So if you throw enough money and person hours at the problem, you can mainly solve it. Check.
At work we used to do tape backup with 4 current tapes. Last year, last month, last week, and yesterday. Every week was stored until the end of month. Every month was stored off-site until the end of year. Every year was stored off-site.
Well, it worked. We did have a real problem verifying that the backups were good, and occasionally they failed. (At one point the read head engaged the write head, so that after reading the tape, it was blank. Yuck!)
But that's a solution that's expensive, slow, and requires a lot of personnel involvement. Not at all suitable for an individual. Also, eventually we got to the point were we were still backing up yesterday's data when people started logging in. Uh-oh!
I don't know what the current solution is. I expect that individual computers are no longer being backed up, but I don't really know.
A better answer is needed. Better has dimensions of both cheap and easy. Removable hard disks have obvious attractions, but it's still too slow. My current (personal) system has two hard disks that are synced occasionally with rsync. Not perfect, by any means. I also have the really important data occasionally copied to a usb key. (So it's got to be *really* limited in size.) And a larger chunk is occasionally copied to a DVD. Not a good answer, but better than nothing, and not so onerous that I won't do it whenever I start getting nervous. But this is a SMALL dataset.
P.S.: I consider relying on current cloud offerings to be ridiculous. Companies frequently go out of business without warning, and do you own the data that's on their computer? If the company goes bankrupt, what assurance do you have that it won't either just be discarded, or sold to the highest bidder at the bankruptcy sale? You sure won't be able to sue them! And I'd bet that their EULA permits them to just quit offering the service without any warning and without any reason, so even bankruptcy isn't necessary, just a change of their business plan. When we relied on off-site storage, we owned the tapes. I.e., the physical media. So it would be illegal for a bankruptcy to sell them off. (Doesn't mean it wouldn't happen, as bankruptcy courts seem to frequently ignore the law, but it's much less likely than if they owned the tapes.)
I think it's been decided that Nemesis "probably doesn't exist". At least in the form originally hypothesized. But there are tentative signs that *something* exists that does approximately what it was proposed that Nemesis would do. Tentative is far from proof, however, and "something" could cover everything from a black hole to a large planet in an eccentric orbit. Depending on how much of the evidence you wish to attribute to chance. (Some of it clearly is, but how much? And we can't tell. Besides, given the proposed mode of action, lots of times one would expect the asteroids to just go into very eccentric orbits...perhaps hitting us later, but usually either having orbital decay and regularization, or being captured by Jupiter or Saturn.)
No. Brown dwarf stars are made of baryonic matter, just like you and I. Dark matter must be non-baryonic, or physics needs to be totally redone. (A difficult job, as coming up with even one chunk of math that matched what we know of quantum behavior took lots of work.)
Basically, current physics predicts the number of protons+neutrons created at the time of the "big bang", and thus the number of baryons in the universe. There aren't enough of them to account for the "dark matter". And all current alternative theories seem to agree on the number of baryons (at least approximately). E.g., the crash of branes is one alternative to the big bang. Some of them could probably be adapted to allow differing numbers of baryons (I suppose that if the universe is cyclic, perhaps not quite everything collapsed at the last big crunch), but the ration of hydrogen to helium needs SOME explanation. And the one that currently seems to fit predicts a particular number of protons+neutrons in the universe. So dark matter isn't composed of protons or neutrons.
You're missing the point of the "Nome to Mexico City". 1) I'm assuming overnight stops, lunch breaks, etc. That was the reason for "45 minutes if very infrequent". I could easily stretch it out to an hour, but every extra minute makes the option less desirable. (As I said, the concept doesn't have sharp edges.) The purpose of the "Nome to Mexico City" was to ensure that there was a requirement for refueling during the trip. (If it could handle that without problems, then it could handle any expectable trip.) N.B.: I'm assuming that you overnight at motels with charging capability. So I'm assuming that that's not a problem. But you still need to be able to put in a day driving with a bit of reserve in case your motel is full and lost your reservation.
2) The other consideration is: most people don't keep a separate car around for when they go on vacation. So the "general purpose vehicle" has to be able to handle the "going away for a week" trip. A battery exchange program would solve this.
