Whenever the subject of a basic income comes up, this same argument is made. But it's simply not true:
There's already scores of people who -for whatever reasons- aren't part of the work force. Usually they do have an income. Be it a retirement allowance (65+), some disability provision, some temporary allowance between jobs, etc, etc. Replace that with a basic income, and the net financial result is the same. Minus the overhead.
People who do have a job, often get various allowances too: low-income rent subsidies, health care benefits, child support, the list goes on. Replace that with a basic income, adjust tax levels such that [previous net income + allowances] = [basic income + new net income], and again net result is the same. Minus the overhead.
As a poster in a previous discussion remarked: this can be done gradually by giving a basic income to select group(s) of people, and then one-by-one, roll various other groups into the same regime. Reducing the governments' administrative overhead at each step along the way.
Bottom line: yes, western countries can afford this, period. Because in one way or another, they already do. Plus the overhead, that is. What's missing is the political will (or balls;-) to turn it into reality.
Once the government has the ability to scan files belonging to hundreds of millions of users (..)
Depends on who does the searching, read: who determines how exactly that search is done. Compare with the situation where somebody wants your help in looking up something on the internet. There is a significant difference between:
a) You being handed a clue on what to look for, followed by you using your own computer / software / internet connection to look for answers, and hand back results. Versus
b) You stepping aside, and letting the other person use your computer / software / internet connection to look for answers. Possibly with little supervision if any.
In the case of a), you have full control over how the search is done, where files go etc, and you see what's happening. In the case of b), you don't. While you're not looking, the other party may do something you wouldn't approve of, quickly save other/unrelated files on an USB stick etc. You'd either have to permanently look over that person's shoulder to watch what is being typed or clicked, or you'd have to trust that person but -in the end- simply not know what (s)he did.
As user/client of a number of internet companies, I have few problems with governments submitting requests for assistance to a company, company judging those request(s) for their merit and legal standing, and providing answers to such requests where deemed necessary or 'the right thing to do'. After all, as user/client of that company you place -some- trust in them. Likewise, you choose what company you trust in which way, and what data you hand to each.
But I have a lot of problems with governments being provided uncontrolled access, backdoors / data taps etc (both for stored data and communication lines), with little/no supervision on what is being looked for, how, where results go, or how long that's stored in 3-letter agency's archives.
If this was such a good solution, it could probably be used for LED lights as well, since they throw off a non-negligible amount of heat as well.
Unfortunately that is mostly in the form of heating of the LED semiconductor die, relatively little in the form of infrared radiation. So the method presented in the article would have only a small effect on a LED's efficiency (if at all).
And yes, there's a relation between the temperature of an object and how much IR it radiates. But unlike glowing-hot-wires, operating temperatures of LEDs are not in a range where this is a big factor.
Your two statements have no financial differnce so where does the extra money come from?
Ehm... that was kind of my point. Choose the numbers right, and the financial end result is the same. There is no 'extra' money needed.
But in the old situation, people might be more or less forced to take some job, and you'd need a lot of bureaucrats to keep tabs on people's affairs. Costs for the latter can be cut, and those bureaucrats can go do something more productive.
In the new situation, nobody would be forced to take some job just to have food on the table or a roof over their head. Just a very low minimum standard, not to be confused with: "enjoying the good life" @ other people's expense. Employers may enjoy a lower minimum wage, so they'll be able to get their work done for less. At the same time, they'd lose much of their power to abuse employees simply because they can.
That's overlooking at least one thing: research has shown that when income inequality is kept in bounds, everybody gets happier. Including the rich folks.
Some difference is okay. It motivates people to go out & earn money by producing stuff, or provide useful services.
Too much difference just causes trouble. Poor folks who are struggling every day to make ends meet, rich folks who have waaaayy more than their fair share of the overall wealth. Enjoying that share less than the poor folks would enjoy it if distributed more equally. Take rich <-> poor differences too far, and you get riots in the streets or even all-out war. Which makes everybody worse off. Including the rich folks.
This holds both for differences between people in one country, as for between countries as a whole.
Secondly: as the poor folks become richer, their increased buying power adds new customers to the economy. We're seeing that right now with countries like China. They used to be mostly poor people who scraped a living by producing goods for western countries. In return, their average wealth / middle class has grown, making them potential buyers for a lot of western countries' products. Win-win.
Amazing how often people seem to think this would be a net "money sink" by definition. Compare the following situations:
Person A is unemployed, and receives, say € 700 as benefits. Person B has a job, and makes € 2000 per month. Versus
Person A is unemployed, but gets a basic income of € 700. Person B gets a basic income of € 700, and has a job to earn an additional € 1300 a month.
It's simply a matter of choosing the numbers appropriately, and adjusting tax levels (and -perhaps- hourly wages etc) as necessary to compensate. Oh wait, that's not counting the large # of government bureaucrats who aren't needed anymore because the rules are simplified. So those bureaucrats can go do something that's more productive than count beans and meddle in other people's private affairs.
In short: there is money to pay for this, period. If only the political will exists. Especially in modern, wealthy western countries.
