Here's a classic example of computer creativity at work:

NASA Evolved Antenna

There's a feature here that everyone who uses iPhones should learn. When the iPhone sends it as an iMessage, it tells you in multiple ways. It says "iMessage" in the background of the text box you are typing in. The message you send shows up in a BLUE bubble. If you don't want to send as iMessage, but as SMS text instead, then AFTER you send it as an iMessage, touch the blue text bubble you just sent, and an option bar will show up above the message, which includes the option "SEND AS TEXT". Select that to make your phone re-send the message as a text message. The text bubble will turn GREEN to indicate it was sent as text instead of as iMessage.

At any point in time, not just at the equator, the plane could have made a turn, to create a perfect mirror image path reflected around the line between the plane and the satellite, and it would produce the exact same satellite data, as if they kept going straight. So there's no way to rule out that such a turn happened. However, since it's highly unlikely the person controlling the plane would have been aware of this satellite or it's location, they would not have done such a move on purpose. So then we are looking at what the odds are, of a course change made for other reasons, would produce a perfect mirror image turn. The odds of a course change randomly fitting a mirror image of this straight line path are very low. The odds could be calculated. But it's likely in the range of 1 out of 100 I would guess. As such, the satellite data could be fitted to a most likely straight-line constant speed path and that would give them two possible routes. The northern route however, I assume, would have taken the plane into multiple airspaces were it would have been spotted on multiple radar systems, including military systems. And likewise, into areas, where evidence of a crash would likely have been found as well. No such data from any of the northern route stations were found, leaving the southern, straight-route path as the statistically most likely by a strong margin. Combine that with debris that are consistent with a plan crash, and we have a very high probability that the plane flew a straight line path likely on auto-pilot, to the southern indian ocean and then ran out of fuel and crashed. But, this announcement is clearly just an attempt by the Malaysian government to resolve the pressure they are getting, instead of the needed careful and wise continued search for answers.

I first bought from Radio Shack back in the 60's when there wasn't even a local store. I bought bags of surplus electronics from them by mail order. I was very excited when they first came to town in the late 60's, and have been a big supporter of them for all these decades. I spent a bit of money buying VEX robotics hardware from them a few years back just as they were getting out of that product line. At one point not too long ago, there were more Radio Shacks than McDonald's. I doubt that's true now.

They are a useless hobbyist store now and have no hope of competing with the on-line electronics and hobby websites or the big computer/hobby stores like Frys, Micro Center, or Best Buy and only seem to make money selling phones, kids toys, and batteries. I don't see any path forward for them other than to continue to be a phone resellers. The Maker-market is huge and expanding with hobbyists getting into all sorts of cool things like robotics, and 3-D printing, but Radio Shack just doesn't have the type of staff and stores to keep up with those specialty markets. They have too many stores, with too little expertise to really fit that specilty geek market.

They are just one more brick and mortar that has no place in today's on-line world. I'm surprised they have lasted as long as they have.

That's correct. Finding work is not the problem. Finding a good paying job is. The good paying job, is today's dinosaur. It will soon be extinct. A Basic Income created by sharing a percentage of the wealth of the machine economy, is tomorrow's source of income for the people. The Basic Income, however is already needed today.

"What to do" is not the problem. The problem is everyday people having the cash to pay for the work being done by the robots. Just because there is work to do, does not guarantee that we will be paid enough for that work, to buy food, let alone a good average life style in society. It's this inequality of the value of our work, that is the social problem we must address today, and tomorrow.

The value of goods and services are measured by their importance to the people. Food is highly important. Shelter is highly important. Clothing is highly important. Transportation is highly important. Health care is highly important. Entertainment is not so important. When the robots do all the important work, then the robots get the lion's share of our cash. This means most the cash flows to those few people that own the most successful machine corporations -- the elite capitalists. The rest of us then spend our time perfecting our skills as techno comedians on SlashDot. We have lots of work to do to try and get our post to the top of the heap, but yet the work we do, does not pay enough to feed ourselves. In fact, it pays so little we don't even get paid!

