Re:They Should Lose Public Protection
on
Public Domain Day 2014
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Are you "deprived" of food, because you have to pay for it?
(3) If the person who has an abundance of it is unwilling to provide* at any reasonable price, yes. (4) If the food is purposely made** to spoil fast, sometimes even before you were able to take a bite from it. (5) If you have to pay the producer of your piece of food over and over again*** in full, if you want it to last or if you want to eat it in another venue than you originally intended.
(* publishers that let works go 'out of print' but still prosecute 'alternative means of distribution'. It is called artificial scarcity and is something very common when dealing with monopolies.) (** certain DRM mechanisms come to mind.) (*** LP, Cassette, CD. Celluloid film, Video cassette, Laser disk, DVD, Blu-ray. Digital distribution with various restrictions. Multiple devices for playback, or the inability to be able to.)
Infrared currently is used as a point-to-point connection where (most of the time) there has to be a clear (as in: only air) path from one node to the other. It's mostly used as a device-to-device type of connection, not as a network of devices.
Li-Fi should integrate into the lighting plan of rooms, should be capable of operation using reflections instead of direct point-to-point. Of course, reflections and re-transmissions probably cause signal degradation if no filter capability exists so the software protocols should be able to compensate or, if unable, scale back to lower network speeds. The same for 'foreign' light sources (the sun included). Individual light points should act as repeaters with one point in a room connected to the 'regular' network being enough to provide the entire room (however large it may be) with full network access. At least, those are the 'promises' I heard about Li-Fi.
And, indeed, being unable to penetrate walls can be an advantage.
Indeed, his whole speech was in defence of libraries and of fiction... Actually, I think, in a broader scope it was defending people's possibilities to imagine. You could (partly) do that with (moving) pictures and theatre as well but he laid emphasis on written material - both the writer and the reader side of it. I think that's a justified emphasis because written material leaves more to the imagination and there is more of it.
One of the most basic ways to be able to fulfil that, people's possibilities to imagine, is through physical libraries. If everyone was born with a (mobile) internet connection, free of censorship, small enough in cost that it is affordable even in hard times and of liberal capability, a virtual form of libraries might be able to take over (some combination of e-reader, wikipedia and specialized chat system inhabited by the readers and 'virtual' librarians might do the job). Do remember, currently, young people first need to have some capability to navigate the internet, learn to handle a device capable of acting as an e-reader and learn some things about e-books and how to get them on their device before they can start reading them. Compare that to libraries for which they only need some push to actually pass that 'scary' librarian at his/her desk and their own two feet to walk to the library in the first place. Also, while there are still people in developed nations (not to mention the nations that are still developing) that have no easy access to internet, physical libraries have a very substantial role to play.
I read Mr. Gaimans (edited) lecture on the website of 'the guardian' from the link in the article. It made me remember all the emotions and wonder I felt while reading through all those fantasy and science stories I have... and the times I (try to) put something on paper as well (try to, because there are too many things I am interested in, including reading and therefore I mostly lack the time. Maybe that will change one day. The day I will stop imagining probably is the day I stop living). I didn't hang out a lot in libraries as a child... but I did every now and then... and always loved the stories I read. At the end of (equivalent) high-school I still had a few reservations about reading due to the mandatory reading lists I had for the foreign languages I chose as subject (English and German. My native language is Dutch). But it didn't withhold me from also finding pleasure in reading. Also in much of the literature I had to read for those language subjects. It was at my early twenties that my interest in fantasy reading really took off and at that age I had enough income (savings form a Saturday job in earlier years, then student, then regular jobs) to buy the books I wanted to read, second hand and I had the internet to search for reviews and interesting authors. Still I buy most of the stories I read in physical book form. I find that form of reading superior for all situations except when mobile and weight-restricted. I do have a smart phone and I do have a very capable tablet. I'm very familiar with computers and the internet... still I find, for stories, hard copy a joy to read above all others.
Of course this is very much my own opinion and I do think everyone is entitled their own. When reading the lecture, however, I found myself both logically and emotionally agreeing with it and I hope more people will. For it is the politicians mostly concerned with making the decision to do so, my opinion is that a policy involving the closure of public libraries is one of the worst things a politician could do apart from outright lying or doing something criminal.
The ruling states a number of very specific conditions. I'll start with the answer your question... -The site was held liable for the offensive comments that were made anonymously, because those comments weren't traceable back to the original authors. To hold the site liable was deemed 'practical'. -A disclaimer of liability doesn't mean squat if you can't properly divert that liability. -The site was found to have generated income out of the posting of those offensive comments. Therefore holding the site liable was found 'reasonable'. -The site did not take any proactive steps to remove the offensive comments. -Given the nature of the article, offensive comments were to be expected and the site should have taken extra care with this article, which it didn't.
The compensation of damages awarded to the plaintiff is €320 (US$433) (I didn't omit a 'K' here or something. It's just that, €320).
Yes, someone did notify you of something you probably didn't realise yet. And it might have become a problem for the company later on... if the wrong people found out just that. That person did it freely and out of his/her own good but it doesn't necessarily makes your job easier (maybe even harder because now you have to solve this while there are already enough other problems on your plate). It won't reduce your workload... your employer has enough other things for you to do... it won't get you to that pub a minute earlier than your employer allows you to leave for the weekend (and that might be even later now). You won't tell that to the person who made that bug report 'tough. You're glad there are people actively want to involve themselves in the security of the product you're proud to work on even 'though they do it without prospect of financial gain. As a small thank you, you send the person a gift certificate paid from your own money, effectively saying 'Here is an hour of my time in wage. Please spend it on something you like to' (give or take... My reference is my current hourly wage, after taxes, as an IT professional, which is a little more, but not much).
