This is a classic N.I.M.B.Y. - B.A.N.A.N.A.* argument. "Wait. Do nothing. Some day in the ephemeral future, the problem will magically solve itself." Just look at all the if, mights, and maybes:
...technological advances over the next century might yield better long-term storage methods.
...the political climate [against refining bomb material]... might be different in 100 years.
...in 100 years, advances in reprocessing technology might make the economics compelling.
...in 100 years, energy supply and demand might be very different. Reprocessed nuclear fuel might well become a critical part of the energy supply...
...we may be smarter at metallurgy, geology, and geochemistry than we are now.
Space-launch technology could become as reliable as jet airplanes are today, giving us a nearly foolproof way to throw waste into solar orbit.
The mysteries of geochemistry might be... transparent... which would mean we could say with confidence what kind of package would keep the waste encased...
Or there might be easier ways to process the waste.
...transmutation, might become more practical in 100 years.
...alternative storage technologies may need only a few more years of research [e.g.] ceramic packaging.
...mixing waste with ceramics or minerals to form a rocklike material... that are not prone to react with water. With a few decades' grace time, engineers could build samples... Ifs, mights, and maybes are not a proposal. They are a wish upon a star.
*N.I.M.B.Y. - not in my back yard *B.A.N.A.N.A. - build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything
From the article:...the pursuit of the perfect solution (assuming deep geologic disposal even could be perfected) has ignored a realistic solution. And when the perfect fails, as now seems likely, we will be left with something no rational person would have chosen: waste sites scattered from coast to coast, in places where reactors used to be, each with its own security force, maintenance crew, and exclusion zone.
For these reasons, the author advocates abandoning the only central storage site we're anywhere near ready to actually use. WTF?!
How can an article that spends thousands of words advocating against a safe, central storage facility (Yucca) end with this sentence?
If we don't take action soon, however, casks of waste will stand alone on that bluff above the Hudson River--and in dozens of other places across the country.
Some one please explain this to me like I'm an idiot. After reading the article, it looks like the school did nothing more than give the students a prox ID card and required them to swipe it at the bus door and at the school door.
Is the issue that we'd have preferred magnetic strip ID cards to RFID cards? Or, do we think these students can be monitored at places other than the bus door and the school door? How is this system different from the time clock at our workplaces?
Personally, I vote against any automated school attendance system, but they're not novel. Why are we so worried about this one.
...what did they do with the people that were living here before them? They wiped them out...
We cannot justify the killing of the remote children of killers merely because of their ancestors' crimes. Were it so, the next invader of the Americas would be justified in slaughtering me for the crimes of the 1500-1900 colonists.
Does anyone else have the opening naration from Mimic stuck in their head now?
When Stricklers Disease struck the city of New York, it wiped out thousands, many of whom were small children. The disease had no cure, and no vaccine. In order to wipe out the disease, the authorities decided to go after the carrier - cockroaches. But cockroaches are very resilient, and chemical control was useless, so the authorities turned to the CDC to create a new insect, one that would wipe out the cockroach populations - they created the Judas Breed.
The Judas Breed were created in the genetic labs - a new species created by splicing cockroach, mantis and termite DNA. They were to be mans ally against the cockroaches, producing an enzyme which caused the cockroach's metabolism to go into overdrive, making them starve to death. They were introduced into the sewer systems where the cockroaches lived and within days every cockroach was dead - the disease was contained.
(Of course, the movie went down hill from there, but that intro...)
But how good was the EB in its 5 year of publication? I bet they were publishing phrenology as a real science....I bet that pompous jerk didn't even take the 3 minutes to correct the Alexander Hamilton article.
EB has demonstrated a successful method for creating a great encyclopedia. (It is safe to say that after phrenology was debunked, EB did not continue promoting it; indeed, it is likely that EB was skeptical even at the time.) EB hires experts to write and uses experts to review. EB charges its readers money for their work.
We hope to demonstrate that a great encyclopedia can be created by open collaboration of uncredentialed volunteers. If we succeed, Wikipedia will be a powerful example of the applicability of open source methodology outside the software arena. To date, we have not succeeded. We all know that Wikipedia still falls woefully short on many of the key criteria for a great encyclopedia (accuracy, breadth, depty, currency, grammar, cost, bias, etc.). (The article's point about Alexander Hamilton is well taken. Not only did yesterday's Wikipedia contain errors on simple matters of record of Hamilton's career, but our collaborative editing process had made things worse, not better.)
