Pu-239 decays primarily via Alpha particles, which are more or less safe for humans when kept external or (God forbid) accidently passed through the digestion tract.
Spontaneous Fission events, OTOH, produce neutron radiation that is extremely destructive to all matter. There are also gamma and X-rays to be concerned about, but they're mostly negligable in this situation.
They didn't claim that it was one of the deadliest substances in the world
Nor did I claim they did. I claimed that the scaremongering is unnecessary as they are plenty of dangerous materials in this world that are more deadly than plutonium.
If you don't get what I just said, then read it again until you do.
Tell that to Alexander Litvinenko. I'm sure it'll cheer him up.
Yeah, because intentionally poisoning someone with polonium is such a major safety concern for the public.
Mr. Coward, please stop the hyperbole. It does not win an argument, and only serves to spread more Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.
With plutonium OTOH "Extremely fine particles of plutonium (on the order of micrograms) can cause lung cancer if inhaled."
This is correct, with a few caveats:
1. It is extremely difficult to grind up plutonium into particulate matter. It's also so heavy that it doesn't float very well. So the issues with inhalation deal mostly with industrial work with the material, and not general safety precautions.
2. It increases the risk of cancer. Simply inhaling a microgram sized partical is not sufficient to guarantee health issues. You need a far larger dosage in your lungs to guarantee such an outcome. (i.e. a "lethal dose".)
Getting back to the more likely mode of contamination (ingestion) which would you rather ingest: 150 grams of caffeine or 150 grams of plutonium? If you're smart, you'll go for the plutonium.
FYI, I do not work in the nuclear industry. It is simply an interest of mine. Most of those who work in the industry deal with the stuff day in and day out. They treat the materials with the proper safety precautions, and it doesn't bother them in the slightest. They are no more dangerous to them than say, acids or arsenic.
No, he accuses the media of exaggerating the dangers of power reactor waste, but he's referencing the different issue of RTG fuel.
Blatently incorrect. RTFA:
Plutonium-239, one of the most deadly by-products of nuclear power, has a half-life of 24,000 years, meaning that only half of any initial batch has decayed over this time. Ideally it should stay put for about ten times as long: a quarter of a million years.
You're only assuming that I'm referring to something different. The fact that Pu-240 contamination fissions at a rate of 415,000 fission per kilo per second should be a tip off to what the real safety issue is with the material. Neutron radiation from fission is more dangerous than alpha radiation any day of the week, and more difficult to shield against. As I said, if we burned this stuff in a reactor, we wouldn't have these problems.
A few micrograms of inhaled plutonium dust could significantly increase your risk of lung cancer.
And you're going to get airborne particals of a material with an atomic weight of 94 from an underground bunker, how again?
Safety tip: Don't grind up your plutonium with diamond reinforced tools from Home Depot.
Moreover, the "most deadly material" label for plutonium is usually associated with the Pu238 used in RTGs.
1. RTFA. It calls Pu-239 "one of the most deadly by-products of nuclear power". Their words, not mine.
2. Pu-238 is HOT. As in temperature wise. Its actual radioactive properties are not nearly as deadly due to its primary mode of decay being Alpha particles. (Unless, of course, you just can't resist drilling or grinding some in your home workshop to make airborne particles. In that case, you'll be forever immortalized in the Darwin awards. And if you manage to survive somehow, expect the feds to be less than happy with your posession of such materials.)
Seriously, it's not like this stuff is going to start oozing into everything. It's pretty stable (and HEAVY!) stuff. It's not going anywhere. It should be treated as a potentially toxic material, but it's not anywhere near a leading cause of death, nor is it likely to become one. Most of the nuclear materials problems we have are due to contamination from nuclear detonations. Contamination we've lived with for over 50 years.
This is a totally different isotope from the waste you're discussing, and with a half-life measured in a few decades rather than thousands of years, it is extremely deadly.
You forgot, "if inhaled or ingested". Touching it will probably give you third degree burns and a mildly elevated dosage of gamma and X-rays.
Basically, handle with care as you would any volatile industrial material. It's deadly to the handler if handled improperly, just like every other dangerous industrial material. Treat with proper respect, and don't stick your fingers in any rotating blades.
