-Video-conferencing using a mobile phone - in extension, carrying an 80's standards super-computer class device in your pocket you can interface with using mere touch input and with an integrated graphics output in splendid resolution. -An extend-your-self computer kit a seven year old can learn to use, the size of half a tablet of chocolate (Raspberry Pi) -Autopilot for cars (Tesla, Google,..., take your pick - even 'though they are not yet perfect). -Full automation of the home using off-the-shelf products. -A.I. beating chess grandmasters - A.I. beating Go grandmasters even more so. -Direct detection of earth-like exo-planets. -The full extent of the world-wide web ('nuff said) -On-demand high-resolution video streaming to both hand-held devices and commercially ubiquitous, large, potentially wall-sized flat-panel monitors. -Commercial space companies able to technically achieve interplanetary missions. -Whole genome sequencing in a day. -Finding the Higgs boson - both the physical instrument, the LHC and the global network of supercomputers and storage servers transporting, dividing, combining, parsing and storing LHC's results.
Most rechargeable batteries have a substantial self discharge rate and will go to zero in a few months with charging.
This used to be the case, but for a decade or so now there are rechargeable 'ready to use'/'low self-discharge' (LSD) NiMH batteries on the market that can hold a significant amount of their charge for several years (for good ones, 75% after 3 years). LSD NiMH's do have a bit smaller capacity per volume but that is maybe a 10-20% difference, at the most.
But maybe these sensors have a rechargeable Li-Ion battery? I don't know about LSD types of those but Li-Ion have very bad charging characteristics when almost empty (high internal resistance - so it's harder to charge the emptier it is) so I don't think they are useful when recharging in these extremely low power conditions. And then there are supercapacitors, but they have a way too high self-discharge rate to be able to claim 5 years of operation on the 'battery' alone.
What you describe is not full duplex. Two radios working together, taking turns (one transmitting, then one receiving, etc.) is the very definition of half duplex. And one radio in constant operation is simplex of course. Full duplex is always a situation where two radios are used in constant operation. One sending, one transmitting.
Full duplex using two radios on different frequencies is old school. Just a matter of a good combination of filters and enough frequency separation.
Full duplex using two radios on the SAME frequency, using directional signals is difficult but not undo-able. As long as you can prevent your receiver being blown up by your own transmission signal (and hope an unexpected reflective object in your signal path doesn't undo all your careful physical transmitter-receiver antenna separation).
Full duplex using two radios (both in continuous operation, one transmitting, one receiving, as defined at the top of my post) on exactly the SAME frequency while using a SINGLE (omni-directional) antenna is a true nightmare. And apparently these guys did just that with technology that promises it to be available in hand-held appliances.
RTFA, they used a combination of a circulator on silicon (which is the most innovative part. The circulator used in the project described by the article should kill most of the transmitted signal otherwise picked up directly by the receiver) and echo cancellation (which they developed earlier and is used to subtract any transmitter signal left which should mostly be echoes from objects that reflect the transmitted signal at distance and possibly internal echo from a sub-optimal antenna) on the received signal at the receiver end, so they can then try amplifying what's left. Which should be the (weak) signals that are transmitted towards the antenna by another transceiver.
I'm not saying Python is just right... but its development was started because the, then current, mature programming languages (C and shellscript) didn't support the mix of features Guido van Rossum needed... and a language that had many features he did like (ABC), he 'had a number of gripes about' (mainly it was a PITA to extend) so he started making Python. It was a typical case of 'developer not happy with current tools, starts making his own almost from scratch'. I see a lot of parallels with this Redux case, and yes I know Python had 27 years to come where it is today. It's already been very usable for most of that time... version 1.0 was released in 'just' 5 years. Same with Linux, by the way, that was made by Torvalds because he wanted a quick and dirty Unix like OS on his 386 and the Hurd didn't cut it. Neither did Minix, which was 16 bit. It took 4 years there to get to 1.0.
So... let's see in 5 years, shall we? Maybe Redux will be something interesting. But, as I said, they need to do a lot of work first, and then, maybe, there will be others willing to help out. Making a lot of noise first is probably not going to help them get more 'eyeballs'.
Well, most of the time you are right. And then there was Python.
Sometimes it works. But there never is an 'easy fix'. If you believe you're doing it better, it still needs a lot of work and convincing to be perceived as being better, let alone actually be better than what there was previously. A quick '0.1' and some documentation is not enough to convince the majority of users to join your band wagon. If you think all the work to get to '1.0' is preferable over fixing what's wrong in the established stuff that you view as inferior, go ahead. But be prepared to do a lot of loveless work before you get your results.
,quote>Where would Florida pump the water to? The ocean?
Well we (Dutch) do... if it's high tide and internal water levels are too high. But usually we let it go at low tide. That's the wonderful thing about the sea... it's dynamic. You 'just' have to have some internal basins to temporarily store fresh-water surplus and adjustable storm surge barriers in your major estuaries.
the Dutch are surrounded by mountains
Not.. quite. At the North and West we have the North Sea, of course. Our Northern flank has a shallow marshy-sea-land type of area and a string of sandy islands stretching a 100 miles or so in a west-east direction and a few dozen miles wide. The Western flank is sand dunes. And the South-west are major estuaries with river-separated islands... and those storm surge barriers, of which one major one (Eastern Scheldt storm surge barrier) is adjustable so it only closes when a storm hits. Oh, and the North-western area of our country contains a (very large, used to be even a lot larger) lake, which used to be a sea in its own right. But we dammed that off and now it's a fresh-water lake with about half the area poldered in, so that's a new provice (we do not have states, but provinces) now.
At the South we have Belgium, which is an independent nation. They have less costs for their water-works because they don't have the major estuaries we Dutch have... but Belgium is still part of the 'Low countries', as is a piece of Northern France and the whole area is not much above sea-level. Then, at the South-east we have a couple of hills of which -maybe- the south-eastern tip might qualify as a mountain (its highest peak is 322 meters (1056 feet) above sea-level). East we have the German low lands, of which the Northern part looks very similar to our North-east,including the shallow marshy sea-land and more sandy islands, all the way up-to and including parts of Denmark, another nation yet again. East-south-east we have the Rhine flowing and the Rhine-Ruhr gebied, which is still quite low and one of the major population areas of Germany. It's only beyond that, there are proper mountains.
We do get a couple of violent storms each year (in the 10 beaufort region), Hurricanes (12 beaufort), probably not... For the Netherlands such violent storms are more like a once in couple of decades event. In the '90's there was a severe storm travelling through North-West Europe with an hourly average wind force of 11 beaufort in the Netherlands and dozens of fatalities in at least 5 different countries.
Although our storms may not be as violent as the hurricanes of the American South-east, there is a trough-shape in the North Sea due to the British isles at our West, which ads extra height to the local sea-level when wind is blowing from the North. That effect is one you won't have at the Florida coast. Sea water can be diverted in enough directions there, but force of the waves may be larger with more violent storms... so you maybe need tougher (thick-skinned, so to speak... more use of rocks to break the waves instead of sand dunes and earthen dikes?) dikes instead of higher ones. However, I think the hurricanes you have should not be a hindrance to implement proper water works in your country if you really want to defend the coastal lands from future flooding. There, however, is a totally different price to pay. A dyke between beach property and the proper beach makes the property a lot less... beachy.
