The behavior will continue until the individuals effected in the manner you specify are the people making the decisions about what business plans to pursue. And even then I expect that there would need to be about a decade of continual prosecutions and punishments to overcome the last several decades of improper conditioning.
That "assuming you trust them" is my real sticking point. I'd rather not give them any information (or any correct information) to start with.
What we need is a character generation application, sort of like you get on angband, but customized to provide random user information for web sites. And a small database that tracks which web site you give which character information to. The only hard part would be the browser interface, so that the browser would automatically give the right website the right charcter information.
Nothing wrong with having a CLI available (and I believe it is) but were I editing video files for most purpose I'd prefer a video interface.
E.g., when editing animations I'd rather use The Gimp then geany, even though I could (probably) do the job on either. (Actually, I've never tried to edit a frame with geany, perhaps it would reject it, or at least give me a read only version. I might need to use a hex editor.)
That's like claiming that "Democrats" are actually democrats, or that "Republicans" are in favor of a republic. (Actually, that last may be generally true, though it's hard to be sure, and depends on which centuries definition of republic you are using.)
Why do you characterise SARS as spreading aggressively? I know people were afraid that it would, but I didn't see any evidence that it spread as readily as the flu, or even measles.
If you say "The spreading characteristic of viruses and bacterial pathogens is all but defeated by modern practices.", I'd want to know how those practices are applied in schools, bars, and public transit, not in hospitals and biology labs. (But even in hospitals those statements appear to be a vast overrating of actual practice, though certainly increased efforts are currently underway.)
Got a reference for that? I believe that Tritium Dioxide is called water. (I'm quite sure that Deuterium Dioxide is called water. Yes, it's also called heavy water, but that doesn't mean it isn't water.)
No, it can't be used against the government. The government has previously claimed patents that have been issued to others as not only it's own, but as it's personal secrets, so you, the inventor, are also not allowed to use them. Then it's hired someone else to use them in its name.
Perhaps there are circumstances where patents can be used against the government, but not if it really cares. (OTOH, the patents I'm thinking of had to do with processing fissionable materials.)
The rate of transmission of highly contagious diseases is related to the common speed of travel, and also to the fastest normal speed of travel, and also to the number (not percentage) of people travelling.
So you can't say that because it took months to spread around Europe when the fastest speed was a fast horse, and the common speed was oxcart, and the number of people travelling was extremely low means that it would take months now. Actually it can take days to spread from New York to Shanghai. (It's usually a bit slower, but that's not the way you calculate threat estimates.)
Yah. But if the incubation period were 5 years, and it were (slightly) contagious during the last two years before obvious symptoms...
Then there's the question of how we would notice. If the symptoms were increasing lack of attention to detail slowly progressing over another 5 years to total unconsciousness (but not death). Since it is proposed to be very slow, there might well not be any obvious changes.
OTOH, that kind of disease WOULD require an expert to fabricate it. Someone more expert than I believe currently exists. I find zoonotic diseases much more plausible, especially given factory farms. But it's also true that the current multi-drug resistant tuberculosis could mutate into a form that was much more contagious and not less deadly. Or there could be a vairant of measles that was resistant to the vaccine, and which had a much worse recurrence than sciatica. (You never kill off the measles virus. It lives on in hiding, waiting to reappear when your immune system stops suppressing it.)
Note that these aren't generally humanity killers, but some of them might well be civilization killers. Or perhaps they would just drive us to eschew all human contact, and only use electronic communications...but robots aren't yet well enough developed to allow that to be practical.
O, that's correct enough. The conclusion doesn't follow, but the facts are correct.
The chance of it happening by accident are quite low. As proof, we only have three or four instances in all of history. (Flu, black death, bubonic plague, maybe another one or two.)
This, however, doesn't address the current situation. We now have a much denser and more mobile population than ever before. And we've been carefully incubating LOTS of microbes to be immune to all the treatments we possess. So there's lots of raw material. Having it happen by accident is thus more likely than ever before. (To be honest, it would probably only kill off humans and one or two other species. Depending on the exact route by which it became lethal.) Imagine if it were carried by flys AND could spread by contact.
Now if we add malign human intent, it becomes quite probable. This is only unlikely because there's no plausible way that the malign humans could protect themselves and their associates. But many people don't think things through.
