Historically, the list books you check out from a library have been protected. However, with the way the government is thinking about it, it is just metadata, since it isn't the books themselves. At this point, I'd honestly be surprised if they weren't mining that data also.
As we've mentioned above, libraries typically delete records as soon as you return whatever you borrowed, so they can't be 'mined'. I believe it's a standard feature in library software these days.
Same here. The library records are deleted as soon as the book/DVD/CD is safely returned to ensure they can't be forced to hand over historical records.
I wonder why people keep comparing information processing with physical technologies as if there's some common ground?
You mean, microprocessors aren't 'physical technologies'? Damn, that's going to amuse my chip-designing friends.
And the 747 was, of course, a highly developed and mature technology for its era, so hardly likely to improve at the exponential rate seen in microprocessors.
But, hey, keep making completely spurious comparisons if it makes you feel good. I'll see you back here in 40 years.
In ITER, if not mitigated in some way, the electron stream could become so intense it would explosively vaporize holes through the wall of the reactor, like some kind of science fictional beam weapon.
Then they've clearly missed an opportunity. Rather than trying to sell it to governments as a fusion reactor, they should have been selling it to the US military as 'some kind of science fictional beam weapon'.
Base don this I fully expect to see the first fully developed commercial fusion power plant come online by 2130 given the track record for fusion research.
I think it's far more likely that, in 2030, Elon Musk will announce that Telsa have finally produced a usable electric car, powered by a Mr Fusion pack, at the same time as the government announces a new $100,000,000,000 project that will build a working fusion reactor by 2050.
Look at what it took with the US to make nuclear fission with the Manhattan Project. Sometimes the only way to get something to work is to throw enough money at it, that just sheer force of capital, it gets done.
That wasn't 'making nuclear fission work'. That was making nuclear bombs work.
Fission reactors were essentially trivial: pile up enough moderately enriched uranium and it starts fissioning on its own.
What makes this different is the international consortium of government funding of the project to the tune of $30 BILLION.
I'm sure usable fusion reactors will be built at some point this century. I'm equally sure that they won't be developed by governments throwing money at people with a decades-long record of failure.
Indeed. Pretty soon we'll have an entire generation of scientists and engineers retiring after spending their entire life NOT generating power from fusion.
Elon Musk would depend on all of NASA's past work, and the NSF, and DARPA, and, etc. etc.
So would NASA. And it would still cost them a hundred times as much, because the program would be designed to funnel money to ex-Shuttle contractors and other troughers, not to put astronauts on Mars.
Unless you count building a rocket that's expected to cost billions of dollars to launch every few years, if any payloads are ever funded, as 'achieving something'.
How long will it be before there is a business reason to go to Mars? I'm thinking a LONG time.. So NASA is a reasonable expense, if you have the money.
I'm willing to bet $5 that Elon Musk lands humans on Mars well before NASA do, and for 1% of the cost of a NASA mission.
Sadly, today's NASA can take any amount of money you give them and blow it on pork without achieving anything.
Yeah, if some imperialist bastards from the other end of the world walked up and told me what to do I wouldn't be terribly motivated either, genocide threat or not.
You do realise Nigeria was given independence in 1960, and, given the timeframe, the GP's father was probably there to assist with the oil boom which was making the country rich, right?
But don't let that get in the way of your idiot leftyist rant.
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Because a nuke in the atmosphere won't affect libraries too?
EMP doesn't wipe ink off paper. Otherwise we'd just reuse it after blasting it with radio waves.
By contrast, in the Culture novels by Iain M Banks, the Minds use their absolute knowledge to create a utopia.
Yeah, that's what the Minds tell you... dumb humans fall for anything.
Historically, the list books you check out from a library have been protected. However, with the way the government is thinking about it, it is just metadata, since it isn't the books themselves. At this point, I'd honestly be surprised if they weren't mining that data also.
As we've mentioned above, libraries typically delete records as soon as you return whatever you borrowed, so they can't be 'mined'. I believe it's a standard feature in library software these days.
Same here. The library records are deleted as soon as the book/DVD/CD is safely returned to ensure they can't be forced to hand over historical records.
If only companies would do the same...
We've thrown vast amounts of money at the Third World, and it's still the Third World.
And Apple will not leave Ireland or kill jobs since the subsidiaries they used weren't even in the country to begin with.
If they 'weren't even in the country to begin with', why should they be paying tax there?
It is not a project with a decades-long record in failure. Actually they are very successful.
At what?
Which, although perhaps technically easier, wasn't exactly cheap, either. It was also heavily funded and subsidized by governments.