(A) Cost per weight of lift (some sites said 10k/lb is a myth, and another mentioned a reuseable boost that could to 1.4k/lb, I'd like a decent verifiable source
For purposes of argument, $10,000/kg (NOT pound!) is a reasonable figure to use. $1,400/kg *is* a myth for the time being.
$5 billion is nearly a quarter of NASA's budget. So no, it's not that feasible. Of course, there is a gotcha in there. The reason why the $10,000/kg price refuses to drop by much is that space access lacks the economics of scale. Launching nuclear waste would provide those economics, and cause the price to drop over the long term. So it could be feasible to launch the materials if you could convince the government to fund such a program for a long enough period of time.
The amusing part about such a plan, however, is that you'd probably do more environmental damage with so many launches than you'd do by just leaving the materials in an underground container. Whoops.:P
Or better yet, why not use it? There are hundreds (perhaps thousands!) of industrial uses for nearly every nuclear material imaginable. Everything from illumination products to smoke detection to electronic level detectors to medical imaging and therapy to decade-long batteries use nuclear materals. Not to mention that the Pu-239 mentioned in the article is an excellent source of nuclear fission for power production.
If we actually put the stuff to good use, we wouldn't have to bury, sink, or launch much of anything. Instead, we sit around and worry that terrorists are going to steal plutonium to make a very complicated implosion bomb rather than stealing the supposedly "safer" Uranium we currently use. Nevermind that the Uranium could be used to make a super-simple gun-type nuclear bomb that could be constructed without massive computational resources, dozens of nuclear scientists, and actual test sites that would show up on a seismograph. No, it's much better to worry about Plutonium.
Sorry for the rant. This is something of a hot button issue for me. It's just stupid that we're not putting all this *good* material to use rather than trying to find a place to bury it. It doesn't make a lick of sense to anyone except politicians.
Many of the waste substances, including plutonium-239, emit alpha radiation, which travels for only very short distances (barely a few hundredths of a millimeter) in the ceramic, but creates havoc along the way.
First of all, why is that stuff sitting in a nuclear waste container? It's good, fissile material that could supply much-needed energy to our power grid. Stop being a bunch of pansies and BURN IT IN A REACTOR! That will not only massively reduce the amount of waste, but it will turn much of the remaining material into extremely hot isotopes that will go inert (or nearly so) in a much shorter period of time.
Secondly, Pu-239 emits a very small amount of radiation. With a half-life of 24,000 years, it barely even raises the background levels. At a whopping 10 fissions per kilo per second, I doubt that much of the radiation is even escaping the material. I presume that the real safety problem is Pu-240 contaimination. A problem that wouldn't exist if they burned the materials instead of storing them.
Lastly, can someone please inform the press that the 1980's called? They want their "one of the most deadly by-products" scare-mongering back. There are far more deadly materials in this world than a bit of plutonium. Caffeine being a prime example. We dillute caffeine so much that we don't realize that too a few grams is actually quite deadly. (Find out how much of your favorite caffinated product would be needed to kill you here.) So maybe we can start reporting these things for what they are (engineering and safety issues) rather than what they're not (mini-Chernobyl levels of contamination). Maybe? *sigh* I suppose not.
Someone should setup a lobby group who's job would be to convince the government to let us use our nuclear fuels instead of declaring everything as waste in a mostly useless gesture to stop the mythical nuclear terrorist of the month.
You know, there's a slight problem with the Digikey catalog. It's not that it's bad or anything; on the contrary. It's quite a good collection of parts! Perhaps even a little too good. You see, the problem with getting the Digikey catalog is that there are so many cool parts that you'll want to buy them all!
I have a number of major gripes with the iPhone business - why did they prematurely announce the release when it's not ready for production yet, when if they are serious about living up to their reputation as a market-savvy tech company
According to Steve Jobs, they have to release the info to the FCC in order to get approval for the device to get to the market. Since that would basically make the phone public, they decided to do a proper announcement to the public before filing. It actually makes a lot of sense.
Also, the phone appears to be quite done. The January - June lead time is time for Apple to get approval, begin manufacturing, and prepare their marketing campaigns. Nothing odd about that.:)
What do you mean? Cisco just released the iPhone like a month ago.
