Probably because the submitter was Australian and/or the article is from an Australian website! No I didn't RTFA either, but I did check the URL. Also it's relevant because of the whole "Great firewall of Australia" debate which is now apparently moot. The Estonian angle is interesting however!
That doesn't make it any less sexist/racist though. It's just socially acceptable to be prejudiced against white males. And it really shouldn't be. The vast majority of white men actually aren't super wealthy and successful and need help and acceptance in life and work as much as anybody.
You get that girls number?!? I think you may have misread the situation as her being representative of the general public, perhaps because she was quite attractive? Geek girls are steadily increasing in quality and quantity, but they aren't THAT common! That said she needs to be a bit better informed befored she truly qualifies for a geek card. Amongst other things, Android isn't exactly free and open, as manufacturers are now encrypting bootloaders. Her tech savviness level is definately sexy though!
I assume this was article was submitted by an Australian, and to that person I would say you need to get a little self-respect. FFS even if you don't respect the person, at least respect the office. Would you seriously submit an article about the yanky prezo and expect it to be published? No, you would refer to him as the US President or more likely just the President, or Obama, even if you hated his guts. To do otherwise is to insult the American people. Refering to some random Australian as an aussie, that's acceptable, although for a news site I personally consider it unprofessional. But, refering to the highest office in the land or any other official goverment entity for that matter as being 'aussie' is just insulting.
Well obviously there is no such thing as 0. I take it as a compliment you didn't find fault with anything else I said. Assuming you are a competent engineer I'd be completely confident you could design a tsunami-proof backup system with a probability of 99.9999% or some other number arbitrarily close to 0. Of course you can't prevent every type of failure, but tsunamis are one you definately can and should (assuming the entire world isn't simultaneously being buried under the sea.) Also the engineers had time to refine their designs (30 years?) I had no oppurtunity to refine my post after I submitted it and noticed my error.
You realize, of course, that engineers don't make funding decisions?
Yes, but they do have the ability to influence them. Also being able to incite public outrage by disclosing nuclear safety risks gives them a lot of leverage. I would have thought the absolutely economic necessity of an uninterrupted power supply would also be a good inducement to spending money. Particularly when a stagnating economy would benefit greatly from a large public infrastructure program.
It remains to be seen why the generators failed - whether due to a tsunami greater than the reactor complex was designed for, a design failure, or some hardware or system failure.
Yes it will be interesting to see just how epicly they failed here. Pumping water is such a trivial task and in this case so vitally important that I'm absolutely astounded it is a problem in 2011. Designing some generators to withstand a tsunami is not an engineering challenge. For one thing you can simply place them 30m or so above sea level with a risk factor of 0. Not having readily available alternatives is an engineering failure. This situation is disgraceful and and frankly I've been quite disturbed on how the nuclear industry has responded to these problems, downplaying them at every oppurtunity. They should be pointing out how insanely incompetent this water pumping issue is and that nuclear power plants can easily be designed to eliminate this problem! The cost of a major nuclear meltdown is so massive that no reasonable expense should be spared in making sure it doesn't happen. That is the engineers responsibility.
Yes you're correct. But this is what really happens:
CEO A thinks: hmm this is my last quarter before I move on to my next ludicrusly overpaid CEO job and I really want to maximise my bonus. I know, I'll raise prices. By the time the market catches on, our loyal customers will send me out with record profits!
CEO B thinks, hmm, market share is 50% for us, 50% for vendor A. Vendor A just put his prices up. Not much to gain by having a lower margin, even if we do grab a few % from vendor A. Lets match vendor As price. I bet this new marketing campaign or this stupidly complex and ultimately more expensive but superficially great value new contract scheme will grab us a few % though. Gee, I love lawyers and accountants almost as much as I love money! Winning!
I absolutely agree with you about the need for redundancy in your backup/safety systems, but as far as the hindsight thing goes this is an epic failure of the engineers and management of this plant. Clearly they have never bothered to do a safety audit on this plant or they would have realised that having one set of backup generators placed within reach of a tsunami is extremely unsafe. It's a nuclear plant for crying out loud, you need multiple redundancies in your systems! This is obvious! Also the Japanese shouldn't need to rely on the US to come save them in an emergency (even though the US is generally very good at doing this.) They should have plenty of their own backup generators and water pumps available at a moments notice for their MANY nuclear plants.
