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OpenSolaris wasn't any closer to standards than Solaris.

Correct, since Solaris was already standards-based. Solaris 1.x/SunOS4 is BSD and X11 for Sun, plus NIS and Openlook. Solaris 2.x/SunOS5 is SVR4 for Sun, plus NIS+ and CDE, as well as the assorted BSD command-line utilities [optionally but typically] placed in /usr/ucb for back-compatibility with shell scripts designed for SunOS4. Bill Joy said in 1985 that Unix would eventually be dominated by an Open Source Code model, and Open Systems was a common marketing term meaning "standards-based" which dates from the 1980s.

The problem is that the value produced by the robots goes to profits earned by the people owning the robots

This is only true if competitors don't also install robots. If everyone automates, the profit margins are competed away, and the added value goes primarily to consumers.

where do the "consumers" get the money to buy that "added value'" if there are no jobs available because the robots do all the jobs?

Of course, this is only true if we have free markets. Removing barriers to competition is the real solution, not slowing the adoption of automation.

The main barrier to competition is the fact that as labor costs drop to zero, and all of the cost of a business is the machinery (which in economic terms is capital), it's expensive to enter a new business. The larger businesses drive out smaller businesses (due to economy of scale) and they price out new competitors (who have to pay the start-up costs).

This should have been covered in your economics 101 class, by the way.

that is, the rich people.

The biggest owners of capital in America are pension funds. So if you have a 401k or an IRA, that means you.

Fine. So, old people with retirement funds are a large portion of the rich people I'm talking about. As a member of the technoclass, you are so insulated in your bubble that you don't even know that not everybody has a retirement fund?.

People not rich enough to own stocks, IRAs, or pension funds are out of luck,.

That changes nothing in any of my statements.

Shortly there will be no entry-level jobs, and after that there will be no jobs, period.

Too late. The McCormick Reaper already destroyed all the jobs.

It pretty much destroyed farming as an occupation that provides jobs for most laborers. Right now, farming is under 1.5% of employment in the US. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/se...

As long as there are other jobs to which the people who were once needed to work on farms can switch to, that's fine.

What happens where there are no other jobs? What happens after that?

Well, on the other hand, there are so many articles about relativity which only mention Albert Einstein and fail to mention Henri Poincaré and David Hilbert.

But if we're talking about 2nd-tier superpowers like Russia destroying satellites they don't own, (destroying ones you do is bad enough...) that's Defcon 1+x.

I think they'd prefer to be less directly attributable in such attacks. Of course, they aren't exactly subtle.

LEO mostly clears itself in a few dozen years just from drag. If we really blew it we could use nuclear weapons to clear it out, or less ultimate measures. It would cost a shit tonne of money and set the world back decades.

But if we're at this point, yes, these are the stakes, and a traitor is in charge! Literally.

Cities that face winter use poured slabs for sidewalks because there are no cracks for the water to get into, freeze and then expand and break material.

Pavers are used all over Europe (including in the north) for streets and walkways. Wikipedia showing description and examples.

When burned, ETFE releases highly toxic hydrofluoric acid. One streets are paved with that, you should hope they will not host a fire.

You sound very confident, which is really bad when you're wrong.

First, let's take apart this "work at cost" thing. The cost for the publisher is virtually 0. Authors work free or pay. Reviewers work free. There's some administration, which $0.10 per download would easily cover (and then some). Instead they charge $35.95 per download (UC presumably pays less).

You're right that uploading papers to a free, popular pre-print server like arXiv is a great thing to do, except top Elsevier journals will reject your paper if you do.

So how can Elsevier afford to be expensive and get exclusive rights? That's the rent it extracts from publishing prestigious journals. Deciding which journal is prestigious is a hard coordination game. Even with a lot of effort (which researchers at UC and worldwide are exerting in various ways), it takes time to change the status quo.

UC simply feels, likely correctly, that the tables have turned far enough that Elsevier can now be taken out of the game.

should sufficiently confuse the bot (Liar paradox).

Easy answer...It is HARD. OCR has been around for years but even today it is hit or miss except for the most sophisticated systems.

Yes, generalized OCR is hard. But the problem gets much easier if you limit the "alphabet" of characters you're trying to recognize. Ten digits plus comma, space and perhaps currency symbols is a much smaller alphabet than full unicode, or even just ASCII.

"Activists" Investors is a loaded term that leads you to think of SJW idiots wanting some kind of SJW actions.

Wow. Triggered much? Activist investor has been a term a decade longer than SJW.

"Activists" Investors is a loaded term that leads you to think of SJW idiots wanting some kind of SJW actions.