Note that this still doesn't involve experts in the field. And doesn't even necessarily involve malign intent. Rats around a factory farm could pick up a disease of pigs that had been cultured in the midst of antibiotics. These could infect the rats in a pet shop with a disease that adapted itself to rats (so it no longer harmed them excessively) but which spread by contact. And some version of this could learn to live on people. It would quite likely be deadly, because it came from a significantly different species, but it could still spread through contact and, say, coughing. NO treatment would work, because it had inherited an immunity to all our antibiotics.
FWIW, tuberculosis shows signs of breaking out in a new form that resists all current treatment. This isn't as quickly lethat as a new flu, because it's adapted to humans. But it's resistant to all known treatments. And many people who have it are living in the general population of several countries where free medical care isn't available. So expect it to spread worldwide.
The only real answer to contagious diseases that resist treatment is quarantine. But people tend to avoid that because of the economic burden that it imposes on them. (There are also other reasons, but that's the really intractable one.) But even quarantine won't work if the disease becomes contagious before symptoms become blatantly obvious.
P.S.: The burning of the houses of victims is one of the things that spread the plague. Don't believe we won't make equivalent mistakes.
FWIW, I believe that Neutron bombs don't significantly damage the real estate attacked.
OTOH, there are reported to have been developed diseases that are 100% fatal to exposed individuals. (They were ferrets, not people, but ferrets were chosen because they are immunologically similar to people WRT that disease.) Also, I believe, it was contagious before the first symptoms appeared. (Not that that matters too much, since many companies have employment policies that strongly encourage people to come to work even when they feel sick.)
I think his poiint was that regulation CAUSED it to be built where and how it was. Regulation can't solve the problem when the regulators ARE the problem.
That said, the US has many such plants that weren't imposed on it by regulators, but which are kept running despite regulations because the operating entities have more political pull than do the regulators (or at least the technologists of the regulatory agency). So again, regulations aren't the answer, though if they were properly enforced they would be.
So the basic answer appears to be that regulations can't cause nuclear plants to operate safely, because the regulators answer to politics. Note that this is true of EVERY regulatory agency, not just the nuclear power industry. But most industries to threaten so much damage from one incident.
P.S.: Did you catch to post about the Hanford plant on the Columbia river above. Apparently we are 7-45 years from a CONTINUING radioactive poisoing of the Columbia river through ground water seepage, and no fix appears possible. And we don't know how bad the poisoning will be. AND the Hanford plant is both still operating and still leaking. (Admittedly the leak comes from a differnt pile than the one that is still operational.) Not only did regulations not solve this problem, they aren't even ameliorating it...well, not in this century unless things change in an unexpected manner. (Presumably when the currently leaking tanks are empty, the poisoning will decline after awhile, unless some new problem arrises.)
People rarely learn from infrequent disasters. If something happens once a day, you learn quickly. If it happens on a random day once a week, you learn more slowly. If it happens once a year, and not on a predicatible day, you may never learn.
Nuclear plants provide random accidents once every decade or so, in an unpredictable pattern. The people who suffer from the accident aren't the people who decide how things are to be done. How long do you expect it to take to learn how to prevent accidents? Teenagers usually learn to be fairly safe drivers in around a decade. (This isn't all learning, it's partially hormonal change.) And they directly experience the results of their actions.
I have my doubts that human societies are designed to learn to manage something as complex and dangerous and powerful as nuclear reactors. One accident/decade isn't an acceptable accident rate. Not in the long term, and there isn't much sign of organizational learning. (Plants in the US of essentially the same design as Fukishima have applied for permits to operate beyond their design specifications and beyond the designed lifetime since the Fukishima accident. It appears that at least some of them will receive the requested waivers.)
You clearly don't mean what you say, or shouldn't, as cockroaches have been found eating the insulation inside working nuclear plants. And, IIRC, radiodurans has been found within the core of working reactors. (Not, of course, where the temperature was above the boiling point of water.)
If you mean places that are officially too dangerous for people to reside there, yes, there are many. Within the reactors, e.g. If you mean the official exclusion zones, people have lived there for years. I don't know how safe it is, but it may well be as safe as many inner cities are for those not of the appropriate ethinic group. Or as safe as the Kalahari is for a bushman, for that matter. (Naturally, this will depend on exactly where you are within either the inner city or the exclusion zone.)
