I'm Dutch, by the way... But the stuff that works against us often works equally against the Brits. And I am not talking about Europe making rules about the size of flowerpots, such things should be seen in the same light as setting up an EU patent office, and is in the interest of people in the business of making and selling flowerpots (and other stuff). No, the EU isn't all bad, that's why I called it a benign dictatorship. That's the problem: the EU is turning into something that is not "for the people" but for itself, i.e. the people running it. Most persons in power in the EU are appointed rather than elected, and there is very little (if any) direct democratic oversight. It's not about the EU being too big or imposing too much red tape, but about it becoming a goal unto itself instead of a means to an end, and being controlled by a cabal of bureaucrats rather than by the people.

There are enough examples of bad EU policies to be had, in monetary policy alone. Greece being dragged into the euro, for example. Experts warned against exactly the sort of things now going on. France and Germany repeatedly getting (i.e. giving each other) a pass on not meeting budgetary requirements during good times, then cracking down hard on smaller countries with similar issues during bad times. When we joined the euro, we got short-changed by about 10%, as pointed out by experts and later even by the minister of finance in charge at the time. Joining the euro was not a bad plan, but think about what it means if a minister of finance is willing to push through such a measure under such conditions. Our national governments, who are supposed to look out for our interests, are largely so blinded by their rosy vision of a united Europe that they are willing to make insane (and often unnecessary) sacrifices to make it happen.

Well, actually the *chinese* backdoor is the one which is hardware embed into the chip that runs the LiteOS.
The 9KB you're looking at are the *russian* backdoor that they managed to sneak in without anybody noticing.
(The remain 1K was written by a coordinated effort of european spying agency... hey not everyone has the ressource of the big player, some need to pool together)

The US you ask? They are busy introducing a new law that will make eaves-dropping access mandatory on all IoT gizmos.

Though that kernel didn't do TCP/IP networking.

Nevertheless, there *are* small opensource OS able to pull network on a C64 (e.g.: Contiki-os).
Huawei's LiteOS is competing against them.

All? Well, if you have any tips on how to accomplish that, I'm all ears. One of my country's parties sees the same issues but they want to try and fix things from within (i.e. working within the existing European political framework). Personally I fear it may be too late for that: the positions that reformers can be elected for are all but powerless, and the people currently running the show will ensure that real reformers will never be appointed to a position of influence. It's close to a dictatorship, even if it's a relatively benign and multiheaded one.

Sorry, I meant:
un-authorized implementations

Well technically there is one agreed upon standard: XMPP/Jabber.

But beside Google (who - although helped pushing it forward back then - would rather like that you forgot they support it) and Facebook (who was more or less forced to slap a gateway as an after though to their proprietary system and would like to discontinue it and force you to install their app) no other big major player use it.

Still, it's very popular among lots of small-scale services (which are usually federated among them), and also popular in the corporate world (Cisco, as a random example, provides solution for communication inside a company, that under the hood uses jabber)

But for current big players in the consumer fields (WhatsApp, Skype), there's no such standards.
(And WhatsApp is very active at trying to shut un authorized users out)

Many of us who are labelled "europhobic" are actually in favour of a Union, even a strong one. The problem we see in the EU is that it has become a bureaucratic, intransparent, undemocratic monster with a far too wide mandate. And if you look at the people building the EU, that is no accident. Considering what this EU might turn into, I think it would be better to not have it at all.

What the EU lacks first and foremost is a proper constitution: a simple document that describes what the EU does and doesn't do, who does what, how, and under what conditions, and what the rights are it grants to its citizens and national governments. Since we don't have one, the EU can grow in any direction and in any way its architects desire. And that direction might not be what's best for Europe or its citizens, but for those running the show in Brussels. As Juncker once said: "When it becomes serious, you have to lie". And that is sort of what they did with the thing that is called the European constitution. It's a huge document and you have to be a legal expert to make any sense of it. And that too is by design: when several countries voted against the "constitution", they took out one part (making "An die Freude" the European anthem) and rewrote the rest in impenetrable legalese.

There are many good reasons for having *a* union. And there are many more for not having *this* one.

Depends. My bet is that it entirely depends on the background of the "someone" you've taken.
- english speaker ? mostly used to litterature and philosophical logic ? yes, maybe as you list them.

- background in mathematics ? The order will probably be reversed, with probably Haskell, C and Fortran near the top. And probably APL topping them all. And the guy complaining that most of them still miss support for greek alphabet.

some people are used to see things written down in plain text, other are better used to see things written with symbols.

plain text has the advantage of being a little bit clearer for a person who happens to be fluent in the language which was used to create the language (say hello to dialects of Logo and Excel macros translated into various languages). Otherwise it's completely useless (most of the language you mention are based around english. useless non-english speakers. when I was a kid, I started learning to code in basic before I knew english).

symbolic notation has the advantage of being more compact (requires less typing, quicker to read)
cf. the well know geeky joke of "add 1 to cobol giving cobol" vs "C++"

And well, Perl, let's forget about Perl. It's a write-only language.
The only language your cat can write legal code in just by walking across the keyboard. :-D

(Disclaimer: I used to code a lot in Basic as a you kid. Started C a bit later, and learned english about this time. I code also regularily in Perl, C++, awk, php, 386 assembler, etc. I know bits of R, javascript, python, FORTRAN, did some Logo in french in school as a kid, etc.)