Personally I'm a big believer in this. For one, it could help greatly to equalize the power balance between employers and employees. In a largely capitalist society, that balance is skewed strongly towards employers. Employees are like water in the ocean, so employers can pick & chose at will. In theory employees can do the same. But in practice, they can't. If they refuse a job offer, they may be unable to put food on the table, lose the roof over their head, etc. A bureaucrat may be breathing down their neck, threatening to cut benefits if they don't take a job. So in practice, they often don't have much of a choice.
When worries about job security (and income security that comes with it) are gone, that could have huge positive effects on the mental well-being of the population. Less fighting between spouses over money, fewer troubles between low-income tenants and their landlords, drug addicts that don't have to go out stealing to pay for their habit, etc, etc, etc. And that's not even taking into account that people will have greater job satisfaction when given the freedom to pursue the jobs they want.
I think over time, the way things are currently done, simply won't work anymore and something will have to change if large-scale social unrest is to be avoided. A basic income would be a big step in the right direction, with potentially huge positive effects on society. The time is ripe for it, let's hope experiments like this will show it's a good idea and actually works.
It could be an excuse to develop even more intrusive / difficult to filter ads than what we've seen so far. But unlike other arms races, I think -over time- that's a dead end. Unless you want to chase all visitors away.
The other choice is re-evaluate how costs are covered. Some options: (mix & match as needed)
Put up a paywall - subscribers only. Or a partial paywall: some stuff free, premium stuff for paying subscribers.
To keep a lid on hosting costs: a return to low(er) bandwidth content. Fewer scripts, images cut to appropriate size / linked through thumbnail vs. full-size directly in each page. More text or pictures vs. stupid video with just a talking head. Plain image ads (hosted on your own site not 3rd party-provided) vs. animated gifs or Flash content. Etc, etc. Read: better content / fluff ratio.
For material that's not self-produced: more linking back to original site(s). Versus (for example) dozens of copies of the same video smeared across dozens of other sites that add little or no content themselves.
For sites with deep-pocketed owners: simply pay (as owner) to get your message out there. If audience and/or bandwidth requirements are modest enough, pockets need not be deep.
Sell physical products, with website regarded as a cost of doing business.
Explore donation / crowdsourcing options.
Increased interest in micro-payment options.
Come to think of it, any of the above sounds fine to me. The "everything free, payed for with ads" model was broken to begin with, imho. It just grew that way because workable alternatives didn't exist. These days, alternatives may exist. And what's more: the numbers have changed dramatically. What used to buy you a few GB hosting traffic per month, may now by you 1000x that amount. If you're in a business where contents changed such that bandwidth requirements went up the same: tough. But if not: serve 1000x more visitors for the same $.
You might have been right if the DRM applied aligns 100% with legal boundaries. That is, allow what's legal and prevent illegal uses. And keeps doing so as circumstances / place / time changes.
But in practice, it never does. DRM on an e-book that prevents copying period, also prevents copying small snippets to use as quote. Which is perfectly legal - see "fair use".
Unlike author claims, the DRM on Blu-rays is far from broken. If it were, playing them on open source operating systems like Linux would be as easy as playing DVD's on there. But that's not the case. There's databases of per-disk decoding keys floating around. There's libraries that emulate some sort of virtual machine that's built into 'authorised' playback devices. There's other libraries that cut through parts of the DRM bullshit, or attempt to streamline the process.
But all of these are kludges, there's no 100% guarantee that a random Blu-ray will play (using open source, at the moment), and it's a lot of hassle for users who are just trying to play discs they legally purchased. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the DRM on Blu-rays will be as irrelevant as that on DVD's, but we're not there yet and in any case it doesn't change the annoyance factor one bit.
What's more: these issues mostly bother legal users, those who download movies illegally couldn't care less. But the DRM will still be in place as long as the discs itself. Regardless of legalities.
There's countless examples like that. The technical measures are practically never capable of following legal developments, nor do they adapt to local jurisdiction. Or have a built-in kill switch that 'frees' a product when legal restrictions end. In my personal opinion: DRM simply lowers the value of products that it's applied to, PERIOD. Sometimes to the point of making those products worthless. Some DRM is just more annoying or difficult to circumvent than others.
That is, until those are commercialized and become affordable for common uses.
So many issues with today's 'wet' batteries result from having a liquid electrolyte where particles move around, distance between electrodes may very somewhat (locally, at least), substances can dissolve in one place and deposit elsewhere (or form structures that cause a short circuit), electrolyte slowly escapes through a cells' sealing or (potentially) bursts into a cloud of smoke & fire when cell is abused, etc, etc.
Move to a construction that consists entirely of solid materials, and you get more capacitor-like behavior: vastly increased # of charge/discharge cycles, possible to make much safer, wider temperature range, potentially high capacity and/or power density, short charging times, less degradation when stored in discharged condition, etc. To top it of, perhaps lower cost as well.
Would be good to have an article about current state of the art in this area.
The devil is in the details. And in particular, the cost of those details and how they chip away at the results you start with.
