So you're arguing that society should provide medical care to those who can't afford it? I think I know of a way of implementing that...

I'll take dying waiting over dying due to not being able to afford them thanks.

There's no rule against private healthcare over here by the way - you want something better then you can pay for it, no-one's going to stop you.

Software defined radio is by definition mathematics. You might be doing the maths in a clever way, but you're still doing maths, and being able to patent it would be like patenting the quadratic formula.

I'm not sure if I got your question exactly with IO busses, but if you're talking about bit-banging a bus then I don't see the patentability. I don't see how the bus can be patentable if it's in hardware, it's a combination of wiring and protocol: the wiring shouldn't be patentable and the protocol is basically an algorithm. Implementing the protocol in hardware may be patentable, but I think the 'not-obvious to someone skilled in the art' part of it would be a stumbling block - if you've got a protocol so ridiculously complex that a competent engineer can't work out how to drive it in hardware then you should probably be allowed to keep it...

The 'clever' hydraulics I think is similar: If it's done in hydraulics but it's obvious to someone that the behaviour being implemented could be implemented in that fashion then I don't see what's patentable. You could have a very complex piece of software to control essentially dumb hydraulics, but still all you are doing is providing a function to map the desired behaviour onto a mathematical model of the hydraulic system.

The problem with most of these debates is that they don't seem to ask anyone 'skilled in the art' whether they'd have come up with that design. Here's a crazy idea: Companies applying for patents pay a fee and that patent office makes the non-patented parts of the application public. Solve the problem in a reasonable amount of time in a manner that matches the patentable part of the application? Pocket the fee. Solve it differently? You both get patents for your respective solution (one of which is now very valuable to any competitors!). No-one solves it? Original company gets the patent, and possibly some of the fee back minus admin etc. Now there's a disincentive to put stupid patents out there, an incentive in the system to find alternative solutions to them etc. If you've truly come up with something that no-one else is able to solve in the same way then you get to own it - a bit like the system is supposed to work...

Indeed... you'd need very large hands...

Predicting it accurately would be very hard... but I think that the several orders-of-magnitude difference between 6000 years and 4.5 billion years means that it 6000 years is unlikely. Here's another way of looking at it: 6000 years/4.5 billion years is 1.33x10^-6 or 0.0001333%.

Secondly I doubt the age of the earth is calculated by fossil record because the earth predates the fossils by some quite significant margin. Only in fairy tales (you know the ones) was the earth and everything on it created in a short space of time. It spent quite a bit of time as a glowing hot ball of molten material, I doubt there were many fossil-leaving creatures around then. The movement of tectonic plates forcing things into the still molten core of the earth puts a bit of an upper bound on the maximum age of fossils as well. If you've found some source dating the earth itself by fossil record then they're either idiots or they have some interest in pushing inaccurate and terrible science

Thirdly in things that are dated by fossil record: I'd wager (even if you wouldn't) that the likely age of the fossil is known through radiocarbon dating or another technique, giving a range of ages where that fossil is likely to be found (extinction not being a modern phenomena). That way when you find rocks with those fossils in you can make a reasonable guess at when the rock formed. In other cases the formation of the rock happens at a known, or discernible rate (e.g. sedimentary rocks where a layer of sediment is formed each year), and so it is practical to date the fossils based on their position in the rock.

The error is pretty large, but then so is the timescale involved, and the accuracy doesn't need to be huge - being accurate to within 6000 years as illustrated above is actually ridiculously tiny, 100's of millions of years is probably a safer error range. The reasoning isn't circular where one of the data sets is calibrated against some other measurable fact.

BTW. I'm no geologist/physicist or other expert on these matters... someone who knows a bit more can chime in if I've made any wild assumptions. What I will say though is that I think it is more than likely we can make a pretty good guess at the age of the earth, with a significant margin for error.

Actually in broadcast 2k is 2048 - there's a good number of 2048x1080 standards. 1920x1080 (or 1050 or 1035) are generally referred to as HD.

There's one every time...

If it's 'hot' for millenia then it's not actually very 'hot' at all.

If it's 'hot' for decades it's not really a problem to store it.

