but to all nations that have poor relations with us such as mexico
Hunh? The US hasn't been at war with any of its neighbors (Canada and Mexico) for over 150 years. I'll grant you that Cuba may qualify, but Mexico? Compare that with Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia -- a couple of World Wars come to mind at the very least.
And you think we have poor relations with Mexico? Admittedly the relations aren't at all perfect, but poor? Last time I was down there, in Mexico City, no one spit on me. Sure there are kidnappings, but guess what? Mexicans get kidnapped too! It's a developing world problem, not a US-Mexican relations problem.
Have you seen any of the arguments between the English and French? Or Germany and Italy? China and Tibet have gotten along famously. And let's not forget the great friendship between India and Pakistan. Or Israel and... well... every other country in that region.
Or were you going to bring up Mexican illegal immigrants as a great evil?
catch (IOException ioe) {
throw new ExtendsFromRuntimeException(ioe); }
catch (IOException ioe) {// do cleanup and log the error }
These are three VERY different things. The first is a blind catch that gobbles any error without regard to applicability. The second is a declaration that we cannot intelligently handle the error where we are and are looking for a fast track to the bottom of the stack (such as for servlet code where an error occurs and we want to send the 50x error code and message without an intermediary. The third is the standard exception we all know and love/hate. The last two are completely valid depending upon the situation. If you can handle the error locally, handle it locally. If you can't, send it on the stack unwinding fasttrack.
My argument was that the last two were simply two options in your toolbox. The first one is just laziness and never acceptable.
My apologies if I was arguing with what you said if in fact we agreed. I read "unchecked exception" as "ignored exception." Unchecked exceptions are fine... in moderation and where they are appropriate. Just like checked exceptions.
Indeed you are correct. Terribly sorry; I was pulling (apparently incorrectly) from memory.
However, the page you link to looks to be making graphs in (quadrillion) BTUs, not kilowatt-hours for the US. I think that's throwing your numbers off. Warning: the page I linked is in thousand megawatt-hours. I'll restate.
3,970,555 million megawatt-hours = 3.97 trillion kilowatt-hours.
Currently less than the 4.8 I cited for the US. Once again, terribly sorry. However I think you are off by more than two orders of magnitude from the start.
150 billion kilowatt-hours (1.5x10^14) for the world is far, far too small a figure. From what you linked, I found this notable quote about a third of the way down the page:
"Electricity generation is expected to nearly double between 2002 and 2025, from 14,275 billion kilowatthours to 26,018 billion kilowatthours."
The world is three and a half times as much as the US alone. (Honestly, I didn't know it was that much. EIA has updated their pages since I last looked at them.) And heading to 26... Yeesh!
14,275 billion kilowatt-hours = 14,275 million megawatt-hours
Not that I don't think you can calculate it. I was writing it out for myself. (It's a shame that EIA can't use the same units everywhere.) Nevertheless, thank you for correcting my US consumption figure.
That has not been my experience. Teams I've worked with both on a regular basis and only occasionally have at least one member that knows what he/she is doing, i.e., kicks the crap out the catch(Exception e) {} junior programmer.
Other than that, I've seen it in some open source projects. That failed to convince me because 80% of all open source project in any language suck. Most are 19-year-old first-timers learning the language.
From my point of view, checked exceptions were a qualified success. It wasn't a panacea, but I don't agree with you that we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. They simply became yet another programming case of "use when needed, don't when not."
Talk about a hysterical (not related to humor) viewpoint. Name one non-Soviet, numbskull, safeties-off case that involved death in a community.
Chernobyl was not an example of "what could happen." Western nuclear plants have never been built like Chernobyl. Graphite moderators and control rods with a positive void coefficient? The site engineers forbidden open communication with nuclear engineers? Just one foot of concrete in the containment wall? 5-10 of the failsafes disabled beforehand?
Compared to oil, natural gas, and coal, nuclear power has a stellar operational record in the West. The big, famous US "catastophe" was what? Harrisburg? A hydrogen buildup? By design, there was no oxygen present. I couldn't have exploded. Period. End of sentence. A bad series of events and decisions (not just one) resulted in a hysterical media, but no real danger to the surrounding communities.
Look up instances where problems occurred at oil, natural gas, and coal plants. In those cases you see deaths, dismemberments, vast amounts of pollution including heavy metals, and entire towns that have been abandoned because a coal vein caught fire for over forty years. (Yes, the fire's been burning in what was once the town of Centralia, Pennsylvania for forty straight years.)
Let's be clear. I am not saying that large-scale nuclear power is safe. I would submit that no large-scale power generation is safe. But when you look at the numbers, nuclear is safer than other options. But the reality is that people hear "nuclear" and start waving their arms about while shouting, "Think of the children," and "What about my wife and kids?" The best part is that they say these things even though the alternatives in use are demonstrably worse.