Disclaimer: I'm by no means a battery expert in any way, shape or form. But if you read enough about battery tech, one thing that becomes clear is that it's basically a fuzzy science due to the many factors involved. Some examples:
In the lab, you may use ultra-pure compounds to construct your battery. Such compounds can be expensive though. So for mass production you'd need to use some commercial-grade material that's less pure. The contaminants in there may not matter much. Or they may. It may depend on where that commercial-grade material is sourced. One way or the other, chances are performance / longevity / capacity is reduced vs. your lab sample.
In the lab, there's lots of things you could try with the materials used. Nano-size structures, layers a few atoms thick deposited on some base material, etc, etc. But for production, none of that matters as you have to be able to actually mass-produce it. And at low enough cost. Which means most of of those nifty tricks will be out. Possibly exactly those tricks that made the improvement.
In the lab, you'll have carefully controlled conditions. Once it's turned into a product, not so. Cells may be overcharged, over-discharged, dropped, dented, overheated, etc. Providing sufficient safety margins / features for that, can easily nullify those gains seen in the lab. A cell that sees most of its cycles around 40 degrees C may have a vastly different cycle life than one operating at 20 degrees C. Etc, etc.
Last but not least: it's a long road from lab to product. As explained above: many factors involved.
Try pushing they key, samzenpus. The "Backspace" key, that is ("Del" may also work).
Okay, I know Slashdot editing isn't known for its quality work. But come on... not even 70 words, a one-minute reading out loud of the summary makes a spelling error like that stand out like a sore thumb. Exactly what job does/. pay their editors for, again?
Bottom line: privacy-sensitive data will be snooped upon by US government agencies. If it isn't in one way, then in another. Either legal or illegal. Such data isn't safe when controlled by US companies, and isn't safe when it passes over US-controlled communication lines. Unless protected by strong encryption that doesn't contain backdoors. Well... possibly not safe either on other communication lines, but that's another story. If you have such data to protect, the first thing to do is make sure it isn't stored by a US-based company, or on US soil.
Things like this are doing economic damage to the US already, and (I suspect) will continue to do so for a looong time. Want to fix that? Start by fixing your totally fubar-ed political system.
All criticism of Islam or resistance of Muslim immigration is hate speech. Modulate yourself, or else.
I think you meant "resistance to" and "Moderate", but anyway: you're wrong.
My country (the NL) has pretty similar laws when it comes to freedom of expression: basically the line is drawn at calling upon others to use violence against (members of) some group of society.
If you ridicule, make a parody, or just plain state you hate some group, then free speech-wise you're in the clear. The simple fact that some part of the population may feel offended, is not enough to wield the ban hammer. Even staying within these limits allows a lot of speech, which is often misunderstood as "anything goes". Not so.
If you say you'd rather see some people walk off a cliff, hit by a bus, die in a fire, return to where they came from (or similar), then you're walking the line. For example our own politician Geert Wilders is known for doing this, and has crossed the line, or not (depending on point of view or interpretation of the law). What matters here is whether you advocate actively doing those things to others, or not. The difference between "I wouldn't mind if he died" vs. "Let's go out and kill him!".
If you clearly do the latter, then you have crossed into territory when free speech ends. Calling upon others to burn down houses, hit someone in the face when "Allah Akbar!" is heard, beat up immigrants or Arabic-looking people with too long beards, all qualifies. The specific group doesn't matter; immigrants, Muslims, blacks, Jews, any minority (or even majority) enjoys the same protections.
In practice, the line is blurred. Sensitivities may differ. Some targeted groups are more likely to file a complaint than others. Some groups may be more used to being ridiculed or discriminated against. Laws are open to interpretation, what's decided in a lower court may be tossed by a higher court. Context, and common practice may have a lot of weight in the decision. But in any case, above principles apply.
Also note that free speech doesn't imply a free press for everyone. Facebook, Google, Twitter etc can be said to have some social responsibility, should provide an open platform etc. But in the end they're private companies. Their site, their rules (within the law, that is). So I read this newspost mostly as a statement saying "yes we'll do more policing to remove content that is questionable with respect to your local laws". Censorship? Removing stuff that (as free speech) should be allowed? Perhaps... but not so much, imho.
Ehm... the Moon has gravity on it's own, you know. Even though it's about 1/6th of Earth's surface gravity. And the Moon's total mass makes for an escape velocity of 2.38 kilometer per second.
So how exactly you suppose that [large enough chunk to do global damage to Earth] would be separated from the Moon, and brought above that escape velocity? Bring a Tsar Bomba there, bury deep under the surface and detonate? Fire a 50m+ diameter rock out of a city-sized gun? All under the radar of other space-faring nations?
Surewhynot (fyi: that's simply the first 3 Google hits).
Yes, there's a lot that's not "open" in iSomething land. But at least they understand open source, and work with a variety of open source projects (well okay... as long as it helps their business;-).
Don't know where you got that 2W number from, but TAG Heuer's product description specifies:
"410mAh battery (minimum 25 hours battery life, based on typical usage)"
Assuming that's a Li-ion battery (3.7V nominal), that would translate into ~60 milliwatt average power (or less). Obviously that means the cpu sleeps most of the time. And perhaps even that tiny display consumes more than the cpu? Or various embedded sensors? Who knows.
Still a huge amount of power for a wristwatch imho. But hey a smartwatch is a little more than that...
