I do recognise that your post is certainly impressive (by assuming that all this information is right, what seems to be the case), although it also shows the human's temerity of seriously thinking that they can control what they cannot.
Even a routine rocket launch is a very big deal for us (yesterday's SpaceX "incident" was an excellent proof). That is: a completely static situation where we only have to make sure that all the parts are assembled correctly. Things get extremely more complex when uncontrollable, moving objects come into picture.
I do think that doing some research on the "let's prepare for the worst" front might be useful, but these attempts shouldn't ever hide the reality. And the reality is that we are here by pure chance and will continue being for as long as pure chance will allow us to continue.
You are talking about managers and your speech sounds too manager-like (or HHRR-like?). To not mention that you are focusing on web when the true big deal of.NET is precisely desktop. Together with nonsensical claims like "never on the rise" or talking about stupid people using the.NET Framework?! (most of the programmers creating applications for the most widely used OS are stupid?!)
Usually programmers talk about programming environments being better, supported by a wider number of users, more programmer friendly, etc. But you are basing your claims on a set of abstract ideas talking about the general attitudes of the companies making the programming languages.
As a programmer, I might not like certain companies, because of their general attitude; but if they happen to create something objectively better, I would accept it and start using it. Other programmers might think differently than me, but will certainly not mix technical stuff with disliking the company up (and, in any case, will never bring “manager decisions“ into a programming language discussion, as far as they are completely irrelevant; and what about "marketing"?! how can you mention such a thing in a discussion about what programming language to use??!)
From the programming point of view, the.NET Framework (and its IDE, Visual Studio) is a step beyond on desktop (and on web it is unclear, as far as their approach is completely different to the remaining approaches and thus not easily to be compared) and don't think that any (even half knowledgeable) programmer will ever discuss about the quality of the.NET framework languages. Other issues (like limited capabilities outside Windows or preferring to continue using the programming language you have been using for a while) are perfectly valid reasons to not use.NET at all. But saying that "was a vehicle for clueless middle-managers to justify sitting around blabbering... " etc. is completely against the reality.
The.NET development team has done an impressive work (unlikely many other development teams at Microsoft) during the last years and, as a result, we have a really good programming framework. You might not want to use it; or not like it; but you shouldn't dare to critise something so unmotivatedly (i.e., at the technical level/quality of the framework, when this is very far away from being a true issue), much less when not having the required knowledge (what, correct me if I am wrong, seems pretty clear from your post).
My previous post is not shown but I cannot re-post it because I get an error message saying "This exact comment has already been posted. Try to be more original..."?!
I will try to paste it below these lines:
Windows is still (by very far) the most used OS on desktop computers. At the corporate level this superiority becomes almost insulting and Windows is and will continue being the number 1. Thus, just by focusing on desktop corporate clients, there will be lots of very interested buyers of Windows applications during the next quite a few years (some of them still struggling with Windows XP). To not mention that the web-based languages (= ASP.NET because Silverlight well) are so different to any alternative and so similar to the desktop-based ones that quite a few companies are moving to ASP.NET; actually, there will be many more doing that if this format wouldn’t have a so restricted applicability in web-servers (but, as explained below, they seem to be working on that). In any case, I want to highlight that I personally rely much more on PHP.
Regarding the web and the mobile platforms, Windows & Microsoft seem to be losing the battle. On the other hand, they seem to be doing quite a few changes on this front lately (like increasing cross-compatibility or relying much more on open source); mainly because they cannot rely on their traditional monopoly-oriented attitude in any of these fronts. In fact, I do expect the.NET Framework to become increasingly more compatible with no-Windows systems within the short term.
And on top of all what is written above, the.NET languages (C#, but even VB) have become so popular that even in the extremely unlikely scenario (better: impossible) of the claimed drastic reduction in their utilisation, some alternatives would surely appear. Additionally, a language like C# is extremely similar to quite a few other languages (like Java or even PHP) and thus learning this language will never be a bad decision.
Windows is still (by very far) the most used OS on desktop computers. At the corporate level this superiority becomes almost insulting and Windows is and will continue being the number 1. Thus, just by focusing on desktop corporate clients, there will be lots of very interested buyers of Windows applications during the next quite a few years (some of them still struggling with Windows XP). To not mention that the web-based languages (= ASP.NET because Silverlight well) are so different to any alternative and so similar to the desktop-based ones that quite a few companies are moving to ASP.NET; actually, there will be many more doing that if this format wouldn’t have a so restricted applicability in web-servers (but, as explained below, they seem to be working on that). In any case, I want to highlight that I personally rely much more on PHP.
