It might be time to read it all again. I dropped it after 30 readings because of watching the movies (they were far from great but they weren't terrible).
But I don't remember that famous scene making it into the scripts...
Reminds me of a story an absentee (he lived in southern NJ) bar owner in NYC told me years ago. He thought he was getting bamboozled by his bartender so he hired a Private Eye to investigate. After about a week or so he want back to owner and told him he didn't see anything wrong going on. He said when bartender was working in the back he would use register there and when he was working in the front he would use the register up there. Owner looked at him and said "we only have one register"!
Decades ago I competed against NCR when I was employed by Burroughs Corp. Thank you for conjuring up some fine old memories from my mind. Competition was fierce between those two formerly great companies. And like the buggy whip and Blockbuster, the cash register has essentially disappeared from our culture. I have one request for those in charge of self service check out in stores; standardize the credit card payment machines at the counter. It is annoying to try and figure out where to place, swipe, or insert the card to pay for the goods. NCR could solve that.
Agree....and keep the voice on non-security mode....the voice sounds like your everyday bitchy nag....I swear to God that the person who designed it used a woman's voice to talk to women checking out the way that women usually talk to men and children...demanding that they do what she says....non-security mode is more nice...
Actually it's mean because generally the woman voice is tired and pleading for some help from husband and children. Monkey see, monkey do for the children and since dad is "head of the household" then they ASSUME whatever dad does is what they CAN do. So Mom's are generally tired and frustrated and pleading since it is THEY who are on duty 24/7 supposed to take care of the house, car, yard, insurance, bills, laundry, purchasing, loading and cooking food, homework assignments, dentist appointments, doctor and vet appointments and keeping track of same, vaccines, etc.,and oh yes, maybe for mom she can fit in a hair cut every 3 months. Let's hear some more men whining, they couldn't begin to keep up. do you part!!! Oh, btw, mine took the garbage down to the curb once a week for pickup, ho hum.
i had three just like you before i wised up. i was fifty years old. one could say i was a slow learner. the last 27 have been much better than the first fifty i can tell you that.
some places on the web would ban you for that comment...lucianne.com, newsbusters, tcth come to mind. the truth isn't always welcomed now-a-days. that said...i agree.
I would invite those websites to deny that the voice in security mode is not in fact bitchy. Every man knows what the voice is...as does every child. They can complain all that they want but I would maintain that they are 25 year old females who act bitchy.
My beloved wife has been away tramping with friends for the past week. Our dog and I have had a pleasant week. Working at our preferred pace, not stressful, got a lot done. She is due back tomorrow.
Today will be spent preparing for inspection. Lawns mowed. Floors vacuumed. Dishes done, bed made, laundry cleared, kitchen sparkling.
No. I’m not scared of her. Honestly. I just want her to be happy.
As the dog is to me, so am I to her. xxxxxx
Besides, if she comes back to a lovely home she will be pleased, scratch my ears and give me a biscuit, metaphorically speaking.
She will trust me and our dog to be left unsupervised, and go for more trips.
Banned, really? Would it be for just using the word bitch?
Or for saying some women are bitches? Everybody alive knows that's true, including all women, even the far left ones.
(I usually say beeyotch myself, it's kind of fun.)
I guess I don't have sufficient information on the context, because I've never asked a card reader to talk. I agree they're always a challenge, even after my years in software.
if they can't solve the theft problem at self checkouts they may just go the way of the dodo bird. the savings on labor are being offset by all that stealing. i'll just leave it at that.
A manager at a big box home improvement store with initials HD told me how much his store lost to theft on some aisles. It is a staggering number in six digits. Self check has theft too but is closely watched and they wouldn’t be adding more self check if it wasn’t working. It’s here to stay with auto check out soon to follow. Just shop and walk out while it records every item. Might be long term answer to theft………if we all live thru this anarchy and remain alive.
I.T. is now A.I.--- everything is A.I. now and most peopld don't have any idea what it really is. It has been around for decades but as the speed and size of integrated circuits (chips) and the vast improvements in algorithms to analyze and resolve or solve just about any inquiry or equation is astounding. Server farms rule. The world is in for a very serious "ride" and perhaps a massive implosion when and if the R.O.I. from these massive investments in A.I. don't pay out.... that could happen easily.
AI is the aggregated "saved knowledge" assembled through powerful chips that can scan and collect relevant "hits" to the question being asked in only a few seconds. It takes a lot of computer chip processing and lots of power to run it all.
It is still an invention of I.T. humans and engineers who can build it.
To your point about the scariness, I agree. Like the atom bomb, we confronted our ability to create something that could wipe us out if used in the wrong way.
That's why I had "saved knowledge" in parentheses.
As is true with all "stored" knowledge, new learning obsoletes old knowledge.
I have the set of World Book Encyclopedias circa 1962 on one of my book shelves. I spent many hours reading through them for their "Stored" knowledge, but much of what is written in them is now not true.