Wow. Triggered much? Activist investor has been a term a decade longer than SJW.

Easy answer...It is HARD. OCR has been around for years but even today it is hit or miss except for the most sophisticated systems. I'm curious how well it translates on a mobile device. I've used OCR on PDF and Word documents that were just images and even when the text was perfectly legible it had a hard time getting the letters right and the formatting was always all over the place.

Pretty sure the OCR will not be done on your device, but elsewhere.

Easy answer...It is HARD. OCR has been around for years but even today it is hit or miss except for the most sophisticated systems.
I'm curious how well it translates on a mobile device. I've used OCR on PDF and Word documents that were just images and even when the text was perfectly legible it had a hard time getting the letters right and the formatting was always all over the place.

Oh hello. I am the IBM 1360 Photo-Digital Storage System.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I was built in the 1960s to hold a terabit of information on film strips.

"it is nowhere closure to 175 MB."

auto correct huh

An income tax was implemented during the Civil War, but they were later ruled as unconstitutional, as they clearly were.

Federal (but not state) income taxes remained illegal until 1913, when the 16th Amendment to the US Constitution specifically authorized congress to levy an income tax.

Being an asshole isn't a protected class.

Funny, I can't find the "Doesn't apply to assholes" when I research natural rights or read the First Amendment.

I guess you pulled that out of your asshole, asshole.

Why do "progressives" crave victimhood so damn much? (Oh, I know - because Marxism clings viciously to its facile, shallow, and fossilized 19th-century "Everything comes from the oppressor/oppressed dyanamic" bullshit. Funny how the "oppressors" are always white, Christian, European, and male. Barbaric Muslims murdering gays and forcing cliterectomies on women are "oppressed"...)

It's about time!

Elsevier has been paywalling scientific research - most, if not all of which was paid for in part or in whole by taxpayers throughout the developed world - since 1947. It's way past time that what amounts to its systematic theft of what should be completely public data came to a screeching, grinding, clattering halt.

Yes, yes, it's also been responsible for any number of unethical practices, including offering Amazon gift vouchers to researchers who agreed to give the company a 5-star rating on the platform, and publishing sham journals, but that's not the main reason it deserves to die. Nor is its campaign to persuade governments and academic institutions alike to shut down open access publication of scientific research, not just by lobbying for legislative restrictions, but by filing lawsuits against universities for allowing their academic researchers to publish open-access copies of their own research papers on their employers' servers.

No, Elsevier deserves to die because it has deliberately misused its virtual monopoly on academic publishing to prevent both researchers and the public from reading an enormous library of published studies, access to which is vital for new research to be conducted in a staggering number of disciplines. It should die because it insists on standing in the way of progress.

If the UC system doesn't allow Elsevier to bribe it into reversing its decision to divorce itself from the company's extortion-based business model, I suspect the remainder of the USA's public universities will swiftly follow its lead. I certainly hope they do - because every other college and university on the planet will undoubtedly follow suit.

The very next step after that should be that the state and national governments which provided funding for the researchers whose articles are still locked behind Elsevier's paywall demand the company surrender them to the public domain.

And fuck Elsevier's shareholders. They've been gorging at the public trough for far too long, as it stands ...

It's about time!

Elsevier has been paywalling scientific research - most, if not all of which was paid for in part or in whole by taxpayers throughout the developed world - since 1947. It's way past time that what amounts to its systematic theft of what should be completely public data came to a screeching, grinding, clattering halt.

Yes, yes, it's also been responsible for any number of unethical practices, including offering Amazon gift vouchers to researchers who agreed to give the company a 5-star rating on the platform, and publishing sham journals, but that's not the main reason it deserves to die. Nor is its campaign to persuade governments and academic institutions alike to shut down open access publication of scientific research, not just by lobbying for legislative restrictions, but by filing lawsuits against universities for allowing their academic researchers to publish open-access copies of their own research papers on their employers' servers.

No, Elsevier deserves to die because it has deliberately misused its virtual monopoly on academic publishing to prevent both researchers and the public from reading an enormous library of published studies, access to which is vital for new research to be conducted in a staggering number of disciplines. It should die because it insists on standing in the way of progress.

If the UC system doesn't allow Elsevier to bribe it into reversing its decision to divorce itself from the company's extortion-based business model, I suspect the remainder of the USA's public universities will swiftly follow its lead. I certainly hope they do - because every other college and university on the planet will undoubtedly follow suit.

The very next step after that should be that the state and national governments which provided funding for the researchers whose articles are still locked behind Elsevier's paywall demand the company surrender them to the public domain.

And fuck Elsevier's shareholders. They've been gorging at the public trough for far too long, as it stands ...

