I can't believe this has idea has reared it's head again.
You're substituting one problem for a whole other set of problems. Here are some pertinent facts:
There is only enough accessible Uranium ore to supply reactors for at most 80 years.
It can take 40 years to completely decommission a reactor, longer than it's useful life.
Nuclear waste can be unsafe for 10,000 years.
This is not to mention the extraordinary build costs, which are only viable with government backing, nor the seemingly inevitable construction delays. That's not even touching on the accidents. In Japan old people are volunteering to clean up Fukashima because they know they're going to die anyway.
For the price of one reactor, you could probably build a wind farm of much higher capacity. Hook it to a huge battery, and you're sorted. There are 441 reactors in the world, we don't need any more.
Doesn't this claim pop up every couple of years? Alternating with discovering who Jack the Ripper was. And for some decades the regular unmasking of Deep Throat of Watergate fame.
What matters is how interesting the character is. Boba is morally ambiguous and has obviously had a lot of adventures. Plenty of scope there for a whole movie. You could even slip in some cameos from Darth Vadar.
Bounty Hunter Scum: A Star Wars movie.
As I recall from back when Bitcoin was created, it's point was to allow anonymous transactions. The stupidly large increases in prices and the wild fluctuations are totally counter to it's intended role.
The US has been poking around underwater cables off the coast of Russia, and previously the USSR, for years.
Here's a fun example from the late 70's early 80's:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Also lets not forget that the USS Jimmy Carter is probably up to this stuff right now:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You want a nerdy watch, that's also huge and ugly? You want a Razer Nabu.
This is going to be my next watch, when I'm a bit less broke. It's semi-smart, with an extra display for messages etc. Also I like big ugly digital watches!
The short answer is yes, if you're interest is genuinely representing the will of the people. A straight count of how the votes flowed would have given Hillary the presidency, and indeed a Democratic presidency every election since 1988 bar one.
However, there are a lot of other things wrong with the US electoral system. Including: heavy gerrymandering in many states in favour of the Republicans, a different method of voting in every county, an active campaign to prevent people from voting through draconian voter registration processes etc., non-compulsory voting, and partisan officials in charge of the election process and vote counting. All of these things distort the result.
Also, there's something very weird for outside observers like myself about the whole candidate selection process. That the campaign seems to start at least two years out from the election is very odd. And the primaries are also an odd odd way to select a candidate.
The next four years are going to be horrible...
Every day, I wonder who exactly designs the interfaces for appliances and other gadgets we use every day. It shouldn't be that hard! But anything with more than four buttons now seems to not be designed for intuitive operations.
The worst example of this would have to be my car stereo. It's some mid-range thing with a graphical display. Things that annoy me about it: Toggle control which both navigates and controls the volume and in some modes the settings.Many buttons with multiple uses: Band/Esc, Power/Source. Buttons with mysterious labels on them, "List" for example, which could mean anything. Settings for the same thing in two separate places. One set of settings which are only accessible by turning the unit off and then starting it in a certain way. And it came with a remote control which I have never ever used. What am I going to do, change the volume from the back seat???
My kid often fiddles with it, and get it into states where it's even less usable.
I'm largely vegetarian, but when I do eat meat I like it to have the least impact on the planet as possible. Raising animals for food is incredibly intensive, and not good for the animals or the planet.
I've had experiences with Windows 10, most of them negative. Some of them are: * Settings for the same items in two different locations * Search bar, which I never use, taking up most of the task bar until you figure out how to turn it off * Links to other Microsoft products (XBox, Get Office) which are in effect ads loaded as icons into the programs menu * Said links are tricky to remove and required the use of a power shell command line * Insistence on linking to my OneDrive account * "My Computer" hard to find and to create a link on the desktop for * No Media Centre at all * It's possible to put Windows 10 into tablet mode when on a PC, which makes it close to unusable. * Start menu looks like a bastard child of the Windows 7 menu and the Windows 8 panels * Features I'll never use such as news and inaccurate weather in that panel thing - all of which are links to Microsoft or it's partners * As has been mentioned way too much reporting back to Microsoft about how you using your PC * Things that I do every day with ease suddenly becoming complex and hidden
Also aesthetically I find the default colour schemes to be almost unreadable.
