I don't mind the idea of nuclear power, but I don't believe that it can be done competitively (compared to other forms of energy)
When you add up the costs over the complete life-cycle (not just the running costs): - Design - Building the reactor - Fuel costs - Very high security - Very safe fuel disposal & security for the disposal for many years after the reactor is closed. - Very high safety measures, maintenance and continual review by an external body. - Safe disposal and demolition of the reactor after its life cycle has finished.
It will add up pretty quickly. It may be economically viable in the future to do this on a large scale for large countries like the US, but for smaller countries like Australia, it might never be viable.
As you say, any for profit company is going to try and cut many of these very high costs, and many would avoid paying many of the clean-up costs by shutting down operations and claiming that they don't have enough funds to cover upgrades, leaving the taxpayer with the bill. We saw how the energy companies avoided paying infrastructure maintenance costs and got the government to pick-up the tab during the Californian energy brownouts.
My Tree Change Idea: Ideally I'd like to buy some acreage two to three hours outside Sydney, and set up a small community of coders to take on some contract work and split it up so that we only work 2-3 days a week on average. We'd define the number hours we'd work and where we'd work.
It just sounds to me like a more relaxed, free, and flexible lifestyle. It wouldn't cost too much, and still be relatively close to friends and relatives.
Number of abortion providers murdered in the last 15 years: less than 25
Number of people killed by Muslim suicide bombers on Tuesday: more than 60
That's hardly a fair comparison. You're comparing abortion related murders in the U.S. and Canada to suicide bombers in Iraq. There is currently a general violence problem in Iraq due to an impotent government & U.S. military.
A fairer comparison would be something like this:
Number of abortion providers murdered in the last 5 years in US & Canada:
A few.
Number of people killed by Muslim suicide bombers in last 5 years in US & Canada:
Zero.
The magnitude of the problems are really comparable.
I'd probably be just as worried about Christian extremists in the U.S. There are lots of these tiny militant christian groups scattered around the U.S, stockpiling weapons. They just don't get the publicity.
Look up "William Krar" (http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s116 3768.htm), who stockpiled enough chemical weapons and suit case bombs to kill thousands.
He was caught around the time the "Dirty Bomber" was arrested (who just had some dodgy sketches of a bomb), yet he got no media attention at all.
Also from the article linked above:
"The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord, the CSA, they were in Arkansas, and they were about a 75-80 member right-wing neo-Nazi, paramilitary religious, survivalist group, who like many groups of their type, they didn't like Jews, they didn't like men and women of colour, they didn't trust people who had money, and it was their belief that the blacks and the Jews were going to be the ruination of the world, they had assembled weapons to protect their 300-acre compound. We found a 55-gallon container of cyanide that they had thought about dumping into the water system in Chicago, hoping that they could kill African-Americans. When we suggested of course blacks and white drink out of the same water system, that somewhat befuddled them."
The difference between man and the "natural world" is poetic, not scientific.
There's a very big "scientific" difference man and other "forces of nature" that can cause mass extinctions on this scale. We have reasoned thought and the ability to plan for the future, which any other "force of nature" clearly does not.
We can now selectively change any ecosystem that we don't like, and plan ahead to mold our environment to one that suits us. We've evolved to the point where we can remove most of the risks of "natural selection". Most first world people die of age related illnesses (average life-span is somewhere around 75-80). We've removed any large predators from around where we live, and any creatures that compete with us for food.
The rules of natural selection really don't apply much to you or I. If you're stronger, quicker or smarter than me, are you really going to have more offspring or live significantly longer?
I just switched back to UO after playing WoW for the last year or so.
WoW is a good game, incredibly polished and a good amount of content, but after a while it just gets boring. After playing until level 40 or so, it all feels like lots of work for a tiny bit of fun now and again.
On starting up UO for the first time, I winced at the old graphics engine, but after playing for a bit I got right back into the game.
UO is just fun. There seems to be a lot more freedom in what you can do. It seems that everyone who's played it has a story or two to tell about the time they got jumped by PKers, or when they bought their first house, etc... It may be unbalanced, feel really old, and have a ridiculous number of rules to learn, but perhaps this is the appeal. It's the only MMORPG I've played that doesn't have the dreaded everquest level grind. You can just muck around in the game and end up with a half decent character.
Still it would be good to see an updated fully 3d client done properly, a decent quest engine, and some more content.
Oblivion doesn't do that, the monsters apparantly are doing something other than just waiting around for you to turn up.
C'mon. It's not about that. My level three character just took out a Vampire Matriarch and her whole clan with an old beat up dagger. There's something wrong there. Suddenly big, bad monsters aren't all that scary.
# In Oblivion, the ennemies level with you... completely breaks the immersion.
Merchants - *shrug*. Enemies - uh well, keeps the game challenging:) Think of it as 'they level with time', the Oblivion gates open, more powerful enemies appear.
I don't know about this. My level 3 character just wandered into a dungeon and took out a vampire matriarch with a silver dagger. In Morrowind, I would have had the snot beaten out of me.