We can look at this in two ways. The risk of incorrect knowledge is either a characteristic of AI that is bad enough to abandon it, or we can recognize that continued INNOVATION will, by its intent, replace older facts with newer facts to improve our lives. It comes down to how it is used.
The entire issue with AI is in how we use - and control - it. Like atomic power, it can be a blessing or end life as we know it.
The set of encyclopedias we had were from the 1920's when dad went to college, possibly older. I remember how they differed on some subjects from the ones at school. Dad told me that the old ones were more trustworthy.
I brought one home from school for a paper on the civil war I had to write. While I was doing chores, dad looked through the "modern" one then told me to use his instead for my research. Quite different analysis, I believe the modern one was written by a southerner.
THIS IS THE PROBLEM AND WHAT IS TRUE. AI EVEN TRIES to finish my text messages....whoa, Nelly. I think its dangerous and part of the dark world coming to pass. But who is in charge????
And AI looks too much like Al yrs i did type differrnt letters I and L .. you can call me Al is too much like HALL and every Sci-FI fan knows what that means.
HAL (not HALL) was IBM (go one letter up from H and you get I; and one letter up from A and you get B; and one letter up from L and you get M)= Hence, IBM. I got that in one second when watching 2001 The Space Odyssey the very first time. What was arguably one of the greatest movies of all time in my humble opinion was greatly flawed by an esoteric and unexplainable (to me) ending. I would have re-written that. But that is me; a sci-fi novice.
I always remember what one reviewer said about it. He noted that HAL the computer had all the personality, and the humans on the ship were so low-key they seemed like machines.
It’s insanity, going full speed ahead into something with no safeguards, rules or off ramp. But never fear, lack of enough electricity is going to slow it way down and might give us enough time to become its master instead of the victim.
After we've seen how the "legacy media" was able to mentally manipulate half the population, I would think we'd be very leery of anything that super-enhanced the opportunity for misinforming people.
What is happening in this federal government is that lying has become standard operating procedure. If our own government thinks its okay to lie to us, why would we believe anything they say about AI is true? This is going to get much worse too and both sides the aisle are lying to us. Dangerous time for America.
Absolutely. The classic IT/programmer/developer struggles to understand users. Hence many of their "innovations" do not deliver on the promises--particularly re. business efficiency.
Apparently most of the AI "solutions" for large manufacturing plants seriously misunderstand the dynamics of standard and non-standard processes. There are many successful automation solutions developed by those with deep knowledge of plant ops. But they must be married with understanding of the underlying processes themselves--and what can go wrong.
The Chinese have moved quite far in utilizing robots for manufacturing tasks--which works well for them and allows for 24 hour ops, etc. Still, those robots are task specific--perhaps "trained" on AI.
The idea of training human operators with AI solely misses the huge opportunity of the human mind.
Seems like the market is reacting in grasping that AI based stock market rallies might be inflated.
One possibility is that the realization of the market, unlike the days of the dot com bubble, could be occurring more gradually, because there is so much more and better (that is, our side's) information available to counter agenda-driven narratives.
It could be translating into daily ups and downs, nerve-wracking as I'm sure they are to many, rather than one big drop and implosion all at once.
Disclaimer: I know very little about how the market works. But I do know our information landscape is miles away from what it was decades ago.
And those ornate brass registers were a work of art to look it and hear the ultimate ring/chime ending. Plus you have a paper receipt to document each purchase. Brilliant.
Wouldn't it be nice to replace the computerized voting machines with something that simple and handsome in the form of bare-bones counting technology, nothing more?
What honest election really needs the ability to play with percentages on the outcome?
The drive to innovate and improve our quality of life is the basis for this country's economic system and is what made the United States the greatest country on Earth. It's not perfect, but it is the best there is so far.
Don't forget that in the same town of Dayton - some years later than this story - two bicycle mechanics without formal education invented man-powered flight with prototypes developed in Dayton, OH and later assembled and tested in Kitty Hawk, NC. The Wright bros. succeeded when the US Government funded inventor, Samuel Langley (with all the right education credentials), failed miserably.
The drive to innovate wins. The Wright bros had innovation fever and worked for themselves. Samuel Langley was a paid consultant to the military so man-powered flight could be used to advance our strength in war.
Langley Air Force Base (but not CIA Langley headquarters) is named after him too.
The Wright Bros only have Wright Patterson Air Force Base named (shared name) after them, just outside of Dayton, OH, but it is where the alien bodies and the Roswell flying saucer are kept. How ironic is that for the men who conquered the warped wing design for controlled man-powered flight to host the first captured flying saucer?
Thank you for this reminder because I love construction equipment.
I started my career in Construction Equipment (Cleveland-based Warner and Swasey owned a division for a newly designed excavator called a Gradall, an innovation by a road contractor, Ray Ferwerda, who lost his crews to to WWII. He applied the new science of hydraulics to dig dirt more efficiently than the steam shovels).
They built America, especially the interstate transportation system, all of which was a huge innovation. The invention of hydraulics (compared to steam) really helped too.
So now we are in desperate need of a new kind of cash register that will stop the gargantuan peculation of what we call the US government. Is Elon today’s modern day saloon keeper or is it “Big Balls?”
