Unosolo

This time it is different because automation has reached the levels when it impacts most jobs profoundly and the remaining or newly created job require more skills and deeper specialisation at the same time.

A woodworker whose job was automated cannot pick computer programming in a couple of weeks. It is just not practical.

The making of the robot will produce tax revenue, however will not necessarily produce the tax revenue in the same jurisdiction. Also new wealth produced by the robot is likely to be more concentrated.

Existing tax systems burden labour more heavily, than capital. This is because capital can flee easily, but labour cannot. A dollar doesn't have a spouse, kids, parents, siblings, a social circle, it doesn't need to learn a new language or culture - it can be moved with a speed of light at a very short notice indeed. Since deploying dollars is cheaper than deploying people from the tax prospective there is a strong economic incentive to replace people with capital at workplaces.

Since Bob's productivity will increase threefold and the demand is finite it is likely Rob, Bob's mate, is going to loose his job. Now the two of them are going to compete for a single job opening and Bob will be lucky (and thankful) to stay employed with no real leverage in his salary negotiations (Rob is unemployed, lost his house and now very eager to get that job too!)

The extra profit will go mostly to the robot owner with some to the robot's inventor (although once enough people are capable of building robots the inventor will have diminishing leverage too, unless he keeps coming up with better stuff).

Then the argument goes that Rob would then become a robot inventor or a capitalist instead of working the mundane job at the widget factory. Not going to happen. He is 53, he doesn't have the capacity required and he is not going to develop on at this stage. No one is going to bet her money on Rob becoming a millionare through invention or investment or even making a decent living ever again. Rob is sad. Whenever Bob talks to Rob he is scared to loose his job to more automation.

Commonwealth and Irish citizens resident in UK could vote, whereas resident EU citizens could not.

A democracy is about people whose lives will be significantly affected by a decision having a right to take part in the decision-making.

Why this logic was applied to resident Commonwealth and Irish citizens differently from residents from EU?

On the topic of Restraint of trade (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restraint_of_trade) clause which some companies insist on: in very few cases a company will take a former employee to court over a breach of such clause and then the company is still likely to lose the case unless the restriction was narrow, specific, reasonable. Usually there also need to be consideration (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consideration) for giving up some of the freedom of trade.

Agree, in Java (and any other language) the main culprit is not the complexity that can eventually be abstracted away, but the trivial noise that cannot be abstracted at all: verbose class definitions, clumsy anonymous functions prior to SE8 (functors), lack of implicit interfaces, lack of infix method call notation, generic type erasure, lack of basic type inference, lack of continuations etc.

My point was that limited expression means of a language are sometimes compounded by inability of a programmer to make a good use of the expression means already available to them.

I also understand the desire for more a expressive language, I am a programmer after all. One has to keep in mind, however, that the more expressive a language is the harder it is on the reader. Java code is trivial for a reader to follow (if not for the excessive verbosity sometimes covering up the true intent); much of Scala code base, on the other hand, is not that trivial to comprehend due to the high expressiveness of the language.

The essence of the argument here is that Java is a poor language as it doesn't offer simple abstraction to copy standard input into standard output; that Java is too verbose and low-level for the task.

The lack of direct abstraction is not a valid argument, because as a programmer, you shouldn't be writing the logic in Java, Python, C or Scala but rather a higher order domain language implemented in the chosen host language and that's what the process of programming is all about. For the majority of real world programming tasks it's unlikely that a language that fits the domain perfectly already exist, so you have to create one.

In Java one can say:

    copyStream(System.in,System.out);

    long copyStream (InputStream src,OutputStream dst) throws IOException {             
        long bytesCopied;
        byte[] buffer = new byte[8192];
        int bytesRead = src.read(buffer);        

        while(bytesRead!=-1) {
            bytesCopied+=bytesRead;
            dst.write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
            bytesRead = src.read(buffer);
        }

        return bytesCopied;
    }

Let's say Python or Perl let one express stream copying more concisely straight out of the box. However when faced with real life programming challenges one will very quickly encounter limits of what a language can express out of the box with one-liner. But as a programmer one has the power to create one-liners from scratch!

Disclaimer: I am not a Java expert, so the code above is just to illustrate the idea based on my very limited knowledge of Java.

"Purchase" doesn't quite reflect modern TOC, I believe the more exact term would be "pay a premium for a longer term license to view video content that is revokable at vendor's will; neither continued availability nor immutability of the initially licensed content is guaranteed".

I would really prefer to pay per view instead and retain a high degree of control over my hardware and software configuration as well as having a reasonable choice of options in terms of video quality, various subtitles and audio tracks.

Ideally I'd be able to buy audio track or subtitles separately to combine with the video content for viewing (plug-in), then there would be a robust market of competing translations.