Got a link? Because I searched their site and came up with zilch. Googling it only came back with info for "Infogear iPhone". Pretty much nothing for "Cisco iPhone".
I really wonder why this "final contract" was so unappealing to apple and they just decided to announce the phone anyways.
Two points:
1. Negotiations are probably still ongoing. Cisco is releasing this announcement in hopes of putting pressure on Apple to settle for their terms.
2. Apple may be hoping to wrestle the trademark away if necessary. Marks are really only valid if you use them. (Insert long list of "gotchas" here.) Given that "iPhone" (whatever it was) appears to be a dead product, Cisco's claim to the mark may not be as strong as Apple's. Alternatively, they may feel they can convince a judge that the two products are in different markets and thus the "Apple iPhone" is a different brand than the "Infogear iPhone". Either way, I don't think Cisco's position is as strong as they're making it out to be.
That solution violates the KISS principle. It is highly complex, non-obvious, non-portable (as in tied to some very expensive dbmses; I don't think MySQL 4.0 could pull it off so easily), and worst of all, unprotected against accidental manipulation. It also wouldn't surprise me if the method became unmaintainable over long maintenance periods as team members working on the codebase shifted around.
Creating a specialized datastore is more direct, more obvious, solves ALL the problems (not just one), maintainable, and can be designed to protect against invalid data. It may be more costly in the short term, but in the long term it will save a great deal of time and energy, in addition to producing a less complex codebase.
2)Since they have one anyway (wanted or not) PS3 owners buy BR disks rather than conventional DVDs (after all, they paid for it, why not use it).
To 90%+ of consumers, a Bluray disc and DVD disc are pretty much the same thing. Why would they spend 50% more money for the Bluray disc when a DVD can be had for less money? Sony is yelling "HD! 1080p!" at the top of their lungs, but it's mostly falling on deaf ears.
I remember when DVDs came out. The early adopters and videophiles got them, but everyone else just sort of waited as VHS tapes were a lot cheaper. It wasn't until DVDs started carrying extra content and features that the format began appealing to the average consumer. This caused prices to drop on DVDs, spurring even more consumers to run out and purchase a DVD player. Since the PS2 cost about the same as a regular DVD player, everyone got one of those. The rest is history.
You don't have to be Kreskin to read the writing on the wall.
The plain and simple fact is that the Wii is doing spectacularly well for itself while the PS3 is receiving a slightly less enthusiastic reception. Only an idiot would turn around and say, "Yeah, we think Sony is going to turn things around and kick our asses."
Instead, they're going to fuel the flames by pointing to their indirect competitor over there. Hopefully at the expense of their biggest competition. Then Microsoft will ride the coattails of the Wii's success by repeating the "Wii60 For the Win!" jingle. A large portion of gamers already think they need both consoles, so why not go with it?
Hierarchichal? Yes, but I don't see any problem using SQL to access hierarchical information. It's easy to have parent/child relationships.
No problem, but it's unoptimized for the task. To show the front page of a webforum, for example, you have to find all the forums, then dive down into each to get the most recent topic, then dive into the most recent topic to get the most recent post, then get all the dates and poster information (which will also have to be retrieved) to display on the front page. Given the difficulty in retreiving that data in an SQL database, the programmers invariably start denormalizing the database to provide a performance boost to the application.
As you probably know, denormalizing is the antithesis of good database design. The result is that the application, database, and code all become several times more complex than they should be. More complexity leads to more bugs. More bugs lead to security issue. Etc.
The optimal solution is a database that can properly index along the needs of a forum. That index (or indexes as the case may be) would allow the database to return the correct information in a fully joined query. Yes, the query path would be far too custom for your average SQL database. Which is why a custom database designed around heirarchical information starts to make sense.
Data of varying sizes? I thought this problem was solved 20 years ago when ANSI adopted a SQL standard including a VARCHAR datatype.
Except that posts vary from sizes that fit in most VARCHARs (cheap) to sizes that are effectively CLOBs (expensive). What you want is a database that makes CLOBs cheap, so you can store all posts the same way.
Full of binary blobs? Why? What in the hell for?
Attachments, images, avatars, etc.
So that each user can have an obnormous enoxious "signature banner" graphic that readers have to look at 20 times in any given thread?