30,000 people die from the coal industry each year. Billions are paid out for cases of Black Lung Disease. Take Chernobyl and look up the number of deaths and incidence of cancer. The worst nuclear disaster in history -- due to substandard bulding practices, faulty experimental controls, and a secretive government attempting to cover things up -- doesn't add up to a single year of coal in just the US. In fact, all nuclear accidents combined for the history of nuclear power in the world do not add up to the death and disease associated with just one year of coal. Couple this with the fact that nuclear is about 20% of all US power production. One third of coal.
In general, I'm all for transparency. However, when it comes to engineering efforts, I'd just as soon shut out the masses screaming, "What about my wife and children." That is unless you have a degree in a related field of engineering.
Am I an engineer? No. But the friend of mine with an environmental engineering degree that used to work at a nuclear power plant is. He was the one that changed my mind, and I'm truly greatful for it. It didn't come from scare tactics; it came from showing me the numbers.
While becoming an engineer takes a great deal of time, it doesn't require advanced math to quell some serious misgivings. For example:
Deadly material for 10,000 years
bullshit: the stuff that lasts the longest is the safest. It's the short-lived isotopes you have to worry about.
We have no idea what to do with the waste
bullshit: there are plenty of good ideas. Many people (for political rather than practical reasons) choose to ignore them. Burying it is a perfectly acceptable possibility. Refining it by removing the 3% of crud that accumulates in the US model of once-through. Vitrifying it (mixing with glass to make it non-reactive) and dropping it into a subduction zone at the bottom of the ocean where it will be covered with clay and drawn into the Earth's mantle. Personally I'm in favor of option number 2, refining.
The plant could turn into a mushroom cloud
bullshit: fissile material for weapons is not the same as fissile material for power generation. Th
When an error occurs, I personally would like to know if it was (a) a malformed URL, (b) a security (sandbox) violation, (c) a data I/O error, or (d) a null reference. But all of these are possibilities if I'm trying to programmatically grab a file from a server.
In this case, you have a few possibilities:
1) Check status codes returned from each function
2) Catch relevant exceptions
With unchecked exceptions, all you know programmatically is that an error occurred. Sure, you can take a look at the stack trace after the fact, but while the program is running, there's no way to differentiate and take appropriate action. For example, a security violation would mean that I'm connecting to a server I shouldn't be. A MalformedURLException means that the user entered invalid data. An I/O exception implies that there was a problem tranferring the data. A SocketTimeoutException means that the server never responded. How my program reacts to each of these situations can be completely different.
If, however, upstream of the raw I/O layer, you decide that any error should be treated the same, that's your business.
catch (Throwable t)
- or - catch (Exception e)
And you're done. Alternatively you could wrap it in a RuntimeException.
catch (Throwable t) { throw new RuntimeException(t); }
It's up to you. The important point here is that if the info simply isn't important to you, you can easily discard it. On the other hand, if that info isn't there in the first place -- if all exceptions are unchecked -- you can't retroactively enforce them; you can't react to info that wasn't already there.
The beauty of Java is that one way or another you must acknowledge possible error conditions. By wrapping them in a RuntimeException, you are still clearly aware that the errors are possible. You just don't think they're important in a particular case.
This is in stark contrast to C where folks regularly ignore error response codes, compiling cleanly at 4am, sometimes with disastrous results down the road at a user's workstation.
Given that humans are inherently flawed creatures that have been know to write inherently flawed code, better to err on the side of caution.
That wasn't the intention. My point wasn't so much "you can never convince me because nuclear power is evil" as "what can we do to estalish enough transparency in the industry that people can sensibly support a nuclear program?"
Perhaps by putting mechanical, fluid dymnamics, and nuclear engineers in charge of the technical aspects of the projects instead of lawyers/politicians?
Then of course the public needs to ignore political protests regarding "giving those scientists a blank check with no oversight." You don't need transparency so much as accountability. Transparency encourages ignorant meddling. Accountability encourages doing the job well.
Once the price of electricity starts going up dramatically and/or starts being rationed, witness opposition to alternatives such as nuclear dwindle rapidly.
People in general become far more pragmatic when the lights are about to be turned off.
The only drawback is that we need that natural gas to heat our homes. In fact, more and more buses and cars are being converted to run on compressed natural gas.
Natural gas is a far more finite resource than we like to admit. Just ask the Ukraine.
Enough solar energy in a day for 1000 years? Ummm... can I share some of your apparently abundant supply of crack?
The US alone uses 8.4 trillion kilowatts of electricity. The sun provides up to 1.367kW per square meter during daylight hours. After factoring night, cloud cover, inclimate weather, and latitudes that seasonally aren't receiving much light, it comes out to about 164 Watts per square meter over a 24 hour day. All together, the entire planet receives the equivalent of 84 billion kilowatts. Multiply by 24 (hours) to get 2.016 trillion kilowatt hours or a little less than one fourth of just the US annual consumption. Multiply that last number by 365 and we get 735.840 trillion kilowatt hours per year. Quite a lot, but far less than 1000 years' worth. Less than 100 years just for the US.
Factor in the energy requirements for the rest of the world and you start talking in terms of a decade.