This wouldn't solve the problem mentioned in the article however. Again having a national power grid is an obvious solution. It's a tiny country FFS, this stuff is really basic. My opinion of Japanese engineers has lowered significantly after this debarcle.
It's don't think it's really a false dichotomy, since the situation proposed where price points and feature sets are identical do match the theorical definitions of perfect competition and collusion, and probably (I'm not interested enough in economics to confirm this) don't meet any others definitions of competition (like feature differentiation.)
Admittedly finishing my OP with a ! rather than a . probably would have clarified my intention somewhat! My point was that it is impossible (by my understanding of human nature and business SOP) to have perfect competition in a market with only 4 very large players. So clearly there is anti-competitive behaviour going on, although as you point out it's not necesarily collusion. In Australia our 3 big players strategy is to differentiate on how many 'free calls' they give you each month. Eg. You pay $49/month and they provide you with $300! worth of calls. The call rates are naturally in the small print and completely different to the competitors making comparison extremely difficult. At least in the US you seem to quote plans in minutes which avoids this particular type of anti-competive behaviour.
This tells us two things:
1. You have SafeSearch enabled.
Yes, I did have safe-search set to moderate! I swear I'd turned it off before and it was misleading because the vanilla porn still showed up. Thankfully my search now returns mucho fisting porno. Still a little disappointed at the lack of midgets involved though! Also, I feel like a noob!
2. Somewhere, there's a soccer team called the Lesbian Midgets.
Actually Lesbian&Midget&Fisting matches a LOT of soccer teams.
It will have an influence on other revolutions no doubt, exactly how will depend on how this whole situation plays out.
The best case here is the UN backed actions will destroy a large part of gaddafi's military infrastructure, severly limiting his ability to stage attacks. With a level playing field gaddafis soldiers will start dying and the gold and virgins they've been promised will no longer be enough to keep them from deserting. After that we see an egypt style army-civilan love-in and a steady handover of power from military to civilian goverment.
Worst case is it simply degrades into a lengthy civil war. I don't think it's too late as some people have suggested (depending on how quick they respond) since the rebels still have significant military resources (including tanks and artillery) and are still holding the major city of bengazi.
It is unlikely we will see the same level of unity in Egypt due to the fact the military has killed a lot more people here and Libya is apparently quite tribal, so some kind of civil strife is likely, hopefully not an all out war though.
On the political side, I think the US has played this perfectly. They took a back seat and let other nations take the lead in the UN actions (probably encouraging them in the background.) By not taking the lead the UN action has avoided anti-US sentiment and not only did the no-fly motion get up but the US won a fairly comprehensive directive. Not taking the lead means the US doesn't have to commit as many resources to it, which is good since they are already stretched. Obama and Clinton should be given credit for this.
If the military involvement ends quickly and the Libyans get a satisfactory power transition, it's possible we could see more of these actions. However, it took a fair bit of direct military action from gaddafi to allow the UN decision to get up. Other leaders could continue to take a more low-key approach to suppression (as in Bahrain) without interference, even if there is a significant body count. Certainly nobody will want to help out if another major revolt happens before this one is resolved.
No what's more disturbing is a search for lesbian midget porn mostly returns pictures of soccer players assembled for team photos. What the hell?? Now I'm thinking I should spice up my life a little and join a soccer team!
Wow are you really an American? You're views seem far too balanced and with a distinct lack of over-simplification. I'd mod you insightful but I don't have any mod points =(
I'd mod you up if I could. Excellent analysis. Hopefully someone at google notices this before it's too late! I read this headline as: Google has officially decided to turn evil.
No, you don't have the capacity to understand it. Or you have given up trying to understand things as instructed by some arbitrarily designated speaker for the aforementioned cruel, random, unprovable space tyrant. You have chosen ignorance. Forgive us for wanting to understand, because apparently your god won't.
I predict MS will become Sheen. They're winning over here with the controller (Kinect). They'll be winning over there with the graphics (xbox3.) Hello, BI-WINNING!
Slashdot Mirror
Probably because the submitter was Australian and/or the article is from an Australian website! No I didn't RTFA either, but I did check the URL. Also it's relevant because of the whole "Great firewall of Australia" debate which is now apparently moot. The Estonian angle is interesting however!
Well since I clearly wasn't trying to take the piss, then you must be pommy asshat with a chip on his shoulder.
Higher than your social skills score. I can pretty much guarantee.
Literally LOL. Although frankly I'm fairly sceptical...
