No matter what your profession, it seems that working with the hands improves anyone's problem solving skills.
It HAS to otherwise you WON'T last working for someone else. I don't mind working but I try to minimize the time and effort working to make the tasks I do as easy and efficient as possible.
Parent site
Their Youtube Page
http://www.youtube.com/user/TEDtalksDirector
Worth a look!
(I'm not a shill/sockpuppet)
But if you don't want to spend the NEXT 40 years of your life digging ditches, cleaning drains, or working the fry baskets at McDonald's, you *might* just want to take the long view, champ.
If you have a college degree and have the opportunity, you can avoid this fate.
I graduated high school, went to college, and wasn't able to finish and get a degree due to no fault of my own.
But that's O.K. as later I was able to put the key skills I was able learned in college in a paying job so for that I am thankful.
It would help if college wasn't so expensive but it appears it has to be to maintain the socioeconomic 'caste system' between 'white collar' and 'blue collar' jobs here where I live.
When you live in a capitalistic society, you need large amounts of money to 'talk properly'....
I don't see how that is possible....
[executive summary]
In a nutshell, how can computers which are fininte and digital, model the real world (which is analog and has 'infinite precison' and is non-digital) with 100% precison--it is fundamentally impossible. Look at the audiophiles complain about music CD sound quality (too brittle) and prefer to listen to their vinyl records (warm pleasing sound).
[longer explanation]
As wonderful and helpful as computers are, all they are are combination adding machines/filing cabinets. They must be told what to do to generate any meaningful data. Or they can be told to monitor some phenomena and store the readings. I think self-aware AIs would be possible if they simply refuse to do impossible tasks--like computing to the last digit, the value of pi (3.1415926535...) [Star Trek in-joke] or do tasks that have no end benefit BEFORE THEY START (like WOPR 'wargaming' at the end of the famous 1983 film -- I guess WOPR didn't have the horrors that befell Hiroshima and Nagasaki programmed into it and couldn't make the leap of logic that 'nuclear war is VERY bad' -- even more so on a global scale).
So, self-aware AI appears impossible to me until computers know any tasks is impossible or unfruitfull before doing them and can spontaneousely combine existing information into new useful forms that didn't exist before in spite of the 'combinatorial explosion'.
What if the trespasser is illiterate/dyslexic/doesn't understand the language the sign is written in?
Won't you still be held at fault if they get hurt?
The real challenge is going to be IFF software - how do you judge a civilian from a combatant, or one side's soldiers from the other?
Have the robot visually detect stuff pointed at it.
Fire ONE warning shot in the air.
See if people scatter (AWAY from the robot).
If they don't, OPEN FIRE ON THEM! (Or if they throw stuff at it [could be grenades and not rocks])
(Doesn't acount for hidden snipers with RPGs though.)
Money and firearms are the TRUE language of this world. Just about everybody respects them regardless of language or culture.
Feel free to poke holes in my simple combat AI. My approach doesn't need to waste time (or memory storage capacity) trying to identify a weapon someone is pointing at it.
But seriously, the 'combat waldo' concept is enough for modern, 'high-tech' warfare -- ED-209 in ROBOCOP (1987) proved an armed, autonomous robot going haywire can lead to disaterous results to those operating/using them against the enemy.
In other words, when it comes to warfare, keep people 'in the loop'. This is done at the highest level with nuclear missile command and control to prevent what happened in DR. STRANGELOVE (1964) and what almost happened in WarGames (1983) from ACTUALLY happening. Even then, there were several 'close calls'
Related links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarGames
If it were desperate people, blame the greediness of 'Corporate America' that drove people to steal essentially your whole garden just to have food to eat. I know government welfare exists in the USA...if you are destitute enough to qualify for it. Otherwise, that avenue of aid is closed when no other form of 'social safety net' is available for those affected (i.e. the 'economic homeless'). This might have been the case here.
If it were vandals, this appears to be the inevitable conclusion of 'theft vs infringement' that gets debated (endlessely) here on Slashdot. The vandals can't (or don't want to) tell the difference in copying computer files illegally or depriving people the fruit of their labors out in 'the real world'. They benefit at your expense and they don't care anyway.
You could grow a garden inside your home if possible to prevent this from happening again but likely you will draw the interest of the police who will think you are growing marijuana indoors. All it would take is a busybody, wannabe cop, or a 'griefer' to 'turn you in' erroneously.