Not by a long shot... Per capita the US is still one of the biggest polluters when it comes to greenhouse gasses (if not the biggest). Taking that graph you linked, China emits just under 2x the amount of CO2 the US does. But does so with >4 times the number of people. Likewise India emits less than half what the US does, with ~4x bigger population. And while the EU is certainly a big emitter, it emits less than the US while having >1.5x bigger population.
That's of course with 2011 figures according to that graph.
Why should they foot the bill for such a project (assuming it's even doable), when it's other nations that are causing the problem? That's especially true if the costs may exceed this tiny nation's income.
Now one can argue about how much of this problem is man-made, and how much is natural causes. And you can argue about how costs should be divided between nations that contribute(d) to the problem. But even then, some part of the problem is man-made, which means the *fair* thing to do would be to pay compensation for that part of the damage.
Of course: fat chance that'll happen. Especially as long as unbridled capitalism, global megacorps, and politicians in their pocket seems to be the norm. So I'd expect to see business as usual: damage is done by group of people in place A, consequences are suffered by group of people in place B - through no fault of their own (see: externalities).
Well article is a little vague on that... On the one hand, it talks about "If all those gray hairs could go back to work" which suggests it could apply to people living now. But who would want that anyway if all our wishes will be some robot's command anyway in a few decades.;-)
Otoh it talks about "CRISPR, a new method for editing genes". Which (I assume) would apply to newborns not grown-ups? Read: a next generation.
Better to sort out the ethics first. If the tech would apply to adult people, then I'd say: go for it, let some volunteers act as guinea pigs if they want, and push mankind's knowledge ahead. But if it applies to not-yet-born individuals, you can't ask them. Even if it were in whole of mankind's interest, could you have them "take one for the team"? In a civilized society, I think the answer is no. Maybe mice, rats or other animals, but not humans.
Of course, if it's technically possible then odds are @ some point, someone will do it - ethics be damned.
As for our gene pool, I'd have less worries. After all: Darwin still applies, even to 'enhanced' humans that may have as-of-yet-unknown shortcomings in other areas. As the article notes:
"Moreover, genes can have multiple purposes - day jobs and night jobs, as Lander put it. These are complex systems, not modules that you can pop out and replace with a better version with zero unintended consequences."
The reason will be the pressure differential. With vacuum inside, a drive's housing would have to be much stronger. Read: thicker, bulkier, heavier, more expensive, and leaving less room inside for platters / heads etc.
SSDs may ultimately overtake spinning rust for consumer level storage needs
Seeing where technology is heading, that's pretty much a given and only a matter of time (and you can scratch "consumer level" from that phrase, I think). But NOT
simply because we're running out of shit to store.
Are U kidding, we'll just find new stuff to fill the space available. As it's always been. In particular hi-def video (got some 4K videos yet?;-), but for example 100GB+ downloaded games may also become 'normal' some day. Never mind datacenters or other professional uses.
That said: yes, it is becoming easier & easier to find room for all that other stuff we've got on our hard drives and USB sticks.
It wouldn't surprise me if at some point the open source driver would catch up to the closed source one. AMD would do well to direct their driver-related efforts in converging the two. That is: if they feel a closed source driver is needed, base it on open source components as much as practical. And put improvements back into those open source parts where possible.
From what I've read, AMD has already made some moves in that direction. Which is a good thing. Shared effort (community <-> AMD), limited resources, etc. Regardless of what products AMD kicks out, software is a significant part of making those products successful. And the open source crowd should NOT be ignored in that process (luckily that's not the case, but hey there's always room for improvement:-). Even if it were just a way to offload some of the work to 3rd parties.
Along the same lines, we should establish a permanent Moon base first. The Moon is much, much, much closer to Earth than Mars, but having a permanent base there presents many of the same challenges:
Temperature extremes, radiation, micro-meteorites (common to any space mission, I suppose). Needing to lift gear much further up than a 300~400 km low orbit. Actually succeeding in landing that gear undamaged. Gravity - but lower than on Earth. Redundant and/or extremely reliable life support systems, since Earth will be 'close' but still too far away for actual emergencies.
Not to mention the advantage that (some) raw materials could be dug up on site, or even sent back to Earth for analysis. While the latter may not be feasible on a Mars mission, it wouldn't hurt for practice / research purposes. And communication lines would be 'low' latency and easy to set up. Also in case of the Moon, we don't have to wait for a launch window in which Earth & Mars are lined up for a shortest-possible trip time.
Oh and btw what about other destinations? Read somewhere that the upper atmosphere of Venus might be an option? What about humans on one of the many other moons in our solar system? When talking about manned missions, would those options all be dropped in favour of a Mars mission? (if so, I'd pick the "send more robots" option...)
Ehm.. a backdoor doesn't program itself and then ends up in firmware because of a 'programming mistake', or because 'corners were cut'. For whatever reason it was done, a backdoor has to be intentionally put there.
That automatically turns "incompetent" into "malicious". Unless end-user was informed of the presence of said backdoor and the reason(s) for its existence, and was okay with that. Which of course is never the case.
