And what is a legal definition of encryption anyway? If I XOR all my files with a constant byte, or if my ISP or the FBI happens to be looking and they don't recognize the file format and somebody calls the cops, how the hell am I going to explain how it's not encryption?
Excellent point. To take this to an extreme: if I send an e-mail message written in the Navajo language, is that encryption (the USA used Navajo speakers in WWII to keep radio messages secret)?
How about Swahili? Or Italian? ROT-13?
A way out of this is to limit the legislation to strong encryption. This opens up a new can of worms. In order to prove that I'm using strong encryption, someone will have to break the code. But maybe the encryption isn't so strong then after all...
How about this? udwhiyr73rtfiy75vfhjgf lsk9
Was that noise or an encrypted message? You'll have to decrypt it first, before you can prove it's encrypted.
Of course, they could outlaw transmitting noise...
It all depends on how paranoid you are. Most of the time, I don't care at all if someone reads my e-mail. Just wasted time for the fool that goes through the trouble of intercepting it.
Sometimes I do care, so I'll encrypt it. A bit more hassle for the recipient, but worth the trouble. We're talking competition sensitive stuff here.
Then, if you're really concerned about interception, you should probably think about steganography. This is the art of hiding the encrypted message so that it won't be obvious that there's an encrypted message being sent. For example, you could hide your encrypted bits inside a picture or an audio file. There is software available to do this automatically. The security advantage is that the message needs to be recognized as being encrypted in the first place, which is not all that trivial.
For most of my messages, all this is way too much trouble. But I guess criminals would find this attractive...
I know of a commercial encryption package that allows you to have variable sets of users and passwords per encryption/decryption key. To clarify this, you can create a key that Alice can use with her own password, Bob with his own (different) password, etc. It would be extremely easy to add a backdoor user/password to every key without the regular users ever knowing (unless they disassemble and reverse engineer the executable...). So, how paranoid is it to think that a security agency would have a backdoor in this product? Or maybe we should just trust the software vendor?
The odds of a good probable-prime being composite is less than the odds of you being struck by a meteor at the instant you read this post.
Absolutely right. As Donald Knuth points out in his "The Art of Computer Programming" (I forgot which volume...), the odds of a hardware error in your processor (or a bit flip because of a cosmic ray, or whatever) are enormous compared to the odds of the candidate prime not being prime.
Also, a statement like probably prime isn't close enough indicates a bit of a misunderstanding about all of this. Either "probable prime" is a prime, or it is not. There is nothing in between. If it is, there is no problem. In the extremely unlikely case that it is not, you have a chance of breaking the encryption. RJH has explained clearly why you should worry about other things instead.
Well, you're right in the sense that Pascal has pointers just like C/C++, and therefore you can leak memory if you want to. However, in my experience Pascal compilers are better at detecting memory leaks (e.g., most C++ compilers will NOT issue an error or even a warning if you free a pointer that has been accidentally set to null.). Also, the VERY confusing pointer syntax (at least for novices) in C/C++ basically invites memory leaks, wild pointers, etc. On the bright side, I guess that's why tools like PC-Lint, Boundschecker, Purify, etc. have a reason to exist...:-). Generally, Pascal does a better job at enforcing clean code, whereas a C/C++ compiler will happily compile most of the garbage that you throw at it. If I do something stupid (which happens often), I like to have the compiler tell me that I'm an idiot. But that's just my $0.02.
Agree. Delphi is simply brilliant. I hear people saying that Pascal is "old". This implies that newer is better, which is not necessarily true. Whenever I need to write a quick and dirty program, I fire up good old Turbo Pascal, and I'm a lot more productive than when I have to remember the confusing syntax of C++. Besides, C++ is hindered by its compatibility with C (can you spell "memory leak"?). Although Java is beginning to contend for my language of choice nowadays...
You have tighter control over the performance of your own code.
Yes, sometimes. Or you think you have more control. Optimization is best left to the compiler in most cases. If you really need to squeeze the last cycle out of your code, you need to use assembler sometimes. For some applications C is the appropriate choice, however, it really does not matter if a graphics window prompting for user input is redrawn in 3 milliseconds rather than 6.
Apps are generally smaller
I think that is only an issue for embedded systems with very limited memory. Does it really matter that you can save a few hundred bytes here and there if your application loads a 200K splash screen?
My biggest concern is that soon we'll have an entire generation of programmers that has no idea (much less cares) what really happens under the hood.
