How much pollution is produced in mining the uranium? Dealing with the nuclear waste? Mining coal? The impact of artificial lakes with dams?
All energy production methods to date are a long way from zero impact. Thermal Solar is about as good as we can get, and thats only if you are in a desert were birds don't get confused with the mirrors. Its unclear that Solar is better or worse than nuclear at this point. It also not clear which is cheaper.
Chernobyl was due to crappy Soviet engineering, management, and maintenance. We've had plenty of time to learn from their mistakes.
Most of the world and indeed even in parts of the former USSR they new better before even designing the thing. It had a negative void coefficient. Which means that if the water boils, the fission rate *increases* rather than decreases. Even in the day this was considered to be a dumb thing to do.
Solar vers Nuclear vers Whatever. Its not clear at all what is best for a given nation/state/counties etc. But one thing is clear. Unless we have a solution to the nuclear waste problem, then its all a bit moot really.
I find it absurd that we stopped making nuke plants.
I would prefer we had a more permanent solution to the nuclear waste problem before scaling up its production. At the very least there should always be reprocessing the waste.
Also its far from clear that nuclear energy is economically sensible. A plant costs a huge amount of money and decommissioning is even bigger. I have nothing against nuclear power, but then i have nothing for it either. We shouldn't just build them without thinking properly about it first. Its not a given that they are a good idea.
I havent read all the comments, so sorry if this has already been said. But encryption will not stop a key logger (TEMPEST/hardware based key logger that is). Even if they just use ever character typed in a day your down to a very manageable number of possible passwords (aka millions or less). Even with some hard core hashing its still in the easy basket for a well funded attacker.
There are not all that many effective counters against this sort of thing really.
My right to distribute binarys without source code is artificially removed with a GPL license. You can't word your way out of it.
There is no problem with that but call it as it is.
I have released code under LGPL, BSD and public domain. So I see a use for it all.
I do tend to have problems with odd interpretations with linking to a GPL library and that sort of thing. Really does start to sound like RIAA type "rights" at that point sometimes...As in extending things well beyond reasonable.
In all however one must remember the original author has the right to use whatever license they want. It not a matter of better or worse or right and wrong. Unless you are against any form of copyrights.
Most *source* version control systems do very badly with binary data. Git does better than most, but the repo size gets big as it would with cvs/svn. But hay I just got a second 1T drive for less than 100EU so who cares...
A little off topic. Well not really. One of my grants was from the NIH. We had to publish in generally accessible journals and were not allowed to get patents on anything as part of the deal.
By the way many universities will claim there purpose is to do research not to teach. There is some funny PhD comics about what different people think a university is for.
Well there was plenty of free beer and easy women at my uni.
But yes you got my point. We pay for our education and trust me it does not cover a lot of the cost of that are incurred in research. That is paid by grants etc outside the tuition fees.
Also its not like the supervisor doesn't have something to do with your work. Thats why you are training to get a PhD. How much of the inventive steps are you vers the supervisor?
Finally I did get paid to go to uni. I don't know any PhD students without a scholarship. Should the scholarship folk now own the patent?
Companies do this too. I don't really see the difference. Your fees cover very little of the R&D you do in graduate work, that money is not yours and there is always a deal to sign to get it. At the end you have what you came for, a PhD or whatever.
You are still going to run out of fossil fuels. Climate change comes in at about number 5 or so on list of good reasons to reduce fossil fuel consumption.
..cannot fix the environment insofar as it supports human life..
I have not heard of any prediction where we get to that state outside a Hollywood movie. We are orders of magnitude outside the realm of causing human extinction. Not to mention that we would be very hard to kill off given our brains (despite the fact we seem to avoid using them) and technology.
You bring up a very good point. Perhaps not the point you wanted to bring up however.
What countries decide to go the geoengineering way and who in those countries decides whats a good idea? If your countries wants no part in the plan? If you want no part in the plan. We get stuck with the aftermath.