Of course there is nothing wrong with a proper reward program, financed by the actual company. If these bugs take at least some skills and resources to track, and are that valuable it would be rather cheap for a company not to have one. That having said, a pay check for services rendered from a company is totally different from an employee paying you a small token out of his/her own pocket while the direct value for that employee is, at least, questionable.
Those older technologies might be more wasteful in spectrum use... they most of the time are technologically less sophisticated which means easier to maintain in wartime. An AM radio is much simpler to build and operate than your latest incarnation of an 'industry standard' 'packet switched' consumer communication device with built in audio compression. The latter needs several black boxes called 'microprocessors' and other hard to replace stuff. The former needs only a hand full of analog semiconductors or a few tubes. For some things, bandwith is not the primary concern. Also, many of those black boxes mentioned earlier don't mix very well with 'space'.
To start with the actual lightbulbs: High yield white light LED technology. Sure, the photoelectric effect has been known for about a century. It took a while for the first practical applications to be available. LEDs being one of them. But you can't compare those little signalling LEDs of a few decades ago with the current lightbulb replacing LED technology. Of course this technology is a mix of other technologies, but quite a few of them are quite recent (as in max. decades old, not centuries).
The article mentions the Telephone as a truly innovative invention. But doesn't that in its turn used microphone, speaker and signal transportation technology of that time?
If the time frame for 'recent' is 'last half century' or so, I'd say there have been true inventions in, optical disk technology, various microprocessor advancements, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence hardware, gene manipulation, solar cell technology and various other fields. Too many to mention. If algorithms can be inventions as well, we have never been as innovative as we are now. Look at all the new search technologies, data-mining for targeted ads, again AI algorithms, mostly visible to the general public in computer games, audio and video compression codecs, speech recognition, synthesis and language translation... the list goes on and on...
Disturbing Ancient Non-Linear systems is a recipe for disaster.
What are you blabbering about? They're not disturbing an ancient system, they are making an entirely new one. That the end-result, a small string of amino acids, is about the same, is the only thing it has in common with the ribosome. Humans already make custom proteins on a massive scale... in yeast tanks with genetically modified yeast, for example. And that works a lot faster than this little Rotaxane thingie.
From TFA:
The ribosome, the molecular machine that translates our genetic code to build the body’s proteins, is a mechanical marvel. Now, chemists have invented a nanomachine that can achieve a similar feat.
That doesn't sound like they are making a Frankenstein's monster, protein by protein, now... does it? Please read the article(s) first before you sprout any nonsense. There are genetic engineering processes commonly used today which are definitely much more dangerous than a piece of molecular Meccano, stringing a small peptide (sorry if I make it sound simple, it's still an enormous achievement to get something like this working and I'm not a biochemist so I'll have to treat the parts that go beyond my knowledge with proper awe;) )
The devil is in the details. I don't say you HAVE to trust your government, just that it's sorry IF you CAN'T trust the government. But then, maybe this is all because of cultural differences and we'll never agree.
Now, in what world would you live if you actually COULD trust the government to do good things and they would? Or if you knew that when they did wrong it could be amended just by a proper re-vote instead of having to implement drastic measures like carving the right to bear arms into a constitution which will fly out of the window anyway if a government really wants to implement evil... and in the mean time will inflict all kinds of harm to society. (Excuse me if I'm uninformed but I regularly read about all kinds of nasties happening over the pond, like public place mass murders, children having gun accidents, increased rates of crimes with lethal consequences etc. Here those things are... drastically less frequent.) Of course, it's your nation.. your peoples decisions. Not wanting to lecture here but please do allow me to find things odd, as you do about us.
Think about it.
Now, mod me into oblivion if you're a true patriot. I'm nothing of the sort. But I am someone willing to trust until someone shatters it... within common sense of course. I'm not that much willing to hand over advance fees to Nigerian princes.
No... People want to have a murder solved. There is a difference. And if you can't trust your government then you live in a very sorry nation indeed.
The hard part is voting the right people in to be your political leaders. Now I don't say everything is all shiny here in the Netherlands because it isn't. But at least we know we can vote every four years and have a choice of political parties to choose from who are actually -different-. And that an absolute majority is a herculean task to achieve so we always have coalitions. Which is good because it means politics has to care about minorities. So, next time you go to the voting box (if you actually do live in the Netherlands), do not vote for the party(/ies) that try to relax the privacy laws so you can actually put a little trust into the government for not randomly trying to fuck you up.
By the way, just in: nu.nl. The second, minute DNA test (which took 6 hours to perform) also identifies the suspect as the one matching the traces both on the victims body and the lighter found at the scene of the crime.
And of course you shouldn't trust my translations. The 'spokeswomen of the PC' actually is the spokeswoman for the NFI. Still it's very clear from all articles I read from 'decent' press resources, the DNA evidence will never be the sole evidence a suspect will be convicted upon. However it is enough evidence to arrest a suspect. There already were clues the suspect had to be local. This DNA search wouldn't have happened in the first place if there weren't. All tests were done voluntarily. Of course that doesn't exclude social pressure. If that has influenced the suspect to hand over his DNA, we'll only know when he, or his (either chosen or assigned) lawyer says something about it. It doesn't help to speculate about that now. That such a large part of the population submitted his DNA doesn't surprise me the slightest. Here in the Netherlands there is still an amount of trust between the peoples and the officers of the law. And material like this ever being handed over to private parties (like insurance companies) is unfathomable. Also there are some good privacy regulations in place. Some politicians (especially those of right-wing parties) would very much like them relaxed but.. for now they still hold... most of the time. What we (the Dutch) should take care about is not voting politicians into office that would like to abolish such regulations. Because that would turn things for the worst like it did in some other first world countries where there is no more trust between people and 'the law'.