People tend to be either irrationally fearful or irrationally trusting of nuclear power. For that matter, it's the irrationality that makes it so hard to store spent fuel. The clearly best answer is to store it in a place that's restricted of access, and contains moderate barriers against access. Say dehydrating it and sintering it. Then use it to produce process heat. (Say stick it in a pressure cooker, and use it to drive a heat pump.) Or if you're worried about neutrons, use it to heat or water. (The idea here is not so much to get additional power out of it, though that's a benefit, but to cool it down while waiting for some better use to show up.) Perhaps it could be used to preheat water for some other purpose. Of course, this would mean you would need to have it near a factory. SO WHAT!!
N.B.: This is probably a cost neutral (or nearly neutral) way of disposing of spent radioactive fuel. It's not a justification of fission piles. I'm not sure they are justifiable. But a lot of the problems are due to hysteria.
P.S.: There may actually be real problems with the precise solution that I proposed for dealing with radioactive waste. That's ok, I'm not an expert. This is my adaptation of an approach that one expert proposed quite awhile ago, and I may have introduced flaws. But do note that because the waste is not totally inaccessible, it's quite possible to fix any problems with the proposal. Maybe, e.g., the glass needs to be in the form of thin threads (angle hair?) and embedded in a matrix of wax. That would limit the amount of heat that could be extracted. If gamma is a problem, perhaps a matrix of lead is needed. Or perhaps needles sheathed in lead and embedded in a wax matrix. But making it more complex makes it more expensive. Thin glass needles would keep the radiation from reinforcing (via short chain reactions), and make the heat easy to extract. High level radioactives don't have a long life, so it would cool down within decades. Low level radio-isotopes aren't particularly dangerous unless they are within your body (and even then not really dangerous unless they are biologically active molecules). Yes, if you bury the glass, some of them will eventually leak out. So don't bury it. Or grind it up and use it in cement blocks. Granite is naturally radioactive already, so this isn't new. Just watch the background level, and where you use the blocks. Support columns for a factory shouldn't be any problem, and it's not as if we're talking about THAT much solid waste. If you're worried about it, commission statues in the park, and use the building blocks for support stands. And sheathe them in marble or granite or sandstone. (Note that this is after the 10 year half-life isotopes have had three or four half-lives, so nothing high level is left.)
Not all of them. But that's not what you're talking about, is it.
ALL sources of energy, and ALL construction leads to deaths. So does driving cars. The question is, what's a reasonable balance.
It isn't clear to me that fission power is a net benefit. It may be, but all the governments cook the books and subsidize various energy provision methods in such varying degrees that I find it impossible to be sure. It *is* clear that the companies won't build and operate the plants without governments idemnifying them against any major problems that they cause. So I have severe doubts as to the economic justification of fission power.
That's not totally clear. A strong immune system can often kill off a cancer before it becomes a problem. Usually before it's detected. (Admittedly, not always. Sometimes it's a cance of the immune system. Or of an area that the immune system can't reach.)
So, yes, some of it's chance. Some of it's your genetic history (epigenetic as well as inherent). Some of it's diet. Perhaps some of it's exercise...though I'm not clear whether exercise creates or prevents it, or perhaps both.
Note that the dose of radiation that gives one person cancer will leave another unaffected. This is a combination of lottery and everything else. It's not pure lottery. But it's also not pure everything else.
What you CAN say is that if you expose a population to a certain level of radiation, then number of cancers will increase by a certain amount. There are large error bars except at the extreme ends, and possibly there, but it's still a reasonably defensible statement. (N.B.: *I* couldn't make that statement, as I can't quantify any of this. But I assert that there are those who reasonably can make that statement, though they *ought* to be more explicit about the error bars than I ever hear them being.)
Sorry, but water CAN be radioactive. That's not the problem here, but it's certainly possible. Half-life is, I believe, 12 1/2 years. (Check the Tritium half-life to be sure.)
OTOH, the radioactivity level of the water itself is probably negligible. It's the stuff that it carries that's the problem. Most of the really bad radioactives have already decayed, however. I doubt there's any radioactive iodine left. OTOH, I am definitely not an expert in this field. Maybe there is small (non-filterable) stuff that's dangerous. My first thought, though, is to let the water seep through a few meters of sand and humus. The chemically active stuff should attach to the humus. Most of the particles should be caught by the sand. The stuff coming out should be very low level radioactive material that is so small that it will diffuse rapidly to the background level. OTOH, I am definitely not an expert in this field.