As someone else pointed out, that has already happened. How many programmers know assembly nowadays? How about CPU registers? And what's a NAND gate anyway? Of course, the whole point of high-level programming languages is to isolate the developer from these concerns. But, as always, there's a trade-off.
I think that it's important for a developer to have a fair understanding of computer systems from top to bottom
Well, maybe, but isn't that the field of the system engineers rather than programmers?
Personally I think it's stupid to replace C/C++ with a language that's less used in todays industry.
I agree. Did you know that COBOL is the programming language that is still used the most nowadays? So, let's bring COBOL back in the universities' curriculum.
Of course it is apples and oranges. Although Java is advancing in the embedded world, it is probably not the best solution for most embedded software projects right now. I also would probably not want to write a device driver in Java.
On the other hand, I am currently writing a prototype for a system that needs a lot of graphical bells and whistles (for demo purposes). I'm glad I have the Java AWT and Swing that I can use for this. In the past I worked on a project that needed a GUI, and needed to be written in C/C++. Our GUI code was produced by a GUI builder. You really don't want to touch the C-code that those things produce, it is typically a case of "it works, so let's keep our fingers off it".
It seems to me that software projects do not pay enough attention to the choice of the implementation language. It is often determined by personal preferences, without a proper analysis of the problem.
As for taking it seriously: it seems to me that the author makes plenty of disclaimers in the article. I think the purpose of his experiment is to see if all the prejudices against Java are justified. At the very least his conclusion should be food for thought.
That question is answered in other replies. But: the whole essence of it all is that it is the process that is the crucial factor. The implementation language is not the deciding factor (although I will admit that some languages will let you create a bigger mess than others), although I suspect that the selection of the implementation language is part of the process.
"World reserves of uranium are more than adequate to satisfy reactor requirements to well beyond 2020."
That's not very reassuring. Fortunately, after stretching it by allowing higher prices for the mining of uranium, the following is stated:
"Given the relatively low impact of the uranium cost on nuclear power economics, the ultimate potential supply base is comparable to those of other energy commodities, in excess of 100 years. "
That sounds about the same as what I said.
Ok, your post was full of misinformation but that statement was by far the most obviously wrong
How about explaining why it is "obviously" wrong? Can you give a reference to a study that claims that there is enough uranium for 200 years, 300 years, etc.?
Futhermore, what is the rest of the "misinformation"?
Sure, if the Plutonium was carefully divided up into 0.1 microgram doses and surgically implanted in the lungs of everyone in the USA.
Yes, that's why I wrote theoretically.
According to The Myth of Plutonium Toxicity, inhaling 10 micrograms of Plutonium should result in an one-in-twenty risk of cancer (1/200 risk of cancer per microgram).
I won't bicker about statistics here and just accept your numbers. So, that means that 1 oz. of plutonium would cause cancer in 140,000 people (if spread out evenly). Call me crazy, but I don't think that's something to ignore.
The public is completely ill-informed when it comes to anything nuclear.
True, but...
The radiation released to the public from TMI was less than the radiation the public got from their houses on that day.
Maybe, but that is because the radioactive material was mostly contained in the Three Mile Island incident. It could have been much worse, like for example in the Chernobyl disaster. Millions of people in the Ukraine are still suffering severe consequences from it (radiation sickness, genetic damage). Radioactive iodine was expressed in the milk and tissue of cows and sheep as far away as Sweden and Great Britain (that's several thousands of miles away, for the geographically challenged). Now, (before someone starts flaming me about it), I'll admit that the Chernobyl accident would not have happened in a Western country, since inherently unsafe designs such as the Chernobyl reactor are simply not used for obvious reasons.
However, if plutonium (Pu-239) from Los Alamos were to get in the atmosphere, I would not count on being safe anywhere in North America. The lethal dose for inhaling Pu-239 is 0.1 microgram. That means that (theoretically) 28 grams (or 1 ounce) would be enough to kill everyone in the USA. So, can you guarantee that burning down the Los Alamos labs will not release such an amount of plutonium?
People fear that waste will get spread around-the waste is stored in steel containers that can survive a train hitting them plus being doused in jet fuel and lit on fire (I saw a film of it.)
Admittedly, these precautions are rather impressive and I don't question their thoroughness, but you're talking about nuclear waste here. Are you sure that all the plutonium in Los Alamos is contained in this way?
France is 80% powered by it, but we haven't built a plant in 10 years because the public is ignorant.