Slashdot Mirror
Whenever the subject of a basic income comes up, this same argument is made. But it's simply not true:
There's already scores of people who -for whatever reasons- aren't part of the work force. Usually they do have an income. Be it a retirement allowance (65+), some disability provision, some temporary allowance between jobs, etc, etc. Replace that with a basic income, and the net financial result is the same. Minus the overhead.
People who do have a job, often get various allowances too: low-income rent subsidies, health care benefits, child support, the list goes on. Replace that with a basic income, adjust tax levels such that [previous net income + allowances] = [basic income + new net income], and again net result is the same. Minus the overhead.
As a poster in a previous discussion remarked: this can be done gradually by giving a basic income to select group(s) of people, and then one-by-one, roll various other groups into the same regime. Reducing the governments' administrative overhead at each step along the way.
Bottom line: yes, western countries can afford this, period. Because in one way or another, they already do. Plus the overhead, that is. What's missing is the political will (or balls ;-) to turn it into reality.
Once the government has the ability to scan files belonging to hundreds of millions of users (..)
Depends on who does the searching, read: who determines how exactly that search is done. Compare with the situation where somebody wants your help in looking up something on the internet. There is a significant difference between:
a) You being handed a clue on what to look for, followed by you using your own computer / software / internet connection to look for answers, and hand back results. Versus
b) You stepping aside, and letting the other person use your computer / software / internet connection to look for answers. Possibly with little supervision if any.
In the case of a), you have full control over how the search is done, where files go etc, and you see what's happening. In the case of b), you don't. While you're not looking, the other party may do something you wouldn't approve of, quickly save other/unrelated files on an USB stick etc. You'd either have to permanently look over that person's shoulder to watch what is being typed or clicked, or you'd have to trust that person but -in the end- simply not know what (s)he did.
As user/client of a number of internet companies, I have few problems with governments submitting requests for assistance to a company, company judging those request(s) for their merit and legal standing, and providing answers to such requests where deemed necessary or 'the right thing to do'. After all, as user/client of that company you place -some- trust in them. Likewise, you choose what company you trust in which way, and what data you hand to each.
But I have a lot of problems with governments being provided uncontrolled access, backdoors / data taps etc (both for stored data and communication lines), with little/no supervision on what is being looked for, how, where results go, or how long that's stored in 3-letter agency's archives.
If this was such a good solution, it could probably be used for LED lights as well, since they throw off a non-negligible amount of heat as well.
Unfortunately that is mostly in the form of heating of the LED semiconductor die, relatively little in the form of infrared radiation. So the method presented in the article would have only a small effect on a LED's efficiency (if at all).
And yes, there's a relation between the temperature of an object and how much IR it radiates. But unlike glowing-hot-wires, operating temperatures of LEDs are not in a range where this is a big factor.
Your two statements have no financial differnce so where does the extra money come from?
Ehm... that was kind of my point. Choose the numbers right, and the financial end result is the same. There is no 'extra' money needed.
But in the old situation, people might be more or less forced to take some job, and you'd need a lot of bureaucrats to keep tabs on people's affairs. Costs for the latter can be cut, and those bureaucrats can go do something more productive.
In the new situation, nobody would be forced to take some job just to have food on the table or a roof over their head. Just a very low minimum standard, not to be confused with: "enjoying the good life" @ other people's expense. Employers may enjoy a lower minimum wage, so they'll be able to get their work done for less. At the same time, they'd lose much of their power to abuse employees simply because they can.
That's overlooking at least one thing: research has shown that when income inequality is kept in bounds, everybody gets happier. Including the rich folks.
Some difference is okay. It motivates people to go out & earn money by producing stuff, or provide useful services.
Too much difference just causes trouble. Poor folks who are struggling every day to make ends meet, rich folks who have waaaayy more than their fair share of the overall wealth. Enjoying that share less than the poor folks would enjoy it if distributed more equally. Take rich <-> poor differences too far, and you get riots in the streets or even all-out war. Which makes everybody worse off. Including the rich folks.
This holds both for differences between people in one country, as for between countries as a whole.
Secondly: as the poor folks become richer, their increased buying power adds new customers to the economy. We're seeing that right now with countries like China. They used to be mostly poor people who scraped a living by producing goods for western countries. In return, their average wealth / middle class has grown, making them potential buyers for a lot of western countries' products. Win-win.
Amazing how often people seem to think this would be a net "money sink" by definition. Compare the following situations:
Person A is unemployed, and receives, say € 700 as benefits.
Person B has a job, and makes € 2000 per month. Versus
Person A is unemployed, but gets a basic income of € 700.
Person B gets a basic income of € 700, and has a job to earn an additional € 1300 a month.
It's simply a matter of choosing the numbers appropriately, and adjusting tax levels (and -perhaps- hourly wages etc) as necessary to compensate. Oh wait, that's not counting the large # of government bureaucrats who aren't needed anymore because the rules are simplified. So those bureaucrats can go do something that's more productive than count beans and meddle in other people's private affairs.
In short: there is money to pay for this, period. If only the political will exists. Especially in modern, wealthy western countries.
