Current levels of radiation outside the plant can only be said to increase cancer risks if you use the Linear no Threshold (LNT) theory of radiation exposure, one that has no real basis in science. Our bodies are pretty good at fixing low-level cellular damage as long as the repair mechanisms aren't overwhelmed.
I'm not talking about an increase in background radiation (which did exceed a minimum safe threshold in same areas). I'm talking about people being exposed to highly radioactive elements following the hydrogen explosion.
Solar, wind, and hydrothermal are not completely safe. There are deaths attributed to wind power generation, for example. Nothing is completely safe. Total safety is an utter myth.
Yes, it's a total myth. Fortunately no one is claiming otherwise. If a wind turbine collapses, it only kills the people it lands on, and doesn't cause deaths decades down the line.
Fission power can be made a lot safer than coal, oil, natural gas, or any other baseline power source we currently use. It will likely be many decades, if ever, when we can figure out how to use wind, solar, or geothermal as baseline power, so you can't really use that as an argument.
*Can* be, except for accidents and improper procedures, which are far more devastating with radioactive material than with fossil fuels.
Also, nuclear can't replace fossil fuels either. It's a dangerous power source, and there's no reason to heap it upon an already unsafe industry.
Not wanting to take the severe risks that nuclear power inescapably brings with it is rational.
What severe risks? If you are talking about the reactor in Japan, more people suffered negative health issues as a result of the damage the tsunami did to other industrial sites than they have from the damage to the nuclear plant.
The tsunami happened either way. But with the Fukushima reactor, additional loss of life has resulted, and will continue to for decades to come.
Did I say it was? Does it somehow make radioactive matter safe?
Seriously, we use electricity at an industrial scale, so we generate it at an industrial scale. When things go wrong, they do so at an industrial scale.
As opposed to a global scale, like with nuclear.
But I do agree with you, we should move away from fossil fuels as well as nuclear.
You're an idiot. Chernobyl, the worst nuclear accident man has known, had immediate, serious issues but nothing to the extent portrayed in the media and the results certainly won't last "billions of years".
Many thousands of people have died, and the nuclear meltdown is still underway. I'm sure this will significantly decrease the duration of the event, but just because Chernobyl's effects won't last billions of years does not mean other incidents will not. Fukushima, for example, may very well last that long, because of the dispersal of plutonium and uranium into the surrounding area.
Background radiation is only above safe levels in the immediate vicinity, and bearing in mind this was an ancient (by nuclear standards) reactor with none of the safety mechanisms in place on modern reactors. In fact, had the Chernobyl reactor been based on modern designs, it never would have happened, and reactors are getting safer and safer.
Just like with "newer, safer, modern designs", Chernobyl should never have happened either. It was entirely due to human error. No nuclear reactor can be made safe from human error.
Even Fukushima was an old reactor, things would have been much better if it had been a modern reactor, but even there the problems are nowhere near so serious as media is claiming. We've damaged the earth far more in the last thirty years by pumping the smoke from burning coal, gas and oil into the air than the damage caused by every nuclear "disaster" in that period. How is the risk "high" when there have been a handful of notable accidents in the entire lifetime of the nuclear industry? I'd say on those numbers it's incredibly low risk.
Nuclear power is less widely used than coal, gas and oil. Also, cancers from nuclear accidents (and even just standard nuclear operations, without the need for an actual accident) are significant.
But this is a red herring. Just because something else is also bad does not make nuclear good. How about we move away from fossil fuels as well, instead of heaping nuclear atop them?
...you end up with a disaster that affects the entire world, and has local effects that will last for billions of years.
Sorry, but that is completely wrong.
What is completely wrong? That there are local effects that will last billions of years?
The danger of a radioactive substance can be effectively measured by its "half-life". Isotopes with a very short half-life emit radiation very quickly (forgetting for this quick post whether we are talking about alpha particles, beta particles, neutron radiation, or gamma rays).
Nothing wrong with a little scientific primer. It helps act as a buffer between your initial claim and the statement that will completely contradict that claim. I can see why you did it.
Isotopes like U-238 / U-235 with a long half-life (700 million years for U-235 and 4.4 billion years for U-238) don't pose a danger unless they are in just titanic quantities.
Tada. Both last for billions of years!
In Fukushima, they stored spent fuel rods on site, which were strewn about by the explosion. These rods are radioactive, and won't simply vanish on their own (well, over many billions of years).
It's definitely possible to live in the area without being affected, but the very fact that these elements are introduced into the environment brings with it the risk of inhalation or ingestion, at which point the normally low-risk of simply being near such elements is replaced by the significant risk of having a radioactive time-bomb in your body.
In other words, effects that will last billions of years. Instead of proving me "completely wrong", you proved me completely right. Thanks.
However something like the particular isotopes of Iodine and Cesium that have been seen at Fukishima have half-lives on the order of days. They are very dangerous, but that danger is short lived. A small quantity of them can definitely kill, but they don't typically last long enough to travel far from the region where they were produced. None of this adds up to "effects that will last for billions of years".
This is entirely correct, but has nothing to do with the elements that do remain radioactive for billions of years.
Instead, it's a danger that is in *addition* to the one you were trying to claim didn't exist.
So we should block out the sun over large cities? The sun gives off more radiation than a nuclear reactor.
In the form of photons (as reaches the surface of the Earth). Some of which are dangerous, and we do block them.
