At a guess, spent fuel from Fukushima isn't likely to end up in the US, and while re-opening Yucca Mountain would probably be okay (you guys know we have another similar salt-dome repository, solely used by the military, right?) I suspect that the present method is okay, too: stashing it in casks out in the parking lot of the reactor facilities.
In any case, it would be really cool if you anti-nuclear guys would get over the notion that this stuff is somehow magically evil. It's a relatively small quantity of admittedly nasty stuff, but unlike your average poison it gets less poisonous while it's sitting around, it's pretty easy to detect leaks with simple equipment, and as designed, it all stays sealed up and you have the luxury of deciding where to put it. If only all industrial waste was like this.
The USPS isn't subsidizing junk-mail. Junk-mail is subsidizing the USPS
Do you guys have anything like a reference for the stuff you're saying?
My understanding is that pre-sorted mail originally got a discount because the post office wouldn't have to sort it themselves. Now the sorting is automated, so the pre-sorted mail discount is just a subsidy for junk mail, and I have my doubts it's really a money making business.
Anyway, I say: replace pre-sorted bulk mail with a discount for non-profits, and let the commercial spammers find a real job.
I wouldn't mind what the the tech bubble popping might do to San Francisco rental prices.
Funny, I had a similar thought. In fact lately, I've been wondering what we might be able to do to pop the bubble on purpose. But that it'd be something like: identify the chumps, try to smarten them up... and that's as far as I get. Good luck on that project, eh?
You have every right not to use facebook. You are not entitled to act all indignant because someone didn't know or forgot that you refuse to use the same means of communication as so many others.
Ah, but they're you're wrong. I do in fact have the right to do
that. I have the right to not like the Yankees, I have the right
to wish everyone would shut up about Miley Cyrus, I have the
right to regard facebook junkies as short-sighted, cliquieish
morons, and I have the right to regard you as an insufferable
prig that can't get over lecturing other people on what they're
allowed to think.
I actually had the feeling that "regulatory capture" was well under way over at wikipedia. Call in an "independent" moderator to arbitrate a dispute, and you're likely to get another droid. For all I know, these people sincerely don't see any problem with "marketing" (if they did, they might have to find a real job).
Much of the new technology, especially when discussing the internet, is no longer about the user
Indeed, in fact The Trend is to make sure the user knows that
they're Owned.
I feel like that every time I start up Firefox and it wants
to "check my addons" (it invariably disables at least one,
unasked), and everytime I try to check on the status of
a downlaod and find that the behavior of my browser has silently
changed -- I needed to read slashdot to find out they were going
to make it harder to shut off javascript --
Every designer out there wants to think they're Steve Jobs, but
they don't have the reality warp field to pull it off.
That you view people that use facebook as impressionable or someway less than you is arrogant.
And your own radiant humility is a thing of joy. Thank you for
sharing it with us.
But it's the latest thing! Everyone knows it's the latest
thing! How can you dare to diss the latest thing! You're
insulting my tribe, you're attacking my core beliefs! How can
such mean, recalcitrant people be allowed to exist! Why can't
everyone be reasonable like me?
The key difference is that swallowing a bee is an unfortunate accident that probably couldn't be foreseen, where as getting cancer from the entirely preventable Fukushima disaster, a facility which was designed to generate profit for a private company on the understanding that they would run it safely, is clearly a case of negligence.
Actually, while it's entirely possible the designers and operators are guilty of some form of negligence, it is not clear that it is so. You might, for example, argue that this was an exceptional tsunami which could not have been forseen and could not reasonably be designed around.
Also, the nuclear industry as a whole remains a safe way of generating power, and Fukushima itself, even given this accident, may remain safer than many competing sources of power... there are many years of safe operation you need to average the present harmful effects over... and it's not at all clear how harmful those are going to turn out to be, in terms of loss of human life.
This is beautiful, the conspiracy theory of the week.
It seems a bit like ill-informed ranting, but that's
par for the course. I mean, I would believe that
some short-sighted people thought it wasn't worth
wasting shelf-space on old Who episodes, I could even
believe a snobbish disdain by some faction led to
deleting that trashy popular stuff before it could
distract anyone from the 10,000th performance of
Rachmaninoff... but you know:
Doctor who, together with the VAST majority of 1960s
BBC TV in the archives, was DELIBERATELY destroyed
(destroyed, not wiped- with no-one allowed to simply
take the material home to keep) at several times in the
70s and 80s. The main reason was political. Britain was
subject to massive acts of social engineering in the
70s and 80s, and the powers-that-be did NOT want the
sheeple having access to material from the 60s that
showed a completely different societal outlook promoted
from the top. There is a VERY good reason a Brit wrote
1984. It is BRITAIN that mastered the art of
're-writing' the past, and you cannot do this if the
real facts of the past still exist.
