I'm sorry, you seem to confuse our corporate owned politicians with Americans. Those aren't Americans those are traitors and they've been quite successful in disarming the people, turning our right to bear arms and form militas to fight them into a combination of a joke and a debate on what weapons are useful for hunting rather than distributing military power. Our corrupt courts have done away with jurors rights as direct representatives of the people as well instructing juries that they are not permitted to nullify unjust laws or applications of them but instead merely assess whether a technical violation has occurred.
You've got to be kidding. Left, right, it makes no difference both are just worshipping the dripping tips of different corporate phallis. Meanwhile both sides support domestic spying, more firmly centralizing federal power, ending net neutrality, a perpetual imaginary war, denying actual healthcare to our citizens, and keeping the wealthy wealthy. Neither wants anything resembling the Constitution restored.
Annoyed about your Netflix having hiccups... vote for the party that wants to put a stop to your internet provider causing those disruptions intentionally to create the illusion their own video service is more stable and reliable. You know, the imaginary party that doesn't exist.
His work? Last I checked the man just dumped a big chunk of his ill gotten gains into charity. Is he off doing work on spreading/stopping malaria himself now? This trend of crediting the people who did nothing but spend money with the results of the actual men and women in the trenches needs to stop. That's how the evil Edison somehow came out with a positive reputation.
They would beg to differ. They've been able to use the "war on terror" and the resulting heightened need for "national security" to dramatically federalize power and support illegal programs and actions across the board.
"This is all the exact opposite of building a larger machine "just because." It is building a larger machine after testing as much as possible on smaller, cheaper, more agile experiments before establishing that things are ready to work in a machine with higher fusion power."
A machine which is also not expected to produce a net power gain. Five billion dollars is an awful lot of money to ask for in order to build yet another machine that isn't even an attempt at actually producing as much power as it takes to light the caps lock led on my keyboard. Set reasonable expectations and the understanding that this is new technology and the results can't be guaranteed but at least spec your new multi-billion dollar dollar prototype with the intention of building something that could work. In fact, double the scale to maximize the chance you can make it work. If that means 4x the amount and another $5 billion to actually make it work so be it. You'll still reach a working device more quickly and more cheaply than building complete prototypes incrementally that are intentionally designed to achieve only incremental objectives.
Also, leading with the implication you are looking for billions to build a device that generates 200MW of usable output when you are in fact asking for funds to build a device which is designed to do nothing but drain massive amounts of energy is misleading and unethical. Be honest, this is nothing more than intentionally milking everything possible from the cow and not an attempt to realize functional and useful fusion energy as quickly and efficiently as possible.
I was referring to the annoying ones that try to block being closed and ask for money to pay a fine but if google can save me the trouble of having to remove the DVD/Bluray ones myself that would be nice too.
"They didn't promise net production of energy, and failing to meet you're moved goal post doesn't mean they didn't work."
They are asking for billions of dollars. The purpose of a fusion reactor is to produce usable energy. That is the first goal post that counts and it is shared with every other device with a common purpose from gas generators to nuclear reactors. Once that is accomplished the goal post is to produce more efficient/cheap energy than similar class devices which would include mass scale solar, nuclear, coal, etc plants but at least outperform other fusion reactor designs that work (ie actually accomplish their purpose and produce usable energy). Currently the auto-winder in my mechanical watch and the $2 shake light in my trunk are more likely to power a city than the fusion reactor they are asking for $5 billion to build, those at least succeed in producing usable energy.
A small scale test of certain isolated principles is one thing but a multi-billion dollar prototype of a complete fusion reactor should be designed to actually successfully produce net energy. I'm not saying the next device will succeed but the target should be designed to succeed. Then you work on fixing and modifying it until it does succeed. Setting small increment goal posts that you know you can hit only serves to drag things out as long as possible until everyone gives up on fusion as a human achievable form of energy production.
I'm all for diverting the money we waste 'the war on terror' to universal healthcare or a basic income for Americans. I'm not in favor of spending it to intentionally take a machine that doesn't work and build a bigger but not better one which also will not work.
