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The Almighty Buck

Gates Warns of Software Replacing People; Greenspan Says H-1Bs Fix Inequity 516

Posted by samzenpus from the man-with-the-plan dept.
dcblogs writes "Bill Gates and Alan Greenspan, in separate forums, offered outlooks and prescriptions for fixing jobs and income. Gates is concerned that graduates of U.S. secondary schools may not be able stay ahead of software automation. 'These things are coming fast,' said Gates, in an interview with the American Enterprise Institute 'Twenty years from now labor demand for a lots of skill sets will be substantially lower, and I don't think people have that in their mental model.' Meanwhile, former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan believes one way to attack income inequity is to raise the H-1B cap. If the program were expanded, income wouldn't necessarily go down much, but it would go down enough to make an impact. Income inequality is a relative concept, he argued. People who are absolutely at the top of the scale in 1925, for instance, would be getting food stamps today, said Greenspan. 'You don't have to necessarily bring up the bottom if you bring the top down.'"

Comment Re:Good (Score 1) 167

by mmustapic (#40158331) Attached to: Intelsat Signs Launch Contract With SpaceX
The Space Shuttle, for example, wasn't very safe: - no crew escape system for most of the flight - very complex (and expensive) heat protection system, the one that failed and led to the Columbia disaster - orbiter mounted on the side of a rocket, making the complex heat protection system be vulnerable to debris (again, Columbia) - gigantic solid rocket boosters that cannot be shut down once ignited The planned crew-carrying Dragon capsule from SpaceX has an escape system that can be used at any point during the launch. So what you say about commercial vs state security concerns is incorrect. Besides, training an astronaut is very expensive, you definitely don't want them killed.

Comment Re:If I had say in the matter. . . (Score 5, Insightful) 147

by mmustapic (#38127720) Attached to: 11 Amazing Things NASA's Huge Mars Rover Can Do
Why do you suppose it doesn't have redundancy or failback mechanisms? For example, it has SIX wheels. The Spirit rover could still work (and did) with only four wheels. Also, the whole rover is a complex laboratory capable of doing many experiments. If one of them fails, it can still do science with the others. Adding a secondary mast, computer, etc, adds weight besides redundancy.

Comment Re:IPV6 (Score 1) 170

by mmustapic (#37157744) Attached to: Argentina Censors Over a Million Blogs
Dude, this was not censorship. The blocked websites had private emails from private email accounts of government officials, journalists, celebrities, detailing such things as income (public for a government official, not for a journalist or celebrity), when they pickup the kids at school, etc. This is a clear violation of a citizens privacy, the equivalent of intercepting paper correspondance and publish it in a newspaper. Luckily in Argentina, and many other countries in the world, this is forbidden.

Comment Re:wtf (Score 1, Troll) 574

by mmustapic (#33335938) Attached to: Iran Unveils Its First UAV Bomber

We used two, "Fat man" and "Little Boy".

More than enough. The US should be ashamed, fuck, really ashamed, at the fact. And all you can say is that the US "just" used two.

We gained a lot of knowledge after using them and one of the things we learned is how horrific they are.

Bullshit, the US didn't didn't use any more nukes because the URSS had nukes too.

What would you rather us do, bomb them?

Well, you ALREADY bomb countries, I don't think I need to give examples, present and past. And what would those interests be?

How else are we going to convince countries not to pursue something against our interest?

And what would those interests be? Please, mention them explicitly, instead of just bombing the fuck of any country you want and excuse yourselves with WMDs and terrorism. Wait, no, even better, keep your "interests" in your own country and let Iran mind for themselves.

But you know, the minute we stop providing cash, then these governments are going to start complaining to their citizens how evil we are for not giving support.

Mention those governments, please. And also note that giving cash is not the same as a trade embargo. And also note that giving cash to buy weapons the US produces is not helping.

I'm sure it must be nice to have this view where the US is this evil entity and the rest of the world is perfect, but in reality every government sucks.

Yes, many governments suck, but the US is the one that is always at war. So yeah, the US is pretty evil.

Comment Re:I know people who work on weapons (Score 4, Informative) 409

by mmustapic (#31987110) Attached to: Obama To Decide On New Weapons

Unless your job is designing large shapeless soft foam objects, you're always going to risk someone using your creation to hurt someone else, and at each point along the continuum from plastic bag designer to nuclear weapon designer, at least a few people are going to say they're not comfortable with doing that, and at least a few people are going to say they are.

Oh please, weapons are built with the purpose of hurting, or forcing someone do something you want (under threat of hurting him). Cars and garbage bags have many other uses besides killing.

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