But what infuriates me most of all is the way it's been rolled out. I have four PCs at home, and I'm the only guy in my large extended family who understands computers. I can't count the number of times I've had people asking me to remove the annoying upgrade pop-up. And the update is so persistent that despite hiding it multiple times, MS has simply overridden that and tried to reinstall again. I've come to know the KB number off by heart.
And the way it downloads in the background without your permission has used up the preciously tiny amount of data some people have. I was on holiday using 3G data on my phone to get my laptop online, only to find a large chunk of my data had gone, used up by that background download.
Upgrading an OS is a big deal. I'm a software developer with some hundreds of programs installed on my work PC. We have to develop in a controlled software environment otherwise things may simply not work.
I'm sticking to Windows 7 till I am compelled to upgrade.
I used to be a Mac fanboy. Not so much anymore. Really dislike the current version of the OS, and dislike how it is now next to impossible to repair a Mac or any Apple product.
I do use Outlook at work. It does a few things well, and a few other things that annoy the hell out of me. I certainly don't see it as a viable replacement.
Actually I do. More than once having an email from anything up to five or more years ago has proved useful. For example I found an old Laptop receipt when my Aunt's place was burgled and she needed evidence for insurance.
And... I have a small number of emails from a guy who has now been dead for nearly ten years. Strange I know but I want to keep them.
I run my own email, on four different domains. I also have Gmail and Hotmail, and indeed Yahoo. All of these accounts I have access to from Thunderbird, all my email is in one place. I've also set up separate email addresses for various purposes - one for Paypal and eBay, one for numerous news sources, one specifically for mailing lists etc.
I have a huge local archive of my email going back sixteen years, which I am not willing to upload into the could or somewhere like Gmail.
I dislike Webmail and always have. Before Thunderbird I used Netscape Mail, before that Elm.
Also I'm in Australia, and sometimes the internet connections here can be a bit crappy, especially outside the big cities. A proper email client like Thunderbird is therefore more use to me than trying to edit email on a webclient, which might suddenly fall over. At least on Thunderbird I can save a draft and try again later.
Oh, look, I agree, it's not clear that it is going EOL. But it does sound that if Mozilla can't find a good way to cut it loose, then it might just go the way of all things. I'm also not confident that a new group running it will actually significantly improve it.
...and it works. When everyone is enfranchised, the politicians have to have a much broader appeal. And every voter has to look long and hard at exactly who and what they're voting for.
I can recommend it. I take great interest in Politics in the US, since it effects us and the rest of the word. And it looks to me like the congress has been captured by a small number of extremely rich people and is no longer representative of the will of the people. This can only happen when only a limited number of people vote, and they can be heavily influenced by massive donations towards media advertising, and when certain highly motivated blocks of voters are far more likely to vote than other groups.
I'm also scandalized by way parts of the US make registering to vote so hard, and actively excluding people from voting. In Australia, if you're not in jail, you have to vote, period. No exceptions. Imagine if that was the case in the US, that it was a right that everyone had by default, regardless of having the right ID at the right time, or previous felonies etc.
The other thing we have which I can highly recommend is the Australian Electoral Commission. They're the group that runs all elections across the entire country. All of them. In a completely standardized way. So the ballot papers (yes still paper) and voting in every part of the country is exactly the same. They're not perfect - they lost a small number of ballot papers at the last election, and a part of the election had to be re-run - but still better than, say, the debacle in Tallahassee in 2000.
And our final innovation? Elections are always held on a Saturday, not a week day, which makes it dramatically easier for everyone to attend.