As robots replace humans for the important work, there will always be some less important work left to be done, but we will not get enough social credit for that work, to give us a fair share of the output of food, shelter, clothing, and iPhones, being produced by the the robots. This problem is already well developed in society. Few people today can produce work valuable enough, to feed themselves. if not for our minimum wage laws, and other social programs, more than 3/4 of society would probably already be in a situation where their work is of so little value, they couldn't feed themselves by working and that number grows larger every day due to advancing technology. Only 63% of the US population over the age of 16 works. That's down from an all time high of 67.3 in 2000. That means only about 47% of the total population currently works as part of the economy. And that stat is now in free fall in the US. Most the rest live off the work of others (wives, children, the elderly). And most that "work" we all live off of, is not in fact done by humans at all, but mostly by our machines. Pushing the "start" button on a machine is not "work". It's machine tending. The machines do most the actual productive work today.

To fix this, we must share more of the work output being produced by the machines than we currently share. The growth in inequality shows the fact that we have failed to expand the sharing as needed. The amount of sharing we do, must increase in parallel, and keep increasing, with the displacement of humans from the workforce. We have been doing this sharing for 100's years in the form of government services and welfare paid for by progressive taxes. But we have fallen far behind. The solution however is not to get the government to collect, and spend even larger amounts of money in our name, but to just directly redistribute wealth, from the top, to the bottom, and let the PEOPLE spend the money, instead of the government spending the money for the people. Create a Basic Income Guarantee, that is the people's fair share of the wealth being produced by all the technology of the world, from all the natural resources of the world, then, let everyone work as they choose, for any additional income they can produce. And though some may choose to only do volunteer work that produces no addition documented income, like perfecting their skill as a SlashDot comedian, or as a YouTube personality, that's still providing important value to society. After the robots feed and cloth us, we still need a good laugh every day.

There will always be work, but there won't always be a paycheck. For far too many today, there already isn't a fair paycheck and that's what we need to fix today, by creating Basic Incomes for every human on the planet. Every human on the planet, deserves at least a small share, of the massive wealth, being produced from all the natural resources of the planet, by the machines, we have created.

The idea of a Basic Income is far wider and older than just what is happening in Switzerland and the EU. It's building popular support all around the world.

In the US, it goes back to Thomas Paine and his 1795 publication of Agrarian Justice.

The state of Alaska has had a working Basic Income since the 80's. Every person in the state gets a check every year of around $1000 as a Basic Income. Brazil and Iran both have a type of Basic Income in place today.

There's a petition at whitehouse.gov right now if you want to sign it and gain support for the idea in the US:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/establish-basic-income-guarantee-all-americans-similar-what-being-proposed-switzerland/jFbgDZ4h

In the late 60's in the US 1200 economists signed a petition and sent it to congress advocating a Basic Income. It was debated in the house but ultimately failed to gain traction. The idea has been around for a long time, and it keeps coming back. It's needed more today, than at any point in the past.

There are always people quick to call it stupid (as we see in this thread), but those people clearly don't understand the larger complexities of economics, sociology, and the problems we face in the world today. Economic Inequality is the world's single worst problem today. All other social problems such as poverty, health, crime, and war, are all fueled, driven, and created by, economic inequality. Even the very attitudes we see in this thread ("Oh fuck that. Produce or die.") is directly created by economic inequality. Though the world is rich enough to create a safe, healthy, peaceful, and easy life, for all 7 billion of us, where no one needs to struggle, or feel insecure, we have failed to do that. People live in constant fear because we have no security. And it's the economic inequality that creates and drives that fear. No matter how rich any person is, they always end up fearing they will lose their wealth and power because there are always people below them who are suffering to remind them how bad life can get.

No matter how much, or how little one has, they always fear losing it. And it's that fear that makes them say things like "Oh fuck that. Produce or die.". They fear that someone will try to take away the little they have, so that statement is really written to mean "I'm so scared of losing the little I have, that I have to speak out and kill any ideas of letting someone else take something away from me".

The rich that have so much more than we do, act as reminders of how much we have "failed" to be "productive" in society, and the poor that have so little, remind us that there are always wolves nipping at our heels. This effect keeps everyone in constant economic fear. The larger the total inequality in society, the larger the stress and fear it creates all across society. It creates as much stress at the top of society, as the poverty does at the bottom of society. The inequality turns society into a a big dogfight where there is constant pressure to climb higher and push others down, before they push you down.