AMSTERDAM - A suspect has been apprehended in the 'Marianne Vaatstra' case. The Procesution Councel (PC) confirmed it this monday morning.
...
The Justice dept. will not reveal any details for now. The PC and Frysian police force will hold a press conference 18:00 CET in Drachten.
...
The Dutch Forensics Institution (NFI) is currently performing a minute double-check of the identity of the suspect. "For both PC and police force it's of major concern we only submit an official statement to the press when it's certain the identity of the suspect is confirmed without question by the NFI."
...
Moreover [the spokeswoman of the PC] emphasizes DNA will 'never be enough', "there always will need to be more evidence".
What do you need a good [b]desktop[/b] OS for to play a game? It's only useful for support features as a console menu is useful to console games. As long as the graphics drivers are stable, featurefull and fast, there is enough support in your OS to start the game, do some configuring and maybe some support apps on the side, you should be good to go. Both Windows OS and a fully kitted out X are overkill.
Awesome potential. No research to speak of (compared to the 'other' nuclear fission). That one will need a lot-lot-lot of research to become economically viable. Yes, we all know the articles that pop up from time to time and the fact that it was researched in the past and all 'forgotten' because it couldn't make Pu. And that everywhere around the world there are small cells of underfunded, understaffed, under-appreciated researchers still working on it. Personally I'd very much like the tech being available and ready for use. But it isn't. And as long as there is no corporate America or scientific Europe or 'communist' China willing to sink some major time+money in it, it won't happen. India seems to work on something in that direction but even then, how many decades do you think it'll take before that is going somewhere and is your country willing to import an Indian reactor model? And when it does... there will be certification which will take more time+money. And when we have that certification for a particular set-up, we'll need to convince all those NIMBYs it really isn't all that bad. When the first Thorium reactor opens at last we probably have ITER already breaking the net-energy barrier and all of us who are having this discussion here, retired and chasing kids off our lawns. That is... unless someone starts a Manhattan style project for Thorium fission about... now. There is much more research going on in improving efficiency of solar and wind and even in nuclear fusion than there is on Thorium. The way I see it currently, the world will have efficient renewables covering most of the energy production (certainly for domestic use) first, then a break-through in fusion and the first solely-built-for-commerce fusion plant one decade later. The second generation fusion plants in another decade will make energy so abundant we no longer want to pump oil but rather generate the fuel from thin air... And then somewhere in half a century a dusty old tech museum, only we granpas tend go to, opens an exhibition about the energy source that never happened. The exhibition is called 'The Thorium Cycle'. The youths we just chased off our lawns just won't care... or if they have an interest in antiquated tech will take the full immersion virtual tour from their couch.
I tend to disagree. I did read Snow Crash and found it a rather enjoyable (and not too long of a) story. To compare it to 'Ron' I'd consider quite a low, even for an AC. As I remember it didn't really have math in there and maybe that did put you off if you were looking for it in there specifically...
(spoilers) .... but the fallen internet-samurai turned pizza deliverer possessing hardware way above his current standards due to his past exploits, jacking in again to the virtual world to ('further', it's already quite dystopian at the start of the story) prevent its and the real worlds melt-down due to a mixed virtual/real primordial language/idea based virus/drug makes for quite a good story. . (end spoilers)
Well... that one line synopsis really did as much justice to the work as the shavings on a snow-cone do the the north pole:P If Cryptonomicon is as good as almost everyone here claims it is I should get me a copy:) I'm not a massive SF reader, preferring high fantasy more but I've read and enjoyed quite some books more or less SF.
None of those things are necessities for life. To survive, to be alive, I do not need to use on-line vendors.
Here in the Netherlands we increasingly need to... Various government taxes already can only, be handled online. Currently the taxes that can only be handled online are those for all (small and large) businesses. And if those businesses refuse they are put out of business. Individuals can still get a paper form for their income tax but it's already strongly discouraged. More and more parts of the government are going an online-mostly or only route, not only for additional stuff but the essentials.
Many businesses stopped sending bills through 'snail' mail. Most communication businesses (telephone, cable and internet providers) were the first to do so. Banks are decreasing their number of offices throughout the country rapidly. Most of the time only the major cities still have one (1) office where you can do your banking business. (Such an office would have to serve ten of thousands of customers if not a majority was doing his/ber banking online.) For the rest they only offer online services. The least expensive health-insurers (with the basic package) only offer you service if they can send bills electronically and medicine can only be ordered through an internet-apothecary (after you get a prescription by a certified GP or specialist of course).
With other things, not interacting online causes a hefty financial penalty. Getting your receipts through mail is a value-added option, not included in the basic packages for those businesses still offering it that don't have to send you the actual goods by mail (like shops... which are cheaper most of the time, by the way, if you order the goods online). The best deals on contracts for electricity, cooking gas, all insurances, savings accounts, mortgages and other financial products, communication products, etc. are found online. If you want to access the educational system, you have to be online, if only it was to sign up for an actual school or university (for college education or equivalents or better).
A person in the Netherlands which doesn't have access to the internet has either a very poor standard of living or a very high one (because he can afford to opt-out).
I would say, here in the Netherlands the ability to have an internet connection capable of doing all this described above is a right. Of course that does not imply you should get a connection for free. You should still pay a proper (but also limited) fee for your connection if you decide to use the services of a provider that provides you with said internet connection. The providers however are (and increasingly so) regulated, for example, by means of laws for things like net-neutrality and the anti-telecoms-monopoly agency OPTA. And there are also government subsidies for providers willing to implement connections to places less profitable. Which is all fair, considering you can't really live in the Netherlands without having an internet connection of some sorts.