If we want to prove our hypothesis (that the bazaar can create things just as well as the cathedral can), then we must not only keep contributing, but we must keep refining our editing protocols to prevent the kind of negative progress we saw with the Hamilton article. It will not help to call our opponents "pompous jerk[s]" for not doing our jobs for us. They've proven that their methodology works. Now, we must prove that ours does.
Want to send humans to Mars? Great! Please dream up either (a) a valid scientific reason, or (b) a valid commercial reason. I don't think either exists presently, and I don't think either will exist within the next 100 years.
Agreed. I'd like to see us go to Mars as much as the next geek, but there are criteria for a "valid" reason, right?
something we can't get without sending humans to Mars
something important enough to justify the expense and danger
The really exciting science task would be to find out of there is unicellular life on Mars (with a positive result probably qualifying as the most important scientific result of the last 200 years).
Are we really still excited by this question? We now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no intelligent life on Mars. That's what the 1950s masses cared about. Unicellular life isn't all that interesting to the non-scientist. Except, perhaps, for whatever use it may have in the tiresome debate with the religious creationists.
The point is this: Vast new areas of resources are never as vast as they seem. 640K is not enough for everyone. And, unless we want Jeff Goldblum and Wil Smith to plant a virus in our mothership 300 years from now, we had bettered learn that expansion is not a sustainable business plan for humanity.
As long as there is enough land left on the moon, there will be no conflicts,...
The Parable of the Milk Bottle
Once upon a time, there was a colony of bacteria living in a milk bottle on a porch step. Because they lived in a land of milk (if not honey), they were fruitful and multiplied. They doubled their number every hour.
The bacteria were also very wise. When they had consumed 25% of all their resources, their leaders began to plan for what their society would do when they ran out of space in the milk bottle. The leaders sent explorers out to find new territory.
The explorers were wildly successful. In only 1 hour, they discovered that there were in fact four milk bottles sitting on the porch step. The people rejoiced at the news of these vast new territories -- 4 times as much space and food as they had in all their history. They promptly colonized the three new bottles.
Question: How long did the bacterial civilization survive? Answer: Exactly 2 hours longer.
It's as simple as that: if you made new land habitable, it should be yours. Maybe I'm a little romantic here,...
To be sure, when Europe conquered the New World, the greatest tragedy was the near-erradictation of native peoples. However, there were also wars among the settlers and among the parent nations over territory and resources. Those wars alone are reason enough not to repeat that history on the moon.
Left to a free for all, colonists will first settle on the best land. Then on the second-best. Perhaps next even on the third-best. But before anyone accepts the fourth-best, they will have a fight over the first-best.
Basically, keep things as is, but limit the patent term to,say, 5 years. After that patent owner can extend it to the full 17 year term but make the extension EXPENSIVE (say, 40K per patent)...
The system you suggest already exists and has existed for decades, albeit at about 1/10th the costs you propose. It is called Maintenance Fees. See 37 CFR 1.362 et seq. These fees are due at 4, 8, and 12 years after issuance. Big companies are charged higher amounts than small ones.
Are you kidding? Doing evil is the best way to get and keep customers.
And yet, Google has customers...
Actually, you're right. Google does limit MS's ability to do evil with its search engine, but only partly. For instance, MS must present a screen as clean as google's or present a non-clean screen that customers like as well. Another example, if Google results are always more relevant than MS, then customers will go to google.
I was about to say "inferior search results cannot possibly lure google's established customers away" . . . but then I remembered Netscape. Well, wait and see, I suppose.
There is nothing in the entire corporate universe more important than management folks getting richer. Your creativity, your breakthrus, your love of projects, your family, your rights... are all secondary.
Second place? My, my. Aren't we full of heedless optimism today?
Re:Not quite so negative.
on
MSN Search Roundup
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
In fact, Mossberg's full article came complete with its own "bottom line": "The bottom line: Google is still my search service of choice, but Microsoft has arrived in search and will be a more and more attractive alternative."
I have to ask, Why are we not rejoicing? We now have two competitors trying to add more useful features. They are already driving innovation -- to the benefit of us. And, so long as Google exists, MSN must do no evil, else it will never gain customers.
