Meet iRobot Founder Rodney Brooks's New Industrial Bot, Baxter 188
First time accepted submitter moon_unit2 writes "Technology Review has the scoop on a new industrial robot created by famed robotics researcher Rodney Brooks. The robot, Baxter, is completely safe, extremely adaptable, and ridiculously easy to program. By providing a way to automate simple manufacturing work, it could help make U.S. manufacturers compete with Chinese companies that rely on low-cost human labor. You can see the new robot in action in a related video of the robot in action and Brooks discussing its potential." $22 thousand and shipping next month, goes the story.
Fawning Rubbish (Score:3, Informative)
The robot, Baxter, is completely safe
Re:Fawning Rubbish (Score:5, Funny)
It's rather worrying actually. It's like being reassured that there is ABSOLUTELY no poison in the coffee.
Re:Fawning Rubbish (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Fawning Rubbish (Score:4, Funny)
Inconceivable!
Re:Fawning Rubbish (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's rather worrying actually. It's like being reassured that there is ABSOLUTELY no poison in the coffee.
Damn right, if there is absolutely no poison in there they probably have you drinking decaf!
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Of course there's no poison in the coffee. A real pro would put the poison on the rim of the cup.
Then again, a REAL real pro wouldn't even use poisons - too hard to make it look like an accident, and it's rather uncommon for police to hunt for an assassin when they don't think it was even a homicide.
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Of course there's no poison in the coffee. A real pro would put the poison on the rim of the cup.
Then again, a REAL real pro wouldn't even use poisons - too hard to make it look like an accident, and it's rather uncommon for police to hunt for an assassin when they don't think it was even a homicide.
Foxglove is damn near undetectable, you know...
Care for some tea? >:)
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"Foxglove is damn near undetectable"
did you just get here from 1950?
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"Foxglove is damn near undetectable" did you just get here from 1950?
Yup - time traveler here. I went back so I could bang your mom, heard she was super hot back in the day.
In retrospect, I should have worn a prophylactic, and subsequently avoided this conversation.
Re:Fawning Rubbish (Score:4, Informative)
Usually when it comes to industrial robots they'll bludgeon you to red paste if you get close to them when they're working. If all coffee by default was lethally poisonous until this one cup then the analogy would be valid, as it stands it's not.
SQUISH! (Score:2)
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The robot, Baxter, is completely safe
It's a pity, actually. There are plenty of ways to say that the robot (through a combination of physical design and active sensor systems) is designed to be safe enough to share an environment with humans, rather than being caged off with warning signs on the swing zones and big red buttons that you have to press before performing maintenance without sounding so overtly fawning about it.
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*shrug* Slashdot summary sucks, film at 11. RTFA instead.
Re:Fawning Rubbish (Score:5, Funny)
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Well if Baxter misbehaves, he can always be converted into a potato.
I wonder (Score:3, Funny)
Neato (Score:2)
I wonder if they build Baxter's firmware with Jenkins.
Doesn't look well suited for manufacturing (Score:2)
Plenty-o-posts (Score:2)
Meet Dice, slashdot's new corporate overlord (Score:4, Informative)
Don't know why it's not on the front page yet, but Dice (the job board guys?) bought slashdot and sourceforge this morning.
And before asshole moderators mod this down, know that Dice knows where you live and where you work. +5 informative this comment if you know what's good for you.
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
Anonymous Coward is right. Dice [webpronews.com] did buy them out for $20 million.
Why modded up? (Score:2)
This post was at +2 only some time after the front page story of Slashdot being bought by dice.
With that on the front page why mod up this post? it became somewhat humorous but kind of irrelevant after that point.
after watching the interview (Score:5, Interesting)
I wish they had showed some practical application. Moving an air hockey paddle two feet to the right isn't extremely practical. Show me it loading a dozen donuts into a donut box or something.
Sensors. Yes it has force sensors but anything else? He was having to carefully position the paddles for pickup. He talked about previous robots being "blind". But is this robot really not blind? Blind people have a sense of touch, why isn't this robot "blind"? Show me it can adapt a little using sight or ultrasound or something.