Well not very likely.

That did work for the openmoko because the neo 1973 and neo freerunner (i have one!) have been designed from the gound up with an open hardware approach.
They have been designed to be easy to open, easy to hack, easy to replace parts.
Thus upgrade kits like gta04 were likely.

That does work now for the N900, because they are a little bit older generation, back at a time when case were a bit bulkier, battery was replaceable, etc.
There are also a lot of them out in the wild. (Basically, for a long time the Maemo where *THE* definite platforms for geeks to go, N900 was the most popular, and there were only 2 others before).
You could make a Neo900 upgrade kit that is more or less practical.

That won't work with modern smartphones:
- first they are absurdly compact and small (just to have a "better number" on the check list. not that it's actually usefull, specially when the end users will enclose them in an over-priced after-market case anyway).
- they are often very hard to dissassamble (both because of the previous point, but also because it makes them more resistant to moisture etc. if they are in an enclosing never designed to be opened)
- some don't even have removable batteries.
- to make quick buck these companies tend to launch one new model every 6 months (yeah, imagine a replacement borad for iPhone. iPhones are popular, isn't it ? except that there are a dozen of them by now)
- also most of these companies aren't targetting geeks in the first place (unlike nokia maemo platform) and thus aren't likely to be held by users actually able to use an upgrade kit.

I suspect that the Jolla's sailfish phone is the only probable next target for an upgrade kit.

But in general, the case is the least problematice in smart phones.
It makes more sense to 3D print a new case around an existing board, rather than try to fit a new board inside an existing phone.

Usually, the screen is the most complex, instead.

I'm under the impression that: as currently lots of the precussors of future IoT projects are from the maker culture it's probably one of the more hipsterish languages like Python and Ruby which might see more rise.

If you think of it, currently it's platforms like Raspberry Pi which are the forerunner of all the future connected small things. It's the "plant tweeting when it needs water" of today, that are the "intelligent fridge which automatically fills your grocery list" of tomorrow.
And currently, Python is *the* most popular rapid prototyping language on these platform.

Well, try to be gentle with them. Do to run too fast so they can try to pretend they can keep up. And while running, please push aside all the various garbage laying on the ground so that these Javaminators don't trip on them and fall (or stop to automatically collect it up).

Also be kind: if you meet more than 1 of them, it would be proper etiquette to act as a translator between them so they can understand each-other (specially if one of them speaks microsoft dialect)

Try also to be understanding toward their sensitivities. There are a few of their kind that the remaining Javaminators consider untouchable (specially the one called Dalvik). Try not to madden them because you don't agree with that rejection (Even if you consider that actually that pastry-obsessed-outcast is the cool guy you want to hang around with).

Funny that here around I've regularly seen and read different numbers (random source in fr. key point < 10% for latex based condoms, < 5% for polyurethan. that's just a random example. I don't have enough time to kill to do a complete litterature mining and meta analysis)
Either North American are much dumber or worse at using condom than European, or your condoms tend to be made of a self-destructin material~
Xenophobic jokes aside, actual result vary *wildly* depending on the considered population, specially the level of sex-ed.

*when used properly* condoms can be very much safe. When used *haphazardly* not so.
See this table (again quick search). Pregnancy rates vary a lot. (See the specially low level among "motivated women" in israel. They probably had better knowledge on proper prevention than the (poor) women in the philiphine that still did get pregnant up to 60%).

The difference in number seem to be linked in the level of education and motivation of the people. A *properly* used condom is effective. That means that you need to educate better the people, to that they use the prevention better.
(instead of completely ignoring condoms, and opting to outcast HIV positive people, as suggested by top troll).

(I know it's only an anecdote, but that also match my personnal experience with <1% breakage among the hundreds of protected intercourses I've done. But both I and girl(s) knew how to use a condom properly and the necessary precautions to take).

It's not the country, It's the drooling morons that we have running the country.

Greed. Pure Greed.

Also, that is not a "youth club". It looks like a regular hackerspace.

You would think so, and you'd be right. Except that politicians beg (or rather: insist) to differ. Same here in NL, downloading was made illegal but the taxes remained in place. Over here they even renamed it to the "home copy levy". There's a levy on all storage media (hard disks, blank DVDs), which is for "compensating authors and artists for copies made of music and movies from legal sources for private use". And since downloading stuff from the internet is now illegal, this means that this fee is levied solely on CDs and DVDs that you already own. Fuckers.