That may be so, but he expressed a clear intention to injure a large number of customers. And no remorse when challenged on the point. This is not someone that we want in even a low-level management position.
OTOH, as I wouldn't buy any Microsoft product anyway, my standing to take action on this matter is dubious. But then I *didn't* take any action. I'm merely defending the actions of those that did as being reasonable (the actions I heard about, anyway).
Do you *want* someone who so despises the end-users to have a management career in software?
He expressed the desire to injure an extremely large number of people, and when he was called on it he expressed not remorse. It's true that this is an attempt to injure him more severely, but the attempt is spread over a vastly smaller number of people.
Someone who intentionally injures a large number of people to a small amount deserves a punishment equal to the sum of the injuries done, plus a bit added, because it was intentional. If he would have injured 100,000 people an injury of, say $10 (we're talking about a purchased product, so dollars seems a reasonable measure), then he deserved a punishmen of, say, $1,500,000. I realize that this won't happen, and there is no judicial system means to cause it to happen, but he has no grounds for complaint unless he is injured unreasonably in return. Having his career damaged not only seems reasonable, it may get him out of management in software development, where he clearly doesn't belong.
Now this is a bit more difficult, because he hasn't yet done the $10 worth of damage to 100,000 people. He has just clearly indicated that he would intentionally do so if he had the chance. That, however, is sufficient to show that he should be OUT of any management position in software development. Maybe he would be a good manager in accounting.
That's my suspicion. It may be a bit paranoid, but given some of the recent activity by gaming houses I don't think so.
It seems plausible that even when games that I desire become available on Linux, they will come with strings that I am not willing to accept.
I don't *want* a multiplayer game. And I don't want to need an internet connection. Registration is acceptable, barely. A requirement for continued internet access is NOT. Too many games contain too much spyware.
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The behavior will continue until the individuals effected in the manner you specify are the people making the decisions about what business plans to pursue. And even then I expect that there would need to be about a decade of continual prosecutions and punishments to overcome the last several decades of improper conditioning.
If there were (real teeth in HIPAA privacy violations), medical agencies couldn't use web connected MSWindows machines.
So, yes, your point stands.
That "assuming you trust them" is my real sticking point. I'd rather not give them any information (or any correct information) to start with.
What we need is a character generation application, sort of like you get on angband, but customized to provide random user information for web sites. And a small database that tracks which web site you give which character information to. The only hard part would be the browser interface, so that the browser would automatically give the right website the right charcter information.
Nothing wrong with having a CLI available (and I believe it is) but were I editing video files for most purpose I'd prefer a video interface.
E.g., when editing animations I'd rather use The Gimp then geany, even though I could (probably) do the job on either. (Actually, I've never tried to edit a frame with geany, perhaps it would reject it, or at least give me a read only version. I might need to use a hex editor.)
That's like claiming that "Democrats" are actually democrats, or that "Republicans" are in favor of a republic. (Actually, that last may be generally true, though it's hard to be sure, and depends on which centuries definition of republic you are using.)
Why do you characterise SARS as spreading aggressively? I know people were afraid that it would, but I didn't see any evidence that it spread as readily as the flu, or even measles.
If you say "The spreading characteristic of viruses and bacterial pathogens is all but defeated by modern practices.", I'd want to know how those practices are applied in schools, bars, and public transit, not in hospitals and biology labs. (But even in hospitals those statements appear to be a vast overrating of actual practice, though certainly increased efforts are currently underway.)
Got a reference for that? I believe that Tritium Dioxide is called water. (I'm quite sure that Deuterium Dioxide is called water. Yes, it's also called heavy water, but that doesn't mean it isn't water.)
No, it can't be used against the government. The government has previously claimed patents that have been issued to others as not only it's own, but as it's personal secrets, so you, the inventor, are also not allowed to use them. Then it's hired someone else to use them in its name.
Perhaps there are circumstances where patents can be used against the government, but not if it really cares. (OTOH, the patents I'm thinking of had to do with processing fissionable materials.)
You are confusing "libertarians" with "Libertarians". (Though I'll agree that some libertarians have the mind system you are objecting to.)
Yes, which is why I call myself a libertarian, I'll NEVER call myself a Libertarian.
FWIW, even "libertarian" has lots of sticky places, but fewer than Democrat or Republican.
That means they didn't break the license agreement, it doesn't mean they aren't parasitic.
OTOH, I'm biased in favor ot the GPL, so my use of the language might not seem appropriate to someone who favors the BSD.