Why isn't there a route with a ferry through the Bering strait nowadays? The wonderful, carbon-dioxide induced temperatures should make that one easy to pull off, you'd think;)
I didn't know 1 euro converts to $2.48 these days.
Because in the Netherlands (fourth cheapest on the chart) the retail price, including VAT and alcohol taxes at one of the more expensive supermarkets of 500ml premium beer (Grolsch in this instance; also one of the more expensive 'normal' beers) is about € 1. That should be somewhere around $1.20-1.30... No way beer is on average twice that amount for half a liter!
Link to webshop of supermarket: http://webwinkel.ah.nl/process?search_parameter=grolsh&catacodestyle=AH&action=albert_noscript.modules.build
Minimum wage before state insurances and income tax in the Netherlands for everyone 23 and older is €1,456.20 on basis of a 40 hours week. This is about €1,230 after taxes.
40 hours = 2400 minutes. 1,230/2400 = 51.25 €cents / minute. Which would make a Dutch person on minimum wage work 1 minute and 57 seconds for his beer.
With 'public' I meant a government working for its citizens.. at least, in a country where government functions, has also the interest of the public in mind and gets evaluated by its citizens, for example through a system of elections. It's true that 'public' works with $$$ as well but it doesn't work with $$$ for $$$ sake as most $$$ based groups do (call them corporations, if you want). There lies the difference. A country with not too much of a debt can be independently wealthy. It's got resources, an infrastructure and a tax paying population. That governments now have a problem extracting & spending enough $$$ isn't because there isn't enough $$$. I would even say there is too much of it. It's partly because of bad government, partly because certain $$$ groups preyed on the 'public', partly external circumstances. Amongst others, the rising prices of finite resources because we're going through them at an alarming rate.
There is still something called 'law', where you come from, I hope? You know, that which, amongst other things, can put limits on the things you and everybody else can do with $$$. That stuff that's made and updated by politicians, applied by the DOJ and other governmental bodies and examined and judged for fairness by judges and lawyers. $$$ shouldn't be a primary motivation with this 'law' thing. It should also look at things like morals, fairness, basic human freedoms. If $$$ was a primary motivation with this 'law' thing, I would call that corruption.
In extent, if 'public' would equate primarily to $$$ I would call that corruption too.
That depends on your political and economic points of view. I'm actually more in favour of a 'Rhineland model' economy myself and have a slightly socialist political bias. In the U.S. that would translate as 'communist', probably. Here it would be 'liberal socialist'.
Interesting to note here is that the German government is considering German fossil fuel power plant holders to forbid to shut down their plants. Those plant holders of course are now asking that same government for MORE subsidies (they are already subsidized) to comply or threaten to close anyway. They can't compete any more with the low energy prices in summer because that's when renewables generate 'too much' power. However, the plants are still needed for a stable power supply and also for enough power in winter.
German news article: http://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2012-09/kraftwerk-abschalten-regierung Dutch news article: http://www.nu.nl/economie/2910227/duitsland-overweegt-uitschakelverbod-kolencentrales.html Unfortunately I couldn't find an English language article about this.
Amongst other things, questions are now raised seriously if liberalizing the energy market in Germany wasn't actually a bad thing in hindsight. If plants were still under government control, it would be a government issue. Now government has to ask business 'pretty, pretty please?'. Everyone speaks $$$ now because we made ourselves dependent on $$$. I'm leaving it up to discussion what's better done by $$$ and what's better off in 'public' hands but things can change... quickly, if they have to. An accelerated sea-level rise would be such a thing because it would threaten half my nation with flooding (I am a Dutch citizen if you're wondering, living near the German border).
They will use WiFi triangulation to be location aware instead?:P
It seems it's the GPS clock signals they want to use here. When those are dropped I guess they'll fall back on their own atomic clocks. It might be a little less accurate 'though.
From T*A:
Google’s cluster-management software provides an implementation of the TrueTime API. This implementation keeps uncertainty small (generally less than 10ms) by using multiple modern clock references (GPS and atomic clocks).
Nothing in there about GPS being essential. Just needs 'multiple modern clock references'.
Partly, yes. I'm a programmer (mostly... but also software designer, code maintainer... and sysadmin and support etc. Small company, must be flexable). When I'm working on new algorithms or squashing bugs that 'go deep into the system' affecting multiple different parts of the code, I'm sometimes at work staring at a problem I can't seem to solve (sometimes for a whole day) or I have the feeling I solved it badly (for example when my solution introduces a lot of extra overhead). Then I go home, make dinner, have some off-time hours, go to sleep and wake up. In that time period, I am unconsciously processing the problems in alternative ways and more often than not new angles pop into my head making the problem lots easier or make it solvable in a way that is more consistent of has less drawbacks than my previous work. Then the next day of work I can use those ideas for new code and solve the problem (in a better way).
Call it a cushy job if you want, but sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to sleep it over a night and then begin with fresh insight.
Ow, I work a 4 day week (and get paid proportionately less of course) but I find it fit my life-style and keep me productive those hours I am available. (By the way, typing this in my lunch-break.)
Slashdot Mirror
Are you "deprived" of food, because you have to pay for it?
(3) If the person who has an abundance of it is unwilling to provide* at any reasonable price, yes.
(4) If the food is purposely made** to spoil fast, sometimes even before you were able to take a bite from it.
(5) If you have to pay the producer of your piece of food over and over again*** in full, if you want it to last or if you want to eat it in another venue than you originally intended.