This is hyped as a machine that takes 50MW in and outputs 250MW for a net of 200MW to the grid. But the fine print says that is completely false and this actually has no net positive result at all. So, the existing prototype does not work. You need to have some idea of WHY it doesn't work before you get money to do anything but continue searching for why. Since they aren't expecting the newer bigger prototype to work either they clearly aren't claiming the problem is scale so why are they building a bigger one?
I have no objection to building a dozen of the things if it is toward a purpose. What is the reason the current fusion capable prototype fails which they believe will be resolved by building another one? There isn't a reason, which is why I object. They don't expect the new one to work either. You don't build bigger and bigger scale models of the same broken machine. That is ridiculously inefficient charity and nothing more.
"And this is a fairly credible fusion approach, not some kooky pseudoscience."
First of all it is arguable if any fusion approach is credible at this point just as there are no shortage of theoretically efficient motor designs that are considered pseudoscience because nobody has managed to build one that operates efficiently there are no fusion designs that work at all. Second noo, it isn't a credible approach. It is a fairly credible theoretical design but what they are doing at this point is engineering. In engineering you don't simply build a new one "just because." That isn't a credible ANYTHING engineering approach. Assuming they need funding. What they need to asking for is funding to continue investing why it doesn't work. That shouldn't cost anywhere near $5 billion since they have a prototype already that achieves fusion. After that, it should be that they need money to fix whatever they believe is the issue. If fixing the issue has a direct tangible and predicted need for a new prototype or it is more cost/time efficient do it that way vs adjusting the existing prototype. This cycle might rinse and repeat a few times.
What you absolutely do not do is scale up prototypes that don't work (unless you've been able to fairly solidly demonstrate the scale IS the problem).
"But whenever there's proper scientific research done, the money invested will yield a return: answers."
Absolutely. But we already understand fusion, the theory is all there. This is an engineering problem now not new science. Researchers make really poor engineers. They are happy with answers. Engineers are all about finding a very specific answer and that is what is needed here. If this was a request for money to make modifications they hypothesized would fix their practical implementation of theoretically sound design so be it. If this was a request for funds because they believe they know the problem but it requires building a new prototype so be it. But you don't spend a single penny making a bigger version of the machine that don't works just for the hell of it.
You can't just throw money at anything with fusion in the label and expect that will get us functional fusion reactors sooner. Fusion is a massively expensive endeavor and the funding needs to go toward engineering such a device.
Fusion isn't research. We know all about fusion. This is engineering, applied science, the goal now is building a useful machine we've already got the theory.
It may well cost $40 billion to get the job done but however much it costs it's going to be a lot more if we just build bigger versions of machines that don't work (achieve net positive output) when they clearly ARE big enough to achieve fusion already. Fix the machine, or build a new machine that is actually different with some idea that it resolves whatever is wrong in the current design. You don't just fund building a bigger version of the broken machine which they aren't even claiming might have a positive output.
This isn't about the $5 billion, it's about what they are saying they are going to do with it. You don't spend money building bigger and bigger versions of designs that don't work without a practical end in engineer land.
I certainly do. But fusion is not a research goal or academic inquiry. We've already made fusion happen.
What is happening now is applied science, i.e. engineering. A net positive output is the definition of "works" in this case, not merely achieving fusion. You build a bigger one or otherwise further invest in increasing the efficiency of a design that works and has a high theoretical potential but currently isn't there yet in applied science. You don't just drop $5 billion to build a bigger version of the machine that doesn't work. They don't even claim the new one will work.
Especially with a very deliberately misleading byline. 50MW to operate and 200MW out to the grid. That would be a huge net positive output but it's utter bull, it's 50MW in < MW out. If MIT released a garbage misleading statement like that about a new combusion engine design and asked for a billion dollars to develop it you might pause for a second due to their reputation but nobody would think that was a good plan.