If by "effective" he means "targeted" (a defensible usage in this context) then his comment is defensible, though still, I believe, incorrect.
Consider how effective mailing anthrax powder to a key Senator was in getting certain legislation passed.
IIUC, weaponized anthrax can generally be avoided by not being where it is being used. That isn't, of course, true of the others.
The rate of transmission of highly contagious diseases is related to the common speed of travel, and also to the fastest normal speed of travel, and also to the number (not percentage) of people travelling.
So you can't say that because it took months to spread around Europe when the fastest speed was a fast horse, and the common speed was oxcart, and the number of people travelling was extremely low means that it would take months now. Actually it can take days to spread from New York to Shanghai. (It's usually a bit slower, but that's not the way you calculate threat estimates.)
Yah. But if the incubation period were 5 years, and it were (slightly) contagious during the last two years before obvious symptoms...
Then there's the question of how we would notice. If the symptoms were increasing lack of attention to detail slowly progressing over another 5 years to total unconsciousness (but not death). Since it is proposed to be very slow, there might well not be any obvious changes.
OTOH, that kind of disease WOULD require an expert to fabricate it. Someone more expert than I believe currently exists. I find zoonotic diseases much more plausible, especially given factory farms. But it's also true that the current multi-drug resistant tuberculosis could mutate into a form that was much more contagious and not less deadly. Or there could be a vairant of measles that was resistant to the vaccine, and which had a much worse recurrence than sciatica. (You never kill off the measles virus. It lives on in hiding, waiting to reappear when your immune system stops suppressing it.)
Note that these aren't generally humanity killers, but some of them might well be civilization killers. Or perhaps they would just drive us to eschew all human contact, and only use electronic communications...but robots aren't yet well enough developed to allow that to be practical.
O, that's correct enough. The conclusion doesn't follow, but the facts are correct.
The chance of it happening by accident are quite low. As proof, we only have three or four instances in all of history. (Flu, black death, bubonic plague, maybe another one or two.)
This, however, doesn't address the current situation. We now have a much denser and more mobile population than ever before. And we've been carefully incubating LOTS of microbes to be immune to all the treatments we possess. So there's lots of raw material. Having it happen by accident is thus more likely than ever before. (To be honest, it would probably only kill off humans and one or two other species. Depending on the exact route by which it became lethal.) Imagine if it were carried by flys AND could spread by contact.
Now if we add malign human intent, it becomes quite probable. This is only unlikely because there's no plausible way that the malign humans could protect themselves and their associates. But many people don't think things through.
Note that this still doesn't involve experts in the field. And doesn't even necessarily involve malign intent. Rats around a factory farm could pick up a disease of pigs that had been cultured in the midst of antibiotics. These could infect the rats in a pet shop with a disease that adapted itself to rats (so it no longer harmed them excessively) but which spread by contact. And some version of this could learn to live on people. It would quite likely be deadly, because it came from a significantly different species, but it could still spread through contact and, say, coughing. NO treatment would work, because it had inherited an immunity to all our antibiotics.
FWIW, tuberculosis shows signs of breaking out in a new form that resists all current treatment. This isn't as quickly lethat as a new flu, because it's adapted to humans. But it's resistant to all known treatments. And many people who have it are living in the general population of several countries where free medical care isn't available. So expect it to spread worldwide.
The only real answer to contagious diseases that resist treatment is quarantine. But people tend to avoid that because of the economic burden that it imposes on them. (There are also other reasons, but that's the really intractable one.) But even quarantine won't work if the disease becomes contagious before symptoms become blatantly obvious.
P.S.: The burning of the houses of victims is one of the things that spread the plague. Don't believe we won't make equivalent mistakes.
FWIW, I believe that Neutron bombs don't significantly damage the real estate attacked.
OTOH, there are reported to have been developed diseases that are 100% fatal to exposed individuals. (They were ferrets, not people, but ferrets were chosen because they are immunologically similar to people WRT that disease.) Also, I believe, it was contagious before the first symptoms appeared. (Not that that matters too much, since many companies have employment policies that strongly encourage people to come to work even when they feel sick.)
I think his poiint was that regulation CAUSED it to be built where and how it was. Regulation can't solve the problem when the regulators ARE the problem.