Not quite 80%, but more than 50%, yes. That's only electrical power though, cars still run on good old fashioned gasoline:-).
Anyway, I think the real reasons why the US haven't built any new nuclear plants are the following.
1. There is no long term solution for the waste problem.
2. Therefore, nuclear electricity is not economically competitive with electricity from fossil fuels. It is only cheaper if you don't account for the astronomical cost of safely disposing of the waste.
3. Uranium is a non-renewable resource that will run out in about 100 years at the current consumption rate (7% of the world's electricity is generated by fission reactors). If you for example triple that percentage, it runs out in 33 years, etc. Fast breeder reactors are no solution either, since they are way too dangerous and expensive. A fast breeder reactor in Kalkar (Germany) was never finished despite a $4 billion investment.
So, summarizing that, it is not the public's ignorance that has stopped the construction of fission reactors, but plain and simple economics.
uh not really i've been in europe and even in the big cities many many people DON'T speak English
I respectfully disagree. I've lived in Europe for 34 years and have always been able to get around speaking English. Just curious, what big cities have you been to where people don't speak English?
and anyway, what's the point of going to a foreign country to speak English? trying to communicate in a foreign language is half the fun!
Absolutely agree, but a portable language translator will not help you much there. Learning another language takes time and a lot of practice. As you mention, the most fun part of that is actually trying to communicate with people in another language. Three months in another country will teach you more than 3 years in school.
My initial impressions are that it will be helpful for translating key words from menus & signs, but may be cumbersome when actually trying to talk with someone.
And that just about sums it up. There's a lot of discussion here about technical aspects of language translation (nerds, oops, that includes myself...), but these translation devices will be mostly useless. For those of you who don't have a passport, most of Europe actually speaks English, and I don't mean Great Britain and Ireland. Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden: just about everyone has a good knowledge of English. Germany, Norway, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, Austria: most people speak enough English to help you find your hotel. France: special case, they actually do speak English, but they won't, since they think the rest of the world should speak French...(I'm half joking). As for other parts of the world (Asia, Africa, etc.), same story: you should be able to find an English speaking person quite easily.
Anyway, a multi-lingual organizer will do you no good if a traffic cop stops you and does not speak English, nor will it help you pick up someone in a bar. So, as was mentioned, nice for translating street signs and the like, but you might as well use a dictionary for that.
Interesting. I have an anecdote which may seem off-topic, but since it has to do with how ethical it is to blindly follow orders, I'll share it with you anyway.
Way back in the '70s an officer in the armed forces of a European country ordered the driver of an Armored Personnel Vehicle to cross a creek. The driver says it's too dangerous because the creek is too deep. The officer orders the driver to do it anyway. So the driver follows orders. Four guys drown.
After this tragedy it is concluded that the driver should have disobeyed the order, even though he could have been punishable under military law. The whole case was included in the training of new soldiers as an example when not to follow orders.
The morale of this story is that even though you have to follow orders, you still have an ethical obligation to evaluate whether it is right to follow these orders. So the argument "you have to follow your superior's orders or else quit" is kinda silly. But that's just my 2 cents.
I don't think he's going to be bamboozled by their bafflegab.
Tonight on the 11 o'clock news a local Seattle TV station briefly reported on this story, and also reported that "Bill Gates was hoping that this would convince Judge Jackson that Microsoft is acting in good faith in this matter." Or something like that, you'll have to forgive me for not remembering exactly.
Now, call me naive, but doesn't that mean that MS does not expect this proposal to be accepted at all? In other words, aren't they just trying to score points with the judge by proposing something that has no substance at all? Or should we interpret it that the DOJ is so unfair that MS does not expect them to accept any reasonable deal?
OK, sloppy reading on my part. Electrification as you describe it may not have benefited from plastics very much.
Well, actually, until only 30 years ago, a lot of the electrical insulation was _not_ plastic.
Well, first of all, I did not live in the United States then, but in Europe insulation was pretty much plastic long before 1970. Second, can you imagine today's equipment (TV's computers, etc.) with a paper or textile insulation?
Also, I think it would be a lot more difficult to produce plastics without electricity than it was to produce and distribute electricity without plastic.
I'm not trolling, but I don't understand that. Polymerization is mainly a chemical reaction that does not involve electricity, just heat. Done it in a lab with some glassware and a bunsen burner. The only chemical reactions I can think of that require electricity are electrolysis and refining bauxite into aluminum.