In combination with spring-tide, the elevated sea level due to the trough shape of the North Sea, caused the 1953 sea-side flood which flooded major parts of the Netherlands and killed over 1800 people in the Netherlands alone. The sea level rose 4,5 meters (15 feet) above normal. That last major flood in Dutch history was the reason we implemented our major water works, the Delta works, which have kept us safe since then. The 2006 'flood', which caused a rise in sea level of 4,8 meter (16 feet) didn't cause any flooding in the Netherlands. And all water works functioned within proper specifications.
A once in a couple of decades event, like the 2006, 1990 and 1953 storms is something which is fully calculate into the structural specifications of our water works. The Delta works, reduced the risk from large-scale sea-side flooding from once in 80 years to once in 4 millennia. We also recently (a decade ago) strengthened the river dykes to prevent flooding by higher river water levels. Global warming means more water ice from glaciers is melting and more evaporation above land and sea -> more rain inland, adding to the usual run-off, causing higher peak-water levels. This caused some inconviniences in the '00's... Previous predictions were too conservative and we acted accordingly. The largest river of North-West Europe, the Rhine flows right through our country... If a storm crosses Germany, we see the result in rising water levels a couple of days later. But also the Meuse, which also flows through the Netherlands and which is a rain-fed river, mostly, can put up quite an act.
And temperatures have been rising, storms are become more violent on average. In 2013 we had a weather pattern which could, for the first time in history, be described as a super-cell, with two accompanying tornadoes.
Well, here in the Netherlands, the number of days there was frost at day-time this winter could be counted on a single hand. I may have had central heating on for maybe two weeks in days in total ('80s concrete apartment, 60 sq.m, bottom corner, reasonably isolated, double glass on one side, no indirect heat from neighbours because that apartment is empty) the past half year. It certainly has been the mildest winter in human recollection here. Positive: I'll probably get returned a shit-load of money on my energy bill advances this year. There has been no snow to mention this year. In the northern part there has been one frosty period of a week or so and some nice snow... but not in the center and bottom 2/3ds of our country.
Spring flowers are in full bloom, bees are collecting honey, trees are budding... at the end of February/start of March... it's all quite strange...
A few decades ago we would have been able to ice-skate on natural ice for several weeks or even months each year... Marathons and '11 cities' full day races on frozen canals and rivers. One year even the Rhine (the largest river in the northwestern part of the European continent) froze over. In the last couple of years the number of days of skate-able ice may have been a few weeks, at the most. And this year it was only a few hours. So there were national championships ice skating on natural ice this year... the one day it was possible to skate on a thoroughly nurtured 'natural' ice track somewhere in the north-eastern part of our country...
Ah, you never understood the attraction of geekiness and I'm afraid you never will for our minds probably are too alien for each other to reach some form of mutual understanding.
In the '80's you were playing street soccer while I was coding my first lines on a ZX spectrum. In the '90's you started dating girls while I explored the realms of procedural programming, fractals and electronic music. At the turn of the millennium I bought a Creative Nomad Jukebox already knowing for 4 years, MP3 was here to stay (using XMMS on Linux, being able to stably decode high quality stereo VBR on a Pentium 200MHz CPU and have enough CPU cycles left for a usable, responsive GUI, to boot). You bought your iPod a year later and thought you were super hip. Ten years later you probably have a wife, some kids, work for sales or in government... or maybe you're one of those banker guys? I'm probably working in IT, doing work I thoroughly enjoy doing for reasonable hours and reasonable pay. Or I work like crazy on stuff I'm really good at... It's a bit stressfull, but I'm making a shit-load of money in the process. Either that or I've just IPO'd a tech start-up.
I may or may not have a wife and kids 'though. If I do have them, my son of 7 is getting a RPi for his birthday to tinker with. I'll watch him carefully while he's soldering for his first extension project.... like my dad did 33 years ago when he offered me a safe interface on the ZX Spectrum's edge connector... in case my first try would result in smoke otherwise.
Wi-Fi networks that can actually harness such performance
Decades of GBits/second of speed over WiFi? Good luck with that. Either it needs to be broad-spectrum 'just above the noise floor' (other words for 'it drowns out all other weak signals'... can create havoc on things like GPS reception) on the conventional bands, or we need to develop radio transmitters that can broadcast in the THz spectrum. Maybe use light for wireless transmission? (Light has a frequency of 400-800 THz)
To transmit a signal with a certain information density, you need a bandwidth at least as large as the information density in bits/second (for a 'standard mode' like PSK), unless you use 'tricks' like quadrature amplitude modulation. You can then send more bits in the same bandwidth, at the cost of successful signal detection at lower signal strength (the receiver now also must be able to differentiate between (various) amplitude level(s), not only phase shift). In other words, you need a stronger signal at the receivers end to successfully transmit more bits at the same radio bandwidth use, meaning, more noise/interference for neighbouring signals or less possible transmission distance between sender and receiver.
If we don't want to 'polute' the entire 'conventional' radio spectrum (which is everything up to a few GHz currently with WiFi signals, we need to create technology that can transmit in a higher band. Unfortunately there are various kinds of physical and technological problems with THz frequencies. To name a few: Absorbtion by water/air molecules. Can't travel through walls. At the upper end, this is ionizing radiation (Start wearing your alu foil hats). Difficult to switch transistors at those speeds.
Someone over there start a 'for the people' registered media company then. Put some creative commons stuff in its portfolio so it's actually a proper business... And let the take downs commence like it's 1998.
There are a variety of monetary (re)sources and taxations which could be used into a system of UBI. Which ones will be used, will depend on politics and public support, if there is going to be a UBI implemented at all. Possibilities are:
-Money currently spent on various welfare subsidies (unemployment benefits, disability benefits, basic welfare for people without other sources of income... Most of them are currently strictly regulated, which also cost a lot in bureaucratic resources). -Countries with abundant natural resources or profitable publicly/state owned industry could use a kind of citizens dividend. -Changes in income based taxation - probably means the income rich will have to pay even more... Instead of taxes based on income, which is currently the norm, more: -Taxation of total personal capital (with, for example, modifiers based on age so people can build up a pension) - which means there will be a limit to how much capital an individual can hold realistically and any corporation larger than that threshold will have to be owned by multiple individuals or slowly be bled dry - it will play havoc on our current corporate structure... -Taxation on positive production and/or capital gain - which will, of course, mean it will be less interesting to invest capital in risky endeavours (because the larger gain will be taxed progressively more) and automated production may 'flee' to countries where there's less taxation. Then, again, it may stop the trend of companies sacrificing their assets, customers and future prospects for a quick dividend paid to their share holders.
Of course thinking about all of this and the possible consequences it has is fun... I'm not sure if implementing is (for one group of people or another).
Actually there already have been some experiments to look at the possible effects of a UBI. One of the more famous ones was in the '70's in Canada and, indeed, various Scandinavian countries and some other European countries are seriously looking into UBI. Finland was flirting with the idea nation-wide but they seem to have backed down a bit. Swiss citizens forced a referendum about the subject onto their government by collecting 125,000 signatures and in the Netherlands some municipalities want to experiment with it.
If it's about countable errors, you AC, are absolutely right. If it's about the magnitude of the errors (the stupidity of them), you are definitely not.
GP didn't specify. So he could be correct in his use of language. No need to go full Grammar Nazi here. Maybe women engineers both make less AND fewer stupid errors and GP's list of women engineering benefits simply isn't complete. Can hardly fault him (probably he is... by the way, I am too) for that, can we?