I'm so embarrassed for my country. I did not vote for the bunch of clowns currently "running" this country.
The carbon tax (which was in fact a carbon price) was working, emissions were down, it was raising money that helped the budget, and was having a minimal impact on consumers. The biggest argument against it - that it was raising gas and electricity prices - was incredibly overblown. The biggest cost for both was actually caused by massive over-investment in infrastructure when demand was falling. Like the oil men that ran the US when Bush was in office, we've been co-opted by Coal men.
BTW, this is not he first thing this government has set out to destroy. They've already nobbled the National Broadband Network, which would have been a world-leading piece of infrastructure. Now... It's not national, it's not really broadband, and it's barely a network!
1. What is the most unusual location you have written a program from? I was once visiting a client site at a small town library (Victor Harbor in South Australia) and needed to fix some of our code. I flipped open my laptop on the main desk and started working away, not realizing that I'd sat under the sign that said "Inquiries". Soon people started coming up to me asking me library questions that I had no hope of answering - I mumbled and pointed at actual librarians.
2. What is the most unusual circumstance under which you have written a program? I was in my apartment with a Lady Visitor. She asked me what I did for a living, so in a pathetic attempt to impress her, I opened up Visual Studio and wrote a WinForms app with one button on it. When the button was clicked, it popped up a dialog with the Ladies name in it! Surprisingly, she was actually impressed...
3. What is the most unusual computing platform that you wrote a program from? An extremely old Vax (I think) running Fortran. Fortran is weird.
4. What is the most unusual application program that you wrote? A website designed to help people track their constipation. It included pictures of various stool types - look up the Bristol Scale if you're really curious. We referred to it internally as "poo shooter".
I can't believe this has idea has reared it's head again. You're substituting one problem for a whole other set of problems. Here are some pertinent facts: There is only enough accessible Uranium ore to supply reactors for at most 80 years .
It can take 40 years to completely decommission a reactor, longer than it's useful life.
Nuclear waste can be unsafe for 10,000 years.
This is not to mention the extraordinary build costs, which are only viable with government backing, nor the seemingly inevitable construction delays. That's not even touching on the accidents. In Japan old people are volunteering to clean up Fukashima because they know they're going to die anyway.
For the price of one reactor, you could probably build a wind farm of much higher capacity. Hook it to a huge battery, and you're sorted. There are 441 reactors in the world, we don't need any more.
If my side gig turned out to be able to support me, I'd gleefully run from my "Career"!
Doesn't this claim pop up every couple of years? Alternating with discovering who Jack the Ripper was. And for some decades the regular unmasking of Deep Throat of Watergate fame.
What matters is how interesting the character is. Boba is morally ambiguous and has obviously had a lot of adventures. Plenty of scope there for a whole movie. You could even slip in some cameos from Darth Vadar. Bounty Hunter Scum: A Star Wars movie.
As I recall from back when Bitcoin was created, it's point was to allow anonymous transactions. The stupidly large increases in prices and the wild fluctuations are totally counter to it's intended role.
The US has been poking around underwater cables off the coast of Russia, and previously the USSR, for years. Here's a fun example from the late 70's early 80's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Also lets not forget that the USS Jimmy Carter is probably up to this stuff right now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Then Russell's Teapot would be a a real thing!
I've got one of them - love it! Takes me back to the 1980's when we judged a watch on the number of buttons it has.
You want a nerdy watch, that's also huge and ugly? You want a Razer Nabu. This is going to be my next watch, when I'm a bit less broke. It's semi-smart, with an extra display for messages etc. Also I like big ugly digital watches!
The short answer is yes, if you're interest is genuinely representing the will of the people. A straight count of how the votes flowed would have given Hillary the presidency, and indeed a Democratic presidency every election since 1988 bar one. However, there are a lot of other things wrong with the US electoral system. Including: heavy gerrymandering in many states in favour of the Republicans, a different method of voting in every county, an active campaign to prevent people from voting through draconian voter registration processes etc., non-compulsory voting, and partisan officials in charge of the election process and vote counting. All of these things distort the result. Also, there's something very weird for outside observers like myself about the whole candidate selection process. That the campaign seems to start at least two years out from the election is very odd. And the primaries are also an odd odd way to select a candidate. The next four years are going to be horrible...