Don fails to mention the most important part of this story: if it had not been for Delco, we'd all be using (and cursing) Lucas electronics. Ask any owner of a British car. Maybe even a Bentley.
Actually, in my experience "warm beer" to describe the German or British kind is an American exaggeration. It's just not as chilled as standard American beers, whose insipidness has long been masked by excessive refrigeration.
But I may also be culturally biased, because when ordering a bottled American beer I still specify a warm glass.
IMHO, I think ALL political grifters of both political party's - Elephants, but especially Jacka$$e$ - are drug-addled drunks, primarily addicted to opium - Other People's Money - but alcohol, as well.
Having relatives in Dayton, OH, I've been to Jay's Seafood Restaurant in the Historic Oregon District. It lives up to it's reputation & the bar is beautiful.
Your poll question, Mr. Surber, is a bit disingenuous.
(1) Redheaded women are my kryptonite, but I dearly love them anyway.
(2) We all know Dumbo's birth certificate is phony, the hospital submitting it wasn't in existence at the time, so his/hers eight year Reign of Terror - One Big A$$ Mistake America - was the biggest fraud perpetrated on Americans.
(3) The atomic bomb ends wars. Rather than wasting men and machines, we should use it more often, especially against drug cartels, Islamic terrorists, American communists and our very own home-grown domestic terrorists.
(4) Fentanyl used to be a prescribed pain reliever, now it's an unprescribed killer. Good riddance to those who use it, especially the democRAT's patron saint, George Floyd.
(5) The computer has made life easier but it is dangerous as hell in the wrong hands. I miss the simplicity and music of the '50's and the music of the '60's & '70's.
For all of the points in your comment is why I still have a complete set of World Book Encyclopedias (early 1960's era) on a handy book self from which I pull one out every once in a while to skim through it.
It is a snapshot that never fades to a time that made a hell of a lot more sense to me.
Thank you. There are probably more of us than you think.
Among other things, I inherited my parents brown, leather-bound Encyclopedia Britannica's, which are a phenomenal source of information, besides my very own green, leather-bound Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia's & dictionary..
Years ago my mom bought a "vintage" 1958 dictionary, which I kept. Way more informative (and accurate) than any modern dictionary. Maybe with the exception of urban dictionary LOL.
Mom angered my dad when she bought Groliers encyclopedia set from a traveling salesman. This turned out to be something that brought the family closer and inspired we children to learn. I still have this set purchased in the 1950s,well read .
Let's be more specific. The truly dangerous invention is the red-headed woman named Karen who is an AWFL. She has a masters degree in some grievance-studies major from Middlebury College, and now she works in HR at a Soros/USAID-funded NGO.
You would know her by her ridiculously expensive and startlingly unattractive hairdo, as well as her NPR tote bag. She drives a Subaru, and lives in an all-white gated community with that "In this house we believe..." sign out front.
However if she's a RED-PILLED red head, she might be much more fun than dangerous.
I don’t know when or why Subarus got a bad name. I’ve driven them since 2003. Grocery runs, long distance road trips. They go in the snow, great turning radius, roomy cargo, easy to park, comfortable ride. Service lobbies have apples. I am far from AWFL and have a statue of Mary in the garden. Karen wouldn’t touch a Subaru. She’s in a Tesla with the T scaped off.
I'm a regular at a men's Bible study which meets every Thursday in a nearby town. One of the other regulars is active in republican politics.
Near the entrance to the parking lot is a house with a host of liberal signage.
Several weeks ago the republican guy started talking about having information packets regarding the various school board and city commission candidates.
I interrupted him and said guys, this is easy, just note the signs you pass coming in and don't vote for them, they're commies.
It seems with each new invention the level of pecolation increases exponentially. I really enjoyed this article. It reminded me of the 1978 TV series “Connections” with James Burke. It would start with a particular incident in history and would follow all the things that occurred based on that incident.
Publix down here in Fla. has now employed the use of self checkout. Although one employee hovers over six checkouts, it bugs me considering they didn’t lower their prices, but surely decreased their employees’ hours. This story reminds me only that our schools are so egregiously corrupt, that we are not turning out the brainpower needed to create future inventors, and the few that will invent needed devices will then have to deal with another egregiously corrupt institution, Congress, who will make it impossible to bring that invention to market. And if it’s a cure for any disease, big pharma will swoop in and buy it and it will never see the light of day.
That could be part of it but I think it is the inability to hire, train and retain good employees. I workpart time for a major cruise line and finding port agents who will actually show up and actually work is a hard thing these days.
A local grocery store in my Northeast Ohio territory (Cleveland-based Marc's) felt the competition from the bigger chains to add self checkout because people got irritated waiting in the too-long human-controlled checkout lines.
Marc's did a moderate renovation to get with the times only to find out they had to add additional manpower to stop the very large increase in PECULATION. People would go through the motion of scanning an item (while covering the bar code). Without a human standing very close to verify the "beep" that it scanned. They walked out (Peculated) with thousands of dollars in merchandise. If caught, their excuse was to blame the scanner since they "tried" to scan the item that never appeared on their receipt.