As an American with a proficiency in taking the piss and a solid grasp of sarcasm I think you'd do rather well here, mate.
800 k's anyone? ie. kays = 1 syllable! Admittedly not as poetic as miles... but still...
That doesn't make it any less sexist/racist though. It's just socially acceptable to be prejudiced against white males. And it really shouldn't be. The vast majority of white men actually aren't super wealthy and successful and need help and acceptance in life and work as much as anybody.
You get that girls number?!? I think you may have misread the situation as her being representative of the general public, perhaps because she was quite attractive? Geek girls are steadily increasing in quality and quantity, but they aren't THAT common! That said she needs to be a bit better informed befored she truly qualifies for a geek card. Amongst other things, Android isn't exactly free and open, as manufacturers are now encrypting bootloaders. Her tech savviness level is definately sexy though!
+1 insightful
It's the Australian Prime Minister.
I assume this was article was submitted by an Australian, and to that person I would say you need to get a little self-respect. FFS even if you don't respect the person, at least respect the office. Would you seriously submit an article about the yanky prezo and expect it to be published? No, you would refer to him as the US President or more likely just the President, or Obama, even if you hated his guts. To do otherwise is to insult the American people. Refering to some random Australian as an aussie, that's acceptable, although for a news site I personally consider it unprofessional. But, refering to the highest office in the land or any other official goverment entity for that matter as being 'aussie' is just insulting.
Well obviously there is no such thing as 0. I take it as a compliment you didn't find fault with anything else I said. Assuming you are a competent engineer I'd be completely confident you could design a tsunami-proof backup system with a probability of 99.9999% or some other number arbitrarily close to 0. Of course you can't prevent every type of failure, but tsunamis are one you definately can and should (assuming the entire world isn't simultaneously being buried under the sea.) Also the engineers had time to refine their designs (30 years?) I had no oppurtunity to refine my post after I submitted it and noticed my error.
I bet you and I could agree. Convincing the politicians on the other hand might be a bit more difficult! I should probably give a try sometime though.
You realize, of course, that engineers don't make funding decisions?
Yes, but they do have the ability to influence them. Also being able to incite public outrage by disclosing nuclear safety risks gives them a lot of leverage. I would have thought the absolutely economic necessity of an uninterrupted power supply would also be a good inducement to spending money. Particularly when a stagnating economy would benefit greatly from a large public infrastructure program.
It remains to be seen why the generators failed - whether due to a tsunami greater than the reactor complex was designed for, a design failure, or some hardware or system failure.
Yes it will be interesting to see just how epicly they failed here. Pumping water is such a trivial task and in this case so vitally important that I'm absolutely astounded it is a problem in 2011. Designing some generators to withstand a tsunami is not an engineering challenge. For one thing you can simply place them 30m or so above sea level with a risk factor of 0. Not having readily available alternatives is an engineering failure. This situation is disgraceful and and frankly I've been quite disturbed on how the nuclear industry has responded to these problems, downplaying them at every oppurtunity. They should be pointing out how insanely incompetent this water pumping issue is and that nuclear power plants can easily be designed to eliminate this problem! The cost of a major nuclear meltdown is so massive that no reasonable expense should be spared in making sure it doesn't happen. That is the engineers responsibility.
Yes you're correct. But this is what really happens:
CEO A thinks: hmm this is my last quarter before I move on to my next ludicrusly overpaid CEO job and I really want to maximise my bonus. I know, I'll raise prices. By the time the market catches on, our loyal customers will send me out with record profits!
CEO B thinks, hmm, market share is 50% for us, 50% for vendor A. Vendor A just put his prices up. Not much to gain by having a lower margin, even if we do grab a few % from vendor A. Lets match vendor As price. I bet this new marketing campaign or this stupidly complex and ultimately more expensive but superficially great value new contract scheme will grab us a few % though. Gee, I love lawyers and accountants almost as much as I love money! Winning!
I absolutely agree with you about the need for redundancy in your backup/safety systems, but as far as the hindsight thing goes this is an epic failure of the engineers and management of this plant. Clearly they have never bothered to do a safety audit on this plant or they would have realised that having one set of backup generators placed within reach of a tsunami is extremely unsafe. It's a nuclear plant for crying out loud, you need multiple redundancies in your systems! This is obvious! Also the Japanese shouldn't need to rely on the US to come save them in an emergency (even though the US is generally very good at doing this.) They should have plenty of their own backup generators and water pumps available at a moments notice for their MANY nuclear plants.
