I'd rather be a marauder. What's an good apocalypse without them?
I am reminded of the words of the notorious pirate Bartholomew Roberts: "...a merry life and a short one shall be my motto."
I have long held the belief that software can be life critical at times and software engineers should be held to the same professionalism as any other form of engineering.
It is a matter of fact, not belief, that software can be life critical. For the majority of software, though, cost and time-to-market considerations far outweigh coding to the highest professional standard. "Good enough" wins.
In most places "Software Engineers" meet no accreditation requirements, have no requirement to belong to any society which regulates ethics, experience or training.
I've worked with real engineers, ethics was more important than their education.
There is no requirement to belong, but at least there is a society that promulgates ethics.
Trying to stuff everyone into a particular mold is like something straight out of Anthem or 1984, and it just doesnt work.
Right. Best to take a page out of "Brave New World", so everyone from alphas to epsilons can be happy.
If I get my hands on the asshat who's been poaching my unicorns there'll be hell to pay
It's those guys from the marketing department.
Can you show me the math that proves that there's no difference between an uncompressed audio source and a 320kbps mp3?
There's a difference between "no difference at all" and "no difference that can be detected by human hearing".
P.S.: I'm quite skeptical about sequestration of CO2. I don't think it will work, and if it does work, I think it will be too expensive to use. The BEST form of sequestration is to grow forests, turn them into paper, and print books on them, with chemically treated paper so it won't decay. This doesn't add in exogenous energy costs, and storage is not a major issue. If it is, just build more libraries...and fund them to retain books. Burying CO2 can expect to have undetected leakages over a period of time, and to add significantly to the cost of generating energy. To me it looks like a boondoggle created to justify continuing to burn coal.
Carbon capture plants will require 25–40% more coal to produce the same amount of electricity compared to blithely-dump-CO2-into-the-air plants.That would tighten up the competition with wind and solar, but not make it "too expensive to use". CO2 leaking from storage remains a legitimate concern.
As for growing forests, I like the idea of turning them into buildings.
If you don't use soap ever, you probably are human contact free too... although what did they use before soap was made?
Ancient Romans used olive oil.
I can't be replaced because I write fiction for a living. In English. I can write up to 12,000 words a day.
An AI capable of writing fiction that people would buy and read may well be less than 30 years away. Once it happens even James Patterson will play John Henry to the indefatigable writing automaton.
and what if it was paid for by using bitcoin...
now i think this post has all the magic words to make it a successful slashertisment.
Not all of the magic words. "What if the next presidential limo was a 3D-printed Tesla paid for with bitcoin?" Now we're getting there.
If you think the system is working, ask someone who's waiting for a prompt.