Regarding the web and the mobile platforms, Windows & Microsoft seem to be losing the battle. On the other hand, they seem to be doing quite a few changes on this front lately (like increasing cross-compatibility or relying much more on open source); mainly because they cannot rely on their traditional monopoly-oriented attitude in any of these fronts. In fact, I do expect the.NET Framework to become increasingly more compatible with no-Windows systems within the short term.
And on top of all what is written above, the.NET languages (C#, but even VB) have become so popular that even in the extremely unlikely scenario (better: impossible) of the claimed drastic reduction in their utilisation, some alternatives would surely appear. Additionally, a language like C# is extremely similar to quite a few other languages (like Java or even PHP) and thus learning this language will never be a bad decision.
Curiously, this time I don't fully disagree with you either. There are always alternatives. And, in any case, I was being over-pessimistic and over-alarmist to raise a bit of awareness (equivalently to what you were doing for your lobby;)) about the underlying not-always-well-known facts, like: humankind having got involved in something which they weren't even close to understand (although we have understood a bit better bomb by bomb, accident by accident and waste by waste).
In any case, I also said that I do consider nuclear energy pretty safe, what does not mean that we should continue going in this direction, unless being completely sure that there is a truly-clean and reliable alternative, that is: reactors which might safely reutilise nuclear waste, if not forever for long enough time. In any other case (i.e., generating radioactive waste over and over) the reliance on nuclear energy should be minimised and replaced as soon as possible.
Are you part of the nuclear lobby?:) Because statements like "Coal is several hundred thousand times _more_ dangerous" sound, in the best scenario, not too objective. But well...
One clarification: according to the ITER guys fusion will occur much sooner (in around 10 years?... I have checked their site since a while ago; but will certainly get fully involved in this project before its definitive start). In fact, if they can go ahead with their plans, your 50-year expectations would be wrong anyway: either fusion will happen before or all/most of us will die and/or nobody will feel like continue trying (because this thing of bringing the sun to the Earth sounds kind of dangerous).
I briefly knew about them. Around 10 years were the cool-but-not-really-applicable alternative, like biodiesel (less CO2 on engines, which is highly compensated with the industrial processes required to generate it). Not sure now...
But are you saying that all the existing reactors can be replaced? (what about the costs? and the differences in power?) And don't they generate any kind of waste (100% reutilisation)? If the answer to both questions is yes, then fission might certainly be the future.
It certainly sounds interesting. No, I didn't know anything about this video and will certainly watch it (might write here an update afterwards).
In any case and just to support my point (i.e., try as hard as you can to fix it but by bearing in mind that we are talking about a really difficult problem which we are only starting to understand), a couple of ideas I extracted from the referred Wikipedia article:
- "The Onkalo repository is expected to be large enough to accept canisters of spent fuel for around one hundred years" ("estimated cost of this project is about €818 million" + "has saved approximately €1.4 billion from charges for generated electricity") -> all this to take care of the nuclear waste generated by just one plant (and perhaps also by a couple of additional close-enough ones) . This kind of 100-years ahead plans are done in all the countries. For example, in Spain we have a main storage for the nuclear waste generated by all our plants (7, I think); and they are certainly accounting for an equivalent scenario to what this article says (also already thinking about what to do after having used all the available space; that is: what will happen will all the nuclear generated in Onkalo after 100 years?). But all this does not represent a final solution, just the only temporary one we can come up with, mainly by bearing in mind that...
- "In 2012, a research group at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, published research that suggests that the copper capsules are not as corrosion-proof as the companies planning the repositories claim" -> we actually don't know the real long term evolution. We just have suppositions, which might be proven wrong in 50 or in 500 years. In fact we have a very little control about what is happening at the atomic level (and below that). We know that by increasing the instability of unstable atoms (radioactive ones), the danger for the human health increases exponentially; we observed certain evolution in these negative effects and, from that, we assume what might be happening next... but we are not sure. What if after X years the evolution changes and the atoms start getting more unstable? We don't know that. And this is the true point of my comments: not trying to provoke paranoia, but just raising some awareness about what playing around with nuclear forces (or with any other potentially very dangerous phenomenon) might provoke: something about which we might not have either control or knowledge.
