Although I agree with what you are saying in your post I don't understand how it applies here. "World's best" programming practices do not provide immunity from the GIGO dictum.
"Trouble is....[snip]...there is no crime committed. There is nothing to be arrested for..."
That doesn't seem to have been much of a problem in the recent past, I say leave them in a hole for 5yrs and I reckon they would be ready to plead guilty to a retrospective law.
Batman's "problem" is that he hasn't realised there is more to implementing a reactor than science, engineering and hard hats. Profit, politics and people get tangled up with the equations when you try and implement something like a nuclear reactor or even a new coal plant...
Personally I don't belive France shut it's reactors down because of the heat wave, it's much more likely the reators were shut down on scheduled maintenance and the system could not cope with the extra demand from air-conditioners during the unscheduled heat wave. I also belive it takes several weeks to jump start a reactor and since their neighbour nations were also short on power they likey had trouble buying enough electricity from them. (Be aware that's just an educated guess because I can't be bothered googling, if you have a credible link that says otherwise I may just learn something).
"Until these are addressed in a serious and thoughtful manner there just won't be much support for this kind of power."
I agree but would add the collary "in nations that do not already own and support nukes". I may have been unclear but that was kinda the main thrust of my post, ie: just because the concerns that I paraphrased are not scientific does not imply they are trivial. Personally I think pebble bed reactors have addressed those concerns in a serious and thoughtful manner and are worth more attention than they get BUT because of my age I can also understand why the general public have a knee-jerk reaction when they hear the words "build a reactor" come out of someone's mouth.
For example: There are a hell of a lot of people here in Australia and NZ who remeber with disgust the French tests and the bombing of the "Rainbow Warrior" by the French government of the day, they don't have anything against the French people but they are rightfully suspicious of anything France says about it's nuclear programs.
If "environmentalists" (and I count myself as one) were true to their word about practising "science based policy" then they must be constantly skeptical of their own policys and if not rid themselves then at least distance themselves from false taboo's, to do otherwise is plain old political hypocricy in my eyes. They could try honesty but being politicians I would settle for a demonstration of intellectual curiosity, something with a bit of irony, like a nuclear policy that aims to "explode" all of mankinds nuclear bombs to produce cleaner electricity in some nations.
FWIW I think you make a convincing argument and point out that "the father of the Earth Sciences" is in full agreement with you. Having said that I can also sympathise with the GP's POV, I'm old enough to remember atmospheric testing, duck and cover, TMI, I watched "China syndrome" at the theater, by the time Chernobyl came around I had a couple of kids...
Up until Chernobyl I cannot remeber a time when knowlegable people such as yourself were not telling the general public how clean and safe nuclear could be. As with Lovelock the ONLY reason I support more nuclear generators is because of the much greater threat posed by coal. But let's face it, these are complicated issues and the only reason I understand and agree with your point is becuase I have spent many, many, hours on slashdot arguing the science behind AGW for the last 8yrs or so.
Your's is an "inconvinient truth" of a different kind and IMHO you will have a hard job to convince many people over 40 that nuclear power is safe, it's not so much because of their ignorance, it's because of their past experiences and the "faulty" risk analysis algorithm of the human brain. For example: Coal mines have been collapsing on a regular basis since the start of the industrial revolution, people are used to them and they are so frequent in the developing world they often go unreported in the mass media - OTOH - shutting down Scottish dairies because of a recator meltdown in Russia has happened once and when it did it had that "OMFG" impact that makes it stick in your mind, Bophal was also an OMFG incident but I think it is less well remebered because the "pollution" was confined to one city as opposed to one hemisphere. In otherwords rightly or wrongly, the implementation of your science suffers from a bad track record that is cartictured[sic] perfectly by Homer Simpson and Mr.Burns.
I belive that nuclear is a vital but short term fix (re: France, etc) however the dogma may prove too difficult to overcome in non-nuclear nations such as here in Australia and given our renewables potential to provide most of SE Asia with electricity I don't think it is worth the public-relations fight in THIS country to install nukes.
I wish you luck in spreading your informative views but a word of advice: keep in mind that you won't change the world by shouting at it.