If I understand correctly, the application of this technology to aluminum *is* new, and I suspect that there will be a number of (legitimate) patents surrounding it. It's not just deciding to replace one metal by another, different metals behave quite differently.
OTOH, it may be something that will break "the magic 300 mile range". But I doubt that it will allow for quick refueling short of a battery exchange. I don't think that even super-capacitors could do that, as the power requirements for a fast charge are a bit appalling.
That said, I'm certain that it will have MANY uses. Some in power transmission, some in other areas. (Earlier comments have lead me to believe that this company won't be interested in pursuing powering consumer gadgets, but in that case they'll probably be open to licensing for that purpose. Which could be very useful.
But I don't think that electric cars will ever be practical as a general purpose vehicle without implementing a battery exchange program, or something equivalent. (Some types of battery operate on a flow-thru principle, so in principle you could treat that just like a two-part fuel, with regeneration done at fixed stations.) FWIW, a general purpose vehicle must be capable of driving from Nome, Alaska to Mexico City (given suitable roads) in one trip without extensive layovers. I do admit to the necessity for stops along the way to refuel, but they can't require more than 45 minutes if they are very infrequent, or 5 minutes if they are frequent. (Yeah, that's quite vague. Intentionally. I don't consider "general purpose vehicle" to be a category with hard edges, but rather with very fuzzy ones. And I acknowledge that some people would reasonably include off-the-road requirements, but I don't. And I'm willing to consider a shorter maximum trip length...but 300 miles isn't long enough. San Francisco to Los Angelas is a bare minimum.)
So I end up thinking quite highly of battery exchange programs for electrical vehicles. Which means standardization requirements for battery shape and connectors. But it's best to wait for the proper battery technology...or to have a standard that is flexible enough to allow variation as technology improves. Which is tricky in and of itself. (Note that under a battery exchange program, you wouldn't own the battery in your vehicle, just the power that it contains. So this would mean that there were various social adaptations necessary, e.g., Mobile would need to be willing to accept batteries owned by Shell in an exchange. Do they charge them? Relabel them? Ship them off to Shell? Can they charge a premium for accepting someone else's battery?)
If footprint were completely irrelevant, then it would be a solved problem. It's only of lesser importance, which means that really huge batteries with low efficiency aren't feasible.
N.B.: if footprint were irrelevant, then one solution would be to build a large tank covered by a heavy weight. To store power, you pump in some fluid underneath it. Air would work. To extract power you run it through a turbine. You need a fairly heavy weight, so use the house. (This, additionally, gives you earthquake protection if you use proper design.) That means you can store the fluid under lots of pressure, so you can run the turbine at high efficiency. Simple, reliable, efficient...but HUGE. And simply because it's huge it's expensive in many different ways. But with a heavy enough weight, and a large enough tank, you can store as much power as you want. And if the fluid has low surface tension (which makes sealing the tank difficult) you can have excellent efficiency. (This is actually a reasonably good mechanical analog of a battery.)
Sorry, but pre-US the "patent" was an exclusive right to do or make something granted by the government. Sometimes it was a patent of nobility, sometimes it was a patent on jam making for use by the King. Sometimes it was a patent on a kind of dyeing. The central idea was monopoly.
What the US did was extend that idea to all inventions registered with the government. And the implementation shows that the implementors (if not the originators of the idea) desired it to be another way of concentrating power. As it had been in Britain. They did, however, face political opposition which held that patents should be as you describe, so they had to make compromises that leaned in a more open direction. So, basically, anyone could potentially get a patent. But using it practically was something that only the quite rich could succeed at. And since they were practically useless without a sizable fortune, the wealthy could buy up patents cheaply...or, generally, violate them with impunity. (Though the "violate with impunity" was also something that the poor could do. Just not anyone worth suing.) Very occasionally someone who started out moderately wealthy was able to use a particularly significant patent to climb into the "very wealthy", but generally they were only useful for maintaining the very wealthy as very wealthy, and for fighting amongst themselves. And as time has gone on the "concentration of power" aspect of patents has increased, while it's utility to anyone besides either the very wealthy or the patent troll has diminished. By now that nearly all that's left.
I could see the value of a system analogous to patents in making or using inventions with a tremendous up-front cost. But not of the current patent system. And not of anything I could envision it being "reform"ed into.