Unless you have irrefutable proof women engineers actually make fewer stupid errors instead of less stupid errors. In that case, that's information worthy of its own post and I would recommend you not withholding such fine details from us. Don't be shy and make my day by a +5 Informative for you AC! It's been too long...
I read this fallacy every time when someone wants to downplay the importance of open source code... every... single... time! Actually to the point of becoming quite nauseated by it.
It's simply not true. (First part of famous quote here:) Given enough eyeballs...
First of all there are the software designers/programmers that actually lay out the structure and write the code. Unless they are 'in to the conspiracy' do you think any of them just write code and then 'throw it into the world and let it be'? There is quite a chance they'll notice when someone is tampering with their work. And for the distribution chain to the 'end user' we have MD5. Only one person has to notice a discrepancy there and make a fuzz about it. Then, when a project becomes more widely used, there will be domain experts looking at the sources, either because they are curious about it because they are working on something similar or there are financial incentives to do so (paid-for support... open source doesn't mean there is no way to earn money with it). And then, there is the problem for the 'attacker' of leaving an actual trail that can lead back to them, which is orders of magnitudes more likely to happen when the source is hosted openly on well-known OSS support websites, than when it's 'securely' stored on some supposedly air-gapped secret server at big company Y. 'Everyone' (if the OSS website opts in for full disclosure) can even use source-code forensics on the style of code underlying the exploit, if necessary and check commit logs and all kinds of secondary resources for traces of how the exploit came to be. Try that in a corporate setting.
Only thing closed source has over OSS is security by obscurity. And that's the proverbial worst security of all.
And this is fact: Unless 'the' closed-source software creator has a very generous 'eyeballs here please, we pay you big $$$, oh and here is the source tyvm with proper NDA of course', no-one but, maybe, that creator itself will notice when something is wrong.... Until some security expert/bughunter finally binary-fuzzes a backdoor/major exploit into action (which, on the chance of over-repeating my point, is a lot harder to do with assembly only information vs. full sources), resulting in big scandalous news posts on tech websites where all 'nerds' can oooh and ahhh over it... either that or the exploit will be sold on to the highest bidder in 'chussiastan' where it will remain hidden until security researcher X notices weird processes on or strange network packets flowing into their honey pots. All in all a much more tedious process.
Or what if the gyro in their smartphone is unstable?
I have a Nexus 5 and an Asus tablet. The level and compass apps I've tested on them should use the internal gyro data... Level is reasonably stable but compass is anything but stable. Especially when moving wildly, the compass goes everywhere but in the right direction...
I'm not against monitoring driver behaviour for drivers transporting passengers on a commercial basis or insurance premium cuts for 'model' drivers. But I do want to see some certified hardware doing the monitoring. Not just any old smartphone and preferably paid for by the company doing the monitoring. Oh, and an air-tight privacy statement along the lines of 'Information gathered by our monitoring hard/software will be made available to the customer on request (for counter-evaluation) and furthermore only be used for internal evaluation to improve our product X or calculate your benefits for Y. All data older than Z months in any way traceable to the customer will be destroyed. Never will this data be released to any third party. Bankruptcy or a buyout of our company U will mean mandatory destruction of all data gathered and all derivatives of it.'.
Well... the way the GP states it, pretty much. Unless you manage to create extra income on top of the universal basic income of course. And nowhere does the GP say that having a universal basic income prevents you from generating extra income. Extra income can be had from a lot of resources: -You're healthy/motivated enough to generate it yourself by working (the traditional way) and someone else is (still) willing to pay you for it. -You're healthy/motivated enough to generate it yourself by working (the traditional way) and you use your work resources to improve your neighbourhood and/or your living conditions directly. -You find an alternative source of income by finding customers and selling them a product which results from you doing something creative in your spare time you don't consider working but other people think is worth paying money for. -You have extra income from some sort of insurance, for example because you became disabled while working or you've recently lost your job* -You have extra income because you have (some) capital that generates a certain amount dividend/interest/profit.
and probably many more. Remember, that universal basic income may be a crappy amount to live off of, but you may have up to 40 hours of extra spare time on your hands, enabling you to improve your living situation dramatically if you find ways to utilise it. And for those that really want to be lazy or find it a sport to survive on a very low income; let them. They won't be motivated employees anyway. Are you sure you WANT them working and take the risk of them doing all kinds of unsavoury things because they are totally unmotivated? The only people I do have a pity for, are those that have to live off of a basic income, are at heart motivated/willing to go beyond but can't due to severe disabilities
Of course the options you have to generate extra income also depend on how the nation you live in, is going to tax various things. How will labour be taxed? If it's going to be taxed too much, no one will work or employ anyone. Will capital be taxed heavily or only above a certain amount? What does that mean for companies? Won't the 'traditional' company be taxed into the ground then? Maybe it would become beneficial to create individual capital holding corporations that won't pay capital tax because it has less total capital than the total capital tax-exempted shares of its individuals... those kinds of currently 'alien' constructions...
*) In most welfare situations in Europe, benefits are higher when you become disabled due to working conditions or if you've been recently laid off. However, you pay a premium for the insurances that pay out in those situations, while working, and depending on your wage. Currently paying those premiums is mandatory in many European countries and they are lawfully withheld from your income by your employer (who in turn pays those premiums to the state insurance fund) or you pay for them as the first 'part' of your income taxes. When universal basic income is implemented, a valid question is of course of these kinds of insurances will stay relevant because one of the 'pro' arguments is that universal basic income will simplify the welfare system a lot and will replace a whole range of welfare constructions for many different situations we currently give people benefits for.
Virtualization is 'expensive', as each virtual server running on the host operating system has it's own operating system, each running their own kernel, having their own generic support libraries, doing its own memory management, hardware access and interrupt management (to/on virtual devices emulated by the host operating system), etc.
Chroot is 'inexpensive', but it only offers a thin veneer of file system separation.
Docker lies somewhere in between. It has its self contained file system with all the generic support libraries (user land) needed for the application, but hardware resources are managed by the single kernel of the host operating system. This does give rise to a restriction not present for true virtual machines; all Docker containers on one host system must use the same kernel (interfaces): those of the kernel of the host system. Actually, the kernel has some special modified interfaces to make certain the applications in the docker container can't access (data or processes of) other docker containers (unless permitted) or the host operating system, and for those applications it still 'feels' like they are running their own copy of the operating system. But, for example, all processes running in all Docker containers on one host system are part of the processes list of the host kernel, there is only one memory manager; that of the host system, etc.
Now there is that newfangled Unikernel kid... What I understand of it is that, in comparison with a Docker container, the support libraries / userland is stripped bare so only the symbols/functions remain that are actually in use by the applications that run in it. But the 'kernel' bit in Unikernel would suggest also parts of kernel functionality is transferred to the container and I would suspect parts not in use by the actual applications in there would not be included. The question is, how much of the host kernel can you transfer to the containers? Certain things should be done 'at the top', if only to prevent containers from hogging critical system resources and such and still being able to do certain system diagnostics at the host os level...
I should read more about it. It seems to be interesting stuff.
Then another someone pointed out even rot26 was now considered too easy to crack because of the increased processing power of commonly available computing technology. So they modernized the rot encryption algorithm. The new shiny they jokingly named 'Rotn encryption', because hackers would have a rotten time hacking this one:
rot(n), n = 26*iv + salt
with iv being prime for added security. The salt was considered optional and only used when using the algorithm for hashing super secret passwords.