Which merely brought it ahead by a few years.
If left solely to the private sector to be developed and proven, it probably still would have happened, but who knows when and in what form.
Almost certainly not the form which produced Chernobyl and Fukupishima.
There are much better and safer reactor designs, but only if you don't want to use them to make plutonium for nuclear bombs.
I wonder why people keep comparing information processing with physical technologies as if there's some common ground?
You mean, microprocessors aren't 'physical technologies'? Damn, that's going to amuse my chip-designing friends.
And the 747 was, of course, a highly developed and mature technology for its era, so hardly likely to improve at the exponential rate seen in microprocessors.
But, hey, keep making completely spurious comparisons if it makes you feel good. I'll see you back here in 40 years.
In ITER, if not mitigated in some way, the electron stream could become so intense it would explosively vaporize holes through the wall of the reactor, like some kind of science fictional beam weapon.
Then they've clearly missed an opportunity. Rather than trying to sell it to governments as a fusion reactor, they should have been selling it to the US military as 'some kind of science fictional beam weapon'.
I wonder where the 3D printers fans will be in 40 years when not a single of their revolutionary predictions will have come to pass?
<1980>
I wonder where the microprocessor fans will be in 40 years when not a single of their revolutionary predictions will have come to pass?
</1980>
Hey, I wonder whether you'll be back here in 40 years to admit you were wrong? I'd better bookmark this story.
Base don this I fully expect to see the first fully developed commercial fusion power plant come online by 2130 given the track record for fusion research.
I think it's far more likely that, in 2030, Elon Musk will announce that Telsa have finally produced a usable electric car, powered by a Mr Fusion pack, at the same time as the government announces a new $100,000,000,000 project that will build a working fusion reactor by 2050.
Look at what it took with the US to make nuclear fission with the Manhattan Project. Sometimes the only way to get something to work is to throw enough money at it, that just sheer force of capital, it gets done.
That wasn't 'making nuclear fission work'. That was making nuclear bombs work.
Fission reactors were essentially trivial: pile up enough moderately enriched uranium and it starts fissioning on its own.
What makes this different is the international consortium of government funding of the project to the tune of $30 BILLION.
I'm sure usable fusion reactors will be built at some point this century. I'm equally sure that they won't be developed by governments throwing money at people with a decades-long record of failure.
You only just realized that?
Indeed. Pretty soon we'll have an entire generation of scientists and engineers retiring after spending their entire life NOT generating power from fusion.
We should have scrapped the whole thing long ago.
Elon Musk would depend on all of NASA's past work, and the NSF, and DARPA, and, etc. etc.
So would NASA. And it would still cost them a hundred times as much, because the program would be designed to funnel money to ex-Shuttle contractors and other troughers, not to put astronauts on Mars.
Show a specific example of that happening.
SLS.
Unless you count building a rocket that's expected to cost billions of dollars to launch every few years, if any payloads are ever funded, as 'achieving something'.
There's probably a 75% higher probability that someone will die in the process.
For decades, NASA was quite happy with a launch vehicle that killed the crew one time in sixty. That's shouldn't be a hard record to beat.
How long will it be before there is a business reason to go to Mars? I'm thinking a LONG time.. So NASA is a reasonable expense, if you have the money.
I'm willing to bet $5 that Elon Musk lands humans on Mars well before NASA do, and for 1% of the cost of a NASA mission.
Sadly, today's NASA can take any amount of money you give them and blow it on pork without achieving anything.
Except the 'full Ubuntu desktop' is Unity, which is a tablet interface, not a desktop interface.
Pinch, Zoom, scrolling, selecting several parts of the screen at once, pen and paper tasks...
So you want to spend all day holding your arm out, just to avoid using the mouse buttons and scroll wheels?
Not to mention wiping fingerprints off it every couple of hours.
I want touch screen on my Desktop.
Why?
What possible use is there for a touch screen, when you have a mouse and keyboard?
Finger painting?
Yeah, if some imperialist bastards from the other end of the world walked up and told me what to do I wouldn't be terribly motivated either, genocide threat or not.
You do realise Nigeria was given independence in 1960, and, given the timeframe, the GP's father was probably there to assist with the oil boom which was making the country rich, right?
But don't let that get in the way of your idiot leftyist rant.
Of course you don't need DRM. You don't produce content with value.
Producers of content with value want DRM.
I produce 'content with value'. I don't use DRM.
Nor do I care if 'content with value' isn't available because the producers don't get DRM. Let them go bust.