The GPL is not like a virus. A virus is something that is generally absorbed unknowingly, and something that is absorbed against your will. The GPL is neither absorbed unknowingly, nor against anybody's will. Thus, I do not believe that the GPL is a virus. Nobody has ever been forced to adopt the GPL against their will. If code is GPL'ed, it is GPL'ed because that was the intent of the author, and your quarrel should be with them, not Richard Stallman.
Often times, people pin RMS as a "lone" worker, who somehow makes terrible things happen. Realize that there are a whole slew of people who agree with most of what RMS says. Just because we aren't visible, it doesn't mean we aren't here. I once met someone, while volunteering with several others at a GNU booth at LISA (sysadmin conference), who had memorized the entire GPL and told us that he recited it once while he was drunk at a bar. There's deep mojo in the GPL.
As for prohibiting linking to non-free articles:
This rule will make sure we respect our own rules, in the same way that the exclusionary rule for evidence is supposed to make police respect their own rules: by not allowing us to treat work which fails to meet the criteria as if it did meet them.
The idea of the World Wide Web is that links tie various separate pages into a larger whole. So when encyclopedia articles or courses link to a certain page, those links effectively make the page part of the encyclopedia. To claim otherwise would be self-deception. If we are to take seriously the criteria set forth above, or any criteria whatsoever, we have to base our actions on them, by not incorporating a page into our network of pages if it doesn't fit the criteria.
Easy enough to understand. It's a self-restriction. It's so that we don't get lazy, give 3 details, and then say, "For the other 100 details, go check out these 15 web pages."
It also ensures that it's Free, through and through. I really don't mind, all that much.
OR, you could read Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing, and learn everything there is know about creating dynamic web sites, for free. That's right; click on the book, and you'll be face to face with one of the best books (and websites) that I have ever read, period.
I've bought the book 3 times in print, because it has the highest circulation amongst my book collection.
Sounds like you've done mostly encapsulation, maybe a bit of inheritance is natural too. Probably not polymorphism though.
...As if the world owes the concept of interface to OOP.
The concept of a wall socket is very old. It's so old, it's even present in UNIX. Look in your/dev/, and the interface that your devices are programmed to. The author of the web page is right; OOP is claiming a lot of inventions that are not it's own...
It's too bad. I wish more computer scientists look at computer science history, rather than the "Learn SQL, C++, and make a bunch of money" book shelf.
Indeed, there are many areas of the Net for which application and licensing should perhaps be required. Pornography is too rampant and too available to any kid who can "borrow" a credit card or simply surf the web, as are gambling sites, sketchy chat rooms, etc. Licenses and passwords could help a lot of this.
So far so good: We are talking about material that is obviously dangerous and has been criminalized in other areas.
"Too much pornography" is "obviously dangerous"?!
This guy scares me.
I plan on raising my daughter to be comfortable with nudity and pornography.
I suspect that the folk behind the SpeakEasy cafe are behind this;
I walked by the cafe with my girlfriend on New Years [wanting to visit the staff], and they noted that they were closed for New Years Eve and New Years. It said, "Come see us at the Monolith Party!", or something like that.
They're crazy, interesting, and rich enough to pull off something like this. I'd say: Quite possibly (likely?) it was them..!
And we shouldn't let people give their books to other people, either! Cuts into writer's pocketses, oh yes- it does!
But, wait-
What about if I bought a CD before, but I lost it 10 years ago. I have to buy it again? WHAT?!
I'm one person. But I had to pay twice. What's with that? It now seems that we have one person with knowledge of the content, but the author has been paid twice..!
I love it. You say "Chelyabinsk?... Everyone knows about that place, TV, newspapers talk about it, and it is known as the "living graveyard", but the guy immediately before you (tftp) posts that everything is fine and dandy there..! (I added the link to Chelyabinsk.)
This is a really surprising experience for me, okay? Look, I'm just a guy. I go to work. I take Chemistry at night for night classes. One day, a prof tells us stuff I'd never heard of before. I decide, "You know what, I'm going to tell people, as best I can," okay?
Just realize that's what common knowledge for you isn't common knowledge over here, okay? I probably have some of the details wrong, but overall, the picture was, and still is, much worse than we knew/know over here.
Yah, there's propaganda on both sides of the fence; we all know this. But what happened over there is far worse than any accident that ever happened over here. The Navada test explosions, 3-mile isle, and Hanford are *nothing* compared to Cherynoble. This isn't an attack on Russia. Russia doesn't need an attack right now. It needs serious help.
(Atomic Cafe, for the US readers, is a good video on USA propaganda, complete with 1950-60's video TV coverage, aired in Navada: "You're hair may fall out, but do not worry! It will grow back!".)
As for "Lake Death", I've never heard of it. I have no idea what it is.
Yes, Zoller said that they were working on Nuclear Hand grenades.
As for the special security clearance: No. His security clearance was due to the fact that he worked with nuclear weapons for the military. As for the permission to talk to his class and individuals, but not the press- this has something to do with what he saw through the military, vs. what he saw through the UN. I really don't know much about the protocol; Apparently he saw things working as a UN inspector that doubled what he saw through his military service. When he wrote to DC, they told him he couldn't make statements in front of press, and had to ask press members to leave. Look, I really don't know much about press and the military and what not.
Next: The MP's. He told something in a [previous] class that one of his students later told his father, who was in the military. The students father happened to know something about the matter, and reported it. Days later, MP's showed up in Zoller's office and required him to show his papers granting permission. I don't know what the subject matter was; it had something to do with a river. I really don't know.