Not really. In the more professional forums (many of which disallow image signatures) everything from photographs of equipment to screenshots to source code to binaries to PDF documents need to be shared. Storing these in the database is wasteful and slow, and storing them flat on disk is dangerous. (e.g. If you deploy JForum as a WAR file, you'll completely overwrite your existing uploads!) It's much better if there is a single, unified datastore for all the information rather than trying to cobble together a solution based on SQL databases + the File System.
And as anyone who has ever done software development in the real world can tell you, custom components almost always suck worse than similar standard components.
If you still think that's true in 100% of the cases, then you haven't been programming long enough. Use of a custom component vs. a generic components depende on how critical the component is to the success of the project. The more critical the component is, the more costly it is to attempt to modify a generic solution to meet specialized needs. Sometimes it really is cheaper, faster, and easier to build your own.
But is this actually happening? Has slashdot had to abandon general-purpose RDBMS?
I wasn't referring to Slashdot in particular, but rather general web forum software. Your PhpBB, vBulletins, and JForums of the world are more along the lines of what I'm referring to. After dealing with the frustrations of setting up, managing, and hacking projects like these, I've come to the conclusion that the backend datastore is the problem. The relational theories still hold true, but the SQL database implementations simply aren't built with CLOBs and BLOBs in mind.
That being said, Slashdot is a fairly good example of how they've worked around the limitations of their backend database at a cost equalling or far exceeding the cost of building a customized data store. A costly venture that bit them in the rear when they reached their maximum post count.
Not that I'm criticizing Slashcode. Hindsight is 20/20. It's just becoming more and more apparent that for some applications the cost of using an off-the-shelf database has become greater than the cost of building a custom datastore.
I was just thinking about writing an article on the same issue.
The problem I've noticed is that too many applications are becoming specialized in ways that are not handled well by traditional databases. The key example of this is forum software. Truly heirarchical in nature, the data is also of varying sizes, full of binary blobs, and generally unsuitable for your average SQL system. Yet we keep trying to cram them into SQL databases, then get surprised when we're hit with performance problems and security issues. It's simply the wrong way to go about solving the problem.
As anyone with a compsci degree or equivalent experience can tell you, creating a custom database is not that hard. In the past it made sense to go with off-the-shelf databases because they were more flexible and robust. But now that modern technology is causing us to fight with the databases just to get the job done, the time saved from generic databases is starting to look like a wash. We might as well go back to custom databases (or database platforms like BerkeleyDB) for these specialized needs.
Please explain to me how legislation to protect equal access and prevent multi-tier implementations that favor big business and big government are a un-Constitutional power grab.
You changed the meaning of his sentence by adding the word "un-Constitutional" in there. Of course it's going to be used in a grab for power. There is very little in congress that isn't misused and abused in that fashion. Unfortunately, there's no constitutional amendment against dirty politics.
After all, conceptually, net neutrality goes far back in US history to the mid 1800's to preserve equal access to telegraph lines with the only exception being made for war or emergency purposes.
And conceptually, tiered services go all the way back to the government's emergency services demands that prioritized switchboards to carry government calls over non-government calls.
Prioritizing traffic can be a good thing when properly applied. For example, VoIP services work much better when there is a guarantee that the packet will make it to its destination in a specified period of time. (A bit like how RTOSes guarantee a time slice to a program.) The only reason why we have a problem is because some telco exec got the bright idea of selling this prioritization service in a general-purpose fashion. (Thus negating the purpose of such a service. Genius, pure genius.) They then tried to ram it through as part of Senator Steven's Internet Consumer Right Bill thingymatube.
Meanwhile, the FCC has already declared that they'll fine any company that abuses their tiering abilities. So the situation is well in hand, but congress-critters are still trying to play the hero in... *gasp* a massive play for power on the Hill.
Pure and simple: The opposite of progress is congress. Don't let them do anything that can be handled without legislation.
If we ever become able to create robots that are able to feel, why should be make them able to feel pain? Wouldn't that be cruel?
As you said, pain is a warning signal to your body. If we give the robots pain and emotion, then we're being cruel. Kicking the robot dog would no longer simply trigger its defensive response (e.g. move out of the way, cry out a warning, etc.), but could also trigger a much deeper "hurt" similar to the emotional damage that humans feel when struck.