Slow. Wow. Ten seconds to move the paddle. Traditional industrial robots would do ten paddles in ten seconds. Sure they're not safe to be around running at those speeds, but this is completely at the other wrong end of the speed scale. Nobody's going to use a robot that moves like a retarded sloth. I do hope the speed can be cranked up?
I would like to have seen a very brief runthrough of the training process. Telling me ten times that it's "easy" without showing me it even once leaves me suspicious of your definition of "easy". (and of "simple")
Someone setting their hand under an object being set down really isn't a practical example of collision behavior on the manufacturing floor. Stick your head out in front of the arm's path and show me how it reacts. Does it knock you off your feet, or maybe shove you slowly to the side? Does it stop immediately and drop that fragile widget a foot down onto the bench? This demo wasn't nearly as informative as I was hoping it would be.
But I do like the "move the arms" training method. I'd put a little time into pondering how to train manufacturing robots in the past, and I was always wondering why they didn't use that approach, at least to rough out the behavior, and use an interface to tweak the positioning and timing etc. But afaik all the programming on other industrial robots to date has been purely through the console. Even if you don't eliminate the programmers or computer techs, at least being able to get a good floor worker to flesh out the robot's basic movements will save a lot of time. And if you involve them more, they can help in optimizing the behavior too I think.
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Re:after watching the interview (Score:4, Interesting)
Clearly you aren't in the industry... or any industry where this would be used.
Frankly, it's a huge deal. It isn't slow compared to human labor. When you factor in 24/7 operation, no breaks, and predictibal turn over.
It's also cheap, so get 2.
In warehouse and logistics, there is a need for something to sort bins, and there are case where this would work far better then people. Those are often uses where you can't be moving at a high rate of speed because you will damage the goods.
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When you factor in 24/7 operation, no breaks, and predictibal turn over.
There are other advantages as well: You don't have to heat or cool the building. Robots can use spot lighting or run in the dark, so you don't need to light up the whole factory. You don't need managers and supervisors. You don't need restrooms, break rooms, and cafeterias. You don't need an HR department.
Robots produce much more consistent results. They were adopted first in jobs like painting and welding, where consistency is very important.
If it takes an hour to train a human on a new task, it may
Simple (Score:2)
Because they *have* perfected LawyerBots. The first time someone gets converted into a human sandwich spread while '
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My mother works in a factory and I hear all the time about how they expect everyone to work incredibly quickly.
Robots aren't paid by the hour.
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Re:Slow Movement (Score:5, Interesting)
I work in a CNC Machine Shop. A robot like this would be great for unloading and reloading the Lathes for example.
I don't need it to be incredibly fast. It takes 2 or 3 minutes to run a part anyway. I just need it to be almost as fast as a person. If I can train it to pick up a blank, load it in the lathe, unload it when the cycle is complete, and stack the parts neatly in a tray, I free up a person to go complete a setup on another lathe, troubleshoot a process, complete an SPC chart, or go home and get a good nights rest while the robot runs parts for us.
It doesn't have to be fast, just fast enough.
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The slow movement stuck out to me as well. My mother works in a factory and I hear all the time about how they expect everyone to work incredibly quickly. Given the speed at which this robot moves and the speed at which factory workers are expected to move, they'll each need ten of these things working on a single task just to keep up with them.
We should arrange a race. I know this really good factory worker by the name of John Henry ...
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What I don't get is what's the interest?
I mean, we keep hearing stuff like how Apple keeps over a quarter-million Chinese workers employed and "to move the jobs back here!" Yet according to TFA, in order to be cost competitive, we need robots, which means that instead of that many people being employed here (which admittedly, will probably be Mexicans and such because it's dull, boring repetitive work in conditions not much better than in China), far fewer jobs will be created purely because the majority of
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Have you seen what retarded sloths want per hour these days?
At 22k I expect this to be an unreliable, high maintenance, plastic gear nightmare.
Robot cheaper (Score:2)
A person working for $8/hour 40 hours a day 52 weeks a year makes 16640.
The robot is $22k... and can work longer hours.