PS:starting to use Slashdot, liking it pretty much and seriously not complaining at all... but it is not kind of weird that you cannot edit your posts/comments after publishing them?
PS: I wasn't completely sure about what you meant with your first statement because I didn't see the AC comment (by the way, I know now what AC means; yesterday I read a reference which I couldn't understand). My reply to this comment reflects what I think about the way in which impolite, not-even-helpful, completely-unrelated-to-what-is-being-discussed and COWARD attitudes should be treated. That's why, I don't think that you should support these behaviours with a nice "is worth noting".
PPS: In any case, bear in mind that I relied on the HTML list tags, which were expected to deliver a better result than simple new paragraph tags (b and r). Apparently slashdot.org does not work as I was expecting and I will certainly be using the new paragraph tags from now on. Actually, having said that (i.e., "better use a couple of HTML new paragraph tags to separate your paragraphs"; by bearing in mind that I am new and slashdot might not be supporting HTML in comments or might support something else like markup) would have been a more practical, useful and accurate (i.e., actually, I was using paragraphs too; but the default indentation/margin of the lists aren't apparently big enough) advise:)
Ah, OK. Thanks for the input, anonymous coward.
PS: sorry for the delay in replying. It hasn't been because of the tremendous stupidity you have written (unfortunately, I am used to deal with people saying lots of stupid things and even reply them, well... when feeling like laughing a bit). I am new in slashdot.org and didn't realise about this thing of the anonymous cowards' contributions being partially hidden.
Thanks for your detailed answer and your nice comments (I am new in Slashdot and am trying to do my level best:)).
Regarding what you say, fossil fuels are certainly not a solution; but neither nuclear energy. For me, nuclear energy is the door which we shouldn't ever have opened but which, once done, we cannot close. The nuclear plants cannot be replaced because they produce too much power (you would need at least 2 conventional power plans to replace just a nuclear one); at least, not in countries like the USA, France or Japan with many nuclear plants. This is the opened door which I am referring and which we cannot close (at least, not immediately): the existing plants.
On the other hand, we should learn from this bad experience and not open more doors which might even be more difficult to be closed in the future. That is: more fission plants would provoke the nuclear waste problem to grow beyond acceptable (shall we force our grand-grand-grand-children to let the Earth as a nuclear waste storage and move to Mars?!). But fusion power might still be worse: we don't know what will be happening after this door is opened. Here some rough ideas: unlikely fission (which barely requires unstable-enough heavy elements to happen), fusion needs an extremely hot source of heat to happen even with the lightest atoms (that's why ITER was talking about bringing the sun to the Earth: these are the kind of temperatures we are talking about). Note that so high temperatures would immediately melt any material we know (ITER is working on a magnetic field to contain so crazily high temperatures!). We are talking about bringing all our knowledge beyond their current limits on quite a few fronts; what, according to quite a few recent experiences, is likely to provoke problems which we cannot even imagine yet.
Two further clarifications:
- With just boiling water, I am trying to remove some "magic-like" ideas which are usually associated with certain not-known-enough realities. The thermodynamic cycles defining most of the current power plants (and all the nuclear ones) are based on boiling water, that is: the thermal energy is transformed into the required kinetic one by converting water into steam. There is nothing bad about this fact (actually, it has been proven as a really good way to generate electricity); but I think that this clear enough idea would help some people to better understand what we are talking about: generating very dangerous materials which will last for thousands of years to accomplish something (boiling water) which might be accomplished in quite a few different ways.
- I don't think that people is fully aware about the implications of nuclear energy; that we are activating very slow bombs which will (virtually) never be deactivated (by the way, I guess that this is what your video is about. Unfortunately, the link does not work). When you start a single nuclear power plan, you are triggering a set of consequences which the Earth and the future generations will be bearing no matter what during the next quite a few thousands of years.
VIsual Studio Code is a simple code editor (although with quite a few enhancements). It does have nothing to do with Visual Studio. For example: it cannot compile C# code of any kind (Winforms, WPF, ASP.NET).
On the other hand, I do recognise that Visual Studio Code is a pretty good editor; I am already using it as partial replacement of NotePad++ (when writing PHP, for example). Although I hope that MS will be improving quite a few things within the short term.
Fully agree.