They already built their machine, their machine doesn't work. Maybe a variation of it will work but they are already achieving fusion, we need them to build that variation on the same scale not a bigger version of the one that doesn't work.
Yup, and to some degree that "feature" is built in by the manufacturer. Not even so much as raised edges around the screen to take the impact before the screen anymore because it reduced failure too much. That after market tempered glass screen protector they sell you, those should just be built in on these $600 devices and so should a solid and reliable case. These things actually cost pennies at phone manufacturer scale.
The memory problems people mention above. They don't actually need to be a problem. There is plenty of room in even the most thin phone for multiple 32GB chips. More than that, intentional or not there is no valid reason for the storage creep people experience on phones.
A fair point but that isn't really a component failure. That's the problem with the general tone of this article. We are already pushed toward new devices in so many ways and it is common to all the carriers interests not to compete on this, no active collusion or conspiracy required to get the same anti-consumer needs to be outlawed result. The last thing we need is take planned obsolescence the next step by actually sanctioning it and supporting the manufacturers deliberately building devices to fail rather than last as long as possible.
Also, how the hell do you plan something to fail at the rate of the screen? The most common failure in screens is a dropped phone which the manufacturer then does not support. We should be demanding more phones that are designed with unbreakable screens not designing everything else to fail.
Really, this isn't that complicated a problem. It's a newspaper, run the things through a compession algorithm such as png, drop the colorspace down to something reasonable for a newspaper. Hell, black and white is actually just fine but you can keep 256 colors if it makes you feel warm and fuzzy and still drop that 100MB to a 10-100k tops. Then OCR it all for search. Tada.
Nothing typically fails in my phones before replacement. My phone and most phones are replaced because we are enticed with a newer shinier phone and amortized or waived costs with a contract.
Does a doctor live longer than a burger flipper? Statistically, they just might given that particular example but you can't really predict how much time you have so for all practical purposes we have to assume we all get the same amount. You can't put a value on human life and we all have a finite amount of life. Of course, you do have to account for the portion of his life a doctor spent becoming a doctor.
As for how much they should get paid, I believe wages for developers are reasonably well established and I don't need to make up numbers. The difference between that number and what users currently pay, that part can disappear almost entirely. I'm not talking about a few developers pooling to together contracting for a project. That is still getting paid for work performed and not over and over again for each copy. I'm talking about the likes of Adobe, Microsoft, etc who pay developers a fair minimized wage but then turn around and maximize what they extract from the public rather than maximizing the value the public receives from the work while minimizing the cost.
You get paid fairly to produce a piece of work, it only took you so long to do it and you've been paid for the piece of your life you gave up to do so. It shouldn't matter if one copy of it is used or ten million copies. Although the ten million copies will probably secure your ability to find work in the future and give a better negotiating position.
While this is very cool tech based on the "hardware" page there is no hardware that would be suitable for this type of application. First, the hardware is expensive. Second, while you can tune to a large range of frequencies the boards are actually mainly designed for 2.4ghz and 5.8ghz operation and will function poorly the further from these frequencies you get which have very little reflection so it tries to punch right through everything losing most of it's energy with each obstacle it passes through. This means it requires a great deal of power to get any kind of range. So points for covering this part "make the encryption technology" but a fail on this part "make... the radios themselves and then somehow manage to miniaturize the technology enough to make efficient handhelds."
Compare this with the capabilities of the radios used by these men. They are $50 dual band radios optimized to operate on 70cm and 2m frequencies and their spectrum can be expanded via firmware update. They can be expected to communicate for miles even in the woods and even further with cloud cover using just 5w. Using two of these radios configured correctly and strapped together they will form an improvised repeater that can be put in a high position expanding line of sight dramatically and you can find a how-to telling you exactly how to do it on youtube. It's simple enough to remember and be able to set up in about 2 minutes without anyone in your group really understanding much about how it or their radios work. These radios will operate for hours without recharge but you can very easily improvise solar powered operation for such a repeater with off the shelf components. That can be as simple and effective as a motorcycle or UPS battery, a 20w panel, a small car inverter, and a waterproof ammo can. Or you could just change the batteries every day. You can even float one up with a weather balloon. Alternatively, for under $500 you can get an old ham repeater that is capable of putting a lot more power into the transmission. That is far less mobile, requires more power, and might or might not actually perform better than a network of these improvised repeaters, each forming a unique channel programmed into their radio memory and their radios set to scan through those channels. For not much more an HF transceiver can be used for much longer ranges, think state or even nation hopping distances at very low power.