But this is a red herring. The sun will be there no matter what we do. It's a fact of life. On the other hand, having nuclear power plants is optional. It's impossible to pretend like there isn't an increased risk. Just because there is a baseline risk does not justify voluntarily increasing it.
There haven't been any accidents in the USA that resulted in leaked radiation.
That's physically impossible. Also, Three Mile Island.
60 years of experience suggest that your assertion, "no amount of mitigation makes it a rational chance to take", is incorrect. Experience suggests that in fact risk can be managed.
Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima. It's 100% impossible to engineer away the risk for an incident. You can reduce the risks, but they will always be there, and it only takes the occasional accident to completely negate the safety of the intervening years.
So, Deepwater Horizon (and hundreds of other smaller disasters, still with larger environmental impact than the Fukushima incident) never happened?
"I'm not bad, look, someone else is bad too!"
More people will die because of Fukushima than have died due to the Gulf spill. But even falsely assuming parity between the disasters, if we have *two* dangerous fuel sources, does it make sense to advocate increasing our usage of them?
Nuclear power is simply not worth the risk on any large scale. All it takes is one accident, either human error (Chernobyl) or natural disaster (Fukushima), and you end up with a disaster that affects the entire world, and has local effects that will last for billions of years.
As opposed to, say, coal, where the day to day operations affect the entire world?
I'm not sure how the fact that coal causes pollution somehow makes nuclear not dangerous.
Instead of increasing the danger (i.e., building more nuclear plants, which is what so many predictable Slashdotters will favor), why not work on moving off of coal (and existing nuclear plants) to cleaner sources of power?
The fuel itself is dangerous, and remains dangerous for billions of years.
No it @#(*& doesn't. Why is it dangerous? Because it's radioactive. If it's radioactive. YOU CAN USE IT FOR SOMETHING.
It's too dangerous to "use it for something".
Right now we had some retarded moratoriums on fuel reprocessing. For as huge of a push as we make for 'recycling' we don't recycle nuclear waste.
Perhaps you could expand on how you "recycle" uranium and plutonium in such a way that reduces its radioactivity? All you can do is increase the rate at which it decays, which is a dangerous (and depending on how fast you increase the rate, highly destructive) process.
Unless you are aware of a method by which you can remove excess nucleons from an atom without an accompanying release of radiation. I'm sure the Nobel committee would be eager to hear from you.
Cancer doesn't tend to kill you the moment the first neutron damages your DNA. It takes a while.
What, do you think the primary risk with nuclear power is that there will be an atom-bomb style explosion? The risk of a nuclear explosion exists (has happened on multiple occasions) but those are instant blasts of radiation that are localized, with very little physical blast damage.
But no, it's not about the instant deaths. It's the increase in cancer deaths and the billions of years of contamination of the nearby land, and the worldwide reach of the fallout that people don't like. If a wind farm gets hit by a tsunami in Massachusetts, you won't die of cancer in 20 years in Iowa.
Yup. Due to the news media's disgusting exaggeration of the event, , and the 60+ years of "all radiation = bad = kill you dead",
Not all radiation, just the radiation from fissionable material like we are talking about here.
a bunch of people who don't understand a thing about nuclear power generation from the 60's,
They understand there are accidents, and that the effects of these accidents are far more serious in scope and duration than a normal accident.
let alone modern reactor technologies are going to browbeat the power industry into the least effectual, most expensive forms of power generation. And it'll be the power industry's fault when power prices skyrocket. It'll also be the power industry's fault when these sources of power fail at maintaining baseline power levels.
No, that'll be the fault of greedy businessmen, corrupt politicians, and foolish free-market voters who put their basic needs into the hands of greedy businessmen and corrupt politicians.
Way to fucking go. Decision by committee of imbeciles.
Disagreeing with you does not make on an imbecile (in fact, reality would seem to indicate quite the reverse). Not wanting to take the severe risks that nuclear power inescapably brings with it is rational. Only an imbecile would try to claim that radioactive materials are safe.
Nothing can be made safe to a 9.0 magnitude earthquake. Nothing. You can't build or plan for it.
Exactly. You *can't* plan for it. So why would you put such dangerous materials into operation in such a place? The reactors in Fukushima took what was a local and temporary event, and turned it into an event that affected the entire planet, and will have effects spanning billions of years.
The fact of the matter is, given the nature of the earthquake, the situation in the Dai-Ichi plant has been extraordinarily well contained. There have been only a very few casualties (due to hydrogen explosions), and the radiation leakage has been so low-level that it's unlikely to cause any measurable harm.
The increase in background radiation will absolutely cause a raise in cancers, and there's the matter of radioactive material put into the environment that is different than simply a temporary increase in background radiation, and will also certainly cause additional deaths.
What's more, current designs are even safer than the Dai-Ichi plant (which is over forty years old), and don't require external power or working generators to safely shut down (convection of coolant will do it).
Radioactive elements can never be made safe. The safest reactor in the world still must concentrate very dangerous materials.
Many people die from complications of coal mining, etc.
But those risks are limited to the people who voluntarily and knowingly engage in such employment.
No form of power generation is completely safe, and if you look at the statistics, even now nuclear is by far the safest.
That's a load of bullshit. Solar, wind, and hydrothermal are much safer. Coal has been traditionally less safe, but we're lead to believe that the current coal plants remove the pollutants that would otherwise plague a small area around the plant.
But since the deaths from nuclear are primarily cancers, which you can't be sure where they came from, as opposed to immediate deaths from things like construction accidents and mine collapses, it's far too easy to falsely assume that nuclear is the safest power source. It's by far the most dangerous, by it's very nature. It's simple physics that fission power cannot be made safe. The best you can do is mitigate the risks.
