People have been losing jobs to robots for decades, and to technology for centuries. If you're worried about lost jobs, look at "hedge fund managers" (corporate pirates) who buy a business, drain its capital, fire its workers and shut it down.

Typo: Soil testing, not spoil testing. Fat fingers and I had a few beers.

Living in the middle of Illinois there's a lot of farming news and farm shows around here, and you see an awful ot of impressive tech, and even science. They have self-driving combines and harvesters that use GPS, cell phone apps very useful to them (some control machinery), chemical testing of the spoil and plants available... you have to know a lot to farm these days.

I know someone's going to complain "BUT JOBS!!!" but the jobs the tech in TFA are jobs are jobs only the most desperate want. Agriculture has been constantly replacing jobs with technology for centuries. It takes fewer and fewr to feed more and more.

Someone's going to bring up GM, GM isn't used much around here, most seed is hybrid -- but the biochemists and agronomists have DNA study of the plants they breed.

There's a TV show that comes on here on Sunday morning at 5:30 AM and it's the only OTA show that's not an infomercial, and It's pretty interesting. Here's their website. I'm not a farmer but it is pretty interesting.

I wouldn't consider potted plants "Big Agriculture." That's soybeans, corn, and wheat.

Heck, in all honesty, I'd probably drift over to a NetFlix-style rental system if such existed. Pay, say $1 or so to rent a book for a month or so.

Wow, you kids are sure willing to part with your hard-earned cash for shit that used to be free. TV shows, bottled water, books... you can "rent" a book from the public library for free. If I'd had to pay for all the books I've read in my life it would take more money than I've ever earned.

If I've bought a hardcopy I've paid my share of fixed costs.

The flawed physical analogy is that electronic "goods" cost nothing to duplicate. If I have paid for the hardcover and they want $3 for the ebook, fuck 'em, I'll go to TPB for the ecopy because I already paid for the damned content when I bought the hardcover.

I'm really sick of the greed these days. Charging extra for an e version when I've paid for it already is just plain wrong. Those people must have no shame or morals at all.

And they have the gall to call pirates "thieves".

There is one site I visit that has occasional stories paywalled, the local paper here. Most info isn't likely elsewhere and the paywalls are trivial to overcome. But I generally avoid them. I'm thinking about a simple HOSTS file to send DNS requests to those sites to the bit bucket.

The incompetently educated are incompetently uneducated, since if you were educated by incompetents, you're uneducated.

...and screw them all.

Is it really a surprise that old birds have a thing or two to teach the young 'uns.

DroidWall is dead as shit, and didn't work on my N4 on JB 4.3.

Can't speak for shiny new phones. It works on my Epic 4G running Gingerbread. I'll keep Android FW in mind when I upgrade, though.

Really, great stuff, just keep repeating the same 'joke'; gets better and more original every time.

You have just described the history of comedy since Aristophanes

I should probably go take a closer look. I've been disappointed so many times, though, that my expectations are not high.

I'm sure someone has already said this, but the fact that this is Linux 3.11 means that the next version will be Linux NT.

Zbigniew Brzezinski 01 September 2013

How the hell is he still alive?

Zbiggy has always been the poster boy, to my eyes, for the global elite that would like to cut loose the poorest 3/4 of the world's population. If a day ever comes when the elite create a breakaway society, his name will be engraved on the moat that surrounds them.

I'm not even sure I believe it's actually him giving these soundbites to the news. More likely a animatronics display controlled by a murderous AI. He's one of the golems, along with Cheney et al.

Fortunately, I keep "Google Play Services" cut off from the net via Droidwall. That should keep Google from fscking with the software on my phone without my review and permission.

*My* computer. *My* choice about whether to apply a software change.