And probably can work for longer than a year.
You still need some workers to work in conjunction with the robots but even the cheapest low end job it can replace as long as it can perform the task.
thoughts (Score:4, Interesting)
With that in mind I do not see this bringing much manufacturing back to North America or Europe. Plus if it was an advantage the cheap labour markets would just by the robots anyway.
The way to get manufacturing back here in my opinion, is to make a products store front cost true to what the real cost is. Ie sum of parts + labour + the cost of dealing with the waste.
I still want a baxter to play with though
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"The way to get manufacturing back here in my opinion, is to make a products store front cost true to what the real cost is. Ie sum of parts + labour + the cost of dealing with the waste."
I suppose we could also take the cynical approach of attempting to lower the cost of shipping vile industrial pollutants to some country that can't do much about it...
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The best way it to impose high tariffs on any product coming form a country that doesn't mean out federal environment, safety and pay standards.
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The best way it to impose high tariffs on any product coming form a country that doesn't mean out federal environment, safety and pay standards.
The US has the weakest regulations on firing employees in the world (including most developing nations), and of course our mandatory vacation time is much lower than Western Europe, so I guess by your calculus the world should impose high tariffs on us!
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(joking BTW)
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There's your mistake. You can use an existing building.
Interestingly the USA is strong in two areas of manufacturing. 1. Highly automated large runs (labor is tiny fraction). 2. Tiny runs (labor is high but proximity is everything).
Safety (Score:2)
The force sensing safety is an interesting improvement. I can see a few applications of robots working alongside humans on assembly lines (fetching parts and handing them over, etc.). But currently, its not safe to hand humans work near industrial robots.
There may be limitations to this. I'd like a robot to pick up an engine block so a worker can install some parts. But the forces involved in lifting two or three hundred pounds would put potentially fatal human contact forces down in the noise level.
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Existing industrial robots have collision detection, but more for running into big heavy things like machines, not squishy things like people. The fact is that an industrial robot can move *really* fast, and the Baxter robot in this video moves *really* slow. So if an industrial robot cell is about 6 times more expensive, but it can do 10 times the throughput (I think that's conservative from what I saw in that video) then you'd go with the traditional industrial robot in a cage.
Where Baxter might shine i
An amazingly big deal... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, its slow (~4-6 pick & place operations per arm per minute), and not very strong (5 lbs max weight) in the current form. These restrictions are probably semi-arbitrary in the name of safety. But thats still enough to be an incredibly big deal in a large number of manufacturing tasks. Also important, its transportable (the base is on wheels), and flexible in learning new tasks, so it doesn't have to do just one thing but starts to approach the flexibility of a minimum wage worker. And for that role, it needs to be safe more than it needs to be quick.
Lets say it can perform task X at 1/4 the rate of a manufacturing worker. But at $8/hr minimum wage + 20% in additional costs/worker-hour, say $10/hr for a minimum wage worker. So that value is at least $2.50/hr.
So it pays for itself in 1100 worker-days, compared with a minimum wage worker and only 1 shift a day. At 3 shifts/day, payback is in 1 year!
Slow is NOT a problem when it is that cheap, that flexible and that safe.
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I work full-time on a robot built for a specific manufacturing process. A general-purpose robot would never compete in my industry.
That said, many factories don't run a continuous assembly process. Let's take an imaginary shutter-making factory as an example. Rather than have a batten-making machine going full-time, they might only make battens in a big burst until they have a sufficient inventory to make shutters for a few days or weeks. Then they might switch over to producing frames. Finally, they'll get
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That's an excellent point. In our case, we are already mass-producing with an assembly line running full-tilt 2 or 3 shifts - but some robots in our industry cost one million dollars or more and are basically hand-built.
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If you are in that position, you already HAVE your industrial robots: They can work in a cage (so no safety concerns and can run faster), and that it takes a day of work to program up a task is, eh, yeah, whatever.
This is for the tasks where current robots fail at: tasks where you need to reprogram the robot perhaps as often as once a day, move the robot to different locations, have the robot work with a human, etc....