When a small group of people decide what is best for the rest (yes this is a very small group of people compared to the 6 billion souls on this rock) it is elitism. They know better, they think they are better than every one else. Historically this has never turned out well.
I suspect that the only reason they got their refund and apology was because it was blown out of proportion.
I don't quite follow you. But i don't think its blown out of proportion. A family was removed from a plane because of religion/race in the USA! This is a *big* deal.
History has show us these things start small, and this is not even that small.
Perhaps this is a more fundamental problem in UI design. I mean really when people say "intuitive" they usually mean works the same as the last program i used. There is some merit in that, but how many of these people still can use a Xbox or drive a car?(ok bad examples.. but you get the idea)
Personally I think we have a long way to go for computers to be "intuitive". The comments about cubicle monkeys above indicated that there will always be a large non technical user base.
For a large percentage of the driving population, ABS actually makes the roads more dangerous and countless studies show a large percent of average drivers who are aware they have ABS, now tailgate, brake later, and create more dangerous driving situations for those around them under the false pretence ABS can keep them from harm.
I was a contractor for a while. MS dev tools were so good that I charged and extra 50% when I was forced to use them. I also added "downtime compensation" to the contracts. The idea was no one would hire me for MS stuff.
I was wrong. They happily paid me the extra money per hour. MS dev tools are good compared to using a binary editor. Seriously what other tools have you used?
People are in fact using wikipedia in Papua New Guinea for education. The availability of the DVD version has been great to really get the ball rolling. Even without the DVD there is mirroring etc that its license permits that can't be done with britanica for example
They got 30 computers donated and then got them set up in Port Moresby. This provides a much cheaper way to provide a library than a normal library. Its also easier to get more modern text books etc.
So this is NOT hypothetical. Its really being done.
Slashdot Mirror
How much pollution is produced in mining the uranium? Dealing with the nuclear waste? Mining coal? The impact of artificial lakes with dams?
All energy production methods to date are a long way from zero impact. Thermal Solar is about as good as we can get, and thats only if you are in a desert were birds don't get confused with the mirrors. Its unclear that Solar is better or worse than nuclear at this point. It also not clear which is cheaper.
Chernobyl was due to crappy Soviet engineering, management, and maintenance. We've had plenty of time to learn from their mistakes.
Most of the world and indeed even in parts of the former USSR they new better before even designing the thing. It had a negative void coefficient. Which means that if the water boils, the fission rate *increases* rather than decreases. Even in the day this was considered to be a dumb thing to do.
Solar vers Nuclear vers Whatever. Its not clear at all what is best for a given nation/state/counties etc. But one thing is clear. Unless we have a solution to the nuclear waste problem, then its all a bit moot really.
I find it absurd that we stopped making nuke plants.
I would prefer we had a more permanent solution to the nuclear waste problem before scaling up its production. At the very least there should always be reprocessing the waste.
Also its far from clear that nuclear energy is economically sensible. A plant costs a huge amount of money and decommissioning is even bigger. I have nothing against nuclear power, but then i have nothing for it either. We shouldn't just build them without thinking properly about it first. Its not a given that they are a good idea.
I havent read all the comments, so sorry if this has already been said. But encryption will not stop a key logger (TEMPEST/hardware based key logger that is). Even if they just use ever character typed in a day your down to a very manageable number of possible passwords (aka millions or less). Even with some hard core hashing its still in the easy basket for a well funded attacker.
There are not all that many effective counters against this sort of thing really.
IIRC his/GNU's free OS is no where near finished. Linux would have happed without him. FreeBSD would have happed....etc...etc..etc.
My right to distribute binarys without source code is artificially removed with a GPL license. You can't word your way out of it.
There is no problem with that but call it as it is.
I have released code under LGPL, BSD and public domain. So I see a use for it all.
I do tend to have problems with odd interpretations with linking to a GPL library and that sort of thing. Really does start to sound like RIAA type "rights" at that point sometimes...As in extending things well beyond reasonable.