But there's an important thing forgotten here:
This assumes that we completely cover the planet in solar panels that are 100% efficient. We will never be 100% efficient. I find it highly unlikely that we'll get above 50% on a large scale. Our most efficient panels that last longer than 18 months and don't cost more than its weight in platinum are about 15%-20% efficient. So now we're into the realm of covering the planet just to break even.
But there's one more important thing forgotten here:
We need that sunlight! We need it to grow crops, for all animal life and plant life to sustain itself, for warmth, etc.
So please, for the sake of all rational thinkers, stop spouting nonsense like, "...we get enough solar energy in a day on this planet to fuel our civilization for the next 1000 years." It's not true (unless you want a large portion of humanity to starve because we've reverted to pre-1900 technology), and it only serves to hurt your credibility.
FYI: One way to prevent corrosion in water-bearing pipes is to apply an electrical charge to the pipe. One of the byproducts (and actually the primary reason why the process works) is hydrogen.
Many (most?) nuclear power plants generate hydrogen anyway. Imagine the potential if that was one of their primary goals?
i for one am sick of dealing with classpaths and 250 jars inside of jar files inside of war files inside of ear files - catch my drift.
So unpack the jar files into a common directory and re-archive them all together. They're basically just renamed zip files.
War files are intended to be independent: that's what they're for. They are meant to be a drop-in web application piece.
i'm also sick of J2EE containers with class loaders schemes that are more complicated than my senior year algebraic structures course.
Fair enough. They are indeed complicated. I happen to believe that their raison d'etre, preventing App-A from redefining classes used by App-B, is a good thing. But you're right. It can be extremely difficult to wrap your head around.
build a linker into java just like.net has, and something like a GAC.
Nah, I'd prefer they standardized the native interfaces on something like GCJ's CNI. But we're in total agreement that JNI is not sufficient.
then allow versioning of libraries.
Can you be more specific? I think I know what you are intending, but I don't think it's a good idea. Principle of charity, I'll assume that I'm misunderstanding what you intend. Can you be more specific as to what you're intending here?
then get rid of checked exceptions so i don't have to do try/catch/wrap/rethrows(or do nothing) in 90% of my J2EE code.
Just extend from RuntimeException. Problem solved. Checked exceptions are good if and only if the calling code can actually do something about the situation. If that's not the case, extending from RuntimeException will give you the fast track out that you are looking for.
Just don't overdo it.
then get rid of stateful, local session beans - how redudant is that???
Not redundant at all. J2EE/EJB components work from interface definitions, not the bean code itself. Without this, you are calling the implementation code directly. Probably not the end of the world in most cases, but a distinct and non-redundant case nonetheless.
then find a way to get rid of the 14 million defines i need in my server.xml to specify which implementation of each 'open, standard' interface i need
Now you're talking app server (Tomcat, right?) configuration. This is hardly the fault of the language, the VM, or the spec.
so, java as a language - it's ok java as a platform - SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
left java for.net after 6 years of dealing with Sun's bullcrap and i have never looked back.
Just like capitalism, it's the worst choice. Well, except for all the others..Net has its own warts.
You really should take a look at the EJB 3.0 spec. It really is a lot nicer.
Not only is dichotomic not a word, you're using it and paramount (I think you meant tantamount) incorrectly.
Regarding the issue of classrooms being federal or local, the question is whether they receive federal funds or not. Schools may chose not to and therefore not be subject to the whims of the federal government. Those that take the money are -- and that basically means every public school in the country.
Further, acknowledging an opposing viewpoint is not anti-science, but science is not a Romper Room sharing session with warm fuzzies. Science is brutal. Science dictates that you make an argument that is bulletproof because your colleagues won't be firing blanks. Science is a bunch of toddlers playing with your toy, not caring if it breaks.
The short version here is that ID is most certainly not bulletproof. In fact, it has so many holes, it makes swiss cheese seem solid. In science to be a valid opposing viewpoint, you have to do more than show up at the party; you must bring a toy that won't get broken.
It must present a workable hypothesis. That hypothesis must fit your observations, must make predictions based upon that data, must be independently repeatable, and must be falsifiable.
ID fails this metric on multiple counts and therefore has no business even being mentioned in the same sentence as "scientific theory" unless also accompanied by judicious use of the words "not," "isn't," and/or the phrases "fails miserably" or "horribly flawed."
Irreducible complexity: certain things like the human eye and bacterial flagellum are so complex, relying on so many independent pieces, that it could not have evolved from chance.
For example, if evolution occurs through gradations, how could it have created the separate parts of the eye -- the lens, the retina, the pupil, and so forth -- since none of these structures by themselves would make vision possible? In other words, what good is five percent of an eye?
I'm also sure you've heard the name Behe before. Did you know that in 2001 Michael Behe admitted that his work had a "defect" and does not actually address "the task facing natural selection." Futhermore, irreducible complexity is rejected by the majority of the scientific community. The main concerns with the concept are that it utilises an argument from ignorance, that Behe fails to provide a testable hypothesis, and that there is a lack of evidence in support of the concept. As such, irreducible complexity is seen by the supporters of evolutionary theory as an example of creationist pseudoscience and amounts to a "God of the Gaps" argument.