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The world of manufacturing is faster and more flexible than ever because of cheap human labor in Chinese factory.
Need to have your factory assemble a new phone? You can train human employees in a day.
Maybe your supplier ran out of LCD screens, so you buy an order from another supplier but it comes loaded differently into a differently size box, or maybe it has a different connector. Time to call in your robot consultant to reprogram the purpose-built industrial bot so it can handle this new form factor.
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The world of manufacturing is faster and more flexible than ever because of cheap human labor in Chinese factory.
That is assuming your cheap Chinese labor put on the reel with the proper inductor value on the SMT pick and place machine (my anecdotal experience with Chinese assembly has not been very positive recently!)
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Cost of electricity to run the robot
Cost of repair and annual maintenance
Way less than $22k/year, therefore still cost effective to replace even the lowest paid worker (as long as minimum wage remains high).
Cost of larger facilities to accommodate 4 robots for every (previous) 1 human job station
It's around the same size as a human, why do you ned more space? A human needs just as much room to move.
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The listed MAX power is 10A at 110V. So say 1 kW power consumption (probably less), which translates to $.20/hr or less in electricity for most businesses.
Repair and maintenance? Over the first couple of years, I'd assume 10%/yr downtime & repair cost
Larger facilities? How many manufacturing facilities are really limited by workstation space on the floor itself?
This thing really really pencils for a lot of tasks.
Chinese Manufacturing (Score:2)
"it could help make U.S. manufacturers compete with Chinese companies " ...until he starts selling them to China, makes his fortune, and retires like a proper wealthy capitalist.
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There's a human cost somewhere in the process and that's where the US will lose the lead most of the time- all other variables even. Plus the various trade agreements vs. taxes seem to give them more of an edge.
Nice (Score:2)
Interesting stuff, but I'm always left with the same question when I see robots advanced and possibly some form of AI.
"What are we going to do with all these humans?"
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I think you mean:
How are we going to please our human gods.
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"What are we going to do with all these humans?"
I suggest making tacos.
Or robot fuel.
Umm (Score:2)
Having manufacturing move back to the US because it's completely robotic doesn't exactly help, at ll. You bring in all the waste with none of the jobs.
Of course, the US should start preparing for the completely robotic workforce,. It will happen.
And no, there is no a one for one replacement in jobs, its closer to every 100 job displaced by automation, 1 job is created.
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ADEPT Flexfeeder (Score:2)
I've used these in the past. They are a pick and place robot with a vision system and conveyor system. You can throw a bucket of parts on the conveyor and it will find and pick the ones you need.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FPSF1KIDnw [youtube.com]
Welcome to the (Score:2)
pre-history of the Great Labor Crash [facebook.com]
Re:Competition (Score:5, Insightful)
Options: a) raise the _minimum_ education and skill level
What? This is not the problem. The problem is in training for jobs where we need people. I know more that a few sales people at the mall with masters degrees... Yet it takes days to get a plumber or A/C repair man.
Re:Competition (Score:5, Insightful)
Well.. up comes the problem of coupling university education and job training.
And add the fact that to the people that are driving all the change in the U.S. right now the only valid job is CEO / other management. Plumbers, good HVAC techs, and electricians are just as valid and needed of a job as CEO. But again... our values are really, really screwed up right now.
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Maybe it is just idle grumbling when I am hating 12 hour days at a desk....but if I had it to do over again I would have done electrician/plumber/carpenter/millwright instead of keyboard banger. (I list millwright just because a great uncle of mine was a millwright. He almost never worked....but when he did, wow he made a lot of money).
Re:Competition (Score:4, Interesting)
It takes a special kind of personality to work by yourself day in, day out, with never a familiar face to greet you. I can't do it.
Re:Competition (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Competition (Score:4, Insightful)
I should have pointed out that these weren't desktop laser or inkjets, these were professional wide-format plotters, where a failure cost more per minute than I made per hour.