That said, the US has many such plants that weren't imposed on it by regulators, but which are kept running despite regulations because the operating entities have more political pull than do the regulators (or at least the technologists of the regulatory agency). So again, regulations aren't the answer, though if they were properly enforced they would be.
So the basic answer appears to be that regulations can't cause nuclear plants to operate safely, because the regulators answer to politics. Note that this is true of EVERY regulatory agency, not just the nuclear power industry. But most industries to threaten so much damage from one incident.
P.S.: Did you catch to post about the Hanford plant on the Columbia river above. Apparently we are 7-45 years from a CONTINUING radioactive poisoing of the Columbia river through ground water seepage, and no fix appears possible. And we don't know how bad the poisoning will be. AND the Hanford plant is both still operating and still leaking. (Admittedly the leak comes from a differnt pile than the one that is still operational.) Not only did regulations not solve this problem, they aren't even ameliorating it...well, not in this century unless things change in an unexpected manner. (Presumably when the currently leaking tanks are empty, the poisoning will decline after awhile, unless some new problem arrises.)
People rarely learn from infrequent disasters. If something happens once a day, you learn quickly. If it happens on a random day once a week, you learn more slowly. If it happens once a year, and not on a predicatible day, you may never learn.
Nuclear plants provide random accidents once every decade or so, in an unpredictable pattern. The people who suffer from the accident aren't the people who decide how things are to be done. How long do you expect it to take to learn how to prevent accidents? Teenagers usually learn to be fairly safe drivers in around a decade. (This isn't all learning, it's partially hormonal change.) And they directly experience the results of their actions.
I have my doubts that human societies are designed to learn to manage something as complex and dangerous and powerful as nuclear reactors. One accident/decade isn't an acceptable accident rate. Not in the long term, and there isn't much sign of organizational learning. (Plants in the US of essentially the same design as Fukishima have applied for permits to operate beyond their design specifications and beyond the designed lifetime since the Fukishima accident. It appears that at least some of them will receive the requested waivers.)
You clearly don't mean what you say, or shouldn't, as cockroaches have been found eating the insulation inside working nuclear plants. And, IIRC, radiodurans has been found within the core of working reactors. (Not, of course, where the temperature was above the boiling point of water.)
If you mean places that are officially too dangerous for people to reside there, yes, there are many. Within the reactors, e.g. If you mean the official exclusion zones, people have lived there for years. I don't know how safe it is, but it may well be as safe as many inner cities are for those not of the appropriate ethinic group. Or as safe as the Kalahari is for a bushman, for that matter. (Naturally, this will depend on exactly where you are within either the inner city or the exclusion zone.)
People tend to be either irrationally fearful or irrationally trusting of nuclear power. For that matter, it's the irrationality that makes it so hard to store spent fuel. The clearly best answer is to store it in a place that's restricted of access, and contains moderate barriers against access. Say dehydrating it and sintering it. Then use it to produce process heat. (Say stick it in a pressure cooker, and use it to drive a heat pump.) Or if you're worried about neutrons, use it to heat or water. (The idea here is not so much to get additional power out of it, though that's a benefit, but to cool it down while waiting for some better use to show up.) Perhaps it could be used to preheat water for some other purpose. Of course, this would mean you would need to have it near a factory. SO WHAT!!
N.B.: This is probably a cost neutral (or nearly neutral) way of disposing of spent radioactive fuel. It's not a justification of fission piles. I'm not sure they are justifiable. But a lot of the problems are due to hysteria.
P.S.: There may actually be real problems with the precise solution that I proposed for dealing with radioactive waste. That's ok, I'm not an expert. This is my adaptation of an approach that one expert proposed quite awhile ago, and I may have introduced flaws. But do note that because the waste is not totally inaccessible, it's quite possible to fix any problems with the proposal. Maybe, e.g., the glass needs to be in the form of thin threads (angle hair?) and embedded in a matrix of wax. That would limit the amount of heat that could be extracted. If gamma is a problem, perhaps a matrix of lead is needed. Or perhaps needles sheathed in lead and embedded in a wax matrix. But making it more complex makes it more expensive. Thin glass needles would keep the radiation from reinforcing (via short chain reactions), and make the heat easy to extract. High level radioactives don't have a long life, so it would cool down within decades. Low level radio-isotopes aren't particularly dangerous unless they are within your body (and even then not really dangerous unless they are biologically active molecules). Yes, if you bury the glass, some of them will eventually leak out. So don't bury it. Or grind it up and use it in cement blocks. Granite is naturally radioactive already, so this isn't new. Just watch the background level, and where you use the blocks. Support columns for a factory shouldn't be any problem, and it's not as if we're talking about THAT much solid waste. If you're worried about it, commission statues in the park, and use the building blocks for support stands. And sheathe them in marble or granite or sandstone. (Note that this is after the 10 year half-life isotopes have had three or four half-lives, so nothing high level is left.)