"and we _have_ demonstrated the ability to create artificial ecologies that are sustainable in the long-term"
The rest of your post is spot on but AFAIK current "biodome" technology can only sustain a habitat suitable for humans for ~2yrs maximum. I wholeheartedly agree with the GP's research priorities and suggest the next POTUS should put the phrase "To understand and protect our home planet" back into NASA's mission statement to undo the attempted strangulation of NASA's Earth facing budget.
Don't get me wrong I'm all for sending men to Mars and the stars but to do that we need to know how the biosphere on Earth ticks and how to replicate it well enough to support a given number of people indefinitely. Even if you get past the incredible gaul and short-sightedness of the neocons "Trash the planet and go to Mars" project AND work out how to keep a small tribe of humans alive for a couple of generations, you still have the phycolocical aspect.
Will the great-great-grandchildren of the original crew still know what the hell was going on when they got to their destination? - One closet scientologist in the original crew, even a "difficult child" who dominates his peers... Just the fact that the crew are human is what will doom galactic voyages, including the one we hijacked a mere 40k years ago and are still trying to figure out how it works.
So before we put a handfull of teenagers and their hormones in a tin can and launch them toward the nearest star we should at least survey what needs repairing on the mothership we are currently living on...
Suppose we had such a situation as you suggest and thousands of reviewers pawed over the code making it "as good as it gets". How do you verify the code that was reviewed is the code that is running?
"if they're all insecure anyway, any system is as bad as any other."
It is true that all voting systems are open to fraud, however rigging a paper election is orders of magnitude more difficult than rigging an electronic election simply because of the number of people needed to implement the "hack".
With all due respect, people who believe electronic voting can be made "better than" or even "as good as" traditional paper voting have no idea how the counting of traditional paper ballots is conducted.
"They'll never be able to switch insurance again. Leave one job and move to another with different medical - nope."
The US still has a lot of people who think UHC is a communist plot that will "ruin the economy" and "degrade the quality of care". Those people should really take a good look at the rest of the western world where the health systems have progressed well past the 1950's leaving US citizens paying for the most expensive system in the world that arguably produces the worst outcomes in the western world...
"...down to the good old 5.25" floppies. Any small linux machine could do this..."
Insensitive clod! - My kids are on super 8 from the 80's, now get off my lawn or I'll call homeland security and tell them about your concealed linux machine.
"Capitalism is essentially economic anarchy. If it's good enough for our money, what's to stop it from being good enough for us?"
By the same criteria and taking mankind as a whole, who's to say we are not already practising anarchy? - I mean aside from the wrath of your peers and their agents, what's stopping you from doing what you want right now?
Thanks for the informative clarification, it makes my original point stronger.
Although I have always known "something" about the middle ages I'm certainly no historian, I became interested in English history after going "back home" a few years ago. Found out my ancestors (family name anyway) contributed 22 Viking boats to William's invasion and likely fought beside him. William's patronage set the family up as key players in English politics for the next 400yrs.
Contrary to Mel Gibson it was Roger Mortimer who was bonking Queen Isabella not William Wallace. I have my own pet theory that the British colloquialisim "a right royal rogering" was inspired by one of my ancestors (the 1st Earl of March), sticking a red hot poker up king Henry II's arse. The other lords thought he went a bit too far, so (as with Braveheart), they stuck his head on a pike, quarted him, and spread the bits around the country.
To continue with the Telstra example they have three basic arms defined as three different companies, all of which will accept checks written out to "Testra". The three arms are ISP, retail phone services, wholesale network service, cable/sattelite TV is a fourth arm in partnership with Fox. The retail and wholesale arms are required by Australian law to be different entities, the wholesale arm (the common carrier) is also required by law to treat all customers (ISP's and retail phone services) equally to avoid monopolistic advantage.
"The world needs a scapegoat, so here I am." - Marilyn Manson, about 2yrs prior to people pointing fingers at him after Colombine.
Disclaimer: I'm old fart who could not name a single Manson track, just looking at him on stage offends my sensibilities. OTOH I'm also old enough to realise there is an insightfull and intelligent person behind the stage persona.
Heh, you're right "common carrier" does not seem to be explicitly defined by treaty (ie: it's more of a tradition than a rule) - found this on the WIPO site...
