If we only count the people killed by nuclear accidents, we are talking in terms of what, dozens? Maybe hundreds?
Well the most conservative credible estimate is by the IAEA. According to them for Chernobyl in the three most heavily affected countries there should be a total of 4000 deaths attributed to the disaster. It's difficult to get accurate numbers given that e.g. leukemia or thyroid cancer rates vary considerably from year to year, even if nothing particularly noticeable happens. Of course there are deaths outside of the most affected countries as well - the estimate for those is also frequently being placed in the range of 4000.
Of course effects due to radiation or other poisoning are not so easy to easy to count as e.g. traffic-related deaths. If someone's live is shorted by 10 years - that's a rather horrible scenario for the person affected. However he might only die 5 years after the incident - do you count that in the illness or in the death column? And the number of people "merely" being severely sick is quite relevant, too.
Regarding coal mining accidents - most of those are in China. If China moves ahead with their nuclear program that might affect the balance a bit, as unsafe operation of coal mines is replaced by unsafe operation of nuclear power plants.
Anyway, just looking at deaths we should be more concerned about our traffic system rather than energy production. 8000 cancers worldwide is not a lot, and the effects of the Japan disaster will likely be less severe.
That's not the whole story though - there is still the question of storing waste fuel - Japan has only earthquake zones available for that. Germany hasn't found a suitable place either.
For both Fukushima and Chernobyl there is also the question of the land which is basically lost to human habitation - 30 to 40 km around the plant in Chernobyl, the Japanese government has admitted to 20 km at some point.
While a country like Russia or Ukraine may be able to handle such a loss, it's pretty dramatic for Japan and would be for Germany too. Those are very densely populated countries, and the land around the plants is both industrially and culturally valuable.
For Chernobyl 14,000 people had to leave their homes, Japan has already evacuated 62,000-78,000 and asked another 62,000 (in the 20-30 km zone) to leave "voluntarily". The US NRC has actually demanded a 80 km evacuation zone - that would affect 1.9 million people or about 1.5% of the population. (Temporarily presumably, not long term.)
I'm not totally opposed to nuclear power plants but there is a chance of severe accidents, and the sites for these plants should be chosen accordingly. It's not clear to me whether Germany has any suitable locations, for any country in the pacific ring of fire it's clear that they don't, though.
I don't quite follow that. As much as I dislike the whole concept of the DHS: of course he is aware of foreign technology being imported with spyware, it's his job to be aware of threats like that. It's not a new threat either.
It might potentially be treasonous not to do something about it - but he didn't admit to that, quite to the contrary he gave evidence to the actions they are taking and ought to take.
BTW is "interested foreign parties" our new code for "China"? Just curious.
I'm using sneakemail - essentially I create a different account for every website or service. If spam is coming in via one of the accounts I know who passed the info to spammers and I can just delete the account.
This is all part of the German silly season ("Sommerloch") - a period in summer when many political institutions are on vacation, so politicians which would normally be ignored can make it into the news - just because nobody important is active.
The statements in the article were all by conservatives in Germany (CDU + CSU). Given that it's interesting that Dorothee Baer - secretary general of the CSU - has asked that "comments about the Internet should be made only by those who are familiar with it". Sound advice.
And no, Germany is not considering banning facebook parties, this is just an attempt by some politicians to get noticed.
There is a nice service available from Ubuntu, as well. (And yes they offered that before Apple did.)
Now I can see why people would want to use the service from Apple - there might be a vendor lock-in issue, but I'm sure their offering is at least nicely put together.
For Dell that's a bit of a different issue though - who on earth would want to be locked into Dell devices? And there are alternatives - like the already mentioned Ubuntu One, which can be accessed with Android and iPhone apps.
ALL tabloids (grimy little nosy bastards, all of them) pay people for information.
Paying people for information is not morally wrong, in general. For example you could offer a reward for information about the girl's whereabouts, which would be fine. Paying people to get personal information about the girl in a way which interferes with a police investigation - that's obviously wrong.