(* publishers that let works go 'out of print' but still prosecute 'alternative means of distribution'. It is called artificial scarcity and is something very common when dealing with monopolies.)
(** certain DRM mechanisms come to mind.)
(*** LP, Cassette, CD. Celluloid film, Video cassette, Laser disk, DVD, Blu-ray. Digital distribution with various restrictions. Multiple devices for playback, or the inability to be able to.)
Seems to be ok now? ... However, the second link is not clickable. HTML source says:
Over 10 million viewers worldwide have watched <a>The Ben Heck Show</a>
Maybe this link is good enough instead?
Infrared currently is used as a point-to-point connection where (most of the time) there has to be a clear (as in: only air) path from one node to the other. It's mostly used as a device-to-device type of connection, not as a network of devices.
Li-Fi should integrate into the lighting plan of rooms, should be capable of operation using reflections instead of direct point-to-point. Of course, reflections and re-transmissions probably cause signal degradation if no filter capability exists so the software protocols should be able to compensate or, if unable, scale back to lower network speeds. The same for 'foreign' light sources (the sun included). Individual light points should act as repeaters with one point in a room connected to the 'regular' network being enough to provide the entire room (however large it may be) with full network access. At least, those are the 'promises' I heard about Li-Fi.
And, indeed, being unable to penetrate walls can be an advantage.
Argh and then I forgot to post as a user. Sorry slashdotters.
Indeed, his whole speech was in defence of libraries and of fiction... Actually, I think, in a broader scope it was defending people's possibilities to imagine. You could (partly) do that with (moving) pictures and theatre as well but he laid emphasis on written material - both the writer and the reader side of it. I think that's a justified emphasis because written material leaves more to the imagination and there is more of it.
One of the most basic ways to be able to fulfil that, people's possibilities to imagine, is through physical libraries. If everyone was born with a (mobile) internet connection, free of censorship, small enough in cost that it is affordable even in hard times and of liberal capability, a virtual form of libraries might be able to take over (some combination of e-reader, wikipedia and specialized chat system inhabited by the readers and 'virtual' librarians might do the job). Do remember, currently, young people first need to have some capability to navigate the internet, learn to handle a device capable of acting as an e-reader and learn some things about e-books and how to get them on their device before they can start reading them. Compare that to libraries for which they only need some push to actually pass that 'scary' librarian at his/her desk and their own two feet to walk to the library in the first place. Also, while there are still people in developed nations (not to mention the nations that are still developing) that have no easy access to internet, physical libraries have a very substantial role to play.
I read Mr. Gaimans (edited) lecture on the website of 'the guardian' from the link in the article. It made me remember all the emotions and wonder I felt while reading through all those fantasy and science stories I have... and the times I (try to) put something on paper as well (try to, because there are too many things I am interested in, including reading and therefore I mostly lack the time. Maybe that will change one day. The day I will stop imagining probably is the day I stop living).
I didn't hang out a lot in libraries as a child... but I did every now and then... and always loved the stories I read. At the end of (equivalent) high-school I still had a few reservations about reading due to the mandatory reading lists I had for the foreign languages I chose as subject (English and German. My native language is Dutch). But it didn't withhold me from also finding pleasure in reading. Also in much of the literature I had to read for those language subjects. It was at my early twenties that my interest in fantasy reading really took off and at that age I had enough income (savings form a Saturday job in earlier years, then student, then regular jobs) to buy the books I wanted to read, second hand and I had the internet to search for reviews and interesting authors. Still I buy most of the stories I read in physical book form. I find that form of reading superior for all situations except when mobile and weight-restricted. I do have a smart phone and I do have a very capable tablet. I'm very familiar with computers and the internet... still I find, for stories, hard copy a joy to read above all others.
Of course this is very much my own opinion and I do think everyone is entitled their own. When reading the lecture, however, I found myself both logically and emotionally agreeing with it and I hope more people will.
For it is the politicians mostly concerned with making the decision to do so, my opinion is that a policy involving the closure of public libraries is one of the worst things a politician could do apart from outright lying or doing something criminal.
For the TL;DR people:
The ruling states a number of very specific conditions. I'll start with the answer your question...
-The site was held liable for the offensive comments that were made anonymously, because those comments weren't traceable back to the original authors. To hold the site liable was deemed 'practical'.
-A disclaimer of liability doesn't mean squat if you can't properly divert that liability.
-The site was found to have generated income out of the posting of those offensive comments. Therefore holding the site liable was found 'reasonable'.
-The site did not take any proactive steps to remove the offensive comments.
-Given the nature of the article, offensive comments were to be expected and the site should have taken extra care with this article, which it didn't.
The compensation of damages awarded to the plaintiff is €320 (US$433) (I didn't omit a 'K' here or something. It's just that, €320).
I don't know...
Yes, someone did notify you of something you probably didn't realise yet. And it might have become a problem for the company later on... if the wrong people found out just that. That person did it freely and out of his/her own good but it doesn't necessarily makes your job easier (maybe even harder because now you have to solve this while there are already enough other problems on your plate). It won't reduce your workload... your employer has enough other things for you to do... it won't get you to that pub a minute earlier than your employer allows you to leave for the weekend (and that might be even later now). You won't tell that to the person who made that bug report 'tough. You're glad there are people actively want to involve themselves in the security of the product you're proud to work on even 'though they do it without prospect of financial gain.
As a small thank you, you send the person a gift certificate paid from your own money, effectively saying 'Here is an hour of my time in wage. Please spend it on something you like to' (give or take... My reference is my current hourly wage, after taxes, as an IT professional, which is a little more, but not much).