I still have to agree that electricity goes at the top of the list.
I'm not disputing that, I just said I thought plastics should be in the top 5. I think plastics got forgotten in the list considering how many of the others would not be possible without it.
Plastics (or polymers in general) are a huge part of everyday life.
Absolutely agree. Also, consider that for example Electrification (#1) would not be possible (or extremely hard to make practical) without plastics. You couldn't build a modern airplane without plastics. Same for computers. I could go on and on.
Just look around you to see if plastics have made an impact. Your electronic equipment, clothes, telephone, car, food packaging, etc. etc. Plastics have advantages like being light, strong, cheap, chemically inert, etc, etc.
You could argue that plastics are included in #17 and #20, however, plastics should be in the top 5 at the very least.
Slightly off-topic: I never realized the importance of plastics until I attended a speech by Prof. Dr. Gerrit Blaauw (one of the brains behind the IBM 370 mainframe) some years ago. He stated: "The introduction of computers is important, but we should not exaggerate. The introduction of plastics has had a greater impact on society".
Well, maybe I was a bit too cynical. I have no doubt that the programmers will do everything possible to make sure their software doesn't kill any astronauts, programmers being decent human beings in general. However, I was actually referring to the management level, where there is not this level of everyday social interaction with the astronauts. I'm sure nobody wants to see another tragic accident happening again, it's just that there is an ethical aspect and an economical aspect to this, and they both play a part in it.
One example of some very well designed software is the Shuttle OS that powers NASA's Space Shuttle.
Yep. However, I read some years ago that the Space Shuttle code costs $1000 per source line to develop (for the whole shebang, analysis, design, implementation, testing, maintenance, documentation, etc.) That's one thousand dollars per line (if I got paid that much, I'd be long retired:-). This only applies to manned missions though, software for unmanned missions costs about $100 per SLOC.
[cynical] I fear this is not because they value human life so much, it's more that loss of human life leads to huge costs in terms of publicity, scrutiny, congressional investigations, freezing of funding, halting of programs, etc. The Challenger tragedy cost far more than the $2 billion that the spacecraft costed, the halting of the launches and the redesign of the shuttle was far more expensive.[/cynical]
Anyway, as I should not have to point out, testing and bug finding is hampered by the law of diminishing returns. It is extremely costly to get the last 1% of the bugs out of the software. In the case of NASA and the space shuttle, there is an economic incentive to hunt down the last of the bugs. In the case of commercial software, stuff riddled with bugs is released because the cost of delaying the release outweighs the cost of leaving bugs in (dare I say that it often makes economic sense to leave bugs in? Just release the bug fixes as an upgrade...).
Anyhow, I think that Open Source has an advantage over commercial software in the sense that the developer(s) are motivated by something else than a paycheck. It is often a sense of pride that makes them strive for clean, bug-free code. Ever notice that the quality of software seems proportional to the inverse of the cost? I'm only half joking here....
But that's not the point here. The point is that no one should be kept from expressing their opinion with threats of imprisonment. No one should be held indefinitely without trial. No one should be subjected to an unfair trial (Mitnick wan't allowed to look at the evidence against him). All these basic human rights were trodden on by the government of the 'land of the free'. Does Mitnick have a way of appealing this ruling limiting his free speech? Can he sue the government for keeping him in prison without trial and without access to the evidence against him? The U.S. claims to uphold the Human Rights Declaration, but is unwilling to have that commitment tested in an international court. Why? Because it would find that many of the current U.S. government policies are in direct violation with international law and the Declaration of Human Rights. It's truly painful to see the U.S. slowly turn into a police state at the request of its voters. It seems the courts are no longer there to protect the innocent, punish the guilty and keep the people free from oppression - they exist to cast out the socially unaccepted and the poor, to lock them up for years or kill them using any means necessary (mandatory sentencing, imprisonment without trial, 3 strikes rule, death penalty, etc) while the rich get to go into therapy or to the Betty Ford clinic.
Excellent summary. When I mentioned Mitnick's story to a neigbor about a year ago, he did not believe me. "They can't hold him without a trial, that's against the Constitution". Two days later I saw him again. "I checked your story, and it's true. I can't believe this is happening in the USA".
Redundant maybe, but: Mitnick never "served his time", he entered a plea bargain. I don't think he had any other choice after being held for more than 4 years without a trial.
