It didn't cost that much to make the other plants to have diesel generators that didn't fail. Completely preventable.
"other sites had the good sense to have emergency diesel generators protected in buildings. Fukushima 2 escaped unharmed because of this simple safety measure. In contrast, the site at Fukushima 1 had crucial seawater pumps for the backup generators exposed to the environment. Not a smart decision, as it turns out."
Some simple advice from Warren Buffett and Freakonomics would do. We need to align owner's/management's goals and motivations to that of the public's by making people responsible for their actions for critical and large utilities or companies that are "too big to fail". If they bankrupt a company, they need to become financially destitute as well, with no insurance protection. They should be culpable for any messes after they leave for up to 1 year. If they commit fraud on an Enron/Madoff level, life sentences or death would be appropriate.
In this case, people owning and running nuclear plants would basically bet their fortunes and lives that they are running the facilities with integrity and great care. Any damage to the environment would be their responsibility and for all those who were affected (lost business, land, health issues, etc).
Eliminate any conflict of interest. For instance, did they delay the cooling down of the nuclear reactors with corrosive seawater to save themselves some money? Why did the backups fail? Was it simply because they were lazy and never tested their backups? (would have revealed problems with incompatible electrical plugs.) Did they not want to spend extra money for diesel generators that were properly protected from water like the other surrounding plants that did not fail? Inspections of safety procedures and backup tests should be public knowledge and transparent like they do for NYC restaurant inspections. Anything less than an A is unacceptable.
The same should go for the agencies that are supposed to regulate and protect the public. Nuclear plant owners should not be cozy with those that are supposed to watch and regulate them. Eliminate all conflicts of interest by having members with zero ties to the nuclear industry, with severe financial and criminal penalties for gifts/bribes/consulting jobs, etc. Peoples lives are at stake, and those that violate this trust should be dealt with severely.
And this practice needs to be coordinated and overseen on a global level, as meltdowns can affect people much farther than the immediate area unfortunately. Until we have something basic like this in place, there will be more preventable disasters to come.
Warren Buffet offered a solution along those lines. A 100% tax on all capital gains on investments under 1 year.
We need to align management's goals and motivations to that of the public's by making people responsible for their actions. I like the idea of long prison sentences and death penalties for CEO and other executive management who commit fraud. (Enron/Madoff) Make them directly/personally/financially responsible (bankers/nuclear plant management/owners) if their decisions cause public damage (financial/enviromental/etc). They would not be able to take out personal insurance claims and would risk personally bankruptcy. No more golden parachutes!
So we are getting closer to a Knight Rider type technology. Hopefully you can use this tech to rescue people from collapsed buildings too like in Japan right now.
However, the Kim family was only rescued after they were spotted walking on a remote road by helicopter. Had they not left the car, they probably would have perished.
And the mother who lost her child in Death Valley never left the car. Had she backtracked by foot down the road, they may have had a chance. Or not...
"As long as prospective returns are above the rate required to produce a dollar of market value per dollar retained, we will continue to retain all earnings. Should our estimate of future returns fall below that point, we will distribute all unrestricted earnings that we believe cannot be effectively used. In making that judgment, we will look at both our historical record and our prospects. Because our year-to-year results are inherently volatile, we believe a five-year rolling average to be appropriate for judging the historical record."
Warren Buffett CEO Berkshire Hathaway. Some of you may know him better as one of the world's most richest men and Billy Gates bridge buddy.;)
Basically, he can invest the money better by increasing the value of the company/stock rather than dishing it out. He never has and probably never will.
No corporation is required to be run ethically. Why should Apple?
lol... Steve Jobs is important. Just like Warren Buffett is important to the success of Berkshire. But even Warren knows it is important to have a succession plan. Although he keeps his secret.
A father of a large family and estate is not required to have a will, but it will sure make things alot easier for his family.
Every once in a while (geologically speaking) the earth's magnetic poles will reverse! No one knows why. And the magnetic field protects us from solar winds and cosmic radiation, which would otherwise destroy earth. What keeps the field going? The earth's molten core. But it's cooling off slowly and one day the magnetic field will be gone and all life on earth will probably end. I propose the next environmental movement be to SAVE THE MAGNETIC FIELDS!;)
"Based upon the study of lava flows of basalt throughout the world, it has been proposed that the Earth's magnetic field reverses at intervals, ranging from tens of thousands to many millions of years, with an average interval of approximately 300,000 years.[15] However, the last such event, called the Brunhes–Matuyama reversal, is observed to have occurred some 780,000 years ago.