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'Fault' might not be the right term. 'Incompatibility' might be better. Some people do not 'mix' well in short-term situations(unless actually impaired enough for a diagnosis of 'mild autism-spectrum-disorder/nonverbal learning disability not otherwise classified/damned-if-we-know-we're-just-the-DSM', they can usually learn to fake it enough for politeness' sake; but faking it is draining not pleasurable); but they might feel much more at home in a more cohesive environment where they get time to develop ra
Re:Competition (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect that there are two basic answers:
1.(the shorter term): So long as robots are capable of only some things, you'll get more jobs for US workers by keeping the factory onshore, partially robotic and partially staffed, than you will by having it leave entirely. Also, the presence of parts of the supply chain tends to have synergistic effects for other parts, especially when quick turnaround is needed, so even if you have an entirely automated factory, you have a better chance that WidgetCorp will keep their engineering office across the street so they can pop in and make revisions quickly, rather than opening up across the street from their factory elsewhere.
2.(longer term, albeit not necessarily that long, depending on who you are): Yup, robots can do much of what humans can do, often for less than the humans could live a non-miserable existence on. The scope of robotic('robotic' in the broad sense that includes both big industrial arms and pure software agents capable of data-processing tasks of various sorts) capability shows no signs of decreasing. Whether this means that humans are becoming obsolete, or humans are on the verge of getting some well-earned time off is up to us. And, frankly, I'm not inclined to optimism on this one...
Re:Competition (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember in the Jetsons where George says "These 3 day workweeks are killing me!"
That is what the view of what this type of tech was supposed to get us... the same living standard with less work. Instead the idea was turned on its ear and a lot of the benefits were kept at the very top.
I'm all for this type of stuff, but I think society has to figure out ways for this to benefit everyone. In a capitalist society is okay for the people who own the capital to benefit the most, but I don't think that's an excuse to let the rest of the society head towards poverty. When we see that in other countries we tend to call that repression.
Re:Competition (Score:5, Insightful)
The corporations will not care about the worker, and I'm not convinced it is their job to do so. Profits will be up, investors happy, management has less headaches. This is not the a unique trend either. If you haven't noticed, education, now pushing a thing called STEM is really about just the opposite to what the public thinks it is. There is not a need for more engineers, there is a need to identify and weed out the top engineer without having to hire 3-4 to find the one. He/She will provide more profit to the company than all the others combined.
Yes, profit has become a refined science, and the group who will suffer the most is Joe Average. What do we do with him, other than let him become Joe Poor?
Anyhow, I'm not against robotic manufacturing, I just think there is a terrible consequence to it, that is not being discussed or planned for.
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Are you also against mechanized farming? You realize we should all be unemployed right now?
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Yes the robots are terrible, we have seen this massive industrialisation before. The industrialisation of agriculture which resulted in a drop from 90 % to 5 % of the population being involved in agriculture resulted in 85 % unemployment as everyone is aware of, I can hardly leave the house without being chased by all those pitchfork carrying unemployed peasants... every day I fear for my life.
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They'll sell their produce to the farmers in Iowa and elsewhere...
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Then I should point out to you the underlying flaw with that approach. The ability to manufacture in bulk with incredible efficiency does you no good if there's no consumer base to acquire said goods. The value of a middle class does not just apply on the supply side, and in the hyperbolic case, the whole economy would collapse.
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The ability to manufacture in bulk with incredible efficiency does you no good if there's no consumer base to acquire said goods.
Except 80% of the labor force is already employed in services. As the cost of goods fall, people will spend a higher proportion of their income on services, increasing both salaries and employment in the service sector of the economy. In other words, there will be a continuation of economic trends that have already been happening for over a hundred years.
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Being unemployed is fine if production isn't affected, we just need to change how we allocate resources to people in a way that doesn't depend on employment.
We're not there yet, but we might want to start considering how we can use automated work to provide for everyone Star Trek or Culture style, while at the same time, not causing them all to become lazy, fat, bored idiots.
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The flaw in your argument is you think employment and jobs should be the goal. You have it completely backwards. Personal consumption is the goal. Let's take it to extremes to make it clear. Would you rather be a slave where you work to produce things every waking hour and are given just enough food to live and clothing and shelter to survive? Or would you rather live a life where everything you want is provided for just by asking and you only produce things because you enjoy it?