Can ID answer the following questions?
Why do we have vestigial fingers on our feet?
Why do our nasal passages drain into our lungs?
Why are our ankles so damn thin and weak compared to our weight and height?
Why are our ribs "designed" to carry weight horizontally?
Why are some whales born with legs?
Why do our eyes have blood vessels directly in front of our field of vision?
If you can't answer the last one at the very least, stop reading now. Go back to the link above, click on it, and spend the four minutes and eight seconds educating yourself.
The point to those questions is that NONE of them can be answered with ID. Can't be predicted with. Can't be tested with. None. Zero.
But do you know what can? Evolution, every one of them.
That said, while you accuse others of not understanding what ID actually is, I contend that you do not understand what evolution is.
(1) the specifics of how life evolved from a scientific point of view, ie natural selection etc. (2) The "big picture" of how the planet is full of human beings now where it was once only a molten planet.
First of all, the article this discussion is linked to references how scientists have learned new "specifics of how life evolved from a scientific point of view..."
Second, evolution has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with how life was created on what was once only a molten planet. Nothing. At all. Evolution is the transition -- of a population -- from one form of life to others forms of life over (usually long periods of) time.
Creation of life where there is no life is what is known as abiogenesis, not evolution. Now stop what you're doing! I can see you reaching for that reply button and Googling for references to the Miller-Urey experiments from the 1950s.
Stop it! You didn't even read that abiogenesis link, did you? I didn't think so. Nothing I can say can convince you to if your mind is already made up (read: clouded by mindless dogma). However I will leave you with one thing so that you can look it up yourself and do the research.
Abiogenesis experiments conducted by Dr. Sidney Fox. Don't even b
Could you please provide us with a single previous example of metaphysics accepted as science that still stands today? Let me run it down for you.
metaphysics = not observable metaphysics = not testable metaphysics = not falsifiable metaphysics = not science
Once again...
metaphysics = not science
Say it again...
metaphysics = not science
No one has said that you cannot discuss ID in a comparative religion or philosophy class. These are the classes for metaphysical discussions, not the biology classes.
Tell me in a nutshell why archie, veronica, and gopher failed to capture the hearts and minds of the world outside academia.
Why did the web succeed where the others failed?
Hmmm... Let's see the difference. Hmmmm...
Oh! That's it! The web had a graphical user interface where you could just click on things whereas the others had a text-only interface with obscure command line switches that, twenty years later, no one gives a rat's ass about.
Okay, now you can go back to your regularly scheduled sock drawer organization.
2. Not everyone wants to be an expert in computers. (More important)
3. You cannot drag and drop a spreadsheet table into a LaTeX document.
4. You assume that those who are not interested in the same things that you are should be considered dumb because they favor a GUI.
5. OS X is an example of a GUI done better. GUI != Windows GUI. For reference, check out Quicksilver for OS X.
6. \documentstyle{letter} \begin{document} is not as easy as using a WYSIWYG word processor. Stop deluding yourself.
7. Do you make sure to wash only whites with whites, light colors with light colors, and darks with darks? Do you fold them neatly and ordered from dark to light? Do you put striped shirts in a different section from solids? Some would argue that just a little time spent up front can save you more time later when selecting an outfit for the day. Others will be impressed by your organization.
OR
Do you just not care enough to obsess about your clean laundry. Maybe you're like me and just fold it and throw it in a dresser. Maybe like me you wash white with "fairly light" on warm most of the time....because it's just not that important to me.
Different people care about different things. Perhaps LaTeX would be marginally more efficient than Word (after the initial training and cursing is over). But more likely, just like organizing your sock drawer; most people figure that they have better things to do.
------------
That said, you are unfortunately comparing apples to oranges. LaTeX is a replacement to the Word doc format, not Word.
I also don't find anything friggin impossible or even difficult about "\documentstyle{letter} \begin{document}... letters... \end{document}"
*ring* *ring*
"Hello? Okay hold on, I'll get him. It's for you. It's the 1980's calling. They want their text processor back."
Now calm down. Do I think LaTeX (and its non-obvious pronounciation) should go away? No. Do I think many people use it through a GUI and not by typing in format/structure codes? Absolutely! I also hope you grasp the irony of someone advocating for better word processing methodology (text with formatting) in a Slashdot post with absolutely no formatting whatsoever. My god man! They're called "paragraph breaks."
What the hell is the point of a 3GHz processor if you're just going to use a text editor that only loads and saves? Then of course you have to pass it through a formatter/compiler so that you can have your nice PDF or graphic or what-have-you. But wait! You need to make a template too so that it looks presentable.
Forget that! I remember the days of writing ".pp" at the beginning of WordStar documents so that numbered page footers would appear from the dot matrix printer. I remember arcane commands like "^KD" for save and close. I occasionally type ":wq" in a console when I have to. I remember typing "CLOAD BJACK" on my father's Z80-processor Exidy Sorceror and pressing play on the tape deck so that I could get a couple hands of Blackjack in before bed. They were all things that I could learn, and they weren't all that complex.