Additionally, what kind of programmers could you force to use your framework? Any experienced enough developer wouldn't accept such a thing. When companies want to attract programmers, they create a similar-enough language with some additional features (e.g., what the.NET Framework did with C# for C-based programmers; and with Visual C++).
Big companies create their own (different-enough) languages for other reasons and always by bearing in mind that convincing programmers to use the new language will be the most problematic part.
While reading the link explaining the radioactive leftovers part, I remembered my feelings about nuclear energy, which I will summarise in the following two points:
- There is no practical way to replace nuclear power plants within the medium term (not even long term). The associated costs would be very high and no government would take that direction even under the most favourable conditions (e.g., all the population against nuclear energy because of a very important accident). On the other hand, it might be important to let people know more about the exact implications on nuclear energy; to, at least, bring into account their opinion before starting future projects. I think that most of population should be aware about some pretty relevant facts, like for example: nuclear waste will remain active for lots years (e.g., they have to be kept in containers for thousands of years because of being extremely dangerous for the health; on the other hand, in the nature, the radioactive materials are only slightly harmful). Another relevant issue can be extracted from the aforementioned link: you will never have full control on what happens inside a reactor after it has been started; and this is a very important issue to bear in mind while reading the next point. In my opinion, nuclear energy is pretty safe and represents an acceptable less-bad alternative (mainly now when going back would be quite difficult), but a big proportion of the population is not even half aware about its exact implications (i.e., potential dangers and nuclear waste) and this should be changed.
- My other thought refers to something about which I am not too knowledgeable: fusion energy. More specifically, to its last most relevant attempt: ITER (but also to any other future project on these lines). Although I don't know too much about this specific project, I do know something about one of our last adventures on the going-beyond front (fission energy). Even now, after more than 50 years and quite a few bad experiences, we cannot fully control nuclear fission; and, in fact, our learning on this field has outputted certainly horrible episodes. We know that atomic (fission) bombs are so bad, because we tested them; we know about the real consequences of nuclear accidents because they actually happened; how could we even know about the nuclear waste to remain active for thousands of years? All this might have been somehow assumed, but nobody could really tell without having passed through this bad experiences. Equivalently to what happens with kids who are told "don't do that", we only really learn after having made some mistakes. The question is: are we seriously thinking about going again in this direction? Are we seriously considering taking a step on the lines of "bringing the sun to the earth" (this was the ITER's self-promotion over 1 year ago)? To spend quite a few years and accept all the problems which might happen during our learning process? And all this just to boil water in a more efficient way (yes, all what you do with fission/fusion energy is finding a more efficient way to boil water)? As said, I don't know too much about this project and I will certainly improve my knowledge on it, but it seems way too risky (to not mention expensive).
If you are only working on building theories, take just care of theories; and when your theory will need some validation, ask another person to do it for you. What you shouldn't be doing is generating theoretical non-validated outputs one after the other. A good theoretical physicist is not the one creating lots of theories; but the one creating theories, which are right and have a point.
Although some things are very difficult to be experimentally proven (for example: most of cosmological related phenomena), building "elegant" theories one on top of the other should be avoided at all cost.
Actually, I am currently taking a look at some of these abstract theories and it is very surprising how far some people can get just by assuming, without even making sure about the correctness of the assumptions they are building their theory on.
Slashdot Mirror
I do recognise that your post is certainly impressive (by assuming that all this information is right, what seems to be the case), although it also shows the human's temerity of seriously thinking that they can control what they cannot.
Even a routine rocket launch is a very big deal for us (yesterday's SpaceX "incident" was an excellent proof). That is: a completely static situation where we only have to make sure that all the parts are assembled correctly. Things get extremely more complex when uncontrollable, moving objects come into picture.
I do think that doing some research on the "let's prepare for the worst" front might be useful, but these attempts shouldn't ever hide the reality. And the reality is that we are here by pure chance and will continue being for as long as pure chance will allow us to continue.
This anonymous coward has a point. We might even apply these ideas to other problems.
Let's detroy all our technology and trust that God (any of them) will get the message!
You are talking about managers and your speech sounds too manager-like (or HHRR-like?). To not mention that you are focusing on web when the true big deal of .NET is precisely desktop. Together with nonsensical claims like "never on the rise" or talking about stupid people using the .NET Framework?! (most of the programmers creating applications for the most widely used OS are stupid?!)