It's about time!

Elsevier has been paywalling scientific research - most, if not all of which was paid for in part or in whole by taxpayers throughout the developed world - since 1947. It's way past time that what amounts to its systematic theft of what should be completely public data came to a screeching, grinding, clattering halt.

Yes, yes, it's also been responsible for any number of unethical practices, including offering Amazon gift vouchers to researchers who agreed to give the company a 5-star rating on the platform, and publishing sham journals, but that's not the main reason it deserves to die. Nor is its campaign to persuade governments and academic institutions alike to shut down open access publication of scientific research, not just by lobbying for legislative restrictions, but by filing lawsuits against universities for allowing their academic researchers to publish open-access copies of their own research papers on their employers' servers.

No, Elsevier deserves to die because it has deliberately misused its virtual monopoly on academic publishing to prevent both researchers and the public from reading an enormous library of published studies, access to which is vital for new research to be conducted in a staggering number of disciplines. It should die because it insists on standing in the way of progress.

If the UC system doesn't allow Elsevier to bribe it into reversing its decision to divorce itself from the company's extortion-based business model, I suspect the remainder of the USA's public universities will swiftly follow its lead. I certainly hope they do - because every other college and university on the planet will undoubtedly follow suit.

The very next step after that should be that the state and national governments which provided funding for the researchers whose articles are still locked behind Elsevier's paywall demand the company surrender them to the public domain.

And fuck Elsevier's shareholders. They've been gorging at the public trough for far too long, as it stands ...

Just one example, from a defcon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... And yes, people really do get their pets on review boards, as well as use well known names as co-authors (often with the famous guy's consent but not with his having read the crap) to get published....
IIRC someone recently got Mein Kampf published in one of these as a social sciences exercise - caught crap for it, but they did put it in print. They are not giving the organization and review service you pay for, not even close. It's not as though a webserver costs millions a year to run to dispense old RevSciIns scans from before the digital age.
Aaron Schwartz had the right idea....and I hope SciHub keeps working and the hero gal who runs it avoids jail. It really does do what the big boys claim - help science. Hero: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

You just lost the debate.

I haven't seen any reports of a repeat of the South Australian Blackout of 2016. I guess there has been some sort of technological improvement since then.

There's a huge difference between organizations enforcing their own rules and the government running a system to disenfranchise people.

Yep.

The first is merely a precursor to the second.

When you can't defend yourself logically, you resort to trying to shut other people up.

And more importantly - you accept that behavior in others.

"Progressives" call it no-platforming. Yeah, it's even got a Wikipedia page.

"Activists" Investors is a loaded term that leads you to think of SJW idiots wanting some kind of SJW actions.

Sometimes but most of the time the term simply refers to some greedy corporate raider trying to squeeze the company in such a way that it pumps up the stock price regardless of the long term benefit to the company.

What it appears to be is simply investors suggesting that eBay focus on its core business and ditch distractions.

Possible but doubtful. Usually the argument goes something like saying the company would be worth more split up than it is as a single unit. Frequently this argument is used against conglomerates. This argument is sometimes correct but it tends to get over used and it's not at all clear if it applies here. Wouldn't surprise me either way.

Ebay is also adding two directors to its board, including Jesse Cohn of Elliott Management, a hedge fund that disclosed a 4% stake in the company in January and began agitating for change.

This is typical of how these things go. Some rich hedge fund guy sees a chance to squeeze a company by threatening a proxy fight or other forms of pressure on management after buying a significant but still single digit percent stake in the company. Usually happens in companies whose stock price is depressed somewhat.

The eBay site is old, out dated, confusing and cluttered.

Yes and eBay is a pain in the ass to use. But you know what? They can do that because there is nobody well positioned to threaten them. They have lots of buyers and lots of sellers with no sign of that changing. Their growth prospects might not be great but they're going to be hard to displace. They are the closest think there is to monopsony for selling used and surplus stuff online.

"Activists" Investors is a loaded term that leads you to think of SJW idiots wanting some kind of SJW actions.

Sometimes but most of the time the term simply refers to some greedy corporate raider trying to squeeze the company in such a way that it pumps up the stock price regardless of the long term benefit to the company.

What it appears to be is simply investors suggesting that eBay focus on its core business and ditch distractions.

Possible but doubtful. Usually the argument goes something like saying the company would be worth more split up than it is as a single unit. Frequently this argument is used against conglomerates. This argument is sometimes correct but it tends to get over used and it's not at all clear if it applies here. Wouldn't surprise me either way.