What kind of super-men do you expect to design, build, run, secure, and maintain these plants? All it takes is one accident, and you've got a disaster on your hands.
The fuel itself is dangerous, and remains dangerous for billions of years. Who do you trust to be able to tame something like that? And even if you trust the current engineers and businessmen and politicians to keep it safe, you have to trust those that follow, for the rest of your life (and the lives of those to follow).
Nuclear power is simply not worth the risk on any large scale. All it takes is one accident, either human error (Chernobyl) or natural disaster (Fukushima), and you end up with a disaster that affects the entire world, and has local effects that will last for billions of years.
Every large reactor is a gamble, and when the potential risk is so high, no amount of mitigation makes it a rational chance to take.
On a small scale (reactors designed to power just a building or a neighborhood), the risks may be more reasonable and manageable, but you significantly increase the odds of something going wrong while also lowering the average expertise of those managing the plants. I'm not sure I'd want even relatively low-level radioactive materials being spread about a city in such vast numbers and being accessible to so many people.
People weren't staying away from the Android tablets that most certainly did exist (and failed miserably) over the last year because of it not having "official" tablet support (which is complete retroactive bullshit, there were official Android tablets shipped in 2010, these weren't simply using the non-controlled open source version of Android). The limitations of pre-Honeycomb tablets wouldn't be terribly apparent in the store. If people actually wanted Android tablets, they would have sold well and just had high returns if Gingerbread were insufficient as a tablet OS.
Your notion that people want all sorts of different sizes and feature sets is overstated. The iPad 2 easily satisfies 90% of consumers who might prefer slight differences in... What exactly? The only major potential desirable difference is screen size.
Your assertion that the iPad is "VERY restrictive" is laughable. For most people, iPads are the exact opposite of restrictive. You also seem to have missed the memo that iPads have HDMI and physical keyboards.
So, *maybe* there will be some people who will like the idea of a 7" tablet enough to go with Android instead, but it's not going to be many.
No, it's regarded as pig shit by Apple afficionados, people that would believe in the infallibility of Apple even if it did turn out pig shit.
No, AC has it right. Android has been on tablets for what, half a year now? No one is buying them. I seem to recall a bunch of predictions back in March and April last year that by Fall 2010, iPad would be outsold by the plethora of inexpensive but more powerful Android tablets.
Instead, iPad completely owns the tablet market. Android is barely a footnote.
The rest of us look at the overall value proposition, and may or may not decide to buy Apple based upon our actual needs.
That's funny. Do you really think the average consumer is going to methodically evaluate the iPad compared to Android tablets and make a choice based on specs?
Judging the overall value proposition will happen, but it won't be made based on the criteria you are thinking it will be. 15 million people made a value proposition in 2010 for the iPad. Right now Apple cannot make iPad 2's fast enough.
The phenomenal success of Android in the handset market shows very clearly that not everyone considers Apple a "must buy." And that's only reasonable: no single product, or product line, can hope to serve everyone's needs.
No, the "phenomenal" success of Android in the handset market (nice selective criteria there, iOS has greater market share than Android overall) shows that people have multiple criteria when choosing a cell phone beyond simply the OS and quality of the phone. This includes things price (how many of those Android phones were free with a contract?), carrier choice, and a physical keyboard. None of these things apply to the iPad.
On the tablet, Android has to compete with iOS directly, and so far it has failed miserably.
At no point did anybody argue that Google was abandoning their search empire.
You opened your previous post with noting that Nokia completely changed their business model over the past twenty years. I assumed it wasn't merely a random statement of the obvious.
That doesn't mean that everything they do equates to zealously protecting their search business.
That's a straw man. Of course they can do things which aren't directly related to ads. But ads is their core business.
Companies seek out growth areas to build new business, and they sometimes take a loss in the beginning to do so. How hard is that to understand?
Absolutely nothing. What's so hard to understand that Android doesn't have even the *potential* to be worth the effort to try to directly monetize it as its primary purpose? Google will bring in some income from partners and from app sales and the like, but these will always be dwarfed by their ad revenues from Android for the foreseeable future.
No one is arguing that Google won't make money directly from Android. Just that Android will be primarily used by Google to get more people to view their ads. Everything else is just a bonus.
McDonalds once owned a portfolio of brands to diversify their business into other areas of the food business. (Which they got rid of only in the past 2 years as a response to market conditions).
This exactly proves my point. Food has remained McDonald's core product. I've already stated more than once that Google will make some money from Android directly, but ads is their core product. Food is McDonald's castle. They have to protect that castle at all costs, including jettisoning any other investments they may have made in the past. For Google, ads is their castle, and they must protect that at all costs. That doesn't mean they can't also make some money from Android on the side, but unless Android becomes *far* more valuable that it can become even in the most optimistic scenarios, it will always be mainly a way to get people to view more of Google's ads.
The reason that food brands stay in the food business is mainly because the market is stable, mature and expansive, and is not prone to the type of paradigm shift that you see in the tech world.
Ads are a stable, mature and expansive market, and is not prone to the type of paradigm shift that you see in the tech world. Google is an ad company that uses technology (primarily the Internet, and now also mobile phone systems) to deliver their ads. Android is far more valuable as a vehicle via which to deliver ads than it is as a product itself.
I don't see how this is bad for B&N. Unless the hack destroys the DRM of the books, anything that will increase sales of the nook will keep B&N one extra step from bankruptcy.