I never want anything to do with them ever again. Why? Because I have better things to worry about than obscure technical arcana that has no relevance to the world at large or the task at hand. The only point in bringing it up and proclaiming that others do the same is to assert how clever you think you are and how you think every else will be made so much more clever if they do as you do.
If you really want people to use LaTeX, bundle it up in such a way that anyone -- not just those who have used computers for ten years or longer -- can use it out of the box with only a ten-minute tutorial. Go ahead. I dare you. A word of advice: don't start the tutorial with "all you have to do is format it like '
Slashdot Mirror
Hunh? The US hasn't been at war with any of its neighbors (Canada and Mexico) for over 150 years. I'll grant you that Cuba may qualify, but Mexico? Compare that with Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia -- a couple of World Wars come to mind at the very least.
And you think we have poor relations with Mexico? Admittedly the relations aren't at all perfect, but poor? Last time I was down there, in Mexico City, no one spit on me. Sure there are kidnappings, but guess what? Mexicans get kidnapped too! It's a developing world problem, not a US-Mexican relations problem.
Have you seen any of the arguments between the English and French? Or Germany and Italy? China and Tibet have gotten along famously. And let's not forget the great friendship between India and Pakistan. Or Israel and... well... every other country in that region.
Or were you going to bring up Mexican illegal immigrants as a great evil?
Let's be sure we're talking about the same thing.
// do cleanup and log the error
catch (Exception e) {}
catch (IOException ioe) {
throw new ExtendsFromRuntimeException(ioe);
}
catch (IOException ioe) {
}
These are three VERY different things. The first is a blind catch that gobbles any error without regard to applicability. The second is a declaration that we cannot intelligently handle the error where we are and are looking for a fast track to the bottom of the stack (such as for servlet code where an error occurs and we want to send the 50x error code and message without an intermediary. The third is the standard exception we all know and love/hate. The last two are completely valid depending upon the situation. If you can handle the error locally, handle it locally. If you can't, send it on the stack unwinding fasttrack.
My argument was that the last two were simply two options in your toolbox. The first one is just laziness and never acceptable.
My apologies if I was arguing with what you said if in fact we agreed. I read "unchecked exception" as "ignored exception." Unchecked exceptions are fine... in moderation and where they are appropriate. Just like checked exceptions.
I would have to admit, far less than 90% of the Java code I've seen out there -- and I've been using it since v1.02 -- has catch (Exception e) {}.
I would even venture to say that the majority of code I've seen that I have written and has been written be others didn't do that.
I listed 8.4 trillion kilowatt-hours.
Take away the crack pipe. Apparently I had way too much when I wrote 8.4.
However, the page you link to looks to be making graphs in (quadrillion) BTUs, not kilowatt-hours for the US. I think that's throwing your numbers off. Warning: the page I linked is in thousand megawatt-hours. I'll restate.
3,970,555 million megawatt-hours = 3.97 trillion kilowatt-hours.
Currently less than the 4.8 I cited for the US. Once again, terribly sorry. However I think you are off by more than two orders of magnitude from the start.
150 billion kilowatt-hours (1.5x10^14) for the world is far, far too small a figure. From what you linked, I found this notable quote about a third of the way down the page:
The world is three and a half times as much as the US alone. (Honestly, I didn't know it was that much. EIA has updated their pages since I last looked at them.) And heading to 26... Yeesh!
14,275 billion kilowatt-hours = 14,275 million megawatt-hours
Not that I don't think you can calculate it. I was writing it out for myself. (It's a shame that EIA can't use the same units everywhere.) Nevertheless, thank you for correcting my US consumption figure.
That has not been my experience. Teams I've worked with both on a regular basis and only occasionally have at least one member that knows what he/she is doing, i.e., kicks the crap out the catch(Exception e) {} junior programmer.
Other than that, I've seen it in some open source projects. That failed to convince me because 80% of all open source project in any language suck. Most are 19-year-old first-timers learning the language.
From my point of view, checked exceptions were a qualified success. It wasn't a panacea, but I don't agree with you that we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. They simply became yet another programming case of "use when needed, don't when not."
"Involves the death of your wife and family?"
Talk about a hysterical (not related to humor) viewpoint. Name one non-Soviet, numbskull, safeties-off case that involved death in a community.
Chernobyl was not an example of "what could happen." Western nuclear plants have never been built like Chernobyl. Graphite moderators and control rods with a positive void coefficient? The site engineers forbidden open communication with nuclear engineers? Just one foot of concrete in the containment wall? 5-10 of the failsafes disabled beforehand?
Compared to oil, natural gas, and coal, nuclear power has a stellar operational record in the West. The big, famous US "catastophe" was what? Harrisburg? A hydrogen buildup? By design, there was no oxygen present. I couldn't have exploded. Period. End of sentence. A bad series of events and decisions (not just one) resulted in a hysterical media, but no real danger to the surrounding communities.
Look up instances where problems occurred at oil, natural gas, and coal plants. In those cases you see deaths, dismemberments, vast amounts of pollution including heavy metals, and entire towns that have been abandoned because a coal vein caught fire for over forty years. (Yes, the fire's been burning in what was once the town of Centralia, Pennsylvania for forty straight years.)