Personally I'm a big believer in this. For one, it could help greatly to equalize the power balance between employers and employees. In a largely capitalist society, that balance is skewed strongly towards employers. Employees are like water in the ocean, so employers can pick & chose at will. In theory employees can do the same. But in practice, they can't. If they refuse a job offer, they may be unable to put food on the table, lose the roof over their head, etc. A bureaucrat may be breathing down their neck, threatening to cut benefits if they don't take a job. So in practice, they often don't have much of a choice.
When worries about job security (and income security that comes with it) are gone, that could have huge positive effects on the mental well-being of the population. Less fighting between spouses over money, fewer troubles between low-income tenants and their landlords, drug addicts that don't have to go out stealing to pay for their habit, etc, etc, etc. And that's not even taking into account that people will have greater job satisfaction when given the freedom to pursue the jobs they want.
I think over time, the way things are currently done, simply won't work anymore and something will have to change if large-scale social unrest is to be avoided. A basic income would be a big step in the right direction, with potentially huge positive effects on society. The time is ripe for it, let's hope experiments like this will show it's a good idea and actually works.
It could be an excuse to develop even more intrusive / difficult to filter ads than what we've seen so far. But unlike other arms races, I think -over time- that's a dead end. Unless you want to chase all visitors away.
The other choice is re-evaluate how costs are covered. Some options: (mix & match as needed)
Put up a paywall - subscribers only. Or a partial paywall: some stuff free, premium stuff for paying subscribers.
To keep a lid on hosting costs: a return to low(er) bandwidth content. Fewer scripts, images cut to appropriate size / linked through thumbnail vs. full-size directly in each page. More text or pictures vs. stupid video with just a talking head. Plain image ads (hosted on your own site not 3rd party-provided) vs. animated gifs or Flash content. Etc, etc. Read: better content / fluff ratio.
For material that's not self-produced: more linking back to original site(s). Versus (for example) dozens of copies of the same video smeared across dozens of other sites that add little or no content themselves.
For sites with deep-pocketed owners: simply pay (as owner) to get your message out there. If audience and/or bandwidth requirements are modest enough, pockets need not be deep.
Sell physical products, with website regarded as a cost of doing business.
Explore donation / crowdsourcing options.
Increased interest in micro-payment options.
Come to think of it, any of the above sounds fine to me. The "everything free, payed for with ads" model was broken to begin with, imho. It just grew that way because workable alternatives didn't exist. These days, alternatives may exist. And what's more: the numbers have changed dramatically. What used to buy you a few GB hosting traffic per month, may now by you 1000x that amount. If you're in a business where contents changed such that bandwidth requirements went up the same: tough. But if not: serve 1000x more visitors for the same $.
Who says you're using a browser to view or render a web page's contents?
You might have been right if the DRM applied aligns 100% with legal boundaries. That is, allow what's legal and prevent illegal uses. And keeps doing so as circumstances / place / time changes.
But in practice, it never does. DRM on an e-book that prevents copying period, also prevents copying small snippets to use as quote. Which is perfectly legal - see "fair use".
Unlike author claims, the DRM on Blu-rays is far from broken. If it were, playing them on open source operating systems like Linux would be as easy as playing DVD's on there. But that's not the case. There's databases of per-disk decoding keys floating around. There's libraries that emulate some sort of virtual machine that's built into 'authorised' playback devices. There's other libraries that cut through parts of the DRM bullshit, or attempt to streamline the process.
But all of these are kludges, there's no 100% guarantee that a random Blu-ray will play (using open source, at the moment), and it's a lot of hassle for users who are just trying to play discs they legally purchased. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the DRM on Blu-rays will be as irrelevant as that on DVD's, but we're not there yet and in any case it doesn't change the annoyance factor one bit.
What's more: these issues mostly bother legal users, those who download movies illegally couldn't care less. But the DRM will still be in place as long as the discs itself. Regardless of legalities.
There's countless examples like that. The technical measures are practically never capable of following legal developments, nor do they adapt to local jurisdiction. Or have a built-in kill switch that 'frees' a product when legal restrictions end. In my personal opinion: DRM simply lowers the value of products that it's applied to, PERIOD. Sometimes to the point of making those products worthless. Some DRM is just more annoying or difficult to circumvent than others.
That is, until those are commercialized and become affordable for common uses.
So many issues with today's 'wet' batteries result from having a liquid electrolyte where particles move around, distance between electrodes may very somewhat (locally, at least), substances can dissolve in one place and deposit elsewhere (or form structures that cause a short circuit), electrolyte slowly escapes through a cells' sealing or (potentially) bursts into a cloud of smoke & fire when cell is abused, etc, etc.
Move to a construction that consists entirely of solid materials, and you get more capacitor-like behavior: vastly increased # of charge/discharge cycles, possible to make much safer, wider temperature range, potentially high capacity and/or power density, short charging times, less degradation when stored in discharged condition, etc. To top it of, perhaps lower cost as well.
Would be good to have an article about current state of the art in this area.
The devil is in the details. And in particular, the cost of those details and how they chip away at the results you start with.
Disclaimer: I'm by no means a battery expert in any way, shape or form. But if you read enough about battery tech, one thing that becomes clear is that it's basically a fuzzy science due to the many factors involved. Some examples:
In the lab, you may use ultra-pure compounds to construct your battery. Such compounds can be expensive though. So for mass production you'd need to use some commercial-grade material that's less pure. The contaminants in there may not matter much. Or they may. It may depend on where that commercial-grade material is sourced. One way or the other, chances are performance / longevity / capacity is reduced vs. your lab sample.
