> > How hard can it be to build miniature (footprint of wheelchair), > > remote-controlled tanks with a bunch of cameras all around it, > > lethal and nonlethal armaments,and a big booming microphone so > > it can bark orders? > > Making them that small would just be silly.
Obviously, you missed the implicit joke:
He wants to build (old style) daleks.
Anyway, they would be defeated any time someone doing an English Gentleman imitation came near them. At least until the last of the classic Doctors has passed on.
> Yucca Mountain, Utah, someplace in Washington, and another in Texas > though I don't recall exactly where in either state.
Hanford, in Washington. They were already storing the liquid wastes, so it seemed reasonable to vitrify the stuff and store it there permanently. Then came the reports on the stored liquid leaking enough to get offsite, and they were off the list.
I do not remember where they were planning to put it in Texas, though. If Texas, for that matter.
I just googled it (site long term+ "nuclear waste storage"), to no great luck. Interestingly, it included a google directory in its top 100. Isn't that masturbation?:-)
> Many of the isotopes that will be stored there, if is used for storage, > have a half-life of more than a million years, some over 100 million.
The goal is not to get all of the radioactives decayed, just to get the radioactivity down to around background. Otherwise, we would have to do the same for everything - can you imagine how difficult it would be to store all the Pepto-Bismal until the bismuth decays?:-)
> > The guy who won proposed that putrefaction (when the body is > > actually rotting) was the only scientifically valid definition. > > That's nonsense! As Dawn of the Dead (Along with countless other > zombie flicks) has shown, people can indeed wake up when they're rotting. > > I do wish they'd clean themselves up first, though.
Ignoring the zombies, there is the problem of frostbite . You are quite awake, but your toes have rotted off.
I supposed that this applies to leprosy, as well.
OTOH, if your brain rots, you aren't coming back.
Does that mean that we can snatch coach potatoes for involuntary organ donation? Oh, god, I am in trouble:-)
> > And the first thing most bugs do on entering a host is attack the signals for apoptosis. > > It's interesting, how much that sounds like a hacking strategy. First > acquire access, then disable... Maybe we should have used the term > "computer virus" for hackers themselves:)
> I believe the book was "A Mote in God's Eye", where I first saw this concept explored.
I read Niven, and he used this idea back in Gil The Arm days. One of the Belters had a suit that was painted with a naked women wrapped around from the front to the back, and an obviously coital position (I believe this was in World Of Ptaavs?). Just to get the horn dogs panting over the suit and the MIT professor even MORE to flip out over.
> > > Forgetting about mining uranium, where are you going to store spent fuel, Yucca Mountain? > > > (skipping) > > And the salt just stays there, rather than washing away, why? > > What salt?
Yucca Mountain is (or has) an underground salt dome, hence believed to be fairly stable, geologically (no Canadian Shield, but good for a few 10,000 years). If they were just going to use a cavern, they could as easily used Carlsbad Caverns (not the tourist area, of course), or even Cheyenne Mountain (hey, it's already hardened again any non-nuclear attack).
> A few months ago I read an article on this that pointed out some problems > with putting nuclear waste in a subduction zone, unfortunately I don't > recall where I read it. One problem I recall though was that it could be > expelled and spread around contaminating the ocean floor.
A subduction zone is where the planet is eating its crust. Any contamination will be sucked down into the mantle, along with the rest of the seafloor. Obviously, you vitrify the stuff first, rather just than drop 55 gallon drums of the waste, or something equally strawmanish, but once there it will be sucked up in time.
> From the 1930's, the U.S. has attempted to avoid excess supplies of grain and > raise grain prices and farm income by encouraging farmers to voluntarily take > some land out of production.
Actually, that is corn (or wheat, or cotton, or whatever used to be grown there) production. I have a relative (father's cousin's husband, to be exact) who uses such land to grow furniture trees (cherry, oak, etc), harvesting a certain portion every 5 years or so. The return isn't as high as wheat, but it is fairly close.
The point being that the so-called idle land isn't just going to waste (except when farmed by idiots or city folk looking for a nice weekend place [his description]); it is being used for something (sometimes just the trees to break up would-be Dust Bowl winds, but something).