Drama from the BBC is always laced with propaganda, so
drama fell victim to this 1984-style
operation. However, the unions were also to blame, for
the unions were very powerful, and very against the
idea of the BBC repeating shows rather than producing
new ones. The unions were VERY anti-BBC-archive, which
they saw as an engine of constant re-runs (Doctor Who
actually got almost no re-runs in the UK).
This is a superb example of the form. (The cabal
knew better than to let people see "The Ice
Warriors", or else all hell would break loose!)
Using the word "sheeple" seems a little
heavy-handed at this point, though. The upper-case
for emphasis is enough of a tip-off, don't you think?
And you know what else is exciting? Since this find in Nigeria,
there have been reports of 106 episodes found in Ethiopia
(clearly, the preservation of civilization requires getting
as far away from the BBC as possible):
106 doctor who episodes uncovered
It is not clear that this Ethiopian 106 that they're talking
about is entirely composed of "lost" episodes, so I would
guess that it is not (despite the way this story is billed in
some circles)
but it's entirely likely that there are a few more the ones on the list
of the 97 officially "still lost" list.
Attention slashdot: an update to this story, adding the Daily Mirror link, would not be out-of-line.
Is this where you want to keep your 'wearable device'?
It doesn't much appeal to me, no, but then I'm not exactly the
target market for any of this stuff. It is clear to me though,
that the ergonomics of the hand-helds that everyone is so excited
about really suck: I see people on the train holding their phones
up in front of their face, bracing their hand with their other
hand, just so they can keep their heads upright for awhile.
On the other hand, I already hate the fact that I'm out riding a bicycle, sharing the road with people who keep looking down to check their messages.
Google Glass is only going to make this kind of behavior worse,
as people tell themselves they can keep their eye on the road and
text at the same time. Maybe they're holding up the rollout of
Glass until the robot cars are ready...
Yeah, I know about the option, but I haven't done a usb boot yet, and I have no idea whether this particular box has the right firmware or whatever. There's a lot of variation in PC BIOSes, and I just wasn't feeling like playing around more
I get it that the general public views insurers as evil
corprorations that are trying to screw people over, but in
reality that's not usually the case. More often than not this
viewpoint originates from bad sales agents who don't properly
explain to customers what they are purchasing...
My experience with buying car insurance-- typically on ten-plus
year old, japanese economy cars-- is that the agent always tries
to convince me to jack my coverage, claiming that this model is
actually a "popular car to steal".
Okay, so the deal is that you yourself more or less got what it's about, but you wrote an article that skips all of that, it comes off like the "Accidental Tourist" guide to BM.
And you're missing the point about what I was saying about RVs: it's attempt at doing things The Easy Way that doesn't actually work all that well. Bringing along a box to seal yourself up in has a psychological appeal for some, but I think you're better off with a decent respirator mask and wallowing in the dust.
That was my thought. After jumping through some new hoops they've put in the way (they won't just let you download an *.iso, you need to learn to deal with jigbo), I found that they're shipping with a new installer of their own that's pretty broken on my 5 year old dual opteron box. Their FAQ explains that this bold new break with backwards compatibility is so that they can do a better job of supporting text-only VMS installation, or some such.
I went back to doing an Ubuntu install, and just downloaded icewm, as I always do.
(If you have some clever boy on your team explaining why you need to break backwards compatibility now, there isn't really any need to sort through the arguments, just shoot him.)
Burning Man is not like being at the NTC. For one, it's a social event rather than simulated warfare where you're trying to stay "alive" and not get "killed" while trying to "kill" others.
I figured that the less time you spend building your living space and cooking your own food, the more time you can spend participating in other ways.
Yeah, but the trouble is you didn't really think about what you were going to contribute, did you?
If you're not local, and don't have a truck to transport stuff, working on large scale, collaborative art work would be difficult, but nevertheless there are people who think of things they can do besides be a spectator:
I met a Russian dude there who was going around telling jokes, and offering to teach people how to do backflips.
I guy I knew brought a set of small stencils and an airbrush, so he could do stenciled body art.
I was once handed a small, decorated notebook with a pen attached to it, with the instruction that I write something in it, and pass it on to someone else, using the same little ritual with which it was handed to me.
I was glad to see you weren't recommending renting an RV... a friend of mine tried that one year, and I was suprised at how badly it sucked, it was even worse than I thought it would be-- hot, nasty and isolating: now that's convienient for you.
I have to say though, the weirdest thing about your advice was to rent a bike once you get there-- it at least used to be a serious no-no to sell stuff on the playa, you're supposed to get any finacial transactions over with before you get there. It may seem like a silly rule, but it keeps it all from degenerating into hamburger stands and budweiser booths.
And one last point: if all you're looking for is a place to party, why not go to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, or something like that? Plan ahead far enough and you can rent a hotel room. What could be easier?