His work in discovering the source of the fallout: The 1st people to tell that something was wrong were some people who were working in a nuclear lab somewhere NW of Cherynooble; I forget what the country was. (It wasn't Russia). Nuclear plant workers test themselves for radioactivity after they enter some sort of dangerous area, but just by chance, a worker decided to investigate himself before entering. He had been in the rain before coming to work. When he tested himself, he found that he was radioactive. The people in the plant worked to figure out what was wrong, and they figured out that the rain outside was radioactive. They reported it.
A short while after, Professor Zoller got a phone call from the military. He wasn't an active serviceman then, I think. I think he'd already left the military at this time, and was at the University of Washington (I forget.) They had arranged for airplane tickets for him to fly down to the bay area (I think). He took the flight (on a commercial airplane), and when it landed, before they unboarded everyone, he was specifically unboarded by the military. They took him to a lab where they had some substance. They told him (and other nuclear chemists with him) to analyze it and tell them what it was. They analyzed it for many days, and reported, "This is rainwater that has been contaminated; a nuclear reactor has exploded somewhere." They said, "That's right." (They wanted to verify that it was true- this is before we all knew about it.) He then helped with the determination of which plant blew up. The Russians were denying that anything had happened at all! Zoller has worked in environmental scientists and was a part of figuring out where the accident happened. He showed us maps that they had, of where the various reactors were, and showed us how the figured that it must have been the Chrenobyl plant. That was his role in determining that it had happened. The world didn't know about it till afterwards..!
As for the "Radioactive Seattle Fish": I can assure you, the fish in Seattle are quite tasty, and I imagine uncontaminated as well. Professor Zoller's predictions were that in 10 years, however, the situation will be different. As for this stuff, I refer you to the arctic environmental reports that I linked to above. Zoller claims that the EPA knows about the dangers in our Arctic sea. Right now, he says though, it's not their problem. I don't know what their permissions are like; Zoller seemed to imply that they were not supposed to talk about it.
My personal view of Russians is not xenophobic; I personally tutor a 16 year old Russian in computer science. He doesn't pay me anything; I just noticed talent in him, and decided to help him learn Computer Science. (It was painful just watching him play a MUD when he could be developing his skills and having more fun then typing the "n" "s" "e" and "w" keys.) He's very nice. I'm kinda trying to convince him that communism isn't the way to go, but he's really adament about it. I think he's just a little young and naive. He's leaning more towards socialism now, which I guess is better.
I suspect as long as there is Love in everyone's hearts, it doesn't matter WHAT type of government you have. Hell, you could probably have a fascist state if everyone was warm and caring.
Zoller's another story. He doesn't have the greatest things to say about the Russian culture. <shrug> I don't think that makes him a liar or an exaggerator though. He believes that the Russians have had troubles with corruption before Stalin even. He said that their history has been really bad, and that they've been suffering a lot, throughout history.
I'm really not a Russian historian. I don't know a thing about Russia.
There's a guy posting here (ekeen, or something like that). He might be a better person to ask about the Russian spirit.
At no point have I said that Russians have no respect for human life.
As for Remembering that my prof is a human: Yes, that's true. I can't really tell what parts of what Zoller has said are precise and which are not. Hell, I'm operating off of memory, and that's even worse..! But the essence of what Zoller has said is very clear in my mind. Anyways, I can't discriminate on something in Zoller's mind, so tell you what: I'll just recount as much I can.
It was quite a different story than I had ever heard before...
Ektanoor, aside from the part where you called me a stupid troll, I liked your post. Okay?
For you, it sounds like these things are obvious, but from the background I came from, from what I was taught in school, it was just sort of this little cute accident, and it's all better now. So I was really shocked to learn about how terrible it was. It sounds like it's obvious to you how terrible it was, but for the rest of us, who don't know anything about Russia or Chrynoble (hell, I can't even spell it right), or even the cold war (I'm only 23; I don't remember much of it)), it was a bit shocking to learn this stuff.
In this post, you haven't refuted anything that I've said.
But, I was told that there were "brave firefighters" putting out the fire. I saw a hollywood-made documentary with a recreation, and that's the way they drew it: Brave firefighters immediately got on the scene to put out the fire.
Zoller told me otherwise. He said as soon as the accident happened, the KGB (& military- I can't quite remember) were on the scene and getting people to put it out under threat of there lives. (Well, they were all going to die *anyways*...)
As for right now: I have no doubt that your friends were brave and knowingly helping out. That's very heroic, and it's really important to me- they're making a better world for me, because they value human life.
I'm sorry if my description said otherwise.
I have a Russian student who I teach Computer Science. He's a good guy.
The "point gun", as you are referring to it, was immediately after the accident. As in, the days immediately following the accident.
Yes, the photos that Zoller showed us were black and white. They were not arial photos, they were from within the building. (In the basement? There was this dripping goo stuff.) Again, I can't tell you much about the pictures. But- I can tell you they were black and white, and they weren't arial shots.
Look, I don't mean to say that the people out there today aren't brave and doing a good thing; I was just trying to communicate what I heard from Zoller, and that I believe him. He said that immediately after the accident, the KGB (& military? I can't remember) can on site and forced people to put out the fire, or whatever it was that they were doing.
I'm not a Russian expert. I don't know what the NKVD. I don't know a thing about the culture. (I do know that when a host toasts you alchohol, you're so post to toast them back, or something like that- This was something Zoller mentioned when he was talking about his Russian friends, and being invited to a Russian house.)