Within six months Marc's tore out the self-check outs and now everyone must go through their (still understaffed) manual, human-controlled checkouts.
Somewhere along the way corporate greed has caused big business to forget who their customer is . A satisfied , well paid middle class is the key to any successful enterprise .
Back when the world was new, quite by serendipity our medical practice discovered that both we and our hospital had been billing for the same services - double-billing, as it were. We immediately hired a large accounting firm to locate the problem, which turned out to be mis-programming of the billing software when it was bought - boiling down to a "code 27" in a single line of software instead of a "code 26."
After the problem had been ferreted-out and the innocence of the manager and billing staff solidly established, we notified the Feds and the State of WV, told them the amounts, and sent documents from Deloitte documenting same. The Feds were disappointed that their new female prosecutor couldn't send anybody to jail and enhance her resumé, but the real killer was the State of WV's response: glad you were so brave and honest. You see, we DON'T DO DOUBLE-ENTRY ACCOUNTING, and we would have never picked it up.
I hear that's changed now. This is why the gub'ment has no business with your money.
Thank you, Don. I love a good history lesson where I learn something I did not know.
Being inventors/practicle scientists, the men who abandoned the early electric cars knew what seems to escape many today. Gasoline and diesel, in terms of energy density (which is how much energy you can get from a given volume), are many, many times that of batteries. That is still true, even with today's improved batteries. Until that magical miracle battery (you know, the one that's been just around the corner for the last 20 freaking years) is invented that can rival gas and oil in energy density AND speed of recharging, electric cars are STILL wasteful and impractical.
Please note none of the above innovation could have taken place under a socialist atmosphere.
Well, maybe technically it *could* have. It just wouldn’t have.
And if it had, the state would have seized control of it.
And would have put it into the back of a warehouse, never to be seen again.
Just like in Atlas Shrugged.
Yep. The abandoned factory hiding the motor.
A fantastic scene in the mystery plot.
It might be time to read it all again. I dropped it after 30 readings because of watching the movies (they were far from great but they weren't terrible).
But I don't remember that famous scene making it into the scripts...
Yes, I wish the films were better done but there was so much in the book it must have been an impossible task.
True, but it did help to end the peculation forcing aspiring Democrats to change careers and go into politics.
Hey, good one! 😂
The IRS couldn’t have done any better….
And CongressCritters learned to love the concept…
Reminds me of a story an absentee (he lived in southern NJ) bar owner in NYC told me years ago. He thought he was getting bamboozled by his bartender so he hired a Private Eye to investigate. After about a week or so he want back to owner and told him he didn't see anything wrong going on. He said when bartender was working in the back he would use register there and when he was working in the front he would use the register up there. Owner looked at him and said "we only have one register"!
11/04/25: That took a while to register, but I eventually got it.
😂
somethings take a while to register.
🤣
Decades ago I competed against NCR when I was employed by Burroughs Corp. Thank you for conjuring up some fine old memories from my mind. Competition was fierce between those two formerly great companies. And like the buggy whip and Blockbuster, the cash register has essentially disappeared from our culture. I have one request for those in charge of self service check out in stores; standardize the credit card payment machines at the counter. It is annoying to try and figure out where to place, swipe, or insert the card to pay for the goods. NCR could solve that.
And make it impossible to attach skimmers.
Agree....and keep the voice on non-security mode....the voice sounds like your everyday bitchy nag....I swear to God that the person who designed it used a woman's voice to talk to women checking out the way that women usually talk to men and children...demanding that they do what she says....non-security mode is more nice...
That is a hilarious comment. And it is right on. Bravo.
Actually it's mean because generally the woman voice is tired and pleading for some help from husband and children. Monkey see, monkey do for the children and since dad is "head of the household" then they ASSUME whatever dad does is what they CAN do. So Mom's are generally tired and frustrated and pleading since it is THEY who are on duty 24/7 supposed to take care of the house, car, yard, insurance, bills, laundry, purchasing, loading and cooking food, homework assignments, dentist appointments, doctor and vet appointments and keeping track of same, vaccines, etc.,and oh yes, maybe for mom she can fit in a hair cut every 3 months. Let's hear some more men whining, they couldn't begin to keep up. do you part!!! Oh, btw, mine took the garbage down to the curb once a week for pickup, ho hum.
i had three just like you before i wised up. i was fifty years old. one could say i was a slow learner. the last 27 have been much better than the first fifty i can tell you that.
I also wised up at 51 and should have done it sooner. No more grief or asking for all kinds of things....just joyful peace and I love it.
some places on the web would ban you for that comment...lucianne.com, newsbusters, tcth come to mind. the truth isn't always welcomed now-a-days. that said...i agree.
I would invite those websites to deny that the voice in security mode is not in fact bitchy. Every man knows what the voice is...as does every child. They can complain all that they want but I would maintain that they are 25 year old females who act bitchy.