It seems kind of pointless to scale all your battles, so that you know your character can take on pretty much everything. What's the point of leveling then if you can beat a lot of the stronger monsters in the game as you start out?
In the US, the christian fundamentalist groups are a pretty large terrorist threat. There's hundreds of these well armed little groups scattered across the country, and the FBI can't watch them all.
Look up William Krar. His group got caught with chemical weapons, and was planning to poison the water supply in Chicago. The media barely touched the story because he was white.
I will also admit, after reading your response, that it is possible the "RPG" moniker was adopted by the video game industry to distinguish action/adventure games featuring customizable avatars from other action/adventure games featuring pre-generated avatars; this is not an angle I previously considered for the reasons already cited.
Early pen & paper RPGs and early computer RPGs had a lot more in common.
Early pen & paper RPGs were an evolution from wargaming with miniatures, except the player only controlled one figure and that figure could go up levels and "develop" as they encounter enemies. If you look at early computer RPGs (like the early Ultimas), they could pretty much be miniatures moving about on a massive board, with encounters and a vague story linking the encounters.
"Restoration of voting rights for former felons": Not sure. Is a felon that has served its sentence entitled to the same rights as others?
Should Nelson Mandela have the right to vote?
I've had problems with this a few times, and in my case it was because Acrobat Reader was displaying a "Check for Updates" window. The "Check for Updates" window was hidden behind all my other windows, and freezes Firefox until you close that window.
I remember reading somewhere that the buttons on the right side are arranged as a cross so that they will operate in the same way as the d-pad for left-handed folks in games where this is needed.
I have to pay for a police department, which I've never used. I've never called the fire deparment, which I have to pay for. There's a park down the road that I've never used, but I have to pay for it.
Get over it. Sometimes you pay for things, which you won't use, but they still make the world a better place.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't mind the idea of nuclear power, but I don't believe that it can be done competitively (compared to other forms of energy)
When you add up the costs over the complete life-cycle (not just the running costs):
- Design
- Building the reactor
- Fuel costs
- Very high security
- Very safe fuel disposal & security for the disposal for many years after the reactor is closed.
- Very high safety measures, maintenance and continual review by an external body.
- Safe disposal and demolition of the reactor after its life cycle has finished.
It will add up pretty quickly. It may be economically viable in the future to do this on a large scale for large countries like the US, but for smaller countries like Australia, it might never be viable.
As you say, any for profit company is going to try and cut many of these very high costs, and many would avoid paying many of the clean-up costs by shutting down operations and claiming that they don't have enough funds to cover upgrades, leaving the taxpayer with the bill. We saw how the energy companies avoided paying infrastructure maintenance costs and got the government to pick-up the tab during the Californian energy brownouts.
Australia got uniform defamation laws in 2005:
http://www.efa.org.au/Issues/Censor/defamation.html#2006
Australian Defamation Laws are ridiculously powerful.
A failed restaurant recently successfully sued a major newspaper for a negative review in the Australian High Court.
This sounds like an easy way around the CIA's domestic spying restrictions.
Would a private contractor be subject to any of these restrictions?
My Tree Change Idea: Ideally I'd like to buy some acreage two to three hours outside Sydney, and set up a small community of coders to take on some contract work and split it up so that we only work 2-3 days a week on average. We'd define the number hours we'd work and where we'd work.
It just sounds to me like a more relaxed, free, and flexible lifestyle. It wouldn't cost too much, and still be relatively close to friends and relatives.
Number of abortion providers murdered in the last 15 years: less than 25
6 3768.htm), who stockpiled enough chemical weapons and suit case bombs to kill thousands.
He was caught around the time the "Dirty Bomber" was arrested (who just had some dodgy sketches of a bomb), yet he got no media attention at all.
Number of people killed by Muslim suicide bombers on Tuesday: more than 60
That's hardly a fair comparison. You're comparing abortion related murders in the U.S. and Canada to suicide bombers in Iraq. There is currently a general violence problem in Iraq due to an impotent government & U.S. military.
A fairer comparison would be something like this:
Number of abortion providers murdered in the last 5 years in US & Canada:
A few.
Number of people killed by Muslim suicide bombers in last 5 years in US & Canada:
Zero.
The magnitude of the problems are really comparable.
I'd probably be just as worried about Christian extremists in the U.S. There are lots of these tiny militant christian groups scattered around the U.S, stockpiling weapons. They just don't get the publicity.
Look up "William Krar" (http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s11
Also from the article linked above:
"The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord, the CSA, they were in Arkansas, and they were about a 75-80 member right-wing neo-Nazi, paramilitary religious, survivalist group, who like many groups of their type, they didn't like Jews, they didn't like men and women of colour, they didn't trust people who had money, and it was their belief that the blacks and the Jews were going to be the ruination of the world, they had assembled weapons to protect their 300-acre compound. We found a 55-gallon container of cyanide that they had thought about dumping into the water system in Chicago, hoping that they could kill African-Americans. When we suggested of course blacks and white drink out of the same water system, that somewhat befuddled them."