A later government statement said they also had considered adding pepper but that would have made computation of the algorithm too expensive, for pepper being an imported spice and all. Since their preferred importer, the VOC, lost their market monopoly some centuries ago, they were not sure if the added use would give their secret formula 'oomph' worth the money. This is of course a very Dutch way to look at such matters. They are firm believers that an increase in expense should only be allowed when it adds even greater value to the product.
Definitely NO. Answer is in the same same piece of text:
EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING...
It's very easy to add a little certificate of 'taking responsibility', or add it as an extra clause at the end of the license. It won't change the GPL. However... you must find a manufacturer of software for autonomously driving vehicles willing to provide their sources under a GPL license.
How does it lead to the further degradation of the privacy of the citizens?
Like how Goolge Ads lead to the further degradation of the privacy of the citizens?
or
Like how mass surveillance of the NSA (as explained by E. Snowden) lead to the further degradation of the privacy of the citizens?
There is a difference, you know and I consider the former one much more benign than the latter. And a once in 5 year census, properly executed, orders of magnitudes less privacy invading than even Google Ads. I expect, from a country like Canada, they are very careful about privacy violations due to government material. In the country I live (Netherlands), we have an independent bureau for these kinds of issues (the Dutch Data Protection Authority / College Bescherming Persoonsgegevens) every part of government (and commerce, for that matter) has to give accountability to when they store privacy sensitive data.
Also, Google Ads have distinct primary and secondary benefits (personalized ads instead of junk you never would care about and 'free' services like google search and gmail) as the census should have (better government based on facts rather than fiction). Now if we only had journalism that would actually criticize government when they fail to make decisions by using proper data and rational thinking... Where is free speech when you need it?
btw, what census evidence was used to decide that ending the war on drugs would be worthwhile?
Maybe there were so many Canadians filling 'drug dealer' as their occupation (2006 census, question 42), that the government decided the extra income tax from legalizing that profession would benefit them more than the costs to society associated with drug (ab-)use.;)
I base some things on *ideals*
Of course you should. But it IS like religion and science. We do want to make rational decisions about things when entire populations are involved. The alternative has historically proven to be often... very unpleasant.
Ehmm RTFF much?... It's 40 pages to fill in per 5 persons (if more than 5 persons live on the same address, you have to call in for a supplemental form). Which would make it about 8 pages per person. Roughly half of the questions should be skipped for persons aged below 15 and most questions are either 'mark the box' or writing names or amounts. It's not like you have to write a 40 page essay.... Questions are about:
-Inquiring the number of persons residential at the dwelling (the form gives detailed information about who to include and who not). -Some basic information about each of these persons (Name, DoB, sex, marital status and relationships). -Ethnic background of each person and language capabilities, detailed. -Level of education and the type and amount of labour performed by each person over 15. Includes voluntary and unpaid labour (like household chores). -The state and ownership situation of the dwelling the form is sent to.
Oh, and there is a page for comments.
Except for that last page, everything in the form seems to me to be very relevant for government decision making. At least, and I am generalizing here, if I'm well enough informed about what 'usual Canadians' consider proper government decision making. I'm Dutch, so I do not know the details, but I do read about what's going on in other countries than my own and that includes what populations usually expect from their governments. Then, again, I can understand why some questions on that form would be highly objectionable to 'usual U.S. Americans'. And I might be wrong but most comments I see here are not those of Canadians... The impression I usually get from the U.S. is that you don't like to let your government meddle in affairs like basic health care, integration of minorities, housing regulations, public welfare or anything that touches income (taxes, minimum wage). And that's what many questions in that census are about. So, I'm not surprised I see so many negative comments here...
A post-scarcity society may be something in reach in a few generations... but some technological (start with abundant energy - controlled fusion) and social break-throughs (the notion that there may not be enough work available to roughly provide every work-able individual with a meaningful job which may lead to things like a basic income) have to happen first... Also, deliberately creating scarcity on a large scale for personal gain should become a crime. One severely punishable by that... like, on the same level as genocide... And it should include a lengthy trial at a world court.
If all 'common' needs (food, housing, security, connectivity, some entertainment... call it bread-and-games if you like) are provided for, for most people, the need for money will start to fade and so will the notion of it. Money will be something only the very rich care about. Either because they like the pissing contest or they want to execute a 'larger than life' goal. For the average person, the ability to barter will no longer be 'money', but the skills you can bring a team that wants to create something 'larger than life'. Those teams can be cooperations of average individuals - they don't have to be kick-started by some very rich, but it may help... initially. Competition between teams will be based on what value they can bring to someone having the skills the team wants. Someone not happy with the 'working conditions' can always take the 'nuclear' option. "I think I go live in a cave for a while - sodd off unless you bring me a better offer". For those teams the 'human capital' they posses will be their most important asset (energy is plentiful, so materials are plenty as well (through recycling or mass-creation) and as such, of low value). Liquidating such teams will not benefit other teams as much unless their goals are very similar. This will bring natural monopolies - but who cares at such a point? Competition will be a lot less...
I think, when you look at Star Trek, there are many things individuals can't 'just' lay their hands on, in it. But most people don't care much. Transporter credits is one explicitly mentioned. They are all things an individual couldn't be expected to create within their own means, even if they would have worked for it their whole lives - on their own. Everything material an individual needs to survive can be provided for - everything else they have to 'work' for. They band together and build something larger than what one individual can do. That's how they must have been able to do the things they do in the series. Plenty of people working towards, what seem to be, insurmountable goals, focussing on what they can do best because all their material needs, and quite some social needs are utterly satisfactory provided for.
So, if you want to do something really interesting (with your life, in a post-scarcity society, within your lifetime), you take up an education (or educate yourself up to a point to get noticed), then apply for that job that may get you there. Like one involving boarding an interstellar space-ship. If your dream is to 'explore new worlds', you make certain to make yourself useful there. For the crew 'they' pick motivated people (even if the motivation is caused by a lost bar fight and a stern speech). Not the lazy bums that just want to go sight-seeing. Where 'they' are the people that banded together to realize something bigger than life in the first place.
Unfortunately, scaling down current designs of power generating systems using nuclear fission will result in an exponential loss in efficiency, or worse. When they are too small, power generation isn't even possible because you need a critical mass in most systems (you need to have enough neutron-fission material interaction to keep a nuclear chain reaction going and when the neutrons are 'going fast' you need a barrier first, most commonly a layer of water, to slow them down enough to split new atoms). For 'small' nuclear power plants you need completely different designs and possible even have to search for other fission processes that can scale down to a size that local power plants are possible. There are some fission processes that can produce small nuclear power plants but those currently known are highly inefficient and/or use very dangerous materials . For example: the heat produced by natural plutonium decay is used in many solar system scale traveling space craft to produce heat and power. There is a reason it's used in those space craft, not in local power plants.
Also there is nuclear fusion. Ever wondered why only the 'hot' variant is scientifically proven to provide a surplus of energy and the first fusion test reactor to be built, designed to generate a surplus of power is a global project and, well, quite... humongous? It isn't because the international scientific community wanted a pork project. I can tell you that...
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, i'll bite...
-Video-conferencing using a mobile phone - in extension, carrying an 80's standards super-computer class device in your pocket you can interface with using mere touch input and with an integrated graphics output in splendid resolution. ..., take your pick - even 'though they are not yet perfect).