Let's be clear. I am not saying that large-scale nuclear power is safe. I would submit that no large-scale power generation is safe. But when you look at the numbers, nuclear is safer than other options. But the reality is that people hear "nuclear" and start waving their arms about while shouting, "Think of the children," and "What about my wife and kids?" The best part is that they say these things even though the alternatives in use are demonstrably worse.
30,000 people die from the coal industry each year. Billions are paid out for cases of Black Lung Disease. Take Chernobyl and look up the number of deaths and incidence of cancer. The worst nuclear disaster in history -- due to substandard bulding practices, faulty experimental controls, and a secretive government attempting to cover things up -- doesn't add up to a single year of coal in just the US. In fact, all nuclear accidents combined for the history of nuclear power in the world do not add up to the death and disease associated with just one year of coal. Couple this with the fact that nuclear is about 20% of all US power production. One third of coal.
In general, I'm all for transparency. However, when it comes to engineering efforts, I'd just as soon shut out the masses screaming, "What about my wife and children." That is unless you have a degree in a related field of engineering.
Am I an engineer? No. But the friend of mine with an environmental engineering degree that used to work at a nuclear power plant is. He was the one that changed my mind, and I'm truly greatful for it. It didn't come from scare tactics; it came from showing me the numbers.
While becoming an engineer takes a great deal of time, it doesn't require advanced math to quell some serious misgivings. For example: Deadly material for 10,000 years bullshit: the stuff that lasts the longest is the safest. It's the short-lived isotopes you have to worry about. We have no idea what to do with the waste bullshit: there are plenty of good ideas. Many people (for political rather than practical reasons) choose to ignore them. Burying it is a perfectly acceptable possibility. Refining it by removing the 3% of crud that accumulates in the US model of once-through. Vitrifying it (mixing with glass to make it non-reactive) and dropping it into a subduction zone at the bottom of the ocean where it will be covered with clay and drawn into the Earth's mantle. Personally I'm in favor of option number 2, refining. The plant could turn into a mushroom cloud bullshit: fissile material for weapons is not the same as fissile material for power generation. Th
When an error occurs, I personally would like to know if it was (a) a malformed URL, (b) a security (sandbox) violation, (c) a data I/O error, or (d) a null reference. But all of these are possibilities if I'm trying to programmatically grab a file from a server.
In this case, you have a few possibilities:
1) Check status codes returned from each function
2) Catch relevant exceptions
With unchecked exceptions, all you know programmatically is that an error occurred. Sure, you can take a look at the stack trace after the fact, but while the program is running, there's no way to differentiate and take appropriate action. For example, a security violation would mean that I'm connecting to a server I shouldn't be. A MalformedURLException means that the user entered invalid data. An I/O exception implies that there was a problem tranferring the data. A SocketTimeoutException means that the server never responded. How my program reacts to each of these situations can be completely different.
If, however, upstream of the raw I/O layer, you decide that any error should be treated the same, that's your business.
catch (Throwable t)
- or -
catch (Exception e)
And you're done. Alternatively you could wrap it in a RuntimeException.
catch (Throwable t) { throw new RuntimeException(t); }
It's up to you. The important point here is that if the info simply isn't important to you, you can easily discard it. On the other hand, if that info isn't there in the first place -- if all exceptions are unchecked -- you can't retroactively enforce them; you can't react to info that wasn't already there.
The beauty of Java is that one way or another you must acknowledge possible error conditions. By wrapping them in a RuntimeException, you are still clearly aware that the errors are possible. You just don't think they're important in a particular case.
This is in stark contrast to C where folks regularly ignore error response codes, compiling cleanly at 4am, sometimes with disastrous results down the road at a user's workstation.
Given that humans are inherently flawed creatures that have been know to write inherently flawed code, better to err on the side of caution.
Then of course the public needs to ignore political protests regarding "giving those scientists a blank check with no oversight." You don't need transparency so much as accountability. Transparency encourages ignorant meddling. Accountability encourages doing the job well.
Obligatory comment about how I wish I had mod points. Of all the "Informative" comments, yours is one of the few that honestly deserves it.
Too bad gas and oil are increasingly finite resources. In that sense, using them to heat your home when alternatives are available is a waste.
Once the price of electricity starts going up dramatically and/or starts being rationed, witness opposition to alternatives such as nuclear dwindle rapidly.
People in general become far more pragmatic when the lights are about to be turned off.
The only drawback is that we need that natural gas to heat our homes. In fact, more and more buses and cars are being converted to run on compressed natural gas.
Natural gas is a far more finite resource than we like to admit. Just ask the Ukraine.
Enough solar energy in a day for 1000 years? Ummm... can I share some of your apparently abundant supply of crack?