The difference between man and the "natural world" is poetic, not scientific.
There's a very big "scientific" difference man and other "forces of nature" that can cause mass extinctions on this scale. We have reasoned thought and the ability to plan for the future, which any other "force of nature" clearly does not.
We can now selectively change any ecosystem that we don't like, and plan ahead to mold our environment to one that suits us. We've evolved to the point where we can remove most of the risks of "natural selection". Most first world people die of age related illnesses (average life-span is somewhere around 75-80). We've removed any large predators from around where we live, and any creatures that compete with us for food.
The rules of natural selection really don't apply much to you or I. If you're stronger, quicker or smarter than me, are you really going to have more offspring or live significantly longer?
I just switched back to UO after playing WoW for the last year or so.
WoW is a good game, incredibly polished and a good amount of content, but after a while it just gets boring. After playing until level 40 or so, it all feels like lots of work for a tiny bit of fun now and again.
On starting up UO for the first time, I winced at the old graphics engine, but after playing for a bit I got right back into the game.
UO is just fun. There seems to be a lot more freedom in what you can do. It seems that everyone who's played it has a story or two to tell about the time they got jumped by PKers, or when they bought their first house, etc...
It may be unbalanced, feel really old, and have a ridiculous number of rules to learn, but perhaps this is the appeal. It's the only MMORPG I've played that doesn't have the dreaded everquest level grind. You can just muck around in the game and end up with a half decent character.
Still it would be good to see an updated fully 3d client done properly, a decent quest engine, and some more content.
Don't forget the controversial Google Web Accelerator.
Must be the better methods of detecting skin cancer and the wider access to medical services over time.
If this were the case, then the deaths due to skin cancer should be going down.
They have been increasing in Australia and New Zealand.
Oblivion doesn't do that, the monsters apparantly are doing something other than just waiting around for you to turn up.
C'mon. It's not about that. My level three character just took out a Vampire Matriarch and her whole clan with an old beat up dagger. There's something wrong there. Suddenly big, bad monsters aren't all that scary.
# In Oblivion, the ennemies level with you... completely breaks the immersion.
:) Think of it as 'they level with time', the Oblivion gates open, more powerful enemies appear.
Merchants - *shrug*. Enemies - uh well, keeps the game challenging
I don't know about this. My level 3 character just wandered into a dungeon and took out a vampire matriarch with a silver dagger. In Morrowind, I would have had the snot beaten out of me.
It seems kind of pointless to scale all your battles, so that you know your character can take on pretty much everything. What's the point of leveling then if you can beat a lot of the stronger monsters in the game as you start out?
Most ISPs don't charge by bandwidth anymore, there is no real advantage of having Zombie PCs in their network.
In Australia, most ISPs still continue to change by bandwidth, and are profiting from the Zombie PCs.
I was just looking at ADSL prices today, and some ISPs (including Bipond, Australia's largest ISP) are charging up to AUS$150/GB of excess usage data.
I've read that if you roast garlic, it loses pretty much all its good health properties.
In the US, the christian fundamentalist groups are a pretty large terrorist threat. There's hundreds of these well armed little groups scattered across the country, and the FBI can't watch them all.
Look up William Krar. His group got caught with chemical weapons, and was planning to poison the water supply in Chicago. The media barely touched the story because he was white.
I bought a new 20GB laptop Hard-drive for $AU 45 about a year ago. That's about $US 35.
It usually comes free when you buy a duo memory stick.
Doesn't seem to work for me if I have the Task Manager running in the background.
I will also admit, after reading your response, that it is possible the "RPG" moniker was adopted by the video game industry to distinguish action/adventure games featuring customizable avatars from other action/adventure games featuring pre-generated avatars; this is not an angle I previously considered for the reasons already cited.
Early pen & paper RPGs and early computer RPGs had a lot more in common.
Early pen & paper RPGs were an evolution from wargaming with miniatures, except the player only controlled one figure and that figure could go up levels and "develop" as they encounter enemies. If you look at early computer RPGs (like the early Ultimas), they could pretty much be miniatures moving about on a massive board, with encounters and a vague story linking the encounters.
"Restoration of voting rights for former felons": Not sure. Is a felon that has served its sentence entitled to the same rights as others? Should Nelson Mandela have the right to vote?
This way he probably gets a nice tax break too.
I've had problems with this a few times, and in my case it was because Acrobat Reader was displaying a "Check for Updates" window. The "Check for Updates" window was hidden behind all my other windows, and freezes Firefox until you close that window.
I used to just drop it on the floor from about half a metre.
I remember reading somewhere that the buttons on the right side are arranged as a cross so that they will operate in the same way as the d-pad for left-handed folks in games where this is needed.
I have to pay for a police department, which I've never used. I've never called the fire deparment, which I have to pay for. There's a park down the road that I've never used, but I have to pay for it.
Get over it. Sometimes you pay for things, which you won't use, but they still make the world a better place.