You assume the edits were malicious, and they weren't actually removing a relatively unknown non-notable Micropayments company from a list of 'notable micropayment companies'
That's essentially what judges are for. They look at the case, and see if the truth can be established (beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal cases, lower standards apply in civil cases) - sometimes that's not possible, sometimes it's rather clear. Here a company removes a link to a direct competitor. Why did they do it? Because the employee of that company cares that the list of notable micropayment companies is correct, they say? Well then let him explain what criteria he used, whether he compared market presence, whether he removed other companies, whether he added competitors.
There is no absolute proof required. In this case the employee in question does not even have a Wikipedia account (since he signed with IP address), so his claim to care about the correctness of Wikipedia information would not pass the reasonable doubt standard. It would even fail the "not laughable" standard.
Many countries have laws against anticompetitive behavior. One of the scenarios this is supposed to avoid, is a larger company suppressing information or spreading misinformation about the smaller company. E.g. in the case of Wikipedia the larger company might be able to afford a dedicated person to remove the smaller companies entries, whereas the smaller company might at best be able to occasionally look at the relevant pages. They'd have no chance to keep the information correct.
What information that Wikipedia page lists afterwards is irrelevant for the court case. The company was fined for engaging in anticompetitive behavior - the judge did *not* order Wikipedia to list the competitor. So Wikipedia is still free to decide which company should be on the list and which should not.
What is it that you are disagreeing to? That there are plenty of governmental institutions who'd be more than happy to fund non-AGW research? Can you make that plausible somehow?
So either AGW is actual science or there is a global conspiracy maintaining "an alarmist spirit" spanning - at the least - every industrialized country on the planet.
Side note: back in the 80ies, the current alarm was not global warming but global cooling.
Who are you telling this to, those of us who were not alive in the 80s? Cause I was, and you are telling BS.
How many governing parties all over the world (on national and state level, where applicable) would rather that AGW wasn't true? For example here are the Utah republicans.
So how do you get funding if you think you have something which would show that AGW wasn't happening, or would be offset by some other effect, or just global warming but not anthropogenic? Apply for research money from the state.
And if due to some bizarre conspiracy that's not possible in your state - try in any other industrialized country of the world.
You only wanted to post part of the quote in order to give the impression that the motivation for acting against AGW was to redistribute wealth. As a reminder, this is what you set out to show: News flash: Climate change advocates funded by The politicians who stand to gain power, money and prestige by implementing climate policy.
The quote in context provides nothing to back up your assertion.
The best way to get through a checkpoint is to quietly make it known that you know they don't like what they do or how they have to do it and that all you are interested in is getting out of their way and on to your destination. Also, it doesn't hurt to treat them like people and offer a little small talk.
You know, I really have better things to do. I don't feel like offering small talk to people who do meaningless searches and enforce utterly pointless regulations (e.g. confiscating bottled water). The job may be unpleasant for both sides (I have my doubts), but in any case it's a lot more unpleasant on the passengers side - and only one side is getting paid for the job.
Personally I just avoid traveling to the US. Of course other countries have security checks and pointless regulations, too - but most manage to remain reasonably civil and professional about it. (Others are just as bad, of course - but we were talking about the TSA specifically.)
OSS is good for software, but it doesn't get hardware built. If there is a project which allows you to install a proper Linux system on Android phones, then I'm interested. MeeGo on dead end hardware only? I'll pass.
Well, it's also easier to just take everything. If you grab one server and that happens to be the right one - great. However if you grab one server and it turns out later that the data was actually on another machine... you don't want to explain that to the boss. And there might be something possibly related on one of the other servers - if the people you are after have rented one server from that ISP, they might have rented another one, too. It's a possibility.
I'm not saying it's legitimate, just that they might find it more convenient.
Other jurisdictions may not be less intrusive, but it might be interesting to have a second server in another jurisdiction. As a hosting company, you could perhaps team up with a hosting company in another country and have a mutual backup agreement.
What they mean with wearable electronics, are electronics embedded in things which you already wear for other purposes. Like belts, glasses or jackets. Neither watches nor smart phones are supposed to be included in that category.
Nobody has come up with an application which would make that interesting. Having your mp3 player in your belt buckle is inconvenient unless you are using only one belt. Having something built into your sun glasses is inconvenient unless you like with wearing your sunglasses even when there is insufficient light (ok that could be a niche). Embedding your smartphone into your jacket is inconvenient unless you only want to use your smartphone when wearing that jacket, or you have it build in all your jackets and are happy to only buy jackets which are equipped with smartphones. (So no more "hey I like that blue one".)
