I’m fairly certain people think about that. That’s one reason antitrust laws exist. If they actually did this for the reason you mention their actions should be investigated by the FTC.

So it would still be cheaper than a Mac?

It seems every other article is some website I'd never heard of until I decided to try reading slashdot again, yesterday: Next Web. The only stories I've seen on their site are ones with intentional misdirection via lack of context that is freely available among most other outlets reporting the same thing. Seems this last /. buyout was a bust for those of us who prefer objective reporting. Oh well, I'll try back in a few more months and see if they cut the crap. Or maybe I won't. I'm kind of tired of this seesaw bullshit between objective and clickbait articles.

You realize there are more than 3 linux distributions, right? And saying that one of the most mainstream distros, known for feature instability, changing it's org structure (again) is killing diversity is kind of making me scratch my head. Like, what the hell are you talking about?

You don't see how driving down the way of engineers and developers via staff augmentation is beneficial to companies that primarily hire engineers and developers? The first three companies you listed all focus their business models on undercutting the cost of having your own engineers and developers. They do this by hiring Indians for pennies on the dollar, promising them an H1-B. Many of the Indians come and do a good job and work hard while they attempt to gain citizenship. The companies they are working for though are vampires. For both the major tech firm and the tech consulting firm it's a super awesome fun time. However, for the American and foreign worker it kind of sucks to be taken advantage of in such an egregious manner.

What are you basing that assertion on?

That's the first time I've heard of an egalitarian economy referred to as the end of the world. I didn't realize that living to live instead of work was such a horrible thing. Although if you mean the end of society in it's current form (and not actually the end of the world), then I would say that history repeatedly disputes your nonsense. Society has continually changed in dramatic ways when new technologies have come about. The economy has followed because it is just a sociological reaction to the current state of the world.

I really you hope you don't think automation is not going to displace labor without some serious government intervention (which by the way the US gov has generally demonstrated support for automating tasks). I think you're just spitting hyperbole and know it (read: a troll).

Here's a question I ask myself every time I try to comprehend how much a technology can change the way our society trades: How long has the personal automobile been ubiquitous and how was (insert some specific task) accomplished before?

While fishing last weekend I saw an old bridge and asked my buddy, "Do you ever think about what it must've been like to build that?" He responded, "I try not to think about how hard it must've been to be a slave." It totally blew my mind. I was thinking about how the hell they got the rocks there and manually mixed and poured so much concrete. I hadn't even considered that bridge was most likely built by a group of slaves as it was the most economically feasible way to construct the bridge during that time period. Anyhow he, being a history major, continued to detail for me how a group of slaves and a whip cracker or two likely moved the rocks from a nearby quarry and mixed up the concrete from mostly local ingredients. This of course led to a conversation about Freemansville and colonization, which is kind of drawing some parallels to our current situation.

Anyhow, before you get anymore foot in mouth disease I'd highly recommend looking at US history during the Civil War and the Reconstruction Era. It's a pretty good pattern for what to expect if we had such a huge abundance of unskilled labor demanding higher wages than what's offered.

So most shipping is done via cities and crowded streets? Hmm, here I was confused thinking that vast spans of highway sat between me and the ocean port where my goods came into the country.

Please report on technology related items and conduct technology related polls. Who's hot, who's not is better suited to TMZ.

They're just idiots. 1's and 0's arranged as symbols to convey meaning is generally accepted as a language since it uses symbols to convey a meaning. It even has a name: Binary Code. If they want to claim it's not Binary Code and merely equations resulting in direct action by hardware... well... you can't patent a mathematical equation.

The media portrays your personality to be one of an ego maniacal sociopath. Please understand this is not me calling you a name or attempting to label you. My opinions are reserved from this until I've been able to hear from both sides. I can imagine that you may have something you would like to say or address about the overall negativity media expresses toward your character before people adjudicate personal bias toward it.

There are people doing that. They're called auditors. You have to be just good enough at security to keep them off your back. The whole point is to keep security ahead of the curve: effort required to secure * value of controlling resource > effort required to obtain * value of gained resource (inclusive of satisfying motivation) If we didn't do this ridiculous draconian thing security could really slip in general to a point we'll have trouble securing it, like transportation signaling equipment. However I don't think they need to take care of it with this model. We likely have a while before the technology to achieve this is ubiquitous enough to make it anymore dangerous than the intense motivation to kill you someone would need to do it like this. I mean a hammer could just as easily assassinate a diabetic.

You don't think there was a camera on that robot?

The commenter was likely getting downvotes because they were trolling. Now, in true Slashdot fashion, they received upvotes from someone saying, "why're they getting downvotes, durr?"

You are likely getting downvotes for spitting the vitriol the troll feeds on. You may have even helped them climax.

If I had anymore mod points I'd downvote both of you for those reasons. Instead I'll just leave this here and hope others agree.

While I appreciate the link very much it is actually more than money they're after. If you read the terms it is very apparent you are paying them to enhance their data mining. I'm looking for a product from a company that's being a bit less evil and more forthright with what they're selling me. So thanks for the link. It will likely help someone. Unfortunately it's way off the mark for me.