Of course there is nothing wrong with a proper reward program, financed by the actual company. If these bugs take at least some skills and resources to track, and are that valuable it would be rather cheap for a company not to have one. That having said, a pay check for services rendered from a company is totally different from an employee paying you a small token out of his/her own pocket while the direct value for that employee is, at least, questionable.
Those older technologies might be more wasteful in spectrum use... they most of the time are technologically less sophisticated which means easier to maintain in wartime.
An AM radio is much simpler to build and operate than your latest incarnation of an 'industry standard' 'packet switched' consumer communication device with built in audio compression. The latter needs several black boxes called 'microprocessors' and other hard to replace stuff. The former needs only a hand full of analog semiconductors or a few tubes. For some things, bandwith is not the primary concern. Also, many of those black boxes mentioned earlier don't mix very well with 'space'.
To start with the actual lightbulbs: High yield white light LED technology. Sure, the photoelectric effect has been known for about a century. It took a while for the first practical applications to be available. LEDs being one of them. But you can't compare those little signalling LEDs of a few decades ago with the current lightbulb replacing LED technology. Of course this technology is a mix of other technologies, but quite a few of them are quite recent (as in max. decades old, not centuries).
The article mentions the Telephone as a truly innovative invention. But doesn't that in its turn used microphone, speaker and signal transportation technology of that time?
If the time frame for 'recent' is 'last half century' or so, I'd say there have been true inventions in, optical disk technology, various microprocessor advancements, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence hardware, gene manipulation, solar cell technology and various other fields. Too many to mention.
If algorithms can be inventions as well, we have never been as innovative as we are now. Look at all the new search technologies, data-mining for targeted ads, again AI algorithms, mostly visible to the general public in computer games, audio and video compression codecs, speech recognition, synthesis and language translation... the list goes on and on...
Disturbing Ancient Non-Linear systems is a recipe for disaster.
What are you blabbering about? They're not disturbing an ancient system, they are making an entirely new one. That the end-result, a small string of amino acids, is about the same, is the only thing it has in common with the ribosome. Humans already make custom proteins on a massive scale... in yeast tanks with genetically modified yeast, for example. And that works a lot faster than this little Rotaxane thingie.
From TFA:
The ribosome, the molecular machine that translates our genetic code to build the body’s proteins, is a mechanical marvel. Now, chemists have invented a nanomachine that can achieve a similar feat.
That doesn't sound like they are making a Frankenstein's monster, protein by protein, now... does it? Please read the article(s) first before you sprout any nonsense. There are genetic engineering processes commonly used today which are definitely much more dangerous than a piece of molecular Meccano, stringing a small peptide (sorry if I make it sound simple, it's still an enormous achievement to get something like this working and I'm not a biochemist so I'll have to treat the parts that go beyond my knowledge with proper awe ;) )
The devil is in the details. I don't say you HAVE to trust your government, just that it's sorry IF you CAN'T trust the government. But then, maybe this is all because of cultural differences and we'll never agree.
Now, in what world would you live if you actually COULD trust the government to do good things and they would? Or if you knew that when they did wrong it could be amended just by a proper re-vote instead of having to implement drastic measures like carving the right to bear arms into a constitution which will fly out of the window anyway if a government really wants to implement evil... and in the mean time will inflict all kinds of harm to society. (Excuse me if I'm uninformed but I regularly read about all kinds of nasties happening over the pond, like public place mass murders, children having gun accidents, increased rates of crimes with lethal consequences etc. Here those things are... drastically less frequent.) Of course, it's your nation.. your peoples decisions. Not wanting to lecture here but please do allow me to find things odd, as you do about us.
Think about it.
Now, mod me into oblivion if you're a true patriot. I'm nothing of the sort. But I am someone willing to trust until someone shatters it... within common sense of course. I'm not that much willing to hand over advance fees to Nigerian princes.
No... People want to have a murder solved. There is a difference. And if you can't trust your government then you live in a very sorry nation indeed.
The hard part is voting the right people in to be your political leaders. Now I don't say everything is all shiny here in the Netherlands because it isn't. But at least we know we can vote every four years and have a choice of political parties to choose from who are actually -different-. And that an absolute majority is a herculean task to achieve so we always have coalitions. Which is good because it means politics has to care about minorities. So, next time you go to the voting box (if you actually do live in the Netherlands), do not vote for the party(/ies) that try to relax the privacy laws so you can actually put a little trust into the government for not randomly trying to fuck you up.
By the way, just in: nu.nl. The second, minute DNA test (which took 6 hours to perform) also identifies the suspect as the one matching the traces both on the victims body and the lighter found at the scene of the crime.
And of course you shouldn't trust my translations. The 'spokeswomen of the PC' actually is the spokeswoman for the NFI.
Still it's very clear from all articles I read from 'decent' press resources, the DNA evidence will never be the sole evidence a suspect will be convicted upon. However it is enough evidence to arrest a suspect. There already were clues the suspect had to be local. This DNA search wouldn't have happened in the first place if there weren't.
All tests were done voluntarily. Of course that doesn't exclude social pressure. If that has influenced the suspect to hand over his DNA, we'll only know when he, or his (either chosen or assigned) lawyer says something about it. It doesn't help to speculate about that now.
That such a large part of the population submitted his DNA doesn't surprise me the slightest. Here in the Netherlands there is still an amount of trust between the peoples and the officers of the law. And material like this ever being handed over to private parties (like insurance companies) is unfathomable. Also there are some good privacy regulations in place. Some politicians (especially those of right-wing parties) would very much like them relaxed but.. for now they still hold... most of the time. What we (the Dutch) should take care about is not voting politicians into office that would like to abolish such regulations. Because that would turn things for the worst like it did in some other first world countries where there is no more trust between people and 'the law'.