I don't know why they didn't want him to know what the radiation was like down there. Yes, they kept him away from the building because he would die if he got too close. He said he needed pictures of the interior. They said that they would get them for him. He showed us the pictures, in lecture, and said that people (2-3, I forget the #) died to get the picture. Now maybe the Russians can afford robots, but by the picture Zoller painted: No, they can't. He told us that they sent people down with cameras until one managed to make it back, and subsequently die.
But I really don't know why they wouldn't want him to know why the radiation levels were as high as they were. That's a good question to ask him.
He mentioned that when they were leaving, there was a guy who was looking over the car with a Geiger counter. Zoller said he looked over at the guy waving the device around, and didn't see any movement on the needle. He said that there is always at least a background radiation; he walked over to the guy with the device and turned it on. The device lit up.
The authorities weren't too happy about this. Someone (I forget if it was a translator or a friend or whatever) said, "Get in the car. Shut up. They'll take you to the airport. Don't say anything." I don't know if they were just embarrased, or if something else was going on. Ask Zoller.
One thing I'm taking from this Slashdot experience- ask more questions and keep more detailed notes!
Ektanoor; yes; this is correct, if my memory is serving me correctly. (Professor Zoller told us about helicoptor pilots that died hours after flying over it; I forgot what they were doing though.)
As far as I know, forced labor isn't being used to seal the sarcophagus; The forced labor (if Zoller is correct) happened immediately after the accident occured.
The reason Zoller does his Chernobyl lecture ("Chernobyl: A Glowing Account"), is so that people will hear what he has to say. Again, he's not allowed to talk to the press, but he is allowed to lecture on it.
We can all be grateful for the grue-driver courage and sacrifice. There's no greater gift than laying down our lives for another; I believe that is true. But, the people who were initially putting out the fires in the Chernobyl plant were not functioning voluntarily. At least, that's what Zoller told me: The KGB instructed people to put them out. People went to the top of the whatever-you-call-it, pointed their hoses to the whatever-it-was, and died after a short while, to be replaced with someone else. There work was important, we should be thankful, but we should not be operating under the illusion that they were operating voluntarily.
From what I understand, everyone that was on the scene or in the nearby city is now dead.
That you're shocked and accusing me is a good sign. It means that you value human life.
I'm sorry. I just tell this because I have a priveledged position- I was able to hear this, and I wanted to rely this out. Again, I'm very sorry. But this is what Zoller has told me.
Why don't you ask him yourself about the film? I'd do so myself right now, but I'm in the middle of working on decyphering rotating world models for work. The photographs were black and white, for what it's worth. I'm not an expert on the subject (I'm taking a freshman chemistry course, and decided to attend Zoller's lecture). But, I did see these photographs, as well as several others of the area.
As for "there's no kind of secturiy clearance that you can tell anyone except news people about", I'm going to have to differ with you.
Zoller explained that normally, if you learn certain things in the military (such as detailed information about how nuclear weapons work), you are not allowed to talk about it with the public.
However, there were some things that he learned when we was working for the UN as an investigator. He wrote to DC asking for permission to talk about these things. They granted it, but he was not allowed to talk to the press about it. (Later, some MP's arrived on campus to verify that he had clearance to talk about various things.) If the press asked about it, he was told that he would have to deny it. He is allowed to talk to students about it.
Look, I don't know; I'm just a part-time student. But I can tell you that my understanding of things changed an awful lot on that day.
Nuclear submarines: Excuse me; it was the nuclear missles that were attached to the submarines that were stupid, not the engines.
For those who think this may just be some anti-nuclear propoganda, or something like that: No. Zoller said that irradiated foods were perfectly safe, and repeatedly said, "We live in a radioactive world- the light around us is radiation." He seemed to be upset by public fear of the words "Chemical" and "Radiation". I was unclear after his talk about how he felt about Nuclear power. He takled briefly about Hanford and 3-Mile island. (He also noted that they were far less damaging than Cherynoble. I think the values were something like 120,000 Curie for Hanford, but 3,000,000 Curie for Cherynoble. 3-Mile was tiny. Again, I wish I had my notes with me here at work.)
I imagine if National Geographic sent their reporters there, they'd have used robots.
But there's a big difference between the Russian government and National Geographic.
Professor Zoller had the same observations about the "sarcophagus". He said that he wasn't allowed to get near the actual building, despite claims that it was safe. (He brought his own geiger counter, and it was showing extremely dangerous levels of radioactivity as he went near the building.)
The Chernobyl accident is far from over. I attended a special lecture by
Professor William Zoller
at the University of Washington, in which he described what happened, and is
continuing to happen, at Chernobyl. It is not an entertaining lecture
to attend. He told us a lot of things.
Professor Zoller showed us images of the radioactive goo at the bottom
of the reacter. He told us that 3 people died to get the picture. The
government just kept sending people down with cameras until someone went
down, took a picture, and survived the trip back up, and then died.
(Prof. Zoller was functioning as a UN inspector, or something. I have
forgotten just what he was doing over there.)
If there are pictures of the interior of the building where the
accident occured, you can pretty much assume people died to take them.
No, they didn't send robots to take those pictures.
All Russian nuclear plants were breeder plants.
Apparently, they wanted plutonium for their weapons.
Nuclear submarines, and, yes, NUCLEAR HANDGRENADES are the stupidest
ideas in history, but, hey... There wasn't/isn't exactly a concern
for human life over there.
Arctic dumping was the primary means of evacuating radioactive waste.