Inequality continues to get worse, and worse. In the US, inequality is at a 80 year high worse than it was back in the great depression. This is because of technology. Technology creates wealth, which is should be good, but at the same time, it creates greater levels of inequality. The wealth of technology, always tends to flow to a minority. It does not naturally trickle down. Technological wealth trickles up. We have offset 100's of years of advanced technological wealth, by building these large welfare states. But despite how large the welfare states have become, they are still not enough to fix the growing inequality. Higher taxes for the rich and more government services for the poor will help offset it, but it won't fix it. Technology is getting too advanced and it's growing inequality too large. The low end jobs, pay so little, that people can't even live off of them any more. The ultimately problem here is that people aren't the ones don't the work anymore. Machines do most the work, and the wealth they produce, don't go to the "workers", it goes to the capitalists that own the machines. That shift from human labor, to machine labor, is the driving force of inequality. It's not a force that can be offset by "Oh fuck that. Produce or die.". One would have to be be able to out think our computers to be able to keep "producing". We can't in the long run, so we will die if that is what society expects of us.

A Basic Income is what is needed, to redistribute wealth, from the capitalists that own the machines, to the workers that can no longer find good paying work. But instead of trying to figure out how owns the machines, and who is getting screwed, the far better approach is to just tax all income equally, so those with the most pay the most, and then share wealth equally across all of society as a Basic Income allowance. This directly fixes the problem of excess inequality without any complex tax codes or welfare laws. All current forms of welfare and social programs can, and should be, replaced with a Basic Income system. As machines displace more people from the work force, and the elite see ever growing wealth, people will understand how important this is. It will be implemented across the whole world in time. it's only a question of how long it takes the world to figure out how important it is.

Though the computer field is still one of the strong income producing fields for people, there are problems there as well. There is without a doubt, age discrimination in the field. Old guys find it much harder to get work than young guys. That is just one more example of social injustice at play, that should be offset, not by age discrimination labor laws, but by a simple Basic Income guarantee. A Basic Income is a far better way to offset economic discrimination than trying to change human nature with laws. Let the businesses hire whoever they want, even if they seem to be discriminating unfairly, and make them pay the basic income tax as their "fee" for their right to discriminate in their free trade. What looks from the outside as social injustice might in fact be a wise business choice. Don't force the business to make bad business decisions, in the name of social justice. It's not the role of business to create social justice, that's the role of our democratic government. And I argue, the best way to offset the social injustice of capitalism, is through a Basic Income Guarantee. As long as we share a fair slice of the total wealth to address all forms of social injustice, we can then free businesses to make decisions that they each believe is best for their business. Their social duty is covered by their taxes and nothing else.

Micro fixes to macro problems always creates more problems that it fixes. Companies will find ways to compensate CEOs that skirt the laws.

Overall social inequality is the macro economic problem that must be fixed, not just CEO salaries.

The correct way to address overall inequality, is with the other approach the Swiss will soon be voting on, which is a Basic Income for all citizens. That is the correct macro solution to the macro problem of inequality. That will fix CEO income relative to the average worker income, as well as all other forms of inequality, The US needs this far more than the Swiss do. Our inequality is far higher, and the social problems created by inequality are far worse in the US.

There's a petition at whitehouse.gov in need of more signatures to bring this problem to the atention of the American People. Please check it out and consider signing it.

Petition: Establish a basic income guarantee for all Americans, similar to what is being proposed in Switzerland.

People must stop arguing the wrong point. This is very important and people must get this right. The problem with technology is not that it kills jobs. It doesn't kill jobs. In a free market there is always work to be done, and there's always a price the market will pay to have that work done.

The true problem with technology is inequality.

Technology drives inequality, and it is inequality, which is the foundation of all our current social problems. So where some people are having their wages driven down by technology, other people are having their income and wealth driven higher. But this does not balance out over time giving everyone an equal chance to get wealthy from technology The wealth concentrates into the hands of a few and the more technology we create, the more concentrated the wealth becomes. This is nothing new that just now showed up with the digital revolution. It's a trend that has been growing worse for 100's of years now.

Technology, is primarily a tool for creating MORE wealth in society, which is the good side of technology that we all love. It is why GDP keeps growing exponentially higher year after year. But technology has an evil side as well. The evil side of technology is that it is also used as a tool by whoever owns the technology, to take wealth away from others. It's this power of technology to steal wealth from people, that is what we must address.

