Its important to realise that this little group is the brainchild of its chairman - Jonathon Porritt. That's Jonathon Porritt, ex-director of 'Friends of the Earth', ex-chair of the 'Green Party' and all round acceptable face of the greenies in the UK (he's the son of Lord Porritt). The SDC is a government sop to the green movement, making it appear that they are being taken seriously, but not necessarily with any power.
The reality is that any grouping put together by this man is unlikely ever to come out and say nuclear power (of any type, including Pebble Bed) is acceptable. The only acceptable solution in their book is for everyone to 'power down' and accept an energy budget akin to the Victorian era.
Although Nuclear Power isn't the full answer, we need lots of renewable investment as well, its almost certainly the best shot we have at the existing time for continuing our civilisation in roughly the same shape as it is at the moment as the oil supply declines. Renewables are just too low in energy density to be able to build fast enough to match the problem.
I hate the idea of one person thinking they are somehow in charge, but just think of how much better anyone else would do than Bush Jr. It would be worth the cost to actually have a measureable positive effect on the development of the world.
If the current waste of space doesn't end his days in jail being 'friend' to 'Bubba' then we are headed for the Apocalypse in a hand basket.
That's the point. Evidence shows that any interference is primarily in the pilots' headset and sometimes an oscillation in particular dials. There have been no documented examples that I know of that caused anymore of dangerous behaviour. Face it, in an aircraft of several hundred people there has got to be at least one every flight that doesn't turn off their phone or leaves a Blackberry on because 'its not a phone'. We don't see planes falling out of the sky every day, or week, or year for that matter.
Its about time the whining stopped and they started testing the aircraft to ensure it would continue to work properly and reject spurious signals - as they should have been doing for decades now. EM resilience is the key, not 'safety' messages that try to offload the responsibility from those that own the solution.
What you don't seem to understand is that its all driven by a fear of not being 'in control'. How can you be 'in control' if you can't access what people are saying, what they are doing? How can you understand them if you don't know their innermost thoughts?
UK government is scared by that they don't understand, Islam, Internet, anything that has passed their arts education by. They don't understand and therefore they need 'more information' to feel that they have 'kept on top' of the problems that confront them.
You know that feeling when you are swimming, but its not working out and you are getting lower and lower in the water, swallowing more and more water? That's the UK, and when they realise it, the US governments.
2. Microsoft has decided that there's no remaining downside to flipping the ECC the bird.
"Microsoft: You are banned from selling any software in Europe for the next three years"
I don't think they will, but for Microsoft the potential downside of pissing off those in nominal control of a huge marketplace has no end. In theory Bill could end up in jail, and he might get arrested and released 'just to send the message'.
I get the feeling that the dumb games they have been playing are going to come back to bite them hard - it won't be forgotten.
Looks like someone on high has been told to allocate resources to copyright infringment. You can see how the idea that people can sell things which are free would confuse PC Plod.
Here's hoping they get equally confused with the idea you can buy something, but not be able to do what you want with your property and in consequence arrest the chairman of EMI.
You either are young and naive; you live in one of the few spots that haven't been MBA'd to death; or you are one of those managers yourself.
Sure the 'good old days' weren't as rosy as some make out - but they were still at least 100% more receptive to new ideas, invention and innovation than those today.
If you have a good idea today your best chance is to pursue it in your own time and hope to hell that someone somewhere doesn't think you have been unwise enough to agree that your soul is theirs 24 hours a day.
Oh, and plan and prepare against the cold hard world that results from thinking powerpoints make up for failing to develop.
How about a prize of $5m for a NASA management plan that realises a 5% improvement in efficiency across the board?
The money saved would then be able to fully fund these technology developments rather than them being seen as a joke as they are at present. People took notice of the X-Prize because it was a worthwhile goal and the money was *just about* appropriate. These aren't so nobody really takes any notice of announcements any more.
Exactly, Sony et al are doing people a favour here.
With such high prices for the disks and the players it will be at least three to five years before Blu-Ray makes enough of an impact for anyone to care. In the meantime there will be lots of people out there working to crack the DRM and make the content available to all using alternative transport technology (say two DVD-Rs). Given the future is downloadable content, probably stored on hard disk for playback, this is useful in giving more consumer friendly solutions a foothold in the public consciousness. The future is more likely to belong to the large hard disk PVR/digital TV receiver than the Blu-Ray player - its more flexible and better tuned to peoples actual needs.
