iPad maker to replace 1 million staff with robots

WTF?

Bankrupt them?

You DO know how much PROFIT they make?

Hint, £Billions.....

Re: But why is the rum gone?

Just goes to show how quickly outsourcing to poor people has now switched to outsourcing to no people. This was supposed to be the bright new future of the 50's, all that leisure time to spend in misery!

No slip of the tongue,

The root meaning of the word robot is forced labor or serf labor.

The word robot was first used by the Czech writer Karel Capek in his play Rossum's Universal Robots and comes from the Czech word robota means literally 'corvee'*, 'serf labor', 'drudgery' or 'hard work' in Czech.

Seems like foxconn has their robots already

* corvee is a form of labor that is imposed on people of a lower social standing by their superiors and the only difference between corvee and slavery in that the worker is not owned outright.

severance snape

Those requesting severance will be escorted to the rooftop "Executive Office".

The managing director was scrapped?

How much was he worth? Did he contain lots of copper and aluminium?

numbers

They dont if you look at the current production.

However this will have exactly increased production capacity in mind. They produce electronics for hundreds of big names. all with major launches on their cards.

If Foxconn wants to remain competitive, it needs to ensure costs are managed, quality is confirmed and that capacity can be achieved.

The problem with meatbags is that costs nearly always go up, quality has to be checked and verified and those increase further with increased capacity.

Utopia

Ultimately the people will be paid by the country not to work.

The country will be taking far more tax from the companies to pay the people to have a non-work life balance, but the profits at the companies will be so large they won't care - they'll positively endorse the philanthropy.

Having a job will be left to those volunteers who like to keep themselves busy. The computers and robots will be designing and building their own replacements anyway.

Meanwhile in other news, scientists have proven that the Higgs Boson far from being the God particle, is in fact God herself, and that major religious groups were in fact all wrong.

Does this include Jeremy Kyle?

That is to say, will Jeremy Kyle be going to China as well? I'm sure we could have a whip-round, should be able to raise the money for a one way first class ticket in no time at all.

Re: Will they be like Marvin?

Or park cars for 20 million years. After that they go into a bit of a decline.

@Adam T Perhaps we should remind their customers that they have...........

...............no fate but that which they make themselves - for good or ill.

Skynet already exists

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_%28satellite%29

SKYNET

SKY (dot) NET, the unholy child of SKYpe and Microsoft

Perhaps...

That would require large amounts of capitol investment. Also, if Lord Jobs and Co started building an automated factory in the US, screaming hordes of unionists would burn it down.

The lack of Unions (and the accompanying lack of worker representation) in China is the reason Foxconn can get away with this.

It's sad that just about every manufacturer found it easier to outsource so many jobs when automation would at least have kept the profits in the western world, as opposed sucked into China and India, never to return.

Money talks

and right now most western countries are raising debt ceilings and arguing about how much to borrow, lend or print..

It's a race against time to get the cheapest most efficient next-generation labour force on the ground, and China is leading the way by the looks of it. It will never get cheaper than robots, unless the robots start manufacturing robots, and then well, see SKYNET posts above...

Cost Effective ? Well Yea

You seem to have forgotten that unfortunately my country, America exported among other things, its traditional method of labour relations: "My way or highway."

I read my employment offers/contracts and in America, and much of the world (particularly places being outsourced to), employment is on an 'at-will' basis. That effectively means that the company can fire anyone, for any reason (without stating that reason, hence anonymous coward). And the burden is on employee to prove dismissal was illegitemate (hence forth marking them for retaliation or at least a hostile work environment.)

It kinds blows, but that’s why outsourcing is cheap: no unions, labor relation, living wages,etc.

Incidently, if a company is considering outscourcing or using foreign contractors like this, they are thinking with their checkbooks and projected production costs. Based on the success of Wallmart, what we think is a moot point.

China probably doesn't care, a likely response is indifference or failling that embracing automation as a 'bold leap forward', (not unlike some Communist Party campaign of past years.)

Silly moral outrage

Most of the electronic assembly work is already done by robots and has been for the last 20 or so years.

Most of the manual effort in electronic manufacture was taken away by surface mount and pick and place machines, each of which replaces dozens of workers.

So it you really wanted to save jobs in the electronics industry you're already twenty years too late.

Of course the flip side to this is asking yourself whether you'd be prepared to pay an extra $500 for an ipod so that it could be made by meat workers rather than robots.

Title

1001001100000100100111001101000001001001110111111001101000001001001111001011011111100110100000100101000001110010110111111001101000011011111000001110010110111111001110111011011111000001110010110111100101110111011011111000001110010000011001011101110110111110000111011110000011001011101110110111100101111011110000011001011101111011001100101111011110000011001110001111011001100101111011110001101111110001111011001100101111011011011101111110001111011001100110010111011011101111110001111011000001100101110110111011111100011011111000001100101110110111011111010111011111000001100101110111110010111010111011111000001100110000011100101110101110111110000110111010000011100101110101110111100101110111010000011100101110111101111100101110111010000011100100000111011111001011101110100001110010100000111011111001011101111011111110010100000111011111001110001011011111110010100000111011101111110001011011111110010100011101001101111110001011011111110110100111101001101111110001011011100011110100111101001101111110010000011000111101001111010011011110111110000011000111101001111011110110110111110000011000111101011001011110110110111110000011000111001011001011110110110111110001101100111001011001011110110110111011111101100111001011001011110111001011011111101100111001011001100100111001011011111101100111011100111100100111001011011111101EOM

Wasting my breath, obviously.

Robots that design robots? How does that work? Are we engineers here, or plebs who think that science fiction is just a future version of reality, in which trips to the stars, time travel and thinking toast-makers are just waiting to be invented by some eccentric professor in his basement?

The comments section of El Reg is one of the most intelligently populated forums I know of, but still I despair sometimes at the hivemind / luddite mentality.

Surely, I can't be the only person here who knows what a REAL robot/computer is, and isn't distracted by the comic-book ideas we read in our youth?

Hint: if you think that commanding a computer to calculate the exact value of pi will cause smoke to begin issuing from its orifices...