...the individual who... clings to the often illogical notion that there is always a deeper answer that only they see, which will eventually lead to acceptance of they themselves as visionaries.
The true visionary is the one who can communicate what they "see" to you so that you can share the vision. The person who claims to see something, but can't or won't tell you what it is -- that person is a charlatan.
It's something like the difference between heroes and celebrities.
Seventy-six trombones led the big parade With a hundred and ten cornets close at hand. They were followed by rows and rows of the finest virtuo- Sos, the cream of ev'ry famous band.
Seventy-six trombones caught the morning sun With a hundred and ten cornets right behind There were more than a thousand reeds Springing up like weeds There were horns of ev'ry shape and kind.
First, I have to give reluctant kudos to MSN for parsing long boolean queries such as (((A AND B) NOT (C OR D)) AND E) Google needs to play catch-up here.
Second, we need SORT OPTIONS. It's not that hard to allow sorting by date, title, file type, and number of hits. Again, MSN has won a march on Google in this area.
Re:More pages v.s more relevant pages
on
Google Index Doubles
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
How about a NEAR operator? Sure, AND OR NOT are nice, but my results would be a lot more relevant if I could eliminate results where the search terms appeared a thousand words apart.
Quote the parent: Will help with all the existing lawsuits... except there aren't any.
You didn't even bother to try to look that up, did you? As of last January, MS was a defendant in 30 patent lawsuits, many of these are sure to be going on still today. Some that made the papers:
Teleshuttle Technologies, LLC - software updates
Eolas - browser plugins
Interactive Data (TVI) - autoplay of cds
Research Corporation Technologies - resolution enhancement
InterTrust Technologies - software registration and activation
And don't forget Allan M. Konrad, who sued hotels and airlines for using MS (and other) software to accept reservations online. He didn't sue Microsoft. Why? Because Redmond's revenues were chump change compared to the revenue from all those travel reservations. Konrad lost, but he won't be the last to try.
It's worth noting that the big international accounting firms are actively attempting to end local licensing of lawyers. Their hope is to commoditize and outsource legal work as well.
So far, local lawyers have resisted these efforts, and outside lawcorps must hire some local guys to titularly head every lawsuit that they work on.
America is bricking itself off. Now every idea will have to be bought and paid for. The barriers to entry will be such that what created America will cease to exist.
Don't mistake this for a national-only trend. In fact, it's the haves bricking themselves off from the have nots. Worldwide. These corporations are acting to erect long-term barriers to entry in every profitable market they can. Over 120 countries are already members of the Patent Cooperation Treaty.
These bricks are not just a wall against foreign copying -- they're a wall against any new start-up.
Slashdot Mirror
...so that we can finally put an end to that oh-so-exact science of taking a timeout for a measurement?
;)
Don't be silly. Once a reason for timeout is invented, it will never be removed. Advertisers are "entitled" to that airtime.
...technological advances over the next century might yield better long-term storage methods.
...the political climate [against refining bomb material] ... might be different in 100 years.
...in 100 years, advances in reprocessing technology might make the economics compelling.
...in 100 years, energy supply and demand might be very different. Reprocessed nuclear fuel might well become a critical part of the energy supply...
...we may be smarter at metallurgy, geology, and geochemistry than we are now.
Space-launch technology could become as reliable as jet airplanes are today, giving us a nearly foolproof way to throw waste into solar orbit.
The mysteries of geochemistry might be ... transparent ... which would mean we could say with confidence what kind of package would keep the waste encased ...
Or there might be easier ways to process the waste.
...transmutation, might become more practical in 100 years.
...alternative storage technologies may need only a few more years of research [e.g.] ceramic packaging.
...mixing waste with ceramics or minerals to form a rocklike material ... that are not prone to react with water. With a few decades' grace time, engineers could build samples ...
Ifs, mights, and maybes are not a proposal. They are a wish upon a star.
*N.I.M.B.Y. - not in my back yard
*B.A.N.A.N.A. - build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything
From the article: ...the pursuit of the perfect solution (assuming deep geologic disposal even could be perfected) has ignored a realistic solution. And when the perfect fails, as now seems likely, we will be left with something no rational person would have chosen: waste sites scattered from coast to coast, in places where reactors used to be, each with its own security force, maintenance crew, and exclusion zone.
For these reasons, the author advocates abandoning the only central storage site we're anywhere near ready to actually use. WTF?!