Also, for those of you he think he's such an evil person, I suggest you either read "Takedown" by Shimomura/Markoff and/or "Cyberpunk" by Hafner/Markoff. Neither of these books paint Mitnick in a very favorable light, but at least they're a bit more objective than the usual rhetoric. Yes, the guy did wrong and he should be punished, but 5 years is way out of proportion IMHO. The way he was treated is something you would expect in a dictatorship, not in the land of the "free"
Then maybe the US is not such a free country as most Americans like to believe. Take for example the fact that Mitnick has lost the right to free speech...
I guess Constitutional rights only go so and so far...
After reading Travels With Samantha it struck me that there were quite a few derogatory comments about Canada and the various foreigners you met on the way. This led me to believe that you are suffering from a mild form of xenophobia, like most Americans. Do you think there is any merit to this or am I hallucinating?
As someone else pointed out, the speed of propagation of an electrical signal has little to do with electrons moving. In normal applications, electrons move pretty slowly.
Correct.
The electromagnetic forces from them move much faster, IIRC they propagate at the same speed as light.
That may or may not be correct, but it's confusing. When you say speed of light do you mean the speed of light in the medium that you happen to be using, or the speed of light in vacuum? (aka c)
Anyhow, IIRC, the propagation speed in copper wire is around 2*10^8 m/s (or about 0.67c).
Slashdot Mirror
Excellent point. To take this to an extreme: if I send an e-mail message written in the Navajo language, is that encryption (the USA used Navajo speakers in WWII to keep radio messages secret)? How about Swahili? Or Italian? ROT-13?
A way out of this is to limit the legislation to strong encryption. This opens up a new can of worms. In order to prove that I'm using strong encryption, someone will have to break the code. But maybe the encryption isn't so strong then after all...
How about this? udwhiyr73rtfiy75vfhjgf lsk9
Was that noise or an encrypted message? You'll have to decrypt it first, before you can prove it's encrypted.
Of course, they could outlaw transmitting noise...
Sometimes I do care, so I'll encrypt it. A bit more hassle for the recipient, but worth the trouble. We're talking competition sensitive stuff here.
Then, if you're really concerned about interception, you should probably think about steganography. This is the art of hiding the encrypted message so that it won't be obvious that there's an encrypted message being sent. For example, you could hide your encrypted bits inside a picture or an audio file. There is software available to do this automatically. The security advantage is that the message needs to be recognized as being encrypted in the first place, which is not all that trivial.
For most of my messages, all this is way too much trouble. But I guess criminals would find this attractive...
I know of a commercial encryption package that allows you to have variable sets of users and passwords per encryption/decryption key. To clarify this, you can create a key that Alice can use with her own password, Bob with his own (different) password, etc. It would be extremely easy to add a backdoor user/password to every key without the regular users ever knowing (unless they disassemble and reverse engineer the executable...). So, how paranoid is it to think that a security agency would have a backdoor in this product? Or maybe we should just trust the software vendor?
Absolutely right. As Donald Knuth points out in his "The Art of Computer Programming" (I forgot which volume...), the odds of a hardware error in your processor (or a bit flip because of a cosmic ray, or whatever) are enormous compared to the odds of the candidate prime not being prime.
Also, a statement like probably prime isn't close enough indicates a bit of a misunderstanding about all of this. Either "probable prime" is a prime, or it is not. There is nothing in between. If it is, there is no problem. In the extremely unlikely case that it is not, you have a chance of breaking the encryption. RJH has explained clearly why you should worry about other things instead.
Well, you're right in the sense that Pascal has pointers just like C/C++, and therefore you can leak memory if you want to. However, in my experience Pascal compilers are better at detecting memory leaks (e.g., most C++ compilers will NOT issue an error or even a warning if you free a pointer that has been accidentally set to null.). Also, the VERY confusing pointer syntax (at least for novices) in C/C++ basically invites memory leaks, wild pointers, etc. On the bright side, I guess that's why tools like PC-Lint, Boundschecker, Purify, etc. have a reason to exist...:-). Generally, Pascal does a better job at enforcing clean code, whereas a C/C++ compiler will happily compile most of the garbage that you throw at it. If I do something stupid (which happens often), I like to have the compiler tell me that I'm an idiot. But that's just my $0.02.
Agree. Delphi is simply brilliant. I hear people saying that Pascal is "old". This implies that newer is better, which is not necessarily true. Whenever I need to write a quick and dirty program, I fire up good old Turbo Pascal, and I'm a lot more productive than when I have to remember the confusing syntax of C++. Besides, C++ is hindered by its compatibility with C (can you spell "memory leak"?). Although Java is beginning to contend for my language of choice nowadays...