Check the immigration requirements. Having a skill isn't enough, you've got to be young enough. And, generally, have some legal connection to the country to which you want to emigrate. (Relatives are good, but there are often other possibilities.) Speaking the language is usually another requirement.
I think that you must usually make the commitment before you are 30. (It's been over a decade since I checked, but I doubt that it's gotten easier.)
The thing is, we're already a 3rd rank nation. We just haven't felt the sharp edge yet. The only way the US is a major power these days is via the military. Certainly not financially. Certainly not in manufacturing. And we're currently killing off research and development.
I hope we fix things before we become a 4th rank nation. Or 5th. But I suspect that Russia may recover before we do.
I think that you are quite naive, and probably live in suburbia. In a largely rural state.
Although, when the actual problem is racism, I don't suppose that you could actually say that the person was injured because of "free speech violations". But not being properly subservient to an authority is frequently the only crime that one need commit to be either injured or prosecuted. And sometimes not even that. (One of the more common moving violations in the area where I live is called "Driving while black or brown." FWIW, I'm caucasian, but I've seen many instances of this.)
There are very good reasons why the police object to people taking pictures of their actions. Although perhaps "good" isn't the correct adjective.
I can accept the possibility that there could be a reasonable patent system. We don't have one. The legal aspects that you point out do make things considerably worse, but the patent system itself is horribly broken...broken to the point that I doubt that any repair is possible. It was broken at least as early as the invention of the telephone, when three separate and independent inventors appeared and *one* was granted a patent. Evidence appears to indicate that it was broken considerably before that, but I don't know anything really convincing. A case can be made that Eli Whitney did deserve a patent on the cotton gin, but do notice that he had to spend most of his time afterwards defending against infringements. So even though he deserved the credit for the sole invention, he didn't deserve what resulted from it. I'd call that broken, even if it's broken in a significantly different way. (Then there's the question of "Was it really a social good?" considering that it made slavery profitable.)
Patents were supposed to protect small businesses and startups with a new idea. Now they're being used for extortion (a la...
I think you're believing the propaganda. Patents are, and always have been, about concentrating power into fewer hands. That's one reason that they are expensive to get, use, and defend against. Copyrights did not originally have that purpose, though they have come to. Copyrights should not be allowed on any material "protected" by a DRM system unless that material is filed in a library of deposit WITHOUT the DRM. In a form suitable for reproduction and use. (Yeah, I'd count source code with the toolchain required to build it as satisfying this requirement. Even a binary would do, though in that case only the binary would be protected by copyright.)
The importance of the library of deposit is that the material under copyright should be guaranteed to eventually be released into public domain, or the copyright should be invalid. That's rather clear in the constitutional provision made to justify copyrights.
As for "get worse before it gets better", it will only get better if a viable better choice appears. For software I've found GPL software to be a viable choice. Others haven't. Their tough luck. If they ask my advice, I'll advise them. I'll often even assist them...but not in making stuff work that requires that I agree to onerous terms. So "I don't do Windows.", or, anymore, Mac. (Apple crossed the line 5 years or so ago, when they slipped a line into the terms of one of their software update packages that said "You agree that we have the right to add, remove, delete, or copy any file on this computer." That could mean something innocuous, but it could also mean something I don't choose to deal with. And I know which meaning an opposing lawyer would choose.)
I think an Lagrange point would be a better choice than the moon. The moon has too much gravity. But, as was pointed out earlier, rotating the antenna (telescope) would be a bit problem, even there. The lighter the structure, the less twist it could take.
That's not quite fascism. Fascism doesn't have any requirements of secrecy. That's an optional extra. And I think that under fascism the state is supposed to control the companies, rather than the other way around. Of course, in practice there's always a lot of give and take, especially around companies that are as powerful as many governments. (And in practice you will always find lots of clandestine activity. It may be an optional extra, but it seems to always be present.)
But stuff that's "in practice" isn't a part of the definition.
If you want anonymity, set up a mesh network. Convince your city to run a mesh network with an internet connection. I'm not sure that onion routing is good security, because I think you are identifiable at both ends. (Could be wrong.)
Just realize that a lot of the anonymous traffic is going to be illegal, and you are likely to be considered suspect. (Less so if your city does set up a mesh network, but I think that the commercial ISPs have set a legal precedent that it's "unfair competition".)