How can an article that spends thousands of words advocating against a safe, central storage facility (Yucca) end with this sentence?
If we don't take action soon, however, casks of waste will stand alone on that bluff above the Hudson River--and in dozens of other places across the country.
Warning: Deploying Verizon's new Fiber To The Premises (FTTP, see previous) in YOUR home may involve geysers of raw sewage streaming into your PC.
Some one please explain this to me like I'm an idiot. After reading the article, it looks like the school did nothing more than give the students a prox ID card and required them to swipe it at the bus door and at the school door.
Is the issue that we'd have preferred magnetic strip ID cards to RFID cards? Or, do we think these students can be monitored at places other than the bus door and the school door? How is this system different from the time clock at our workplaces?
Personally, I vote against any automated school attendance system, but they're not novel. Why are we so worried about this one.
...what did they do with the people that were living here before them? They wiped them out...
We cannot justify the killing of the remote children of killers merely because of their ancestors' crimes. Were it so, the next invader of the Americas would be justified in slaughtering me for the crimes of the 1500-1900 colonists.
Killing a people is a bad thing.
But how good was the EB in its 5 year of publication? I bet they were publishing phrenology as a real science. ...I bet that pompous jerk didn't even take the 3 minutes to correct the Alexander Hamilton article.
EB has demonstrated a successful method for creating a great encyclopedia. (It is safe to say that after phrenology was debunked, EB did not continue promoting it; indeed, it is likely that EB was skeptical even at the time.) EB hires experts to write and uses experts to review. EB charges its readers money for their work.
We hope to demonstrate that a great encyclopedia can be created by open collaboration of uncredentialed volunteers. If we succeed, Wikipedia will be a powerful example of the applicability of open source methodology outside the software arena. To date, we have not succeeded. We all know that Wikipedia still falls woefully short on many of the key criteria for a great encyclopedia (accuracy, breadth, depty, currency, grammar, cost, bias, etc.). (The article's point about Alexander Hamilton is well taken. Not only did yesterday's Wikipedia contain errors on simple matters of record of Hamilton's career, but our collaborative editing process had made things worse, not better.)
If we want to prove our hypothesis (that the bazaar can create things just as well as the cathedral can), then we must not only keep contributing, but we must keep refining our editing protocols to prevent the kind of negative progress we saw with the Hamilton article. It will not help to call our opponents "pompous jerk[s]" for not doing our jobs for us. They've proven that their methodology works. Now, we must prove that ours does.
Agreed. I'd like to see us go to Mars as much as the next geek, but there are criteria for a "valid" reason, right?
something we can't get without sending humans to Mars
something important enough to justify the expense and danger
The really exciting science task would be to find out of there is unicellular life on Mars (with a positive result probably qualifying as the most important scientific result of the last 200 years).
Are we really still excited by this question? We now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no intelligent life on Mars. That's what the 1950s masses cared about. Unicellular life isn't all that interesting to the non-scientist. Except, perhaps, for whatever use it may have in the tiresome debate with the religious creationists.
The point is this: Vast new areas of resources are never as vast as they seem. 640K is not enough for everyone. And, unless we want Jeff Goldblum and Wil Smith to plant a virus in our mothership 300 years from now, we had bettered learn that expansion is not a sustainable business plan for humanity.
As long as there is enough land left on the moon, there will be no conflicts, ...
The Parable of the Milk Bottle
Once upon a time, there was a colony of bacteria living in a milk bottle on a porch step. Because they lived in a land of milk (if not honey), they were fruitful and multiplied. They doubled their number every hour.
The bacteria were also very wise. When they had consumed 25% of all their resources, their leaders began to plan for what their society would do when they ran out of space in the milk bottle. The leaders sent explorers out to find new territory.
The explorers were wildly successful. In only 1 hour, they discovered that there were in fact four milk bottles sitting on the porch step. The people rejoiced at the news of these vast new territories -- 4 times as much space and food as they had in all their history. They promptly colonized the three new bottles.
Question: How long did the bacterial civilization survive? Answer: Exactly 2 hours longer.
It's as simple as that: if you made new land habitable, it should be yours. Maybe I'm a little romantic here, ...
To be sure, when Europe conquered the New World, the greatest tragedy was the near-erradictation of native peoples. However, there were also wars among the settlers and among the parent nations over territory and resources. Those wars alone are reason enough not to repeat that history on the moon.