Not all of them. But that's not what you're talking about, is it.
ALL sources of energy, and ALL construction leads to deaths. So does driving cars. The question is, what's a reasonable balance.
It isn't clear to me that fission power is a net benefit. It may be, but all the governments cook the books and subsidize various energy provision methods in such varying degrees that I find it impossible to be sure. It *is* clear that the companies won't build and operate the plants without governments idemnifying them against any major problems that they cause. So I have severe doubts as to the economic justification of fission power.
That's not totally clear. A strong immune system can often kill off a cancer before it becomes a problem. Usually before it's detected. (Admittedly, not always. Sometimes it's a cance of the immune system. Or of an area that the immune system can't reach.)
So, yes, some of it's chance. Some of it's your genetic history (epigenetic as well as inherent). Some of it's diet. Perhaps some of it's exercise...though I'm not clear whether exercise creates or prevents it, or perhaps both.
Note that the dose of radiation that gives one person cancer will leave another unaffected. This is a combination of lottery and everything else. It's not pure lottery. But it's also not pure everything else.
What you CAN say is that if you expose a population to a certain level of radiation, then number of cancers will increase by a certain amount. There are large error bars except at the extreme ends, and possibly there, but it's still a reasonably defensible statement. (N.B.: *I* couldn't make that statement, as I can't quantify any of this. But I assert that there are those who reasonably can make that statement, though they *ought* to be more explicit about the error bars than I ever hear them being.)
Sorry, but water CAN be radioactive. That's not the problem here, but it's certainly possible. Half-life is, I believe, 12 1/2 years. (Check the Tritium half-life to be sure.)
OTOH, the radioactivity level of the water itself is probably negligible. It's the stuff that it carries that's the problem. Most of the really bad radioactives have already decayed, however. I doubt there's any radioactive iodine left. OTOH, I am definitely not an expert in this field. Maybe there is small (non-filterable) stuff that's dangerous. My first thought, though, is to let the water seep through a few meters of sand and humus. The chemically active stuff should attach to the humus. Most of the particles should be caught by the sand. The stuff coming out should be very low level radioactive material that is so small that it will diffuse rapidly to the background level. OTOH, I am definitely not an expert in this field.
That may be so, but he expressed a clear intention to injure a large number of customers. And no remorse when challenged on the point. This is not someone that we want in even a low-level management position.
OTOH, as I wouldn't buy any Microsoft product anyway, my standing to take action on this matter is dubious. But then I *didn't* take any action. I'm merely defending the actions of those that did as being reasonable (the actions I heard about, anyway).
Do you *want* someone who so despises the end-users to have a management career in software?
He expressed the desire to injure an extremely large number of people, and when he was called on it he expressed not remorse. It's true that this is an attempt to injure him more severely, but the attempt is spread over a vastly smaller number of people.
Someone who intentionally injures a large number of people to a small amount deserves a punishment equal to the sum of the injuries done, plus a bit added, because it was intentional. If he would have injured 100,000 people an injury of, say $10 (we're talking about a purchased product, so dollars seems a reasonable measure), then he deserved a punishmen of, say, $1,500,000. I realize that this won't happen, and there is no judicial system means to cause it to happen, but he has no grounds for complaint unless he is injured unreasonably in return. Having his career damaged not only seems reasonable, it may get him out of management in software development, where he clearly doesn't belong.
Now this is a bit more difficult, because he hasn't yet done the $10 worth of damage to 100,000 people. He has just clearly indicated that he would intentionally do so if he had the chance. That, however, is sufficient to show that he should be OUT of any management position in software development. Maybe he would be a good manager in accounting.
That's my suspicion. It may be a bit paranoid, but given some of the recent activity by gaming houses I don't think so.
It seems plausible that even when games that I desire become available on Linux, they will come with strings that I am not willing to accept.
I don't *want* a multiplayer game. And I don't want to need an internet connection. Registration is acceptable, barely. A requirement for continued internet access is NOT. Too many games contain too much spyware.