The reasons why existing video services do not work for me and I've tried Google Play and Amazon Instant so far:

- Lack of on-demand high quality (true 1080) option: Google Play is 480 and Amazon Instant is blurry on a big screen. Besides Amazon states in their TOC that they can change quality as they see fit at the time of a video being played.

- Insistence on specific playback tech. Amazon Instant mandates Silverlight and the playback is choppy on my media centre PC due to Silverlight's graphic acceleration issues.

- Lack of audio track (and often subtitle) options: in UK that's English only. I want to be able to watch films dubbed and have a selection of translations that are already available.

More generally I am opposed to the prepackaged nature of the paid service offered and lack of control over how and what I can watch.

Some alternative ways of viewing the content offer me great choice and full control over:

  1. Title I choose to watch.
  2. Video quality.
  3. Audio quality.
  4. Audio track. 
  5. Subtitles.
  6. Streaming vs. download, so I can make the best use of my connection.
  7. Hardware and software I am using for viewing.
  

spindritf, not necessarily, we don't know the initial temperature of the water and on a hot day (as per the problem statement) the ice-water system will be absorbing some of the external energy.

In practical world, more likely that water will start at around 20-25°C mark and will be considerably cooler once the ice has melted but still above 4°C. So the water volume is likely to shrink a tiny bit due to the rising density and then some more due to ice and water evaporation.

But the effect might be barely noticeable and for some time water will stay level with the edges after ice melted.

Since water reaches its peak density at about 4 °C, the actual outcome will vary slightly depending on the initial and the final temperature of the water once the ice has melted.

This list is a sign of a viable business if anything else. Any company needs to stay forever young by keeping its offerings in line with the demand. Companies that fail are the ones that choose to ignore the reality.

I believe this still to be a very good advice and applies to both sexes. In family life circumstances when a household must depend only on a single source of income are abound. Families where each participating adult can provide a basic standard of living for the entire family in times of need are much stronger financially.

Contemporary LED lighting does seem much harsher with very sharp shadows and much less pleasant to the eye than older lights. I believe that lighting need to be assessed on it's overall merits, not just based on brightness / cost ratio.

Understanding downside is much more crucial for continual survival than upside: what is the worse case scenario, bottom line analysis - are the heuristic tools routinely used by people the world over.

A new solution to bacterial infection control problem is due and it might come with even greater benefits than antibiotics. The article makes us appreciate the pain of the problem and puts a greater value on achieving a solution.

My experience of having gone through a relationship with an abusive cheater and subsequent two-years research on the topic reading confessions and engaging with fellow men indicates that these words are written from a contemporary female perspective.

Out of failed relationships, a typical westernised woman involved tends to take a marriage like something that can be ditched at any point if anything at all goes wrong; men, on the contrary, tend to stick by their wives. Statistics tell that the majority of divorces in westernised society nowadays are initiated by women. [1]

The legal landscape at least here, in UK, means that after a relationship fails and a divorce in practical terms its predominately men who are left with the financial burden of the split.

[1] http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/vsob1/divorces-in-england-and-...

I am 35 and I share this mindset about close relationships. Family is similar to a start-up in that founders should be prepared to carry each other through ups and downs pooling the risks and sharing not only profits but losses.

What I learned from failed relationships so far is that you have to be careful who you closely associate with for start-up and family purposes alike. The initial excitement and enthusiasm might be blinding, you owe it to yourself to vet candidates carefully.

A lot of modern high-paying jobs that require rare skills are all-or-nothing affairs: the choice between fewer hours & less pay and more hours & more money just isn't there.

Some teams have to be small and be able to react quickly to very tight deadlines meaning high work intensity and long hours to remain just on top of what's going on in the environment.

This. He had likely abandoned his well-paying job because of burn-out caused by the long hours and lack of appreciation at home where he was treated as an ATM.

I am talking from personal experience and many stories of my peers. In the modern Western society many men are isolated and do not talk to each other about their family problems. If they did they'd found out how similar their stories are - overworked, unappreciated by their wives with their kids brought up to despise them, quietly carrying the entire financial burden of the family on their backs.

Whilst the author had to pick up the pieces of spending gone out of control his entire "family" moved on. As soon as he became a liability instead of an asset his wife discarded him.

Could that be a forecasting system that notifies the driver just in time for him to react about what is going to happen in a next moment?

To me it is not clear why stealing the proprietary code could have cost CG hundreds of millions of dollars.

Proprietary code that wasn't developed and tested with generic requirements in mind can rarely be economically re-used outside of the original company context, as it reflects the structure and the processes of the mother-company. In fact most organisations I know decided to throw away their code base entirely when restructuring or upgrading their internal systems as re-work was deemed uneconomic, because the gap between the code and changed environment is too great.