Ebay is also adding two directors to its board, including Jesse Cohn of Elliott Management, a hedge fund that disclosed a 4% stake in the company in January and began agitating for change.

This is typical of how these things go. Some rich hedge fund guy sees a chance to squeeze a company by threatening a proxy fight or other forms of pressure on management after buying a significant but still single digit percent stake in the company. Usually happens in companies whose stock price is depressed somewhat.

The eBay site is old, out dated, confusing and cluttered.

Yes and eBay is a pain in the ass to use. But you know what? They can do that because there is nobody well positioned to threaten them. They have lots of buyers and lots of sellers with no sign of that changing. Their growth prospects might not be great but they're going to be hard to displace. They are the closest think there is to monopsony for selling used and surplus stuff online.

"Activists" Investors is a loaded term that leads you to think of SJW idiots wanting some kind of SJW actions.

Sometimes but most of the time the term simply refers to some greedy corporate raider trying to squeeze the company in such a way that it pumps up the stock price regardless of the long term benefit to the company.

What it appears to be is simply investors suggesting that eBay focus on its core business and ditch distractions.

Possible but doubtful. Usually the argument goes something like saying the company would be worth more split up than it is as a single unit. Frequently this argument is used against conglomerates. This argument is sometimes correct but it tends to get over used and it's not at all clear if it applies here. Wouldn't surprise me either way.

Ebay is also adding two directors to its board, including Jesse Cohn of Elliott Management, a hedge fund that disclosed a 4% stake in the company in January and began agitating for change.

This is typical of how these things go. Some rich hedge fund guy sees a chance to squeeze a company by threatening a proxy fight or other forms of pressure on management after buying a significant but still single digit percent stake in the company. Usually happens in companies whose stock price is depressed somewhat.

The eBay site is old, out dated, confusing and cluttered.

Yes and eBay is a pain in the ass to use. But you know what? They can do that because there is nobody well positioned to threaten them. They have lots of buyers and lots of sellers with no sign of that changing. Their growth prospects might not be great but they're going to be hard to displace. They are the closest think there is to monopsony for selling used and surplus stuff online.

No surprise there... there is a reason private ownership is important in order to maximize the value of items. However, ownership requires responsibility - something that increasing numbers of people desperately try to avoid these days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Hmmm, maybe the Terracotta Army is actually some ancient, failed, rent-a-statue business venture.

The floods which likely form the basis for the worldwide flood myths are probably Outburst Floods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... in particular from the end of the last ice age. Some of the floods that we know about covered some areas of land that were otherwise dry in hundreds of meters of water. Sure this isn't exactly the same as the Noah flood myth where even the mountains were covered, but exaggeration in a story passed down from more than 10,000 years ago is hardly surprising.

Yes you can. Green lasers, the cheap ones you can easily buy, usually work by frequency doubling, using a non-linear crystal that converts two 1064 nm photons into a 532 nm photon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Ironic comment.

A republic is a democracy. Maybe you should go to a 5th grade social studies class and ask about "representative democracy" vs direct democracy.

Here's a link for your future non-perusal:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

You know there is a bit in the US constitution that requires all be treated equal under law. Technically they are committing constitutional crimes by taxing different individuals under different laws. If one gets those tax breaks under law, all should get equal breaks, otherwise laws for thee and not for mee. It is really quite criminal.

Really really bad "logic".

If US governments could only tax everyone equally, that means the only possible tax is a "head" or "poll tax".

That wasn't the case when the US Constitution was written, so that's one strike against your argument.

And being equal under law in no way means the resulting tax paid must be equal under all circumstances. I have no ideal how you get from "If you did exactly what Bob did, you'd pay exactly the same taxes. You didn't do the same thing, so you pay different taxes" to "OMG! That's being treated unequally by the law!"

JFC, should jaywalkers get the same punishment as mass murderers?!?!

Dafuq?

The reality is it probably creates more de facto inflation for the average local working stiff, having so much tech and finance there. While all these CEOs would like it as it only has a positive impact for them, really who else's life would it improve? And on the other hand, creating more localized inflation, it would likely harm many more. "The middle children of history."

I suspect it's this kind of obliviousness to the average person's life challenges that got Trump, and AOC, elected.

Is there any evidence that any of these big subsidy deals to bring companies, sport franchises, etc have ever worked out to the benefit of the population of the municipality?

It is hard to say because each scheme is different, and you can't roll the experiment forward and then roll it back and try it again without the subsidy. Reality only has one timeline.

But we can say that on average they are a net loss. Amazon was going to expand no matter what. Without the subsidy they would have chosen the location based on the best business efficiency. So all the subsidy did was pay to pull the potential HQ from one city to another.