This wouldn't solve the problem mentioned in the article however. Again having a national power grid is an obvious solution. It's a tiny country FFS, this stuff is really basic. My opinion of Japanese engineers has lowered significantly after this debarcle.
Suggested reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dichotomy
It's don't think it's really a false dichotomy, since the situation proposed where price points and feature sets are identical do match the theorical definitions of perfect competition and collusion, and probably (I'm not interested enough in economics to confirm this) don't meet any others definitions of competition (like feature differentiation.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_sequitur_(logic)
This logic is consistent as above. You could certainly disagree with my premise that perfect competition doesn't exist.
Suggest reading for most of my posts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_Wit
Admittedly finishing my OP with a ! rather than a . probably would have clarified my intention somewhat! My point was that it is impossible (by my understanding of human nature and business SOP) to have perfect competition in a market with only 4 very large players. So clearly there is anti-competitive behaviour going on, although as you point out it's not necesarily collusion. In Australia our 3 big players strategy is to differentiate on how many 'free calls' they give you each month. Eg. You pay $49/month and they provide you with $300! worth of calls. The call rates are naturally in the small print and completely different to the competitors making comparison extremely difficult. At least in the US you seem to quote plans in minutes which avoids this particular type of anti-competive behaviour.
Yes except perfect competition doesn't exist. Therefore it's collusion.
This tells us two things:
1. You have SafeSearch enabled.
Yes, I did have safe-search set to moderate! I swear I'd turned it off before and it was misleading because the vanilla porn still showed up. Thankfully my search now returns mucho fisting porno. Still a little disappointed at the lack of midgets involved though! Also, I feel like a noob!
2. Somewhere, there's a soccer team called the Lesbian Midgets.
Actually Lesbian&Midget&Fisting matches a LOT of soccer teams.
Just my opinion, so flame away:
It will have an influence on other revolutions no doubt, exactly how will depend on how this whole situation plays out.
The best case here is the UN backed actions will destroy a large part of gaddafi's military infrastructure, severly limiting his ability to stage attacks. With a level playing field gaddafis soldiers will start dying and the gold and virgins they've been promised will no longer be enough to keep them from deserting. After that we see an egypt style army-civilan love-in and a steady handover of power from military to civilian goverment.
Worst case is it simply degrades into a lengthy civil war. I don't think it's too late as some people have suggested (depending on how quick they respond) since the rebels still have significant military resources (including tanks and artillery) and are still holding the major city of bengazi.
It is unlikely we will see the same level of unity in Egypt due to the fact the military has killed a lot more people here and Libya is apparently quite tribal, so some kind of civil strife is likely, hopefully not an all out war though.
On the political side, I think the US has played this perfectly. They took a back seat and let other nations take the lead in the UN actions (probably encouraging them in the background.) By not taking the lead the UN action has avoided anti-US sentiment and not only did the no-fly motion get up but the US won a fairly comprehensive directive. Not taking the lead means the US doesn't have to commit as many resources to it, which is good since they are already stretched. Obama and Clinton should be given credit for this.
If the military involvement ends quickly and the Libyans get a satisfactory power transition, it's possible we could see more of these actions. However, it took a fair bit of direct military action from gaddafi to allow the UN decision to get up. Other leaders could continue to take a more low-key approach to suppression (as in Bahrain) without interference, even if there is a significant body count. Certainly nobody will want to help out if another major revolt happens before this one is resolved.
No what's more disturbing is a search for lesbian midget porn mostly returns pictures of soccer players assembled for team photos. What the hell?? Now I'm thinking I should spice up my life a little and join a soccer team!
Wow are you really an American? You're views seem far too balanced and with a distinct lack of over-simplification. I'd mod you insightful but I don't have any mod points =(
I'd mod you up if I could. Excellent analysis. Hopefully someone at google notices this before it's too late! I read this headline as: Google has officially decided to turn evil.
No, you don't have the capacity to understand it. Or you have given up trying to understand things as instructed by some arbitrarily designated speaker for the aforementioned cruel, random, unprovable space tyrant. You have chosen ignorance. Forgive us for wanting to understand, because apparently your god won't.
I predict MS will become Sheen. They're winning over here with the controller (Kinect). They'll be winning over there with the graphics (xbox3.) Hello, BI-WINNING!
Warning: Consumption of space-beer may lead to zero-g sex experiments.
I so wish I had mod points coz you deserve a +1 for the lolz.