-An extend-your-self computer kit a seven year old can learn to use, the size of half a tablet of chocolate (Raspberry Pi)
-Autopilot for cars (Tesla, Google,
-Full automation of the home using off-the-shelf products.
-A.I. beating chess grandmasters - A.I. beating Go grandmasters even more so.
-Direct detection of earth-like exo-planets.
-The full extent of the world-wide web ('nuff said)
-On-demand high-resolution video streaming to both hand-held devices and commercially ubiquitous, large, potentially wall-sized flat-panel monitors.
-Commercial space companies able to technically achieve interplanetary missions.
-Whole genome sequencing in a day.
-Finding the Higgs boson - both the physical instrument, the LHC and the global network of supercomputers and storage servers transporting, dividing, combining, parsing and storing LHC's results.
Should I go on?
Most rechargeable batteries have a substantial self discharge rate and will go to zero in a few months with charging.
This used to be the case, but for a decade or so now there are rechargeable 'ready to use'/'low self-discharge' (LSD) NiMH batteries on the market that can hold a significant amount of their charge for several years (for good ones, 75% after 3 years). LSD NiMH's do have a bit smaller capacity per volume but that is maybe a 10-20% difference, at the most.
But maybe these sensors have a rechargeable Li-Ion battery? I don't know about LSD types of those but Li-Ion have very bad charging characteristics when almost empty (high internal resistance - so it's harder to charge the emptier it is) so I don't think they are useful when recharging in these extremely low power conditions. And then there are supercapacitors, but they have a way too high self-discharge rate to be able to claim 5 years of operation on the 'battery' alone.
What you describe is not full duplex. Two radios working together, taking turns (one transmitting, then one receiving, etc.) is the very definition of half duplex. And one radio in constant operation is simplex of course. Full duplex is always a situation where two radios are used in constant operation. One sending, one transmitting.
Full duplex using two radios on different frequencies is old school. Just a matter of a good combination of filters and enough frequency separation.
Full duplex using two radios on the SAME frequency, using directional signals is difficult but not undo-able. As long as you can prevent your receiver being blown up by your own transmission signal (and hope an unexpected reflective object in your signal path doesn't undo all your careful physical transmitter-receiver antenna separation).
Full duplex using two radios (both in continuous operation, one transmitting, one receiving, as defined at the top of my post) on exactly the SAME frequency while using a SINGLE (omni-directional) antenna is a true nightmare. And apparently these guys did just that with technology that promises it to be available in hand-held appliances.
RTFA, they used a combination of a circulator on silicon (which is the most innovative part. The circulator used in the project described by the article should kill most of the transmitted signal otherwise picked up directly by the receiver) and echo cancellation (which they developed earlier and is used to subtract any transmitter signal left which should mostly be echoes from objects that reflect the transmitted signal at distance and possibly internal echo from a sub-optimal antenna) on the received signal at the receiver end, so they can then try amplifying what's left. Which should be the (weak) signals that are transmitted towards the antenna by another transceiver.
Exciting stuff :)
73, PG8W
I'm not saying Python is just right... but its development was started because the, then current, mature programming languages (C and shellscript) didn't support the mix of features Guido van Rossum needed... and a language that had many features he did like (ABC), he 'had a number of gripes about' (mainly it was a PITA to extend) so he started making Python.
It was a typical case of 'developer not happy with current tools, starts making his own almost from scratch'. I see a lot of parallels with this Redux case, and yes I know Python had 27 years to come where it is today. It's already been very usable for most of that time... version 1.0 was released in 'just' 5 years. Same with Linux, by the way, that was made by Torvalds because he wanted a quick and dirty Unix like OS on his 386 and the Hurd didn't cut it. Neither did Minix, which was 16 bit. It took 4 years there to get to 1.0.
So... let's see in 5 years, shall we? Maybe Redux will be something interesting. But, as I said, they need to do a lot of work first, and then, maybe, there will be others willing to help out. Making a lot of noise first is probably not going to help them get more 'eyeballs'.
Well, most of the time you are right. And then there was Python.
Sometimes it works. But there never is an 'easy fix'. If you believe you're doing it better, it still needs a lot of work and convincing to be perceived as being better, let alone actually be better than what there was previously. A quick '0.1' and some documentation is not enough to convince the majority of users to join your band wagon. If you think all the work to get to '1.0' is preferable over fixing what's wrong in the established stuff that you view as inferior, go ahead. But be prepared to do a lot of loveless work before you get your results.
,quote>Where would Florida pump the water to? The ocean?
Well we (Dutch) do... if it's high tide and internal water levels are too high. But usually we let it go at low tide. That's the wonderful thing about the sea... it's dynamic. You 'just' have to have some internal basins to temporarily store fresh-water surplus and adjustable storm surge barriers in your major estuaries.
the Dutch are surrounded by mountains
Not .. quite. At the North and West we have the North Sea, of course. Our Northern flank has a shallow marshy-sea-land type of area and a string of sandy islands stretching a 100 miles or so in a west-east direction and a few dozen miles wide. The Western flank is sand dunes. And the South-west are major estuaries with river-separated islands... and those storm surge barriers, of which one major one (Eastern Scheldt storm surge barrier) is adjustable so it only closes when a storm hits. Oh, and the North-western area of our country contains a (very large, used to be even a lot larger) lake, which used to be a sea in its own right. But we dammed that off and now it's a fresh-water lake with about half the area poldered in, so that's a new provice (we do not have states, but provinces) now.
At the South we have Belgium, which is an independent nation. They have less costs for their water-works because they don't have the major estuaries we Dutch have... but Belgium is still part of the 'Low countries', as is a piece of Northern France and the whole area is not much above sea-level. Then, at the South-east we have a couple of hills of which -maybe- the south-eastern tip might qualify as a mountain (its highest peak is 322 meters (1056 feet) above sea-level). East we have the German low lands, of which the Northern part looks very similar to our North-east,including the shallow marshy sea-land and more sandy islands, all the way up-to and including parts of Denmark, another nation yet again. East-south-east we have the Rhine flowing and the Rhine-Ruhr gebied, which is still quite low and one of the major population areas of Germany. It's only beyond that, there are proper mountains.
We do get a couple of violent storms each year (in the 10 beaufort region), Hurricanes (12 beaufort), probably not... For the Netherlands such violent storms are more like a once in couple of decades event. In the '90's there was a severe storm travelling through North-West Europe with an hourly average wind force of 11 beaufort in the Netherlands and dozens of fatalities in at least 5 different countries.
Although our storms may not be as violent as the hurricanes of the American South-east, there is a trough-shape in the North Sea due to the British isles at our West, which ads extra height to the local sea-level when wind is blowing from the North. That effect is one you won't have at the Florida coast. Sea water can be diverted in enough directions there, but force of the waves may be larger with more violent storms... so you maybe need tougher (thick-skinned, so to speak... more use of rocks to break the waves instead of sand dunes and earthen dikes?) dikes instead of higher ones. However, I think the hurricanes you have should not be a hindrance to implement proper water works in your country if you really want to defend the coastal lands from future flooding. There, however, is a totally different price to pay. A dyke between beach property and the proper beach makes the property a lot less ... beachy.