If you are proficient enough to build hardware for GNU Radio use, instead of a dramatically inferior and far more expensive radio you could just build a second battery operated box that plugs in the mic port and encrypts/decrypts audio. You could likely do this with $5 arduinos and certainly do it with $20 raspberry pis. Then you can just use the cheap off the shelf baofengs they were already using. Unfortunately, this doesn't get you frequency hopping so while the content of your communications would be encrypted you'd want to minimize communications and keep them short so there isn't enough time to home in on your signal. An SDR would be superior in this respect.
All that aside, I'm not arguing that an SDR couldn't be built to operate on these HAM bands. But for the moment I'm trusting in the hardware page of the project as an indicator either that the chips aren't available or that you'd have to code support for such chips because the project is focusing on hardware optimized for unlicensed spectrum where the features of their software can be used legally.
I was suggesting a solution to the current risk of economic ruin we face due to risk of deflation not suggesting a way to redistribute wealth. But adding inflation that is distributed directly to the people would do some of that indirectly because it would increase the amount of risk one must assume in those investments in order to bring a greater return than inflation. Investment is gambling, the ultra wealthy engage in very low risk gambling with lots of wagers spread all over the place. Higher risk means they'd lose more of those bets.
This isn't going to take all the rich people's wealth away, it might mean being a hair less successful than the general population in capturing new wealth generated. It would put more of the newly generated money into the hands of the general population. Currently the newly generated money from inflation comes out of the hands of everyone with a dollar, no matter how poor, and goes directly into the hands of the wealthy so they can lend it out.
"No, EVERYONE does not benefit from an increase in performance; only those who bump into the upper end of their machine's performance actually benefit from the extra performance."
"When every action you perform on a machine is instant and there are no longer progress bars or hour glasses"
A progress bar or hour glass is someone bumping into the upper end of their machines performance. Okay, admittedly some of these are hard coded to display as animations so there is a minimum time they'd appear regardless but generally speaking they are there because most users bump into the upper end of their machines performance.
Just because people are willing to accept delays does not mean they wouldn't benefit from getting rid of them. Time is a resource which is completely limited for all of us.
"Not to mention that the additional cost often does not justify that extra speed, if the bottlenecks are few and far between and unless the intended processes are truly CPU/GPU-bound, and the slowness is not due to any other constraint that is already in the top echelon of its performance."
I made no claims of cost effectiveness. You are making a lot of assumptions here, even limiting the definition of performance to cpu/gpu and then you throw out a statement that flies in the face of your own argument.
"And in case you haven't noticed, your "goal" will ALWAYS be unobtainable; because software will ALWAYS expand in computational requirements to fill the computational resources... PLUS 10 percent..."
So you agree, everyone would benefit from more performance because it would increase the useful lifespan of their machine.
I wasn't just talking about cpu but you are a generation behind. The A72 is the current gen of that line and about 400% faster than the A57. But today it is no longer about how fast an individual chip is, it's about how much power they consume and how many cores you can squeeze in per rack u. The most important feature is found right here:
1-4x SMP within a single processor cluster, and multiple coherent SMP processor clusters through AMBA® 5 CHI or AMBA 4 ACE technology.
That will provide for a very dense rack and a lot of vms.