Of course, this stuff is so far off in the future, it's not even funny. Trying to make decisions about these things now is like asking Queen Elizabeth's (of York) government to decide on automobile traffic laws.
Put the Millenium Man DVD down, and no one gets hurt.
To answer your question, we can "forsee" a lot of things. That's what Scifi authors have been doing for nearly a century now. By providing us thoughtful entertainment, they've prepared us for the implications of life changing technologies so that we're able to make better decisions about them when they arrive.
That being said, there are no decisions to be made right now. "Learning" AIs exist, but not in the sense you mean. They're barely "learning" how to interpret different variations of the letter "A" (what we humans think of as stylistic fonts), and are nowhere near any sort of conciousness or intelligence. i.e. For the moment, they're sophisticated machines, but still machines. If and when we have an AI that can pass the Turing test as applied by an expert, then we can start worrying about what you're talking about. When we have intelligent enough robots to give them a feeling of pain and emotion, then we can worry about what the article is talking about.
In the meantime, I'm still going to bang the front of the Pepsi machine to make sure I get the drink I paid for.
Slashdot Mirror
Fissions != Decays
Pu-239 decays primarily via Alpha particles, which are more or less safe for humans when kept external or (God forbid) accidently passed through the digestion tract.
Spontaneous Fission events, OTOH, produce neutron radiation that is extremely destructive to all matter. There are also gamma and X-rays to be concerned about, but they're mostly negligable in this situation.
Nor did I claim they did. I claimed that the scaremongering is unnecessary as they are plenty of dangerous materials in this world that are more deadly than plutonium.
If you don't get what I just said, then read it again until you do.
Yeah, because intentionally poisoning someone with polonium is such a major safety concern for the public.
Mr. Coward, please stop the hyperbole. It does not win an argument, and only serves to spread more Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.
This is correct, with a few caveats:
1. It is extremely difficult to grind up plutonium into particulate matter. It's also so heavy that it doesn't float very well. So the issues with inhalation deal mostly with industrial work with the material, and not general safety precautions.
2. It increases the risk of cancer. Simply inhaling a microgram sized partical is not sufficient to guarantee health issues. You need a far larger dosage in your lungs to guarantee such an outcome. (i.e. a "lethal dose".)
Getting back to the more likely mode of contamination (ingestion) which would you rather ingest: 150 grams of caffeine or 150 grams of plutonium? If you're smart, you'll go for the plutonium.
FYI, I do not work in the nuclear industry. It is simply an interest of mine. Most of those who work in the industry deal with the stuff day in and day out. They treat the materials with the proper safety precautions, and it doesn't bother them in the slightest. They are no more dangerous to them than say, acids or arsenic.
Blatently incorrect. RTFA:
You're only assuming that I'm referring to something different. The fact that Pu-240 contamination fissions at a rate of 415,000 fission per kilo per second should be a tip off to what the real safety issue is with the material. Neutron radiation from fission is more dangerous than alpha radiation any day of the week, and more difficult to shield against. As I said, if we burned this stuff in a reactor, we wouldn't have these problems.
And you're going to get airborne particals of a material with an atomic weight of 94 from an underground bunker, how again?
Safety tip: Don't grind up your plutonium with diamond reinforced tools from Home Depot.
1. RTFA. It calls Pu-239 "one of the most deadly by-products of nuclear power". Their words, not mine.
2. Pu-238 is HOT. As in temperature wise. Its actual radioactive properties are not nearly as deadly due to its primary mode of decay being Alpha particles. (Unless, of course, you just can't resist drilling or grinding some in your home workshop to make airborne particles. In that case, you'll be forever immortalized in the Darwin awards. And if you manage to survive somehow, expect the feds to be less than happy with your posession of such materials.)
Seriously, it's not like this stuff is going to start oozing into everything. It's pretty stable (and HEAVY!) stuff. It's not going anywhere. It should be treated as a potentially toxic material, but it's not anywhere near a leading cause of death, nor is it likely to become one. Most of the nuclear materials problems we have are due to contamination from nuclear detonations. Contamination we've lived with for over 50 years.
You forgot, "if inhaled or ingested". Touching it will probably give you third degree burns and a mildly elevated dosage of gamma and X-rays.