Rivers were also a way of getting the waste out of there.
As far as I can tell, people panicked, and thought, "Well, if we just
dump this in the sea, it'll all just go away." In 10 years time,
here in Seattle, we'll be told not to eat our fish. (This is according
to Professor Zoller.) He also claims that the EPA knows about this,
but is required to keep quiet. But, they continue to monitor the
radioactivity of boats coming in on the ports here in Seattle.
The so-called "Brave Firefighters" who put out the fire were not brave.
They were forced to put it out by the KGB.
There is a place called
Chelyabink-Tomask (unfortunately, I don't have my notes with me and cannot spell the name correctly.)
that is a living graveyard, guarded by the military;
They are essentially, waiting to die. Nobody goes out, nobody goes in.
You can verify this yourself by contacting him.
He will ask you if you are a member of the press.
If you are, he is not allowed to talk about it with you.
So ask him personally.
I wonder if posting an email to Slashdot is equivelent to being a member of the press.?
These notes are from my memory, not my written notes;
I'm afraid there will probably be imprecise.
But they are accurate.
That is, what is described is true, though I may have numbers and names wrong.
His lecture scared me immensly.
The room had only about 10% of the people in it by the time he finished...
Related links:
Professor William Zoller Unfortunately, he does not talk about any of this, nor his military role in the discovery of the Chernobyl radioactivity, nor his security clearance. I encourage you to e-mail him personally to verify all this. (Hmm. I hope he doesn't mind me posting this..!)
When I was growing up, my favorite games were Star Flight, the Final Fantasy series, Secret of Mana, and many other games that I can't remember the names of, but that I remember the essences of. Sure, I played Contra, and Mario as well, but they didn't really shape my values.
I liked the social values that these series offered me; they were values that my parents did not. Hey! People in RPG's are kind and treat one another well!
I think that I am a better person because of these games, and because of this I thank the authors for them.
I live in Seattle and teach free classes on how to program, use a shell, architecture issues, and what not.
I've noticed conversation and interest shifting into the HURD lately, and have decided that it will be a good place to go, in terms of studying and teaching.
A microkernel where we can add and remove services will be nice as an educational tool, and will be interesting to work inside of. It seems like a good thing. It probably is.
60/72 Hz is what we want when we play games, but you generally have to target above that for when your potentially viewable set (PVS) changes dramatically- if you move *really* fast (missile cam), say, or if you just turn your head 90 degrees (and look down a completely different hallway).
A current trend in games is to seperate the rendering cycle from the simulation cycle.
Historically, games have been implemented with a read-eval-print loop like this:
read user input for a given cycle
evaluate what happens next
display the result
Now, we (FPS, 3D) seem to be moving towards the parallelization of read/eval (simulation) cycles and the print (display) cycles. That way they can be controlled independently: The display can be given just the cycles it needs to provide 60/72Hz, and simulation lives in it's own space. The display routines have their own prediction mechanisms to make sure that they can keep pace.
Read the Judge's paper; It's quite fascinating and an in-depth description of the 1st Amendment, written remarkably clearly. The section on how games are produced is a better description than you will ever find in Game Developer's Magazine.
From what I gather from reading the article, courts are not so concerned about whether or not it has been proved that video games can cause harm to childen; It is more concerned with the possibility of harm. While I can imagine many arguments both for and against, and personally believe that violent or sexual video games do *not* harm children (I would cite Japan's media history as a primary example, as well as the Brother's Grim for the European history), the courts hold that as long as there is a possibility, that it is sufficient to allow communities to regulate.
Note that if the focus of the game and the primary value derived from the game was a political idea, a specific message, or artistic value, that violence and nudity are both allowed, and the game is protected under the 1st amendment.
I highly recommend reading the judge's well informed "opinion", and making your own mind up after having read it in it's entirety.
I'm a game programmer. Every day, I see the enormous efforts being heaped into making shared 3-D game worlds a reality. It is incredibly difficult; it is not a trivial task. State/event distribution and user interface are terribly hard problems.
Rendering is the easy part.
I find it a little... funny that the VRML is saying, "What? We can't do this in our web browsers yet?" when the game world is working full time to produce meager results.
I'd say: Leave it in the oven for another decade, and I think we will all be pleased with what we find.
I'm sorry, but this is nuts. MFC is the worst example of OO UI that I have ever seen.
If you really buy into Object Oriented dogma, and you want to make an OO UI, you have two places to look for real examples:
NextStep. The NextStep system, a complete Object Oriented system from the ground up, Foundation Classes, gui builders, written in Objective-C (let me guess; you've never programmed in it... tut, tut...), is truly the paragon of Object Oriented User Interface design. So modular, customers can completely reshape the UI (appearance, layout, hot-keys) without changing a single line of code. It is breathtaking.
GTK+. GTK+ is the next best thing to NextStep's system, from what I have seen. I'll bet you've never used it. GTK+ has the same capability to modify the UI, provided that you use libglade (as you should, as mentioned in the article). If you don't like a GTK+ UI, you can open up glade, reshape the.glade file, and wha-lah, you have a rearranged UI. I'm not so certain that you can add new elements very easily without getting into the code (as you can with NextStep's system, but you can do quite a bit). Note that GTK+ is object oriented, even though it is not written in C++. (Guess what! There are languages out there that are not C++... Some of them are even something called "functional"... Unfortunately, functional concepts seem to be lost to the world...)