If they sell them at a loss, however... If the Nook is a reasonable tablet for $250, why aren't other companies selling them at similar prices?
As far as who will hack it, it may be more than we think. People who have no clue how o install an OS are hacking the iPhone. Of course, a many average users are incapable of following simple instructions, or conceptualizing how a computer works, so they will not be hacking.
The only numbers I could find are from 2009. Less than 7% of iPod touches and iPhones were jailbroken then. It's worth noting that this was before multitasking was brought to iOS, and also before WiFi hotspot sharing, both of which were major reasons people gave for jailbreaking. Also, these are earlier adopters than those buying iOS devices today, so of the 100 million or so new customers, it's less likely they will be as technically proficient as those people from early 2009.
Jailbreaking/rooting/custom firmware flashing will never become mainstream.
I'm not saying that NPR is going to cause B&N to run out of stock, but they did just expose the idea to a new segment of people, who might just be interested enough to try. It also represents the idea of rooting a device starting to drift out of nerd circles, which is interesting and probably a good thing.
While it will likely result in some number of additional rooted Nooks, it will primarily only be done by geeks who heard this story and finally decided to give it a try.
Rooting will never go mainstream. If the idea does "drift out of nerd circles" it will not be a good thing, it'll be a very bad thing. You think you are bothered too much as it is right now fixing people's computers? Now imagine those people rooting their tablets. That can't end well.
Fortunately, it's not going to happen in any significant numbers anyway.
"Could this signal a change in how mainstream users see devices like this? Could rooting Android devices like the Nook ever become mainstream?"
No, it can't signal *anything* with regards to being mainstream. Geeks will do this, perhaps many thousands, but it's completely impossible for something like this to become mainstream. You guys know how you are always complaining about "idiots" who can't run their computer, and how you often install Firefox on their computers, give it a blue 'e' icon and name it "Internet"?
Well, guess what: that's the mainstream.
These people aren't actually stupid, they just aren't geeks. They are nowhere near as motivated as you are. Why would someone go through the hassle of rooting a Nook Color when for twice the price they can buy an iPad that actually works properly as sold, and provides them with a significantly superior user experience?
You can "yawn" all you want, but you've provided no reason whatsoever to believe Google is going to transition from an ad-centric business model. Why would they? For a cut of app sales and handset sales? Those don't amount to jack shit compared to ads.
Just because it can happen doesn't mean it will happen. Examples of this, like Nokia, are the exception, not the rule. Android is presently far more profitable to Google as a way to get people to view their ads than it can presently (and for the foreseeable future) be as a more direct revenue source itself. It's certainly possible for this to change down the road, but there's no evidence that this is a reasonable expectation.
That's why my "conviction" appears "unwavering" to you. I'm quite certain that Google does not plan to replace their gigantic ad empire for a minuscule Android empire, based on present circumstance and near-term market trends. It would be like McDonald's going from being a food-centric[*] to a WiFi service provider centric business model. WiFi is only there to get people to stop in and buy food. If WiFi ever became more profitable, they could transition like Nokia did. But I'm just as "unwaveringly convinced" that McDonald's is not going to alter their business model anytime soon.
Likewise, neither will Google. Things can change, but unless you have evidence that things are changing enough for this to happen, you're just fantasizing.
[*] The McDonald's Corporation itself, I assume, makes its money from leasing franchises, but it's food that makes the franchises money, so it's the flip-side of the same coin. Android, on the other hand, is nowhere near as valuable as ads are to Google. Android isn't the flip-side of the same coin, it's just one little bump of metal on the flip-side.
However, our main discussion is diversification of Google's revenue stream. You said that Google's revenue from non-search is small. What you forgot is that it's growing as a phenomenal rate. Android market grew from $11m in revenues to $102m in revenue in the space of a year. No-one can say what the final figure would be in 2011, but you can be sure that either this year or next year Android Market would make itself noticed on Google's balance sheet.
No, it won't. Google doesn't give a shit if they make a profit on the Marketplace. Neither does Apple care if they make a profit from the App Store.
When I say "don't give a shit", of course they would both welcome a profit, but that's secondary to their reasons for their application stores. The storefronts are meant to bolster their primary offerings. For Google, that's ads. For Apple, that's hardware sales. It would be monumentally disastrous if either company would try to drive application store profits directly.
Then we have Google Apps, which is a direct assault on Exchange. In a year or so, MS Office will be in the crosshairs. A year after that, Windows.
That's geek fantasy. Google Apps is not a threat to Exchange. Google Apps is not a profit center, and never will be. However, every Google Apps customer is a Google Ads customer, and that's where they make their money.
Of course Google doesn't expect the same amount of market dominance in these area as Microsoft, but you can see the trend for them to be build up significant presence in many key areas. It's not all about search - which was my original point.
No, it's not all about search, but it is all about ads. Everything else is just gravy.
Right now, they get most of their ad views from search. In the future, that may come from mobile services. Either way, absolutely everything Google does has an ad-centric end goal. There's no way whatsoever that Android, for example, would ever be profitable enough any time soon to move the focus from ads to apps or anything else. 100% impossible.
Even 20 years from now, it would be a long shot to bet on anything other than ads as being Google's primary revenue source.
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Current levels of radiation outside the plant can only be said to increase cancer risks if you use the Linear no Threshold (LNT) theory of radiation exposure, one that has no real basis in science. Our bodies are pretty good at fixing low-level cellular damage as long as the repair mechanisms aren't overwhelmed.