.NET Framework (and its IDE, Visual Studio) is a step beyond on desktop (and on web it is unclear, as far as their approach is completely different to the remaining approaches and thus not easily to be compared) and don't think that any (even half knowledgeable) programmer will ever discuss about the quality of the .NET framework languages. Other issues (like limited capabilities outside Windows or preferring to continue using the programming language you have been using for a while) are perfectly valid reasons to not use .NET at all. But saying that "was a vehicle for clueless middle-managers to justify sitting around blabbering... " etc. is completely against the reality.
.NET development team has done an impressive work (unlikely many other development teams at Microsoft) during the last years and, as a result, we have a really good programming framework. You might not want to use it; or not like it; but you shouldn't dare to critise something so unmotivatedly (i.e., at the technical level/quality of the framework, when this is very far away from being a true issue), much less when not having the required knowledge (what, correct me if I am wrong, seems pretty clear from your post).
Usually programmers talk about programming environments being better, supported by a wider number of users, more programmer friendly, etc. But you are basing your claims on a set of abstract ideas talking about the general attitudes of the companies making the programming languages.
As a programmer, I might not like certain companies, because of their general attitude; but if they happen to create something objectively better, I would accept it and start using it. Other programmers might think differently than me, but will certainly not mix technical stuff with disliking the company up (and, in any case, will never bring “manager decisions“ into a programming language discussion, as far as they are completely irrelevant; and what about "marketing"?! how can you mention such a thing in a discussion about what programming language to use??!)
From the programming point of view, the
The
My previous post is not shown but I cannot re-post it because I get an error message saying "This exact comment has already been posted. Try to be more original..."?!
.NET Framework to become increasingly more compatible with no-Windows systems within the short term.
.NET languages (C#, but even VB) have become so popular that even in the extremely unlikely scenario (better: impossible) of the claimed drastic reduction in their utilisation, some alternatives would surely appear. Additionally, a language like C# is extremely similar to quite a few other languages (like Java or even PHP) and thus learning this language will never be a bad decision.
I will try to paste it below these lines:
Windows is still (by very far) the most used OS on desktop computers. At the corporate level this superiority becomes almost insulting and Windows is and will continue being the number 1. Thus, just by focusing on desktop corporate clients, there will be lots of very interested buyers of Windows applications during the next quite a few years (some of them still struggling with Windows XP). To not mention that the web-based languages (= ASP.NET because Silverlight well) are so different to any alternative and so similar to the desktop-based ones that quite a few companies are moving to ASP.NET; actually, there will be many more doing that if this format wouldn’t have a so restricted applicability in web-servers (but, as explained below, they seem to be working on that). In any case, I want to highlight that I personally rely much more on PHP.
Regarding the web and the mobile platforms, Windows & Microsoft seem to be losing the battle. On the other hand, they seem to be doing quite a few changes on this front lately (like increasing cross-compatibility or relying much more on open source); mainly because they cannot rely on their traditional monopoly-oriented attitude in any of these fronts. In fact, I do expect the
And on top of all what is written above, the
Windows is still (by very far) the most used OS on desktop computers. At the corporate level this superiority becomes almost insulting and Windows is and will continue being the number 1. Thus, just by focusing on desktop corporate clients, there will be lots of very interested buyers of Windows applications during the next quite a few years (some of them still struggling with Windows XP). To not mention that the web-based languages (= ASP.NET because Silverlight well) are so different to any alternative and so similar to the desktop-based ones that quite a few companies are moving to ASP.NET; actually, there will be many more doing that if this format wouldn’t have a so restricted applicability in web-servers (but, as explained below, they seem to be working on that). In any case, I want to highlight that I personally rely much more on PHP.
.NET Framework to become increasingly more compatible with no-Windows systems within the short term.
.NET languages (C#, but even VB) have become so popular that even in the extremely unlikely scenario (better: impossible) of the claimed drastic reduction in their utilisation, some alternatives would surely appear. Additionally, a language like C# is extremely similar to quite a few other languages (like Java or even PHP) and thus learning this language will never be a bad decision.
Regarding the web and the mobile platforms, Windows & Microsoft seem to be losing the battle. On the other hand, they seem to be doing quite a few changes on this front lately (like increasing cross-compatibility or relying much more on open source); mainly because they cannot rely on their traditional monopoly-oriented attitude in any of these fronts. In fact, I do expect the
And on top of all what is written above, the
You agreed on something I wrote!!! Thanks!...