Basically, handle with care as you would any volatile industrial material. It's deadly to the handler if handled improperly, just like every other dangerous industrial material. Treat with proper respect, and don't stick your fingers in any rotating blades.
For purposes of argument, $10,000/kg (NOT pound!) is a reasonable figure to use. $1,400/kg *is* a myth for the time being.
Sooo... best case:
500 tonnes = 500,000 kilograms
500,000kg * $10,000 = $5 billion
$5 billion is nearly a quarter of NASA's budget. So no, it's not that feasible. Of course, there is a gotcha in there. The reason why the $10,000/kg price refuses to drop by much is that space access lacks the economics of scale. Launching nuclear waste would provide those economics, and cause the price to drop over the long term. So it could be feasible to launch the materials if you could convince the government to fund such a program for a long enough period of time.
The amusing part about such a plan, however, is that you'd probably do more environmental damage with so many launches than you'd do by just leaving the materials in an underground container. Whoops.
$#%#@! s/2048/2084/g
Darn right. Who else is going to save us in 2048 when all of our Robotron creations rise against us and try to kill the last family?
Or better yet, why not use it? There are hundreds (perhaps thousands!) of industrial uses for nearly every nuclear material imaginable. Everything from illumination products to smoke detection to electronic level detectors to medical imaging and therapy to decade-long batteries use nuclear materals. Not to mention that the Pu-239 mentioned in the article is an excellent source of nuclear fission for power production.
If we actually put the stuff to good use, we wouldn't have to bury, sink, or launch much of anything. Instead, we sit around and worry that terrorists are going to steal plutonium to make a very complicated implosion bomb rather than stealing the supposedly "safer" Uranium we currently use. Nevermind that the Uranium could be used to make a super-simple gun-type nuclear bomb that could be constructed without massive computational resources, dozens of nuclear scientists, and actual test sites that would show up on a seismograph. No, it's much better to worry about Plutonium.
Sorry for the rant. This is something of a hot button issue for me. It's just stupid that we're not putting all this *good* material to use rather than trying to find a place to bury it. It doesn't make a lick of sense to anyone except politicians.
First of all, why is that stuff sitting in a nuclear waste container? It's good, fissile material that could supply much-needed energy to our power grid. Stop being a bunch of pansies and BURN IT IN A REACTOR! That will not only massively reduce the amount of waste, but it will turn much of the remaining material into extremely hot isotopes that will go inert (or nearly so) in a much shorter period of time.
Secondly, Pu-239 emits a very small amount of radiation. With a half-life of 24,000 years, it barely even raises the background levels. At a whopping 10 fissions per kilo per second, I doubt that much of the radiation is even escaping the material. I presume that the real safety problem is Pu-240 contaimination. A problem that wouldn't exist if they burned the materials instead of storing them.
Lastly, can someone please inform the press that the 1980's called? They want their "one of the most deadly by-products" scare-mongering back. There are far more deadly materials in this world than a bit of plutonium. Caffeine being a prime example. We dillute caffeine so much that we don't realize that too a few grams is actually quite deadly. (Find out how much of your favorite caffinated product would be needed to kill you here.) So maybe we can start reporting these things for what they are (engineering and safety issues) rather than what they're not (mini-Chernobyl levels of contamination). Maybe? *sigh* I suppose not.
Someone should setup a lobby group who's job would be to convince the government to let us use our nuclear fuels instead of declaring everything as waste in a mostly useless gesture to stop the mythical nuclear terrorist of the month.
You know, there's a slight problem with the Digikey catalog. It's not that it's bad or anything; on the contrary. It's quite a good collection of parts! Perhaps even a little too good. You see, the problem with getting the Digikey catalog is that there are so many cool parts that you'll want to buy them all!
Ow, ow, ow! My poor pocketbook!
According to Steve Jobs, they have to release the info to the FCC in order to get approval for the device to get to the market. Since that would basically make the phone public, they decided to do a proper announcement to the public before filing. It actually makes a lot of sense.
Also, the phone appears to be quite done. The January - June lead time is time for Apple to get approval, begin manufacturing, and prepare their marketing campaigns. Nothing odd about that.
Thanks. The timing seems more than a little suspicious though, doesn't it? Hmm...