I'm not talking about an increase in background radiation (which did exceed a minimum safe threshold in same areas). I'm talking about people being exposed to highly radioactive elements following the hydrogen explosion.
Solar, wind, and hydrothermal are not completely safe. There are deaths attributed to wind power generation, for example. Nothing is completely safe. Total safety is an utter myth.
Yes, it's a total myth. Fortunately no one is claiming otherwise. If a wind turbine collapses, it only kills the people it lands on, and doesn't cause deaths decades down the line.
Fission power can be made a lot safer than coal, oil, natural gas, or any other baseline power source we currently use. It will likely be many decades, if ever, when we can figure out how to use wind, solar, or geothermal as baseline power, so you can't really use that as an argument.
*Can* be, except for accidents and improper procedures, which are far more devastating with radioactive material than with fossil fuels.
Also, nuclear can't replace fossil fuels either. It's a dangerous power source, and there's no reason to heap it upon an already unsafe industry.
Not wanting to take the severe risks that nuclear power inescapably brings with it is rational.
What severe risks? If you are talking about the reactor in Japan, more people suffered negative health issues as a result of the damage the tsunami did to other industrial sites than they have from the damage to the nuclear plant.
The tsunami happened either way. But with the Fukushima reactor, additional loss of life has resulted, and will continue to for decades to come.
Dude, neither is petroleum
Did I say it was? Does it somehow make radioactive matter safe?
Seriously, we use electricity at an industrial scale, so we generate it at an industrial scale. When things go wrong, they do so at an industrial scale.
As opposed to a global scale, like with nuclear.
But I do agree with you, we should move away from fossil fuels as well as nuclear.
You're an idiot. Chernobyl, the worst nuclear accident man has known, had immediate, serious issues but nothing to the extent portrayed in the media and the results certainly won't last "billions of years".
Many thousands of people have died, and the nuclear meltdown is still underway. I'm sure this will significantly decrease the duration of the event, but just because Chernobyl's effects won't last billions of years does not mean other incidents will not. Fukushima, for example, may very well last that long, because of the dispersal of plutonium and uranium into the surrounding area.
Background radiation is only above safe levels in the immediate vicinity, and bearing in mind this was an ancient (by nuclear standards) reactor with none of the safety mechanisms in place on modern reactors. In fact, had the Chernobyl reactor been based on modern designs, it never would have happened, and reactors are getting safer and safer.
Just like with "newer, safer, modern designs", Chernobyl should never have happened either. It was entirely due to human error. No nuclear reactor can be made safe from human error.
Even Fukushima was an old reactor, things would have been much better if it had been a modern reactor, but even there the problems are nowhere near so serious as media is claiming. We've damaged the earth far more in the last thirty years by pumping the smoke from burning coal, gas and oil into the air than the damage caused by every nuclear "disaster" in that period. How is the risk "high" when there have been a handful of notable accidents in the entire lifetime of the nuclear industry? I'd say on those numbers it's incredibly low risk.
Nuclear power is less widely used than coal, gas and oil. Also, cancers from nuclear accidents (and even just standard nuclear operations, without the need for an actual accident) are significant.
But this is a red herring. Just because something else is also bad does not make nuclear good. How about we move away from fossil fuels as well, instead of heaping nuclear atop them?
...you end up with a disaster that affects the entire world, and has local effects that will last for billions of years.
Sorry, but that is completely wrong.
What is completely wrong? That there are local effects that will last billions of years?
The danger of a radioactive substance can be effectively measured by its "half-life". Isotopes with a very short half-life emit radiation very quickly (forgetting for this quick post whether we are talking about alpha particles, beta particles, neutron radiation, or gamma rays).
Nothing wrong with a little scientific primer. It helps act as a buffer between your initial claim and the statement that will completely contradict that claim. I can see why you did it.
Isotopes like U-238 / U-235 with a long half-life (700 million years for U-235 and 4.4 billion years for U-238) don't pose a danger unless they are in just titanic quantities.
Tada. Both last for billions of years!
In Fukushima, they stored spent fuel rods on site, which were strewn about by the explosion. These rods are radioactive, and won't simply vanish on their own (well, over many billions of years).
It's definitely possible to live in the area without being affected, but the very fact that these elements are introduced into the environment brings with it the risk of inhalation or ingestion, at which point the normally low-risk of simply being near such elements is replaced by the significant risk of having a radioactive time-bomb in your body.
In other words, effects that will last billions of years. Instead of proving me "completely wrong", you proved me completely right. Thanks.
However something like the particular isotopes of Iodine and Cesium that have been seen at Fukishima have half-lives on the order of days. They are very dangerous, but that danger is short lived. A small quantity of them can definitely kill, but they don't typically last long enough to travel far from the region where they were produced. None of this adds up to "effects that will last for billions of years".
This is entirely correct, but has nothing to do with the elements that do remain radioactive for billions of years.
Instead, it's a danger that is in *addition* to the one you were trying to claim didn't exist.
So we should block out the sun over large cities? The sun gives off more radiation than a nuclear reactor.
In the form of photons (as reaches the surface of the Earth). Some of which are dangerous, and we do block them.
But this is a red herring. The sun will be there no matter what we do. It's a fact of life. On the other hand, having nuclear power plants is optional. It's impossible to pretend like there isn't an increased risk. Just because there is a baseline risk does not justify voluntarily increasing it.
There haven't been any accidents in the USA that resulted in leaked radiation.
That's physically impossible. Also, Three Mile Island.