Every day, I wonder who exactly designs the interfaces for appliances and other gadgets we use every day. It shouldn't be that hard! But anything with more than four buttons now seems to not be designed for intuitive operations. The worst example of this would have to be my car stereo. It's some mid-range thing with a graphical display. Things that annoy me about it: Toggle control which both navigates and controls the volume and in some modes the settings.Many buttons with multiple uses: Band/Esc, Power/Source. Buttons with mysterious labels on them, "List" for example, which could mean anything. Settings for the same thing in two separate places. One set of settings which are only accessible by turning the unit off and then starting it in a certain way. And it came with a remote control which I have never ever used. What am I going to do, change the volume from the back seat??? My kid often fiddles with it, and get it into states where it's even less usable.
I'm largely vegetarian, but when I do eat meat I like it to have the least impact on the planet as possible. Raising animals for food is incredibly intensive, and not good for the animals or the planet.
I've had experiences with Windows 10, most of them negative. Some of them are:
* Settings for the same items in two different locations
* Search bar, which I never use, taking up most of the task bar until you figure out how to turn it off
* Links to other Microsoft products (XBox, Get Office) which are in effect ads loaded as icons into the programs menu
* Said links are tricky to remove and required the use of a power shell command line
* Insistence on linking to my OneDrive account
* "My Computer" hard to find and to create a link on the desktop for
* No Media Centre at all
* It's possible to put Windows 10 into tablet mode when on a PC, which makes it close to unusable.
* Start menu looks like a bastard child of the Windows 7 menu and the Windows 8 panels
* Features I'll never use such as news and inaccurate weather in that panel thing - all of which are links to Microsoft or it's partners
* As has been mentioned way too much reporting back to Microsoft about how you using your PC
* Things that I do every day with ease suddenly becoming complex and hidden
Also aesthetically I find the default colour schemes to be almost unreadable.
But what infuriates me most of all is the way it's been rolled out. I have four PCs at home, and I'm the only guy in my large extended family who understands computers. I can't count the number of times I've had people asking me to remove the annoying upgrade pop-up. And the update is so persistent that despite hiding it multiple times, MS has simply overridden that and tried to reinstall again. I've come to know the KB number off by heart.
And the way it downloads in the background without your permission has used up the preciously tiny amount of data some people have. I was on holiday using 3G data on my phone to get my laptop online, only to find a large chunk of my data had gone, used up by that background download.
Upgrading an OS is a big deal. I'm a software developer with some hundreds of programs installed on my work PC. We have to develop in a controlled software environment otherwise things may simply not work.
I'm sticking to Windows 7 till I am compelled to upgrade.
I used to be a Mac fanboy. Not so much anymore. Really dislike the current version of the OS, and dislike how it is now next to impossible to repair a Mac or any Apple product.
Thanks. Most useful comment yet.
I do use Outlook at work. It does a few things well, and a few other things that annoy the hell out of me. I certainly don't see it as a viable replacement.
Actually I do. More than once having an email from anything up to five or more years ago has proved useful. For example I found an old Laptop receipt when my Aunt's place was burgled and she needed evidence for insurance.
And... I have a small number of emails from a guy who has now been dead for nearly ten years. Strange I know but I want to keep them.
I prefer "Weenie".
OK, for several reasons.
I run my own email, on four different domains. I also have Gmail and Hotmail, and indeed Yahoo. All of these accounts I have access to from Thunderbird, all my email is in one place. I've also set up separate email addresses for various purposes - one for Paypal and eBay, one for numerous news sources, one specifically for mailing lists etc.