Yes, sometimes. Or you think you have more control. Optimization is best left to the compiler in most cases. If you really need to squeeze the last cycle out of your code, you need to use assembler sometimes. For some applications C is the appropriate choice, however, it really does not matter if a graphics window prompting for user input is redrawn in 3 milliseconds rather than 6.
Apps are generally smaller
I think that is only an issue for embedded systems with very limited memory. Does it really matter that you can save a few hundred bytes here and there if your application loads a 200K splash screen?
My biggest concern is that soon we'll have an entire generation of programmers that has no idea (much less cares) what really happens under the hood.
As someone else pointed out, that has already happened. How many programmers know assembly nowadays? How about CPU registers? And what's a NAND gate anyway? Of course, the whole point of high-level programming languages is to isolate the developer from these concerns. But, as always, there's a trade-off.
I think that it's important for a developer to have a fair understanding of computer systems from top to bottom
Well, maybe, but isn't that the field of the system engineers rather than programmers?
Just my $0.02.
The fact that the government uses Microsoft software more or less proves their charge that Microsoft is a monopoly. I think.
I agree. Did you know that COBOL is the programming language that is still used the most nowadays? So, let's bring COBOL back in the universities' curriculum.
On the other hand, I am currently writing a prototype for a system that needs a lot of graphical bells and whistles (for demo purposes). I'm glad I have the Java AWT and Swing that I can use for this. In the past I worked on a project that needed a GUI, and needed to be written in C/C++. Our GUI code was produced by a GUI builder. You really don't want to touch the C-code that those things produce, it is typically a case of "it works, so let's keep our fingers off it".
It seems to me that software projects do not pay enough attention to the choice of the implementation language. It is often determined by personal preferences, without a proper analysis of the problem.
As for taking it seriously: it seems to me that the author makes plenty of disclaimers in the article. I think the purpose of his experiment is to see if all the prejudices against Java are justified. At the very least his conclusion should be food for thought.
That question is answered in other replies. But: the whole essence of it all is that it is the process that is the crucial factor. The implementation language is not the deciding factor (although I will admit that some languages will let you create a bigger mess than others), although I suspect that the selection of the implementation language is part of the process.
Some quotes:
"World reserves of uranium are more than adequate to satisfy reactor requirements to well beyond 2020."
That's not very reassuring. Fortunately, after stretching it by allowing higher prices for the mining of uranium, the following is stated:
"Given the relatively low impact of the uranium cost on nuclear power economics, the ultimate potential supply base is comparable to those of other energy commodities, in excess of 100 years. "
That sounds about the same as what I said.
Ok, your post was full of misinformation but that statement was by far the most obviously wrong
How about explaining why it is "obviously" wrong? Can you give a reference to a study that claims that there is enough uranium for 200 years, 300 years, etc.?
Futhermore, what is the rest of the "misinformation"?
Yes, that's why I wrote theoretically.
According to The Myth of Plutonium Toxicity, inhaling 10 micrograms of Plutonium should result in an one-in-twenty risk of cancer (1/200 risk of cancer per microgram).
I won't bicker about statistics here and just accept your numbers. So, that means that 1 oz. of plutonium would cause cancer in 140,000 people (if spread out evenly). Call me crazy, but I don't think that's something to ignore.
Plutonium is nasty stuff...
A bit of an understatement if you ask me.
True, but...
The radiation released to the public from TMI was less than the radiation the public got from their houses on that day.
Maybe, but that is because the radioactive material was mostly contained in the Three Mile Island incident. It could have been much worse, like for example in the Chernobyl disaster. Millions of people in the Ukraine are still suffering severe consequences from it (radiation sickness, genetic damage). Radioactive iodine was expressed in the milk and tissue of cows and sheep as far away as Sweden and Great Britain (that's several thousands of miles away, for the geographically challenged).
Now, (before someone starts flaming me about it), I'll admit that the Chernobyl accident would not have happened in a Western country, since inherently unsafe designs such as the Chernobyl reactor are simply not used for obvious reasons.
However, if plutonium (Pu-239) from Los Alamos were to get in the atmosphere, I would not count on being safe anywhere in North America. The lethal dose for inhaling Pu-239 is 0.1 microgram. That means that (theoretically) 28 grams (or 1 ounce) would be enough to kill everyone in the USA. So, can you guarantee that burning down the Los Alamos labs will not release such an amount of plutonium?