Unfortunately, I can't speak for QT; I've never used it. {:(}=
Now MFC..?! An object oriented system? It's the epitome of bad OO design. Good lord; when you use MFC, it generates these enormous files for you with macro blocks that say, "DO NOT TOUCH THESE!" around them. You can't add anything except through the grace of the UI builder. Is this "modular design"? This from people who mindlessly repeat the mantra "We must have type safety"?! It's nuts. Okay, now lets move beyond the macro blocks. When you are using MFC, it generates functions for you, and you are supposed to manually modify these functions. You can't register your functions; you have to manually go in and modify the code that it generates for you. And we are supposed to believe that this is "object oriented" design.
I'm not an OO bigot. But really; If you have determined to be an OO bigot, at leastbe a good OO bigot. Pull out your SmallTalk books, Simula, Design Patterns, Objective-C. Trace your roots. Read them. Read about NextStep. Study. Look at well documented, and well implemented, OO UI designs. Please. I'm begging you. As much as I despise OO facists, at least I want to talk with quality OO facists. Please don't align yourself with MFC.
(I generally hate writing flames, but some just have to be written...)
Slashdot Mirror
Dear Ben Crowell,
Two points:
As for prohibiting linking to non-free articles:
Easy enough to understand. It's a self-restriction. It's so that we don't get lazy, give 3 details, and then say, "For the other 100 details, go check out these 15 web pages."
It also ensures that it's Free, through and through. I really don't mind, all that much.
Sure, you could read this book...
OR, you could read Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing, and learn everything there is know about creating dynamic web sites, for free. That's right; click on the book, and you'll be face to face with one of the best books (and websites) that I have ever read, period.
I've bought the book 3 times in print, because it has the highest circulation amongst my book collection.
...As if the world owes the concept of interface to OOP.
The concept of a wall socket is very old. It's so old, it's even present in UNIX. Look in your /dev/, and the interface that your devices are programmed to. The author of the web page is right; OOP is claiming a lot of inventions that are not it's own...
It's too bad. I wish more computer scientists look at computer science history, rather than the "Learn SQL, C++, and make a bunch of money" book shelf.
"Too much pornography" is "obviously dangerous"?! This guy scares me. I plan on raising my daughter to be comfortable with nudity and pornography.
Screw the prudes!
Somehow, I don't think you've ever met the SpeakEasy crew...
I find it rather laughable to believe that this is "scheming marketeers"...
The SpeakEasy staff are the most environmentally (both social and ecological environments) conscious people I have ever met.
Their cafe is an incredible place.
I suspect that the folk behind the SpeakEasy cafe are behind this;
I walked by the cafe with my girlfriend on New Years [wanting to visit the staff], and they noted that they were closed for New Years Eve and New Years. It said, "Come see us at the Monolith Party!", or something like that.
They're crazy, interesting, and rich enough to pull off something like this. I'd say: Quite possibly (likely?) it was them..!
Ah-hah!
And we shouldn't let people give their books to other people, either! Cuts into writer's pocketses, oh yes- it does!
But, wait- What about if I bought a CD before, but I lost it 10 years ago. I have to buy it again? WHAT?!
I'm one person. But I had to pay twice. What's with that? It now seems that we have one person with knowledge of the content, but the author has been paid twice..!
I love it. You say "Chelyabinsk? ... Everyone knows about that place, TV, newspapers talk about it, and it is known as the "living graveyard", but the guy immediately before you (tftp) posts that everything is fine and dandy there..! (I added the link to Chelyabinsk.)
This is a really surprising experience for me, okay? Look, I'm just a guy. I go to work. I take Chemistry at night for night classes. One day, a prof tells us stuff I'd never heard of before. I decide, "You know what, I'm going to tell people, as best I can," okay?
Just realize that's what common knowledge for you isn't common knowledge over here, okay? I probably have some of the details wrong, but overall, the picture was, and still is, much worse than we knew/know over here.
Yah, there's propaganda on both sides of the fence; we all know this. But what happened over there is far worse than any accident that ever happened over here. The Navada test explosions, 3-mile isle, and Hanford are *nothing* compared to Cherynoble. This isn't an attack on Russia. Russia doesn't need an attack right now. It needs serious help.
(Atomic Cafe, for the US readers, is a good video on USA propaganda, complete with 1950-60's video TV coverage, aired in Navada: "You're hair may fall out, but do not worry! It will grow back!".)
As for "Lake Death", I've never heard of it. I have no idea what it is.
Let me address these one at a time.
Yes, Zoller said that they were working on Nuclear Hand grenades.
As for the special security clearance: No. His security clearance was due to the fact that he worked with nuclear weapons for the military. As for the permission to talk to his class and individuals, but not the press- this has something to do with what he saw through the military, vs. what he saw through the UN. I really don't know much about the protocol; Apparently he saw things working as a UN inspector that doubled what he saw through his military service. When he wrote to DC, they told him he couldn't make statements in front of press, and had to ask press members to leave. Look, I really don't know much about press and the military and what not.
Next: The MP's. He told something in a [previous] class that one of his students later told his father, who was in the military. The students father happened to know something about the matter, and reported it. Days later, MP's showed up in Zoller's office and required him to show his papers granting permission. I don't know what the subject matter was; it had something to do with a river. I really don't know.
His work in discovering the source of the fallout: The 1st people to tell that something was wrong were some people who were working in a nuclear lab somewhere NW of Cherynooble; I forget what the country was. (It wasn't Russia). Nuclear plant workers test themselves for radioactivity after they enter some sort of dangerous area, but just by chance, a worker decided to investigate himself before entering. He had been in the rain before coming to work. When he tested himself, he found that he was radioactive. The people in the plant worked to figure out what was wrong, and they figured out that the rain outside was radioactive. They reported it.