Mint is actually the superior experience these day and Mint w/ KDE is a superior experience to anything Canonical ever produced or what you get on your Mac.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, you seem to confuse our corporate owned politicians with Americans. Those aren't Americans those are traitors and they've been quite successful in disarming the people, turning our right to bear arms and form militas to fight them into a combination of a joke and a debate on what weapons are useful for hunting rather than distributing military power. Our corrupt courts have done away with jurors rights as direct representatives of the people as well instructing juries that they are not permitted to nullify unjust laws or applications of them but instead merely assess whether a technical violation has occurred.
You've got to be kidding. Left, right, it makes no difference both are just worshipping the dripping tips of different corporate phallis. Meanwhile both sides support domestic spying, more firmly centralizing federal power, ending net neutrality, a perpetual imaginary war, denying actual healthcare to our citizens, and keeping the wealthy wealthy. Neither wants anything resembling the Constitution restored.
Annoyed about your Netflix having hiccups... vote for the party that wants to put a stop to your internet provider causing those disruptions intentionally to create the illusion their own video service is more stable and reliable. You know, the imaginary party that doesn't exist.
His work? Last I checked the man just dumped a big chunk of his ill gotten gains into charity. Is he off doing work on spreading/stopping malaria himself now? This trend of crediting the people who did nothing but spend money with the results of the actual men and women in the trenches needs to stop. That's how the evil Edison somehow came out with a positive reputation.
They would beg to differ. They've been able to use the "war on terror" and the resulting heightened need for "national security" to dramatically federalize power and support illegal programs and actions across the board.
"This is all the exact opposite of building a larger machine "just because." It is building a larger machine after testing as much as possible on smaller, cheaper, more agile experiments before establishing that things are ready to work in a machine with higher fusion power."
A machine which is also not expected to produce a net power gain. Five billion dollars is an awful lot of money to ask for in order to build yet another machine that isn't even an attempt at actually producing as much power as it takes to light the caps lock led on my keyboard. Set reasonable expectations and the understanding that this is new technology and the results can't be guaranteed but at least spec your new multi-billion dollar dollar prototype with the intention of building something that could work. In fact, double the scale to maximize the chance you can make it work. If that means 4x the amount and another $5 billion to actually make it work so be it. You'll still reach a working device more quickly and more cheaply than building complete prototypes incrementally that are intentionally designed to achieve only incremental objectives.
Also, leading with the implication you are looking for billions to build a device that generates 200MW of usable output when you are in fact asking for funds to build a device which is designed to do nothing but drain massive amounts of energy is misleading and unethical. Be honest, this is nothing more than intentionally milking everything possible from the cow and not an attempt to realize functional and useful fusion energy as quickly and efficiently as possible.
I was referring to the annoying ones that try to block being closed and ask for money to pay a fine but if google can save me the trouble of having to remove the DVD/Bluray ones myself that would be nice too.
These things are annoying.
"They didn't promise net production of energy, and failing to meet you're moved goal post doesn't mean they didn't work."
They are asking for billions of dollars. The purpose of a fusion reactor is to produce usable energy. That is the first goal post that counts and it is shared with every other device with a common purpose from gas generators to nuclear reactors. Once that is accomplished the goal post is to produce more efficient/cheap energy than similar class devices which would include mass scale solar, nuclear, coal, etc plants but at least outperform other fusion reactor designs that work (ie actually accomplish their purpose and produce usable energy). Currently the auto-winder in my mechanical watch and the $2 shake light in my trunk are more likely to power a city than the fusion reactor they are asking for $5 billion to build, those at least succeed in producing usable energy.
A small scale test of certain isolated principles is one thing but a multi-billion dollar prototype of a complete fusion reactor should be designed to actually successfully produce net energy. I'm not saying the next device will succeed but the target should be designed to succeed. Then you work on fixing and modifying it until it does succeed. Setting small increment goal posts that you know you can hit only serves to drag things out as long as possible until everyone gives up on fusion as a human achievable form of energy production.
I'm all for diverting the money we waste 'the war on terror' to universal healthcare or a basic income for Americans. I'm not in favor of spending it to intentionally take a machine that doesn't work and build a bigger but not better one which also will not work.