60 years of experience suggest that your assertion, "no amount of mitigation makes it a rational chance to take", is incorrect. Experience suggests that in fact risk can be managed.
Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima. It's 100% impossible to engineer away the risk for an incident. You can reduce the risks, but they will always be there, and it only takes the occasional accident to completely negate the safety of the intervening years.
"billions of years" is also incorrect: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Chernobyl-Still-Radioactive-After-23-Years-129912.shtml
Plutonium and Uranium remain radioactive for billions of years.
So, Deepwater Horizon (and hundreds of other smaller disasters, still with larger environmental impact than the Fukushima incident) never happened?
"I'm not bad, look, someone else is bad too!"
More people will die because of Fukushima than have died due to the Gulf spill. But even falsely assuming parity between the disasters, if we have *two* dangerous fuel sources, does it make sense to advocate increasing our usage of them?
Nuclear power is simply not worth the risk on any large scale. All it takes is one accident, either human error (Chernobyl) or natural disaster (Fukushima), and you end up with a disaster that affects the entire world, and has local effects that will last for billions of years.
As opposed to, say, coal, where the day to day operations affect the entire world?
I'm not sure how the fact that coal causes pollution somehow makes nuclear not dangerous.
Instead of increasing the danger (i.e., building more nuclear plants, which is what so many predictable Slashdotters will favor), why not work on moving off of coal (and existing nuclear plants) to cleaner sources of power?
The fuel itself is dangerous, and remains dangerous for billions of years.
No it @#(*& doesn't. Why is it dangerous? Because it's radioactive. If it's radioactive. YOU CAN USE IT FOR SOMETHING.
It's too dangerous to "use it for something".
Right now we had some retarded moratoriums on fuel reprocessing. For as huge of a push as we make for 'recycling' we don't recycle nuclear waste.
Perhaps you could expand on how you "recycle" uranium and plutonium in such a way that reduces its radioactivity? All you can do is increase the rate at which it decays, which is a dangerous (and depending on how fast you increase the rate, highly destructive) process.
Unless you are aware of a method by which you can remove excess nucleons from an atom without an accompanying release of radiation. I'm sure the Nobel committee would be eager to hear from you.
Cancer doesn't tend to kill you the moment the first neutron damages your DNA. It takes a while.
What, do you think the primary risk with nuclear power is that there will be an atom-bomb style explosion? The risk of a nuclear explosion exists (has happened on multiple occasions) but those are instant blasts of radiation that are localized, with very little physical blast damage.
But no, it's not about the instant deaths. It's the increase in cancer deaths and the billions of years of contamination of the nearby land, and the worldwide reach of the fallout that people don't like. If a wind farm gets hit by a tsunami in Massachusetts, you won't die of cancer in 20 years in Iowa.
Yup. Due to the news media's disgusting exaggeration of the event, , and the 60+ years of "all radiation = bad = kill you dead",
Not all radiation, just the radiation from fissionable material like we are talking about here.
a bunch of people who don't understand a thing about nuclear power generation from the 60's,
They understand there are accidents, and that the effects of these accidents are far more serious in scope and duration than a normal accident.
let alone modern reactor technologies are going to browbeat the power industry into the least effectual, most expensive forms of power generation. And it'll be the power industry's fault when power prices skyrocket. It'll also be the power industry's fault when these sources of power fail at maintaining baseline power levels.
No, that'll be the fault of greedy businessmen, corrupt politicians, and foolish free-market voters who put their basic needs into the hands of greedy businessmen and corrupt politicians.
Way to fucking go. Decision by committee of imbeciles.
Disagreeing with you does not make on an imbecile (in fact, reality would seem to indicate quite the reverse). Not wanting to take the severe risks that nuclear power inescapably brings with it is rational. Only an imbecile would try to claim that radioactive materials are safe.
Nothing can be made safe to a 9.0 magnitude earthquake. Nothing. You can't build or plan for it.
Exactly. You *can't* plan for it. So why would you put such dangerous materials into operation in such a place? The reactors in Fukushima took what was a local and temporary event, and turned it into an event that affected the entire planet, and will have effects spanning billions of years.
The fact of the matter is, given the nature of the earthquake, the situation in the Dai-Ichi plant has been extraordinarily well contained. There have been only a very few casualties (due to hydrogen explosions), and the radiation leakage has been so low-level that it's unlikely to cause any measurable harm.
The increase in background radiation will absolutely cause a raise in cancers, and there's the matter of radioactive material put into the environment that is different than simply a temporary increase in background radiation, and will also certainly cause additional deaths.
What's more, current designs are even safer than the Dai-Ichi plant (which is over forty years old), and don't require external power or working generators to safely shut down (convection of coolant will do it).
Radioactive elements can never be made safe. The safest reactor in the world still must concentrate very dangerous materials.
Many people die from complications of coal mining, etc.
But those risks are limited to the people who voluntarily and knowingly engage in such employment.
No form of power generation is completely safe, and if you look at the statistics, even now nuclear is by far the safest.
That's a load of bullshit. Solar, wind, and hydrothermal are much safer. Coal has been traditionally less safe, but we're lead to believe that the current coal plants remove the pollutants that would otherwise plague a small area around the plant.
But since the deaths from nuclear are primarily cancers, which you can't be sure where they came from, as opposed to immediate deaths from things like construction accidents and mine collapses, it's far too easy to falsely assume that nuclear is the safest power source. It's by far the most dangerous, by it's very nature. It's simple physics that fission power cannot be made safe. The best you can do is mitigate the risks.