A short while after, Professor Zoller got a phone call from the military. He wasn't an active serviceman then, I think. I think he'd already left the military at this time, and was at the University of Washington (I forget.) They had arranged for airplane tickets for him to fly down to the bay area (I think). He took the flight (on a commercial airplane), and when it landed, before they unboarded everyone, he was specifically unboarded by the military. They took him to a lab where they had some substance. They told him (and other nuclear chemists with him) to analyze it and tell them what it was. They analyzed it for many days, and reported, "This is rainwater that has been contaminated; a nuclear reactor has exploded somewhere." They said, "That's right." (They wanted to verify that it was true- this is before we all knew about it.) He then helped with the determination of which plant blew up. The Russians were denying that anything had happened at all! Zoller has worked in environmental scientists and was a part of figuring out where the accident happened. He showed us maps that they had, of where the various reactors were, and showed us how the figured that it must have been the Chrenobyl plant. That was his role in determining that it had happened. The world didn't know about it till afterwards..!
As for the "Radioactive Seattle Fish": I can assure you, the fish in Seattle are quite tasty, and I imagine uncontaminated as well. Professor Zoller's predictions were that in 10 years, however, the situation will be different. As for this stuff, I refer you to the arctic environmental reports that I linked to above. Zoller claims that the EPA knows about the dangers in our Arctic sea. Right now, he says though, it's not their problem. I don't know what their permissions are like; Zoller seemed to imply that they were not supposed to talk about it.
My personal view of Russians is not xenophobic; I personally tutor a 16 year old Russian in computer science. He doesn't pay me anything; I just noticed talent in him, and decided to help him learn Computer Science. (It was painful just watching him play a MUD when he could be developing his skills and having more fun then typing the "n" "s" "e" and "w" keys.) He's very nice. I'm kinda trying to convince him that communism isn't the way to go, but he's really adament about it. I think he's just a little young and naive. He's leaning more towards socialism now, which I guess is better.
I suspect as long as there is Love in everyone's hearts, it doesn't matter WHAT type of government you have. Hell, you could probably have a fascist state if everyone was warm and caring.
Zoller's another story. He doesn't have the greatest things to say about the Russian culture. <shrug> I don't think that makes him a liar or an exaggerator though. He believes that the Russians have had troubles with corruption before Stalin even. He said that their history has been really bad, and that they've been suffering a lot, throughout history.
I'm really not a Russian historian. I don't know a thing about Russia.
There's a guy posting here (ekeen, or something like that). He might be a better person to ask about the Russian spirit.
At no point have I said that Russians have no respect for human life.
As for Remembering that my prof is a human: Yes, that's true. I can't really tell what parts of what Zoller has said are precise and which are not. Hell, I'm operating off of memory, and that's even worse..! But the essence of what Zoller has said is very clear in my mind. Anyways, I can't discriminate on something in Zoller's mind, so tell you what: I'll just recount as much I can.
It was quite a different story than I had ever heard before...
Ektanoor, aside from the part where you called me a stupid troll, I liked your post. Okay?
For you, it sounds like these things are obvious, but from the background I came from, from what I was taught in school, it was just sort of this little cute accident, and it's all better now. So I was really shocked to learn about how terrible it was. It sounds like it's obvious to you how terrible it was, but for the rest of us, who don't know anything about Russia or Chrynoble (hell, I can't even spell it right), or even the cold war (I'm only 23; I don't remember much of it)), it was a bit shocking to learn this stuff.
In this post, you haven't refuted anything that I've said.
But, I was told that there were "brave firefighters" putting out the fire. I saw a hollywood-made documentary with a recreation, and that's the way they drew it: Brave firefighters immediately got on the scene to put out the fire.
Zoller told me otherwise. He said as soon as the accident happened, the KGB (& military- I can't quite remember) were on the scene and getting people to put it out under threat of there lives. (Well, they were all going to die *anyways*...)
As for right now: I have no doubt that your friends were brave and knowingly helping out. That's very heroic, and it's really important to me- they're making a better world for me, because they value human life.
I'm sorry if my description said otherwise.
I have a Russian student who I teach Computer Science. He's a good guy.
The "point gun", as you are referring to it, was immediately after the accident. As in, the days immediately following the accident.
Yes, the photos that Zoller showed us were black and white. They were not arial photos, they were from within the building. (In the basement? There was this dripping goo stuff.) Again, I can't tell you much about the pictures. But- I can tell you they were black and white, and they weren't arial shots.
Look, I don't mean to say that the people out there today aren't brave and doing a good thing; I was just trying to communicate what I heard from Zoller, and that I believe him. He said that immediately after the accident, the KGB (& military? I can't remember) can on site and forced people to put out the fire, or whatever it was that they were doing.
I'm not a Russian expert. I don't know what the NKVD. I don't know a thing about the culture. (I do know that when a host toasts you alchohol, you're so post to toast them back, or something like that- This was something Zoller mentioned when he was talking about his Russian friends, and being invited to a Russian house.)
I don't know why they didn't want him to know what the radiation was like down there. Yes, they kept him away from the building because he would die if he got too close. He said he needed pictures of the interior. They said that they would get them for him. He showed us the pictures, in lecture, and said that people (2-3, I forget the #) died to get the picture. Now maybe the Russians can afford robots, but by the picture Zoller painted: No, they can't. He told us that they sent people down with cameras until one managed to make it back, and subsequently die.