Everybody in the Dutch talks as if the man is convicted already.
Ok .. this is so untrue...
This is the news article from the major Dutch online newspaper. Put it through Google translate if you don't trust my translations:
nu.nl
AMSTERDAM - A suspect has been apprehended in the 'Marianne Vaatstra' case. The Procesution Councel (PC) confirmed it this monday morning.
...
The Justice dept. will not reveal any details for now. The PC and Frysian police force will hold a press conference 18:00 CET in Drachten.
...
The Dutch Forensics Institution (NFI) is currently performing a minute double-check of the identity of the suspect.
"For both PC and police force it's of major concern we only submit an official statement to the press when it's certain the identity of the suspect is confirmed without question by the NFI."
...
Moreover [the spokeswoman of the PC] emphasizes DNA will 'never be enough', "there always will need to be more evidence".
What do you need a good [b]desktop[/b] OS for to play a game? It's only useful for support features as a console menu is useful to console games. As long as the graphics drivers are stable, featurefull and fast, there is enough support in your OS to start the game, do some configuring and maybe some support apps on the side, you should be good to go. Both Windows OS and a fully kitted out X are overkill.
Thorium fission.
Awesome potential. No research to speak of (compared to the 'other' nuclear fission). ... unless someone starts a Manhattan style project for Thorium fission about ... now.
That one will need a lot-lot-lot of research to become economically viable. Yes, we all know the articles that pop up from time to time and the fact that it was researched in the past and all 'forgotten' because it couldn't make Pu. And that everywhere around the world there are small cells of underfunded, understaffed, under-appreciated researchers still working on it.
Personally I'd very much like the tech being available and ready for use. But it isn't. And as long as there is no corporate America or scientific Europe or 'communist' China willing to sink some major time+money in it, it won't happen. India seems to work on something in that direction but even then, how many decades do you think it'll take before that is going somewhere and is your country willing to import an Indian reactor model? And when it does... there will be certification which will take more time+money. And when we have that certification for a particular set-up, we'll need to convince all those NIMBYs it really isn't all that bad.
When the first Thorium reactor opens at last we probably have ITER already breaking the net-energy barrier and all of us who are having this discussion here, retired and chasing kids off our lawns. That is
There is much more research going on in improving efficiency of solar and wind and even in nuclear fusion than there is on Thorium. The way I see it currently, the world will have efficient renewables covering most of the energy production (certainly for domestic use) first, then a break-through in fusion and the first solely-built-for-commerce fusion plant one decade later. The second generation fusion plants in another decade will make energy so abundant we no longer want to pump oil but rather generate the fuel from thin air... And then somewhere in half a century a dusty old tech museum, only we granpas tend go to, opens an exhibition about the energy source that never happened. The exhibition is called 'The Thorium Cycle'. The youths we just chased off our lawns just won't care... or if they have an interest in antiquated tech will take the full immersion virtual tour from their couch.
I tend to disagree. I did read Snow Crash and found it a rather enjoyable (and not too long of a) story. To compare it to 'Ron' I'd consider quite a low, even for an AC. As I remember it didn't really have math in there and maybe that did put you off if you were looking for it in there specifically...
(spoilers) ... but the fallen internet-samurai turned pizza deliverer possessing hardware way above his current standards due to his past exploits, jacking in again to the virtual world to ('further', it's already quite dystopian at the start of the story) prevent its and the real worlds melt-down due to a mixed virtual/real primordial language/idea based virus/drug makes for quite a good story.
.
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(end spoilers)
Well ... that one line synopsis really did as much justice to the work as the shavings on a snow-cone do the the north pole :P :) I'm not a massive SF reader, preferring high fantasy more but I've read and enjoyed quite some books more or less SF.
If Cryptonomicon is as good as almost everyone here claims it is I should get me a copy
None of those things are necessities for life. To survive, to be alive, I do not need to use on-line vendors.
Here in the Netherlands we increasingly need to... Various government taxes already can only, be handled online. Currently the taxes that can only be handled online are those for all (small and large) businesses. And if those businesses refuse they are put out of business. Individuals can still get a paper form for their income tax but it's already strongly discouraged. More and more parts of the government are going an online-mostly or only route, not only for additional stuff but the essentials.
Many businesses stopped sending bills through 'snail' mail. Most communication businesses (telephone, cable and internet providers) were the first to do so. Banks are decreasing their number of offices throughout the country rapidly. Most of the time only the major cities still have one (1) office where you can do your banking business. (Such an office would have to serve ten of thousands of customers if not a majority was doing his/ber banking online.) For the rest they only offer online services. The least expensive health-insurers (with the basic package) only offer you service if they can send bills electronically and medicine can only be ordered through an internet-apothecary (after you get a prescription by a certified GP or specialist of course).
With other things, not interacting online causes a hefty financial penalty. Getting your receipts through mail is a value-added option, not included in the basic packages for those businesses still offering it that don't have to send you the actual goods by mail (like shops... which are cheaper most of the time, by the way, if you order the goods online). The best deals on contracts for electricity, cooking gas, all insurances, savings accounts, mortgages and other financial products, communication products, etc. are found online.
If you want to access the educational system, you have to be online, if only it was to sign up for an actual school or university (for college education or equivalents or better).
A person in the Netherlands which doesn't have access to the internet has either a very poor standard of living or a very high one (because he can afford to opt-out).