When the textile workers of the early 19th century lost their jobs to the new machines, what happened? Lots of skilled workers were all making about the same amount of money weaving cloth by hand before the new technology showed up. But then automated looms were invented, and all these textile workers LOST their income. 1000 skilled textile workers, might have been replaced by a 500 people who manufactured the new automated equipment, OWNED the textile mills, and staffed the low skill, low paid jobs for the people who tended the new machines (operators). So we see a situation where there was a lot of equality of pay, across a large population of workers, shift to a small population, with high inequality of income, depending on what role they played. But the most wealth, shifted to whoever OWNS these new machines. Wealth shifted from the people who used to do the work, to the machines that took over the work.

This is very important concept to understand. Humans are just meat robots, that have for thousands of years, done most the work with their hands. We humans were the "machine of choice" for getting work done - for the protection of goods and services of value. But as our technology advances, other machines have slowly replaced our job functions, and those other machines become the "machine of choice" for that jobs. When a weaver is replaced by an automated loom, the money in society that once went into the pocket of the weaver, now goes into the pocket of the person who OWNS the new machines. The machines become tools, that allow the people who own the technology, to take money o9ut of the pockets of the weaver, and put it into their own pockets.

Every technology ever created follows this same pattern. It boosts total wealth in society, but at the same time, it shifts some wealth, from one group of people, to another.

What is happening over time, is the the creation of wealth is shifting from the old machines (meat robots), to the new machines, automated looms and all the other technology that is producing wealth today, like computers and robots. The wealth of society (the wealth produced by the machines), is assigned to whoever owns the machines. We humans own our own bodies, so any wealth we produce with our own hands, goes to us. But when we create machines that produce wealth, the wealth doesn't go to whoever made the machine, the wealth goes to whoever OWNS the machine. Sometimes the person that makes the machine is the one that ends up owning it, but more often than not, it's not true. Wealth production, and wealth itself, has for a long time now, been shifting from the workers, to the capitalists that own the machines. And with this shift, comes growing inequality in society.

In the past, the most valuable machine in the economy, was a meat robot. We humans all had an important highly valuable asset. We were all born rich, becuase we were born as the owner of our own body - one of the most valuable machines in the economy. We could create wealth for ourselves, by leasing this valuable machine to the market - we could work for a good wage. But the more technology we create to do the work that once, only meat robots could do, the less valuable the meat robots become. We meat robots, are being made obsolete, by each new technology that is created.

When all the work was done by meat robots, there was great equality in society. We each owned, one, and only one, meat robot. The inequality that existed, had to do with who owned the other valuable resources, like land. Kings would gain monopoly control over resources like land, and distort the market with their monopoly to degrade the value of the meat robots. But, by removing their monopoly control over the land, great equally could exist in society, due to the fact that each human, owned one of these very valuable machines - their own body.

But those days are gone. Meat robots are being obsoleted by technology. And as that happens, the levels of equality that once existed, are vanishing from society.

Capitalism is NOT a game that naturally creates equality. It's a game that naturally creates INEQUALITY. All the wealth is EXPECTED to shift to the best "player" and all the other players, are expected to go bankrupt. Just go play a game of monopoly to understand how that works. The only reason we have seen any level of equality at all in the past, was the fact that the game was rigged by outlawing slavery. We created a degree of equality, by giving each human, sole ownership rights to his own body. That worked well, as long as us meat robots were valuable assets in the economy. But more and more, that's no longer true. The value of the "meat robot" is represented in the game of monopoly, by how much is paid for "passing go". That $200 payment, is the money each player gets for "working". That is, for leasing his meat robot body to the economy. To make the game go on forever, all you have to do, is change the rules, so you get $10,000 for passing go, instead of $200. If meat robots are more valuable, than owning hotels, then the game becomes one of equality. When hotels, and railroads are more valuable than meat robots, we get inequality.

In today's world, meat robots are not worth much compared to what all the other technology and resources are worth, so we have great inequality, based on who is winning the real world game of monopoly. Many people have reached the point that the care and feeding of their "meat robot" body costs more, than their meat robot is worth in the market place. They can't make enough, to feed themselves. This is what happens when a technology becomes obsolete. The care and maintenance of a steam engine, is greater, than it's worth in the market as an engine. We stop producing steam engines, because they now cost more to maintain, than they are worth. Without socialism, in the form of minimum wage, and other problems, many people would be dead now, if their only option in life for getting food to eat, was to lease their meat robot body, to others -- aka try to work for a living.

