But we do not even mitigate the biggest risk first. Arguably the biggest risk right now to us is cancer. However, in the US, the budget for cancer research is a pitiful 5 billion $/yr, which is rather small in comparison to the 79 billion $/yr for military research and testing.
The Dutch East Indies Company had established trading colonies in the Indies before the Netherlands had even gained its independence from Spain. The first permanent trading post was established in 1603, by the company, not by the government. Going to the other side of the globe was dangerous. It was expensive. And there were unquantified risks.
If there is profit, a company can pull it off. I can certainly see SpaceX mine some asteroid for some valuable minerals, if they are worth the fuel to go there and back. But the real question is what Mars has to offer for any company. It's just another gravity well, and it will be a pain to export anything from Mars to where any market is... so it'd better better be some kind of information that they export.
Aren't US government resources always used to improve the financial situation of corporations? Once there is proof that these systems are used freely to help a corporation, a lot of people will say that "it is necessary to help our struggling economy".
Well, if they have a strong electromagnet, shouldn't that create a magnetic force within the earth's magnetic field (although perhaps quite small)? I mean, two magnets either attract, repel, right?
I wonder for how many people the internet becomes completely inaccessible without Google? (I also still occasionally meet people who do not know what a 'browser' is, and who think that IE is their only option).
Google is a good search engine, but there are alternatives. If Google stopped working, I wouldn't suffer very much, I think. (When Gmail crashes, I think that for gmail users this is another issue... but I use alternative email).
Well, good luck finding any new employees to work for the government ever then. After hearing this, nobody will bother to apply.
One can only hope this is the case. Unfortunately, I think that also in Australia, there are thousands of people who will either argue that "they have to somehow pay their bills", or that "they have nothing to hide", or any other stupid argument. And otherwise, the govt. can always promise to pay 5000 $ more per year than in similar jobs elsewhere, which is no doubt enough to shut up a whole lot of people.
If all shows would always be available in a convenient way, they people wouldn't pirate. But it's too little, too late. Only a few shows are available globally (and judging by the comments here, even in this case that is not entirely sure). But it is certainly too late. There are so many alternative ways to obtain a series or movie that people don't go back.
5-10 years ago, many people couldn't be bothered to figure out how this whole downloading thing worked. But the commerce of TV made them figure it out. Now, everybody can do it. There are loads of streaming websites, and torrents. By now, viewers do not only demand it becomes available globally, but also that it is available 24/7, so they can watch it at their own convenience. That is the luxury that downloading provides.
So the company that essentially made everyone want a smartphone (recall the crackberry) explores ways to die.
Something is wrong at the top of a company when they create a market then hand it to a rival without even a challenge.
Nonsense. It is healthy economics at work. There are lots of huge companies that no longer exist because their markets dried up, or because the competition became better at playing the game than them. Their business plan was to have an innovative product. Now, Apple and Samsung have larger research departments and get products on the market quicker than Blackberry. Better try to sell off whatever is left now than wait until the next wave of Chinese smart phone producers floods the market and kills them off completely.
Remember that the task of the CEO and management of blackberry is primarily to satisfy its investors, not the employees. Continuation of the company is perhaps desirable, but not necessary.
What, bring the metal detectors and baggage scanners in the plane? Are they portable, or built-in? That's gonna give you a little extra weight, or someone needs to carry the damned things into and out of the plane.
What problem does this solve? Now you would just stand in line and wait in a terminal in the city center, instead of at the airport. Who cares. It's still gonna be a boring terminal. The traveltime to the airport is not reduced. The security and check in are not reduced. Flight time is not reduced. But you will get some additional technical checks that can only start after clicking this train onto that plane - which means I am there, waiting.
This just adds more weight to the plane. Makes travel time longer. Also, it means I can stretch my legs even less, as I have to wait for half an hour after landing until I can get up.
I tried to turn myself in at the local police station. I told the officer there that I had borrowed a book from someone else. I had not paid for it. My friend has also read it. So, that's three people, in three different households, that have all read this book for the price of one!
The officer threatened to give me a fine for wasting his time, then sent me home.
Well, in the Netherlands the scam as you describe it has not started yet. In fact, the Netherlands has a healthy competition among ISPs, and an internet connection for 20 euro/month will get you a very reasonable 20 Mb / 1 Mb connection, and the wifi modem/router is included (free).