Neck-on-the-block prediction time, Blu-Ray will only ever be a bit player unless the content protection for writing onto Blu-Ray recordable disks is broken with about two years.
Same price as a DVD, using somebody else's bandwidth. Unless these are released before the DVD is then there is no reason to choose this option. Maybe that's the point.
Since I can rent a DVD by mail for 1 unit of currency it difficult to see anything else other than an attempt to say "see tried it, didn't work". The price needs to be around half that of a retail DVD, at most.
Oh, and no intrusive DRM either.
On a related point, has anyone noticed how movie and TV are coming together into a true competitive marketplace? The gap is much smaller than it used to be.
Remember, if the average IQ is 100, that means half the people are dumber than this.
OK, OK, don't get all mathematical on the statement, but its important to realise that there is a vast pool of the electorate that are essentially unquestioning and in favour of the 'status quo'. If they were told as a child that God is real and the earth was created in 6 days, they tend to continue to believe it - particularly since the lessons that put the lie to this are taught once they have reached an age when they are no longer listening.
Banning all religious indoctrination of children would go a long way to fixing the ills of the world.
Stop assuming that the default is US English(sic) and USA for every damn thing. Its not "International English" its "English", and it should come before any regional dialect.
Just try being a bit smarter and make sure you only ever ask once what country people are in - and take note from there. In short, start assuming the US is just one other country, and there is certainly nothing special about it. Save yourself the marketing budget for something useful.
I don't want some faceless politico saying all devices should only turn off all-the-way. I have no problem in minimising the drain and also have no problem in stating the continuing power drain should be less than 1 watt - but I want MORE intelligent devices. I want devices that can be controlled at a distance and that don't require me always around to control the damn thing.
This is not a hair-shirt world.
Talk about the eco-nuts missing the point, its not about making this a harsher world, its about not throwing away resources - about people being smarter. Focus on acceptable solutions and the big problems, please.
Management by committee?
You're suggesting this is an improvement, rather than reason there has been relatively little progress in fundamental ideas over the past decades?
I'm sure Einstein would have valued your input.
Well Mr Nihilist Hippie, you might like to check out Kai Krause's entry for a related theme.
I have to say, of all of these entries here, this one is the one that made me stop and think the most. The concept of civilisation when it mets resource limitations and pollution impacts with selfish and individualistic mindsets self-destructing has a certain truth to it.
The majority of the population work all their time from childhood till death, for the express ability to....well.....keep on doing it. There really is no difference between "work to live" and "live to work" anymore in the world we inhabit. This is a bit of a puzzler given our cave man cousins also had to work to survive. Where's the progress really? Where is the ability of people to develop themselves in that world of leisure we were all promised in the 1970s?
The possibility/probability of a large group saying "to hell with it" is very real. If the flavour presented was right it could snowball in a very short period of time with an impact that would dwarf other realistic dangerous ideas.
OK, some random predictions to keep in with the theme.
1) At least on major country or trading block will attempt large scale taxation of the Internet and Internet commerce. This will be used as a cover for the removal of the last vestiges of anonymity, with the sop of removing spam in the same breadth. The approach will spread worldwide as governments find it a no brainer.
2) Parallelisation will continue as not only to all normal machines become SMP boxes, but the flexibility grows to combine and split apart all the computer power you possess. The PDA/mobile phone won't be a separate item, it will become only a part of the wider entity that you can carry with you. Increasingly accessing and synchronising with the whole entity will become as norm.
3) Wireless will go long range as mobile phone companies attempt to get over the still birth of 3G with WiMAX like services.
4) TV will go Internet, and very quickly both transmission and country borders will look quaint.
5) DRM will be added to everything, and just as quickly broken. Lies will be told and individuals will be taken to court.
and finally, but not least
6) Bird flu will hit home, preceding by a dry run of the first wave of infection. All those that have been playing down its impact will point to the first wave and ignore the second. They will die and the world that emerges from 2006 will look very different than the one we have now. The double wammy of the shock of peak oil will send the world into an introspective spiral that will shatter certain expectations.
The problems detailed are the same problems that are repeated time and again in all government organisations, all over the world. In total the waste is probably in the trillions. At heart the problem is trust and paperwork. Because everyone is so scared to actually trust people, they create masses of paperwork, hierarchy and approvals to make them feel like they are 'managing risk'. Result is "the answer is no, now what's the question?"
Upshot is either things don't happen, or people go 'around the system' to make things happen. Sometimes that comes back and bites the organisation on the arse.