I would say, here in the Netherlands the ability to have an internet connection capable of doing all this described above is a right. Of course that does not imply you should get a connection for free. You should still pay a proper (but also limited) fee for your connection if you decide to use the services of a provider that provides you with said internet connection. The providers however are (and increasingly so) regulated, for example, by means of laws for things like net-neutrality and the anti-telecoms-monopoly agency OPTA. And there are also government subsidies for providers willing to implement connections to places less profitable. Which is all fair, considering you can't really live in the Netherlands without having an internet connection of some sorts.
This route may have road closures.
*Sprays drink through nose upon keyboard
Why isn't there a route with a ferry through the Bering strait nowadays? The wonderful, carbon-dioxide induced temperatures should make that one easy to pull off, you'd think ;)
I didn't know 1 euro converts to $2.48 these days.
Because in the Netherlands (fourth cheapest on the chart) the retail price, including VAT and alcohol taxes at one of the more expensive supermarkets of 500ml premium beer (Grolsch in this instance; also one of the more expensive 'normal' beers) is about € 1. That should be somewhere around $1.20-1.30... No way beer is on average twice that amount for half a liter!
Link to webshop of supermarket: http://webwinkel.ah.nl/process?search_parameter=grolsh&catacodestyle=AH&action=albert_noscript.modules.build
Minimum wage before state insurances and income tax in the Netherlands for everyone 23 and older is €1,456.20 on basis of a 40 hours week. This is about €1,230 after taxes.
http://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/minimumloon/vraag-en-antwoord/hoe-hoog-is-het-minimumloon.html
40 hours = 2400 minutes. 1,230/2400 = 51.25 €cents / minute. Which would make a Dutch person on minimum wage work 1 minute and 57 seconds for his beer.
With 'public' I meant a government working for its citizens.. at least, in a country where government functions, has also the interest of the public in mind and gets evaluated by its citizens, for example through a system of elections. It's true that 'public' works with $$$ as well but it doesn't work with $$$ for $$$ sake as most $$$ based groups do (call them corporations, if you want). There lies the difference. A country with not too much of a debt can be independently wealthy. It's got resources, an infrastructure and a tax paying population. That governments now have a problem extracting & spending enough $$$ isn't because there isn't enough $$$. I would even say there is too much of it. It's partly because of bad government, partly because certain $$$ groups preyed on the 'public', partly external circumstances. Amongst others, the rising prices of finite resources because we're going through them at an alarming rate.
There is still something called 'law', where you come from, I hope? You know, that which, amongst other things, can put limits on the things you and everybody else can do with $$$. That stuff that's made and updated by politicians, applied by the DOJ and other governmental bodies and examined and judged for fairness by judges and lawyers. $$$ shouldn't be a primary motivation with this 'law' thing. It should also look at things like morals, fairness, basic human freedoms. If $$$ was a primary motivation with this 'law' thing, I would call that corruption.
In extent, if 'public' would equate primarily to $$$ I would call that corruption too.
That depends on your political and economic points of view. I'm actually more in favour of a 'Rhineland model' economy myself and have a slightly socialist political bias. In the U.S. that would translate as 'communist', probably. Here it would be 'liberal socialist'.
Interesting to note here is that the German government is considering German fossil fuel power plant holders to forbid to shut down their plants. Those plant holders of course are now asking that same government for MORE subsidies (they are already subsidized) to comply or threaten to close anyway.
They can't compete any more with the low energy prices in summer because that's when renewables generate 'too much' power. However, the plants are still needed for a stable power supply and also for enough power in winter.
German news article: http://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2012-09/kraftwerk-abschalten-regierung
Dutch news article: http://www.nu.nl/economie/2910227/duitsland-overweegt-uitschakelverbod-kolencentrales.html
Unfortunately I couldn't find an English language article about this.
Amongst other things, questions are now raised seriously if liberalizing the energy market in Germany wasn't actually a bad thing in hindsight. If plants were still under government control, it would be a government issue. Now government has to ask business 'pretty, pretty please?'. ... quickly, if they have to.
Everyone speaks $$$ now because we made ourselves dependent on $$$. I'm leaving it up to discussion what's better done by $$$ and what's better off in 'public' hands but things can change
An accelerated sea-level rise would be such a thing because it would threaten half my nation with flooding (I am a Dutch citizen if you're wondering, living near the German border).
They will use WiFi triangulation to be location aware instead? :P
It seems it's the GPS clock signals they want to use here. When those are dropped I guess they'll fall back on their own atomic clocks. It might be a little less accurate 'though.
From T*A:
Google’s cluster-management software provides an implementation of the TrueTime API. This implementation keeps uncertainty small (generally less than 10ms) by using multiple modern clock references (GPS and atomic clocks).
Nothing in there about GPS being essential. Just needs 'multiple modern clock references'.
Partly, yes.
I'm a programmer (mostly... but also software designer, code maintainer... and sysadmin and support etc. Small company, must be flexable). When I'm working on new algorithms or squashing bugs that 'go deep into the system' affecting multiple different parts of the code, I'm sometimes at work staring at a problem I can't seem to solve (sometimes for a whole day) or I have the feeling I solved it badly (for example when my solution introduces a lot of extra overhead). Then I go home, make dinner, have some off-time hours, go to sleep and wake up. In that time period, I am unconsciously processing the problems in alternative ways and more often than not new angles pop into my head making the problem lots easier or make it solvable in a way that is more consistent of has less drawbacks than my previous work. Then the next day of work I can use those ideas for new code and solve the problem (in a better way).
Call it a cushy job if you want, but sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to sleep it over a night and then begin with fresh insight.
Ow, I work a 4 day week (and get paid proportionately less of course) but I find it fit my life-style and keep me productive those hours I am available. (By the way, typing this in my lunch-break.)