If your goal is jobs that's
Re:Competition (Score:4, Interesting)
There will be a chilling reverse effect on the economy, improve US manufacturing, AND drive up unemployment rates.
This, in a nutshell, is the Lump of Labor Fallacy [wikipedia.org].
As production costs fall, demand increases, and other areas of the economy expand. This happened when agriculture was invented, again when agriculture was mechanized, again with the industrial revolution, again with electrification and computerized automation. All of these led to higher standards of living (the opposite of what your theory predicts). 80% of our economy is already services, so lower production costs of goods will not have as much impact as in the past, but that impact will almost certainly be positive.
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Dear roman_mir (Score:3)
I didn't get a very good response to it (I mean moderation), so it's not a popular thing on /. to think about it maybe?
To which I will point out that taking on a condescending stance on group moderation will not improve your image. You have switched from your first account to this second account because your karma took a hit after you went on a day-long orgy of lies and insults a few weeks ago. Apparently you didn't learn much from that experience?
Let me give you
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We are throwing more and more money at the schools to the point of bankruptcy.
You obviously have no children in public school
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You obviously don't look at what they do spend money on.
Some public school systems are broken, no doubt. There is also no doubt that for at least some of them (D.C. Schools are the example that proves it) lack of money is not the problem.
Re:Competition (Score:4, Insightful)
You obviously don't look at what they do spend money on.
Some public school systems are broken, no doubt. There is also no doubt that for at least some of them (D.C. Schools are the example that proves it) lack of money is not the problem.
Yup, it's a 'fund allocation issue,' certainly.
Accompanying anecdote: When I was in high school a scant decade ago, the board decided to cut orchestra and ceramics for lack of funding - the same year, they approved an brand new $2,000,000 building for the football/American football teams (pretty much just locker rooms and storage).
Of course, school boards (and sport parents) support these sort of decisions by claiming that sports bring in money - the part they leave out is that the sports programs are still a net loss, as they tend to cost 1.5 - 3 times as much to operate as they generate in revenue. But, that's not the important part here, the important part is that arts and sciences suffer so that school board members and parents can spend more time watching minors knock each other senseless.
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To be fair you compared art and gym. Both are extras. Had they cut math to fund a stadium I'd be more concerned.
On point. Many school systems scream poverty while spending far more per student then successful systems. DC is the festering puss filled example of public school failure.
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He's right, though. We spend more per-student then just about any other country in the world, and yet look at the results. There are many problems with our public schools, and some of them probably include the uneven way they are funded - but we more than adequately fund education.
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Even if you could get rid of the stupid people you would never get rid of stupid people. The previously middle-range IQ people would now because the stupid people. You then loop this forever until there is only one person on the planet, at which points he drops his glasses and can't read books.
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Even if you could get rid of the stupid people you would never get rid of stupid people. The previously middle-range IQ people would now because the stupid people. You then loop this forever until there is only one person on the planet, at which points he drops his glasses and can't read books.
It's not fair!
+1 for the reference, and a bonus +1 for the chuckle remembering that episode brings.
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Burgess, is that you?
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Baxter will enjoy serving the Vault Dweller after the war.
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buy a no wage robot, learn to control it.
have it do shirts and sell them at the mall.
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Translation: don't settle for a low income low skill job, and rely on it to pay the bills your whole life. Unless it makes you happy of course. But if it doesn't strive for better.
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The question is whether it will create more jobs for engineers/programmers/roboticists than the manual labor jobs it wiped out - that is, assuming any manual laborer can transition to one of those skilled jobs.
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You can't see how retaining a factory helps the US? Really?
You want to ask that now or after Mitt eliminates (Score:2)
the corporate tax?
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First of all, it can't and won't be only robots.
Second, a factory - no matter how robotic - requires all sorts of support services, raw materials, and transportation. All of the people involved in those services spend their money where they live, and the whole local economy gets a boost. Even if you argue that this boost is trivial, it is non-zero and we are better off with a robotic factory then we are with no factory at all.
And of course there are national and economic security reasons to want manufacturi