Sure, you could probably farm a bunch of sock puppets and mod-bomb people you disagree with, but there's no payoff. You get no personal benefit or gain out of out-trolling someone, certainly not enough to make it worth the effort.
Which is to say, the slashdot moderation system is just a toy for a site that doesn't take itself seriously, it's not suitable for any situation where something might actually be riding on the outcome.
This is true for pretty much every web site out there, e.g. wikipedia, which has become important enough to want to subvert, without really coming up with any solution to prevent subversion attempts.
That's only because I walk down that street at least 2-3 times every single day, going to/from work or lunch, and I've seen pretty much all there is to see about it already.
But you won't see me glaring at you for stumbling around like a zombie,
because you're too tuned out to notice.
Try shutting it off for awhile and watch the other people doing the zombie walk, and see what you think of it.
Slashdot Mirror
"Yeah, quit bitching about Uranium fucking hippies, it's half-life is only 4.468 billion years"
If it was just Uranium they wouldn't be spent fuel rods. Try taking a look at this, you might get what I'm talking about: Fission_product.
At a guess, spent fuel from Fukushima isn't likely to end up in the US, and while re-opening Yucca Mountain would probably be okay (you guys know we have another similar salt-dome repository, solely used by the military, right?) I suspect that the present method is okay, too: stashing it in casks out in the parking lot of the reactor facilities.
In any case, it would be really cool if you anti-nuclear guys would get over the notion that this stuff is somehow magically evil. It's a relatively small quantity of admittedly nasty stuff, but unlike your average poison it gets less poisonous while it's sitting around, it's pretty easy to detect leaks with simple equipment, and as designed, it all stays sealed up and you have the luxury of deciding where to put it. If only all industrial waste was like this.
Do you guys have anything like a reference for the stuff you're saying?
My understanding is that pre-sorted mail originally got a discount because the post office wouldn't have to sort it themselves. Now the sorting is automated, so the pre-sorted mail discount is just a subsidy for junk mail, and I have my doubts it's really a money making business.
Anyway, I say: replace pre-sorted bulk mail with a discount for non-profits, and let the commercial spammers find a real job.
I tend to work places that have actual income, so no, I don't worry so much about stock scams evaporating.
You want a real economic indicator? Try checking the snark frequency. This is all pretty obvious to people on the ground here: SF Techie Explains Why the World Should Revolve Around Bay Area Techies (via jwz).
Funny, I had a similar thought. In fact lately, I've been wondering what we might be able to do to pop the bubble on purpose. But that it'd be something like: identify the chumps, try to smarten them up... and that's as far as I get. Good luck on that project, eh?
web literacy: don't use software where the "designers" claim the right to broadcast UI changes to you at their whim.
Ah, but they're you're wrong. I do in fact have the right to do that. I have the right to not like the Yankees, I have the right to wish everyone would shut up about Miley Cyrus, I have the right to regard facebook junkies as short-sighted, cliquieish morons, and I have the right to regard you as an insufferable prig that can't get over lecturing other people on what they're allowed to think.
I actually had the feeling that "regulatory capture" was well under way over at wikipedia. Call in an "independent" moderator to arbitrate a dispute, and you're likely to get another droid. For all I know, these people sincerely don't see any problem with "marketing" (if they did, they might have to find a real job).
Much of the new technology, especially when discussing the internet, is no longer about the user
Indeed, in fact The Trend is to make sure the user knows that they're Owned.
I feel like that every time I start up Firefox and it wants to "check my addons" (it invariably disables at least one, unasked), and everytime I try to check on the status of a downlaod and find that the behavior of my browser has silently changed -- I needed to read slashdot to find out they were going to make it harder to shut off javascript --
Every designer out there wants to think they're Steve Jobs, but they don't have the reality warp field to pull it off.
And your own radiant humility is a thing of joy. Thank you for sharing it with us.
But it's the latest thing! Everyone knows it's the latest thing! How can you dare to diss the latest thing! You're insulting my tribe, you're attacking my core beliefs! How can such mean, recalcitrant people be allowed to exist! Why can't everyone be reasonable like me?
Is dealing with articles split up into 11 pages to try to sleaze more "pageviews" out of you. Presuming you bother to read them at all.
Actually, while it's entirely possible the designers and operators are guilty of some form of negligence, it is not clear that it is so. You might, for example, argue that this was an exceptional tsunami which could not have been forseen and could not reasonably be designed around.
Also, the nuclear industry as a whole remains a safe way of generating power, and Fukushima itself, even given this accident, may remain safer than many competing sources of power... there are many years of safe operation you need to average the present harmful effects over... and it's not at all clear how harmful those are going to turn out to be, in terms of loss of human life.