It's only the stuff in the middle that's particularly nasty, and that can be controlled through good design of the reactor process

Reprocessing and breeder reactors will mean we can get rid of all the waste in it's entirety. Of course that would mean research, development and construction of new reactors. One of the biggest problems is that a lot of the people who complain about the by-products of nuclear power are also the people who are blocking any solution to it. It seems they would rather have big piles of waste comprising small quantities of very dangerous material mixed with large quantities of practically inert material (making large quantities of practically dangerous material) lying around so there is something to complain about than use existing technology to make the waste harmless because it would be nuclear technology and therefore everything it does would be evil.

Or you could be informed... and look at reality. Highest cost as percentage of GDP in the world, coverage of 2/3rd the population? Yay US! I've got private healthcare (it's often a job perk in the UK), but I also know that if I lost my job tomorrow, had some chronic illness or something that wasn't covered I'd still be fine. I get taxed for it, but I still feel more 'free' than I would were it necessary to be employed or maintain a private health insurance policy for coverage. Also we get much more holiday over here, no worries about random gun violence - our police are generally unarmed because they generally don't need to be armed, and you get all the rain you can complain about.

In the time you spent typing that post you could have read the comment carefully...

See if you can spot it this time round...

Pedantic GP is pedantic. Over-eager-to-feel-superior AC should not feel superior

In addition, device drivers talk to real hardware. Sometimes a buggy driver will cause an irrecoverable situation in hardware regardless of software that may be able to 'kill' a driver process. Short of the kernel closing down devices and potentially buses (e.g. Linux disables non-handled interrupt sources) there will be nothing that can be done. If your buggy driver instructs the device to DMA data to incorrect memory locations then the fanciest kernel in the world can't help. Microkernels may have advantages, but I agree they are unlikely to provide the panacea of stable, high-performance device drivers. IMHO that can only be obtained by correctly written and well tested device drivers, which makes the monolithic/micro-kernel choice irrelevant.

Or let's see reality. You have 6 companies A-F, with corresponding CEOs A-F. Each company has a remuneration committee that votes on the compensation for the CEO.

The remuneration committee for company/CEO A consists of people who happen to be CEOs [B-F]
The remuneration committee for company/CEO B consists of people who happen to be CEOs [A,C-F]
The remuneration committee for company/CEO C consists of people who happen to be CEOs [A-B,D-F]
etc.
etc.

Market forces have nothing to do with it (otherwise why would companies that make losses still increase executive compensation? Why would executives who have failed still be getting higher and higher paid jobs?). It's all a big exercise in scratching each others' backs. Even if it's not by design, and even if your pay is decided by people a few steps removed, there's still a circular dependency where it's in no-one's interest to vote down remuneration.

Even without the direct link above, you still see examples of 'Other companies of size XXX pay YYY for this position so we are going to pay YYY+ZZZ to get the best person'. The people who make these decisions are also in the market for these jobs: It's not in their interest to push the pay down as it would indirectly push down or limit their own pay.

"... and if you don't want to pay your taxes, you're free to spend a weekend with the pain monster"

You're correct. We should also remove any testing and training requirements for operating heavy machinery because most people would probably be fine. And the guys that run critical infrastructure like power plants, or people who drive trains, or pilots who fly planes, they all have to go through a ridiculous amount of testing and training and have strict requirements that clearly do very little to preserve anyone's safety. We should just let them try it and if they don't kill anyone they can carry on because they clearly know what they're doing.

If you're that shitting scared on the road you shouldn't be driving, that fear is your brain telling you that you have no control over the situation. You could try being a better driver, observation, anticipation, defensive driving etc. will mean that you don't get as many nasty surprises and you are better prepared for the ones that do happen. If you want to drive like you own the road then you're going to come into conflict with an awful lot of other idiots who also think they own the road. Share the roads, expect people to drive like idiots and protect yourself from them by becoming a better driver yourself, and you'll find the whole experience a lot better. Driving is a skill, one that is complex and has many facets. Drivers should be continuously seeking to be better at it, not to get as close as possible to the minimum acceptable standard.

Pop the hood, lock the doors with the remote (presuming you have one) then actually open the hood, that usually sets the alarm off...

Same as all the parked up lorries (18-wheelers or whatever everyone else calls them) leaving their doors open when they're sleeping in a lay-by overnight. They still have to worry about then is someone stealing their diesel though...