> Acreage Reduction Program (stuff omitted)(last sentence is:) > ARP program was eliminated by 1996 Farm Bill.
Gone 10 years ago. Quit talking about it, now.
> Forgetting about mining uranium, where are you going to store spent fuel, Yucca Mountain?
(skipping) And the salt just stays there, rather than washing away, why?
Also, there is always Hawaiia Volcano Nat'l Park. Just dump it into the molten lava and let it emerge as rock in a few years. Let Pele earn Her keep:-) There are large subduction zones around the world, as well. Vitrify it and just leave it around to eliminate idiots, for that matter. The waste can be dealt with, and as someone up sorting mentioned, a coal-fired plant produces more radioactive waste than a nuclear plant, then blows it into the air.
> This Rufus Pollock has some good stuff on his site. I've only had about > ten minutes to read over a few of these papers and I'm pretty impressed. > Not only is it well written but it aligns heavily with the Slashdot > community's interests.
I started to read the thesis, and found that he reasons from a vast set of hypotheses, all of which can only support his conclusions, and had no attempt at real-world testing. I was frankly expecting that he would have the arguments badly rebutted with "But surely, Socrates, it cannot be that [insert strawman argument here]" like Plato did, but he didn't even bother with that.
For a start, he assumes that the value of a copyright decreases as it becomes cheaper to copy. By this theory, song writers should receive NO copyright on any song that is simple enough that sheet music is not NECESSARY to learn it, or at least not beyond the point that the first person hums it after having heard it. You may agree - this was certainly the situation before the early 20th century, when non-classical music was usually learned by imitating others, ala Professor Henry Hill's Think Method, and lots of songs were created during that period - but I expect that the proposition is at least arguable.
Frankly, I doubt that "Forever minus one day" copyrights make sense (except for some "music" where I would also raise the license fees to billions per performance, to drive them from human memory; I expect we all have our own selections here:-), but I likewise expect that zero-length copyrights do not do much for the non-singer/songwriters (who did and do produce good work that might be worth some compensation beyond that day's wage).
BTW, I suppose that if we can prove that someone really COULD memorize a copyrighted book and teach it to someone else orally, as in Fahrenheit 451, that he could claim zero worth for book copyrights, as well.
> Also interesting is that he conjectures that the burden of proof of ownership > in intellectual property should be placed on those attempting to acquire the > IP, not anyone else.
Conjectures. This has already been disposed with by the concept of Intellectual Property. I could conjecture that the burden of proof of ownership in material property (say, pieces of coin or currency) should be placed on the victims of my cunning burglaries, as well, but I doubt that anyone, either the police or even Rufus Pollock (if his home or apartment was burgled), would agree.
> He has a paper detailing a model where innovation occurs without intellectual > property in an attempt to show that the assumption regarding IP's relationship > to innovation is false.
And Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin had models that proposed that same things, and generalized the argument to all types of property, as well. This is why Western Europe fell before the vast onslaught of consumer goods produced by the superior Soviet and Warsaw Pact economies.
No, it was Richard Armitage who "outed" a non-field agent (for the previous 5 or so years).
Fitzgerald found that out several days before he first talked to Libby; since his brief was to find out who leaked, and was it on purpose or just an accident, and he knew the answers to both, his investigation should have closed down then, and he should have denounced Armitage. Instead, Armitage stayed under cover, and Fitzgerald had fun investigating anyone else that he could, rather like the FBI agents under investigation.
> Someone please respond to this post with a verifiable > example of a terrorist action that was stopped by using > provisions of the Patriot act.
Wait about 50 years. It took that long for the Venona Intercepts to be declassified, so that we now know that the Rosenbergs WERE guilty (Ethel less so), Alger Hiss WAS guilty, and Joe McCarthy might very well have had his evidence about the State Dept being filled with Soviet agents, but he could never reveal it (or the CIA people who originally leaked it to him would have had to kill him).
It took even longer for the British to admit to having helped us (the USA) intercept and decode the Zimmerman Telegram that was the proximate cause for our entry into WWI.