"63 The concept of a "common carrier," dating from 16th century English common law, captures private entities
that perform public functions. Since at least the middle ages, most significant carriers of communications and
commerce have been regulated as common carriers. Common carrier rules have resolved the disputed issues of
duty to serve, nondiscrimination, and interconnection. Facilities such as railroads, telegraphs and telephone
companies were obliged either by common law or by legislation to implement an equal "duty to serve" regime.
The history of common carrier duties illuminates three reasons supporting the imposition (and the occasional
elimination) of those requirements. Common carrier duties have been imposed variously upon theories of de
facto and de jure monopoly, on the theory that the enterprise had become "essential," and upon theories that the
enterprise was publicly concerned in a particular manner (See James B. Speta, A Common Carrier Approach to
Internet Interconnection, 54 Fed. Comm. L.J. 225 (2002) (surveying the history of common carriers and arguing
that the same reason justify a general interconnection obligation for Internet carriers)."
Yep, the "fight" is never ending. However over the last 800yrs we have been 'winning' by forcing various layers of overlords to cead power. eg: The Magna Carta only applied to "freemen", "freemen" were basically land owners, land owners were basically nobility and the upper class.
The US constitution eliminated this distinction with the "All men are created equal" thing, of course the politicians then argued that women and non-Europeans were not "men" and kept on beating their wives and slaves until they agreed...
The AC is correct in what he is saying about common carriers. Check out the registered company name of your ISP and I will wager that it is not AT&T but rather a subsiduary of AT&T (ie: a seperate company in the eyes of the law).
This is how the telco's in Australia with common carrier status get around the rule against sniffing the line, eg: Australia's "Telstra" is not an ISP but "Telstra Big Pond" is an ISP. Since common carrier rules are international I dare say AT&T do exactly the same thing.
"The sad thing is they actually have representation now."
I know a lot of American's belive the "fight for freedom" started with the Boston tea party. However the English started limiting the power of their own overlords way back in 1215 when a group of Barons forced King John to sign the "Magna Carta Libertatum" (Great Charter of Freedoms).
Good advise, but your own risk assesment that you are 'so sure about' doesn't have any probability caveates at all?
The GP did have one such caveate (ie: 'likely'), the best science available says 'very likely'. But maybe I have misunderstood, maybe you are talking about the GP's implicit assumption that humans are causing the climate to change, if that's the case then the science says 'certain'.
Indeed, China's earnings from exporting goods and services stands at ~25% of GDP, the US accounts for less than half of that. This is good for the economy here in Australia, not so good for the economy in the US. As for China, if the US stopped importing from them tomorrow their growth rate of ~10% would make up for the loss in ~1yr.
It's also interesting to note that China lifted it's ban on buying and selling gold 2-3yrs ago (when oil & gold abruptly started climbing). For a while the government encoraged China's middle class to put some of their savings into the traditional 'rainy day' plan of hoarding gold in the form of trinkets. The middle class really didn't need much encouraging, China's new retail gold market drove the gold price up for the first 6-12 months of it's operation.
Disclaimer: Even though it was concieved by Newton I am not calling for a return to the gold standard.
2. An agency that used the Bretton Woods system to rebuild western Europe, and has gone on to bring democracy, wealth and good govanance to much of S.America, S.E Asia, and Eastern Europe.
I have heard "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" and suspect both definitions are correct at one time or another.
The people at the coal face make up their own interpretations of the rules, they apply them using vaugely defined subjective criteria and a mental dartboard.
I flew from Australia to HK to London back to HK and then someone spotted the scissors in the sowing kit that had remained in a pocket of my carry-on bag the whole trip.
On the same trip I had the window half open and was watching the twilight (the flight path had created an extended sunset). A stewardess (who basically wanted her cattle to go to sleep) came over and demanded I close the blind because "the light could disturb other people". At this point the guy next to me who had been sleeping opened one eye toward the stewardess and said (paraphrase): "I don't mind the light but your actions are disturbing people right now". She was left speechless and walked off, a few people chuckled quietly, I went back to looking out the window.
Slashdot Mirror
He's already getting cover from the incorrect slashdot summary, from now on he can screw things up and blame it on the conservatives.
