Well, there is a difference between understanding how nuclear weapons work, and understanding the global political environment (not to mention the elements of human psychology that help shape it). Making predictions about whether or not there will be a nuclear war anytime soon would be better left to focus groups consisting of political scientists, psychologists, and sociologists.

I, for one, am not an expert in any of these fields, so I am nowhere near qualified to weigh in. That, of course, won't inhibit me at all.

Genetically speaking, modern humans are no more enlightened than the warmongering war criminals that led the world during the dark ages. We are not intrinsically more moral or more concerned about others, etc. The only difference is the technological landscape we are in. Not just the presence of nuclear weapons, but also the communication technologies that have tied the entire world together and produced a much more aware populace. This creates new political pressures and new incentives to make different choices than our recent ancestors would have (but again, morality is not a factor. It's still just a matter of incentives and consequences).

The concept of mutually-assured destruction is not very noble, but it is very real, and it is effective at staying the hands of the world's nuclear powers (at least somewhat). And this is also nothing new, as it has always been true of humans that the most effective deterrent to violence is a credible threat of devastating retaliatory violence (insane people excepted, of course).

So, with that in mind, our best short term option is to ensure that world leaders are sane enough to understand this mutually-assured destruction risk. This isn't a judgment about their morality or even their loyalty (as those things are too easy to lie about) but about their mental grasp of their situation. So long as they all know how that war would end all life on our planet, they probably won't start it. This also means ensuring that any country that cannot produce leaders at this level of sanity must be proactively prevented from attaining nuclear weapons by intrusive actions on the part of the greater world powers.

Unfortunately, there isn't any way to guarantee the sanity of the leaders of any country. Democracy sure doesn't do it (it's just a popularity contest and insane people can still win great popularity among the voting masses), and dictatorship sure doesn't do it either.

I was going to add a bit about countries forming alliances with each other and such, but that feels secondary to the main point about sane leadership, which we have no way to ensure.

So, in short, we are doomed.

Many machines have replaced or greatly reduced the need for human labor. What makes acting deserving of special protection from automation?

I know several very healthy vegetarians would disagree with you. And I know of many more, including the Shaolin monks.

Maybe being omnivores gives us some options?

Airlines can add more flights and bigger planes for more seats. Try doing that with a pop star.

I was responding to saloomy, who said "just make a law...".

That ain't retail. It's the futures wholesale market.

The fact that you don't list them doesn't prove their existence.

I'm aware of wholesale auctions and small exceptions. If you want, consider TicketMaster as a wholesaler.

Why would concert tickets need an auction any more than almost everything else? No auction for beans, none for gasoline, or haircuts. If they price them too high, they don't sell enough. If they price them too low, they sell out fast and learn to charge more next time, just as any other limited commodity does. If they can get more, they do, and raise the price next time. If they can't, well, that's life.

I don't think TicketMaster is making a fortune, because if they were, competitors would want some of the action. That's how markets work. If artists actually cared, they would sign up with alternative sellers and pull the rug out from under TicketMaster. They don't. Artists either don't care, or don't know. From the noise they make, they are hypocrites either way.

The actual real value of concert tickets for established artists is well-known by now. But artists want to pretend they support the little people, so they refuse to charge realistic prices, and act all miffed when the market establishes the real value people place on their tickets.

The simple fact is that more people want tickets than tickets are available. The only realistic alternative is long long lines and make people pay in time and hassle. But then others will charge high prices to stand in line as placeholders. Price caps are no more useful than Richard Nixon's gas price controls in 1973. People pay in dollars or time or barter of some sort. The market will always establish a more realistic price.

Or one could just let the market handle it. You can't stop scalping any more than Custer could. Prohibition doesn't work, it just creates black markets.

An iris scan is still just data. It can be copied or forged. How is it any more reliable than any other data that can be copied or forged?

I think this whole notion of "prove you are a human from the other side of the Internet" is misguided. I understand why people would want this, but given the nature of the tech, it is too easy to fake it. We are going to need to adapt differently.

This does more than fix prices, it also drives them up. Amazon charges a lot to sell on its site. You can often afford to sell cheaper on other sites without cutting into your margins at all, just because they have reasonable fees. So this arrangement forces prices to go up to Amazon's level across the internet, costing consumers more for everything.

So, even if you don't use Amazon, you are being burned by this.

There were two theaters in San Francisco, the Richilieu? (Geary near Van Ness) and a second near the TransAmerica Pyramid. Great selection of old movies, mostly b/w, and great trailers for old movies. They eventually decided the second one just wasn't profitable enough, early 1980s, and had a final night of nothing but previews, several hours of them, the trashiest exploitation movies from the 1950s, glorious stuff. Then they interrupted it, lights came on to announce someone with a private copy of Vertigo had brought it in and did we want to see it? Apparently it was locked up in some copyright ownership dispute and could not be seen commercially, but since we hadn't paid for it ...

A fantastic night. I'd gladly do it again, nothing but hours of trashy ancient B and C movie trailers.

Americans aren't paid enough to be able to afford American-made products. Simultaneously, American workers cost so much that it is way more profitable to do the manufacturing in foreign countries.

This isn't going to be fixed by encouragement, nor by tariffs or import bans. This will just recreate the conditions of the late 1920s when warehouses were awash with consumer products that nobody could afford to buy. It was one of the factors that plunged us into a depression, and it absolutely can happen again.

We are going to need another decade-long depression to fix this.

I mean, maybe in theory it would be possible to fix this through the right balance of regulation that blocks cheap imports AND pulls wages up AND stimulates more factory construction in America so the products we need will be available in sufficient amounts, AND keeps the prices down through competition. It may be slightly more possible for simians to aviate from my posterior, however. The people who must sacrifice the most for that to happen are the very people who hold all the political power (since the USA functions as an oligarchy, and only appears to function as a democracy).

So, a good old-fashioned depression will hit the holdings of the super-rich hard enough that actual meaningful regulation can come out of it. Though it will be all the rest of us who suffer from it the most.

I would really like to be proven wrong about this. I only know what I have learned about economics from a few elective courses in college. Maybe someone who knows more about this than I do can provide a more realistic narrative and prediction.

Because OCT 31 == DEC 25.

I have never been so disappointed. Slashdot is going to the dregs.

...but that sure won't stop me from passing judgment!

This sounds like a clear case of "AI makes it so easy to find bugs now, that we don't need to pay out cash to incite others to do it anymore."