But I really don't know why they wouldn't want him to know why the radiation levels were as high as they were. That's a good question to ask him.
He mentioned that when they were leaving, there was a guy who was looking over the car with a Geiger counter. Zoller said he looked over at the guy waving the device around, and didn't see any movement on the needle. He said that there is always at least a background radiation; he walked over to the guy with the device and turned it on. The device lit up.
The authorities weren't too happy about this. Someone (I forget if it was a translator or a friend or whatever) said, "Get in the car. Shut up. They'll take you to the airport. Don't say anything." I don't know if they were just embarrased, or if something else was going on. Ask Zoller.
One thing I'm taking from this Slashdot experience- ask more questions and keep more detailed notes!
Remember, you're free to email the prof.
Ektanoor; yes; this is correct, if my memory is serving me correctly. (Professor Zoller told us about helicoptor pilots that died hours after flying over it; I forgot what they were doing though.)
As far as I know, forced labor isn't being used to seal the sarcophagus; The forced labor (if Zoller is correct) happened immediately after the accident occured.
I wish you were right.
Most of his research has been to use Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis to measure trace elements in samples from the Atmosphere. His work also has been with the measurement of RadioIsotopes in the environment from atmospheric weapons testing and reactor accidents such as Chernobyl in the Former Soviet Union. Zoller also has worked with a lot of nuclear weapons for the military, but that's not on any of his web pages.
The reason Zoller does his Chernobyl lecture ("Chernobyl: A Glowing Account"), is so that people will hear what he has to say. Again, he's not allowed to talk to the press, but he is allowed to lecture on it.
We can all be grateful for the grue-driver courage and sacrifice. There's no greater gift than laying down our lives for another; I believe that is true. But, the people who were initially putting out the fires in the Chernobyl plant were not functioning voluntarily. At least, that's what Zoller told me: The KGB instructed people to put them out. People went to the top of the whatever-you-call-it, pointed their hoses to the whatever-it-was, and died after a short while, to be replaced with someone else. There work was important, we should be thankful, but we should not be operating under the illusion that they were operating voluntarily.
From what I understand, everyone that was on the scene or in the nearby city is now dead.
That you're shocked and accusing me is a good sign. It means that you value human life.
I'm sorry. I just tell this because I have a priveledged position- I was able to hear this, and I wanted to rely this out. Again, I'm very sorry. But this is what Zoller has told me.
Why don't you ask him yourself about the film? I'd do so myself right now, but I'm in the middle of working on decyphering rotating world models for work. The photographs were black and white, for what it's worth. I'm not an expert on the subject (I'm taking a freshman chemistry course, and decided to attend Zoller's lecture). But, I did see these photographs, as well as several others of the area.
As for "there's no kind of secturiy clearance that you can tell anyone except news people about", I'm going to have to differ with you.
Zoller explained that normally, if you learn certain things in the military (such as detailed information about how nuclear weapons work), you are not allowed to talk about it with the public.
However, there were some things that he learned when we was working for the UN as an investigator. He wrote to DC asking for permission to talk about these things. They granted it, but he was not allowed to talk to the press about it. (Later, some MP's arrived on campus to verify that he had clearance to talk about various things.) If the press asked about it, he was told that he would have to deny it. He is allowed to talk to students about it.
Look, I don't know; I'm just a part-time student. But I can tell you that my understanding of things changed an awful lot on that day.
Nuclear submarines: Excuse me; it was the nuclear missles that were attached to the submarines that were stupid, not the engines.
For those who think this may just be some anti-nuclear propoganda, or something like that: No. Zoller said that irradiated foods were perfectly safe, and repeatedly said, "We live in a radioactive world- the light around us is radiation." He seemed to be upset by public fear of the words "Chemical" and "Radiation". I was unclear after his talk about how he felt about Nuclear power. He takled briefly about Hanford and 3-Mile island. (He also noted that they were far less damaging than Cherynoble. I think the values were something like 120,000 Curie for Hanford, but 3,000,000 Curie for Cherynoble. 3-Mile was tiny. Again, I wish I had my notes with me here at work.)
I imagine if National Geographic sent their reporters there, they'd have used robots.
But there's a big difference between the Russian government and National Geographic.
Professor Zoller had the same observations about the "sarcophagus". He said that he wasn't allowed to get near the actual building, despite claims that it was safe. (He brought his own geiger counter, and it was showing extremely dangerous levels of radioactivity as he went near the building.)
The Chernobyl accident is far from over. I attended a special lecture by Professor William Zoller at the University of Washington, in which he described what happened, and is continuing to happen, at Chernobyl. It is not an entertaining lecture to attend. He told us a lot of things.
Professor Zoller showed us images of the radioactive goo at the bottom of the reacter. He told us that 3 people died to get the picture. The government just kept sending people down with cameras until someone went down, took a picture, and survived the trip back up, and then died. (Prof. Zoller was functioning as a UN inspector, or something. I have forgotten just what he was doing over there.)
If there are pictures of the interior of the building where the accident occured, you can pretty much assume people died to take them.
No, they didn't send robots to take those pictures.
All Russian nuclear plants were breeder plants. Apparently, they wanted plutonium for their weapons. Nuclear submarines, and, yes, NUCLEAR HANDGRENADES are the stupidest ideas in history, but, hey... There wasn't/isn't exactly a concern for human life over there.