There is no clear theory as to how the geomagnetic reversals might have occurred . Some scientists have produced models for the core of the Earth wherein the magnetic field is only quasi-stable and the poles can spontaneously migrate from one orientation to the other over the course of a few hundred to a few thousand years. Other scientists propose that the geodynamo first turns itself off, either spontaneously or through some external action like a comet impact, and then restarts itself with the magnetic "North" pole pointing either North or South. External events are not likely to be routine causes of magnetic field reversals due to the lack of a correlation between the age of impact craters and the timing of reversals. Regardless of the cause, when the magnetic pole flips from one hemisphere to the other this is known as a reversal, whereas temporary dipole tilt variations that take the dipole axis across the equator and then back to the original polarity are known as excursions."
The solution is simple. 100% taxes on all short term trades. Something Warren Buffett has suggested. It would destroy the Wall Street casino, but we would all be better off.
I have been using windows XP at home, and the only reason I am going to upgrade to Win 7 is because of native SSD and Trim support. I have already upgraded my work computer and latop computers to SSD's. No other upgrade in recent memory has compared. Maybe as impressive as the 3DFX cards from back in the day..;)
Wrong. Not so simple. Mod grandparent up. I'm waiting until TLER issues with RAID is resolved with consumer grade large capacity "green" drives. Ive been wanting to build a RAID 5 solution with the WD/Samsung 2TB green drives.
"Western Digital now claims that using the WDTLER.EXE tool on newer drives can damage the firmware and make the disk unusable. The WDTLER.EXE tool is no longer available from Western Digital, and new disks will not be able to have the TLER setting changed. RE disks are only suitable for RAID arrays and Caviar are only suitable for non-RAID use. The utility still works for older disks."
"Note: Western Digital (1.5TB Green Power) WD15EADS-00P8B0 (Nov 2009) drives do not support TLER. WD15EADS-00S2B0 (Feb 2010) models do support TLER."
"I know the first time I killed the Cyberdemon in Doom I nearly wept"
Ha! This comment made me go buy ultimate doom and relive the old days.:) I forgot where most of the secrets were, so I went to utube for walkthroughs and came across this insanity. enjoi!
1. There was something wrong with the Audis. The throttle and brake pedals were too close together.
2. The problems with the Lexus/Toyotas have not been reproducible. The Audi problems were reproducible with video cameras pointed at the feet. Toyota blames the floor mats, but no one has been able to reproduce it as far as I can tell. Regardless, the floor mats may not be the only culprit. (Therac-25 had multiple bugs.)
3. For events to have happened as described, the code and designs for the system need to be open for peer review and testing before anyone can make any conclusive claim. (One can only guess at how comprehensive the investigations have been.)
PC architecture, cpu design, programming paradigms, TCPIP, np complete, neural networks, etc. Excellent explanations. Brief but dense. Wonderful starting point.
You get to see all the beautiful forests instead of getting lost in a few groves...
Part of running a good business is not just being aware of the legal aspects, but the ethical aspects as well (at the very least from a marketing/popular opinion perspective.) Slaughtering elephants, selling guns, and child porno is bad. Bootlegged stuff is not so bad.
Should a third party be required to provide proof that participants in a sex video were not 11 years old? If you did, you wouldn't be in business very long if you took that kind of attitude, legal or not.
Slashdot Mirror
It didn't cost that much to make the other plants to have diesel generators that didn't fail. Completely preventable.
"other sites had the good sense to have emergency diesel generators protected in buildings. Fukushima 2 escaped unharmed because of this simple safety measure. In contrast, the site at Fukushima 1 had crucial seawater pumps for the backup generators exposed to the environment. Not a smart decision, as it turns out."
http://k.lenz.name/LB/?p=1159 [lenz.name]
Or how about they just dump seawater on it to begin with? Sure you would have lost the plant, but you wouldn't end up with a meltdown.
Compare that with the cost of *trillions* that tax payers may spend.
http://nuclear-news.net/2011/05/06/fukushima-nuclear-accident-could-cost-tax-payer-trillions/
And if we aren't willing to carry that responsibility and cost, then we shouldn't have it to begin with.
