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Comment Re:delegate an agent (Score 1) 54

Things like that will appear eventually. It's too early to expect them. And eventually it will be the user that has the read-only access...and it will never be used. But eventually may be a couple of decades from now (and it may also be a couple of years from now...there's a large variance in that prediction, but I'd be really surprised if it were less than a year from now or longer than a couple of decades).

Comment Re:Pluto is a planet (Score 0) 70

Don't be hypnotized by the names. What is most significant (after the orbit) is the mass. And that's a pretty smooth gradation (at least on a logarithmic scale).

If you want "planet" to mean "stuff in orbit around the sun", you end up with most planets weighing micrograms...or possibly less.

N.B.: By the strict definition of "planet" used by the IAU, even Jupiter wouldn't really qualify, because it hasn't cleared it's orbit. There's a lot of small stuff and, of course, the trojans.

Comment Re:Antibiotics are going out..... (Score 1) 69

I disagree. I think it probably CAN get much faster, but I'm not sure how much cheaper it can get.

The approach I think could succeed is the "bio-chip", with lots of cells and feed lines so different wells in the chip would host different combinations of bacteriophage and sample. This would need to be screened frequently, probably by an AI, that would pick out the most successful set. I think this could, in principle, usually be done within a couple of days in a mostly automated way. But that's a pretty complex setup, and I doubt that it could be done really cheaply.

Comment Re:Do we know the geographical source? (Score 3, Interesting) 69

It's not even that. Most of the drug-resistant bacteria existed before antibiotics came out of the lab. But they weren't a very successful part of the population. Antibiotics killed off their competition, and now they're successful. Most methods of resisting antibiotics have an energy cost, so bacteria that don't use them are more successful if the antibiotics aren't around. Unfortunately, it's not usually a very high cost, so stopping the use of an antibiotic doesn't reset the population, at least not quickly.

But, yeah, bacteria mutate really rapidly to fill a new niche, so you probably literally CAN'T have an antibiotic both in wide use and remaining effective.

Comment Re:Compatibility is always going to be a problem.. (Score 4, Interesting) 131

Or even better, make ODF the standard, and judge Office on its rendering and creating ODF formats.

Again being the size it is the government Denmark can start with publishing all of its forms in ODF format, no more DOCX; also use open/free fonts. This makes it a MS problems if they do not render properly -- people will start blaming MS for errors not the other way round. Thus industry and people at home will start using LibreOffice (what is in Collabora).

Next they need to push schools & tech colleges to use ODF, too many of them train students to learn how to use Microsoft products, they graduate and expect to use MS in their jobs. Actually: it would be nice if schools were to train people properly, most teachers do not know how to use style sheets, etc, and, eg, will make columns line up by pressing spaces rather than setting tabs/whatever. Start by teaching teachers (harder than you think).

Comment They were using Open Source software, so ... (Score 2, Interesting) 131

if it does not do what you want take the damned source and add what is missing and everyone will benefit. If you do not have the expertise then pay the developers or someone to do it for you. Yes: it will cost but to an entity the size of the Danish government the cost will be less than the cost of licensing MS Office for another year or so. Once this development cost is paid it does not need to be paid again next year - unlike a license fee.

If the various EU governments each pay to fix whatever itch scratches for them then you quickly end up with better packages; as well as regaining digital sovereignty etc. This must be obvious to almost everybody, or it is being used as an excuse to do nothing or maybe keep the brown envelopes coming ?

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