Not quite. The right to know is not equivalent to the right to coerce someone into telling you. I'll agree that it's not obvious how else he would know, but the two are not equivalent.
You risk your portion of "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor" and ACT on them.
Rights are sort of peculiar. They exist, but they don't have any effective power except when people choose to exercise them. And there's no guarantee that there won't be heavy penalties in such exercise. There isn't supposed to be, not under our constitution. But that presumes that the government pays any attention to the constitution, or doesn't blatantly misinterpret it.
Mind you, I think parts of the constitution are blatantly unworkable as written in a densely urban civilization with fast transportation, but the appropriate answer is to change the constitution, not to ignore it.
I think you haven't been following the news very long. This kind of idiocy happens in all countries. Like calling the internet a set of tubes. (US)
I don't see what else Google could have done, since I really doubt that the newspapers involved are significant enough to justify paying them anything, much less what they would likely have asked.
It's a legitimate question, but I can't answer, as the particular example I'm thinking of was from a printed newspaper whose name I couldn't read. But I saw it just a few days ago in Oakland, CA...which, of course, helps LOTS when you're trying to confirm a report.
I saw it on a bus, and didn't see who left it. (I suppose there could have been Katakana and Kanji mixed in, as I can't tell the difference between them. I just know it wasn't roman letters. But I do recognize spaces. [Sorry, Hirigana was the only name I could think of. I shouldn't have been so definite.]) I guess there's even an off-chance that it was Chinese, but I don't think so. At least the illustrations made me think of Japan.
I think the efficiency is currently too low for any practical application. Not sure about the cost, but...
OTOH, this *IS* a research project. There's probably lots of ways to improve it, and maybe they'll get around to looking at them. But maybe they'll head off in a different direction, and leave development to someone else. This is normal.
FWIW, *I* am more interested in solar shingles. At low cost and reasonable efficiency...but with long durability. This is also being worked on, though by a different group. (Haven't heard any news for several months, or maybe even a year. But that's too be expected, especially if some company got interested.)
My impression, from just LOOKING at Hiragana(?? The ideographic Japanese printing), was that they DID use spaces to separate words. And tended to use them frequently. Also to separate sentences, but larger spaces. (I'll grant that frequently the separation was left out, but not always. My guess was that it was put in to disambiguate.)
OTOH, the layout also seems to be a bit inconsistent. Even to sometimes being vertical and sometimes being horizontal. (I'm assuming that vertical is the older form, and that horizontal is much more recent. The same may be true for spacing.)
Bike lanes are really a very poor answer. They are too narrow, if you take a fall, you fall right in the middle of traffic, and people open car doors right in front of you. (They don't make the roads any wider just by putting in those lanes. Some times they take out a lane of parking, but that has other bad effects.)
What's really needed is separate grade. How to do it, though, is not clear. But at minimum the bike lane should be closer to the edge than the lane of parked cars.
Remember, lots of the people cycling are quite young. 9 isn't unusual. (Yeah, lots are older, too, but that's a separate matter.) You really don't want them risking falling down into traffic. (Adults can use their judgment. I decided the streets were too dangerous at around 30. This was difficult, as I don't drive. I don't consider my eyesight good enough to handle fast traffic. I'm *REALLY* wanting automated cars to show up soon. And bus service is, frankly, quite a poor substitute.)
If it killed software patents, that would be no loss. Software patents are inherently evil. The only possible good use for them is to defend against other patents, and even when used for that purpose the continually tend to corrupt.
Trade secrets are reasonable, copyrights are reasonable, but patents are evil. Even copyrights extend for FAR too long. 15 years should be the absolute maximum. And FOSS or not doesn't even enter into this. It's an orthogonal consideration.
Re:Time to rename the GNU Image Manipulation Progr
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When Software Offends
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Come up with one and fork the project.
I'll have to admit, however, that gimp is not a term I've heard or read in the last decade in any context other than the Gnu Image Manipulation Program. Still, it might well be a good marketing move. If someone would bother to do it. And could come up with a better name. (I would hope they could keep the icon, but I wouldn't count on it, so plan on needing to come up with an equally attractive icon, too.)
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So if you throw enough money and person hours at the problem, you can mainly solve it. Check.
