language.

But this is not a problem. The problem resides in what you do with that language. If all you teach kids about programming is calling into libraries, then yeah, it is a problem. But if you teach them logic and control and variables, which most programming languages provide, then you're doing fine.

Even languages like Java which hide memory allocation are not that bad. This is high school computer science. If you can get them to understand variables and a for-loop, you're a miracle worker :)

They can learn the details of memory management in college/university or another advanced high-school class.

While I fully agree with the workers affected and there needs to be something done for them, it is not immoral or unethical to work in the field.

Personally, the workers should be redeployed and workshare as needed.

Instead of hiring 1 person at 90k/year, hire 2 at 45k and have them work half time. More families are supported. More people have free time.

Yes, this might not be possible in certain fields, but it is possible in most fields.

Keep spreading the jobs and reducing the hours worked so all people contribute something and get paid.

While I agree, I think you overstate what they wanted.

People aren't that complicated. They aren't really interested in getting a cut of the profits. They aren't particularly interested in income distribution.

What people want is to be OK. It really doesn't get any simpler than that. And people who used to be OK and then were suddenly not OK being displaced by a machine... are going to protest.

And there's nothing wrong with that. I find the language we have to use today absolutely silly. As if you need to have a moral reason to just want to be OK. We feel the need to demonize profits and say its only fair workers get a cut of the profits. And what about the person who ever had a good job to begin with? And they suddenly not deserving of the cut of profits?

Let's be honest about it. People want to be OK.
And when you have something disruptive, the society had better make sure there are ways to be OK.

Maybe it's income redistribution.
Maybe it's government creating jobs for people.
Maybe it's getting out of government so the cost of living goes down.
Maybe it's organizing work sharing programs so more the actual work is spread out.
Maybe it's training people for new work. ...

Whatever it is... but people just want to be OK... and that's a good enough moral reason to do something. You don't need anything else beyond that. You are a person and you want to live a comfortable life.

Basic income is one way.
Work Sharing is another.

I personally favor work sharing because there's going to be a very long period where human work will need to be done.
You won't motivate people to do work if you're handing out enough money for people to do nothing and live a decent life.

Sure, we can all imagine doing interesting or fulfilling work for free or when other people are getting free money. Maybe a university professor, family doctor, researcher...

But would you want to be a doctor working the midnight shift in the ER all the time? Would you want to be the practical nurse cleaning up after the elderly? Would you want to be the guy working in a mine for lithium? Would you want to be the person loading and unloading trucks for supermarkets?

I'd much rather we work share the work we can all do.

Everything seems to swing. But one thing is certain, always follow the money.

This whole 'contracting' affair on both the public and private sector does not produce the highest quality products. Why should it? None of the incentives are there.

The contracting company doesn't want to build something that works without flaws for a minimal profit. They want to have continuing profits. This is not unique to big corporations. Just try dealing with any contractor or mechanic. Sure if you *know* them, you can deal with them honestly somewhat. Or if you pay them enough... and they can cost a lot, you can get an honest deal.

At best, you hope they do a good job and that means you build a good relationship, and that means more business in the future. But of course, when this comes to government contracts, what that natural process means is that it gets called corruption.

On the other hand, you can have the builder operate it. There's some incentive there for them to do a good job as they get a cut of continuing operations. I think there is some hope that the 'cloud' will actually provide for better overall software. Although of course this results in vendor lockin and could potentially cause all kinds of other business problems.

Or you could build it in house. Then of course you run the risk of an overstaffed bureaucracy and unionized government workers.

There's no real easy solution. But I do think the dominant view has swayed too far towards contracting.