Fixing it isn't done by changing the captain of the Titanic, its done by clearing out all the existing processes, all the paperwork, most of the arts graduates claiming to be managers and only adding them back where they can demonstrate real value - and then only in the simplest possible fashion. 'Managing risk' as value is a red flag that suggested solution is a bad one.
A good half way house is to insist those that ask for a form to be filled in provide the real money out of their budgets for the time taken to do that work, rather than hiding the pain and cost. At least that way people think before implementing new processes.
The thing I find interesting is exactly the same issues crop up again and again, but the trendy management textbooks never see fit to address these real issues with real solutions - instead focusing on 'enhancing your synagy'. Maybe its because MBAs are at the root the reason these management failures crop up in the first place.
In general if you end up attempting to land in a crater then no matter what you do, and what landing system you have, you are in trouble. Historically US missions have been lucky, although I remember the Apollo 11 crew taking manual control at the last moment to avoid lunar craters/boulders. That could have ended differently.
Beagle was designed to bounce along the surface, losing energy in a controlled manner and coming to a safe stop. Dropping that into a crater is akin to putting the frog in the blender and dialing in a healthy shake. The bits might end up in roughly the same spot, but not necessarily in the same order.
I feel sorry for the Prof. He fought the system to do something that should have had far greater funding, and then they blamed him for what was partly bad luck and partly their fault. If you do a little research into the techology and the experiments planned its really quite amazing stuff. He deserved much more than he got.
If you hire people with the creative skill to be able to make TV or movies you can make an advert that people want to watch, remember, and take note of. If you do what so many US marketeers seem to do and try to brainwash people into buying the product - you end up with the "Buy Me, Buy Me, Buy ME" ads that cause the creation of ad skipping technology in the first place.
Hell, watch this advert and if your creative concept isn't up to the same standard, go back and EARN your money.
The money is there, the time to fill is short, there is no excuse for not creating a 30 second product that doesn't match up to reasonable standards.
So maybe not overflowing with positive stories, but this IS typical news coverage. You have to wonder if these Chinese Bloggers are paid/told to put forward that censorship is somehow a non issue.
Re:Ok, I'll bite...
on
A Flu Pandemic?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
OK, simple question. How long could you survive in your house without going out to the shops?
If it hits you're going to want to say away from others, since there won't be a vaccine and you won't get your hands on Tamiflu. Key factor in this is the supplies in your house.
That IS something you can do now. The other is to do what 90% of the population can't - research the facts and make up your own mind. Are you keeping up on the stories direct from South East Asia, rather than the little the US press lets through?
Are you paying attention?
on
A Flu Pandemic?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
If you're not frightened by a flu pandemic, you haven't understood what it is or what it means. If the average case happens we could likely lose 150m worldwide, most probably from the wage earning, productive heart of each community. The speed and breadth of the disease will run it around the world in a matter of a few weeks with air travel and no medical system will have the chance to do much more than count the corpses. Governments are playing down the numbers, predicting from the basis of mild pandemics and allowing years to act.
Its no exaggeration to say this is the most significant threat we have faced in decade - orders of magnitude more important than a few terrorists. Yet there still is a sleepwalking feel to people's reaction.
I'll guess that the existance of the trojan makes them safe against DCMA attacks from Sony. Thus the root to getting rid of all DRM is clear. Make your virus dependent on something the DRM does, and there is a justifable cause to remove that DRM from peoples' system.
Personally I can't believe that I'm having the concoct reasons why a company would be able to provide you a tool for remove and deinstalling software on your own computer. How insane has this world got when an unread EULA could potentially give a company 'rights' to mess with your computer, and prevent you having the right to correct it?
We need a clean slate on all patent, copyright and attendant laws - and get them back to sanity. We can't go on like this.
Slashdot Mirror
The reality is that any grouping put together by this man is unlikely ever to come out and say nuclear power (of any type, including Pebble Bed) is acceptable. The only acceptable solution in their book is for everyone to 'power down' and accept an energy budget akin to the Victorian era.
Although Nuclear Power isn't the full answer, we need lots of renewable investment as well, its almost certainly the best shot we have at the existing time for continuing our civilisation in roughly the same shape as it is at the moment as the oil supply declines. Renewables are just too low in energy density to be able to build fast enough to match the problem.
File under ignore - the government will.
Hell, I'll pay $100 per year to do it.
I hate the idea of one person thinking they are somehow in charge, but just think of how much better anyone else would do than Bush Jr. It would be worth the cost to actually have a measureable positive effect on the development of the world.