I believe that in the (near?) future, ISPs must also list a minimum up and download speed (if they are the bottleneck themselves), next to the maximum that they advertise with.
If the ISP wishes to scam you into paying a few euro more, they can already do that. But they don't want to lose to the competition, so they don't.
There is Kroes and a number of others who want to keep the internet free, so it can defend democratic values and such. And then there are those who are bought by lobbyists, and who support the ISPs as well as the music/movie industry and wish to tie it down and control it, in the name of The Economy and Profit.
It's a good thing that Neelie Kroes is quite a big shot in the EU government (the "European Commission digital agenda vice-president" is important in this matter)...
How is that going to be different if you had met this girl in a bar or your local handcraft workshop? It's still gonna take a while to get to know a person. Dark emotions that cause depressions will remain hidden for a long time, regardless of how you met.
It is true that email contact is different than talking face-to-face. You have more time to think about what you write. But I would hope that any relation moves away from written to spoken contact soon enough? Even if it is long-distance, there is Skype or phone. You cannot realistically expect to get to know someone before that anyway. But similarly, you cannot realistically expect to know anyone after just a few dates.
The really emotional stuff is gonna take time. Always.
We are actually pretty bad at detecting small objects that are orbiting our own sun! I agree that our detection methods have a strong bias for larger planets in near orbits to their star. However, it is still interesting to read that Jupiters are less common than Neptune sized planets.
Still, it's a nice article. I didn't know the counter for exo-planets stood at 900 already. Awesome.
True, but the whole quest is to make a device smaller. You cannot carry a netbook in a pocket (or you actually can, but some people have really small pockets!). I also carry a backpack with a small laptop... a small laptop has many advantages over smart phones or even tinier devices (multiple usb ports, a larger screen, and I can have my favorite distro on it) but some other people think there's a market for tiny devices. Let them. It's nice to see they are finding a solution to one of the more fundamental problems of making things smaller: humans are big and clumsy.
Why have we decided that stupid tiny keyboards are a good idea?
You don't have a keyboard with you if you are on a train or bus. This is the replacement for a smart phone, not your desktop PC. Still, 4 or even 9 wpm (words per minute) seems a little slow? I've seen kids text on the old phones (before touch screens) faster than that.
Faster construction means higher costs. The simple reason is that you have to pay crews more if they work in the night. Also, the logistics of a project that runs 24/7 is more complicated than a project that runs only a few hours per week. The costs of a few diggers standing idle is small to the costs of the crews or the asphalt factory that may have to run over-hours. Asphalt is a major bottleneck: it cannot be stored after it has been made. It comes out of the factory, still hot, and must be transported to the site quickly.
I bet that in the US, as well as in Europe, they can actually pull off a trick like in China/Japan easily, but they often deliberately choose not to, to lower the costs. Only vital infrastructure is worked on overnight.
I was just gonna write something similar. It is very common to be able to buy a phone without contract in the Netherlands, and then buy a separate sim-card somewhere. What's all the fuss about? But then I guess we do occasionally blow news items from the USA out of proportion, so maybe I should just take it with a grain of salt and grab another cup of coffee.
Yeah, that is what I meant with long-term development. The Chinese now just try out some ideas. Some will succeed, some will fail. But they try them out on such a massive scale that they will learn all there is to learn. And then they will sell the successes to us at a profit. When us Western people finally see the light, we will be buying Chinese scooters, with Chinese charging stations and Chinese battery packs. And if we decide to go for cars, we'll still be buying their charging stations and battery packs.
The are starting to move away from their heavy focus on simple mass production of cheap goods. They are starting a new focus on high-tech goods, just out competing us on our only remaining stronghold of knowledge. Give it another 10, maybe 20 years, and China is no longer known for dumb mass production, but also for quality.
Slashdot Mirror
But we do not even mitigate the biggest risk first. Arguably the biggest risk right now to us is cancer. However, in the US, the budget for cancer research is a pitiful 5 billion $/yr, which is rather small in comparison to the 79 billion $/yr for military research and testing.
Sources for budgets:
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/NCI/research-funding
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#By_title
The Dutch East Indies Company had established trading colonies in the Indies before the Netherlands had even gained its independence from Spain. The first permanent trading post was established in 1603, by the company, not by the government. Going to the other side of the globe was dangerous. It was expensive. And there were unquantified risks.