People fear that waste will get spread around-the waste is stored in steel containers that can survive a train hitting them plus being doused in jet fuel and lit on fire (I saw a film of it.)
Admittedly, these precautions are rather impressive and I don't question their thoroughness, but you're talking about nuclear waste here. Are you sure that all the plutonium in Los Alamos is contained in this way?
France is 80% powered by it, but we haven't built a plant in 10 years because the public is ignorant.
Not quite 80%, but more than 50%, yes. That's only electrical power though, cars still run on good old fashioned gasoline :-).
Anyway, I think the real reasons why the US haven't built any new nuclear plants are the following.
1. There is no long term solution for the waste problem.
2. Therefore, nuclear electricity is not economically competitive with electricity from fossil fuels. It is only cheaper if you don't account for the astronomical cost of safely disposing of the waste.
3. Uranium is a non-renewable resource that will run out in about 100 years at the current consumption rate (7% of the world's electricity is generated by fission reactors). If you for example triple that percentage, it runs out in 33 years, etc. Fast breeder reactors are no solution either, since they are way too dangerous and expensive. A fast breeder reactor in Kalkar (Germany) was never finished despite a $4 billion investment.
So, summarizing that, it is not the public's ignorance that has stopped the construction of fission reactors, but plain and simple economics.
I respectfully disagree. I've lived in Europe for 34 years and have always been able to get around speaking English. Just curious, what big cities have you been to where people don't speak English?
and anyway, what's the point of going to a foreign country to speak English? trying to communicate in a foreign language is half the fun!
Absolutely agree, but a portable language translator will not help you much there. Learning another language takes time and a lot of practice. As you mention, the most fun part of that is actually trying to communicate with people in another language. Three months in another country will teach you more than 3 years in school.
And that just about sums it up. There's a lot of discussion here about technical aspects of language translation (nerds, oops, that includes myself...), but these translation devices will be mostly useless. For those of you who don't have a passport, most of Europe actually speaks English, and I don't mean Great Britain and Ireland. Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden: just about everyone has a good knowledge of English. Germany, Norway, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, Austria: most people speak enough English to help you find your hotel. France: special case, they actually do speak English, but they won't, since they think the rest of the world should speak French...(I'm half joking). As for other parts of the world (Asia, Africa, etc.), same story: you should be able to find an English speaking person quite easily.
Anyway, a multi-lingual organizer will do you no good if a traffic cop stops you and does not speak English, nor will it help you pick up someone in a bar. So, as was mentioned, nice for translating street signs and the like, but you might as well use a dictionary for that.
Way back in the '70s an officer in the armed forces of a European country ordered the driver of an Armored Personnel Vehicle to cross a creek. The driver says it's too dangerous because the creek is too deep. The officer orders the driver to do it anyway. So the driver follows orders. Four guys drown.
After this tragedy it is concluded that the driver should have disobeyed the order, even though he could have been punishable under military law. The whole case was included in the training of new soldiers as an example when not to follow orders.
The morale of this story is that even though you have to follow orders, you still have an ethical obligation to evaluate whether it is right to follow these orders. So the argument "you have to follow your superior's orders or else quit" is kinda silly. But that's just my 2 cents.
Tonight on the 11 o'clock news a local Seattle TV station briefly reported on this story, and also reported that "Bill Gates was hoping that this would convince Judge Jackson that Microsoft is acting in good faith in this matter." Or something like that, you'll have to forgive me for not remembering exactly.
Now, call me naive, but doesn't that mean that MS does not expect this proposal to be accepted at all? In other words, aren't they just trying to score points with the judge by proposing something that has no substance at all? Or should we interpret it that the DOJ is so unfair that MS does not expect them to accept any reasonable deal?
Well, actually, until only 30 years ago, a lot of the electrical insulation was _not_ plastic.
Well, first of all, I did not live in the United States then, but in Europe insulation was pretty much plastic long before 1970. Second, can you imagine today's equipment (TV's computers, etc.) with a paper or textile insulation?
Also, I think it would be a lot more difficult to produce plastics without electricity than it was to produce and distribute electricity without plastic.
I'm not trolling, but I don't understand that. Polymerization is mainly a chemical reaction that does not involve electricity, just heat. Done it in a lab with some glassware and a bunsen burner. The only chemical reactions I can think of that require electricity are electrolysis and refining bauxite into aluminum.
