Nuclear power is inefficient. The plants cost hundreds of millions. The variable costs may be low once they are set up, but the initial fixed costs are high, and there is still no good solution for what to do with the toxic waste they produce. How many of you pro-nuke posters would be willing to have a nuclear plant within 20 miles of were you live? How many would be willing to have the toxic waste stored on-site of the plant? I thought so.
After a 20-year struggle to shut down the Trojan nuclear power plant here in the Northwest, which never produced electricity and yet we are still paying for, it will be a cold day on the Sun before people allow a nuclear plant in Oregon or Washington.
Why do we periodically hear about appeals for more nuclear power? Couldn't be because General Electric and other large multinationals sell the technology.
Why don't we hear more about small-scale solar power? Could it be because you sell the consumer a solar panel once and then you get no more money out of him until he replaces it in 20 or 30 years? No monthly check to the utility. The utility doesn't buy hydrocarbons from the oil and gas companies. We all know how much companies love the subscription model.
If corporations could find a way to put a meter between the Sun and the consumer and charge us per-lumen then you'd see massive investment in solar power research in this country. Until then, they'll continue to push nuclear.
Okay now hands up, how many of you pro-nuke posters are Astro-turfers being paid to post in favor of it? I thought so.
Companies are constrained from passing on the full value of their tax to their customers by the price elasticity of demand for their product. Which in turn depends on the how much their customers need their product (can they put off buying them or do without, do they yearn for it?) and the availability of substitute products and the degree to which those substitute products are suitable (Linux and Mac OS X are pretty good, as is OpenOffice).
If he could pass on the full cost to his customers Ballmer wouldn't care about a tax increase.
I'm From The Federal Government Purchasing Authority. As You Know, The Federal Government Is The Largest Purchaser Of Hard Disk-Equipped Devices In The World. We'd Love To Put Your New Self-Encrypting Hard Drive On Our List Of Devices Approved For Purchase, But First We Require Your Cooperation In Implementing Some Features.
The Nsa And Fbi Have Some Concerns That This Particular Product May Be Used To Facilitate Illegal Behavior: Terrorism, Child Pornography, Piracy Of Major Feature Films, Among Other Threats To Public Safety. So, They'll Require A Way To Decrypt Any Such Device Without The Consent Of It's Owner. Only Then Will We Be Able To Make Our Sizable Initial Purchase Of Your Devices.
Should You Choose Not To Cooperate With Us In This, We May Be Forced To Re-Open Any Previous Approvals We've Given Other Products That You Produce. Also, The Irs May Have Some Questions About Certain Of Your Executive Compensation Practices.
As Businessmen And Patriots, We're Sure We Can Count On Your Cooperation In This.
Sincerely,
John Apparatchik Purchasing Requirements Conformity Director National Institute of Standards and Technology United States Department of Commerce
So you judge research based on who did it? Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy.
This research is easily verifiable. I verified some of it's claims after reading this paper. Specifically, I used Safari's reset feature that is supposed to clear all cookies. Then, checked the directory where the article says Flash stores user-data. It was all still there. I don't care if Kate McKinley is Satan herself. She is clearly telling the truth about this particular claim.
Your ad-hominem attack is based on another logical fallacy. You should really learn how science works. Research is valid not because of the credentials (or lack thereof) of the researcher, but if it takes a disprovable hypothesis and designs reproducible experiments that test measurable evidence that logically would disprove it.
I can't speak for everyone, but I was one of those anarchists (Boo!) who went to Seattle for N30 1999. My affinity group and I went there not "looking for a riot" but to blockade with our bodies the entrances to the venue for the World Trade Organization meetings to prevent the delegates from meeting there and conspiring against the public good.
In an attempt to clear the streets, the cops began to use pepper-spray and tear gas. Only then did groups of protestors begin to smash things up. If you've never been tear gassed, I can tell you it engenders a strong desire to smash shit belonging to the gassers. If I didn't, it was only because I didn't come across what I felt was a suitable target.
Later in the day the police pushed a large chunk of the demonstration out of downtown and up into the Capital Hill neighborhood where they continued to unleash their pepper spray, tear gas, and clubs indiscriminately on anyone on the sidewalks or even standing on the porches of their homes observing. They gave the good people of Capitol Hill an object lesson in what the police are all about in this society.
Far from being brain-dead, I think that I and my fellow protestors were better informed and politically engaged than the public at large.
Saw it last night. It should have wrapped up 20 minutes earlier. Also, does anyone else find it strange that the thug who pulled a gun on the District Attorney while on the stand was later picked up by Gordon and cops at the bar? So you try to murder the district attorney in the courtroom and you just get out on bail? WTF?