Correct. There are some idiots who think this is merely an engineering problem.
What kind of super-men do you expect to design, build, run, secure, and maintain these plants? All it takes is one accident, and you've got a disaster on your hands.
The fuel itself is dangerous, and remains dangerous for billions of years. Who do you trust to be able to tame something like that? And even if you trust the current engineers and businessmen and politicians to keep it safe, you have to trust those that follow, for the rest of your life (and the lives of those to follow).
Nuclear power is simply not worth the risk on any large scale. All it takes is one accident, either human error (Chernobyl) or natural disaster (Fukushima), and you end up with a disaster that affects the entire world, and has local effects that will last for billions of years.
Every large reactor is a gamble, and when the potential risk is so high, no amount of mitigation makes it a rational chance to take.
On a small scale (reactors designed to power just a building or a neighborhood), the risks may be more reasonable and manageable, but you significantly increase the odds of something going wrong while also lowering the average expertise of those managing the plants. I'm not sure I'd want even relatively low-level radioactive materials being spread about a city in such vast numbers and being accessible to so many people.
People weren't staying away from the Android tablets that most certainly did exist (and failed miserably) over the last year because of it not having "official" tablet support (which is complete retroactive bullshit, there were official Android tablets shipped in 2010, these weren't simply using the non-controlled open source version of Android). The limitations of pre-Honeycomb tablets wouldn't be terribly apparent in the store. If people actually wanted Android tablets, they would have sold well and just had high returns if Gingerbread were insufficient as a tablet OS.
Your notion that people want all sorts of different sizes and feature sets is overstated. The iPad 2 easily satisfies 90% of consumers who might prefer slight differences in... What exactly? The only major potential desirable difference is screen size.
Your assertion that the iPad is "VERY restrictive" is laughable. For most people, iPads are the exact opposite of restrictive. You also seem to have missed the memo that iPads have HDMI and physical keyboards.
So, *maybe* there will be some people who will like the idea of a 7" tablet enough to go with Android instead, but it's not going to be many.
No, it's regarded as pig shit by Apple afficionados, people that would believe in the infallibility of Apple even if it did turn out pig shit.
No, AC has it right. Android has been on tablets for what, half a year now? No one is buying them. I seem to recall a bunch of predictions back in March and April last year that by Fall 2010, iPad would be outsold by the plethora of inexpensive but more powerful Android tablets.
Instead, iPad completely owns the tablet market. Android is barely a footnote.
The rest of us look at the overall value proposition, and may or may not decide to buy Apple based upon our actual needs.
That's funny. Do you really think the average consumer is going to methodically evaluate the iPad compared to Android tablets and make a choice based on specs?
Judging the overall value proposition will happen, but it won't be made based on the criteria you are thinking it will be. 15 million people made a value proposition in 2010 for the iPad. Right now Apple cannot make iPad 2's fast enough.
The phenomenal success of Android in the handset market shows very clearly that not everyone considers Apple a "must buy." And that's only reasonable: no single product, or product line, can hope to serve everyone's needs.
No, the "phenomenal" success of Android in the handset market (nice selective criteria there, iOS has greater market share than Android overall) shows that people have multiple criteria when choosing a cell phone beyond simply the OS and quality of the phone. This includes things price (how many of those Android phones were free with a contract?), carrier choice, and a physical keyboard. None of these things apply to the iPad.
On the tablet, Android has to compete with iOS directly, and so far it has failed miserably.
Apple sucks, so we have to copy everything they do.
So what you're saying is that if Samsung is going to copy Apple's astroturfing campaigns, they need to do a better job of it?
Well, they could start copying Apple by actually finding real people who like their products. Remember Ellen Feiss?
At no point did anybody argue that Google was abandoning their search empire.
You opened your previous post with noting that Nokia completely changed their business model over the past twenty years. I assumed it wasn't merely a random statement of the obvious.
That doesn't mean that everything they do equates to zealously protecting their search business.
That's a straw man. Of course they can do things which aren't directly related to ads. But ads is their core business.
Companies seek out growth areas to build new business, and they sometimes take a loss in the beginning to do so. How hard is that to understand?
Absolutely nothing. What's so hard to understand that Android doesn't have even the *potential* to be worth the effort to try to directly monetize it as its primary purpose? Google will bring in some income from partners and from app sales and the like, but these will always be dwarfed by their ad revenues from Android for the foreseeable future.
No one is arguing that Google won't make money directly from Android. Just that Android will be primarily used by Google to get more people to view their ads. Everything else is just a bonus.
McDonalds once owned a portfolio of brands to diversify their business into other areas of the food business. (Which they got rid of only in the past 2 years as a response to market conditions).
This exactly proves my point. Food has remained McDonald's core product. I've already stated more than once that Google will make some money from Android directly, but ads is their core product. Food is McDonald's castle. They have to protect that castle at all costs, including jettisoning any other investments they may have made in the past. For Google, ads is their castle, and they must protect that at all costs. That doesn't mean they can't also make some money from Android on the side, but unless Android becomes *far* more valuable that it can become even in the most optimistic scenarios, it will always be mainly a way to get people to view more of Google's ads.
The reason that food brands stay in the food business is mainly because the market is stable, mature and expansive, and is not prone to the type of paradigm shift that you see in the tech world.
Ads are a stable, mature and expansive market, and is not prone to the type of paradigm shift that you see in the tech world. Google is an ad company that uses technology (primarily the Internet, and now also mobile phone systems) to deliver their ads. Android is far more valuable as a vehicle via which to deliver ads than it is as a product itself.