At work we used to do tape backup with 4 current tapes. Last year, last month, last week, and yesterday. Every week was stored until the end of month. Every month was stored off-site until the end of year. Every year was stored off-site.
Well, it worked. We did have a real problem verifying that the backups were good, and occasionally they failed. (At one point the read head engaged the write head, so that after reading the tape, it was blank. Yuck!)
But that's a solution that's expensive, slow, and requires a lot of personnel involvement. Not at all suitable for an individual. Also, eventually we got to the point were we were still backing up yesterday's data when people started logging in. Uh-oh!
I don't know what the current solution is. I expect that individual computers are no longer being backed up, but I don't really know.
A better answer is needed. Better has dimensions of both cheap and easy. Removable hard disks have obvious attractions, but it's still too slow. My current (personal) system has two hard disks that are synced occasionally with rsync. Not perfect, by any means. I also have the really important data occasionally copied to a usb key. (So it's got to be *really* limited in size.) And a larger chunk is occasionally copied to a DVD. Not a good answer, but better than nothing, and not so onerous that I won't do it whenever I start getting nervous. But this is a SMALL dataset.
P.S.: I consider relying on current cloud offerings to be ridiculous. Companies frequently go out of business without warning, and do you own the data that's on their computer? If the company goes bankrupt, what assurance do you have that it won't either just be discarded, or sold to the highest bidder at the bankruptcy sale? You sure won't be able to sue them! And I'd bet that their EULA permits them to just quit offering the service without any warning and without any reason, so even bankruptcy isn't necessary, just a change of their business plan. When we relied on off-site storage, we owned the tapes. I.e., the physical media. So it would be illegal for a bankruptcy to sell them off. (Doesn't mean it wouldn't happen, as bankruptcy courts seem to frequently ignore the law, but it's much less likely than if they owned the tapes.)
No citation, but I've heard this too. From multiple sources. The claim is that the oil in the bearings becomes too sticky for the disk motor to start.
True? False? What's "fairly regularly"?
I don't know, so I wouldn't want to depend on it being wrong.
I think it's been decided that Nemesis "probably doesn't exist". At least in the form originally hypothesized. But there are tentative signs that *something* exists that does approximately what it was proposed that Nemesis would do. Tentative is far from proof, however, and "something" could cover everything from a black hole to a large planet in an eccentric orbit. Depending on how much of the evidence you wish to attribute to chance. (Some of it clearly is, but how much? And we can't tell. Besides, given the proposed mode of action, lots of times one would expect the asteroids to just go into very eccentric orbits...perhaps hitting us later, but usually either having orbital decay and regularization, or being captured by Jupiter or Saturn.)
No. Brown dwarf stars are made of baryonic matter, just like you and I. Dark matter must be non-baryonic, or physics needs to be totally redone. (A difficult job, as coming up with even one chunk of math that matched what we know of quantum behavior took lots of work.)
Basically, current physics predicts the number of protons+neutrons created at the time of the "big bang", and thus the number of baryons in the universe. There aren't enough of them to account for the "dark matter". And all current alternative theories seem to agree on the number of baryons (at least approximately). E.g., the crash of branes is one alternative to the big bang. Some of them could probably be adapted to allow differing numbers of baryons (I suppose that if the universe is cyclic, perhaps not quite everything collapsed at the last big crunch), but the ration of hydrogen to helium needs SOME explanation. And the one that currently seems to fit predicts a particular number of protons+neutrons in the universe. So dark matter isn't composed of protons or neutrons.
You're missing the point of the "Nome to Mexico City".
1) I'm assuming overnight stops, lunch breaks, etc. That was the reason for "45 minutes if very infrequent". I could easily stretch it out to an hour, but every extra minute makes the option less desirable. (As I said, the concept doesn't have sharp edges.) The purpose of the "Nome to Mexico City" was to ensure that there was a requirement for refueling during the trip. (If it could handle that without problems, then it could handle any expectable trip.)
N.B.: I'm assuming that you overnight at motels with charging capability. So I'm assuming that that's not a problem. But you still need to be able to put in a day driving with a bit of reserve in case your motel is full and lost your reservation.
2) The other consideration is: most people don't keep a separate car around for when they go on vacation. So the "general purpose vehicle" has to be able to handle the "going away for a week" trip. A battery exchange program would solve this.