I find that after 12 car chase scenes, chase scenes are boring. Explosions are boring after the 60th one. Maybe I'm not the target market for these films, but I liked Iron Man better -- and I hate Tony Stark in the comics, billionaire industrialist dickhead that he is.
"Cocoa only works with Objective-C code" Actually, there are bridges to the Cocoa API for quite a few languages other than Objective-C in varying degrees of development.
The Java bridge has been deprecated, but there are bridges from Python (PyObjC), Lisp, and Ruby.
Predictions on the internet are not worth the electrons they are printed on.
For anything longer than a long magazine article I much prefer to read a hard copy than on-screen. I'm not the only one by far. The library has been improved by computers. They do not render them obsolete.
In Portland the Multnomah County library catalog is on-line. I can look up a book that interests me from my computer, put a hold on it, and it will be shipped to my local branch which is 3 blocks away from my apartment. When the book or CD arrives I get an email notifying me that I have 5 days to pick it up. All of this holds true for interlibrary loans, as well.
The computer has made the public library more relevant to me, not less. But an article about this would never be sexy enough to make the front page of slashdot.
A mission out to Titan to collect a load of hydrocarbons would cost far more energy than the load would be worth.
Same is true about Iraq's oil... Does not stop millions of idiots world-wide from claiming, ours is a "War for Oil".
It may be true that Iraq's oil will turn out to be more expensive to seize than it is worth. But the people benefiting from the war are not the one's paying for it. So in their calculations it is a great deal.
The public bears the costs and certain well-connected corporations reap the benefits.
If you still think that the invasion of Iraq was about "WMD" or bringing democracy to that country and not cold hard cash, you are worse than an idoit. You are a sucker.
I'm writing via the wireless network in a café in Xela, Guatemala on my 15" Macbook Pro. I'm amazed by how many internet "cafés" (really just a place to rent time on the computer) I've seen in this country. Even in the tiny town of Colomba (pop ~ 7000) there's one. And many cafés have wifi.
I'm going to be in Central America and Mexico for some months, and I'm glad I brought the laptop. It's saved me the fees of computer-rental places and I get to use my preferred OS and programs in more comfortable surroundings. (Guatemalan computers are all wintel boxes. Many tourists have Mac laptops with them. But no Guateltecos that I have spoken to have heard of Linux.)
It's good to have something to download my photos to and edit them before I email them to friends or put them on my web site. But I wish I had something smaller. A macbook would have been more practical and they're tougher with their polycarbonate housing.
I brought a small firewire drive for backups just in case. Don't want to lose all those photos! Also bring a USB flashkey for data transfer when you do need to use the rent-a-computers.
Yeah, umm. There is no such thing as "human capital". Capital is a store of value that is used to acquire the means of production (plant and machinery), raw materials and labor that is then used in production of something to be sold on the market.
What you are calling "human capital" has been known previously as "labor", as in "non-competes as the DRM of labor". But apparently in this amazing new, new economy labor is no longer required, production is a process of just "capital" and ummmm "human capital".
The AP quotes a network security engineer at Google, Paul "Tony" Watson who says of Comcast, "It's their network and they can do what they want".
Well "their" network runs on the public right-of-way. This private interest tore up our streets and yards in order to make money hand over fist. In exchange for use of the public right-of-way Comcast agreed to certain conditions set by the relevant local governments. Unless the local government officials involved were hopelessly corrupt or stupid they extracted concessions like public access facilities and channels, and an annual franchise fee.
In return Comcast also got the exclusive right to provide cable services to an area. No competition. You'll never find two cable companies operating in the same area. It just doesn't make economic sense to have two separate entities digging two separate trenches down the same street to provide the same service - it's redundant and wasteful. That's also why in each city block there is only one entity stringing electrical wires, telephone lines and laying pipe for water mains.
According to anti-trust law and non-religious economic theory, monopolies should not be tolerated because they rob the public of the benefits of competition. But certain industries - like electricity, water, roads, telecoms - are called "natural monopolies" in standard economics texts. They recognize that it is impractical to try to introduce competition into these areas. So they recommend that monopoly in these areas be allowed to exist so long as they are either publicly owned or closely regulated to prevent them from abusing their sanctioned monopolies to shaft the public with high prices, shoddy service or other abusive practices.
I think impersonating the customer to prevent communications of which the company doesn't approve, while lying to the customer about it, falls under "abusive practices".
Comcast is a state-sanctioned monopoly, operating a network on the public right-of-way. As are the telecom companies that provide DSL. We bloody well can tell them what they can and cannot do with "their network". Congress should mandate network neutrality through explicit laws. Mere administrative regulations from the FCC can be too easily ignored or waived by lazy or corrupt officials (who then retire to take cushy jobs with Comcast).