Men and children wouldn't know what to do unless a woman tells them...women rule the world, truth be told.
My beloved wife has been away tramping with friends for the past week. Our dog and I have had a pleasant week. Working at our preferred pace, not stressful, got a lot done. She is due back tomorrow.
Today will be spent preparing for inspection. Lawns mowed. Floors vacuumed. Dishes done, bed made, laundry cleared, kitchen sparkling.
No. I’m not scared of her. Honestly. I just want her to be happy.
As the dog is to me, so am I to her. xxxxxx
Besides, if she comes back to a lovely home she will be pleased, scratch my ears and give me a biscuit, metaphorically speaking.
She will trust me and our dog to be left unsupervised, and go for more trips.
Nah. She will just become suspicious and want to know what you are hiding.
What a good boy!!!! Bless your little heart!!! I am serious. She will feel loved and appreciated, isn't that what marriage is about?
for women it is. for men it's being an atm for a female.
Does your goldfish ride a bicycle VICKI ?? asking for a friend.
what exactly is your point? asking for myself.
he made it...you either missed it or you're a bull shite artist.
i'll go with door number two.
Banned, really? Would it be for just using the word bitch?
Or for saying some women are bitches? Everybody alive knows that's true, including all women, even the far left ones.
(I usually say beeyotch myself, it's kind of fun.)
I guess I don't have sufficient information on the context, because I've never asked a card reader to talk. I agree they're always a challenge, even after my years in software.
holding women to account is a risky pass time.
if they can't solve the theft problem at self checkouts they may just go the way of the dodo bird. the savings on labor are being offset by all that stealing. i'll just leave it at that.
A manager at a big box home improvement store with initials HD told me how much his store lost to theft on some aisles. It is a staggering number in six digits. Self check has theft too but is closely watched and they wouldn’t be adding more self check if it wasn’t working. It’s here to stay with auto check out soon to follow. Just shop and walk out while it records every item. Might be long term answer to theft………if we all live thru this anarchy and remain alive.
Amem/ Life was much easier and convenient in the sixties until some geniuses decided to "automate" everything.
scan and shop would be much more secure than self checkout.
Possibly. I’m not sure but has to be better than an unmotivated, half asleep checker.
Yes! That drives me crazy.
I can only guess it is the result of the loopy I.T. culture trying to overtake the industrialists.
I.T. is now A.I.--- everything is A.I. now and most peopld don't have any idea what it really is. It has been around for decades but as the speed and size of integrated circuits (chips) and the vast improvements in algorithms to analyze and resolve or solve just about any inquiry or equation is astounding. Server farms rule. The world is in for a very serious "ride" and perhaps a massive implosion when and if the R.O.I. from these massive investments in A.I. don't pay out.... that could happen easily.
AI is the aggregated "saved knowledge" assembled through powerful chips that can scan and collect relevant "hits" to the question being asked in only a few seconds. It takes a lot of computer chip processing and lots of power to run it all.
It is still an invention of I.T. humans and engineers who can build it.
To your point about the scariness, I agree. Like the atom bomb, we confronted our ability to create something that could wipe us out if used in the wrong way.
Sorry it is stored information...much of which is not true.
That's why I had "saved knowledge" in parentheses.
As is true with all "stored" knowledge, new learning obsoletes old knowledge.
I have the set of World Book Encyclopedias circa 1962 on one of my book shelves. I spent many hours reading through them for their "Stored" knowledge, but much of what is written in them is now not true.
We can look at this in two ways. The risk of incorrect knowledge is either a characteristic of AI that is bad enough to abandon it, or we can recognize that continued INNOVATION will, by its intent, replace older facts with newer facts to improve our lives. It comes down to how it is used.
The entire issue with AI is in how we use - and control - it. Like atomic power, it can be a blessing or end life as we know it.
The set of encyclopedias we had were from the 1920's when dad went to college, possibly older. I remember how they differed on some subjects from the ones at school. Dad told me that the old ones were more trustworthy.
I brought one home from school for a paper on the civil war I had to write. While I was doing chores, dad looked through the "modern" one then told me to use his instead for my research. Quite different analysis, I believe the modern one was written by a southerner.
By modern I mean 1970's, not 2025.
THIS IS THE PROBLEM AND WHAT IS TRUE. AI EVEN TRIES to finish my text messages....whoa, Nelly. I think its dangerous and part of the dark world coming to pass. But who is in charge????
'A eye' always insane!!
And AI looks too much like Al yrs i did type differrnt letters I and L .. you can call me Al is too much like HALL and every Sci-FI fan knows what that means.
HAL (not HALL) was IBM (go one letter up from H and you get I; and one letter up from A and you get B; and one letter up from L and you get M)= Hence, IBM. I got that in one second when watching 2001 The Space Odyssey the very first time. What was arguably one of the greatest movies of all time in my humble opinion was greatly flawed by an esoteric and unexplainable (to me) ending. I would have re-written that. But that is me; a sci-fi novice.
One of the best movies of all time and amazingly close to today’s reality.
True - it was ground-breaking indeed.
