Sounds like a bunch of philistine engineers to me. Armstrong's quote could easily be applied to Einstein or Maxwell. Heaviside probably would have condemned the Manhattan Project as a bunch of theorists.

It's telling that Tesla draws the line at Morse, who invented Tesla's chosen field of engineering. And Tesla was a brilliant engineer. But later, as an actual scientist and researcher, as someone that had to do experiments and develop new theory, Tesla was a failure. His work was a dead end.

He needs to be more blunt. Let me assume the Jefferson position for a second. Ahem...

There will come a time when our leniency toward strong encryption will prevent law enforcement from doing its job. Some sort of violent attack will occur, a murder or a bank robbery or even a terrorist attack; and the public will demand answers. The public will want to know why we weren't able to break the veil of secrecy around our enemies's communications, why we couldn't keep up with them, why we couldn't protect those we were sworn to serve when we, all of us, from the lowest law enforcement officer to the highest government official, took our office.

There comes a time when a nation must decide where it places our value. We all want those basic rights of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, of security from search and property seizure, of privacy. At times, those rights interfere with our safety, and we must decide: Do we prefer the risk of terrorist attack, or the risk of being arrested for our political views and our opinions? Do we want the chance, however slight, to overhear a plot to blow up a school or a shopping mall; or do we want our private conversations to be private, to be our own business, without fear of law enforcement or government finding something to worry about in our own personal lives?

We decided long ago that our officers, our legislators, our executives are here to defend us, not to pry into our lives or raise us like children. We decided long ago that our rights include privacy and personal security from government intrusion. When, in time, these decisions cause us pain and loss, we can look back and say we accepted that when we wrote the rules; we can look across at oppressive regimes and say we are glad we are not them; we can assure ourselves that the decision was correct, personally, for every one of us save a few lost, an unfortunate consequence of doing the right thing for all of us.

A strong society recognizes that the Child of Omelas cannot be saved; but it also does all it can to comfort the child. We cannot protect everyone, and we won't do any better by removing their protections and stripping their rights; we can only work to find better solutions despite the difficulty basic human rights pose to our security.

This is true. A lot of landlords were, at some point a few years ago, sitting on vacant buildings that didn't need tons of work. Strip interior walls and redo the floor plan, and you go from a 6-bedroom unit to an 18-bedroom unit. Filling 18 units at more than 1/3 as much is going to bring a profit; I put in my calculations at $1.33/sqft instead of $0.96/sqft to ensure housing viability.

It's a Dividend because it's taken as a percentage of the total income from the economy. When you work, you start with $0 and end up with $60,000; when a business works, it pays out its expenses (including wages), and ends up with millions in the end. All that income is just the profit of the whole economy; you take 17% of it and share that among all the stakeholders. Every individual human is an equal shareholder in the economy.

The classic Georgeist way to do this is to use a Land Value Tax; but taxing land value is just an arbitrary tax. The theory is land has a certain economic value potential--you can profit so many dollars per acre of land--and so you're taxed based on a percentage of that value; for practical reasons, this is usually adjusted to the market: if it's a super market, it's got a different Land Value than an apartment building on the same spot; and the Land Value of a market in Baltimore is different than the Land Value of a market in New York. In short: a bunch of people try to guess what your income should be, and levy an income tax on imaginary income.

From what I can tell, the above strategy is just a pretend-not-Income-tax. I turned it into a flat income tax.

It's not just a basic income; it's a full deployment plan for a basic income, risk-adjusted, market-focused. It's a plan to make poor people a major profit source, meaning whoever supplies them with the means to survive will become very rich. It's the same principle as putting crushed honey comb back next to a bee hive: the bees will clean it for you.

Why does everyone say say, "Oh, but poor people will want to live in upper-class areas, and that's not enough?" They're unemployed, they have zero money in savings, they've been forced out of Florida by the police after the ban on homeless people. They'll go where they can; and there will be a market somewhere. Even New York and San Francisco have slums.