Wearable electronics have to compete with other technologies like pockets, belt clips, wrist bands and bags. So far they've been losing that competition rather dramatically.
Seriously? Each time I see one in the department store, I'm surprised how ugly WP7 looks. I mean it's plain white text on a blue background - it's not even an interesting font - plus some seriously old-fashioned clip art. When was the last time you've actually seen a phone that looked like this?
Maybe it's supposed to be retro and perhaps that works for some people, but then why not just go and use this here?
You can't easily change the course after that anymore - once you have lost your development team you've lost your ability to develop. IP and existing products are essentially useless for that - you need qualified, experienced and motivated people. If they were to start now, it would probably take them years to rebuild their teams to the same level they once had.
Same with their customers - I want a Linux phone, but there is no way I'd even look at this. It's a dead-end product.
You can't kill the GPL without killing more onerous EULAs, and as we all know, that will never happen.
Well the case is in Germany and EULAs in their usual forms are already not legal there. In Germany after the sale has been completed you can normally not add further conditions to the contract.
The GPL is in a better position there since it grants further rights and that should be perfectly legal.
Well Deutsche Bahn Fernverkehr (the long distance branch of the German railway system) is turning a profit. (In 2002 they introduced an innovative new pricing system, but they recovered from that 2.5 years later...)
They are running their third generation HSR now (ICE 3) and have just placed orders for 300 IC X trains.
Nothing particularly wrong with that. Of course that shouldn't lead to building white elephants, but if this technology would mean jobs are created within the country that's a good thing. The employees will spend their money inside the country and pay tax rather than needing assistance by the state.
Slashdot Mirror
If we only count the people killed by nuclear accidents, we are talking in terms of what, dozens? Maybe hundreds?
Well the most conservative credible estimate is by the IAEA. According to them for Chernobyl in the three most heavily affected countries there should be a total of 4000 deaths attributed to the disaster. It's difficult to get accurate numbers given that e.g. leukemia or thyroid cancer rates vary considerably from year to year, even if nothing particularly noticeable happens. Of course there are deaths outside of the most affected countries as well - the estimate for those is also frequently being placed in the range of 4000.
Of course effects due to radiation or other poisoning are not so easy to easy to count as e.g. traffic-related deaths. If someone's live is shorted by 10 years - that's a rather horrible scenario for the person affected. However he might only die 5 years after the incident - do you count that in the illness or in the death column? And the number of people "merely" being severely sick is quite relevant, too.
Regarding coal mining accidents - most of those are in China. If China moves ahead with their nuclear program that might affect the balance a bit, as unsafe operation of coal mines is replaced by unsafe operation of nuclear power plants.
Anyway, just looking at deaths we should be more concerned about our traffic system rather than energy production. 8000 cancers worldwide is not a lot, and the effects of the Japan disaster will likely be less severe.
That's not the whole story though - there is still the question of storing waste fuel - Japan has only earthquake zones available for that. Germany hasn't found a suitable place either.
For both Fukushima and Chernobyl there is also the question of the land which is basically lost to human habitation - 30 to 40 km around the plant in Chernobyl, the Japanese government has admitted to 20 km at some point.
While a country like Russia or Ukraine may be able to handle such a loss, it's pretty dramatic for Japan and would be for Germany too. Those are very densely populated countries, and the land around the plants is both industrially and culturally valuable.
For Chernobyl 14,000 people had to leave their homes, Japan has already evacuated 62,000-78,000 and asked another 62,000 (in the 20-30 km zone) to leave "voluntarily". The US NRC has actually demanded a 80 km evacuation zone - that would affect 1.9 million people or about 1.5% of the population. (Temporarily presumably, not long term.)
I'm not totally opposed to nuclear power plants but there is a chance of severe accidents, and the sites for these plants should be chosen accordingly. It's not clear to me whether Germany has any suitable locations, for any country in the pacific ring of fire it's clear that they don't, though.
I don't quite follow that. As much as I dislike the whole concept of the DHS: of course he is aware of foreign technology being imported with spyware, it's his job to be aware of threats like that. It's not a new threat either.