Slashdot Mirror
> > How hard can it be to build miniature (footprint of wheelchair),
> > remote-controlled tanks with a bunch of cameras all around it,
> > lethal and nonlethal armaments,and a big booming microphone so
> > it can bark orders?
>
> Making them that small would just be silly.
Obviously, you missed the implicit joke:
He wants to build (old style) daleks.
Anyway, they would be defeated any time someone doing an English Gentleman imitation came near them. At least until the last of the classic Doctors has passed on.
> Yucca Mountain, Utah, someplace in Washington, and another in Texas
:-)
:-)
> though I don't recall exactly where in either state.
Hanford, in Washington. They were already storing the liquid wastes, so it seemed reasonable to vitrify the stuff and store it there permanently. Then came the reports on the stored liquid leaking enough to get offsite, and they were off the list.
I do not remember where they were planning to put it in Texas, though. If Texas, for that matter.
I just googled it (site long term+ "nuclear waste storage"), to no great luck. Interestingly, it included a google directory in its top 100. Isn't that masturbation?
> Many of the isotopes that will be stored there, if is used for storage,
> have a half-life of more than a million years, some over 100 million.
The goal is not to get all of the radioactives decayed, just to get the radioactivity down to around background. Otherwise, we would have to do the same for everything - can you imagine how difficult it would be to store all the Pepto-Bismal until the bismuth decays?
> > The guy who won proposed that putrefaction (when the body is
:-)
> > actually rotting) was the only scientifically valid definition.
>
> That's nonsense! As Dawn of the Dead (Along with countless other
> zombie flicks) has shown, people can indeed wake up when they're rotting.
>
> I do wish they'd clean themselves up first, though.
Ignoring the zombies, there is the problem of frostbite . You are quite awake, but your toes have rotted off.
I supposed that this applies to leprosy, as well.
OTOH, if your brain rots, you aren't coming back.
Does that mean that we can snatch coach potatoes for involuntary organ donation? Oh, god, I am in trouble
> > And the first thing most bugs do on entering a host is attack the signals for apoptosis. :)
:-)
>
> It's interesting, how much that sounds like a hacking strategy. First
> acquire access, then disable... Maybe we should have used the term
> "computer virus" for hackers themselves
But how often do hackers get to reproduce?
> I believe the book was "A Mote in God's Eye", where I first saw this concept explored. I read Niven, and he used this idea back in Gil The Arm days. One of the Belters had a suit that was painted with a naked women wrapped around from the front to the back, and an obviously coital position (I believe this was in World Of Ptaavs?). Just to get the horn dogs panting over the suit and the MIT professor even MORE to flip out over.
> > > Forgetting about mining uranium, where are you going to store spent fuel, Yucca Mountain?
> > > (skipping)
> > And the salt just stays there, rather than washing away, why?
>
> What salt?
Yucca Mountain is (or has) an underground salt dome, hence believed to be fairly stable, geologically (no Canadian Shield, but good for a few 10,000 years). If they were just going to use a cavern, they could as easily used Carlsbad Caverns (not the tourist area, of course), or even Cheyenne Mountain (hey, it's already hardened again any non-nuclear attack).
> A few months ago I read an article on this that pointed out some problems
> with putting nuclear waste in a subduction zone, unfortunately I don't
> recall where I read it. One problem I recall though was that it could be
> expelled and spread around contaminating the ocean floor.
A subduction zone is where the planet is eating its crust. Any contamination will be sucked down into the mantle, along with the rest of the seafloor. Obviously, you vitrify the stuff first, rather just than drop 55 gallon drums of the waste, or something equally strawmanish, but once there it will be sucked up in time.
> From the 1930's, the U.S. has attempted to avoid excess supplies of grain and
:-) There are large subduction zones around the world, as well. Vitrify it and just leave it around to eliminate idiots, for that matter. The waste can be dealt with, and as someone up sorting mentioned, a coal-fired plant produces more radioactive waste than a nuclear plant, then blows it into the air.
> raise grain prices and farm income by encouraging farmers to voluntarily take
> some land out of production.
Actually, that is corn (or wheat, or cotton, or whatever used to be grown there) production. I have a relative (father's cousin's husband, to be exact) who uses such land to grow furniture trees (cherry, oak, etc), harvesting a certain portion every 5 years or so. The return isn't as high as wheat, but it is fairly close.