Call me when you've got everyone in the marketing department up to speed on groff.

In lieu of looking for all that--which will be hard to find--I present you this for your amusement.

The April 11 aftershock was a magnitude 6.6. Aftershock. The original March earthquake was a 9.0 (not a 9.7; it was followed up by 6.0 and some 7.0+ aftershocks). According to Wikipedia, it was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded to have hit Japan, and the fourth most powerful earthquake in the world since modern record-keeping began in 1900.

There was an 8.9 in 869, 1150 years ago; an 8.6 in 1707; and an 8.4 in 1933. Some 8.3 quakes have hit Japan as recently as 2006. The Fukushima Daiichi plant managed to survive the 9.0 earthquake, mostly, enough for safety systems to stay online; unfortunately, the seawall was for a 5.5 meter high tsunami, and Japan took a 13-meter high tsunami instead. The 8.3 quakes in 2006 and thereabouts, as well as any storms coming from the Pacific Ocean to the Japanese coast, never managed to breach the seawall; the waves resulting from this event were substantially larger and more energetic.

The Fukushima region itself wasn't considered prone to massive quakes--the reactor wasn't designed for more than 0.45g, but took 0.55g forces when the 9.0 quake hit. They did ignore an internal risk assessment warning of tsunami waves up to 10 meters in height, claiming those numbers were ridiculous; nobody ever suggested ginormous earthquakes might happen right under the plant. Everything on the Events section of the Wikipedia page is fascinating, especially the diagram showing the inadequate seawall, 10 meter height the waves didn't fall short of, and 15 meter height the waves actually reached. Even a risk assessment considered unrealistic and alarmist fell 50% short of predicting the actual disaster.

Fukushima may be a good study of risk. In hindsight, we're guaranteed to find piles of flawed assessment methods and procedural issues that should have gotten attention; we'll likely realize these are routinely mishandled everywhere, or even indicative of a poor grasp of how certain environmental factors impact risk assessment industry-wide. As for gross mishandling and blame, Fukushima was hit with a massive disaster which even the most risk-averse estimates failed to predict or protect against: it was never going to survive that disaster, because we never through a disaster like that could happen. You may as well plan for a meteor strike or an alien invasion while you're at it.

Amazon's automated warehouses become K-Mart's automated stock rooms. Check-out lines are replaced by assisted self-checkout, allowing one cashier to run 4-6 checkouts. Hamburger makers are replaced by hamburger making machines. Auto manufacturers use a fully machine-tooled line with only a few workers for final assembly. It's coming.

Our welfare system, in 2013, cost $1.62 trillion, of which $1.28 trillion was Federal spending. This is made up of Social Security Old-Age Pensions, Supplemental Disability Insurance, Food stamps, WIC, income security programs, unemployment, and the HUD direct housing voucher program. Just the Federal spending accounts for 37% of Federal spending, 46% of Federal taxes taken, and 55% of all Corporate and Individual income taxes taken at the Federal level.

If we drop the payroll OASDI tax and roll OASDI into general income, all income taxes increase by 9.34%. If we then slice those incomes by 55% and apply a 17.0% separate Dividend Tax on all currently-taxed Income, our tax brackets move from 16.2% on the lowest income earners and 39.6% on the highest income earners to 25.69% and 38.99%. Low-income earners around $9,000 income will take home $5000 more per year; middle-income earners at the $120,000 level will about break even; above that, it increases as high as a 3.17% take-home decrease around $400,000, again breaking even around exactly $2,000,000.

The base income tax system is progressive, and can be adjusted to smooth this out as appropriate; reducing the income taxes at the lowest level to around 0% would return the system to something resembling our current tax structure, with a 3% increase at the highest end. Considering this along with the above, the total taxes taken can raise from 16.2% to 17% on the most poor, and 39.6% to around 43% on the most rich. This compares favorably against current proposals to tax Millionaires and Billionaires at 45%, 50%, 60%, and 80%. Minimizing the taxes in the poor and middle-class ranges is a practical matter: it reduces their wage demand, reducing the cost of labor and slowing down all future transitions to new management strategies designed to reduce labor expenses; such management strategies have higher base cost, but lower labor utilization, and thus are cheaper only when labor is expensive or when the base costs factors of the new strategy have been refined into a significantly inexpensive form.

