from the article:"This is necessary because software is growing ever more complex, and an increasing amount of work must be done simply to debug programs."
This is the real problem with todays new software: every programmer wants to put every functionality in every program he writes. This creates bloated and bug-ridden programs.
For example: if I want to buy a new bicycle, and I would like to look up information on the internet. I NEED a browser that supports pdf files, flash animations, at least 5 different graphic file formats, cascading style sheets, java scripting and so on, just because nobody cares about standards. Because of that all pages look really bad, because my fonts scale differently, or I have a different screen size.
Everything You wrote is true, for as far as I can verify(although I do think that much more people have died from cancer related to Chernobil...), except for your conclusions. If I get it right, you think it's OK to use nuclear energy until a better solution arrives, because it is safe to use and does not generate much pollution.
I agree that it's safe to use, but nuclear waste is a serious problem. I don't have the numbers in here, but let's say we have to store things for 500 years. Now 500 years doesn't look like much. We both know it has to be stored much longer than that.
Now look 500 years back. Here in europe we were just escaping from the dark ages and America was still inhibited by indians. 500 years is NOT something we can oversee, but despite that we are generating nuclear waste and leave our children (and theirs and theirs and so on) with the problem. In times of war nuclear waste depots will be a vailable target.
I don't have the solution, but I just wanted to say yours isn't one either.
Cheers.
Re:I've got an even better idea
on
Lunar Lasers
·
· Score: 1
>Why not spend $50,000,000,000 on solar panels for >use on Earth.
Because you would produce far more electricity if u use those dollars to buy home trainers, ship them to third world countries, and let them peddle over there for half a dollar a day.
You can even use that fancy microwave transmitter to get your electricity back to the US.
> And, earth and mars, obviously, have vastly
> different atmospheres.
That's right. But the fun thing is that our earth athmosphere is a very complicated one. Slightly different temperatures can have a large impact on the biology in the air or in the water. Those are things we can not easily predict. Some weird bacteria may like two degrees (celsius, I am european...) more that much, that it will grow rapidly, first killing its food and thereby killing itself as well.
On Mars, there is no such thing as widespread biological activity, we've proven that by now. This does not mean radical chances can't take place, but when they take place, it's easier to point a finger at something.
Slashdot Mirror
While trying to get my printer working, you know, installing lpd and gs from source I've got a page with just one line printed on the top line:
Warning: printer device not found.
Well, two reasons:
1. imagine something goes wrong during the launch (which is what you can expect whenever you launch these kind of transports on a regular basis)
2. It still costs a hell of a lot of energy to shoot something into space.
from the article :"This is necessary because software is growing ever more complex, and an increasing amount of work must be done simply to debug programs."
This is the real problem with todays new software: every programmer wants to put every functionality in every program he writes. This creates bloated and bug-ridden programs.
For example: if I want to buy a new bicycle, and I would like to look up information on the internet. I NEED a browser that supports pdf files, flash animations, at least 5 different graphic file formats, cascading style sheets, java scripting and so on, just because nobody cares about standards. Because of that all pages look really bad, because my fonts scale differently, or I have a different screen size.
Wiebe.
Everything You wrote is true, for as far as I can verify(although I do think that much more people have died from cancer related to Chernobil...), except for your conclusions. If I get it right, you think it's OK to use nuclear energy until a better solution arrives, because it is safe to use and does not generate much pollution.
I agree that it's safe to use, but nuclear waste is a serious problem. I don't have the numbers in here, but let's say we have to store things for 500 years. Now 500 years doesn't look like much. We both know it has to be stored much longer than that.
Now look 500 years back. Here in europe we were just escaping from the dark ages and America was still inhibited by indians. 500 years is NOT something we can oversee, but despite that we are generating nuclear waste and leave our children (and theirs and theirs and so on) with the problem. In times of war nuclear waste depots will be a vailable target.
I don't have the solution, but I just wanted to say yours isn't one either.
Cheers.
>Why not spend $50,000,000,000 on solar panels for >use on Earth.
Because you would produce far more electricity if u use those dollars to buy home trainers, ship them to third world countries, and let them peddle over there for half a dollar a day.
You can even use that fancy microwave transmitter to get your electricity back to the US.
> And, earth and mars, obviously, have vastly
> different atmospheres.
That's right. But the fun thing is that our earth athmosphere is a very complicated one. Slightly different temperatures can have a large impact on the biology in the air or in the water. Those are things we can not easily predict. Some weird bacteria may like two degrees (celsius, I am european...) more that much, that it will grow rapidly, first killing its food and thereby killing itself as well.
On Mars, there is no such thing as widespread biological activity, we've proven that by now. This does not mean radical chances can't take place, but when they take place, it's easier to point a finger at something.