In the lab, there's lots of things you could try with the materials used. Nano-size structures, layers a few atoms thick deposited on some base material, etc, etc. But for production, none of that matters as you have to be able to actually mass-produce it. And at low enough cost. Which means most of of those nifty tricks will be out. Possibly exactly those tricks that made the improvement.
In the lab, you'll have carefully controlled conditions. Once it's turned into a product, not so. Cells may be overcharged, over-discharged, dropped, dented, overheated, etc. Providing sufficient safety margins / features for that, can easily nullify those gains seen in the lab. A cell that sees most of its cycles around 40 degrees C may have a vastly different cycle life than one operating at 20 degrees C. Etc, etc.
Last but not least: it's a long road from lab to product. As explained above: many factors involved.
Try pushing they key, samzenpus. The "Backspace" key, that is ("Del" may also work).
Okay, I know Slashdot editing isn't known for its quality work. But come on... not even 70 words, a one-minute reading out loud of the summary makes a spelling error like that stand out like a sore thumb. Exactly what job does /. pay their editors for, again?
Does it even matter anymore?
Bottom line: privacy-sensitive data will be snooped upon by US government agencies. If it isn't in one way, then in another. Either legal or illegal. Such data isn't safe when controlled by US companies, and isn't safe when it passes over US-controlled communication lines. Unless protected by strong encryption that doesn't contain backdoors. Well... possibly not safe either on other communication lines, but that's another story. If you have such data to protect, the first thing to do is make sure it isn't stored by a US-based company, or on US soil.
Things like this are doing economic damage to the US already, and (I suspect) will continue to do so for a looong time. Want to fix that? Start by fixing your totally fubar-ed political system.
All criticism of Islam or resistance of Muslim immigration is hate speech. Modulate yourself, or else.
I think you meant "resistance to" and "Moderate", but anyway: you're wrong.
My country (the NL) has pretty similar laws when it comes to freedom of expression: basically the line is drawn at calling upon others to use violence against (members of) some group of society.
If you ridicule, make a parody, or just plain state you hate some group, then free speech-wise you're in the clear. The simple fact that some part of the population may feel offended, is not enough to wield the ban hammer. Even staying within these limits allows a lot of speech, which is often misunderstood as "anything goes". Not so.
If you say you'd rather see some people walk off a cliff, hit by a bus, die in a fire, return to where they came from (or similar), then you're walking the line. For example our own politician Geert Wilders is known for doing this, and has crossed the line, or not (depending on point of view or interpretation of the law). What matters here is whether you advocate actively doing those things to others, or not. The difference between "I wouldn't mind if he died" vs. "Let's go out and kill him!".
If you clearly do the latter, then you have crossed into territory when free speech ends. Calling upon others to burn down houses, hit someone in the face when "Allah Akbar!" is heard, beat up immigrants or Arabic-looking people with too long beards, all qualifies. The specific group doesn't matter; immigrants, Muslims, blacks, Jews, any minority (or even majority) enjoys the same protections.
In practice, the line is blurred. Sensitivities may differ. Some targeted groups are more likely to file a complaint than others. Some groups may be more used to being ridiculed or discriminated against. Laws are open to interpretation, what's decided in a lower court may be tossed by a higher court. Context, and common practice may have a lot of weight in the decision. But in any case, above principles apply.
Also note that free speech doesn't imply a free press for everyone. Facebook, Google, Twitter etc can be said to have some social responsibility, should provide an open platform etc. But in the end they're private companies. Their site, their rules (within the law, that is). So I read this newspost mostly as a statement saying "yes we'll do more policing to remove content that is questionable with respect to your local laws". Censorship? Removing stuff that (as free speech) should be allowed? Perhaps... but not so much, imho.
Ehm... the Moon has gravity on it's own, you know. Even though it's about 1/6th of Earth's surface gravity. And the Moon's total mass makes for an escape velocity of 2.38 kilometer per second.
So how exactly you suppose that [large enough chunk to do global damage to Earth] would be separated from the Moon, and brought above that escape velocity? Bring a Tsar Bomba there, bury deep under the surface and detonate? Fire a 50m+ diameter rock out of a city-sized gun? All under the radar of other space-faring nations?
Sure why not (fyi: that's simply the first 3 Google hits).
Yes, there's a lot that's not "open" in iSomething land. But at least they understand open source, and work with a variety of open source projects (well okay... as long as it helps their business ;-).
Don't know where you got that 2W number from, but TAG Heuer's product description specifies:
"410mAh battery (minimum 25 hours battery life, based on typical usage)"
Assuming that's a Li-ion battery (3.7V nominal), that would translate into ~60 milliwatt average power (or less). Obviously that means the cpu sleeps most of the time. And perhaps even that tiny display consumes more than the cpu? Or various embedded sensors? Who knows.
Still a huge amount of power for a wristwatch imho. But hey a smartwatch is a little more than that...