I still have to agree that electricity goes at the top of the list.
I'm not disputing that, I just said I thought plastics should be in the top 5. I think plastics got forgotten in the list considering how many of the others would not be possible without it.
Absolutely agree. Also, consider that for example Electrification (#1) would not be possible (or extremely hard to make practical) without plastics. You couldn't build a modern airplane without plastics. Same for computers. I could go on and on.
Just look around you to see if plastics have made an impact. Your electronic equipment, clothes, telephone, car, food packaging, etc. etc. Plastics have advantages like being light, strong, cheap, chemically inert, etc, etc.
You could argue that plastics are included in #17 and #20, however, plastics should be in the top 5 at the very least.
Slightly off-topic: I never realized the importance of plastics until I attended a speech by Prof. Dr. Gerrit Blaauw (one of the brains behind the IBM 370 mainframe) some years ago. He stated: "The introduction of computers is important, but we should not exaggerate. The introduction of plastics has had a greater impact on society".
Well, maybe I was a bit too cynical. I have no doubt that the programmers will do everything possible to make sure their software doesn't kill any astronauts, programmers being decent human beings in general. However, I was actually referring to the management level, where there is not this level of everyday social interaction with the astronauts. I'm sure nobody wants to see another tragic accident happening again, it's just that there is an ethical aspect and an economical aspect to this, and they both play a part in it.
Yep. However, I read some years ago that the Space Shuttle code costs $1000 per source line to develop (for the whole shebang, analysis, design, implementation, testing, maintenance, documentation, etc.) That's one thousand dollars per line (if I got paid that much, I'd be long retired :-). This only applies to manned missions though, software for unmanned missions costs about $100 per SLOC.
[cynical] I fear this is not because they value human life so much, it's more that loss of human life leads to huge costs in terms of publicity, scrutiny, congressional investigations, freezing of funding, halting of programs, etc. The Challenger tragedy cost far more than the $2 billion that the spacecraft costed, the halting of the launches and the redesign of the shuttle was far more expensive.[/cynical]
Anyway, as I should not have to point out, testing and bug finding is hampered by the law of diminishing returns. It is extremely costly to get the last 1% of the bugs out of the software. In the case of NASA and the space shuttle, there is an economic incentive to hunt down the last of the bugs. In the case of commercial software, stuff riddled with bugs is released because the cost of delaying the release outweighs the cost of leaving bugs in (dare I say that it often makes economic sense to leave bugs in? Just release the bug fixes as an upgrade...).
Anyhow, I think that Open Source has an advantage over commercial software in the sense that the developer(s) are motivated by something else than a paycheck. It is often a sense of pride that makes them strive for clean, bug-free code. Ever notice that the quality of software seems proportional to the inverse of the cost? I'm only half joking here....
Excellent summary. When I mentioned Mitnick's story to a neigbor about a year ago, he did not believe me. "They can't hold him without a trial, that's against the Constitution". Two days later I saw him again. "I checked your story, and it's true. I can't believe this is happening in the USA".
Redundant maybe, but: Mitnick never "served his time", he entered a plea bargain. I don't think he had any other choice after being held for more than 4 years without a trial.
Also, for those of you he think he's such an evil person, I suggest you either read "Takedown" by Shimomura/Markoff and/or "Cyberpunk" by Hafner/Markoff. Neither of these books paint Mitnick in a very favorable light, but at least they're a bit more objective than the usual rhetoric. Yes, the guy did wrong and he should be punished, but 5 years is way out of proportion IMHO. The way he was treated is something you would expect in a dictatorship, not in the land of the "free"
Then maybe the US is not such a free country as most Americans like to believe. Take for example the fact that Mitnick has lost the right to free speech...
I guess Constitutional rights only go so and so far...
After reading Travels With Samantha it struck me that there were quite a few derogatory comments about Canada and the various foreigners you met on the way. This led me to believe that you are suffering from a mild form of xenophobia, like most Americans. Do you think there is any merit to this or am I hallucinating?
Correct.
The electromagnetic forces from them move much faster, IIRC they propagate at the same speed as light.
That may or may not be correct, but it's confusing. When you say speed of light do you mean the speed of light in the medium that you happen to be using, or the speed of light in vacuum? (aka c)
Anyhow, IIRC, the propagation speed in copper wire is around 2*10^8 m/s (or about 0.67c).