This is beautiful, the conspiracy theory of the week. It seems a bit like ill-informed ranting, but that's par for the course. I mean, I would believe that some short-sighted people thought it wasn't worth wasting shelf-space on old Who episodes, I could even believe a snobbish disdain by some faction led to deleting that trashy popular stuff before it could distract anyone from the 10,000th performance of Rachmaninoff... but you know:
This is a superb example of the form. (The cabal knew better than to let people see "The Ice Warriors", or else all hell would break loose!)
Using the word "sheeple" seems a little heavy-handed at this point, though. The upper-case for emphasis is enough of a tip-off, don't you think?
And you know what else is exciting? Since this find in Nigeria, there have been reports of 106 episodes found in Ethiopia (clearly, the preservation of civilization requires getting as far away from the BBC as possible): 106 doctor who episodes uncovered
It is not clear that this Ethiopian 106 that they're talking about is entirely composed of "lost" episodes, so I would guess that it is not (despite the way this story is billed in some circles) but it's entirely likely that there are a few more the ones on the list of the 97 officially "still lost" list.
Attention slashdot: an update to this story, adding the Daily Mirror link, would not be out-of-line.
It doesn't much appeal to me, no, but then I'm not exactly the target market for any of this stuff. It is clear to me though, that the ergonomics of the hand-helds that everyone is so excited about really suck: I see people on the train holding their phones up in front of their face, bracing their hand with their other hand, just so they can keep their heads upright for awhile.
On the other hand, I already hate the fact that I'm out riding a bicycle, sharing the road with people who keep looking down to check their messages. Google Glass is only going to make this kind of behavior worse, as people tell themselves they can keep their eye on the road and text at the same time. Maybe they're holding up the rollout of Glass until the robot cars are ready...
And with the new release of Google Opiate, your mind can be numbed like it never has before.
Yeah, I know about the option, but I haven't done a usb boot yet, and I have no idea whether this particular box has the right firmware or whatever. There's a lot of variation in PC BIOSes, and I just wasn't feeling like playing around more
My experience with buying car insurance-- typically on ten-plus year old, japanese economy cars-- is that the agent always tries to convince me to jack my coverage, claiming that this model is actually a "popular car to steal".
Sorry, I meant a DVD-iso. When I was doing this I couldn't figure out where my CD-R blanks were (haven't needed any in ages).
I also ordered a set of DVDs on the off chance I felt like messing with it again.
But yes, they're pushing jigbo pretty heavily, though there's no doubt ways to dance around it.
Okay, so the deal is that you yourself more or less got what it's about, but you wrote an article that skips all of that, it comes off like the "Accidental Tourist" guide to BM.
And you're missing the point about what I was saying about RVs: it's attempt at doing things The Easy Way that doesn't actually work all that well. Bringing along a box to seal yourself up in has a psychological appeal for some, but I think you're better off with a decent respirator mask and wallowing in the dust.
That was my thought. After jumping through some new hoops they've put in the way (they won't just let you download an *.iso, you need to learn to deal with jigbo), I found that they're shipping with a new installer of their own that's pretty broken on my 5 year old dual opteron box. Their FAQ explains that this bold new break with backwards compatibility is so that they can do a better job of supporting text-only VMS installation, or some such.
I went back to doing an Ubuntu install, and just downloaded icewm, as I always do.
(If you have some clever boy on your team explaining why you need to break backwards compatibility now, there isn't really any need to sort through the arguments, just shoot him.)
Well, except for Thunderdome, of course.
Yeah, but the trouble is you didn't really think about what you were going to contribute, did you?
If you're not local, and don't have a truck to transport stuff, working on large scale, collaborative art work would be difficult, but nevertheless there are people who think of things they can do besides be a spectator:
I was glad to see you weren't recommending renting an RV... a friend of mine tried that one year, and I was suprised at how badly it sucked, it was even worse than I thought it would be-- hot, nasty and isolating: now that's convienient for you.
I have to say though, the weirdest thing about your advice was to rent a bike once you get there-- it at least used to be a serious no-no to sell stuff on the playa, you're supposed to get any finacial transactions over with before you get there. It may seem like a silly rule, but it keeps it all from degenerating into hamburger stands and budweiser booths.
And one last point: if all you're looking for is a place to party, why not go to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, or something like that? Plan ahead far enough and you can rent a hotel room. What could be easier?
Which is to say, the slashdot moderation system is just a toy for a site that doesn't take itself seriously, it's not suitable for any situation where something might actually be riding on the outcome.
This is true for pretty much every web site out there, e.g. wikipedia, which has become important enough to want to subvert, without really coming up with any solution to prevent subversion attempts.
But you won't see me glaring at you for stumbling around like a zombie, because you're too tuned out to notice.
Try shutting it off for awhile and watch the other people doing the zombie walk, and see what you think of it.