;)) about the underlying not-always-well-known facts, like: humankind having got involved in something which they weren't even close to understand (although we have understood a bit better bomb by bomb, accident by accident and waste by waste).
Curiously, this time I don't fully disagree with you either. There are always alternatives. And, in any case, I was being over-pessimistic and over-alarmist to raise a bit of awareness (equivalently to what you were doing for your lobby
In any case, I also said that I do consider nuclear energy pretty safe, what does not mean that we should continue going in this direction, unless being completely sure that there is a truly-clean and reliable alternative, that is: reactors which might safely reutilise nuclear waste, if not forever for long enough time. In any other case (i.e., generating radioactive waste over and over) the reliance on nuclear energy should be minimised and replaced as soon as possible.
Are you part of the nuclear lobby? :) Because statements like "Coal is several hundred thousand times _more_ dangerous" sound, in the best scenario, not too objective. But well...
One clarification: according to the ITER guys fusion will occur much sooner (in around 10 years?... I have checked their site since a while ago; but will certainly get fully involved in this project before its definitive start). In fact, if they can go ahead with their plans, your 50-year expectations would be wrong anyway: either fusion will happen before or all/most of us will die and/or nobody will feel like continue trying (because this thing of bringing the sun to the Earth sounds kind of dangerous).
I briefly knew about them. Around 10 years were the cool-but-not-really-applicable alternative, like biodiesel (less CO2 on engines, which is highly compensated with the industrial processes required to generate it). Not sure now...
But are you saying that all the existing reactors can be replaced? (what about the costs? and the differences in power?) And don't they generate any kind of waste (100% reutilisation)? If the answer to both questions is yes, then fission might certainly be the future.
It certainly sounds interesting. No, I didn't know anything about this video and will certainly watch it (might write here an update afterwards).
In any case and just to support my point (i.e., try as hard as you can to fix it but by bearing in mind that we are talking about a really difficult problem which we are only starting to understand), a couple of ideas I extracted from the referred Wikipedia article:
- "The Onkalo repository is expected to be large enough to accept canisters of spent fuel for around one hundred years" ("estimated cost of this project is about €818 million" + "has saved approximately €1.4 billion from charges for generated electricity") -> all this to take care of the nuclear waste generated by just one plant (and perhaps also by a couple of additional close-enough ones) . This kind of 100-years ahead plans are done in all the countries. For example, in Spain we have a main storage for the nuclear waste generated by all our plants (7, I think); and they are certainly accounting for an equivalent scenario to what this article says (also already thinking about what to do after having used all the available space; that is: what will happen will all the nuclear generated in Onkalo after 100 years?). But all this does not represent a final solution, just the only temporary one we can come up with, mainly by bearing in mind that...
- "In 2012, a research group at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, published research that suggests that the copper capsules are not as corrosion-proof as the companies planning the repositories claim" -> we actually don't know the real long term evolution. We just have suppositions, which might be proven wrong in 50 or in 500 years. In fact we have a very little control about what is happening at the atomic level (and below that). We know that by increasing the instability of unstable atoms (radioactive ones), the danger for the human health increases exponentially; we observed certain evolution in these negative effects and, from that, we assume what might be happening next... but we are not sure. What if after X years the evolution changes and the atoms start getting more unstable? We don't know that. And this is the true point of my comments: not trying to provoke paranoia, but just raising some awareness about what playing around with nuclear forces (or with any other potentially very dangerous phenomenon) might provoke: something about which we might not have either control or knowledge.
PS:starting to use Slashdot, liking it pretty much and seriously not complaining at all... but it is not kind of weird that you cannot edit your posts/comments after publishing them?
PS: I wasn't completely sure about what you meant with your first statement because I didn't see the AC comment (by the way, I know now what AC means; yesterday I read a reference which I couldn't understand). My reply to this comment reflects what I think about the way in which impolite, not-even-helpful, completely-unrelated-to-what-is-being-discussed and COWARD attitudes should be treated. That's why, I don't think that you should support these behaviours with a nice "is worth noting".