The 17% Dividend tax would be distributed among every natural-born, resident, American citizen over the age of 18. This specifically excludes the abuses of immigrants flooding to America to live on free Government money, and immigrants crossing the border illegally to birth an American citizen who then goes to live in Cuba or Mexico or wherever with a pension coming at age 18. It also excludes the abuse of welfare families popping out more babies to get at an additional per-child stipend by simply not providing one. The Dividend amounts to $6,558 in 2013; with the typical 3.4% total income growth per year, this amounts to $7,010 in 2015.

In 2013, a 750sqft apartment in a lower-class neighborhood rented for $725/mo, or $0.96 cents per square foot. Assuming an inflated $1.34/sqft, a 224sqft apartment could rent for $300. The model apartment houses a single adult individual and consists of a 6'x9' bedroom suitable to contain a twin bed and a small end-table dresser; a 10'x9' sitting room; a bathroom including a 3'x3' shower stall with corner sink basin and spigot mounted inside, totaling 20 sqft; and an 80sqft kitchen, one counter surface separating it from the sitting room to function as a prep surface and a dining table. These living arrangements provide an improvement over the standard soggy cardboard box inhabited by 600,000 of the United States's poor.

Assuming $300 for rent, out of the 2013 $546/mo, $246 remain. The cost of food is an important consideration. A survivable, but sub-optimal, diet largely including starches such as rice and sweet potatoes as well as vegetables will sustain a human being readily for under $100/mo; chicken and pork, at $0.01 per kcal and $0.005 per kcal, provide valuable fat and protein sources, although rice at $0.00043 per kcal is almost 10% as expensive as chicken and can make 2000kcal per day for 30 days at $25. A dry pound of pinto beans provides 1,572 kcal, a rate of $0.00025 per kcal, roughly $15 to satisfy the caloric needs of a human for 30 days. The $100 budget gives room for meat, beans, rice, vegetables, sweet potatoes, and squash to provide adequate macro- and micronutrients to sustain an individual human, allowing even for culinary flourish with a variety of ingredients, cooking methods, oils, and spices.

In 2012, I paid $57/mo for gas and electric in a 750sqft apartment. I have calculated $30/mo for utilities for a single person. The water utility carries the highest risk, due to the combined use of shower facilities; laundry facilities are predictable. By the same token, as a single male, I pay the minimum water fee 100% of the time: my household doesn't use 1 unit (6000gal) of water, so is charged for 1 unit; a combined low-income housing unit would divide this cost among many, so that 5 units among 10 households is still half as much. The heating utility carries the second highest risk; recommend thermostats locked to 72F or below heating, 76F or above cooling, with ceiling fans.

I have been generous with personal care items of soap and toothpaste, shaving cream, tampons, and so on at $35/mo; I spend $10-$15 on these things every 3-5 months. I have also amortized clothing at $35/mo, although I spent $500 on clothing in 4 years, averaging $10/mo.

This leaves $46 in the budget as a risk control on top of the conservative estimates for rent, clothing, and personal care. The Great Recession of 2007 represents a 5% loss of total income, translating to a 2013 decrease of $27.30/mo, leaving roughly $19 of this margin in the case of another major economic disaster; likewise, my calculations base on 2013, during a great recovery swing: economic growth will outpace the base 3.4%, so the error margin is actually higher and risk is lower. Finally, this policy creates several enormous markets, increasing job availability and, more importantly, total income--either the businesses or the individuals make more money in the end, but, either way there is more to tax and more to hand out.

