I have 3 fanless desktops and you can build them quite cheaply if 65w cpus are enough for you. You can get a fanless seasonic power supply for 90 usd and use cpu cooler Artic Alpine 12 for 25 USD - the remaining components including the case can be quite standard
"all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed" -- Preamble of the declaration of independence
It is going to be very difficult to motivate people to change something... until a big part of population is starving I believe...
The problem is that telecom is already a heavy regulated area (for historical and technical reasons). Besides this, connecting to your competitor network is going to be always a rigged game, just a handful of players will connect between them, that leads to monopoly... So I think it is virtually impossible to setup your own new company... I live in France and it is quite interesting to see the raise of the provider Free.fr, quite impressive how they defied all other big companies... (Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with this ISP).
I agree with this in theory... but I know of at least one counter example: if you moved to Denmark, it would took 2 years (working or studying there) for you to considered a "resident" and be eligible to all state benefits as a Danish (at least was this way 7 years ago). I believe that it will be very interesting how they will solve this... they would need to add some barrier otherwise LOT of people will migrate to there... in France the minimum wage is around 1.400 euros for working 35 hours... people would even live in Switzerland and come to work in France or Italy...
Sorry, you are right, Switzerland is only part of Schengen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area), but still the long term objective of the Schengen Area would be borderless trade, immigration, workforce, etc.
I believe that there is a second and more dark intention in this proposal. Today Switzerland is part of EU but they still have quotas for "work permits" depending on the nationality of the worker, this goes against the principles of Schengen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Agreement) and there is lot of pressure for Switzerland to remove these "quotas" (mainly against eastern European countries). The problem is that the wages there are way higher than other Schengen countries, and without the quotas there would be massive immigration to Switzerland that would lower sharply the wages for jobs that don't require higher education. So, IMO, Switzerland wants to give a minimum wage to create a "virtual block" to the poor countries of Schengen... (I am French and I live near the border)
edit to clarify: if you are a Swiss citizen you would earn your wage + state wage, and if you are an immigrant you would earn just your wage... making virtually impossible to afford living there (considering your wage =~ state given wage), only for very well paid jobs that this would make no difference.
I use VLC in win7 (x64) and in ubuntu (x64). I usually watch my videos from a slow memory card or pendrive, because of this I try always to increase the file caching the in input codecs, first, I don't understand why it is limited to 6999ms, is there a reason (my machines have between 8gb to 32gb of ram, so would be nice to prefetch everything...)? and second, the volume is still with some lag... i guess because you pre-amplify it.. the lag is a real pity because makes it feels a way worse player... still it is my favorite player! so thanks!
IMO, there is some kind of correlation between efficiency in the economy and the inequality in the society. I believe that it is part of the government job to reduce the inequality... but the devil is on the details on how to do it.
In my opinion there are 2 main issues with Biometrics:
- The first is that it may identify you with precision but it can not tell your will, so basically, you can force someone to use the sensor.
- The second issue is that it does not allow you to give authorization to a third party in exceptional situations.
The problem is that as the data came from "parallel" investigations, it is way easier for the prosecutor justify that he did not have access to information that could innocent you, no?
There are at least 3 scary factors in this.
1 - What will be next crime that is big enough that justify using this? File sharing? Drinking in public? Jaywalking? Driving above the speed limit?
2 - The data is collected forever! Our current law system is not just in a situation which the prosecutors can dig your past to find problems! Imagine you do some graffiti (ok, I know it is vandalism) to express your indignation, now, if you are ideologically an enemy of the state, they can dig for crimes your whole life...!
3 - The collected data can be used to prosecute you but it can not be used to innocent you.
Impressive, it really works!
Why do they allow this? They want to be indexed by google? What is the logic behind, because if you go by their website you have a terrible experience, if you go by google (with googles ads) you have a better one!
I am no lawyer... but I think it doesn't work exactly this way. You just inherit the debts if you decide to accept the inheritance (you have the option to just repudiate it).
I live in France, and as far as I know, it works the same way. In Brazil your main residence is even protected (if you live on it)... only my 2c, but in in my opinion, US is still the scariest.