The US alone uses 8.4 trillion kilowatts of electricity. The sun provides up to 1.367kW per square meter during daylight hours. After factoring night, cloud cover, inclimate weather, and latitudes that seasonally aren't receiving much light, it comes out to about 164 Watts per square meter over a 24 hour day. All together, the entire planet receives the equivalent of 84 billion kilowatts. Multiply by 24 (hours) to get 2.016 trillion kilowatt hours or a little less than one fourth of just the US annual consumption. Multiply that last number by 365 and we get 735.840 trillion kilowatt hours per year. Quite a lot, but far less than 1000 years' worth. Less than 100 years just for the US.
Factor in the energy requirements for the rest of the world and you start talking in terms of a decade.
But there's an important thing forgotten here:
This assumes that we completely cover the planet in solar panels that are 100% efficient. We will never be 100% efficient. I find it highly unlikely that we'll get above 50% on a large scale. Our most efficient panels that last longer than 18 months and don't cost more than its weight in platinum are about 15%-20% efficient. So now we're into the realm of covering the planet just to break even.
But there's one more important thing forgotten here:
We need that sunlight! We need it to grow crops, for all animal life and plant life to sustain itself, for warmth, etc.
So please, for the sake of all rational thinkers, stop spouting nonsense like, "...we get enough solar energy in a day on this planet to fuel our civilization for the next 1000 years." It's not true (unless you want a large portion of humanity to starve because we've reverted to pre-1900 technology), and it only serves to hurt your credibility.
Fair enough, but blame the lib author, not the language.
FYI: One way to prevent corrosion in water-bearing pipes is to apply an electrical charge to the pipe. One of the byproducts (and actually the primary reason why the process works) is hydrogen.
Many (most?) nuclear power plants generate hydrogen anyway. Imagine the potential if that was one of their primary goals?
War files are intended to be independent: that's what they're for. They are meant to be a drop-in web application piece.
Fair enough. They are indeed complicated. I happen to believe that their raison d'etre, preventing App-A from redefining classes used by App-B, is a good thing. But you're right. It can be extremely difficult to wrap your head around.
Nah, I'd prefer they standardized the native interfaces on something like GCJ's CNI. But we're in total agreement that JNI is not sufficient.
Can you be more specific? I think I know what you are intending, but I don't think it's a good idea. Principle of charity, I'll assume that I'm misunderstanding what you intend. Can you be more specific as to what you're intending here?
Just extend from RuntimeException. Problem solved. Checked exceptions are good if and only if the calling code can actually do something about the situation. If that's not the case, extending from RuntimeException will give you the fast track out that you are looking for.
Just don't overdo it.
Not redundant at all. J2EE/EJB components work from interface definitions, not the bean code itself. Without this, you are calling the implementation code directly. Probably not the end of the world in most cases, but a distinct and non-redundant case nonetheless.
Now you're talking app server (Tomcat, right?) configuration. This is hardly the fault of the language, the VM, or the spec.
Just like capitalism, it's the worst choice. Well, except for all the others.
You really should take a look at the EJB 3.0 spec. It really is a lot nicer.
Not only is dichotomic not a word, you're using it and paramount (I think you meant tantamount) incorrectly.
Regarding the issue of classrooms being federal or local, the question is whether they receive federal funds or not. Schools may chose not to and therefore not be subject to the whims of the federal government. Those that take the money are -- and that basically means every public school in the country.
Further, acknowledging an opposing viewpoint is not anti-science, but science is not a Romper Room sharing session with warm fuzzies. Science is brutal. Science dictates that you make an argument that is bulletproof because your colleagues won't be firing blanks. Science is a bunch of toddlers playing with your toy, not caring if it breaks.
The short version here is that ID is most certainly not bulletproof. In fact, it has so many holes, it makes swiss cheese seem solid. In science to be a valid opposing viewpoint, you have to do more than show up at the party; you must bring a toy that won't get broken.
It must present a workable hypothesis.
That hypothesis must fit your observations, must make predictions based upon that data, must be independently repeatable, and must be falsifiable.
ID fails this metric on multiple counts and therefore has no business even being mentioned in the same sentence as "scientific theory" unless also accompanied by judicious use of the words "not," "isn't," and/or the phrases "fails miserably" or "horribly flawed."
Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.
Feel free to take four minutes and eight seconds to learn precisely how the human eye probably evolved.
If you can handle the four minutes and eight seconds, perhaps you'd be willing to do some reading about how a bacterial flagellum could form without a designer.
I'm also sure you've heard the name Behe before. Did you know that in 2001 Michael Behe admitted that his work had a "defect" and does not actually address "the task facing natural selection." Futhermore, irreducible complexity is rejected by the majority of the scientific community. The main concerns with the concept are that it utilises an argument from ignorance, that Behe fails to provide a testable hypothesis, and that there is a lack of evidence in support of the concept. As such, irreducible complexity is seen by the supporters of evolutionary theory as an example of creationist pseudoscience and amounts to a "God of the Gaps" argument.
Can ID answer the following questions?
If you can't answer the last one at the very least, stop reading now. Go back to the link above, click on it, and spend the four minutes and eight seconds educating yourself.
The point to those questions is that NONE of them can be answered with ID. Can't be predicted with. Can't be tested with. None. Zero.
But do you know what can? Evolution, every one of them.