In combination with spring-tide, the elevated sea level due to the trough shape of the North Sea, caused the 1953 sea-side flood which flooded major parts of the Netherlands and killed over 1800 people in the Netherlands alone. The sea level rose 4,5 meters (15 feet) above normal. That last major flood in Dutch history was the reason we implemented our major water works, the Delta works, which have kept us safe since then. The 2006 'flood', which caused a rise in sea level of 4,8 meter (16 feet) didn't cause any flooding in the Netherlands. And all water works functioned within proper specifications.
A once in a couple of decades event, like the 2006, 1990 and 1953 storms is something which is fully calculate into the structural specifications of our water works. The Delta works, reduced the risk from large-scale sea-side flooding from once in 80 years to once in 4 millennia. We also recently (a decade ago) strengthened the river dykes to prevent flooding by higher river water levels. Global warming means more water ice from glaciers is melting and more evaporation above land and sea -> more rain inland, adding to the usual run-off, causing higher peak-water levels. This caused some inconviniences in the '00's... Previous predictions were too conservative and we acted accordingly. The largest river of North-West Europe, the Rhine flows right through our country... If a storm crosses Germany, we see the result in rising water levels a couple of days later. But also the Meuse, which also flows through the Netherlands and which is a rain-fed river, mostly, can put up quite an act.
And temperatures have been rising, storms are become more violent on average. In 2013 we had a weather pattern which could, for the first time in history, be described as a super-cell, with two accompanying tornadoes.
Well, here in the Netherlands, the number of days there was frost at day-time this winter could be counted on a single hand. I may have had central heating on for maybe two weeks in days in total ('80s concrete apartment, 60 sq.m, bottom corner, reasonably isolated, double glass on one side, no indirect heat from neighbours because that apartment is empty) the past half year. It certainly has been the mildest winter in human recollection here. Positive: I'll probably get returned a shit-load of money on my energy bill advances this year. There has been no snow to mention this year. In the northern part there has been one frosty period of a week or so and some nice snow... but not in the center and bottom 2/3ds of our country.
Spring flowers are in full bloom, bees are collecting honey, trees are budding... at the end of February/start of March... it's all quite strange...
A few decades ago we would have been able to ice-skate on natural ice for several weeks or even months each year... Marathons and '11 cities' full day races on frozen canals and rivers. One year even the Rhine (the largest river in the northwestern part of the European continent) froze over. In the last couple of years the number of days of skate-able ice may have been a few weeks, at the most. And this year it was only a few hours. So there were national championships ice skating on natural ice this year... the one day it was possible to skate on a thoroughly nurtured 'natural' ice track somewhere in the north-eastern part of our country...
Ah, you never understood the attraction of geekiness and I'm afraid you never will for our minds probably are too alien for each other to reach some form of mutual understanding.
In the '80's you were playing street soccer while I was coding my first lines on a ZX spectrum.
In the '90's you started dating girls while I explored the realms of procedural programming, fractals and electronic music.
At the turn of the millennium I bought a Creative Nomad Jukebox already knowing for 4 years, MP3 was here to stay (using XMMS on Linux, being able to stably decode high quality stereo VBR on a Pentium 200MHz CPU and have enough CPU cycles left for a usable, responsive GUI, to boot). You bought your iPod a year later and thought you were super hip.
Ten years later you probably have a wife, some kids, work for sales or in government... or maybe you're one of those banker guys? I'm probably working in IT, doing work I thoroughly enjoy doing for reasonable hours and reasonable pay. Or I work like crazy on stuff I'm really good at... It's a bit stressfull, but I'm making a shit-load of money in the process. Either that or I've just IPO'd a tech start-up.
I may or may not have a wife and kids 'though. If I do have them, my son of 7 is getting a RPi for his birthday to tinker with. I'll watch him carefully while he's soldering for his first extension project.... like my dad did 33 years ago when he offered me a safe interface on the ZX Spectrum's edge connector... in case my first try would result in smoke otherwise.
Wi-Fi networks that can actually harness such performance
Decades of GBits/second of speed over WiFi? Good luck with that. Either it needs to be broad-spectrum 'just above the noise floor' (other words for 'it drowns out all other weak signals' ... can create havoc on things like GPS reception) on the conventional bands, or we need to develop radio transmitters that can broadcast in the THz spectrum. Maybe use light for wireless transmission? (Light has a frequency of 400-800 THz)
To transmit a signal with a certain information density, you need a bandwidth at least as large as the information density in bits/second (for a 'standard mode' like PSK), unless you use 'tricks' like quadrature amplitude modulation. You can then send more bits in the same bandwidth, at the cost of successful signal detection at lower signal strength (the receiver now also must be able to differentiate between (various) amplitude level(s), not only phase shift). In other words, you need a stronger signal at the receivers end to successfully transmit more bits at the same radio bandwidth use, meaning, more noise/interference for neighbouring signals or less possible transmission distance between sender and receiver.
If we don't want to 'polute' the entire 'conventional' radio spectrum (which is everything up to a few GHz currently with WiFi signals, we need to create technology that can transmit in a higher band. Unfortunately there are various kinds of physical and technological problems with THz frequencies. To name a few: Absorbtion by water/air molecules. Can't travel through walls. At the upper end, this is ionizing radiation (Start wearing your alu foil hats). Difficult to switch transistors at those speeds.
Someone over there start a 'for the people' registered media company then. Put some creative commons stuff in its portfolio so it's actually a proper business... And let the take downs commence like it's 1998.
There are a variety of monetary (re)sources and taxations which could be used into a system of UBI. Which ones will be used, will depend on politics and public support, if there is going to be a UBI implemented at all. Possibilities are:
-Money currently spent on various welfare subsidies (unemployment benefits, disability benefits, basic welfare for people without other sources of income... Most of them are currently strictly regulated, which also cost a lot in bureaucratic resources).
-Countries with abundant natural resources or profitable publicly/state owned industry could use a kind of citizens dividend.
-Changes in income based taxation - probably means the income rich will have to pay even more...
Instead of taxes based on income, which is currently the norm, more:
-Taxation of total personal capital (with, for example, modifiers based on age so people can build up a pension) - which means there will be a limit to how much capital an individual can hold realistically and any corporation larger than that threshold will have to be owned by multiple individuals or slowly be bled dry - it will play havoc on our current corporate structure...
-Taxation on positive production and/or capital gain - which will, of course, mean it will be less interesting to invest capital in risky endeavours (because the larger gain will be taxed progressively more) and automated production may 'flee' to countries where there's less taxation. Then, again, it may stop the trend of companies sacrificing their assets, customers and future prospects for a quick dividend paid to their share holders.
Of course thinking about all of this and the possible consequences it has is fun... I'm not sure if implementing is (for one group of people or another).
Actually there already have been some experiments to look at the possible effects of a UBI. One of the more famous ones was in the '70's in Canada and, indeed, various Scandinavian countries and some other European countries are seriously looking into UBI. Finland was flirting with the idea nation-wide but they seem to have backed down a bit. Swiss citizens forced a referendum about the subject onto their government by collecting 125,000 signatures and in the Netherlands some municipalities want to experiment with it.
Let's get pedantic, shall we?
If it's about countable errors, you AC, are absolutely right.
If it's about the magnitude of the errors (the stupidity of them), you are definitely not.
GP didn't specify. So he could be correct in his use of language. No need to go full Grammar Nazi here. Maybe women engineers both make less AND fewer stupid errors and GP's list of women engineering benefits simply isn't complete. Can hardly fault him (probably he is ... by the way, I am too) for that, can we?