Got a link? Because I searched their site and came up with zilch. Googling it only came back with info for "Infogear iPhone". Pretty much nothing for "Cisco iPhone".
Two points:
1. Negotiations are probably still ongoing. Cisco is releasing this announcement in hopes of putting pressure on Apple to settle for their terms.
2. Apple may be hoping to wrestle the trademark away if necessary. Marks are really only valid if you use them. (Insert long list of "gotchas" here.) Given that "iPhone" (whatever it was) appears to be a dead product, Cisco's claim to the mark may not be as strong as Apple's. Alternatively, they may feel they can convince a judge that the two products are in different markets and thus the "Apple iPhone" is a different brand than the "Infogear iPhone". Either way, I don't think Cisco's position is as strong as they're making it out to be.
That solution violates the KISS principle. It is highly complex, non-obvious, non-portable (as in tied to some very expensive dbmses; I don't think MySQL 4.0 could pull it off so easily), and worst of all, unprotected against accidental manipulation. It also wouldn't surprise me if the method became unmaintainable over long maintenance periods as team members working on the codebase shifted around.
Creating a specialized datastore is more direct, more obvious, solves ALL the problems (not just one), maintainable, and can be designed to protect against invalid data. It may be more costly in the short term, but in the long term it will save a great deal of time and energy, in addition to producing a less complex codebase.
To 90%+ of consumers, a Bluray disc and DVD disc are pretty much the same thing. Why would they spend 50% more money for the Bluray disc when a DVD can be had for less money? Sony is yelling "HD! 1080p!" at the top of their lungs, but it's mostly falling on deaf ears.
I remember when DVDs came out. The early adopters and videophiles got them, but everyone else just sort of waited as VHS tapes were a lot cheaper. It wasn't until DVDs started carrying extra content and features that the format began appealing to the average consumer. This caused prices to drop on DVDs, spurring even more consumers to run out and purchase a DVD player. Since the PS2 cost about the same as a regular DVD player, everyone got one of those. The rest is history.
You don't have to be Kreskin to read the writing on the wall.
The plain and simple fact is that the Wii is doing spectacularly well for itself while the PS3 is receiving a slightly less enthusiastic reception. Only an idiot would turn around and say, "Yeah, we think Sony is going to turn things around and kick our asses."
Instead, they're going to fuel the flames by pointing to their indirect competitor over there. Hopefully at the expense of their biggest competition. Then Microsoft will ride the coattails of the Wii's success by repeating the "Wii60 For the Win!" jingle. A large portion of gamers already think they need both consoles, so why not go with it?
No problem, but it's unoptimized for the task. To show the front page of a webforum, for example, you have to find all the forums, then dive down into each to get the most recent topic, then dive into the most recent topic to get the most recent post, then get all the dates and poster information (which will also have to be retrieved) to display on the front page. Given the difficulty in retreiving that data in an SQL database, the programmers invariably start denormalizing the database to provide a performance boost to the application.
As you probably know, denormalizing is the antithesis of good database design. The result is that the application, database, and code all become several times more complex than they should be. More complexity leads to more bugs. More bugs lead to security issue. Etc.
The optimal solution is a database that can properly index along the needs of a forum. That index (or indexes as the case may be) would allow the database to return the correct information in a fully joined query. Yes, the query path would be far too custom for your average SQL database. Which is why a custom database designed around heirarchical information starts to make sense.
Except that posts vary from sizes that fit in most VARCHARs (cheap) to sizes that are effectively CLOBs (expensive). What you want is a database that makes CLOBs cheap, so you can store all posts the same way.
Attachments, images, avatars, etc.
Not really. In the more professional forums (many of which disallow image signatures) everything from photographs of equipment to screenshots to source code to binaries to PDF documents need to be shared. Storing these in the database is wasteful and slow, and storing them flat on disk is dangerous. (e.g. If you deploy JForum as a WAR file, you'll completely overwrite your existing uploads!) It's much better if there is a single, unified datastore for all the information rather than trying to cobble together a solution based on SQL databases + the File System.
If you still think that's true in 100% of the cases, then you haven't been programming long enough. Use of a custom component vs. a generic components depende on how critical the component is to the success of the project. The more critical the component is, the more costly it is to attempt to modify a generic solution to meet specialized needs. Sometimes it really is cheaper, faster, and easier to build your own.
