I should have no reasonable expectation that a farmer (Nye wrote "regular software writers and farmers") would have expertise in astrophysics for example.

I'd expect farmers to have a far better background in and a more intuitive understanding of science than software writers. Farming is, at its core, applied science. It may not be as rigorous or structured, but for thousands of years people have lived and died based on how well farmers hypotheses have panned out.

Software writing and computer "science" in general falls more under mathematics than science. In mathematics, once something is proven it stays proven, not matter how sloppy or random the process of getting to the proof might be.

Also the same with business reliance on lines of credit to pay employees and suppliers.

No one pays in cash and that is a common misconception today. Wall Street likes smooth lines and no bumps which lines of credit pay for daily operations. No lines of credit POOF out of business even if you have money it means suppkiers who put in 90 days pay as they too used a line of credit can't pay your employer. So the cash reserves will go with them as well.

Lovely. In 1929 only the few big titans of industry was so dependent on lines of credit. Not true in 2015

No they can't.

It will cause a great depression not seen since WWII. Reason being is the way the books are counted at the banks. Imagine the game of hot potato in kindergarten? Now imagine each time you caught it counted as an asset. When you throw it it counted as another asset.

Debt = assets. Not liabilities today??

See the problem? So since everyone is in a web of IOUs you close one down and it impacts the others and the house of cards collapss in a domino effect hence 2008 financial crises. Difference is we got bailed out back then. Today ... there is no more cash to do so.

That was because the house majority leader at the time was from Las Vegas.

Needless to say the locals heavily oppose it in their backyard.

As it will be worth less than the paper it is printed on if they default on their debt which they plan on doing.

Easy. Shit ware, Trojaned app stores, and fake certicates would come pre-installed on them with Linux too.

Folks put your linux advocacy aside as linux has Trojans too. They simply aren't targeted as linux users are smarter and can delete them. Not because modern windows is somehow less secure.

Hasn't been true since XP SP 1 died. Windows today is as secure if not more than linux design wise. It has ACL lists, low rights sandboxing options and so on.

They do this on purpose to cut down on support costs.

This is stupid as it actually increases due to angry users calling India to get their start menu back

If Ubuntu won the marketshare wars this same unit would come with fake certificates, false Ubuntu app stores, and other crapware too.

Yes we here would know better and fix this but the average Joe would not.

Jail time and a massive fine by the FTC. If this came from China new fines and trade laws were violated too as this is a financial backdoor planted and considered an act of espionage by the Chinese. Lovely and I hope someone in the whitehouse has a pair of balls to go after Lenovo for this. It also shows the marketers are going now too far. Whats next?

Would anyone tolerate purchasing an alarm clock with a hidden cam on it?

I think not! This is outright criminal. No no reinstalling an OS should never be a common practice on a new system. Yes people use, need, and do not have the technical ability or need to run a non-Windows OS. Yes this is going to butt hurt many here but give it up.

Windows 7 is stable and works fine for non hacker use. People ... normal people ... do not run an OS. They run applications. This means Windows.

If Linux wont he marketshare wars they would have fake certificates, app stores, in Ubuntu too. This should be illegal ... actually it is illegal and hacking. People pay their bills on their systems these days as a normal practice and this is downright scary. Just because I image Windows 7 and install Unix VMs on my system does not mean the average user should at all.

MS needs to change the EULA to prevent this since Windows 10 will be free for the consumer version of it.

Build your own. Works best for Windows machines and Linux as well

Is there a way for sites to detect and block this?

What were Lenovo thinking? People pay bills online you know. Easily can steal lots of information

As much as we bashed RMS here for being a lunatic he has a point with trusting a for profit entity making closed source software.

Suppose I could invest $50k and get a kind of robotic copy of myself. I could send that to work and do my job for me, enjoy lots of free time and the same income.

On the other hand, suppose my employer would invest these $50k....

In the end, the question is how the "spoils" of automation will be distributed about the population. Indeed that doesn't look good now.

In the future we will have more than enough production capacity to fulfull our needs and wishes, but if we use that capacity to any good, that is compete redistribution of all of it, is questionable. The current trend doesn't look good, but I think economists will see, sooner or later, that the alternative is for the rich to live in a state of siege, military protected and guarded against the masses.

Economic laws do change fundamentally, it is hard to predict. However, suppose a robot could do the 10-fold work of what most people could do. Indeed we would not run out of ideas on what to do, but if you could replace yourself, would you continue to add your 10% "output" for 10% extra income, or would you rather have 100% spare time for about 90% income? That is the trade off that will be made in the end.

As robots get more powerful compared to man, and the "pseudo-intelligece" will surpass that of most humans for most tasks, I find it really hard to see how most people would still have meaningful jobs.

It is not about imagining the output, it is about imagining what extra significant contributation most men could make in relation to robots.