Left to a free for all, colonists will first settle on the best land. Then on the second-best. Perhaps next even on the third-best. But before anyone accepts the fourth-best, they will have a fight over the first-best.
Basically, keep things as is, but limit the patent term to,say, 5 years. After that patent owner can extend it to the full 17 year term but make the extension EXPENSIVE (say, 40K per patent)...
The system you suggest already exists and has existed for decades, albeit at about 1/10th the costs you propose. It is called Maintenance Fees. See 37 CFR 1.362 et seq. These fees are due at 4, 8, and 12 years after issuance. Big companies are charged higher amounts than small ones.
Are you kidding? Doing evil is the best way to get and keep customers.
And yet, Google has customers...
Actually, you're right. Google does limit MS's ability to do evil with its search engine, but only partly. For instance, MS must present a screen as clean as google's or present a non-clean screen that customers like as well. Another example, if Google results are always more relevant than MS, then customers will go to google.
I was about to say "inferior search results cannot possibly lure google's established customers away" . . . but then I remembered Netscape. Well, wait and see, I suppose.
There is nothing in the entire corporate universe more important than management folks getting richer. Your creativity, your breakthrus, your love of projects, your family, your rights... are all secondary.
Second place? My, my. Aren't we full of heedless optimism today?
In fact, Mossberg's full article came complete with its own "bottom line": "The bottom line: Google is still my search service of choice, but Microsoft has arrived in search and will be a more and more attractive alternative."
I have to ask, Why are we not rejoicing? We now have two competitors trying to add more useful features. They are already driving innovation -- to the benefit of us. And, so long as Google exists, MSN must do no evil, else it will never gain customers.
...the individual who ... clings to the often illogical notion that there is always a deeper answer that only they see, which will eventually lead to acceptance of they themselves as visionaries.
The true visionary is the one who can communicate what they "see" to you so that you can share the vision. The person who claims to see something, but can't or won't tell you what it is -- that person is a charlatan.
It's something like the difference between heroes and celebrities.
Seventy-six trombones led the big parade
With a hundred and ten cornets close at hand.
They were followed by rows and rows of the finest virtuo-
Sos, the cream of ev'ry famous band.
Seventy-six trombones caught the morning sun
With a hundred and ten cornets right behind
There were more than a thousand reeds
Springing up like weeds
There were horns of ev'ry shape and kind.
First, I have to give reluctant kudos to MSN for parsing long boolean queries such as
(((A AND B) NOT (C OR D)) AND E)
Google needs to play catch-up here.
Second, we need SORT OPTIONS. It's not that hard to allow sorting by date, title, file type, and number of hits. Again, MSN has won a march on Google in this area.
How about a NEAR operator? Sure, AND OR NOT are nice, but my results would be a lot more relevant if I could eliminate results where the search terms appeared a thousand words apart.
You didn't even bother to try to look that up, did you? As of last January, MS was a defendant in 30 patent lawsuits, many of these are sure to be going on still today. Some that made the papers:
Teleshuttle Technologies, LLC - software updates
Eolas - browser plugins
Interactive Data (TVI) - autoplay of cds
Research Corporation Technologies - resolution enhancement
InterTrust Technologies - software registration and activation
And don't forget Allan M. Konrad, who sued hotels and airlines for using MS (and other) software to accept reservations online. He didn't sue Microsoft. Why? Because Redmond's revenues were chump change compared to the revenue from all those travel reservations. Konrad lost, but he won't be the last to try.
It's worth noting that the big international accounting firms are actively attempting to end local licensing of lawyers. Their hope is to commoditize and outsource legal work as well.
So far, local lawyers have resisted these efforts, and outside lawcorps must hire some local guys to titularly head every lawsuit that they work on.
America is bricking itself off. Now every idea will have to be bought and paid for. The barriers to entry will be such that what created America will cease to exist.
Don't mistake this for a national-only trend. In fact, it's the haves bricking themselves off from the have nots. Worldwide. These corporations are acting to erect long-term barriers to entry in every profitable market they can. Over 120 countries are already members of the Patent Cooperation Treaty.
These bricks are not just a wall against foreign copying -- they're a wall against any new start-up.
This is one of those days when there's only one thing you can say: Praise the Lord.