This is where capitalism alone just stops working as a foundation for society. Free trade, is not a viable foundation for society, when technology gives a minority, the power to keep the majority from having enough wealth to even eat, let alone, live some type of "good" life. This is what our technology has done to society, and what we must fix. Capitalism, and technology, creates death and misery for the majority if we don't offset it with socialism. And this is why, for the past 100 years, we have had to add massive amounts of socialistic sharing of wealth, in the form of welfare programs, and minimum wage laws, and education for the poor paid for by the rich, and labor unions, and progressive income taxes, and food stamps, and unemployment insurance. All this has been needed, to offset the inequality created by technology. But yet, over the past 30 to 40 years in the US, we have failed to add enough socialism, to offset all the inequality, and we have allowed inequality to grow far too large. And this inequality, has not only caused large number of poor to suffer, it has, at the same time, given a rich minority far too much power to corrupt society in favor of continuing support of the rich over the poor.

Our democracy will be destroyed if we don't fix this growing inequality. And the only fix, is more socialism. We must redistribute wealth from the top, back to the bottom, to take more power away from the rich, but more important, to give more power and wealth back to the poor. We are past the point that we can do this justin the form of more government programs like free schools. It must be done as straight up transfers of cash now. And the best and most fair way to do that, is with a Basic Income for everyone. Tax the economy, with a flat tax, so the rich pay the most, and give an equal cash payment to every person in the country.

Yes, the money goes to investors, instead of workers. The world shifts a little farther away from the people who own human bodies (workers), and towards the people who own the machines. Every new technology, shifts wealth creation a little father away from labor, and and little closer to capital investments. Money is increasingly made by what we own, more so than by what we do. When full human like robots come to be in the next few decades, it will push human labor totally out of the market, and make all wealth production an issue of capital investments.

The problem with capital investments is that it shifts all wealth, into the hands of a few -- just like the game of monopoly does - for the same reason - because the game is so structured so that labor income ($200 for passing go), is insignificant, compared to investment income (you landed on my hotel and owe me $4000).

Technology shifts wealth production from the fairly equal form of human labor (we all own a human body for life we can lease to the job market), to the highly unequal form of investment income (monopoly game -- one guy wins it all)

To cope with this shift, and keep society functioning, and fair, we will have to add more socialism into the mix. We will have to force the winning investors, to share a cut of their wealth with the population. What they get to keep for themselves, is their reward for doing a good job of investing. We tax the entire economy, and distribute the money as a Basic Income to all the people. This tax should be understood as a Capitalist Inequality tax that the people force the businesses to pay, for the right to operate their inequality producing "game" in their country. The tax, is what offsets the inequality, created by the operation of capitalism in the country.

By looking at relative living standards in society. By looking at inequality.

When the poor are forced to live a lifestyle that is many times less than the average or median family, then we have a serious problem in society.

It is true that technology hasn't typically destroyed jobs, because of the cycle of creative destruction. But what it is very much doing, and has been doing for a long time, is eroding the value of human labor on one end, and inflating the value of capital on the other. This drives inequality higher and higher, as we keep adding more technology. The technology is both saving us, by creating wealth, but destroying us, by shifting the wealth away from labor, and towards capital investments. Where as labor generated wealth is fairly well shared -- each of us owns one, and only one, human body to sell into the labor market -- capital wealth is not shared. The best investors, are able to buy a growing hoard of top wealth producing assets.

To cope with this shift of wealth away from labor, and towards capital, the world is going to have to introduce more forced wealth sharing into the system -- more socialism. The best way, and what has been in the works for 100's of years is the idea of a Basic Income. This is best understood as a business tax, applied to the entire economy, which is then distributed to the people evenly as monthly checks. It's the people saying to the capitalists, "If you want to operate your inequality producing business in this country, you are going to have to pay us a cut, for that right".