I always remember what one reviewer said about it. He noted that HAL the computer had all the personality, and the humans on the ship were so low-key they seemed like machines.
It’s insanity, going full speed ahead into something with no safeguards, rules or off ramp. But never fear, lack of enough electricity is going to slow it way down and might give us enough time to become its master instead of the victim.
After we've seen how the "legacy media" was able to mentally manipulate half the population, I would think we'd be very leery of anything that super-enhanced the opportunity for misinforming people.
So true but if I have learned anything it is to never underestimate a humans ability to ignore what they are unwilling to see and admit.
Heard that ever since Al Gore invented the internet you can not trust what you read on it . Is this true ??
Agree, but that's how they took us into COVID. Now we know they knew better but they did it anyway.
On that, I can only hope the old adage applies to more people every day:
Once burned, twice shy.
What is happening in this federal government is that lying has become standard operating procedure. If our own government thinks its okay to lie to us, why would we believe anything they say about AI is true? This is going to get much worse too and both sides the aisle are lying to us. Dangerous time for America.
Down the road, robots will be us and we will be the pets. Thankfully no in my lifetime but wait and see if you are younger.
Absolutely. The classic IT/programmer/developer struggles to understand users. Hence many of their "innovations" do not deliver on the promises--particularly re. business efficiency.
Apparently most of the AI "solutions" for large manufacturing plants seriously misunderstand the dynamics of standard and non-standard processes. There are many successful automation solutions developed by those with deep knowledge of plant ops. But they must be married with understanding of the underlying processes themselves--and what can go wrong.
The Chinese have moved quite far in utilizing robots for manufacturing tasks--which works well for them and allows for 24 hour ops, etc. Still, those robots are task specific--perhaps "trained" on AI.
The idea of training human operators with AI solely misses the huge opportunity of the human mind.
Seems like the market is reacting in grasping that AI based stock market rallies might be inflated.
One possibility is that the realization of the market, unlike the days of the dot com bubble, could be occurring more gradually, because there is so much more and better (that is, our side's) information available to counter agenda-driven narratives.
It could be translating into daily ups and downs, nerve-wracking as I'm sure they are to many, rather than one big drop and implosion all at once.
Disclaimer: I know very little about how the market works. But I do know our information landscape is miles away from what it was decades ago.
A good point.
Those that argue "efficient market theory" always assume "perfect" knowledge.
In my experience in finance and otherwise that is still not true. But you may be correct that information is both more pertinent and plentiful now.
The (stock) market in short term at least, is still heavily influenced by sentiment and momentum.
And those ornate brass registers were a work of art to look it and hear the ultimate ring/chime ending. Plus you have a paper receipt to document each purchase. Brilliant.
Wouldn't it be nice to replace the computerized voting machines with something that simple and handsome in the form of bare-bones counting technology, nothing more?
What honest election really needs the ability to play with percentages on the outcome?
I guess there's always the abacus...
The drive to innovate and improve our quality of life is the basis for this country's economic system and is what made the United States the greatest country on Earth. It's not perfect, but it is the best there is so far.
Don't forget that in the same town of Dayton - some years later than this story - two bicycle mechanics without formal education invented man-powered flight with prototypes developed in Dayton, OH and later assembled and tested in Kitty Hawk, NC. The Wright bros. succeeded when the US Government funded inventor, Samuel Langley (with all the right education credentials), failed miserably.
The drive to innovate wins. The Wright bros had innovation fever and worked for themselves. Samuel Langley was a paid consultant to the military so man-powered flight could be used to advance our strength in war.
I love the film clip of Langly's machine ignomonously falling into the Potomac. Priceless. But the gubmint named an aircraft carrier after him. Hmmm!?
True, true, true.
Langley Air Force Base (but not CIA Langley headquarters) is named after him too.
The Wright Bros only have Wright Patterson Air Force Base named (shared name) after them, just outside of Dayton, OH, but it is where the alien bodies and the Roswell flying saucer are kept. How ironic is that for the men who conquered the warped wing design for controlled man-powered flight to host the first captured flying saucer?
Named for the NCR founder's nephew, a young lieutenant who died while training to be a pilot in Dayton
Thanks for the connection and new insight!
I thought they were stored at Area 51?
There too, most likely.
What, none in Biden's garage?
Now that you mention it, Biden may be one of them? A real space cadet. That explains it!
A very fine illustration of the advantages of private enterprise over government programs. Might that also apply to Musk vs. NASA?
See LeTourneau for construction equipment innovations.
Thank you for this reminder because I love construction equipment.
I started my career in Construction Equipment (Cleveland-based Warner and Swasey owned a division for a newly designed excavator called a Gradall, an innovation by a road contractor, Ray Ferwerda, who lost his crews to to WWII. He applied the new science of hydraulics to dig dirt more efficiently than the steam shovels).
They built America, especially the interstate transportation system, all of which was a huge innovation. The invention of hydraulics (compared to steam) really helped too.
And yet the navy named their first carrier USS Langley instead of USS Wright.
It's not what you know, it's who you know.
