My son is 13 years old and has been training to be a pilot since he was 11. He has taken off and landed a small airplane (with the PIC in the airplane with him, of course) quite a few times. It just goes to show that landing an airplane isn't as difficult as some people think it is
This news story struck me as wonderful news. My son has wanted to be a pilot since he was three years old. If you are one of the lucky few (I am not) who knew what he wanted to be for his whole life, then I envy you as much as I envy my son for having a singular great dream. The notion of drones and computerized pilots scares me because it threatens that dream. Stories in which autopilots and drones are slandered make me happy.
Especially if your children are at the age where they instinctively put things in their mouths, you need to watch them at all times.
Spoken like a true non-parent.
There are NO parents who watch their children "at all times". How long does it take for a child to pick something up, put it in their mouth, and swallow it? About a second, perhaps. If you really "need" to watch a toddler "at all times", think about all the things that are difficult to do because you have to be hawk-like hovering over the child like a neurotic poltergeist without even one second of inattentiveness. Things like: cooking, watching the road (instead of the child) while driving, sex, and probably most importantly, watching your other children.
Monopolies are bad, government or otherwise.
End it.
This is not what the patent system was intended to do, this is madness.
On the contrary, this is precisely the intended effect i.e. elevation of power and profits of the only group that really matters in this: the lawyers. You will take note that irrespective of what comes out of this (Apple loses, Samsung loses, whatever) the lawyers (and bankers - all that money has to get deposited somewhere - also just think of the magnitude of "transaction fees") get their money. A huge pile of money.
In a society run by lawyers the only people who really count are lawyers. Every other activity (such as producing something actually useful) must somehow benefit the true power holders. Thus "rules" are made, which from your perspective might appear "insane", which advertise themselves as "justice" or "promotion of this or that noble goal" to make them defensible to and palatable by the plebs, but simply say "you shall suck a lawyer's dick" once you decipher all the implications of the lawyerly priesthood's "legalise" code in which these "rules" were written.
And since most Western societies are overrun with a whole pyramid of classes of parasites such as lawyers or "financial industry" creatures the pooch is pretty much screwed - at least until the next Great Fuckup (probably an economic collapse the way things are going but its anyone's guess really).
I jailbreak my IOS device for one very important reason:
Apple (and all other money-making enterprises) hate this notion because it interferes with their potential profit. This is why we have to rely on jailbreaking to restore these free speech rights. My IOS5 device is jailbroken, but I cannot get an untethered jailbreak for IOS6.
IANAL. Doesn't matter. This is a philosophical issue.
What a tragedy. Ubuntu's focus on ease of use was such a great leap forward for Linux usability. Now they've lost the plot and forgot about their constituency, instead trying to drive more and more revenue with things the user's don't actually want.
Does anyone want Facebook? How is it that Facebook is free?
When users want "privacy", they want to make sure that their location isn't tracked
When RMS talks about "privacy", keep in mind the monk-like lifestyle he leads. http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html
I'd be willing to accept an "apples and oranges" rejoinder.
It is only a "fallacy" until comes true.
First of all economics is not a science but something akin to a bunch of voodoo followers and witch doctors trying to find "scientific" justification for their pre-conceived ideologies so one must take their opinion on what is and what is not a "fallacy" with a sizeable grain of salt.
And then it is quite obvious that growth in "productivity" in the last 30 years in the most industrialized countries actually lowered (the actual as opposed to superficially perceived) standard of living. Sure on the surface things are more shiny, everyone has an i-dinky, a mcMansion and a car with a GPS. But what most people do not think about is that everyone is up to their ears in debt, one paycheque away from bankruptcy, most of that shiny stuff they think as "theirs" actually belongs to banks/credit card companies and what was once the standard "american dream" - a single income household with a mortage paid in 10 years, fully paid car, children educated without student debt, a stable for-life job and generous pension afterwards, etc -is now something available to the denizens of Wall Street only - if that.
Is this "progress"? Well the concentration of wealth in much fewer hands surely progressed. And workers in China got a lot of menial jobs they did not have before...
But from the perspective of the US worker the "lump of jobs" "fallacy" is looking less "fallacious" by the minute.
Also, closer to 100% automation we get, more broken the assumptions of economists become. At 100% automation a singularity occurs in their equations and the outcomes become unpredictable for average member of society. Given the whole of human history and the nature of people I bet on total dystopia. I don't think I am in a very great danger of losing that bet.
Did you even read his post? Did the "offer unconditional base income (generated from those automated low-level jobs)" part somehow go over your head or did all the foam coming from your mouth block your vision?
That is the standard "carrot on the stick" cop-out offered by various apologists.
Use your head! If Germany actually did it they would make Greece look like a maven of fiscal responsibility and frugal governance in a very short order.
Also how would those "base income" recipients look like? Think "the housing projects" ghettos in the US, complete with burning garbage heaps and graffiti-covered concrete jungles. That is because providing a "base income" in a greed-driven economy instantly devalues everything until that "base income" only guarantees absolute shits for a "life-style".
But most importantly the OP and you ignore the pivotal issue: who gets to control these 100% automated factories of this Brave New Future? Given the current trend of concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands and the mechanics of access to mass-scale advanced technology it will be the plutocratic owners of mega-pan-national corporations who will leave everyone else dirt poor and begging for life's necessities instead of being "liberated from menial tasks" and free to be "creative".
Also, all these language translators who all complained about "soul-sucking" jobs are nearly extinct from
The goal here is, to free humanity from primitive low-level jobs, so that they can concentrate on cool and interesting challenges.
Like diving through dumpsters for your next meal....
Newsflash:
a) the opportunities for truly "cool and interesting challenges" - as opposed to desperate rat-races with ever exponentially increasing demands for "education" and "retraining" and ever exponentially diminishing returns disguised as "challenges" - are orders of magnitude less than the population size. Only those who wish to establish a slavery system based on stratification of the society into "thinkers" and "the rabble" where the gap between the two is unbridgeable (say 40 years of "education" and minimum 12 PhD titles to get your first paying job) are trying to pretend otherwise .
b) most people are unable to deal with, unwilling to and uninterested in "interesting challenges" because these "interesting challenges" usually disrupt their lives beyond repaior and destroy their families,
c) many of those who can deal with these "challenges" when forced to do so find them far less "interesting" and find their lives becoming miserable, unhappy and begin to question the point of this whole societal exercise that trades simple, boring but secure and predictable lives for chaotic, psychotic, insecure, stressful, hand-to-mouth existence in a sadistic competition to meet "interesting challenges" or perish.
And so on.
Your position is that of a corporate shill who tries to pretend that the so-called "progress" (as long as accompanied by vast wealth increases for very few "right people") is self-justifying and that any social cost is acceptable, especially when the cost is placed on the backs of everyone but those select few.
Technocrats and corporatists have stood the whole thing on its head! It is "happiness" that is the goal of the whole exercise and "progress" and "technological advancement" are to be only used in service to attaining happiness. Forcing everyone to meet "interesting" (in the opinion of the few privileged individuals) challenges so that "progress" (for these same individual's bank accounts) can be achieved is only going to in the long run result in "interesting challenges" for the likes of you that involve guns and lining up against walls....
Fast, cheap, good: pick two.