If I understand correctly, the application of this technology to aluminum *is* new, and I suspect that there will be a number of (legitimate) patents surrounding it. It's not just deciding to replace one metal by another, different metals behave quite differently.
OTOH, it may be something that will break "the magic 300 mile range". But I doubt that it will allow for quick refueling short of a battery exchange. I don't think that even super-capacitors could do that, as the power requirements for a fast charge are a bit appalling.
That said, I'm certain that it will have MANY uses. Some in power transmission, some in other areas. (Earlier comments have lead me to believe that this company won't be interested in pursuing powering consumer gadgets, but in that case they'll probably be open to licensing for that purpose. Which could be very useful.
But I don't think that electric cars will ever be practical as a general purpose vehicle without implementing a battery exchange program, or something equivalent. (Some types of battery operate on a flow-thru principle, so in principle you could treat that just like a two-part fuel, with regeneration done at fixed stations.) FWIW, a general purpose vehicle must be capable of driving from Nome, Alaska to Mexico City (given suitable roads) in one trip without extensive layovers. I do admit to the necessity for stops along the way to refuel, but they can't require more than 45 minutes if they are very infrequent, or 5 minutes if they are frequent. (Yeah, that's quite vague. Intentionally. I don't consider "general purpose vehicle" to be a category with hard edges, but rather with very fuzzy ones. And I acknowledge that some people would reasonably include off-the-road requirements, but I don't. And I'm willing to consider a shorter maximum trip length...but 300 miles isn't long enough. San Francisco to Los Angelas is a bare minimum.)
So I end up thinking quite highly of battery exchange programs for electrical vehicles. Which means standardization requirements for battery shape and connectors. But it's best to wait for the proper battery technology...or to have a standard that is flexible enough to allow variation as technology improves. Which is tricky in and of itself. (Note that under a battery exchange program, you wouldn't own the battery in your vehicle, just the power that it contains. So this would mean that there were various social adaptations necessary, e.g., Mobile would need to be willing to accept batteries owned by Shell in an exchange. Do they charge them? Relabel them? Ship them off to Shell? Can they charge a premium for accepting someone else's battery?)
If footprint were completely irrelevant, then it would be a solved problem. It's only of lesser importance, which means that really huge batteries with low efficiency aren't feasible.
N.B.: if footprint were irrelevant, then one solution would be to build a large tank covered by a heavy weight. To store power, you pump in some fluid underneath it. Air would work. To extract power you run it through a turbine. You need a fairly heavy weight, so use the house. (This, additionally, gives you earthquake protection if you use proper design.) That means you can store the fluid under lots of pressure, so you can run the turbine at high efficiency. Simple, reliable, efficient...but HUGE. And simply because it's huge it's expensive in many different ways. But with a heavy enough weight, and a large enough tank, you can store as much power as you want. And if the fluid has low surface tension (which makes sealing the tank difficult) you can have excellent efficiency. (This is actually a reasonably good mechanical analog of a battery.)
Sorry, but pre-US the "patent" was an exclusive right to do or make something granted by the government. Sometimes it was a patent of nobility, sometimes it was a patent on jam making for use by the King. Sometimes it was a patent on a kind of dyeing. The central idea was monopoly.
What the US did was extend that idea to all inventions registered with the government. And the implementation shows that the implementors (if not the originators of the idea) desired it to be another way of concentrating power. As it had been in Britain. They did, however, face political opposition which held that patents should be as you describe, so they had to make compromises that leaned in a more open direction. So, basically, anyone could potentially get a patent. But using it practically was something that only the quite rich could succeed at. And since they were practically useless without a sizable fortune, the wealthy could buy up patents cheaply...or, generally, violate them with impunity. (Though the "violate with impunity" was also something that the poor could do. Just not anyone worth suing.) Very occasionally someone who started out moderately wealthy was able to use a particularly significant patent to climb into the "very wealthy", but generally they were only useful for maintaining the very wealthy as very wealthy, and for fighting amongst themselves. And as time has gone on the "concentration of power" aspect of patents has increased, while it's utility to anyone besides either the very wealthy or the patent troll has diminished. By now that nearly all that's left.