Unless you have irrefutable proof women engineers actually make fewer stupid errors instead of less stupid errors. In that case, that's information worthy of its own post and I would recommend you not withholding such fine details from us. Don't be shy and make my day by a +5 Informative for you AC! It's been too long...
Unless domain experts are constantly auditing
I read this fallacy every time when someone wants to downplay the importance of open source code... every ... single ... time! Actually to the point of becoming quite nauseated by it.
It's simply not true. (First part of famous quote here:) Given enough eyeballs...
First of all there are the software designers/programmers that actually lay out the structure and write the code. Unless they are 'in to the conspiracy' do you think any of them just write code and then 'throw it into the world and let it be'? There is quite a chance they'll notice when someone is tampering with their work. And for the distribution chain to the 'end user' we have MD5. Only one person has to notice a discrepancy there and make a fuzz about it.
Then, when a project becomes more widely used, there will be domain experts looking at the sources, either because they are curious about it because they are working on something similar or there are financial incentives to do so (paid-for support... open source doesn't mean there is no way to earn money with it).
And then, there is the problem for the 'attacker' of leaving an actual trail that can lead back to them, which is orders of magnitudes more likely to happen when the source is hosted openly on well-known OSS support websites, than when it's 'securely' stored on some supposedly air-gapped secret server at big company Y. 'Everyone' (if the OSS website opts in for full disclosure) can even use source-code forensics on the style of code underlying the exploit, if necessary and check commit logs and all kinds of secondary resources for traces of how the exploit came to be. Try that in a corporate setting.
Only thing closed source has over OSS is security by obscurity. And that's the proverbial worst security of all.
And this is fact: Unless 'the' closed-source software creator has a very generous 'eyeballs here please, we pay you big $$$, oh and here is the source tyvm with proper NDA of course', no-one but, maybe, that creator itself will notice when something is wrong....
Until some security expert/bughunter finally binary-fuzzes a backdoor/major exploit into action (which, on the chance of over-repeating my point, is a lot harder to do with assembly only information vs. full sources), resulting in big scandalous news posts on tech websites where all 'nerds' can oooh and ahhh over it... either that or the exploit will be sold on to the highest bidder in 'chussiastan' where it will remain hidden until security researcher X notices weird processes on or strange network packets flowing into their honey pots. All in all a much more tedious process.
Or what if the gyro in their smartphone is unstable?
I have a Nexus 5 and an Asus tablet. The level and compass apps I've tested on them should use the internal gyro data... Level is reasonably stable but compass is anything but stable. Especially when moving wildly, the compass goes everywhere but in the right direction...
I'm not against monitoring driver behaviour for drivers transporting passengers on a commercial basis or insurance premium cuts for 'model' drivers. But I do want to see some certified hardware doing the monitoring. Not just any old smartphone and preferably paid for by the company doing the monitoring.
Oh, and an air-tight privacy statement along the lines of 'Information gathered by our monitoring hard/software will be made available to the customer on request (for counter-evaluation) and furthermore only be used for internal evaluation to improve our product X or calculate your benefits for Y. All data older than Z months in any way traceable to the customer will be destroyed. Never will this data be released to any third party. Bankruptcy or a buyout of our company U will mean mandatory destruction of all data gathered and all derivatives of it.'.
Well ... the way the GP states it, pretty much. Unless you manage to create extra income on top of the universal basic income of course. And nowhere does the GP say that having a universal basic income prevents you from generating extra income. Extra income can be had from a lot of resources:
-You're healthy/motivated enough to generate it yourself by working (the traditional way) and someone else is (still) willing to pay you for it.
-You're healthy/motivated enough to generate it yourself by working (the traditional way) and you use your work resources to improve your neighbourhood and/or your living conditions directly.
-You find an alternative source of income by finding customers and selling them a product which results from you doing something creative in your spare time you don't consider working but other people think is worth paying money for.
-You have extra income from some sort of insurance, for example because you became disabled while working or you've recently lost your job*
-You have extra income because you have (some) capital that generates a certain amount dividend/interest/profit.
and probably many more. Remember, that universal basic income may be a crappy amount to live off of, but you may have up to 40 hours of extra spare time on your hands, enabling you to improve your living situation dramatically if you find ways to utilise it. And for those that really want to be lazy or find it a sport to survive on a very low income; let them. They won't be motivated employees anyway. Are you sure you WANT them working and take the risk of them doing all kinds of unsavoury things because they are totally unmotivated? The only people I do have a pity for, are those that have to live off of a basic income, are at heart motivated/willing to go beyond but can't due to severe disabilities
Of course the options you have to generate extra income also depend on how the nation you live in, is going to tax various things. How will labour be taxed? If it's going to be taxed too much, no one will work or employ anyone. Will capital be taxed heavily or only above a certain amount? What does that mean for companies? Won't the 'traditional' company be taxed into the ground then? Maybe it would become beneficial to create individual capital holding corporations that won't pay capital tax because it has less total capital than the total capital tax-exempted shares of its individuals... those kinds of currently 'alien' constructions...
*) In most welfare situations in Europe, benefits are higher when you become disabled due to working conditions or if you've been recently laid off. However, you pay a premium for the insurances that pay out in those situations, while working, and depending on your wage. Currently paying those premiums is mandatory in many European countries and they are lawfully withheld from your income by your employer (who in turn pays those premiums to the state insurance fund) or you pay for them as the first 'part' of your income taxes.
When universal basic income is implemented, a valid question is of course of these kinds of insurances will stay relevant because one of the 'pro' arguments is that universal basic income will simplify the welfare system a lot and will replace a whole range of welfare constructions for many different situations we currently give people benefits for.
Virtualization is 'expensive', as each virtual server running on the host operating system has it's own operating system, each running their own kernel, having their own generic support libraries, doing its own memory management, hardware access and interrupt management (to/on virtual devices emulated by the host operating system), etc.
Chroot is 'inexpensive', but it only offers a thin veneer of file system separation.
Docker lies somewhere in between. It has its self contained file system with all the generic support libraries (user land) needed for the application, but hardware resources are managed by the single kernel of the host operating system. This does give rise to a restriction not present for true virtual machines; all Docker containers on one host system must use the same kernel (interfaces): those of the kernel of the host system. Actually, the kernel has some special modified interfaces to make certain the applications in the docker container can't access (data or processes of) other docker containers (unless permitted) or the host operating system, and for those applications it still 'feels' like they are running their own copy of the operating system. But, for example, all processes running in all Docker containers on one host system are part of the processes list of the host kernel, there is only one memory manager; that of the host system, etc.
Now there is that newfangled Unikernel kid... What I understand of it is that, in comparison with a Docker container, the support libraries / userland is stripped bare so only the symbols/functions remain that are actually in use by the applications that run in it. But the 'kernel' bit in Unikernel would suggest also parts of kernel functionality is transferred to the container and I would suspect parts not in use by the actual applications in there would not be included. The question is, how much of the host kernel can you transfer to the containers? Certain things should be done 'at the top', if only to prevent containers from hogging critical system resources and such and still being able to do certain system diagnostics at the host os level...
I should read more about it. It seems to be interesting stuff.