This is hyped as a machine that takes 50MW in and outputs 250MW for a net of 200MW to the grid. But the fine print says that is completely false and this actually has no net positive result at all. So, the existing prototype does not work. You need to have some idea of WHY it doesn't work before you get money to do anything but continue searching for why. Since they aren't expecting the newer bigger prototype to work either they clearly aren't claiming the problem is scale so why are they building a bigger one?
I have no objection to building a dozen of the things if it is toward a purpose. What is the reason the current fusion capable prototype fails which they believe will be resolved by building another one? There isn't a reason, which is why I object. They don't expect the new one to work either. You don't build bigger and bigger scale models of the same broken machine. That is ridiculously inefficient charity and nothing more.
"And this is a fairly credible fusion approach, not some kooky pseudoscience."
First of all it is arguable if any fusion approach is credible at this point just as there are no shortage of theoretically efficient motor designs that are considered pseudoscience because nobody has managed to build one that operates efficiently there are no fusion designs that work at all. Second noo, it isn't a credible approach. It is a fairly credible theoretical design but what they are doing at this point is engineering. In engineering you don't simply build a new one "just because." That isn't a credible ANYTHING engineering approach. Assuming they need funding. What they need to asking for is funding to continue investing why it doesn't work. That shouldn't cost anywhere near $5 billion since they have a prototype already that achieves fusion. After that, it should be that they need money to fix whatever they believe is the issue. If fixing the issue has a direct tangible and predicted need for a new prototype or it is more cost/time efficient do it that way vs adjusting the existing prototype. This cycle might rinse and repeat a few times.
What you absolutely do not do is scale up prototypes that don't work (unless you've been able to fairly solidly demonstrate the scale IS the problem).
"But whenever there's proper scientific research done, the money invested will yield a return: answers."
Absolutely. But we already understand fusion, the theory is all there. This is an engineering problem now not new science. Researchers make really poor engineers. They are happy with answers. Engineers are all about finding a very specific answer and that is what is needed here. If this was a request for money to make modifications they hypothesized would fix their practical implementation of theoretically sound design so be it. If this was a request for funds because they believe they know the problem but it requires building a new prototype so be it. But you don't spend a single penny making a bigger version of the machine that don't works just for the hell of it.
You can't just throw money at anything with fusion in the label and expect that will get us functional fusion reactors sooner. Fusion is a massively expensive endeavor and the funding needs to go toward engineering such a device.
Fusion isn't research. We know all about fusion. This is engineering, applied science, the goal now is building a useful machine we've already got the theory.
It may well cost $40 billion to get the job done but however much it costs it's going to be a lot more if we just build bigger versions of machines that don't work (achieve net positive output) when they clearly ARE big enough to achieve fusion already. Fix the machine, or build a new machine that is actually different with some idea that it resolves whatever is wrong in the current design. You don't just fund building a bigger version of the broken machine which they aren't even claiming might have a positive output.
This isn't about the $5 billion, it's about what they are saying they are going to do with it. You don't spend money building bigger and bigger versions of designs that don't work without a practical end in engineer land.
I certainly do. But fusion is not a research goal or academic inquiry. We've already made fusion happen.
What is happening now is applied science, i.e. engineering. A net positive output is the definition of "works" in this case, not merely achieving fusion. You build a bigger one or otherwise further invest in increasing the efficiency of a design that works and has a high theoretical potential but currently isn't there yet in applied science. You don't just drop $5 billion to build a bigger version of the machine that doesn't work. They don't even claim the new one will work.
Especially with a very deliberately misleading byline. 50MW to operate and 200MW out to the grid. That would be a huge net positive output but it's utter bull, it's 50MW in < MW out. If MIT released a garbage misleading statement like that about a new combusion engine design and asked for a billion dollars to develop it you might pause for a second due to their reputation but nobody would think that was a good plan.
They already built their machine, their machine doesn't work. Maybe a variation of it will work but they are already achieving fusion, we need them to build that variation on the same scale not a bigger version of the one that doesn't work.
