Two obvious ones: Isaac Asimov (basically everything) and Iain M Banks (the Culture). For me, Asimovs universe was much more rewarding as it raises and explores much more ethical and philosophical questions, but Banks has an alternative view on future AI which is worth checking out.
Yes, but if your customers have a lot of valuable data in your service, cancelling would make them loose that data. You can technically use this to extort money from your users. Not a viable business plan in the long run, for sure, but there are plenty of businesses that would try, I think.
Compared to farming, this system uses a lot less water (which is basically free right now) and a lot more electricity (which is more expensive). So you can just imagine it being viable if the cost of those utilities reverses. Could happen if for example we get efficient solar power and the negative projections of fresh water availability come true.
Thats a very narrow definition. Music is sound we interpret. There is no reason why computers cannot "compose" meaningful to us music. Of course it will probably be by happenchance, but nonetheless. Also computers are good at finding patterns. There is definitely a chance they (I should write "it" but cant reformulate so it sounds good) can find patterns interesting to us.
You have to use your bitcoins someday. Either to buy real currency or real goods. Then you know where the money went TO. Tracing the transactions back (where the money came FROM) is then not a big deal - full history is in the blockchain.
So as long as you don't do a transaction that connects your identity to any bitcoin address, you are fine. but to use bitcoins you are almost always required to do it (its an electronic financial transaction, they are governed by law to have an identity, but of course you can find entities who do not follow these laws).
Yes, I also got excited when I read that, but "open sourcing" means providing freely accessible information, not consulting. And they dont have any accessible information that I could see. Also I dont have 30 grand or a boat, I wanted to try this on a much smaller scale, just for my own interest and benefit.
We need open source resources on how to build and maintain farms like this. Unfortunately these guys are not sharing yet, at least I couldn't find any detailed information. I'd love to try this myself, but as a complete novice i'd need a lot basic information - like what species to grow, how to get seeds and plant them, etc.
I believe the op is referring to the debate about wealth creation and distribution, where one could have a view that people in IT-startups like Zuckerberg are not creating wealth, just distributing it. And to distribute, you need to have someone to distribute FROM and someone to distribute TO. Now the comment should be more legible, I believe.
Well, the endangered species are endangered either because
1. human involvement
2. natural selection
So I don't see that as a valid argument for not protecting dolphins. It's not really their fault.
Also, we consistently overprotect one not endangered animal (humans) at the expense of all other species.
Confluence + word export? For similar price you get reports plus a wiki as well. I've been using that export recently and it works awesome. You need a word template, though, but that can be cheaply had through freelance designers ($20-50 tops). I'd consider this if this was a one-time purchase or like $5/month, but not for that price.
Seems like they used a PIK number created by the census bureau to track individuals and same address to create parent-child link.