Personally, on this matter, I defer to Phil Mason, Ph.D., who is a chemist specializing in nuclear chemistry. He put a video up on his thunderf00t channel when this thing came out in the news explaining why it's bullshit.

Those diamond batteries were bullshit. The problem is that as the carbon-14 decays, the structure stops being diamond, because it's no longer made of all carbon. After even a decade or two, the diamond structure will be practically gone and the remaining carbon will impure as balls and in mostly graphite form. Once the structure is damaged enough, it will no longer hold itself together. I suppose you could encase the diamond in something like resin but part of the point of using diamond was the electrical properties (diamond is a good insulator of electricity which makes for good capacitors, the effects of which were being used in the device in part to make it work.). Also, while carbon-14 is screamingly radioactive; it's way, way less so than the currently used tritium. This means you'd a ton more of it to get the same wattage output, although it's longer half-life would mean that it could, assuming it maintained it's structure, last longer than the tritium betavoltaics. But to get it to maintain it's structure long-term would require using proportionally less carbon-14 and more carbon-12 and carbon-13. This means you lose one of the advantages of tritium - size.

Yes, they can. Like 20 years ago, when CmdrTaco was still running this site, they implemented Unicode support. But then a few weeks later they disabled it because they couldn't figure out how to stop the text direction markers from breaking the site. You could post a comment with a right-to-left direction and reverse all the text that came after, including the next comments, unless you remembered to change it back before the end of the comment. They never did re-enable Unicode, which is quite ridiculous. Everyone else figured this out 20 years ago or more.

The best system that's been done is called SOCIALISM. It combines the best and most useful aspects of communism with the best and most useful aspects of capitalism. Straight capitalism, like what the right and far right in the US want (and are largely starting to get under their God-Emperor Trump, unfortunately) ultimately leads to fascism and assholitry. See "anarcho-capitalism". The end result will be some system akin to slavery, even if it has a different name, just like has happened in the past. See "sharecropping", "Russian serfdom", and "feudalism". The end result of Socialism taken to its logical conclusion, on the other hand, is basically Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Before you say "No True Scotsman", see "the Scandinavian Economy, Post World War II". We've seen what Communism brings when you turn it on like a switch, and when you take it to an extreme, and it sucks donkey. See "Maoist China" and "the USSR, post-World War II".

Freenet is also based on middle-out compression.

No. Trying to push 30TB into Freenet will be interpreted as an attack on the network by other peers and they'll disconnect from your peer.

Freenet is better viewed as a communication medium than a storage medium. Data is prioritized according to demand, somewhat like an LRU cache. You can't upload 30TB and expect the network to preserve it for you.

On liability, running a Freenet peer is more like running network infrastructure that automatically routes and caches other people's traffic than intentionally publishing it. US law explicitly recognizes this distinction in the DMCA's provisions for transitory network communications and system caching. We discuss this in more detail in the FAQ.

You obviously haven't tried Freenet. You can join our room on River and you'll see no spam, no fraud, no hate speech, none of that.

Decentralized doesn't mean unmoderated. Systems built on Freenet can be moderated however their creators and communities want. River is moderated.

The difference is that nobody running one service gets to decide what everyone else is allowed to run.

I forgot about /proc and I think there's also another filesystem that's relevant, /sysfs. The original idea was to make a central /etc, but, yeah, the Registry is a bit more general than I made it sound.

What's wrong with the Registry? Its original intent was to be a database of all system settings. Linux and Unix has had the same thing from the start, except that the Unix/Linux solution is a directory containing a bunch of files (that is, /etc). They both even have system wide settings trees and individual user settings trees. (On Linux, this would be the dotfiles in your user directory. On Windows, it's just a second root tree in the Registry. HKEY_LOCAL_USER\, if I remember correctly.)

Now, I'll grant you that most program settings today aren't stored in the Registry anymore, but system-wide settings still are. This is similar on Linux where a lot of configuration stuff is stored within containers like flatpaks.

Rep. Curt Weldon : Thank you. Let me see if I can liven things up here in the last couple of minutes of the luncheon. First of all, I apologize for being late. And I thank Bob and the members of the caucus for inviting me here.
...
But the point is that when John Hamre briefed me, and gave me the three key points of this change, there are a lot of unanswered questions. He assured me that in discussions that he had had with people like Bill Gates and Gerstner from IBM that there would be, kind of a, I don't know whether it's a, unstated ability to get access to systems if we needed it., Now, I want to know if that is part of the policy, or is that just something that we are being assured of, that needs to be spoke. Because, if there is some kind of a tacit understanding, I would like to know what it is. Because that is going to be subjected to future administrations, if it is not written down in a clear policy way. I want to know more about this end use certificate. In fact, sitting on the Cox Committee as I did, I saw the fallacy of our end use certificate that we were supposedly getting for HPCs going into China, which didn't work. So, I would like to know what the policies are. So, I guess what I would say is, I am happy that there seems to be a coming together. In fact, when I first got involved with NSA and DOD and CIS, and why can't you sit down with industry, and work this out. In fact, I called Gerstner, and I said, can't you IBM people, and can't you software people get together and find the middle ground, instead of us having to do legislation.