In western, developed societies (such as the USA) a 'handful' of people control most of the wealth in that country. Their goal appears twofold:
1) Maintain the status quo.
2) Keep as much money as possible flowing...to their pockets.
To do that, almost everyone else in such societies are treated as cogs in a giant machine that benefits only an elite few at the top of the socioeconomic ladder. The (somewhat) exception to this are those that work visibly in the mass media industry comprising music, movies, and publishing. These individuals can (and do) influence the masses and are paid very well for their services but their employers make even more from their efforts...unless they are 'self employed' AND 'household names' in which case they pocket most of the profits.
Unfortunately, 'money makes the world go around' and it is for that reason 10% of the people starve in 'greed is good' societies that obsess over anything that can be reduced to 'dollars and cents'.
The film Fight Club memorably delved into these things. In retrospect, I am surprised it was made at all but it was ultimately made because a group of people thought they could turn a anarchic bestselling book into a hit movie. It didn't happen at first but now the film is acknowledged as a classic and there hasn't been a major Hollywood film like it released since then that I know of.
Trade your games directly on craigslist. It works everytime for me.
So who acts first on a craigslist transaction?
How does a transaction 'play out' in order to avoid theft (or fraud)?
When I used to buy stuff off of eBay, I paid with a U.S. Postal money order. I rationalized if I got ripped off, I'd file a complaint at the Post Office and let the Feds take care of the rest. That's how I avoided getting 'ripped off' but I did have a close call one time....
That is the best way eliminate all the email spam clogging the internet if people weren't so greedy.
Sadly, that likely won't happen due to apathy and inertia 'by the masses'.
(Insert Monty Python 'Spam' skit here -- that skit 'predicted' the 'menace' caused by repetative, redundant communication.)
appears simple: chose generosity.
Unfortunately, such a stance is ridiculed as untenable due to the overwhelming 'culture of greed' that pervades developed countries and
'spills over' into the underdeveloped/undeveloped ones via 'exported popular media' from developed countries (mostly the USA) that showcase 'greedy behavior' (primarily game shows, crime-dramas, sporting events, and financial news reports).
I've read elsewhere on the Net (in another Slashdot post?) that in some 'third world' countries, people will share what litte food they have with others -- even when it is only three mouthfuls of food for the whole day.
Generosity is sharing and caring in its purest form. Alas, it is anathema in 'greed is good' capitalistic societies and countries.
The internet exists to link people and computers together. It is not designed to make money,
Tell that to eBay, PayPal, Amazon, Google, and iTunes. If these online companies were not making money and showing a constant stream of profit, they would not still be on the internet to this day.
eBay, PayPal, and Amazon, make money as 'middlemen' to the physical enconomy comprising largely of the buying and selling of 3-dimensional objects. Should 'replicator technology' seen in STAR TREK become a reality, they will become unecessary and will fall by the wayside of history.
Google makes money as an ad agency that happens to own and operate a wildly popular internet search engine and a complete copy of the non-binary portion of USENET via Google Groups. Once somebody comes up with a search engine that is consistently better than Google and mirrors Google Groups in its entirety, they too will fall by the wayside of history as well.
iTunes makes money by selling 'digital downloads' of pieces of popular culture (primarily music). They are proof that it is possible to make money online selling non 3-dimensional objects. Once their entire catalogue of downloads is available for free online elsewhere on the internet, they too will fall by the wayside of history as well.
As the parent poster said, the internet exists to link people and computers together--it also exists to exchange information in the form of computer files. The media cartels realize the internet can distribute (their) content cheaper and faster (and illegally) than they can which will eventually make them fall by the wayside of history as well. There response to this looming threat in the past shows that they are desparate and will do ANYTHING to continue to exist. This is simply self-preservation in action.
I used to co-write 'bespoke code' at my last job.
As long as I understood what was wanted, I was happy.
My goal was to write code that worked correctly, ran as fast as possible, and was easy to modify and upgrade--time is money as they say.
As long as I was someplace comfortable, and reasonably quiet (and smoke-free if at all possible) I was happy coding. Listening to movie OSTs (mostly symphonic ones and not the more popular 'songtracks') and techno on headphones was a plus.
Ya'll hear about the geometer who went to the beach to catch some rays and became a tangent ?