These subsidies are a Prisoner's Dilemma. Each city feels compelled to offer subsidies because the other cities are doing the same. But they would be collectively better off if none of them did so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

It's a 52L tank - that's pretty darn small. By volume, compressed hydrogen is about 4 times as efficient as Li-Ion batteries; you get ~4 times the energy in a liter of volume. AC points out the fuel cell efficiency gains - meaning that instead of completely wiping the floor with batteries, compressed hydrogen only wipes 90% of the floor with batteries.

"Xi Jinping of China is a great admirer of Han Fei Zi, one of China's legalist philosophers."

Han Fei is not so bad. However it appears from his policies that Emperor Xi is also quite a fan of Shang Yang, who might fairly be called the father of absolutism.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

One can perhaps gain some insight from reading Shang's book.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

"Xi Jinping of China is a great admirer of Han Fei Zi, one of China's legalist philosophers."

Han Fei is not so bad. However it appears from his policies that Emperor Xi is also quite a fan of Shang Yang, who might fairly be called the father of absolutism.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

One can perhaps gain some insight from reading Shang's book.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

Like grow seaweed which is a valuable crop for food, fertilizer, and biofuels.

https://www.climatecouncil.org...

We could fertilize sections of the oceans with iron which would increase fish yields.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

So instead of listening to the Lex Luthor types and blocking out the sun like crazy people, why don't we help nature which will help us by giving us more food and absorbing CO2.

If we really want to go crazy... we could still dump a bunch of lime (calcium) into the ocean.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...

~Kevin Matthews aka matthekc

Direct3D came out in 1996, a year after Win95's release. The network stack was a separate product.

The problem is that the value produced by the robots goes to profits earned by the people owning the robots

This is only true if competitors don't also install robots. If everyone automates, the profit margins are competed away, and the added value goes primarily to consumers.

Of course, this is only true if we have free markets. Removing barriers to competition is the real solution, not slowing the adoption of automation.

that is, the rich people.

The biggest owners of capital in America are pension funds. So if you have a 401k or an IRA, that means you.

Shortly there will be no entry-level jobs, and after that there will be no jobs, period.

Too late. The McCormick Reaper already destroyed all the jobs.

To stop another event like
South African Airways Flight 295 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The air density, and thus the drag, is far higher on the ground than at 30,000 feet.

You are certainly right that the lack of infrastructure for Hyperloop is a major disadvantage but Hyperloop runs in a vacuum so the above is not a valid criticism.

Trains are not much better than current aircraft [energy.gov] at energy efficiency

These are statistics from US trains. If you look at the data for European Trains the data show 65 MJ/km vs. 209.1 l/100 km for US trains which already tells you something about the age of US trains. Converting this into energy 1 l diesel is 38.29 MJ so this gives 80 MJ/km. So EU trains use 81% of the energy of US trains. Using the statistics you linked airlines use 91% of the energy of US trains. Hence, modern trains, such as those in the EU, are definitely more efficient per passenger kilometre than airlines and can run on renewable sources of electricity which aeroplanes currently cannot. US trains are old-fashioned diesels so it is not surprising that they are much less efficient.

Unless you're really stretching the meaning of "exploit" and that's what you meant.

Elsagate and FamilyOFive comes to mind. Those are probably the tip of the iceberg.

Unless you're really stretching the meaning of "exploit" and that's what you meant.

Elsagate and FamilyOFive comes to mind. Those are probably the tip of the iceberg.

> If you believe someone is socially or legally inferior based on sex, it's sexist.

Actually that's chauvinism. Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on a person's sex or gender.

There's very little music on MTV anymore. It's the circle of life.

There's very little music on MTV anymore. It's the circle of life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

No wonder our cities are such disasters. It's deliberate!

Look, I get the argument you're making, and I'm generally sympathetic to it: a society in which citizens are subject to arbitrary detention by the police has all sorts of possible abuses. But in arguing it, you shouldn't resort to lies.

For example:

There's a non-zero chance that [the police] will kill me. In fact, it's about as likely that they will kill me as an actual criminal would.

Shootings by police in the US are 1000 every year recorded, 500 most years. The total homicide rate in the US is ~16000/yr. So being shot by a criminal is far more likely than being shot by police - even before we start to look at the circumstances, and find that most people shot by police were in the process of attacking them.

Similarly, stop and frisk has, when introduced, dramatically decreased crime rates - and repealing it has increased them again. It's about as clear-cut as a social-policy result can get.

If you've got a spine, you should be able to say "Stop and frisk decreases crime rates, and reduces the risk of harm coming to bystanders, but I oppose it anyway on civil liberties grounds.".