Then another someone pointed out even rot26 was now considered too easy to crack because of the increased processing power of commonly available computing technology. So they modernized the rot encryption algorithm. The new shiny they jokingly named 'Rotn encryption', because hackers would have a rotten time hacking this one:
rot(n), n = 26*iv + salt
with iv being prime for added security. The salt was considered optional and only used when using the algorithm for hashing super secret passwords.
A later government statement said they also had considered adding pepper but that would have made computation of the algorithm too expensive, for pepper being an imported spice and all. Since their preferred importer, the VOC, lost their market monopoly some centuries ago, they were not sure if the added use would give their secret formula 'oomph' worth the money. This is of course a very Dutch way to look at such matters. They are firm believers that an increase in expense should only be allowed when it adds even greater value to the product.
Definitely NO. Answer is in the same same piece of text:
EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING...
It's very easy to add a little certificate of 'taking responsibility', or add it as an extra clause at the end of the license. It won't change the GPL. However... you must find a manufacturer of software for autonomously driving vehicles willing to provide their sources under a GPL license.
How does it lead to the further degradation of the privacy of the citizens?
Like how Goolge Ads lead to the further degradation of the privacy of the citizens?
or
Like how mass surveillance of the NSA (as explained by E. Snowden) lead to the further degradation of the privacy of the citizens?
There is a difference, you know and I consider the former one much more benign than the latter. And a once in 5 year census, properly executed, orders of magnitudes less privacy invading than even Google Ads. I expect, from a country like Canada, they are very careful about privacy violations due to government material. In the country I live (Netherlands), we have an independent bureau for these kinds of issues (the Dutch Data Protection Authority / College Bescherming Persoonsgegevens) every part of government (and commerce, for that matter) has to give accountability to when they store privacy sensitive data.
Also, Google Ads have distinct primary and secondary benefits (personalized ads instead of junk you never would care about and 'free' services like google search and gmail) as the census should have (better government based on facts rather than fiction).
Now if we only had journalism that would actually criticize government when they fail to make decisions by using proper data and rational thinking... Where is free speech when you need it?
btw, what census evidence was used to decide that ending the war on drugs would be worthwhile?
Maybe there were so many Canadians filling 'drug dealer' as their occupation (2006 census, question 42), that the government decided the extra income tax from legalizing that profession would benefit them more than the costs to society associated with drug (ab-)use. ;)
I base some things on *ideals*
Of course you should. But it IS like religion and science. We do want to make rational decisions about things when entire populations are involved. The alternative has historically proven to be often... very unpleasant.
Ehmm RTFF much?... It's 40 pages to fill in per 5 persons (if more than 5 persons live on the same address, you have to call in for a supplemental form). Which would make it about 8 pages per person. Roughly half of the questions should be skipped for persons aged below 15 and most questions are either 'mark the box' or writing names or amounts. It's not like you have to write a 40 page essay.... Questions are about:
-Inquiring the number of persons residential at the dwelling (the form gives detailed information about who to include and who not).
-Some basic information about each of these persons (Name, DoB, sex, marital status and relationships).
-Ethnic background of each person and language capabilities, detailed.
-Level of education and the type and amount of labour performed by each person over 15. Includes voluntary and unpaid labour (like household chores).
-The state and ownership situation of the dwelling the form is sent to.
Oh, and there is a page for comments.
Except for that last page, everything in the form seems to me to be very relevant for government decision making. At least, and I am generalizing here, if I'm well enough informed about what 'usual Canadians' consider proper government decision making. I'm Dutch, so I do not know the details, but I do read about what's going on in other countries than my own and that includes what populations usually expect from their governments.
Then, again, I can understand why some questions on that form would be highly objectionable to 'usual U.S. Americans'. And I might be wrong but most comments I see here are not those of Canadians... The impression I usually get from the U.S. is that you don't like to let your government meddle in affairs like basic health care, integration of minorities, housing regulations, public welfare or anything that touches income (taxes, minimum wage). And that's what many questions in that census are about. So, I'm not surprised I see so many negative comments here...
A post-scarcity society may be something in reach in a few generations... but some technological (start with abundant energy - controlled fusion) and social break-throughs (the notion that there may not be enough work available to roughly provide every work-able individual with a meaningful job which may lead to things like a basic income) have to happen first... Also, deliberately creating scarcity on a large scale for personal gain should become a crime. One severely punishable by that... like, on the same level as genocide... And it should include a lengthy trial at a world court.
If all 'common' needs (food, housing, security, connectivity, some entertainment... call it bread-and-games if you like) are provided for, for most people, the need for money will start to fade and so will the notion of it. Money will be something only the very rich care about. Either because they like the pissing contest or they want to execute a 'larger than life' goal. ... initially. Competition between teams will be based on what value they can bring to someone having the skills the team wants. Someone not happy with the 'working conditions' can always take the 'nuclear' option. "I think I go live in a cave for a while - sodd off unless you bring me a better offer". For those teams the 'human capital' they posses will be their most important asset (energy is plentiful, so materials are plenty as well (through recycling or mass-creation) and as such, of low value). Liquidating such teams will not benefit other teams as much unless their goals are very similar. This will bring natural monopolies - but who cares at such a point? Competition will be a lot less...
For the average person, the ability to barter will no longer be 'money', but the skills you can bring a team that wants to create something 'larger than life'. Those teams can be cooperations of average individuals - they don't have to be kick-started by some very rich, but it may help
I think, when you look at Star Trek, there are many things individuals can't 'just' lay their hands on, in it. But most people don't care much. Transporter credits is one explicitly mentioned.
They are all things an individual couldn't be expected to create within their own means, even if they would have worked for it their whole lives - on their own. Everything material an individual needs to survive can be provided for - everything else they have to 'work' for. They band together and build something larger than what one individual can do. That's how they must have been able to do the things they do in the series. Plenty of people working towards, what seem to be, insurmountable goals, focussing on what they can do best because all their material needs, and quite some social needs are utterly satisfactory provided for.
So, if you want to do something really interesting (with your life, in a post-scarcity society, within your lifetime), you take up an education (or educate yourself up to a point to get noticed), then apply for that job that may get you there. Like one involving boarding an interstellar space-ship. If your dream is to 'explore new worlds', you make certain to make yourself useful there. For the crew 'they' pick motivated people (even if the motivation is caused by a lost bar fight and a stern speech). Not the lazy bums that just want to go sight-seeing. Where 'they' are the people that banded together to realize something bigger than life in the first place.
It's all quite logical.
Unfortunately, scaling down current designs of power generating systems using nuclear fission will result in an exponential loss in efficiency, or worse. When they are too small, power generation isn't even possible because you need a critical mass in most systems (you need to have enough neutron-fission material interaction to keep a nuclear chain reaction going and when the neutrons are 'going fast' you need a barrier first, most commonly a layer of water, to slow them down enough to split new atoms). For 'small' nuclear power plants you need completely different designs and possible even have to search for other fission processes that can scale down to a size that local power plants are possible. There are some fission processes that can produce small nuclear power plants but those currently known are highly inefficient and/or use very dangerous materials . For example: the heat produced by natural plutonium decay is used in many solar system scale traveling space craft to produce heat and power. There is a reason it's used in those space craft, not in local power plants.
Also there is nuclear fusion. Ever wondered why only the 'hot' variant is scientifically proven to provide a surplus of energy and the first fusion test reactor to be built, designed to generate a surplus of power is a global project and, well, quite ... humongous? It isn't because the international scientific community wanted a pork project. I can tell you that...