Arctic dumping was the primary means of evacuating radioactive waste. Rivers were also a way of getting the waste out of there. As far as I can tell, people panicked, and thought, "Well, if we just dump this in the sea, it'll all just go away." In 10 years time, here in Seattle, we'll be told not to eat our fish. (This is according to Professor Zoller.) He also claims that the EPA knows about this, but is required to keep quiet. But, they continue to monitor the radioactivity of boats coming in on the ports here in Seattle.
The so-called "Brave Firefighters" who put out the fire were not brave. They were forced to put it out by the KGB.
There is a place called Chelyabink-Tomask (unfortunately, I don't have my notes with me and cannot spell the name correctly.) that is a living graveyard, guarded by the military; They are essentially, waiting to die. Nobody goes out, nobody goes in.
You can verify this yourself by contacting him. He will ask you if you are a member of the press. If you are, he is not allowed to talk about it with you. So ask him personally.
I wonder if posting an email to Slashdot is equivelent to being a member of the press.?
These notes are from my memory, not my written notes; I'm afraid there will probably be imprecise. But they are accurate. That is, what is described is true, though I may have numbers and names wrong. His lecture scared me immensly. The room had only about 10% of the people in it by the time he finished...
Related links:
Games are really important to me.
When I was growing up, my favorite games were Star Flight, the Final Fantasy series, Secret of Mana, and many other games that I can't remember the names of, but that I remember the essences of. Sure, I played Contra, and Mario as well, but they didn't really shape my values.
I liked the social values that these series offered me; they were values that my parents did not. Hey! People in RPG's are kind and treat one another well!
I think that I am a better person because of these games, and because of this I thank the authors for them.
I'm a participant of the Freebook Project because free (liber) educational materials are very important. From our site, there is a list of free books on all sorts of topics.
We discuss issues related to producing and promoting free books, and we are collectively writing a book on free books.
Please help us out if you are interested.
I live in Seattle and teach free classes on how to program, use a shell, architecture issues, and what not.
I've noticed conversation and interest shifting into the HURD lately, and have decided that it will be a good place to go, in terms of studying and teaching.
A microkernel where we can add and remove services will be nice as an educational tool, and will be interesting to work inside of. It seems like a good thing. It probably is.
60/72 Hz is what we want when we play games, but you generally have to target above that for when your potentially viewable set (PVS) changes dramatically- if you move *really* fast (missile cam), say, or if you just turn your head 90 degrees (and look down a completely different hallway).
A current trend in games is to seperate the rendering cycle from the simulation cycle.
Historically, games have been implemented with a read-eval-print loop like this:
Now, we (FPS, 3D) seem to be moving towards the parallelization of read/eval (simulation) cycles and the print (display) cycles. That way they can be controlled independently: The display can be given just the cycles it needs to provide 60/72Hz, and simulation lives in it's own space. The display routines have their own prediction mechanisms to make sure that they can keep pace.
Read the Judge's paper; It's quite fascinating and an in-depth description of the 1st Amendment, written remarkably clearly. The section on how games are produced is a better description than you will ever find in Game Developer's Magazine.
From what I gather from reading the article, courts are not so concerned about whether or not it has been proved that video games can cause harm to childen; It is more concerned with the possibility of harm. While I can imagine many arguments both for and against, and personally believe that violent or sexual video games do *not* harm children (I would cite Japan's media history as a primary example, as well as the Brother's Grim for the European history), the courts hold that as long as there is a possibility, that it is sufficient to allow communities to regulate.
Note that if the focus of the game and the primary value derived from the game was a political idea, a specific message, or artistic value, that violence and nudity are both allowed, and the game is protected under the 1st amendment.
I highly recommend reading the judge's well informed "opinion", and making your own mind up after having read it in it's entirety.
Having formed your opinion, make a contribution to the comic book legal defence fund.
I'm a game programmer. Every day, I see the enormous efforts being heaped into making shared 3-D game worlds a reality. It is incredibly difficult; it is not a trivial task. State/event distribution and user interface are terribly hard problems.
Rendering is the easy part.
I find it a little... funny that the VRML is saying, "What? We can't do this in our web browsers yet?" when the game world is working full time to produce meager results.
I'd say: Leave it in the oven for another decade, and I think we will all be pleased with what we find.
I'm sorry, but this is nuts. MFC is the worst example of OO UI that I have ever seen.
If you really buy into Object Oriented dogma, and you want to make an OO UI, you have two places to look for real examples:
Unfortunately, I can't speak for QT; I've never used it. {:(}=
Now MFC..?! An object oriented system? It's the epitome of bad OO design. Good lord; when you use MFC, it generates these enormous files for you with macro blocks that say, "DO NOT TOUCH THESE!" around them. You can't add anything except through the grace of the UI builder. Is this "modular design"? This from people who mindlessly repeat the mantra "We must have type safety"?! It's nuts. Okay, now lets move beyond the macro blocks. When you are using MFC, it generates functions for you, and you are supposed to manually modify these functions. You can't register your functions; you have to manually go in and modify the code that it generates for you. And we are supposed to believe that this is "object oriented" design.
I'm not an OO bigot. But really; If you have determined to be an OO bigot, at leastbe a good OO bigot. Pull out your SmallTalk books, Simula, Design Patterns, Objective-C. Trace your roots. Read them. Read about NextStep. Study. Look at well documented, and well implemented, OO UI designs. Please. I'm begging you. As much as I despise OO facists, at least I want to talk with quality OO facists. Please don't align yourself with MFC.
(I generally hate writing flames, but some just have to be written...)