Depends on what "online communications" are.
If you mean things like Email, the answer is "none" - simply because Email-encryption remains too difficult for people to setup and use, so no one does.
If you include browsing, well, since Snowdon, the websites I run are https-only. Unfortunately, most sites haven't taken this step - and anyway, it only helps if you also block the trackers and take other privacy measures.
Orbital launch cost is a red herring; it's expensive, and this isn't going to change. We live in a whopping big gravity well.
The goal has to be building an infrastructure. Get mining and production infrastructure up there. That's going to be a huge investment, but once it's in place you can produce ever more of what you need directly, without having to haul it out of the well.
Provide incentives for private industry, and get the fsck out of the way.
Promise $5 billion to the first company to send the same spaceship to orbit 10 times and return. $10 billion to the first company to send the same spaceship to geo-sync orbit 3 times. $20 billion to the first company to bring an asteroid above size X to a lagrange point. $50 billion to the first company to have people live on the moon for two weeks. Change the goals and figures to suit. Total cost will be a fraction of having the bloated NASA bureaucracy do the same things.
Then get rid of all possible regulations, and eliminate most liability. Space is hazardous - let's assume participants are adults who know what they are getting into.
Then get out of the way.
If Microsoft has half-a-brain, they will see this as the business opportunity it is. Charge a fee for additional support from every government and organization that will pay, and it's quite the business model
I'm not talking about individual companies or homes burning trash, but rather municipal incinerators with carefully controlled processes. Modern incinerators produce little beyond water vapor and CO2. You get substantial amounts of power, eliminate essentially all chemicals (that would otherwise eventually pollute the ground water) and you recover most of the metals that would otherwise be lost in a landfill. Municipal incineration is standard in much of Europe.
Here's the story as I understand it:
- There's an ignition switch. If you have a really heavy key-ring, it is possible that the weight of your keys can turn the switch "off".
- Over the course of a decade 13 People have died in car accidents that might have had something to do with this.
- GM apparently, at some point over all those years, altered the ignition switch to require more force to turn it.
So somehow the car manufacturer is evil?
This sounds a lot more like ambulance-chasing lawyers hoping to use publicity as a lever to pry out a big settlement...
Other
I've taught off and on for 30 years now, and over the entire time one thing has remained pretty constant: About 10% of the students completing the programs are really good; they will be star programmers and eventually software architects. Another 40% are competent - they would be able to carry out plans created by others, but should never carry any larger responsibility. Good, solid programmers. The remaining 50% manage to graduate, but frankly should never work directly in the field. Maybe they can be testers or write documentation, but never let them write a line of code in a real project.
Unfortunately, it's not always obvious what kind of person you are hiring. Add to this mix the people who are self-taught, who are coming from some other field, and may have wildly inappropriate ideas. Just as an example, I am currently working with a company whose star programmer (and he really is very good) comes from process control - and has zero clue about testing or quality control. He writes code and assumes that it works, and his company is so glad to have him (at a grunt-level salary) that they refuse to insult him by testing his code - so they deliver his work untested straight to clients - you can imagine how well this works.
tl;dr: There is no shortage of bodies in STEM fields. However, there is a shortage of good people who also have a solid education in and understand of their field. This is true in computer science, and almost certainly in every other STEM field out there.
When you control for working hours and years of experience (as opposed to simply age - women more often take time off work to raise children), there hasn't been a male/female pay gap for decades. However, this is not PC. Feminists don't want to hear that they're done, that they have long since achieved their goals, and that feminism has become counterproductive. Hence, the studies that show this are routinely ignored, and certainly never publicized.
Taking months or years off for child raising, or working only part time, or refusing to travel - none of these things should affect your career or your pay. It ought to be possible to drop out of the workforce at 25, raise your kids full-time for 20 years, and then rejoin the workforce as a senior manager.
It makes as much sense as the rest of the progressive agenda...
Situation 1: Private citizen is in front of a court; the judge says the defendent must produce certain documents. Defendent says "sorry, judge, I refuse; I signed a private contract promising that I would never reveal that information". Judge says: To jail with you for contempt of court. Do this 200 times, and spend a long time in jail.
Situation 2: Police want to do a search, the law says they need a warrant. The police say "sorry, judge, we signed this here NDA". Two hundred times they did this. Anyone believe the police are going to jail here?
Forcefully entering the apartment for a physical search, also without a warrant, is just added some whipped cream on top...
Is there a recommended way by FBI or Secret Service where one can go, establish the non-criminal bona-fide of oneself and have an intelligent conversation with someone
I did some minor computer consulting for the Secret Service a long time ago. I was too young at the time to realize what was going on; only in retrospect years later did I realize that there had been zero effort to preserve electronic evidence, share it with the defense, or any of the other niceties one is supposed to expect from the justice system. They knew the guy was guilty, and that was all that mattered.
Given the direction law enforcement at all levels in the US has taken in the past 20 years or so, things today are far worse: increasing militarization at all levels, an even worse mentality of "us vs. them" (where "they" are the entire civilian population). If they decide to target you for something, you are SOL. Getting involved involved with these agencies has huge risks and essentially no advantages. This guy is bloody lucky they didn't charge and prosecute him.
If you've just got to play white knight, at least get a good attorney on board from the very start, and have your attorney with you for all interactions.
The problem has always been the "old boys network" where top executives take turns sitting on each others' Boards of Directors, approving each others' salaries. These nitwits are so disconnected from the lives of their workers that they probably sincerely believe they are worth such ridiculous salaries.
Starting this year, here in Switzerland, the shareholders must vote on the executive compensation package at the annual shareholders' meeting. This vote is binding: if they vote against (outrageous) compensation, then it won't get paid. I believe this will have a long-term effect, not only because of the vote, but also because it requires spelling out executive compensation in plain terms that the shareholders can understand.
I expect a number of Swiss companies will have a sudden urge to rethink things, before the next annual meetings take place...
So, press freedom in the US isn't really so bad, because the US has sometimes ranked higher? Even though it has never ranked above rank 20 or so? Is place 20 something to be pround of for the "land of the free"?
Read the report. It's not only about government abuse, which is bad enough, but also includes other factors. "Self-censorship" is a big one, for example, because of factors like "political correctness" (can't criticize minorities, don't dare offend the Christian right, etc.) and fear of lawsuits. However, the government abuses are already bad enough: metadata gathering, collecting specific phone records without warrants, etc.
Never heard of it. And a science program for the US public is likely to be all flashy pictures and no depth. Still, if it is a success, maybe it will awaken some belated interest in science and education, as opposed to Justin Bieber and Oprah.
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