I could see the value of a system analogous to patents in making or using inventions with a tremendous up-front cost. But not of the current patent system. And not of anything I could envision it being "reform"ed into.
Check the immigration requirements. Having a skill isn't enough, you've got to be young enough. And, generally, have some legal connection to the country to which you want to emigrate. (Relatives are good, but there are often other possibilities.) Speaking the language is usually another requirement.
I think that you must usually make the commitment before you are 30. (It's been over a decade since I checked, but I doubt that it's gotten easier.)
The thing is, we're already a 3rd rank nation. We just haven't felt the sharp edge yet. The only way the US is a major power these days is via the military. Certainly not financially. Certainly not in manufacturing. And we're currently killing off research and development.
I hope we fix things before we become a 4th rank nation. Or 5th. But I suspect that Russia may recover before we do.
I think that you are quite naive, and probably live in suburbia. In a largely rural state.
Although, when the actual problem is racism, I don't suppose that you could actually say that the person was injured because of "free speech violations". But not being properly subservient to an authority is frequently the only crime that one need commit to be either injured or prosecuted. And sometimes not even that. (One of the more common moving violations in the area where I live is called "Driving while black or brown." FWIW, I'm caucasian, but I've seen many instances of this.)
There are very good reasons why the police object to people taking pictures of their actions. Although perhaps "good" isn't the correct adjective.
I can accept the possibility that there could be a reasonable patent system. We don't have one. The legal aspects that you point out do make things considerably worse, but the patent system itself is horribly broken...broken to the point that I doubt that any repair is possible. It was broken at least as early as the invention of the telephone, when three separate and independent inventors appeared and *one* was granted a patent. Evidence appears to indicate that it was broken considerably before that, but I don't know anything really convincing. A case can be made that Eli Whitney did deserve a patent on the cotton gin, but do notice that he had to spend most of his time afterwards defending against infringements. So even though he deserved the credit for the sole invention, he didn't deserve what resulted from it. I'd call that broken, even if it's broken in a significantly different way. (Then there's the question of "Was it really a social good?" considering that it made slavery profitable.)
Patents were supposed to protect small businesses and startups with a new idea. Now they're being used for extortion (a la ...
I think you're believing the propaganda. Patents are, and always have been, about concentrating power into fewer hands. That's one reason that they are expensive to get, use, and defend against. Copyrights did not originally have that purpose, though they have come to. Copyrights should not be allowed on any material "protected" by a DRM system unless that material is filed in a library of deposit WITHOUT the DRM. In a form suitable for reproduction and use. (Yeah, I'd count source code with the toolchain required to build it as satisfying this requirement. Even a binary would do, though in that case only the binary would be protected by copyright.)
The importance of the library of deposit is that the material under copyright should be guaranteed to eventually be released into public domain, or the copyright should be invalid. That's rather clear in the constitutional provision made to justify copyrights.
As for "get worse before it gets better", it will only get better if a viable better choice appears. For software I've found GPL software to be a viable choice. Others haven't. Their tough luck. If they ask my advice, I'll advise them. I'll often even assist them...but not in making stuff work that requires that I agree to onerous terms. So "I don't do Windows.", or, anymore, Mac. (Apple crossed the line 5 years or so ago, when they slipped a line into the terms of one of their software update packages that said "You agree that we have the right to add, remove, delete, or copy any file on this computer." That could mean something innocuous, but it could also mean something I don't choose to deal with. And I know which meaning an opposing lawyer would choose.)
I think an Lagrange point would be a better choice than the moon. The moon has too much gravity. But, as was pointed out earlier, rotating the antenna (telescope) would be a bit problem, even there. The lighter the structure, the less twist it could take.
That's not quite fascism. Fascism doesn't have any requirements of secrecy. That's an optional extra. And I think that under fascism the state is supposed to control the companies, rather than the other way around. Of course, in practice there's always a lot of give and take, especially around companies that are as powerful as many governments. (And in practice you will always find lots of clandestine activity. It may be an optional extra, but it seems to always be present.)
But stuff that's "in practice" isn't a part of the definition.
If you want anonymity, set up a mesh network. Convince your city to run a mesh network with an internet connection. I'm not sure that onion routing is good security, because I think you are identifiable at both ends. (Could be wrong.)