Only about 65% of the US population is currently in paid work of any type and less than 50% are working in full time positions. The majority of people certainly don't need to be working in paid positions (let them work at home and raise kids instead, or work at school and learn). This is not the 18th century when 90% of the population was farming just to feed everyone. Only about 2% of the population is working to feed the world now. A good number of people working aren't needed by the economy and work only because they must in order to survive, and many work in minimum wage, part time jobs typically that they hate. I would estimate that nearly half the current work force could be removed, and still not have any substantial effect on GDP. Because of technology, most the really productive and important work that generates most the GDP, is done by only a very small percentage of the work force. The rest are just cheap filler that is not needed that our economic system is forcing to work.

If we converted all the current welfare payments of the US government into a universal welfare, we would have about $1K per year for every person in the country. We can afford that level of universal welfare with no changes to the tax structures. If we roll in other current government redistributions such as pensions, healthcare, and social security into a universal welfare, we are getting up to around $10K per person for everyone in the country, for life.

$10K per person, is around 5% of the US GDP and is very affordable and very workable for a Basic Income Guarantee as a way to create a very badly needed universal welfare in the US. If it causes 10% of the current workforce to drop out of the paid workforce, it will have no significant effect on GDP or GDP growth, but it will have a massive effect on the quality of life for people across the country.

If some choose not to work, it only helps to raise the wages for those that do choose to work.

A far better way to implement that idea, is to create a Basic Income Guarantee to better share the wealth and offset the inequality of technology. Then throw away minimum wage, unemployment insurance, and labor laws that force overtime pay, so as to free up workers and businesses to negotiate any deal they want, be it 40 hours, 80, or 0 a week.

It's a personality thing, but for me, I can't be productive when I work alone at home. Having people around me stimulates and motivates me. I need the random office interaction to maintain my sanity. I also think for many creative projects group interaction is highly important. I need the office environment.

But some types of work, and some types of people, work much better when they can be isolated and focused. These types of workers, need to be given more options for working at home.

When people worked at home before the industrial revolution, it was normally piece work - you got paid based on what you produced, so there was no need to monitor or manage them. Any office work that can be paid like piece work moves to the home very nicely. Wage work and salary work doesn't translate as well unless the manager has a large amount of trust in the worker which tends to be the exception and not the norm. And if the manger lets one person work at home, but not others, it's gets very sticky trying to say "I trust Sally to work at home, but you Bob, I don't trust, so you must come in so I can watch you!". It opens a can of worms that most companies just end up staying away from which is why we don't have see more telecommuting in salaried office workers and might never see unless our technology is able to create a virtual office environment where manages can keep an eye on people, and walk around and have casual random chats with them as needed.

I think it's time for a new bill that defines intelligent design as child abuse.

Yes, that is my point as well. The end game we are headed for is one where human contribution to the production of things of value, is nearly zero. In that case, wealth inequality as a reward for being productive makes no sense at all. As you say, it would be mostly an incentive for being luckily. But more often (and the real danger), it's an incentive to be mean and ruthless and uncaring - to be socially irresponsible. But this is not just an issue for the future. It's an issue already effecting us today. Wealth distribution across our society is becoming more a matter of luck (and a matter of cheating), than hard work, every day, and we should be offsetting that trend today. It's not something we should wait until it's totally luck before we act. And of course, we are doing things already - lots of them. All our government social programs are there for the purpose of sharing the wealth of our society for the "unlucky". But many of our programs are inherently inefficient and are wasting resources that do not need to be wasted. They are highly inefficiency because they are administered by our government - who must set up large offices of over paid low productive workers to decide who is "unlucky" enough to get aid, and to decide how much aid they should get. We can greatly improve much of that, by giving everyone and exactly equal share of "aid" whether they are lucky or unlucky. That removes all the burden from the government, of complex administration tasks, and gives everyone in the country the same stable foundation for life, to build on. Instead of creating an atmosphere of "aid to the needy", it creates an atmosphere of equality across the entire society. When we pay the tax, we no longer are left with the feeling that we are helping only the "needy" or the "lazy", because the money goes to everyone equally, including our own children, and family, and friends. The tax is not to help the needy, it's to help everyone equally. And when people receive this "aid" it no longer comes with any sort of social stigma of "worthless looser". No one need feel "bad" for accepting the aid, since everyone in the society gets the same aid. It's a far better way to deal with the inequality created by technology, than the trillions we currently spend on social aid programs. And far more important, it's a program that will continue to work, all the way to the end game, where humans are contributing nothing to the production of value.