Data is salvageable and immediately valuable; however re-using the code requires a considerable effort, it would also be very hard to keep in secret. The news of their platform being fully or partially re-used at competitor's would have quickly reached GC and they could have shut down the competitor entirely whilst suing them for all of the profit.

Of course one could steal the code for analysis so they could try and exploit the technological weaknesses in GC trading patterns, however this is not the argument given by the article or GC.

The original Vanity Fair article tries very hard to paint a picture of a stereotypical overly naive techy.

Little carefully inserted details such as pain-the-back side of having to mow the lawn, all these details should be creating a picture of life-unsavvy coding reclude in reader's mind. The reader supposed to chuckle "how naive, anyone who is on $270K can just hire gardener to take care of the lawn!"

I have personal knowledge of programmers taking the code with them when leaving employment for no particular reason except for "in case I might need it as a reference" and then never ever looking at it again. In my mind it's very much akin to hoarding.

I have very little doubt that the code would be unusable outside of GC infrastructure.

What does seem unusually harsh is the punishment for the crime when no damage was ever done to the victim; to me this is an attribute of a show-case trial.

I regularly see developers going out of business because they are not charging enough. I have been doing software consulting for the past six years and I charge higher rate than anyone else I met in the niche.

The ex-contractors I had a chance to talk to don't describe becoming a permanent employee as "going out of contracting business". The reasons they usually cite for ceasing consulting: - anxiety about not being able to get a next contract - additional paperwork, unpaid administrative overhead - dwindling of contract work stream - unpaid travel

They tend to underestimate the volatility and added overhead of contract work compared to permanent positions and they do not charge enough to cover the risks and extra expense. A lot of the newly born contractors stay in the business as long as the initial client keeps extending them and fail to build a business.

The nature of their business is opportunistic and the business dies once the first serious obstacle is met. In my opinion they fail to realise the importance of negotiating a thicker margin that serves as a tool and motivation to overcome many hurdles that are otherwise smoothed by employer. A thicker margin provides business continuity and a long-term win for the customers.

I can see clear parallels with selling apps. Sexy apps might be given away for free, as there are plenty of competing developers some of whom are attracted by vanity. However, charging more means getting higher quality customers who self-select based criteria you set and advertise and will help build a more stable, healthy business.

Poor GPU support (lack of drivers) is still a major deal-breaker for home and media use. As of now hardware should still be selected on the basis of available driver support and it's a major obstacle and the situation doesn't seem to have improved significantly since 3-5 years ago.

> An attack of revenge, maybe against the military or police forces, would be what's expected.

Sure:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beslan_school_hostage_crisis

Ironically Ingush and Chechen islamic terrorists are persistently referred to as "rebels" and "separatists" by Western media, BBC which is perceived as more "independent" news outlet didn't utter once word "terrorist" even during the coverage of the heinous terror attack against children.

People committing acts of terror are terrorists regardless of their aims.

Why not enforce a velocity restriction on outgoing e-mails instead and put spam filters on outgoing e-mail then bounce offending mail back to sender?

Spammers are phishing for ox.ac.uk accounts because they're easy to exploit, right? Just raise the bar.

This is the case of economic stimulus through military spending in addition to hidden high-tech subsidy on taxpayer's tab. And redistribution of wealth, if you wish.

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to do any amount of "crucial R&D" that will eventually be sold to taxpayers irregardless of outcome? Every big corp manager's dream.

It doesn't matter if the thing works extra reliably or not: an average lifespan of the battlefield equipment is measured in hours. At a significantly lower costs these copters could be disposable suggesting an entirely different patterns of tactical use.

Apart from the redistribution of wealth from the taxpayers' pockets into the pockets of elites the military spending is "no questions asked" then compared to social projects. Taxpayer's either won't care at all or will come up with reasoning such as "military grade means X1000 the civil costs".

I'm an engineer and have studied several MBA courses as part of my engineering management degree. MBA courses are heavily corporation oriented and have limited value for founders of organically grown start-ups.

Majority of the management techniques taught are economic only when applied at corporate scale.

Talking from personal experience of having managed off-shore projects from an on-shore base the most significant challenges are:

- misaligned interests

- availability of information

- control

- security and compliance

- communication

As far as "does it EVER work" concerned: it does. It doesn't work well though. Most people can run, doesn't mean that most people can run as fast as Usain Bolt.

My whole opinion at: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/46934/12348

Quoting http://stackoverflow.com/a/746854/22088:

Contractor is a temporary resource brought in from outside of organisation. Contractors' job is done when they finish delivering products or services specified in their contract.

Consultant is a specific kind of contractor. Their primary job is not just scaling up the existing team, but delivery of knowledge transfer. Consultants invest time into learning a specific topic or coming up with a new way of doing things, then they come to an organisation and transfer that knowledge to the locals, so that the team can carry on doing the job without need for the consultant to stay with the organisation.