With politicians, it's who you blow.
GMTA !!
So now we are in desperate need of a new kind of cash register that will stop the gargantuan peculation of what we call the US government. Is Elon today’s modern day saloon keeper or is it “Big Balls?”
Don fails to mention the most important part of this story: if it had not been for Delco, we'd all be using (and cursing) Lucas electronics. Ask any owner of a British car. Maybe even a Bentley.
That's why the Brits drink warm beer in the dark. Lucas, Prince of Darkness!
Germans also drink warm beer. Good beer can be consumed warm.
Shitty beer needs to be cold to be drinkable. Some beers, like Schlitz, need to be below absolute zero
Actually, in my experience "warm beer" to describe the German or British kind is an American exaggeration. It's just not as chilled as standard American beers, whose insipidness has long been masked by excessive refrigeration.
But I may also be culturally biased, because when ordering a bottled American beer I still specify a warm glass.
What you don’t like, knocking on your gauges to make them work?
Just a bit of fine-tuning. Those gauges were made by Smiths.
In our early years, my wife’s best friend had an Austin America. Some days it would start fine, some days… no. No reasons.
IMHO, I think ALL political grifters of both political party's - Elephants, but especially Jacka$$e$ - are drug-addled drunks, primarily addicted to opium - Other People's Money - but alcohol, as well.
Having relatives in Dayton, OH, I've been to Jay's Seafood Restaurant in the Historic Oregon District. It lives up to it's reputation & the bar is beautiful.
Your poll question, Mr. Surber, is a bit disingenuous.
(1) Redheaded women are my kryptonite, but I dearly love them anyway.
(2) We all know Dumbo's birth certificate is phony, the hospital submitting it wasn't in existence at the time, so his/hers eight year Reign of Terror - One Big A$$ Mistake America - was the biggest fraud perpetrated on Americans.
(3) The atomic bomb ends wars. Rather than wasting men and machines, we should use it more often, especially against drug cartels, Islamic terrorists, American communists and our very own home-grown domestic terrorists.
(4) Fentanyl used to be a prescribed pain reliever, now it's an unprescribed killer. Good riddance to those who use it, especially the democRAT's patron saint, George Floyd.
(5) The computer has made life easier but it is dangerous as hell in the wrong hands. I miss the simplicity and music of the '50's and the music of the '60's & '70's.
God Bless America and Rock & Roll!
For all of the points in your comment is why I still have a complete set of World Book Encyclopedias (early 1960's era) on a handy book self from which I pull one out every once in a while to skim through it.
It is a snapshot that never fades to a time that made a hell of a lot more sense to me.
Thank you. There are probably more of us than you think.
Among other things, I inherited my parents brown, leather-bound Encyclopedia Britannica's, which are a phenomenal source of information, besides my very own green, leather-bound Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia's & dictionary..
Years ago my mom bought a "vintage" 1958 dictionary, which I kept. Way more informative (and accurate) than any modern dictionary. Maybe with the exception of urban dictionary LOL.
LOL!
WTF is an 'urban' dictionary - ebonics, afro-english, ghetto-speak, geek slang, spanglish?
Inquiring minds would like to know?
Online modern slang dictionary for those of us not hip and cool enough to know what they mean.
Thank you. Ever heard of a rhetorical question?
Mom angered my dad when she bought Groliers encyclopedia set from a traveling salesman. This turned out to be something that brought the family closer and inspired we children to learn. I still have this set purchased in the 1950s,well read .
#4. I'm in favor of using Fentanyl as the drug for executing death row prisoners. If we did, would China quit sending it?
Nah, a variation of Russian Roulette with the monsters on their Highway to Hell. Then feed them to the hogs.
Nope! The only way the ChiCom's will pay attention is to drop a NUKE or, at least, a MOAB on Beijing when Jing-Ping-Pong's in house.
Could feed them to the hogs alive, just tie their hands and drop them in between a sow and her litter. Keeps the bacon drug free.
Great minds think alike, Jeremy & hogs leave nothing behind except scat.
Farm boys know !!
Let's be more specific. The truly dangerous invention is the red-headed woman named Karen who is an AWFL. She has a masters degree in some grievance-studies major from Middlebury College, and now she works in HR at a Soros/USAID-funded NGO.
You would know her by her ridiculously expensive and startlingly unattractive hairdo, as well as her NPR tote bag. She drives a Subaru, and lives in an all-white gated community with that "In this house we believe..." sign out front.
However if she's a RED-PILLED red head, she might be much more fun than dangerous.
I don’t know when or why Subarus got a bad name. I’ve driven them since 2003. Grocery runs, long distance road trips. They go in the snow, great turning radius, roomy cargo, easy to park, comfortable ride. Service lobbies have apples. I am far from AWFL and have a statue of Mary in the garden. Karen wouldn’t touch a Subaru. She’s in a Tesla with the T scaped off.
Female academics drive them.
Is this why pickup trucks try to drive me off the road!? I guess I need a bumper sticker: ´I’m not one of them.´
Yikes! Be careful out there....
