>(Ford)'s amazing success with low R&D expenditure (they had one engine design that ran from the 70's to the 90's with no modification or improvement despite the industry ballooning with different technologies during that time) shows how small the relationship between R&D and great products is.
And no-one ever accused Ford of making shoddy cars that fall apart the second they leave the floor... for many decades solid...
The reason I dived into Android with so much relish was because it was so much like my Asus WinMo PDA. The TOMTOM maps on that was brilliant. GPS was way more accurate than Google Maps, both as in "determining what road you're on" and "pinpoint accuracy in the middle of nowhere".
Averages are nice, but I'll be interested to see what happens to the workforce that depends upon them entirely, as mentioned above: truckies, taxis, FedEx, etc.
I say, leave it for a year to lull the companies into a false sense of security, then tax the hell out of companies using them for a few years to pay for some re-education for the old employees.
Maybe it's because I'm Australian and have got used to the free ride of healthcare and education, but I'd gladly take a minor tax increase if it means a significant portion of the population gets into an entirely new career quicker, instead of remaining unemployed and being MORE of a strain on the economy.
Career is a strong word, though. The sorts of people we're talking about usually have no other option, and education can change that.
You should be used to this kind of talk by now. It's the modus operandi of socialism and the Democratic party. Who ever heard of personal responsibility?
How dare that person get cancer, become unemployed because of unforseen shifts in the job market, etc.
Social safety nets exist for a reason. You may opt out by moving somewhere else if you would prefer not to participate in a society with said safety nets.
I say this as someone in a $200K/year+ household. People who preach personal responsibility are oblivious to the realities of the world.
Well every one knows that becoming severely ill is a possibility for anyone, that's what insurance is for. Can't afford insurance? Give up unhealthy habits to lower your rates, get a better job, look after family so that they will support you if you need help.
Get made redundant due to unforeseen shifts in the job market? Educate yourself, get a better job, work harder. Innovate, invent, think, mow your neighbors lawns. Use your brain and don't embark on a dead end career.
I agree that some social safety nets are needed for a civilized society (No one that is ill should go without out treatment if they don't have any money etc) but at the same time there are limits and I think paying for people who lose their jobs because of new technology is way past that line. We need to encourage people to be smarter, not dumber.
"People who preach personal responsibility are oblivious to the realities of the world." I live in South Africa and government handouts do nothing but keep the poor oppressed and uneducated. They are used as a tool for control by populist politicians. People will have more children just for another R250/month from the government instead of creating value. Socialism is a huge threat to everyone everywhere. It keeps the populous dumb and gives governments way too much power. Please don't preach about the realities of the world from your $200K/year+ household pedestal. Socialism is obviously working out great for you.
>I live in South Africa and government handouts do nothing but keep the poor oppressed and uneducated.
I live in Australia, one of the best examples of how government handouts can ruin a race, and I'm saying this as someone coming from a low-income family with poor education and working+educating myself to a $100k/y job before I'm 30.
>I think paying for people who lose their jobs because of new technology is way past that line.
I think completely supporting them would be a bad idea, but as said in my original post, assistance in re-education should be partially paid for. I am always of the opinion that education should be at least partially subsidised - full subsidy encourages a poorer quality of education.
Example: You're 26 and have just spent $80k and 8 years of toil studying furiously for a degree, and the market for your chosen field evaporates. Sure, you've got the rest of your life ahead of you, but now you're significantly in debt because of something you had no control over.
This is a difficult analogy to compare with taxi drivers, but I hope you see the point - and over the next 10-40 years we will see this happen more and more as machine intelligence replaces more and more jobs.
I don't have much to add to tetomb. While certain safety nets can be successfully argued to make sense in a large, wealthy, productive, and strongly-led society, that doesn't imply all safety nets make sense in all societies. It also doesn't imply that even the desirable nets can be had feasibly at a good quality of service. For deductive reasons why they don't, see Carlyle, Mises, et al. (If you prefer inductive observation, you can also look at a wide variety of examples across history of failed and failing attempts.)
Lest you think I have no experience with the US situation and system, I've never lived in a 6-figure income/year household, I have a family member who was unemployed for over a year, who broke her arm only months after losing her job and medical insurance (all the years of medical insurance payments wasted, she having never been injured or seriously ill during that time--but that's a risk one takes when deciding (when one has a choice) to pay for insurance), finally getting a job that paid less than half of what she used to make--she's just trying to make it to retirement because all the money the government has forced her to "save" is effectively untouchable until then. I have a cousin who recently got knee cancer (but he'll be fine because it hasn't spread, his dad's an attorney, and a lot of cancers are curable), and I have another family member with a mental illness who without medical treatment could not function. He has paid the (often brutal) consequences of going off the medication enough times, fortunately he's been stable now for some years. (And mental illness is far worse than cancer, from the underfunded and incomplete medical understanding and treatments to government systems for aid to the social stigmas that make making friends, getting family support, getting a job, and a whole bunch of other things incredibly difficult.) I'm not oblivious to realities of the world. I see the causes deserving of aid as well as the crappiness of institutionalized aid systems.
>Australia could chase edge by becoming a low-tax or low-red-tape capital.
Although our country was founded and grew up with a "low red-tape" mentality, the last 30 years of global-scale mining boom has forever removed that possibility from our environment. Combining socialised welfare, healthcare and (finally!) decent network infrastructure with the Western selfish love of toys, there's not a chance we are ever going to return to a low-tax, low-red-tape society.
They are legal on private property and (since 2012-06) in our capital city, Canberra, but not on any other roads/pathways.
Side note: in New Zealand they're classified the same as mobility scooters and motorised wheelchairs, and as such are fine, bust stick to walkways when possible.
They're not legal on Auckland central streets any more; my favourite pizza place, Sal's, was recently banned from using them to make deliveries.
Side note: if you're ever in orkland, go to sals, they do fantastic pizza.
I like the photos of the solidoodle2 and the price tag. How is the end product? Some dudes in a local hackerspace built a reprap a while ago but that thing is nothing but disappointment... Head drift, ooze problems, constant maintenance. What's the most complex thing you've printed, if you don't mind me asking?
Over the last two months, it's been decent. I had ooze issues, but they were cured by removing water from my filament using an oven and a lot of desiccant.
As for head drift and maintenance, no head drift and almost no maintenance required. I had to level the bed as it wasn't quite right when I got it (UPS clearly smashed the package as always, though, so it was probably right when it was shipped).
I think the manufactured steel-frame approach that Solidoodle and MakerBot have taken is superior in many ways to the cobbled-together threaded rods/hardware approach that RepRap designs take - you pay more for a large build area, but it's easier to get decent strength and much less fiddly in terms of setup (no adjusting bolts to make rods line up and the like). Sure, you can't make a copy with just a hardware store and a 3D printer, but for the price and functionality difference, I'll deal with that drawback.
I've printed a couple of decently complex models and what I've found is that settings and filament matter a -lot- more than anything else. The print head goes where I want it to and the extruder pushes the amount of plastic I request through the nozzle - beyond that, it's all about making sure the filament isn't expanding too much in the hot end via high quality filament and making sure there is -no- water in it, and getting the slicer to request the correct amount of plastic at the right rate.
All very interesting, thanks for the detailed response. I'm pretty interested in setting up a fully-automated custom brewery/distillery so I've been looking into making a lot of custom fittings for piping and heat-exchanging. Thanks again