Fixed-point decimals and scaled integers are fundamentally the same thing. The only real difference is that decimal data types use base-10 at the representation level (aka binary-coded decimal, or even straight ASCII numerals. You can do math directly on both using techniques that are practically identical, save a few differing constants.). Of course, I doubt you meant actual decimal data types. Fixed-point binary and scaled integers are exactly the same thing.

Historically, money was computed using only BCD representations, largely because that's what COBOL used. BCD representations are fixed-point by nature. Most COBOL implementations used packed BCD (2 digits per byte), although modern implementations often use either integer types with a scaling factor or straight ASCII numbers. Using integer types is WAY more efficient, both cycles- and storage-wise, but using ASCII is convenient. Other languages with a native Decimal type do the same.

Using floating-point of any kind for monetary values is a VERY bad idea. When numbers get large, you silently lose precision. When you get big enough, you can no longer store cents. You also get issues with not being able to represent cents exactly unless you scale the numbers anyway.

With apologies to Dr "Suse", to the tune of "Green Eggs and Ham".

Linux can. Linux can .Use Linux

That Linux can! That Linux can! I do not like that Linux can!

Do you like open sourcing plan?

I do not like that Linux can. I do not like the open sourcing plan.

Would you like to free source share?

I would not like to free source share. I would not like it anywhere. I do not like open sourcing plan. I do not like that Linux can.

Would you like it very stable? Would you like it to enable?

I do not like it very stable. I do not like it to enable. I do not like to free source share. I do not like it anywhere. I do not like the open sourcing plan. I do not like that Linux can.

Would you use it in a X-Box? Would you use it if it ROCKS?

Not on X-box. Not if it rocks. Not if very stable. Not to enable. I would not let them free source share. I would not let them anywhere. I would not allow open sourcing plan. I do not like that Linux can.

Would you? Could you? In your biz? Use it! Use it! Here it is.

I would not, could not, in our biz.

You may like it. You will see. You may like it if it's free!

I would not, could not if it's free. Not in our biz! It should never be!

I do not like it on the X-box. I do not like it that it rocks. I do not like it amongst our biz. I do not like it that it is. I do not like they free source share. I do not like that anywhere. I do not like that Linux can. I do not like you Linux man!

service! service! service! service! Could you, would you, as a service?

Not as a service! Not if it's free! Not in my biz! Man! Let not it be! I would not, could not, on a X-box. I could not, would not, if it rocks. I will not use it if its stable. I will not use it even to enable. I will not let them free source share. I will not let them anywhere. I do not like open sourcing plan. I do not like that Linux can.

Say! if in copyleft? always free copyleft! Would you, could you, copyleft?

I would not, could not, in copyleft.

Would you, could you, why so nervous?

I would not, could not, I'm NOT nervous. Not as copyleft. Not as a service. Not in my biz. Not if it's free. I do not like that it can, you see. Not if it's stable. Not on X-box. Not to enable. Not if it rocks. I will not let them free source share. I do not like it anywhere!

You do not like open sourcing plan?

I do not like that Linux can.

Could you, would you use what we wrote?

I would not, could not, use what you wrote!

Would you, could you, to avoid your bloat?

I could not, would not, avoid bloat. I will not, will not, use what you wrote. I will not compete with them as a service. I will not because it makes us nervous. Not in our biz! Not if it's free! Not if it is! You let me be! I do not like it on the X-Box. I do not like it that it Rocks. I will not use it if it's stable. I do not like that it does enable. I do not like they free source share. I do not like it ANYWHERE I do not like open sourcing plan!I do not like that, Linux can.

You do not like it. So you say. Try it! Try it! And you may. Try it and you may, I say.

Man! If you will let me be, I will try it. You will see.

Say! I like open sourcing plan! I do! I like that, Linux can! And I would use it because it's stable. And I could use it to enable... And I could charge for providing a service. And I could copyleft without being nervous. And in my biz. And still source free. For you can still charge for a service fee!

So I will use it on the networked X-box. And I will promote it because it ROCKS. And I will use it because it's stable. And I will use it to enable.

And I will use it here and there. Say! I can use it ANYWHERE!

I do so like open sourcing plan! Thank you! Thank you, Linux man!

By The Cat with the Red Hat