In all however one must remember the original author has the right to use whatever license they want. It not a matter of better or worse or right and wrong. Unless you are against any form of copyrights.
Most *source* version control systems do very badly with binary data. Git does better than most, but the repo size gets big as it would with cvs/svn. But hay I just got a second 1T drive for less than 100EU so who cares...
A little off topic. Well not really. One of my grants was from the NIH. We had to publish in generally accessible journals and were not allowed to get patents on anything as part of the deal.
By the way many universities will claim there purpose is to do research not to teach. There is some funny PhD comics about what different people think a university is for.
Well there was plenty of free beer and easy women at my uni.
But yes you got my point. We pay for our education and trust me it does not cover a lot of the cost of that are incurred in research. That is paid by grants etc outside the tuition fees.
Also its not like the supervisor doesn't have something to do with your work. Thats why you are training to get a PhD. How much of the inventive steps are you vers the supervisor?
Finally I did get paid to go to uni. I don't know any PhD students without a scholarship. Should the scholarship folk now own the patent?
Companies do this too. I don't really see the difference. Your fees cover very little of the R&D you do in graduate work, that money is not yours and there is always a deal to sign to get it. At the end you have what you came for, a PhD or whatever.
You are still going to run out of fossil fuels. Climate change comes in at about number 5 or so on list of good reasons to reduce fossil fuel consumption.
And what side effects?
..cannot fix the environment insofar as it supports human life..
I have not heard of any prediction where we get to that state outside a Hollywood movie. We are orders of magnitude outside the realm of causing human extinction. Not to mention that we would be very hard to kill off given our brains (despite the fact we seem to avoid using them) and technology.
You bring up a very good point. Perhaps not the point you wanted to bring up however.
What countries decide to go the geoengineering way and who in those countries decides whats a good idea? If your countries wants no part in the plan? If you want no part in the plan. We get stuck with the aftermath.
When a small group of people decide what is best for the rest (yes this is a very small group of people compared to the 6 billion souls on this rock) it is elitism. They know better, they think they are better than every one else. Historically this has never turned out well.
I suspect that the only reason they got their refund and apology was because it was blown out of proportion.
I don't quite follow you. But i don't think its blown out of proportion. A family was removed from a plane because of religion/race in the USA! This is a *big* deal.
History has show us these things start small, and this is not even that small.
Truly you have a dizzying intellect.
Perhaps this is a more fundamental problem in UI design. I mean really when people say "intuitive" they usually mean works the same as the last program i used. There is some merit in that, but how many of these people still can use a Xbox or drive a car?(ok bad examples.. but you get the idea)
Personally I think we have a long way to go for computers to be "intuitive". The comments about cubicle monkeys above indicated that there will always be a large non technical user base.
For a large percentage of the driving population, ABS actually makes the roads more dangerous and countless studies show a large percent of average drivers who are aware they have ABS, now tailgate, brake later, and create more dangerous driving situations for those around them under the false pretence ABS can keep them from harm.
Citation needed.
The problem is everyone thinks they are a Lewis Hamilton. And besides it was used in F1 for a few years....
In what country. In NZ if I hit someone in the rear and they hit the next car which hits the next car. I get to pay for ALL the damage.
I was a contractor for a while. MS dev tools were so good that I charged and extra 50% when I was forced to use them. I also added "downtime compensation" to the contracts. The idea was no one would hire me for MS stuff.
I was wrong. They happily paid me the extra money per hour. MS dev tools are good compared to using a binary editor. Seriously what other tools have you used?
People are in fact using wikipedia in Papua New Guinea for education. The availability of the DVD version has been great to really get the ball rolling. Even without the DVD there is mirroring etc that its license permits that can't be done with britanica for example
They got 30 computers donated and then got them set up in Port Moresby. This provides a much cheaper way to provide a library than a normal library. Its also easier to get more modern text books etc.
So this is NOT hypothetical. Its really being done.