This policy doesn't care about income distribution: when automation comes, goods will cost less to produce, and so prices will drop or businesses will become richer; either way, the buying power of the Dividend increases: it is either larger, or it is able to purchase more. The policy makes no attempt to tax the rich for being rich, or to effect any other policy by way of taxing carbon emissions or the like. Overall, it attaches itself to no specific economic condition, and avoids the risk of changing economic conditions.

This policy tracks inflation, but ignores wealth. As inflation continues, the dollar amount of the Dividend increases. Our economy also becomes more efficient and, thus, more wealthy over time: more things are produced with less labor and less energy, decreasing the inflation-adjusted cost of goods and services. Over time, the Dividend increases in buying power, but remains the same share of buying power: as the poor become more wealthy, so do the middle class and the rich. This policy makes no attempt to keep the poor at their lot, nor to elevate them at the cost of anyone else; it will naturally elevate them as scarcity decreases.

This policy survives economic downturns. It has enough padding to provide in the worst times.

This policy operates entirely from the Federal budget. The State welfare costs aren't addressed here; it is left to the States to decide how to handle their welfare systems. It is predicted that this policy will largely obsolete State welfare, causing a rapid decrease in welfare costs. It is also predicted that State welfare will remain, greatly reduced, to cover families with children, ineligible immigrants, any other corner cases not addressed, and any shortcomings such as less resilience to economic strife than I have predicted. As HUD and many food security programs are handled entirely at the State level, transition risk is mediated and mitigated by this strategy as well: businesses will have time to recognize the low-risk profit opportunity and construct a market to capitalize on it before food stamps and housing vouchers start disappearing.

The full plan includes a 15-year transition away from Social Security. Simply cutting off Social Security would be a bad political and economic move: A lot of people would not survive the immediate loss of income. Existing and soon-to-be retirees need advanced warning of a reduction of benefits, and the economy needs time to fully respond to the profit opportunity of the Citizen's Dividend. Instead, all Social Security benefits are reduced immediately by the Dividend; all recipients continue to receive exactly the same total dollar numbers combined from Social Security and the Dividend; and anyone reaching retirement age within 15 years of the passing of the Dividend is grandfathered on Social Security Old-Age pensions until they die. This cuts away most of the Social Security taxes immediately, and then eliminates the remainder over the next two generations.

It is a simple, well-examined, strongly risk-adjusted plan. It is 100% saturated 100% of the time, ignorant of economic conditions, and responsive to economic growth. It does not suffer or strain the economy in periods of high unemployment and high welfare need, because the welfare need is always 100% satisfied. It eliminates welfare traps and desperation, completely eliminating the need for a minimum wage and reducing the incentive for crimes of necessity (e.g. shoplifting food when starving, prostitution). It completely eliminates homelessness and hunger, thus reducing stress and exposure to physically adverse conditions, improving national mental and physical health.

I solved this problem a long time ago. It only took, like, a week to solve poverty.

We'll eventually invent new jobs that are cheaper for human workers. The question is: How long between 70% unemployment and availability of new jobs? Automating parts of bigger processes lets us take up bigger processes without much scaling risk, meaning we can start creating new jobs for the humans to do after the robots have done their part; but that involves engineering new business processes which create more value using a blend of human and robot labor than you can create with just robot labor.

The Luddites were right, though. 60 years of 70% unemployment after the Industrial Revolution.

We have the manpower--what do you think 11% unemployment, 60% labor participation, and severe underemployment are? We don't have the profit motive.

I've already solved the issue anyway. Automation will disrupt our workforce, temporarily; I've adjusted for that. I need to get this implemented, but nobody will listen.

They're using bad science, too.

Drunk drivers are likely to not get caught their first time. DUI penalties are so high largely on the stated justification that it's probably not their first time--that the police catch you after your 50th or 100th time driving drunk--so we need to penalize you for all the times we've probably missed. There are numerous other problems as well.