If there is profit, a company can pull it off. I can certainly see SpaceX mine some asteroid for some valuable minerals, if they are worth the fuel to go there and back. But the real question is what Mars has to offer for any company. It's just another gravity well, and it will be a pain to export anything from Mars to where any market is... so it'd better better be some kind of information that they export.
Aren't US government resources always used to improve the financial situation of corporations? Once there is proof that these systems are used freely to help a corporation, a lot of people will say that "it is necessary to help our struggling economy".
Well, if they have a strong electromagnet, shouldn't that create a magnetic force within the earth's magnetic field (although perhaps quite small)? I mean, two magnets either attract, repel, right?
I wonder for how many people the internet becomes completely inaccessible without Google? (I also still occasionally meet people who do not know what a 'browser' is, and who think that IE is their only option).
Google is a good search engine, but there are alternatives. If Google stopped working, I wouldn't suffer very much, I think. (When Gmail crashes, I think that for gmail users this is another issue... but I use alternative email).
Dude, that made as much sense as saying, "How to make a car fly: Exit the car and enter a plane". :D
And I would say that's fantastic advice... I wonder if a car is check-in or cabin baggage...
Well, good luck finding any new employees to work for the government ever then. After hearing this, nobody will bother to apply.
One can only hope this is the case. Unfortunately, I think that also in Australia, there are thousands of people who will either argue that "they have to somehow pay their bills", or that "they have nothing to hide", or any other stupid argument. And otherwise, the govt. can always promise to pay 5000 $ more per year than in similar jobs elsewhere, which is no doubt enough to shut up a whole lot of people.
If all shows would always be available in a convenient way, they people wouldn't pirate. But it's too little, too late. Only a few shows are available globally (and judging by the comments here, even in this case that is not entirely sure). But it is certainly too late. There are so many alternative ways to obtain a series or movie that people don't go back.
5-10 years ago, many people couldn't be bothered to figure out how this whole downloading thing worked. But the commerce of TV made them figure it out. Now, everybody can do it. There are loads of streaming websites, and torrents. By now, viewers do not only demand it becomes available globally, but also that it is available 24/7, so they can watch it at their own convenience. That is the luxury that downloading provides.
I'm so happy that streaming and downloading (but not uploading) is still legal in the Netherlands. :-)
http://torrentfreak.com/downloading-movies-and-music-stays-legal-in-the-netherlands-121221/
So the company that essentially made everyone want a smartphone (recall the crackberry) explores ways to die.
Something is wrong at the top of a company when they create a market then hand it to a rival without even a challenge.
Nonsense. It is healthy economics at work. There are lots of huge companies that no longer exist because their markets dried up, or because the competition became better at playing the game than them. Their business plan was to have an innovative product. Now, Apple and Samsung have larger research departments and get products on the market quicker than Blackberry. Better try to sell off whatever is left now than wait until the next wave of Chinese smart phone producers floods the market and kills them off completely.
Remember that the task of the CEO and management of blackberry is primarily to satisfy its investors, not the employees. Continuation of the company is perhaps desirable, but not necessary.
Professors too have the right to be scaremongered into an unrealistic fear of terrorism.
What, bring the metal detectors and baggage scanners in the plane? Are they portable, or built-in? That's gonna give you a little extra weight, or someone needs to carry the damned things into and out of the plane.
What problem does this solve? Now you would just stand in line and wait in a terminal in the city center, instead of at the airport. Who cares. It's still gonna be a boring terminal. The traveltime to the airport is not reduced. The security and check in are not reduced. Flight time is not reduced. But you will get some additional technical checks that can only start after clicking this train onto that plane - which means I am there, waiting.
This just adds more weight to the plane. Makes travel time longer. Also, it means I can stretch my legs even less, as I have to wait for half an hour after landing until I can get up.
The majority of Americans (1) don't understand the extent of the surveillance, and (2) don't understand why privacy is so important.
I totally believe this poll.
This article says that 70% of Americans don't know what the constitution is: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1368482/How-ignorant-Americans-An-alarming-number-U-S-citizens-dont-know-basic-facts-country.html
I tried to turn myself in at the local police station. I told the officer there that I had borrowed a book from someone else. I had not paid for it. My friend has also read it. So, that's three people, in three different households, that have all read this book for the price of one!