If Comcast doesn't like it, local governments can turn the cable franchise over to another company who will abide by their rules and conditions or run it as a public service as the town of Ashland, Oregon has done for years.
"The argument relating to CDs espoused in the joint reply could be summarized: although nothing has prevented consumers from making backups of CDs, this cannot be construed as authorization from the music labels for them to do so. Thus, there has been no authorization of said backups, and the coincidental ability to make backups currently should not be mistaken for fair use."
Worse, according to this theory, if I have ripped a CD I have bought to my own computer that's stealing once. If I then copy the song to my iPod nano I have stolen a second time. If I then copy the song to my iPhone I have stolen a third time.
The corollary of this is that the record companies want us to purchase music we already own again for each new device that we play it back on. That's what this is really all about, not the supposed billions of dollars in losses that the RIAA says they have suffered due to P2P file sharing.
The day Apple installs an update without my consent is the day I wipe OSX off my drive and install GNU/Linux on my Macbook Pro. Ubuntu Server already runs on my intel mac mini.
Re:Things like this are easy to fix.
on
Google's Evil NDA
·
· Score: 1
I used to be a union steward at the City of Portland. In one case I represented a co-worker who was being disciplined by management in a way that he and I felt was unjust. At the end of a long, drawn-out process we negotiated an agreement that was acceptable to the co-worker and management. The City lawyers were to commit our agreement to writing and send it along to my co-worker to sign.
When the written agreement arrived it contained a couple clauses to which we had not agreed and my co-worker objected. He was really upset by this. He wanted the whole months-long ordeal to be over, but he thought that the added terms were unreasonable.
So, I opened Word and re-typed the agreement without the offending clauses, so that it reflected what we had actually agreed on in our last meeting with management (I had an audio tape of it), and printed it out on City letterhead. My co-worker signed that and we sent it to the City lawyers.
We never mentioned the clauses I excised, and neither did management. I can only assume that they just filed it away without ever proof-reading it.
It's too bad that they never tried to hold my co-worker to the terms of the clauses I removed. It would have been fun to ask them where they got the idea that he had ever agreed to them!
Slashdot Mirror
Try "remedy", or does that not sound pseudo-technical enough?
Dude, you are truly most awesome.
Please decant 2 dozen betas for us. We'll need them to assemble the centrifugal bumblepuppies. Capitalism+Genetic Engineering = GMO Slaves
Nuclear power is inefficient. The plants cost hundreds of millions. The variable costs may be low once they are set up, but the initial fixed costs are high, and there is still no good solution for what to do with the toxic waste they produce. How many of you pro-nuke posters would be willing to have a nuclear plant within 20 miles of were you live? How many would be willing to have the toxic waste stored on-site of the plant? I thought so.
After a 20-year struggle to shut down the Trojan nuclear power plant here in the Northwest, which never produced electricity and yet we are still paying for, it will be a cold day on the Sun before people allow a nuclear plant in Oregon or Washington.
Why do we periodically hear about appeals for more nuclear power? Couldn't be because General Electric and other large multinationals sell the technology.
Why don't we hear more about small-scale solar power? Could it be because you sell the consumer a solar panel once and then you get no more money out of him until he replaces it in 20 or 30 years? No monthly check to the utility. The utility doesn't buy hydrocarbons from the oil and gas companies. We all know how much companies love the subscription model.
If corporations could find a way to put a meter between the Sun and the consumer and charge us per-lumen then you'd see massive investment in solar power research in this country. Until then, they'll continue to push nuclear.
Okay now hands up, how many of you pro-nuke posters are Astro-turfers being paid to post in favor of it? I thought so.
Just curious. Why do you not like this article?
Not true.
Companies are constrained from passing on the full value of their tax to their customers by the price elasticity of demand for their product. Which in turn depends on the how much their customers need their product (can they put off buying them or do without, do they yearn for it?) and the availability of substitute products and the degree to which those substitute products are suitable (Linux and Mac OS X are pretty good, as is OpenOffice).
If he could pass on the full cost to his customers Ballmer wouldn't care about a tax increase.
Hello,
I'm From The Federal Government Purchasing Authority. As You Know, The Federal Government Is The Largest Purchaser Of Hard Disk-Equipped Devices In The World. We'd Love To Put Your New Self-Encrypting Hard Drive On Our List Of Devices Approved For Purchase, But First We Require Your Cooperation In Implementing Some Features.