Actually, GHG emissions from the US are trending down while other countries' emissions are trending up sharply. So your weird, angry finger-pointing is out of date.
Not by a long shot... Per capita the US is still one of the biggest polluters when it comes to greenhouse gasses (if not the biggest). Taking that graph you linked, China emits just under 2x the amount of CO2 the US does. But does so with >4 times the number of people. Likewise India emits less than half what the US does, with ~4x bigger population. And while the EU is certainly a big emitter, it emits less than the US while having >1.5x bigger population.
That's of course with 2011 figures according to that graph.
Why should they foot the bill for such a project (assuming it's even doable), when it's other nations that are causing the problem? That's especially true if the costs may exceed this tiny nation's income.
Now one can argue about how much of this problem is man-made, and how much is natural causes. And you can argue about how costs should be divided between nations that contribute(d) to the problem. But even then, some part of the problem is man-made, which means the *fair* thing to do would be to pay compensation for that part of the damage.
Of course: fat chance that'll happen. Especially as long as unbridled capitalism, global megacorps, and politicians in their pocket seems to be the norm. So I'd expect to see business as usual: damage is done by group of people in place A, consequences are suffered by group of people in place B - through no fault of their own (see: externalities).
Well article is a little vague on that... On the one hand, it talks about "If all those gray hairs could go back to work" which suggests it could apply to people living now. But who would want that anyway if all our wishes will be some robot's command anyway in a few decades. ;-)
Otoh it talks about "CRISPR, a new method for editing genes". Which (I assume) would apply to newborns not grown-ups? Read: a next generation.
Better to sort out the ethics first. If the tech would apply to adult people, then I'd say: go for it, let some volunteers act as guinea pigs if they want, and push mankind's knowledge ahead. But if it applies to not-yet-born individuals, you can't ask them. Even if it were in whole of mankind's interest, could you have them "take one for the team"? In a civilized society, I think the answer is no. Maybe mice, rats or other animals, but not humans.
Of course, if it's technically possible then odds are @ some point, someone will do it - ethics be damned.
As for our gene pool, I'd have less worries. After all: Darwin still applies, even to 'enhanced' humans that may have as-of-yet-unknown shortcomings in other areas. As the article notes:
"Moreover, genes can have multiple purposes - day jobs and night jobs, as Lander put it. These are complex systems, not modules that you can pop out and replace with a better version with zero unintended consequences."
The reason will be the pressure differential. With vacuum inside, a drive's housing would have to be much stronger. Read: thicker, bulkier, heavier, more expensive, and leaving less room inside for platters / heads etc.
SSDs may ultimately overtake spinning rust for consumer level storage needs
Seeing where technology is heading, that's pretty much a given and only a matter of time (and you can scratch "consumer level" from that phrase, I think). But NOT
simply because we're running out of shit to store.
Are U kidding, we'll just find new stuff to fill the space available. As it's always been. In particular hi-def video (got some 4K videos yet? ;-), but for example 100GB+ downloaded games may also become 'normal' some day. Never mind datacenters or other professional uses.
That said: yes, it is becoming easier & easier to find room for all that other stuff we've got on our hard drives and USB sticks.
It wouldn't surprise me if at some point the open source driver would catch up to the closed source one. AMD would do well to direct their driver-related efforts in converging the two. That is: if they feel a closed source driver is needed, base it on open source components as much as practical. And put improvements back into those open source parts where possible.
From what I've read, AMD has already made some moves in that direction. Which is a good thing. Shared effort (community <-> AMD), limited resources, etc. Regardless of what products AMD kicks out, software is a significant part of making those products successful. And the open source crowd should NOT be ignored in that process (luckily that's not the case, but hey there's always room for improvement :-). Even if it were just a way to offload some of the work to 3rd parties.
Along the same lines, we should establish a permanent Moon base first. The Moon is much, much, much closer to Earth than Mars, but having a permanent base there presents many of the same challenges:
Temperature extremes, radiation, micro-meteorites (common to any space mission, I suppose). Needing to lift gear much further up than a 300~400 km low orbit. Actually succeeding in landing that gear undamaged. Gravity - but lower than on Earth. Redundant and/or extremely reliable life support systems, since Earth will be 'close' but still too far away for actual emergencies.
Not to mention the advantage that (some) raw materials could be dug up on site, or even sent back to Earth for analysis. While the latter may not be feasible on a Mars mission, it wouldn't hurt for practice / research purposes. And communication lines would be 'low' latency and easy to set up. Also in case of the Moon, we don't have to wait for a launch window in which Earth & Mars are lined up for a shortest-possible trip time.
Oh and btw what about other destinations? Read somewhere that the upper atmosphere of Venus might be an option? What about humans on one of the many other moons in our solar system? When talking about manned missions, would those options all be dropped in favour of a Mars mission? (if so, I'd pick the "send more robots" option...)
Ehm.. a backdoor doesn't program itself and then ends up in firmware because of a 'programming mistake', or because 'corners were cut'. For whatever reason it was done, a backdoor has to be intentionally put there.
That automatically turns "incompetent" into "malicious". Unless end-user was informed of the presence of said backdoor and the reason(s) for its existence, and was okay with that. Which of course is never the case.