"While there remain hurdles to overcome, such as sustaining the fusion reaction long enough to achieve a net power return"
When anyone accomplishes this it is news. Until then it's a waste of $5 billion dollars.
Yup, and to some degree that "feature" is built in by the manufacturer. Not even so much as raised edges around the screen to take the impact before the screen anymore because it reduced failure too much. That after market tempered glass screen protector they sell you, those should just be built in on these $600 devices and so should a solid and reliable case. These things actually cost pennies at phone manufacturer scale.
The memory problems people mention above. They don't actually need to be a problem. There is plenty of room in even the most thin phone for multiple 32GB chips. More than that, intentional or not there is no valid reason for the storage creep people experience on phones.
A fair point but that isn't really a component failure. That's the problem with the general tone of this article. We are already pushed toward new devices in so many ways and it is common to all the carriers interests not to compete on this, no active collusion or conspiracy required to get the same anti-consumer needs to be outlawed result. The last thing we need is take planned obsolescence the next step by actually sanctioning it and supporting the manufacturers deliberately building devices to fail rather than last as long as possible.
Also, how the hell do you plan something to fail at the rate of the screen? The most common failure in screens is a dropped phone which the manufacturer then does not support. We should be demanding more phones that are designed with unbreakable screens not designing everything else to fail.
Really, this isn't that complicated a problem. It's a newspaper, run the things through a compession algorithm such as png, drop the colorspace down to something reasonable for a newspaper. Hell, black and white is actually just fine but you can keep 256 colors if it makes you feel warm and fuzzy and still drop that 100MB to a 10-100k tops. Then OCR it all for search. Tada.
Nothing typically fails in my phones before replacement. My phone and most phones are replaced because we are enticed with a newer shinier phone and amortized or waived costs with a contract.
Does a doctor live longer than a burger flipper? Statistically, they just might given that particular example but you can't really predict how much time you have so for all practical purposes we have to assume we all get the same amount. You can't put a value on human life and we all have a finite amount of life. Of course, you do have to account for the portion of his life a doctor spent becoming a doctor.
As for how much they should get paid, I believe wages for developers are reasonably well established and I don't need to make up numbers. The difference between that number and what users currently pay, that part can disappear almost entirely. I'm not talking about a few developers pooling to together contracting for a project. That is still getting paid for work performed and not over and over again for each copy. I'm talking about the likes of Adobe, Microsoft, etc who pay developers a fair minimized wage but then turn around and maximize what they extract from the public rather than maximizing the value the public receives from the work while minimizing the cost.
You get paid fairly to produce a piece of work, it only took you so long to do it and you've been paid for the piece of your life you gave up to do so. It shouldn't matter if one copy of it is used or ten million copies. Although the ten million copies will probably secure your ability to find work in the future and give a better negotiating position.
While this is very cool tech based on the "hardware" page there is no hardware that would be suitable for this type of application. First, the hardware is expensive. Second, while you can tune to a large range of frequencies the boards are actually mainly designed for 2.4ghz and 5.8ghz operation and will function poorly the further from these frequencies you get which have very little reflection so it tries to punch right through everything losing most of it's energy with each obstacle it passes through. This means it requires a great deal of power to get any kind of range. So points for covering this part "make the encryption technology" but a fail on this part "make... the radios themselves and then somehow manage to miniaturize the technology enough to make efficient handhelds."