The Nsa And Fbi Have Some Concerns That This Particular Product May Be Used To Facilitate Illegal Behavior: Terrorism, Child Pornography, Piracy Of Major Feature Films, Among Other Threats To Public Safety. So, They'll Require A Way To Decrypt Any Such Device Without The Consent Of It's Owner. Only Then Will We Be Able To Make Our Sizable Initial Purchase Of Your Devices.
Should You Choose Not To Cooperate With Us In This, We May Be Forced To Re-Open Any Previous Approvals We've Given Other Products That You Produce. Also, The Irs May Have Some Questions About Certain Of Your Executive Compensation Practices.
As Businessmen And Patriots, We're Sure We Can Count On Your Cooperation In This.
Sincerely,
John Apparatchik
Purchasing Requirements Conformity Director
National Institute of Standards and Technology
United States Department of Commerce
Oh, so I can sell myself to you then? Man, this whole time I thought the 14th amendment prevented that particular transaction between private parties.
So you judge research based on who did it? Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy.
This research is easily verifiable. I verified some of it's claims after reading this paper. Specifically, I used Safari's reset feature that is supposed to clear all cookies. Then, checked the directory where the article says Flash stores user-data. It was all still there. I don't care if Kate McKinley is Satan herself. She is clearly telling the truth about this particular claim.
Your ad-hominem attack is based on another logical fallacy. You should really learn how science works. Research is valid not because of the credentials (or lack thereof) of the researcher, but if it takes a disprovable hypothesis and designs reproducible experiments that test measurable evidence that logically would disprove it.
Who is bogaboga and does he work for Adobe?
No gasoline bombs were thrown in Seattle. I have never even heard such an assertion made by the police. Cite your sources.
I can't speak for everyone, but I was one of those anarchists (Boo!) who went to Seattle for N30 1999. My affinity group and I went there not "looking for a riot" but to blockade with our bodies the entrances to the venue for the World Trade Organization meetings to prevent the delegates from meeting there and conspiring against the public good.
In an attempt to clear the streets, the cops began to use pepper-spray and tear gas. Only then did groups of protestors begin to smash things up. If you've never been tear gassed, I can tell you it engenders a strong desire to smash shit belonging to the gassers. If I didn't, it was only because I didn't come across what I felt was a suitable target.
Later in the day the police pushed a large chunk of the demonstration out of downtown and up into the Capital Hill neighborhood where they continued to unleash their pepper spray, tear gas, and clubs indiscriminately on anyone on the sidewalks or even standing on the porches of their homes observing. They gave the good people of Capitol Hill an object lesson in what the police are all about in this society.
Far from being brain-dead, I think that I and my fellow protestors were better informed and politically engaged than the public at large.
Saw it last night. It should have wrapped up 20 minutes earlier. Also, does anyone else find it strange that the thug who pulled a gun on the District Attorney while on the stand was later picked up by Gordon and cops at the bar? So you try to murder the district attorney in the courtroom and you just get out on bail? WTF?
I find that after 12 car chase scenes, chase scenes are boring. Explosions are boring after the 60th one. Maybe I'm not the target market for these films, but I liked Iron Man better -- and I hate Tony Stark in the comics, billionaire industrialist dickhead that he is.
I hadn't heard about this. Do you have any citations to back up your assertions?
Predictions on the internet are not worth the electrons they are printed on.
For anything longer than a long magazine article I much prefer to read a hard copy than on-screen. I'm not the only one by far. The library has been improved by computers. They do not render them obsolete.
In Portland the Multnomah County library catalog is on-line. I can look up a book that interests me from my computer, put a hold on it, and it will be shipped to my local branch which is 3 blocks away from my apartment. When the book or CD arrives I get an email notifying me that I have 5 days to pick it up. All of this holds true for interlibrary loans, as well.
The computer has made the public library more relevant to me, not less. But an article about this would never be sexy enough to make the front page of slashdot.
It may be true that Iraq's oil will turn out to be more expensive to seize than it is worth. But the people benefiting from the war are not the one's paying for it. So in their calculations it is a great deal.
The public bears the costs and certain well-connected corporations reap the benefits.
If you still think that the invasion of Iraq was about "WMD" or bringing democracy to that country and not cold hard cash, you are worse than an idoit. You are a sucker.
I'm writing via the wireless network in a café in Xela, Guatemala on my 15" Macbook Pro. I'm amazed by how many internet "cafés" (really just a place to rent time on the computer) I've seen in this country. Even in the tiny town of Colomba (pop ~ 7000) there's one. And many cafés have wifi.
I'm going to be in Central America and Mexico for some months, and I'm glad I brought the laptop. It's saved me the fees of computer-rental places and I get to use my preferred OS and programs in more comfortable surroundings. (Guatemalan computers are all wintel boxes. Many tourists have Mac laptops with them. But no Guateltecos that I have spoken to have heard of Linux.)