Why did only Fukushima 1 fail?
http://k.lenz.name/LB/?p=1159
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110406a4.html
*sigh*
It appears you are wrong.
http://k.lenz.name/LB/?p=1159
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110406a4.html
Read my other post for what I think the real reason is.
Some simple advice from Warren Buffett and Freakonomics would do. We need to align owner's/management's goals and motivations to that of the public's by making people responsible for their actions for critical and large utilities or companies that are "too big to fail". If they bankrupt a company, they need to become financially destitute as well, with no insurance protection. They should be culpable for any messes after they leave for up to 1 year. If they commit fraud on an Enron/Madoff level, life sentences or death would be appropriate.
In this case, people owning and running nuclear plants would basically bet their fortunes and lives that they are running the facilities with integrity and great care. Any damage to the environment would be their responsibility and for all those who were affected (lost business, land, health issues, etc).
Eliminate any conflict of interest. For instance, did they delay the cooling down of the nuclear reactors with corrosive seawater to save themselves some money? Why did the backups fail? Was it simply because they were lazy and never tested their backups? (would have revealed problems with incompatible electrical plugs.) Did they not want to spend extra money for diesel generators that were properly protected from water like the other surrounding plants that did not fail? Inspections of safety procedures and backup tests should be public knowledge and transparent like they do for NYC restaurant inspections. Anything less than an A is unacceptable.
The same should go for the agencies that are supposed to regulate and protect the public. Nuclear plant owners should not be cozy with those that are supposed to watch and regulate them. Eliminate all conflicts of interest by having members with zero ties to the nuclear industry, with severe financial and criminal penalties for gifts/bribes/consulting jobs, etc. Peoples lives are at stake, and those that violate this trust should be dealt with severely.
And this practice needs to be coordinated and overseen on a global level, as meltdowns can affect people much farther than the immediate area unfortunately. Until we have something basic like this in place, there will be more preventable disasters to come.
mod this guy up. For all we know, Mark enjoys killing things and uses this story as cover.
Computer Science: An Overview by Brookshear
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0132569035/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0201781301&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=156PMT03KVNBZ06TDF4D
Get it, and you can thank me later.
Warren Buffet offered a solution along those lines. A 100% tax on all capital gains on investments under 1 year.
We need to align management's goals and motivations to that of the public's by making people responsible for their actions. I like the idea of long prison sentences and death penalties for CEO and other executive management who commit fraud. (Enron/Madoff) Make them directly/personally/financially responsible (bankers/nuclear plant management/owners) if their decisions cause public damage (financial/enviromental/etc). They would not be able to take out personal insurance claims and would risk personally bankruptcy. No more golden parachutes!
So, anyone know if they will make this available for purchase and download via a system like Steam?
Did Jackson and the studio come to a settlement and reveal the books to clear up their creative Hollywood accounting?
So we are getting closer to a Knight Rider type technology. Hopefully you can use this tech to rescue people from collapsed buildings too like in Japan right now.
Probably the best bet.
However, the Kim family was only rescued after they were spotted walking on a remote road by helicopter. Had they not left the car, they probably would have perished.
And the mother who lost her child in Death Valley never left the car. Had she backtracked by foot down the road, they may have had a chance. Or not...
"As long as prospective returns are above the rate required to produce a dollar of market value per dollar retained, we will continue to retain all earnings. Should our estimate of future returns fall below that point, we will distribute all unrestricted earnings that we believe cannot be effectively used. In making that judgment, we will look at both our historical record and our prospects. Because our year-to-year results are inherently volatile, we believe a five-year rolling average to be appropriate for judging the historical record."
Warren Buffett CEO Berkshire Hathaway. Some of you may know him better as one of the world's most richest men and Billy Gates bridge buddy. ;)
Basically, he can invest the money better by increasing the value of the company/stock rather than dishing it out. He never has and probably never will.
No corporation is required to be run ethically. Why should Apple?
lol... Steve Jobs is important. Just like Warren Buffett is important to the success of Berkshire. But even Warren knows it is important to have a succession plan. Although he keeps his secret.
A father of a large family and estate is not required to have a will, but it will sure make things alot easier for his family.
Simple. It ends right before where you started off.