The point being that the so-called idle land isn't just going to waste (except when farmed by idiots or city folk looking for a nice weekend place [his description]); it is being used for something (sometimes just the trees to break up would-be Dust Bowl winds, but something).
> Acreage Reduction Program (stuff omitted)(last sentence is:)
> ARP program was eliminated by 1996 Farm Bill.
Gone 10 years ago. Quit talking about it, now.
> Forgetting about mining uranium, where are you going to store spent fuel, Yucca Mountain?
(skipping)
And the salt just stays there, rather than washing away, why?
Also, there is always Hawaiia Volcano Nat'l Park. Just dump it into the molten lava and let it emerge as rock in a few years. Let Pele earn Her keep
> This Rufus Pollock has some good stuff on his site. I've only had about
:-), but I likewise expect that zero-length copyrights do not do much for the non-singer/songwriters (who did and do produce good work that might be worth some compensation beyond that day's wage).
> ten minutes to read over a few of these papers and I'm pretty impressed.
> Not only is it well written but it aligns heavily with the Slashdot
> community's interests.
I started to read the thesis, and found that he reasons from a vast set of hypotheses, all of which can only support his conclusions, and had no attempt at real-world testing. I was frankly expecting that he would have the arguments badly rebutted with "But surely, Socrates, it cannot be that [insert strawman argument here]" like Plato did, but he didn't even bother with that.
For a start, he assumes that the value of a copyright decreases as it becomes cheaper to copy. By this theory, song writers should receive NO copyright on any song that is simple enough that sheet music is not NECESSARY to learn it, or at least not beyond the point that the first person hums it after having heard it. You may agree - this was certainly the situation before the early 20th century, when non-classical music was usually learned by imitating others, ala Professor Henry Hill's Think Method, and lots of songs were created during that period - but I expect that the proposition is at least arguable.
Frankly, I doubt that "Forever minus one day" copyrights make sense (except for some "music" where I would also raise the license fees to billions per performance, to drive them from human memory; I expect we all have our own selections here
BTW, I suppose that if we can prove that someone really COULD memorize a copyrighted book and teach it to someone else orally, as in Fahrenheit 451, that he could claim zero worth for book copyrights, as well.
> Also interesting is that he conjectures that the burden of proof of ownership
> in intellectual property should be placed on those attempting to acquire the
> IP, not anyone else.
Conjectures. This has already been disposed with by the concept of Intellectual Property. I could conjecture that the burden of proof of ownership in material property (say, pieces of coin or currency) should be placed on the victims of my cunning burglaries, as well, but I doubt that anyone, either the police or even Rufus Pollock (if his home or apartment was burgled), would agree.
> He has a paper detailing a model where innovation occurs without intellectual
> property in an attempt to show that the assumption regarding IP's relationship
> to innovation is false.
And Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin had models that proposed that same things, and generalized the argument to all types of property, as well. This is why Western Europe fell before the vast onslaught of consumer goods produced by the superior Soviet and Warsaw Pact economies.
No, it was Richard Armitage who "outed" a non-field agent (for the previous 5 or so years).
Fitzgerald found that out several days before he first talked to Libby; since his brief was to find out who leaked, and was it on purpose or just an accident, and he knew the answers to both, his investigation should have closed down then, and he should have denounced Armitage. Instead, Armitage stayed under cover, and Fitzgerald had fun investigating anyone else that he could, rather like the FBI agents under investigation.
> Someone please respond to this post with a verifiable
> example of a terrorist action that was stopped by using
> provisions of the Patriot act.
Wait about 50 years. It took that long for the Venona Intercepts to be declassified, so that we now know that the Rosenbergs WERE guilty (Ethel less so), Alger Hiss WAS guilty, and Joe McCarthy might very well have had his evidence about the State Dept being filled with Soviet agents, but he could never reveal it (or the CIA people who originally leaked it to him would have had to kill him).
It took even longer for the British to admit to having helped us (the USA) intercept and decode the Zimmerman Telegram that was the proximate cause for our entry into WWI.