The Lounge - CodeProject

RossMW wrote:
The data collected is used for all sort of important issues.

Sure it is. I find it funny how that's true for tons of other data collected about us but everyone else cries about it. I'm surprised how many criers are OK with the census data.

RossMW wrote:
it may well feel intrusive,

Not to me. I don't care who knows what my birthday is.

Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other.

Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.

All you have to specify is how many people live at the address. Nothing else is required.

".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013

In Norway, population information has "for ages" been continously updated in electronic registers. Every childbirth is reported, and if you haven't registred a name for the kid within a certain period, you receive a reminder from the register that you must file a name for the baby.

Other registers are going all digital as well. About fifteen years ago, I was stopped in a routine check for drunk driving (not because my driving was dubious; it was a general screening), and it took me a few seconds to dig up my driver's license. Before I found it, the police officer told me: "Don't worry; we've got it here, over the radio. Everything OK". Today, you don't need a physical driver's license at all.

It is the same with lots of other public archives (and private/commercial ones as well). I am not perfectly happy with it; it makes us very dependent on network techology being 100% stable. And datacenter technology. Besides, some excuses for it are questionable from a privacy point of view: E.g. the Norwegian state provides some state support for religious coommunities based on their membership count. Churches were required to submit membership lists electronically, and there were cases of people requesting support in up to five different churches! I very strongly question the very idea of the state supporting religious societies (it can only be understood because we had a tax financed 'state church' up until a few years ago), and the authorities demand for electronic lists did reveal what could certainly be called fraud. But my real worry is thinking of how the authorities in central Europe in the late 1930s could have used such a register. Or some future power may use it.

We have, maybe for nostalgic/romantic reasons, retained some "census-like" activities: It is more like a nationwide gallup poll. Once every ten years, they select some aspect they would like to know more about. Like, "The official register tells that you are living here - but are you living most of your life somewhere else, e.g. because you are a student or commuter?"

The census is all like "non-essential information", "things we are curious about". I do not know about US cencuses, but I suspect that is to a far greater degree is a real collection of basic information about the population, because the authorities do not know.

I think that there is a lot of information about me that is nobody's business - not even the the authorities. But I cannot keep secret where I live, how may kids I have, and how old I am. The authorities must have that information, e.g. to pay me my old age pension when that day comes. Why should they have me report it every ten years? They might just as well keep an always-updated archive of it. Then we don't 'need' the census.

Member 7989122 wrote:
Before I found it, the police officer told me: "Don't worry; we've got it here, over the radio. Everything OK". Today, you don't need a physical driver's license at all.

So... If I drive another person's car... the sue will be sent to him? Nice Smile | :)

M.D.V.

If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
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Not quite. I gave him my "person number" (functionally similar to the US Social Security Number, but is independent of Social Security). He got my photo and signature on the screen of his device, and recognized me from the photo.

For drunk driving, which car you drive is irrelevant. You breathe into this meter, and if the reading is above a certain limit, you are taken to the side for a blood sample, which is used as the evidence. The breathing test is just a quick way to check you out. The police always asks for your driver's license, whatever the reason for stopping you.

Even for automatic speed control, they cannot fine the car owner; they must be able to identify the driver from the photo. The license plates of the car is just an aid for the police to more easily find the driver. As a car owner, you may receive a request: "Who was driving your car at this and that time?", but if you do not know (or pretend that you do not know), but the photo does not show your face, they cannot make you responsible for the speeding.

I have received three census requests, one in an envelope quite different to the other two and addressed to the 3rd floor resident. This one is quite worrying as there is no third floor on my single family home. I search my attic but there is no sign of life up there. The other two are addressed to residents of "2fl" and "1a" neither of which exist.

Can I ignore all of them?

- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.

I'm currently in assisted living and they have us on lock down. Nothing goes in or out, so no one can pick upmy mail. Sounds like a good excuse to me!
If they wqant me to fill out a census form, they can let me out or my family in. End of story.

CQ de W5ALT

Walt Fair, Jr.PhD P. E.
Comport Computing
Specializing in Technical Engineering Software

In real life, before I become a programmer, I was doing chemical kinetics measurement. On a walk around the block form which I just returned (just short of no one to even say "hi") I began to think of our current predicament in terms of reactants and products. In this case, the virus (actually, the carriers) and the previously uninfected.

First it occurred to me that this in not a simple 'binuclear' reaction but much more akin to catalyisis with, initially, a positive feedback loop as the product is also of the catalyst type. A mitigating factor is that the catalyst is only active for a limited amount of time and then becomes inert. That is, a carrier infects any number of uninfected individuals for a while and then ceases to infect (Typhoid Mary was an interesting and frightening alternate scenario).

Start fresh - a huge number of molecules in the unreacted state (unexposed). Introduce into this one enzyme (the first carrier). Virtually everyone with whom they are in contact will be a potential reactant - catch the virus and start to spread it. At first appearance, this state wherein we have a large 'bath' of the uninfected and small bath of the infected increase (I'll use the word!) exponentially. We can pretend this value is (only) 2. This doubling continues until the bath has finally been populated by a sufficient number of infected (and inert 'cured' person) that the power of the the number of those newly infected drops to the level of those newly cured. This is the steady state. Eventually, the number being infected is insufficient to account for those who are now inactive (immune) and the number infected drops off until what we could call completion - or in this case, "herd immunity". The reaction is over - the epidemic has ended.