Every once in a while (geologically speaking) the earth's magnetic poles will reverse! No one knows why. And the magnetic field protects us from solar winds and cosmic radiation, which would otherwise destroy earth. What keeps the field going? The earth's molten core. But it's cooling off slowly and one day the magnetic field will be gone and all life on earth will probably end. I propose the next environmental movement be to SAVE THE MAGNETIC FIELDS! ;)
"Based upon the study of lava flows of basalt throughout the world, it has been proposed that the Earth's magnetic field reverses at intervals, ranging from tens of thousands to many millions of years, with an average interval of approximately 300,000 years.[15] However, the last such event, called the Brunhes–Matuyama reversal, is observed to have occurred some 780,000 years ago.
There is no clear theory as to how the geomagnetic reversals might have occurred . Some scientists have produced models for the core of the Earth wherein the magnetic field is only quasi-stable and the poles can spontaneously migrate from one orientation to the other over the course of a few hundred to a few thousand years. Other scientists propose that the geodynamo first turns itself off, either spontaneously or through some external action like a comet impact, and then restarts itself with the magnetic "North" pole pointing either North or South. External events are not likely to be routine causes of magnetic field reversals due to the lack of a correlation between the age of impact craters and the timing of reversals. Regardless of the cause, when the magnetic pole flips from one hemisphere to the other this is known as a reversal, whereas temporary dipole tilt variations that take the dipole axis across the equator and then back to the original polarity are known as excursions."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_magnetic_field
Not that I believe in such a silly rule, but what about Clint Eastwood? :)
If Avatar wasn't at least technically and artistically creative, then you have a very narrow definition you're working with.
The solution is simple. 100% taxes on all short term trades. Something Warren Buffett has suggested. It would destroy the Wall Street casino, but we would all be better off.
Osmosis is only the movement of water.
I have been using windows XP at home, and the only reason I am going to upgrade to Win 7 is because of native SSD and Trim support. I have already upgraded my work computer and latop computers to SSD's. No other upgrade in recent memory has compared. Maybe as impressive as the 3DFX cards from back in the day.. ;)
Wrong. Not so simple. Mod grandparent up. I'm waiting until TLER issues with RAID is resolved with consumer grade large capacity "green" drives. Ive been wanting to build a RAID 5 solution with the WD/Samsung 2TB green drives.
"Western Digital now claims that using the WDTLER.EXE tool on newer drives can damage the firmware and make the disk unusable. The WDTLER.EXE tool is no longer available from Western Digital, and new disks will not be able to have the TLER setting changed. RE disks are only suitable for RAID arrays and Caviar are only suitable for non-RAID use. The utility still works for older disks."
"Note: Western Digital (1.5TB Green Power) WD15EADS-00P8B0 (Nov 2009) drives do not support TLER. WD15EADS-00S2B0 (Feb 2010) models do support TLER."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TLER
"I know the first time I killed the Cyberdemon in Doom I nearly wept"
Ha! This comment made me go buy ultimate doom and relive the old days. :) I forgot where most of the secrets were, so I went to utube for walkthroughs and came across this insanity. enjoi!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XorJfexzF4M&feature=autofb
1. There was something wrong with the Audis. The throttle and brake pedals were too close together.
2. The problems with the Lexus/Toyotas have not been reproducible. The Audi problems were reproducible with video cameras pointed at the feet. Toyota blames the floor mats, but no one has been able to reproduce it as far as I can tell. Regardless, the floor mats may not be the only culprit. (Therac-25 had multiple bugs.)
3. For events to have happened as described, the code and designs for the system need to be open for peer review and testing before anyone can make any conclusive claim. (One can only guess at how comprehensive the investigations have been.)
4. Go read about the Therac25.
http://courses.cs.vt.edu/cs3604/lib/Therac_25/Therac_1.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25
Nice! So what was the problem and your solution? :)
This is my favorite and a must for anyone for interested in computers. Puts all the other excellent books recommended here in perspective.
Computer Science by Brookshear
http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Science-Overview-Glenn-Brookshear/dp/0321524039/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230062205&sr=8-1
PC architecture, cpu design, programming paradigms, TCPIP, np complete, neural networks, etc. Excellent explanations. Brief but dense. Wonderful starting point.
You get to see all the beautiful forests instead of getting lost in a few groves...
Part of running a good business is not just being aware of the legal aspects, but the ethical aspects as well (at the very least from a marketing/popular opinion perspective.) Slaughtering elephants, selling guns, and child porno is bad. Bootlegged stuff is not so bad.
Should a third party be required to provide proof that participants in a sex video were not 11 years old? If you did, you wouldn't be in business very long if you took that kind of attitude, legal or not.