It's a valid assumption, but it raises a key consideration:

To get these conclusions, you would have to measure a person's BAC through a blood sample every time they drive. You would have to baseline their 0% BAC crash rate with their 0.05% and 0.08% crash rate. You would have to count how many times they drove at 0.0%, 0.05%, and so forth, and measure how many crashes they were involved in. Confounding includes the length of the drive, the visibility conditions, if the person is tired, if the person is stressed, the bad driving of other drivers, and so on; even crashing at mile 105 of a single, long drive is quite different than crashing 5 miles into a drive out of a sample set totaling a distance of 105 miles. The average of all individuals will be different than the average of all drives taken as a group. It goes on.

The way you regard the measurement has a big impact, as well. Memory tests readily exemplify this statistical concept: psychological studies into mnemonics have measured what percentage of things had been remembered, what percentage had been forgot, how many had been remembered, and how many had been forgot. You get ridiculous shit like a study showing that a greater percentage of things remembered in 5 minutes is forgotten when using a mnemonic; meanwhile the participants using the mnemonic memorized 70 things and forgot 30, and the participants using rote memory memorized 30 things and forgot 5. You can see here that people using mnemonics forget 6 times as much; they forget 30% of what they try to remember, versus 14%; and that they remember 2.3 times as much. That's right: they forget 6 times as much and remember 2.3 times as much--they forget more and remember more.

Statistics results are often meaningless without a short explanation of the method used.

The whole thing is just hype. Enormous time and money? Deployment aside, I could DEVELOP something like this BY MYSELF. Virtual file systems? I wrote one on Fuse on a whim, to intercept disk access calls and check against policy. Exploiting a kernel driver? Same as exploiting anything else; it's a zero-day malware. Hundreds of CNC servers? Vanilla botnet--a deployment issue. Detecting iPhones and doing weird shit? Yeah, I work in DevOps; I have a server that detects mobile phones and redirects them to a mobile site.

Software of a given size doesn't require special time or money; it requires skill. Creating a full MacOSX clone with a BSD-like kernel and DPDF windowing system? That requires a ton of time and expert skill effort, because it's millions of lines of complex code. Creating a Windows 7 clone? Same. Creating a Linux clone from scratch? Same. Creating a WinAMP clone? Much less time and effort. Creating a FileZilla clone? Similar to a WinAMP clone. Creating a computer worm? It's a few thousand lines of code; it's single-person basement work for anyone familiar with the various techniques involved.

All of these technological breakthroughs were old in 1999.

The sky is blue, the president is black, and Russia is bombing Ukraine. None of that is relevant, either.

You cannot demonstrate that no new technology is required to create a colony on Mars. Economic viability, perhaps. Technology? The primary concern is energy; anything from a nuclear power plant to space lasers can handle that. In 1964, we demonstrated an electric helicopter powered by pointing a big microwave dish at and using a rectifier and antenna to convert the microwave beam into an electrical potential; microwave beam power transmission is well-established and proven, but prohibitively expensive.

We have a sealed habitat up in orbit around the Earth. We can readily build a giant sealed habitation dome on Mars. We use LED lights for high-efficiency electricity-to-plant-mass conversion here at home; orbital solar with microwave beam transmission would power an artificial sun readily. New Zealand is growing chickens at a rate of 1.3fcr, producing 1 pound of chicken meat per 1.3 pounds of chicken feed: you can have meat and grain. Air and water purification technology exist already. Again, it's prohibitively expensive, but technologically reachable.

You can theorize that the martian atmosphere may provide technological challenges that exceed these things; but the only way to demonstrably prove that we can't do it with current technology is to build a model in a Martian environment. If we have the technology to maintain a terrestrial simulated Martian environment, then we also have the technology to maintain a Martian simulated terrestrial environment; this won't help us to simulate things like solar-orbital power, however, due to atmospheric scattering not present on Mars, and long distances present in the Mars orbit-to-surface path.

You cannot demonstrably prove that we don't have the technology to maintain an independent Mars colony; you can only theorize.

Life insurance money.

You cannot demonstrate that; you can only conjecture it.