I don't see how this is bad for B&N. Unless the hack destroys the DRM of the books, anything that will increase sales of the nook will keep B&N one extra step from bankruptcy.
If they sell them at a loss, however... If the Nook is a reasonable tablet for $250, why aren't other companies selling them at similar prices?
As far as who will hack it, it may be more than we think. People who have no clue how o install an OS are hacking the iPhone. Of course, a many average users are incapable of following simple instructions, or conceptualizing how a computer works, so they will not be hacking.
The only numbers I could find are from 2009. Less than 7% of iPod touches and iPhones were jailbroken then. It's worth noting that this was before multitasking was brought to iOS, and also before WiFi hotspot sharing, both of which were major reasons people gave for jailbreaking. Also, these are earlier adopters than those buying iOS devices today, so of the 100 million or so new customers, it's less likely they will be as technically proficient as those people from early 2009.
Jailbreaking/rooting/custom firmware flashing will never become mainstream.
I'm not saying that NPR is going to cause B&N to run out of stock, but they did just expose the idea to a new segment of people, who might just be interested enough to try. It also represents the idea of rooting a device starting to drift out of nerd circles, which is interesting and probably a good thing.
While it will likely result in some number of additional rooted Nooks, it will primarily only be done by geeks who heard this story and finally decided to give it a try.
Rooting will never go mainstream. If the idea does "drift out of nerd circles" it will not be a good thing, it'll be a very bad thing. You think you are bothered too much as it is right now fixing people's computers? Now imagine those people rooting their tablets. That can't end well.
Fortunately, it's not going to happen in any significant numbers anyway.
"Could this signal a change in how mainstream users see devices like this? Could rooting Android devices like the Nook ever become mainstream?"
No, it can't signal *anything* with regards to being mainstream. Geeks will do this, perhaps many thousands, but it's completely impossible for something like this to become mainstream. You guys know how you are always complaining about "idiots" who can't run their computer, and how you often install Firefox on their computers, give it a blue 'e' icon and name it "Internet"?
Well, guess what: that's the mainstream.
These people aren't actually stupid, they just aren't geeks. They are nowhere near as motivated as you are. Why would someone go through the hassle of rooting a Nook Color when for twice the price they can buy an iPad that actually works properly as sold, and provides them with a significantly superior user experience?
You can "yawn" all you want, but you've provided no reason whatsoever to believe Google is going to transition from an ad-centric business model. Why would they? For a cut of app sales and handset sales? Those don't amount to jack shit compared to ads.
Just because it can happen doesn't mean it will happen. Examples of this, like Nokia, are the exception, not the rule. Android is presently far more profitable to Google as a way to get people to view their ads than it can presently (and for the foreseeable future) be as a more direct revenue source itself. It's certainly possible for this to change down the road, but there's no evidence that this is a reasonable expectation.
That's why my "conviction" appears "unwavering" to you. I'm quite certain that Google does not plan to replace their gigantic ad empire for a minuscule Android empire, based on present circumstance and near-term market trends. It would be like McDonald's going from being a food-centric[*] to a WiFi service provider centric business model. WiFi is only there to get people to stop in and buy food. If WiFi ever became more profitable, they could transition like Nokia did. But I'm just as "unwaveringly convinced" that McDonald's is not going to alter their business model anytime soon.
Likewise, neither will Google. Things can change, but unless you have evidence that things are changing enough for this to happen, you're just fantasizing.
[*] The McDonald's Corporation itself, I assume, makes its money from leasing franchises, but it's food that makes the franchises money, so it's the flip-side of the same coin. Android, on the other hand, is nowhere near as valuable as ads are to Google. Android isn't the flip-side of the same coin, it's just one little bump of metal on the flip-side.
However, our main discussion is diversification of Google's revenue stream. You said that Google's revenue from non-search is small. What you forgot is that it's growing as a phenomenal rate. Android market grew from $11m in revenues to $102m in revenue in the space of a year. No-one can say what the final figure would be in 2011, but you can be sure that either this year or next year Android Market would make itself noticed on Google's balance sheet.
No, it won't. Google doesn't give a shit if they make a profit on the Marketplace. Neither does Apple care if they make a profit from the App Store.
When I say "don't give a shit", of course they would both welcome a profit, but that's secondary to their reasons for their application stores. The storefronts are meant to bolster their primary offerings. For Google, that's ads. For Apple, that's hardware sales. It would be monumentally disastrous if either company would try to drive application store profits directly.
Then we have Google Apps, which is a direct assault on Exchange. In a year or so, MS Office will be in the crosshairs. A year after that, Windows.
That's geek fantasy. Google Apps is not a threat to Exchange. Google Apps is not a profit center, and never will be. However, every Google Apps customer is a Google Ads customer, and that's where they make their money.
Of course Google doesn't expect the same amount of market dominance in these area as Microsoft, but you can see the trend for them to be build up significant presence in many key areas. It's not all about search - which was my original point.
No, it's not all about search, but it is all about ads. Everything else is just gravy.
Right now, they get most of their ad views from search. In the future, that may come from mobile services. Either way, absolutely everything Google does has an ad-centric end goal. There's no way whatsoever that Android, for example, would ever be profitable enough any time soon to move the focus from ads to apps or anything else. 100% impossible.
Even 20 years from now, it would be a long shot to bet on anything other than ads as being Google's primary revenue source.