If the current waste of space doesn't end his days in jail being 'friend' to 'Bubba' then we are headed for the Apocalypse in a hand basket.
Its about time the whining stopped and they started testing the aircraft to ensure it would continue to work properly and reject spurious signals - as they should have been doing for decades now. EM resilience is the key, not 'safety' messages that try to offload the responsibility from those that own the solution.
The solution is in the cockpit, not the cabin.
UK government is scared by that they don't understand, Islam, Internet, anything that has passed their arts education by. They don't understand and therefore they need 'more information' to feel that they have 'kept on top' of the problems that confront them.
You know that feeling when you are swimming, but its not working out and you are getting lower and lower in the water, swallowing more and more water? That's the UK, and when they realise it, the US governments.
I don't think they will, but for Microsoft the potential downside of pissing off those in nominal control of a huge marketplace has no end. In theory Bill could end up in jail, and he might get arrested and released 'just to send the message'.
I get the feeling that the dumb games they have been playing are going to come back to bite them hard - it won't be forgotten.
Looks like someone on high has been told to allocate resources to copyright infringment. You can see how the idea that people can sell things which are free would confuse PC Plod.
Here's hoping they get equally confused with the idea you can buy something, but not be able to do what you want with your property and in consequence arrest the chairman of EMI.
Sure the 'good old days' weren't as rosy as some make out - but they were still at least 100% more receptive to new ideas, invention and innovation than those today.
If you have a good idea today your best chance is to pursue it in your own time and hope to hell that someone somewhere doesn't think you have been unwise enough to agree that your soul is theirs 24 hours a day.
Oh, and plan and prepare against the cold hard world that results from thinking powerpoints make up for failing to develop.
Therefore sure it should be impossible to have a valid trademark? Remember the reasoning behind "Pentium" rather than "586"?
So what is the "TM" doing on it?
The money saved would then be able to fully fund these technology developments rather than them being seen as a joke as they are at present. People took notice of the X-Prize because it was a worthwhile goal and the money was *just about* appropriate. These aren't so nobody really takes any notice of announcements any more.
With such high prices for the disks and the players it will be at least three to five years before Blu-Ray makes enough of an impact for anyone to care. In the meantime there will be lots of people out there working to crack the DRM and make the content available to all using alternative transport technology (say two DVD-Rs). Given the future is downloadable content, probably stored on hard disk for playback, this is useful in giving more consumer friendly solutions a foothold in the public consciousness. The future is more likely to belong to the large hard disk PVR/digital TV receiver than the Blu-Ray player - its more flexible and better tuned to peoples actual needs.
Neck-on-the-block prediction time, Blu-Ray will only ever be a bit player unless the content protection for writing onto Blu-Ray recordable disks is broken with about two years.
Turn the phone off before you go somewhere you don't want to be tracked.
Since I can rent a DVD by mail for 1 unit of currency it difficult to see anything else other than an attempt to say "see tried it, didn't work". The price needs to be around half that of a retail DVD, at most.
Oh, and no intrusive DRM either.
On a related point, has anyone noticed how movie and TV are coming together into a true competitive marketplace? The gap is much smaller than it used to be.
OK, OK, don't get all mathematical on the statement, but its important to realise that there is a vast pool of the electorate that are essentially unquestioning and in favour of the 'status quo'. If they were told as a child that God is real and the earth was created in 6 days, they tend to continue to believe it - particularly since the lessons that put the lie to this are taught once they have reached an age when they are no longer listening.
Banning all religious indoctrination of children would go a long way to fixing the ills of the world.
Just try being a bit smarter and make sure you only ever ask once what country people are in - and take note from there. In short, start assuming the US is just one other country, and there is certainly nothing special about it. Save yourself the marketing budget for something useful.
This is not a hair-shirt world.
Talk about the eco-nuts missing the point, its not about making this a harsher world, its about not throwing away resources - about people being smarter. Focus on acceptable solutions and the big problems, please.
Management by committee? You're suggesting this is an improvement, rather than reason there has been relatively little progress in fundamental ideas over the past decades? I'm sure Einstein would have valued your input.
I have to say, of all of these entries here, this one is the one that made me stop and think the most. The concept of civilisation when it mets resource limitations and pollution impacts with selfish and individualistic mindsets self-destructing has a certain truth to it.