The Subaru Brat ruined their image with young American males 😒.
> Karen wouldn’t touch a Subaru. She’s in a Tesla with the T scaped off.
Makes sense.
Did anybody else ever wonder whether leftist Tesla owners keyed their own cars?
An almost perfect description of the enemy.
You forgot the BLM placard in the front yard next to her campaign sign running for the local school board.
BOLO - Be on the look out and avoid these areas at all cost.
I'm a regular at a men's Bible study which meets every Thursday in a nearby town. One of the other regulars is active in republican politics.
Near the entrance to the parking lot is a house with a host of liberal signage.
Several weeks ago the republican guy started talking about having information packets regarding the various school board and city commission candidates.
I interrupted him and said guys, this is easy, just note the signs you pass coming in and don't vote for them, they're commies.
I use a similar strategy. I know where some leftist libs live and note the signs in their yard for who NOT to vote for.
Me too. Comes in very handy in local elections in my ever-bluer town in my solid blue state.
blueMA doesn't even bother indicating party affiliation on local races on the ballots, as far as I can see.
Well, the “in this house” sign includes “black lives matter”. But she would also have a separate BLM sign in her window.
What a great history lesson this morning.
Thanks Mr. Surber
It seems with each new invention the level of pecolation increases exponentially. I really enjoyed this article. It reminded me of the 1978 TV series “Connections” with James Burke. It would start with a particular incident in history and would follow all the things that occurred based on that incident.
I was going to bring up “Connections” also. Glad to see someone else remembers that program.
Publix down here in Fla. has now employed the use of self checkout. Although one employee hovers over six checkouts, it bugs me considering they didn’t lower their prices, but surely decreased their employees’ hours. This story reminds me only that our schools are so egregiously corrupt, that we are not turning out the brainpower needed to create future inventors, and the few that will invent needed devices will then have to deal with another egregiously corrupt institution, Congress, who will make it impossible to bring that invention to market. And if it’s a cure for any disease, big pharma will swoop in and buy it and it will never see the light of day.
That could be part of it but I think it is the inability to hire, train and retain good employees. I workpart time for a major cruise line and finding port agents who will actually show up and actually work is a hard thing these days.
A local grocery store in my Northeast Ohio territory (Cleveland-based Marc's) felt the competition from the bigger chains to add self checkout because people got irritated waiting in the too-long human-controlled checkout lines.
Marc's did a moderate renovation to get with the times only to find out they had to add additional manpower to stop the very large increase in PECULATION. People would go through the motion of scanning an item (while covering the bar code). Without a human standing very close to verify the "beep" that it scanned. They walked out (Peculated) with thousands of dollars in merchandise. If caught, their excuse was to blame the scanner since they "tried" to scan the item that never appeared on their receipt.
Within six months Marc's tore out the self-check outs and now everyone must go through their (still understaffed) manual, human-controlled checkouts.
Fail-Fail.
It takes a great deal of effort to build a system that works well.
It takes only a few small, but key, mistakes to destroy such a system.
Sometimes only one.
"For want of a nail, the horse was lost..."
Appreciate the thought.
Marc's still has their kingdom, though, so all is not lost . . . yet.
Somewhere along the way corporate greed has caused big business to forget who their customer is . A satisfied , well paid middle class is the key to any successful enterprise .
Like the 40 + mile per gallon carburetors we never saw [ were they even real? ].
A very interesting and entertaining piece this morning.
Thank you.
Back when the world was new, quite by serendipity our medical practice discovered that both we and our hospital had been billing for the same services - double-billing, as it were. We immediately hired a large accounting firm to locate the problem, which turned out to be mis-programming of the billing software when it was bought - boiling down to a "code 27" in a single line of software instead of a "code 26."
After the problem had been ferreted-out and the innocence of the manager and billing staff solidly established, we notified the Feds and the State of WV, told them the amounts, and sent documents from Deloitte documenting same. The Feds were disappointed that their new female prosecutor couldn't send anybody to jail and enhance her resumé, but the real killer was the State of WV's response: glad you were so brave and honest. You see, we DON'T DO DOUBLE-ENTRY ACCOUNTING, and we would have never picked it up.
I hear that's changed now. This is why the gub'ment has no business with your money.
Don,
Great historical essay! The poll only needed 1 choice…the Kenyan’s birth certificate.
Great story. You might mention Thomas J Watson Sr who left his position as Sales Manager of NCR to join a company he renamed IBM.
Thank you, Don. I love a good history lesson where I learn something I did not know.
Being inventors/practicle scientists, the men who abandoned the early electric cars knew what seems to escape many today. Gasoline and diesel, in terms of energy density (which is how much energy you can get from a given volume), are many, many times that of batteries. That is still true, even with today's improved batteries. Until that magical miracle battery (you know, the one that's been just around the corner for the last 20 freaking years) is invented that can rival gas and oil in energy density AND speed of recharging, electric cars are STILL wasteful and impractical.
Convenience. Recharge a car from zero to full in two minutes and I buy a Tesla