I wasn't referring to Slashdot in particular, but rather general web forum software. Your PhpBB, vBulletins, and JForums of the world are more along the lines of what I'm referring to. After dealing with the frustrations of setting up, managing, and hacking projects like these, I've come to the conclusion that the backend datastore is the problem. The relational theories still hold true, but the SQL database implementations simply aren't built with CLOBs and BLOBs in mind.
That being said, Slashdot is a fairly good example of how they've worked around the limitations of their backend database at a cost equalling or far exceeding the cost of building a customized data store. A costly venture that bit them in the rear when they reached their maximum post count.
Not that I'm criticizing Slashcode. Hindsight is 20/20. It's just becoming more and more apparent that for some applications the cost of using an off-the-shelf database has become greater than the cost of building a custom datastore.
I was just thinking about writing an article on the same issue.
The problem I've noticed is that too many applications are becoming specialized in ways that are not handled well by traditional databases. The key example of this is forum software. Truly heirarchical in nature, the data is also of varying sizes, full of binary blobs, and generally unsuitable for your average SQL system. Yet we keep trying to cram them into SQL databases, then get surprised when we're hit with performance problems and security issues. It's simply the wrong way to go about solving the problem.
As anyone with a compsci degree or equivalent experience can tell you, creating a custom database is not that hard. In the past it made sense to go with off-the-shelf databases because they were more flexible and robust. But now that modern technology is causing us to fight with the databases just to get the job done, the time saved from generic databases is starting to look like a wash. We might as well go back to custom databases (or database platforms like BerkeleyDB) for these specialized needs.
You changed the meaning of his sentence by adding the word "un-Constitutional" in there. Of course it's going to be used in a grab for power. There is very little in congress that isn't misused and abused in that fashion. Unfortunately, there's no constitutional amendment against dirty politics.
And conceptually, tiered services go all the way back to the government's emergency services demands that prioritized switchboards to carry government calls over non-government calls.
Prioritizing traffic can be a good thing when properly applied. For example, VoIP services work much better when there is a guarantee that the packet will make it to its destination in a specified period of time. (A bit like how RTOSes guarantee a time slice to a program.) The only reason why we have a problem is because some telco exec got the bright idea of selling this prioritization service in a general-purpose fashion. (Thus negating the purpose of such a service. Genius, pure genius.) They then tried to ram it through as part of Senator Steven's Internet Consumer Right Bill thingymatube.
Meanwhile, the FCC has already declared that they'll fine any company that abuses their tiering abilities. So the situation is well in hand, but congress-critters are still trying to play the hero in... *gasp* a massive play for power on the Hill.
Pure and simple: The opposite of progress is congress. Don't let them do anything that can be handled without legislation.
As you said, pain is a warning signal to your body. If we give the robots pain and emotion, then we're being cruel. Kicking the robot dog would no longer simply trigger its defensive response (e.g. move out of the way, cry out a warning, etc.), but could also trigger a much deeper "hurt" similar to the emotional damage that humans feel when struck.
Of course, this stuff is so far off in the future, it's not even funny. Trying to make decisions about these things now is like asking Queen Elizabeth's (of York) government to decide on automobile traffic laws.
Put the Millenium Man DVD down, and no one gets hurt.
To answer your question, we can "forsee" a lot of things. That's what Scifi authors have been doing for nearly a century now. By providing us thoughtful entertainment, they've prepared us for the implications of life changing technologies so that we're able to make better decisions about them when they arrive.
That being said, there are no decisions to be made right now. "Learning" AIs exist, but not in the sense you mean. They're barely "learning" how to interpret different variations of the letter "A" (what we humans think of as stylistic fonts), and are nowhere near any sort of conciousness or intelligence. i.e. For the moment, they're sophisticated machines, but still machines. If and when we have an AI that can pass the Turing test as applied by an expert, then we can start worrying about what you're talking about. When we have intelligent enough robots to give them a feeling of pain and emotion, then we can worry about what the article is talking about.
In the meantime, I'm still going to bang the front of the Pepsi machine to make sure I get the drink I paid for.
In case anyone is wondering...
ad nauseum