It's good to have something to download my photos to and edit them before I email them to friends or put them on my web site. But I wish I had something smaller. A macbook would have been more practical and they're tougher with their polycarbonate housing.
I brought a small firewire drive for backups just in case. Don't want to lose all those photos! Also bring a USB flashkey for data transfer when you do need to use the rent-a-computers.
Yeah, umm. There is no such thing as "human capital". Capital is a store of value that is used to acquire the means of production (plant and machinery), raw materials and labor that is then used in production of something to be sold on the market.
What you are calling "human capital" has been known previously as "labor", as in "non-competes as the DRM of labor". But apparently in this amazing new, new economy labor is no longer required, production is a process of just "capital" and ummmm "human capital".
Excuse me, I gotta go to work now.
"dot-pee-too-pee" sucks. They clearly can't use that. I hearby open the floor for suggetions. To start I'll throw out:
BitSwarm
next . . .
The AP quotes a network security engineer at Google, Paul "Tony" Watson who says of Comcast, "It's their network and they can do what they want".
Well "their" network runs on the public right-of-way. This private interest tore up our streets and yards in order to make money hand over fist. In exchange for use of the public right-of-way Comcast agreed to certain conditions set by the relevant local governments. Unless the local government officials involved were hopelessly corrupt or stupid they extracted concessions like public access facilities and channels, and an annual franchise fee.
In return Comcast also got the exclusive right to provide cable services to an area. No competition. You'll never find two cable companies operating in the same area. It just doesn't make economic sense to have two separate entities digging two separate trenches down the same street to provide the same service - it's redundant and wasteful. That's also why in each city block there is only one entity stringing electrical wires, telephone lines and laying pipe for water mains.
According to anti-trust law and non-religious economic theory, monopolies should not be tolerated because they rob the public of the benefits of competition. But certain industries - like electricity, water, roads, telecoms - are called "natural monopolies" in standard economics texts. They recognize that it is impractical to try to introduce competition into these areas. So they recommend that monopoly in these areas be allowed to exist so long as they are either publicly owned or closely regulated to prevent them from abusing their sanctioned monopolies to shaft the public with high prices, shoddy service or other abusive practices.
I think impersonating the customer to prevent communications of which the company doesn't approve, while lying to the customer about it, falls under "abusive practices".
Comcast is a state-sanctioned monopoly, operating a network on the public right-of-way. As are the telecom companies that provide DSL. We bloody well can tell them what they can and cannot do with "their network". Congress should mandate network neutrality through explicit laws. Mere administrative regulations from the FCC can be too easily ignored or waived by lazy or corrupt officials (who then retire to take cushy jobs with Comcast).
If Comcast doesn't like it, local governments can turn the cable franchise over to another company who will abide by their rules and conditions or run it as a public service as the town of Ashland, Oregon has done for years.
Worse, according to this theory, if I have ripped a CD I have bought to my own computer that's stealing once. If I then copy the song to my iPod nano I have stolen a second time. If I then copy the song to my iPhone I have stolen a third time.
The corollary of this is that the record companies want us to purchase music we already own again for each new device that we play it back on. That's what this is really all about, not the supposed billions of dollars in losses that the RIAA says they have suffered due to P2P file sharing.
The day Apple installs an update without my consent is the day I wipe OSX off my drive and install GNU/Linux on my Macbook Pro. Ubuntu Server already runs on my intel mac mini.
Anyone know where I can get a SPARC laptop?
I used to be a union steward at the City of Portland. In one case I represented a co-worker who was being disciplined by management in a way that he and I felt was unjust. At the end of a long, drawn-out process we negotiated an agreement that was acceptable to the co-worker and management. The City lawyers were to commit our agreement to writing and send it along to my co-worker to sign.
When the written agreement arrived it contained a couple clauses to which we had not agreed and my co-worker objected. He was really upset by this. He wanted the whole months-long ordeal to be over, but he thought that the added terms were unreasonable.
So, I opened Word and re-typed the agreement without the offending clauses, so that it reflected what we had actually agreed on in our last meeting with management (I had an audio tape of it), and printed it out on City letterhead. My co-worker signed that and we sent it to the City lawyers.
We never mentioned the clauses I excised, and neither did management. I can only assume that they just filed it away without ever proof-reading it.
It's too bad that they never tried to hold my co-worker to the terms of the clauses I removed. It would have been fun to ask them where they got the idea that he had ever agreed to them!
Check out RCDefault App It adds a System Preference Pane that allows you to manage default applications and file type associations with a GUI!