If those currently immune can be carriers, it only serves to speed up the rate of approach to the final state. This would be better fitted to enzyme kinetics where the product of the reaction is more of the enzyme.

For individuals, the mechanism is

reacted     -> activated complex -> final product, or rephrased,
unexposed   -> infected/carrier  -> immune

For this to end to occur, some mechanism of immunity must exist in the susceptible reactants. If a vaccine is developed, one can effectively skip that middle step. That would be nice. If no immunity develops (war-grade Ebola) then extinction will also stop the process.

Ravings en masse^
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010

A flawed analogy:

1. viruses evolve, becoming more/less infectious/deadly. as a kind-of life-form, they exhibit selective evolution: if they are too deadly, and kill all their hosts, they go extinct.

2. catalysts do not create "asymptomatic carriers."

3. catalysts do not hang around on material surfaces outside their "container," waiting for another container to come along.

4. catalysts do not produce "immune" substances from their substrates: however, they may transform substances so they are changed into forms that do not respond to the catalyst.

«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali

1 - Modification is comparatively slow compared to propagation. When it does occur (think influenza) it is basically a new system.

2 - Not relevant to the argument in any major way (as far as catalysts go) - I only put that in because, in the case of humans, are symptomatic.

3 - Catalyst can be homogeneous or heterogeneous. The former 'roaming' around in the reactant-filled surroundings, the later awaiting the reactant to come to it.

4 - Catalyst do form 'immune' substance - that is they change the material with which they react until it no longer reacts.

A catalyst is a material that takes part in a reaction by lowering the activation energy (barrier to reaction occurring). They undergo no net change in their own concentration, but may in fact be changed in the reaction they facility, such as exchanging their original (atomic) content for new (such changes can be observed via isotopic labeling studies).

If you're looking for some sort of religiously rigorous correlation between a conscious macroscopic system and a non-conscious microscopic system then you read the wrong post.

Ravings en masse^
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010

W∴ Balboos, GHB wrote:
Eventually, the number being infected is insufficient to account for those who are now inactive (immune) and the number infected drops off until what we could call completion - or in this case, "herd immunity". The reaction is over - the epidemic has ended.

Where the theory falls apart is that it doesn't go beyond "infected".

i.e. it assumes that everyone infected gains immunity, where the reality is that 9.5% (based on today's figures[^]), rather than become immune, die.

I'd say that the cost of such "evolutionary immunity" is a tad on the high side.

"Acceptable losses" is a term reserved for use by psychopaths and maniacs.

I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

and politicians. I guess that was redundant though.

"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"

Mark_Wallace wrote:

i.e. it assumes that everyone infected gains immunity, where the reality is that 9.5% (based on today's figures[^]), rather than become immune, die.

In a recent study, those who die from a disease are permanently immune to it.

Obviously, here our A->B includes a that unfortunate byproduct. It's still out of the reaction.

And the 'catalyst' model still holds. In the real world of reactions, one wants to go from A to B with the help of catalyst C. What happens is that one goes from A to B, gets some B1, B2, D, E, Q . . . and a lot of the effort in catalyst research is to get as much A to B as possible relative to the rest (under milder conditions, if possible).

- For what it's worth, I did a computer simulation of this in the 80's - gas/surface interactions - and then had experimental proof as well to the hypothesis. And if I explained it in only rigorously scientific terms it would be basically unreadable to most lounge readers.

Ravings en masse^
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010

modified 19-Mar-20 7:51am.

Not all infections give permanent immunity. For most corona viruses it only lasts between 6 and 24 months. We're at least a year from being able to start characterizing this one.

Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius

Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt

Granted. Permanent immunity is not guaranteed. For that matter, it may even slowly mutate its way through the population until the new version comes back to strike again (flu, cold, etc.) and permanent immunity doesn't help much.

This[^], along with interesting considerations, agrees with your point. Particularly towards the end.

On a sunny note, of sorts, the author expect a likely scenario is it joining four other Corona virus' that are typically with us along with the flu, sharing the season - but since kill or severely sickening the hosts doesn't spread the virus very well, it will likely evolve to an illness with generally minor symptoms. Alas, not in a time frame anywhere near 'Yesterday'

Ravings en masse^
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010

Actually disease propogation is a difusion process caused by random contact with contagious people rather than random motion of molecules.

Rules to live by:
1, wash your hands with an antiviral, not antiseptic or anti-bacterial.
Avoid large groups of people who are coughing.
3. Don't kiss anyone with a runny nose.

CQ de W5ALT

Walt Fair, Jr.PhD P. E.
Comport Computing
Specializing in Technical Engineering Software

I can see the diffusion point of view. On the microscopic level, all chemical process are prety much diffusion processes.

They have some other tricks, too, such as a something like proton transfer in aqueous solutions: the proton doesn't have to actually move - the charge propagates along the (H₂0)_n chain. Fortunately, disease should be able to mimic this. Unfortunately, however, human behavior (as in deciding they need to hoard) does . . .

I just picked out one model that wasn't too difficult to describe. Is a person sneezing an SN₁ or SN₂ reaction?

Unlike the chemical in a reaction it has one special caveat that most annoying: unpredictable behavior of sentient reactants.

Ravings en masse^
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010