:)
PPS: In any case, bear in mind that I relied on the HTML list tags, which were expected to deliver a better result than simple new paragraph tags (b and r). Apparently slashdot.org does not work as I was expecting and I will certainly be using the new paragraph tags from now on. Actually, having said that (i.e., "better use a couple of HTML new paragraph tags to separate your paragraphs"; by bearing in mind that I am new and slashdot might not be supporting HTML in comments or might support something else like markup) would have been a more practical, useful and accurate (i.e., actually, I was using paragraphs too; but the default indentation/margin of the lists aren't apparently big enough) advise
Ah, OK. Thanks for the input, anonymous coward. PS: sorry for the delay in replying. It hasn't been because of the tremendous stupidity you have written (unfortunately, I am used to deal with people saying lots of stupid things and even reply them, well... when feeling like laughing a bit). I am new in slashdot.org and didn't realise about this thing of the anonymous cowards' contributions being partially hidden.
Thanks for your detailed answer and your nice comments (I am new in Slashdot and am trying to do my level best :)).
Regarding what you say, fossil fuels are certainly not a solution; but neither nuclear energy. For me, nuclear energy is the door which we shouldn't ever have opened but which, once done, we cannot close. The nuclear plants cannot be replaced because they produce too much power (you would need at least 2 conventional power plans to replace just a nuclear one); at least, not in countries like the USA, France or Japan with many nuclear plants. This is the opened door which I am referring and which we cannot close (at least, not immediately): the existing plants.
On the other hand, we should learn from this bad experience and not open more doors which might even be more difficult to be closed in the future. That is: more fission plants would provoke the nuclear waste problem to grow beyond acceptable (shall we force our grand-grand-grand-children to let the Earth as a nuclear waste storage and move to Mars?!). But fusion power might still be worse: we don't know what will be happening after this door is opened. Here some rough ideas: unlikely fission (which barely requires unstable-enough heavy elements to happen), fusion needs an extremely hot source of heat to happen even with the lightest atoms (that's why ITER was talking about bringing the sun to the Earth: these are the kind of temperatures we are talking about). Note that so high temperatures would immediately melt any material we know (ITER is working on a magnetic field to contain so crazily high temperatures!). We are talking about bringing all our knowledge beyond their current limits on quite a few fronts; what, according to quite a few recent experiences, is likely to provoke problems which we cannot even imagine yet.
Two further clarifications:
- With just boiling water, I am trying to remove some "magic-like" ideas which are usually associated with certain not-known-enough realities. The thermodynamic cycles defining most of the current power plants (and all the nuclear ones) are based on boiling water, that is: the thermal energy is transformed into the required kinetic one by converting water into steam. There is nothing bad about this fact (actually, it has been proven as a really good way to generate electricity); but I think that this clear enough idea would help some people to better understand what we are talking about: generating very dangerous materials which will last for thousands of years to accomplish something (boiling water) which might be accomplished in quite a few different ways.
- I don't think that people is fully aware about the implications of nuclear energy; that we are activating very slow bombs which will (virtually) never be deactivated (by the way, I guess that this is what your video is about. Unfortunately, the link does not work). When you start a single nuclear power plan, you are triggering a set of consequences which the Earth and the future generations will be bearing no matter what during the next quite a few thousands of years.
VIsual Studio Code is a simple code editor (although with quite a few enhancements). It does have nothing to do with Visual Studio. For example: it cannot compile C# code of any kind (Winforms, WPF, ASP.NET). On the other hand, I do recognise that Visual Studio Code is a pretty good editor; I am already using it as partial replacement of NotePad++ (when writing PHP, for example). Although I hope that MS will be improving quite a few things within the short term.
Fully agree. Additionally, what kind of programmers could you force to use your framework? Any experienced enough developer wouldn't accept such a thing. When companies want to attract programmers, they create a similar-enough language with some additional features (e.g., what the .NET Framework did with C# for C-based programmers; and with Visual C++).
Big companies create their own (different-enough) languages for other reasons and always by bearing in mind that convincing programmers to use the new language will be the most problematic part.
If you are only working on building theories, take just care of theories; and when your theory will need some validation, ask another person to do it for you. What you shouldn't be doing is generating theoretical non-validated outputs one after the other. A good theoretical physicist is not the one creating lots of theories; but the one creating theories, which are right and have a point.
Although some things are very difficult to be experimentally proven (for example: most of cosmological related phenomena), building "elegant" theories one on top of the other should be avoided at all cost. Actually, I am currently taking a look at some of these abstract theories and it is very surprising how far some people can get just by assuming, without even making sure about the correctness of the assumptions they are building their theory on.