It might potentially be treasonous not to do something about it - but he didn't admit to that, quite to the contrary he gave evidence to the actions they are taking and ought to take.
BTW is "interested foreign parties" our new code for "China"? Just curious.
I'm using sneakemail - essentially I create a different account for every website or service. If spam is coming in via one of the accounts I know who passed the info to spammers and I can just delete the account.
This is all part of the German silly season ("Sommerloch") - a period in summer when many political institutions are on vacation, so politicians which would normally be ignored can make it into the news - just because nobody important is active.
The statements in the article were all by conservatives in Germany (CDU + CSU). Given that it's interesting that Dorothee Baer - secretary general of the CSU - has asked that "comments about the Internet should be made only by those who are familiar with it". Sound advice.
And no, Germany is not considering banning facebook parties, this is just an attempt by some politicians to get noticed.
There is a nice service available from Ubuntu, as well. (And yes they offered that before Apple did.)
Now I can see why people would want to use the service from Apple - there might be a vendor lock-in issue, but I'm sure their offering is at least nicely put together.
For Dell that's a bit of a different issue though - who on earth would want to be locked into Dell devices? And there are alternatives - like the already mentioned Ubuntu One, which can be accessed with Android and iPhone apps.
Yeah, slimier advertisers might move in. They are not stupid though: they'll pay less.
ALL tabloids (grimy little nosy bastards, all of them) pay people for information.
Paying people for information is not morally wrong, in general. For example you could offer a reward for information about the girl's whereabouts, which would be fine. Paying people to get personal information about the girl in a way which interferes with a police investigation - that's obviously wrong.
You assume the edits were malicious, and they weren't actually removing a relatively unknown non-notable Micropayments company from a list of 'notable micropayment companies'
That's essentially what judges are for. They look at the case, and see if the truth can be established (beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal cases, lower standards apply in civil cases) - sometimes that's not possible, sometimes it's rather clear. Here a company removes a link to a direct competitor. Why did they do it? Because the employee of that company cares that the list of notable micropayment companies is correct, they say? Well then let him explain what criteria he used, whether he compared market presence, whether he removed other companies, whether he added competitors.
There is no absolute proof required. In this case the employee in question does not even have a Wikipedia account (since he signed with IP address), so his claim to care about the correctness of Wikipedia information would not pass the reasonable doubt standard. It would even fail the "not laughable" standard.
Many countries have laws against anticompetitive behavior. One of the scenarios this is supposed to avoid, is a larger company suppressing information or spreading misinformation about the smaller company. E.g. in the case of Wikipedia the larger company might be able to afford a dedicated person to remove the smaller companies entries, whereas the smaller company might at best be able to occasionally look at the relevant pages. They'd have no chance to keep the information correct.
What information that Wikipedia page lists afterwards is irrelevant for the court case. The company was fined for engaging in anticompetitive behavior - the judge did *not* order Wikipedia to list the competitor. So Wikipedia is still free to decide which company should be on the list and which should not.
Give me a fucking break. I already named Utah. How many state governments are run by republicans?
You can't think of *one* which would provide funding? Are you serious?
admittedly have little to do with the environment
Who is admitting that? Certainly not the person you quoted.
What is it that you are disagreeing to? That there are plenty of governmental institutions who'd be more than happy to fund non-AGW research? Can you make that plausible somehow?
So either AGW is actual science or there is a global conspiracy maintaining "an alarmist spirit" spanning - at the least - every industrialized country on the planet.
Side note: back in the 80ies, the current alarm was not global warming but global cooling.
Who are you telling this to, those of us who were not alive in the 80s? Cause I was, and you are telling BS.
How many governing parties all over the world (on national and state level, where applicable) would rather that AGW wasn't true? For example here are the Utah republicans.
So how do you get funding if you think you have something which would show that AGW wasn't happening, or would be offset by some other effect, or just global warming but not anthropogenic? Apply for research money from the state.
And if due to some bizarre conspiracy that's not possible in your state - try in any other industrialized country of the world.
You only wanted to post part of the quote in order to give the impression that the motivation for acting against AGW was to redistribute wealth. As a reminder, this is what you set out to show: News flash: Climate change advocates funded by The politicians who stand to gain power, money and prestige by implementing climate policy.