I have a huge local archive of my email going back sixteen years, which I am not willing to upload into the could or somewhere like Gmail.
I dislike Webmail and always have. Before Thunderbird I used Netscape Mail, before that Elm.
Also I'm in Australia, and sometimes the internet connections here can be a bit crappy, especially outside the big cities. A proper email client like Thunderbird is therefore more use to me than trying to edit email on a webclient, which might suddenly fall over. At least on Thunderbird I can save a draft and try again later.
Oh, look, I agree, it's not clear that it is going EOL. But it does sound that if Mozilla can't find a good way to cut it loose, then it might just go the way of all things. I'm also not confident that a new group running it will actually significantly improve it.
Would that I had the time... My full time job and nearly three year old son eat all my spare time.
Thunderbird also needs a fair bit of love, IMHO, more than I can muster the time for.
I think I have used Quick folders or something much like it.
...and it works. When everyone is enfranchised, the politicians have to have a much broader appeal. And every voter has to look long and hard at exactly who and what they're voting for.
I can recommend it. I take great interest in Politics in the US, since it effects us and the rest of the word. And it looks to me like the congress has been captured by a small number of extremely rich people and is no longer representative of the will of the people. This can only happen when only a limited number of people vote, and they can be heavily influenced by massive donations towards media advertising, and when certain highly motivated blocks of voters are far more likely to vote than other groups.
I'm also scandalized by way parts of the US make registering to vote so hard, and actively excluding people from voting. In Australia, if you're not in jail, you have to vote, period. No exceptions. Imagine if that was the case in the US, that it was a right that everyone had by default, regardless of having the right ID at the right time, or previous felonies etc.
The other thing we have which I can highly recommend is the Australian Electoral Commission. They're the group that runs all elections across the entire country. All of them. In a completely standardized way. So the ballot papers (yes still paper) and voting in every part of the country is exactly the same. They're not perfect - they lost a small number of ballot papers at the last election, and a part of the election had to be re-run - but still better than, say, the debacle in Tallahassee in 2000.
And our final innovation? Elections are always held on a Saturday, not a week day, which makes it dramatically easier for everyone to attend.
I bought the poster of your The First Human strip, and stuck it on the door of my kid's room. Just thought you'd like to know.
I'm so embarrassed for my country. I did not vote for the bunch of clowns currently "running" this country.
The carbon tax (which was in fact a carbon price) was working, emissions were down, it was raising money that helped the budget, and was having a minimal impact on consumers. The biggest argument against it - that it was raising gas and electricity prices - was incredibly overblown. The biggest cost for both was actually caused by massive over-investment in infrastructure when demand was falling. Like the oil men that ran the US when Bush was in office, we've been co-opted by Coal men.
BTW, this is not he first thing this government has set out to destroy. They've already nobbled the National Broadband Network, which would have been a world-leading piece of infrastructure. Now... It's not national, it's not really broadband, and it's barely a network!
1. What is the most unusual location you have written a program from?
I was once visiting a client site at a small town library (Victor Harbor in South Australia) and needed to fix some of our code. I flipped open my laptop on the main desk and started working away, not realizing that I'd sat under the sign that said "Inquiries". Soon people started coming up to me asking me library questions that I had no hope of answering - I mumbled and pointed at actual librarians.
2. What is the most unusual circumstance under which you have written a program?
I was in my apartment with a Lady Visitor. She asked me what I did for a living, so in a pathetic attempt to impress her, I opened up Visual Studio and wrote a WinForms app with one button on it. When the button was clicked, it popped up a dialog with the Ladies name in it! Surprisingly, she was actually impressed...
3. What is the most unusual computing platform that you wrote a program from?
An extremely old Vax (I think) running Fortran. Fortran is weird.
4. What is the most unusual application program that you wrote?
A website designed to help people track their constipation. It included pictures of various stool types - look up the Bristol Scale if you're really curious. We referred to it internally as "poo shooter".