That said, while you accuse others of not understanding what ID actually is, I contend that you do not understand what evolution is.
First of all, the article this discussion is linked to references how scientists have learned new "specifics of how life evolved from a scientific point of view..."
Second, evolution has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with how life was created on what was once only a molten planet. Nothing. At all. Evolution is the transition -- of a population -- from one form of life to others forms of life over (usually long periods of) time.
Creation of life where there is no life is what is known as abiogenesis, not evolution. Now stop what you're doing! I can see you reaching for that reply button and Googling for references to the Miller-Urey experiments from the 1950s.
Stop it! You didn't even read that abiogenesis link, did you? I didn't think so. Nothing I can say can convince you to if your mind is already made up (read: clouded by mindless dogma). However I will leave you with one thing so that you can look it up yourself and do the research.
Abiogenesis experiments conducted by Dr. Sidney Fox. Don't even b
Could you please provide us with a single previous example of metaphysics accepted as science that still stands today? Let me run it down for you.
metaphysics = not observable
metaphysics = not testable
metaphysics = not falsifiable
metaphysics = not science
Once again...
metaphysics = not science
Say it again...
metaphysics = not science
No one has said that you cannot discuss ID in a comparative religion or philosophy class. These are the classes for metaphysical discussions, not the biology classes.
One more time...
metaphysics = not science
Got it yet?
metaphysics = not science
Perhaps you haven't heard yet:
Version 7.4 (or 7.3, I forget) had the option of autovacuum as a standalone daemon.
Version 8.1 has autovaccum fully integrated into the product.
Effectively, the administrator hasn't had to worry about manual vacuums for well over a year.
Tell me in a nutshell why archie, veronica, and gopher failed to capture the hearts and minds of the world outside academia.
Why did the web succeed where the others failed?
Hmmm... Let's see the difference. Hmmmm...
Oh! That's it! The web had a graphical user interface where you could just click on things whereas the others had a text-only interface with obscure command line switches that, twenty years later, no one gives a rat's ass about.
Okay, now you can go back to your regularly scheduled sock drawer organization.
1. Not everyone is an expert.
2. Not everyone wants to be an expert in computers. (More important)
3. You cannot drag and drop a spreadsheet table into a LaTeX document.
4. You assume that those who are not interested in the same things that you are should be considered dumb because they favor a GUI.
5. OS X is an example of a GUI done better. GUI != Windows GUI. For reference, check out Quicksilver for OS X.
6. \documentstyle{letter} \begin{document} is not as easy as using a WYSIWYG word processor. Stop deluding yourself.
7. Do you make sure to wash only whites with whites, light colors with light colors, and darks with darks? Do you fold them neatly and ordered from dark to light? Do you put striped shirts in a different section from solids? Some would argue that just a little time spent up front can save you more time later when selecting an outfit for the day. Others will be impressed by your organization.
OR
Do you just not care enough to obsess about your clean laundry. Maybe you're like me and just fold it and throw it in a dresser. Maybe like me you wash white with "fairly light" on warm most of the time.
Different people care about different things. Perhaps LaTeX would be marginally more efficient than Word (after the initial training and cursing is over). But more likely, just like organizing your sock drawer; most people figure that they have better things to do.
------------
That said, you are unfortunately comparing apples to oranges. LaTeX is a replacement to the Word doc format, not Word.
*ring* *ring*
"Hello? Okay hold on, I'll get him. It's for you. It's the 1980's calling. They want their text processor back."
Now calm down. Do I think LaTeX (and its non-obvious pronounciation) should go away? No. Do I think many people use it through a GUI and not by typing in format/structure codes? Absolutely! I also hope you grasp the irony of someone advocating for better word processing methodology (text with formatting) in a Slashdot post with absolutely no formatting whatsoever. My god man! They're called "paragraph breaks."
What the hell is the point of a 3GHz processor if you're just going to use a text editor that only loads and saves? Then of course you have to pass it through a formatter/compiler so that you can have your nice PDF or graphic or what-have-you. But wait! You need to make a template too so that it looks presentable.
Forget that! I remember the days of writing ".pp" at the beginning of WordStar documents so that numbered page footers would appear from the dot matrix printer. I remember arcane commands like "^KD" for save and close. I occasionally type ":wq" in a console when I have to. I remember typing "CLOAD BJACK" on my father's Z80-processor Exidy Sorceror and pressing play on the tape deck so that I could get a couple hands of Blackjack in before bed. They were all things that I could learn, and they weren't all that complex.
I never want anything to do with them ever again. Why? Because I have better things to worry about than obscure technical arcana that has no relevance to the world at large or the task at hand. The only point in bringing it up and proclaiming that others do the same is to assert how clever you think you are and how you think every else will be made so much more clever if they do as you do.
If you really want people to use LaTeX, bundle it up in such a way that anyone -- not just those who have used computers for ten years or longer -- can use it out of the box with only a ten-minute tutorial. Go ahead. I dare you. A word of advice: don't start the tutorial with "all you have to do is format it like '
You want to pay more for a hybrid that isn't as good solely based on a brand name?
Suit yourself.