Compare this with the capabilities of the radios used by these men. They are $50 dual band radios optimized to operate on 70cm and 2m frequencies and their spectrum can be expanded via firmware update. They can be expected to communicate for miles even in the woods and even further with cloud cover using just 5w. Using two of these radios configured correctly and strapped together they will form an improvised repeater that can be put in a high position expanding line of sight dramatically and you can find a how-to telling you exactly how to do it on youtube. It's simple enough to remember and be able to set up in about 2 minutes without anyone in your group really understanding much about how it or their radios work. These radios will operate for hours without recharge but you can very easily improvise solar powered operation for such a repeater with off the shelf components. That can be as simple and effective as a motorcycle or UPS battery, a 20w panel, a small car inverter, and a waterproof ammo can. Or you could just change the batteries every day. You can even float one up with a weather balloon. Alternatively, for under $500 you can get an old ham repeater that is capable of putting a lot more power into the transmission. That is far less mobile, requires more power, and might or might not actually perform better than a network of these improvised repeaters, each forming a unique channel programmed into their radio memory and their radios set to scan through those channels. For not much more an HF transceiver can be used for much longer ranges, think state or even nation hopping distances at very low power.
If you are proficient enough to build hardware for GNU Radio use, instead of a dramatically inferior and far more expensive radio you could just build a second battery operated box that plugs in the mic port and encrypts/decrypts audio. You could likely do this with $5 arduinos and certainly do it with $20 raspberry pis. Then you can just use the cheap off the shelf baofengs they were already using. Unfortunately, this doesn't get you frequency hopping so while the content of your communications would be encrypted you'd want to minimize communications and keep them short so there isn't enough time to home in on your signal. An SDR would be superior in this respect.
All that aside, I'm not arguing that an SDR couldn't be built to operate on these HAM bands. But for the moment I'm trusting in the hardware page of the project as an indicator either that the chips aren't available or that you'd have to code support for such chips because the project is focusing on hardware optimized for unlicensed spectrum where the features of their software can be used legally.
I was suggesting a solution to the current risk of economic ruin we face due to risk of deflation not suggesting a way to redistribute wealth. But adding inflation that is distributed directly to the people would do some of that indirectly because it would increase the amount of risk one must assume in those investments in order to bring a greater return than inflation. Investment is gambling, the ultra wealthy engage in very low risk gambling with lots of wagers spread all over the place. Higher risk means they'd lose more of those bets.
This isn't going to take all the rich people's wealth away, it might mean being a hair less successful than the general population in capturing new wealth generated. It would put more of the newly generated money into the hands of the general population. Currently the newly generated money from inflation comes out of the hands of everyone with a dollar, no matter how poor, and goes directly into the hands of the wealthy so they can lend it out.
"No, EVERYONE does not benefit from an increase in performance; only those who bump into the upper end of their machine's performance actually benefit from the extra performance."
"When every action you perform on a machine is instant and there are no longer progress bars or hour glasses"
A progress bar or hour glass is someone bumping into the upper end of their machines performance. Okay, admittedly some of these are hard coded to display as animations so there is a minimum time they'd appear regardless but generally speaking they are there because most users bump into the upper end of their machines performance.
Just because people are willing to accept delays does not mean they wouldn't benefit from getting rid of them. Time is a resource which is completely limited for all of us.
"Not to mention that the additional cost often does not justify that extra speed, if the bottlenecks are few and far between and unless the intended processes are truly CPU/GPU-bound, and the slowness is not due to any other constraint that is already in the top echelon of its performance."
I made no claims of cost effectiveness. You are making a lot of assumptions here, even limiting the definition of performance to cpu/gpu and then you throw out a statement that flies in the face of your own argument.
"And in case you haven't noticed, your "goal" will ALWAYS be unobtainable; because software will ALWAYS expand in computational requirements to fill the computational resources... PLUS 10 percent..."
So you agree, everyone would benefit from more performance because it would increase the useful lifespan of their machine.
I wasn't just talking about cpu but you are a generation behind. The A72 is the current gen of that line and about 400% faster than the A57. But today it is no longer about how fast an individual chip is, it's about how much power they consume and how many cores you can squeeze in per rack u. The most important feature is found right here:
1-4x SMP within a single processor cluster, and multiple coherent SMP processor clusters through AMBA® 5 CHI or AMBA 4 ACE technology.
That will provide for a very dense rack and a lot of vms.
Mint is actually the superior experience these day and Mint w/ KDE is a superior experience to anything Canonical ever produced or what you get on your Mac.