The majority of the population work all their time from childhood till death, for the express ability to....well.....keep on doing it. There really is no difference between "work to live" and "live to work" anymore in the world we inhabit. This is a bit of a puzzler given our cave man cousins also had to work to survive. Where's the progress really? Where is the ability of people to develop themselves in that world of leisure we were all promised in the 1970s?
The possibility/probability of a large group saying "to hell with it" is very real. If the flavour presented was right it could snowball in a very short period of time with an impact that would dwarf other realistic dangerous ideas.
Maybe the future belongs to those that say no?
1) At least on major country or trading block will attempt large scale taxation of the Internet and Internet commerce. This will be used as a cover for the removal of the last vestiges of anonymity, with the sop of removing spam in the same breadth. The approach will spread worldwide as governments find it a no brainer.
2) Parallelisation will continue as not only to all normal machines become SMP boxes, but the flexibility grows to combine and split apart all the computer power you possess. The PDA/mobile phone won't be a separate item, it will become only a part of the wider entity that you can carry with you. Increasingly accessing and synchronising with the whole entity will become as norm.
3) Wireless will go long range as mobile phone companies attempt to get over the still birth of 3G with WiMAX like services.
4) TV will go Internet, and very quickly both transmission and country borders will look quaint.
5) DRM will be added to everything, and just as quickly broken. Lies will be told and individuals will be taken to court.
and finally, but not least
6) Bird flu will hit home, preceding by a dry run of the first wave of infection. All those that have been playing down its impact will point to the first wave and ignore the second. They will die and the world that emerges from 2006 will look very different than the one we have now. The double wammy of the shock of peak oil will send the world into an introspective spiral that will shatter certain expectations.
Upshot is either things don't happen, or people go 'around the system' to make things happen. Sometimes that comes back and bites the organisation on the arse.
Fixing it isn't done by changing the captain of the Titanic, its done by clearing out all the existing processes, all the paperwork, most of the arts graduates claiming to be managers and only adding them back where they can demonstrate real value - and then only in the simplest possible fashion. 'Managing risk' as value is a red flag that suggested solution is a bad one.
A good half way house is to insist those that ask for a form to be filled in provide the real money out of their budgets for the time taken to do that work, rather than hiding the pain and cost. At least that way people think before implementing new processes.
The thing I find interesting is exactly the same issues crop up again and again, but the trendy management textbooks never see fit to address these real issues with real solutions - instead focusing on 'enhancing your synagy'. Maybe its because MBAs are at the root the reason these management failures crop up in the first place.
Beagle was designed to bounce along the surface, losing energy in a controlled manner and coming to a safe stop. Dropping that into a crater is akin to putting the frog in the blender and dialing in a healthy shake. The bits might end up in roughly the same spot, but not necessarily in the same order.
I feel sorry for the Prof. He fought the system to do something that should have had far greater funding, and then they blamed him for what was partly bad luck and partly their fault. If you do a little research into the techology and the experiments planned its really quite amazing stuff. He deserved much more than he got.
Hell, watch this advert and if your creative concept isn't up to the same standard, go back and EARN your money.
The money is there, the time to fill is short, there is no excuse for not creating a 30 second product that doesn't match up to reasonable standards.
- Toxic leak in river
- Bird Flu Death
- A WTO conference
- Torture
- Art on show in London
So maybe not overflowing with positive stories, but this IS typical news coverage. You have to wonder if these Chinese Bloggers are paid/told to put forward that censorship is somehow a non issue.If it hits you're going to want to say away from others, since there won't be a vaccine and you won't get your hands on Tamiflu. Key factor in this is the supplies in your house.
That IS something you can do now. The other is to do what 90% of the population can't - research the facts and make up your own mind. Are you keeping up on the stories direct from South East Asia, rather than the little the US press lets through?
Its no exaggeration to say this is the most significant threat we have faced in decade - orders of magnitude more important than a few terrorists. Yet there still is a sleepwalking feel to people's reaction.
So how are you prepared?
I'll guess that the existance of the trojan makes them safe against DCMA attacks from Sony. Thus the root to getting rid of all DRM is clear. Make your virus dependent on something the DRM does, and there is a justifable cause to remove that DRM from peoples' system.
Personally I can't believe that I'm having the concoct reasons why a company would be able to provide you a tool for remove and deinstalling software on your own computer. How insane has this world got when an unread EULA could potentially give a company 'rights' to mess with your computer, and prevent you having the right to correct it?
We need a clean slate on all patent, copyright and attendant laws - and get them back to sanity. We can't go on like this.