The officer threatened to give me a fine for wasting his time, then sent me home.
Well, in the Netherlands the scam as you describe it has not started yet. In fact, the Netherlands has a healthy competition among ISPs, and an internet connection for 20 euro/month will get you a very reasonable 20 Mb / 1 Mb connection, and the wifi modem/router is included (free).
I believe that in the (near?) future, ISPs must also list a minimum up and download speed (if they are the bottleneck themselves), next to the maximum that they advertise with.
If the ISP wishes to scam you into paying a few euro more, they can already do that. But they don't want to lose to the competition, so they don't.
There is Kroes and a number of others who want to keep the internet free, so it can defend democratic values and such.
And then there are those who are bought by lobbyists, and who support the ISPs as well as the music/movie industry and wish to tie it down and control it, in the name of The Economy and Profit.
It's a good thing that Neelie Kroes is quite a big shot in the EU government (the "European Commission digital agenda vice-president" is important in this matter)...
How is that going to be different if you had met this girl in a bar or your local handcraft workshop? It's still gonna take a while to get to know a person. Dark emotions that cause depressions will remain hidden for a long time, regardless of how you met.
It is true that email contact is different than talking face-to-face. You have more time to think about what you write. But I would hope that any relation moves away from written to spoken contact soon enough? Even if it is long-distance, there is Skype or phone. You cannot realistically expect to get to know someone before that anyway. But similarly, you cannot realistically expect to know anyone after just a few dates.
The really emotional stuff is gonna take time. Always.
We are actually pretty bad at detecting small objects that are orbiting our own sun! I agree that our detection methods have a strong bias for larger planets in near orbits to their star. However, it is still interesting to read that Jupiters are less common than Neptune sized planets.
Still, it's a nice article. I didn't know the counter for exo-planets stood at 900 already. Awesome.
True, but the whole quest is to make a device smaller. You cannot carry a netbook in a pocket (or you actually can, but some people have really small pockets!). I also carry a backpack with a small laptop... a small laptop has many advantages over smart phones or even tinier devices (multiple usb ports, a larger screen, and I can have my favorite distro on it) but some other people think there's a market for tiny devices. Let them. It's nice to see they are finding a solution to one of the more fundamental problems of making things smaller: humans are big and clumsy.
Why have we decided that stupid tiny keyboards are a good idea?
You don't have a keyboard with you if you are on a train or bus. This is the replacement for a smart phone, not your desktop PC. Still, 4 or even 9 wpm (words per minute) seems a little slow? I've seen kids text on the old phones (before touch screens) faster than that.
Faster construction means higher costs.
The simple reason is that you have to pay crews more if they work in the night. Also, the logistics of a project that runs 24/7 is more complicated than a project that runs only a few hours per week. The costs of a few diggers standing idle is small to the costs of the crews or the asphalt factory that may have to run over-hours. Asphalt is a major bottleneck: it cannot be stored after it has been made. It comes out of the factory, still hot, and must be transported to the site quickly.
I bet that in the US, as well as in Europe, they can actually pull off a trick like in China/Japan easily, but they often deliberately choose not to, to lower the costs. Only vital infrastructure is worked on overnight.
Can we complain about Ubuntu's choice for Unity yet?
In retrospect, not the best combination of words. :)
I was just gonna write something similar. It is very common to be able to buy a phone without contract in the Netherlands, and then buy a separate sim-card somewhere. What's all the fuss about? But then I guess we do occasionally blow news items from the USA out of proportion, so maybe I should just take it with a grain of salt and grab another cup of coffee.
Yeah, that is what I meant with long-term development. The Chinese now just try out some ideas. Some will succeed, some will fail. But they try them out on such a massive scale that they will learn all there is to learn. And then they will sell the successes to us at a profit. When us Western people finally see the light, we will be buying Chinese scooters, with Chinese charging stations and Chinese battery packs. And if we decide to go for cars, we'll still be buying their charging stations and battery packs.
The are starting to move away from their heavy focus on simple mass production of cheap goods. They are starting a new focus on high-tech goods, just out competing us on our only remaining stronghold of knowledge. Give it another 10, maybe 20 years, and China is no longer known for dumb mass production, but also for quality.
p.s. Do you have a link about these scooters?