Just realize that a lot of the anonymous traffic is going to be illegal, and you are likely to be considered suspect. (Less so if your city does set up a mesh network, but I think that the commercial ISPs have set a legal precedent that it's "unfair competition".)
Not quite. The right to know is not equivalent to the right to coerce someone into telling you. I'll agree that it's not obvious how else he would know, but the two are not equivalent.
You risk your portion of "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor" and ACT on them.
Rights are sort of peculiar. They exist, but they don't have any effective power except when people choose to exercise them. And there's no guarantee that there won't be heavy penalties in such exercise. There isn't supposed to be, not under our constitution. But that presumes that the government pays any attention to the constitution, or doesn't blatantly misinterpret it.
Mind you, I think parts of the constitution are blatantly unworkable as written in a densely urban civilization with fast transportation, but the appropriate answer is to change the constitution, not to ignore it.
I think you haven't been following the news very long. This kind of idiocy happens in all countries. Like calling the internet a set of tubes. (US)
I don't see what else Google could have done, since I really doubt that the newspapers involved are significant enough to justify paying them anything, much less what they would likely have asked.
It's a legitimate question, but I can't answer, as the particular example I'm thinking of was from a printed newspaper whose name I couldn't read. But I saw it just a few days ago in Oakland, CA...which, of course, helps LOTS when you're trying to confirm a report.
I saw it on a bus, and didn't see who left it. (I suppose there could have been Katakana and Kanji mixed in, as I can't tell the difference between them. I just know it wasn't roman letters. But I do recognize spaces. [Sorry, Hirigana was the only name I could think of. I shouldn't have been so definite.]) I guess there's even an off-chance that it was Chinese, but I don't think so. At least the illustrations made me think of Japan.
I think the efficiency is currently too low for any practical application. Not sure about the cost, but...
OTOH, this *IS* a research project. There's probably lots of ways to improve it, and maybe they'll get around to looking at them. But maybe they'll head off in a different direction, and leave development to someone else. This is normal.
FWIW, *I* am more interested in solar shingles. At low cost and reasonable efficiency...but with long durability. This is also being worked on, though by a different group. (Haven't heard any news for several months, or maybe even a year. But that's too be expected, especially if some company got interested.)
My impression, from just LOOKING at Hiragana(?? The ideographic Japanese printing), was that they DID use spaces to separate words. And tended to use them frequently. Also to separate sentences, but larger spaces. (I'll grant that frequently the separation was left out, but not always. My guess was that it was put in to disambiguate.)
OTOH, the layout also seems to be a bit inconsistent. Even to sometimes being vertical and sometimes being horizontal. (I'm assuming that vertical is the older form, and that horizontal is much more recent. The same may be true for spacing.)
Bike lanes are really a very poor answer. They are too narrow, if you take a fall, you fall right in the middle of traffic, and people open car doors right in front of you. (They don't make the roads any wider just by putting in those lanes. Some times they take out a lane of parking, but that has other bad effects.)
What's really needed is separate grade. How to do it, though, is not clear. But at minimum the bike lane should be closer to the edge than the lane of parked cars.
Remember, lots of the people cycling are quite young. 9 isn't unusual. (Yeah, lots are older, too, but that's a separate matter.) You really don't want them risking falling down into traffic. (Adults can use their judgment. I decided the streets were too dangerous at around 30. This was difficult, as I don't drive. I don't consider my eyesight good enough to handle fast traffic. I'm *REALLY* wanting automated cars to show up soon. And bus service is, frankly, quite a poor substitute.)
If it killed software patents, that would be no loss. Software patents are inherently evil. The only possible good use for them is to defend against other patents, and even when used for that purpose the continually tend to corrupt.
Trade secrets are reasonable, copyrights are reasonable, but patents are evil. Even copyrights extend for FAR too long. 15 years should be the absolute maximum. And FOSS or not doesn't even enter into this. It's an orthogonal consideration.
Come up with one and fork the project.
I'll have to admit, however, that gimp is not a term I've heard or read in the last decade in any context other than the Gnu Image Manipulation Program. Still, it might well be a good marketing move. If someone would bother to do it. And could come up with a better name. (I would hope they could keep the icon, but I wouldn't count on it, so plan on needing to come up with an equally attractive icon, too.)