The quote in context provides nothing to back up your assertion.
The best way to get through a checkpoint is to quietly make it known that you know they don't like what they do or how they have to do it and that all you are interested in is getting out of their way and on to your destination. Also, it doesn't hurt to treat them like people and offer a little small talk.
You know, I really have better things to do. I don't feel like offering small talk to people who do meaningless searches and enforce utterly pointless regulations (e.g. confiscating bottled water). The job may be unpleasant for both sides (I have my doubts), but in any case it's a lot more unpleasant on the passengers side - and only one side is getting paid for the job.
Personally I just avoid traveling to the US. Of course other countries have security checks and pointless regulations, too - but most manage to remain reasonably civil and professional about it. (Others are just as bad, of course - but we were talking about the TSA specifically.)
According to this http://liliputing.com/2011/06/hands-on-with-the-asus-eee-pc-x101-200-netbook.html Asus will bring out a $199 netbook running MeeGo.
OSS is good for software, but it doesn't get hardware built. If there is a project which allows you to install a proper Linux system on Android phones, then I'm interested. MeeGo on dead end hardware only? I'll pass.
Well, it's also easier to just take everything. If you grab one server and that happens to be the right one - great. However if you grab one server and it turns out later that the data was actually on another machine ... you don't want to explain that to the boss. And there might be something possibly related on one of the other servers - if the people you are after have rented one server from that ISP, they might have rented another one, too. It's a possibility.
I'm not saying it's legitimate, just that they might find it more convenient.
Other jurisdictions may not be less intrusive, but it might be interesting to have a second server in another jurisdiction. As a hosting company, you could perhaps team up with a hosting company in another country and have a mutual backup agreement.
What they mean with wearable electronics, are electronics embedded in things which you already wear for other purposes. Like belts, glasses or jackets. Neither watches nor smart phones are supposed to be included in that category.
Nobody has come up with an application which would make that interesting. Having your mp3 player in your belt buckle is inconvenient unless you are using only one belt. Having something built into your sun glasses is inconvenient unless you like with wearing your sunglasses even when there is insufficient light (ok that could be a niche). Embedding your smartphone into your jacket is inconvenient unless you only want to use your smartphone when wearing that jacket, or you have it build in all your jackets and are happy to only buy jackets which are equipped with smartphones. (So no more "hey I like that blue one".)
Wearable electronics have to compete with other technologies like pockets, belt clips, wrist bands and bags. So far they've been losing that competition rather dramatically.
Once you get past the flashy tiles
Seriously? Each time I see one in the department store, I'm surprised how ugly WP7 looks. I mean it's plain white text on a blue background - it's not even an interesting font - plus some seriously old-fashioned clip art. When was the last time you've actually seen a phone that looked like this?
Maybe it's supposed to be retro and perhaps that works for some people, but then why not just go and use this here?
Maemo/Meego for the highend linux touchscreen computer phones
How would that happen? They've already clearly stated that they'll go with WP7 and they are dismantling their own platform: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/jobs/2011/04/27/nokia-announces-layoffs-and-symbian-outsourcing-40092621/
You can't easily change the course after that anymore - once you have lost your development team you've lost your ability to develop. IP and existing products are essentially useless for that - you need qualified, experienced and motivated people. If they were to start now, it would probably take them years to rebuild their teams to the same level they once had.
Same with their customers - I want a Linux phone, but there is no way I'd even look at this. It's a dead-end product.
You can't kill the GPL without killing more onerous EULAs, and as we all know, that will never happen.
Well the case is in Germany and EULAs in their usual forms are already not legal there. In Germany after the sale has been completed you can normally not add further conditions to the contract.
The GPL is in a better position there since it grants further rights and that should be perfectly legal.
Well Deutsche Bahn Fernverkehr (the long distance branch of the German railway system) is turning a profit. (In 2002 they introduced an innovative new pricing system, but they recovered from that 2.5 years later...)
They are running their third generation HSR now (ICE 3) and have just placed orders for 300 IC X trains.
Nothing particularly wrong with that. Of course that shouldn't lead to building white elephants, but if this technology would mean jobs are created within the country that's a good thing. The employees will spend their money inside the country and pay tax rather than needing assistance by the state.