Although I agree with what you are saying in your post I don't understand how it applies here. "World's best" programming practices do not provide immunity from the GIGO dictum.
"Trouble is....[snip]...there is no crime committed. There is nothing to be arrested for..."
That doesn't seem to have been much of a problem in the recent past, I say leave them in a hole for 5yrs and I reckon they would be ready to plead guilty to a retrospective law.
Batman's "problem" is that he hasn't realised there is more to implementing a reactor than science, engineering and hard hats. Profit, politics and people get tangled up with the equations when you try and implement something like a nuclear reactor or even a new coal plant...
Personally I don't belive France shut it's reactors down because of the heat wave, it's much more likely the reators were shut down on scheduled maintenance and the system could not cope with the extra demand from air-conditioners during the unscheduled heat wave. I also belive it takes several weeks to jump start a reactor and since their neighbour nations were also short on power they likey had trouble buying enough electricity from them. (Be aware that's just an educated guess because I can't be bothered googling, if you have a credible link that says otherwise I may just learn something).
"Until these are addressed in a serious and thoughtful manner there just won't be much support for this kind of power."
I agree but would add the collary "in nations that do not already own and support nukes". I may have been unclear but that was kinda the main thrust of my post, ie: just because the concerns that I paraphrased are not scientific does not imply they are trivial. Personally I think pebble bed reactors have addressed those concerns in a serious and thoughtful manner and are worth more attention than they get BUT because of my age I can also understand why the general public have a knee-jerk reaction when they hear the words "build a reactor" come out of someone's mouth.
For example: There are a hell of a lot of people here in Australia and NZ who remeber with disgust the French tests and the bombing of the "Rainbow Warrior" by the French government of the day, they don't have anything against the French people but they are rightfully suspicious of anything France says about it's nuclear programs.
If "environmentalists" (and I count myself as one) were true to their word about practising "science based policy" then they must be constantly skeptical of their own policys and if not rid themselves then at least distance themselves from false taboo's, to do otherwise is plain old political hypocricy in my eyes. They could try honesty but being politicians I would settle for a demonstration of intellectual curiosity, something with a bit of irony, like a nuclear policy that aims to "explode" all of mankinds nuclear bombs to produce cleaner electricity in some nations.
At 0.03K they may be talking about a Bose-Einstien condensate which is a "newish" state of matter.
FWIW I think you make a convincing argument and point out that "the father of the Earth Sciences" is in full agreement with you. Having said that I can also sympathise with the GP's POV, I'm old enough to remember atmospheric testing, duck and cover, TMI, I watched "China syndrome" at the theater, by the time Chernobyl came around I had a couple of kids...
Up until Chernobyl I cannot remeber a time when knowlegable people such as yourself were not telling the general public how clean and safe nuclear could be. As with Lovelock the ONLY reason I support more nuclear generators is because of the much greater threat posed by coal. But let's face it, these are complicated issues and the only reason I understand and agree with your point is becuase I have spent many, many, hours on slashdot arguing the science behind AGW for the last 8yrs or so.
Your's is an "inconvinient truth" of a different kind and IMHO you will have a hard job to convince many people over 40 that nuclear power is safe, it's not so much because of their ignorance, it's because of their past experiences and the "faulty" risk analysis algorithm of the human brain. For example: Coal mines have been collapsing on a regular basis since the start of the industrial revolution, people are used to them and they are so frequent in the developing world they often go unreported in the mass media - OTOH - shutting down Scottish dairies because of a recator meltdown in Russia has happened once and when it did it had that "OMFG" impact that makes it stick in your mind, Bophal was also an OMFG incident but I think it is less well remebered because the "pollution" was confined to one city as opposed to one hemisphere. In otherwords rightly or wrongly, the implementation of your science suffers from a bad track record that is cartictured[sic] perfectly by Homer Simpson and Mr.Burns.
I belive that nuclear is a vital but short term fix (re: France, etc) however the dogma may prove too difficult to overcome in non-nuclear nations such as here in Australia and given our renewables potential to provide most of SE Asia with electricity I don't think it is worth the public-relations fight in THIS country to install nukes.
I wish you luck in spreading your informative views but a word of advice: keep in mind that you won't change the world by shouting at it.
"and we _have_ demonstrated the ability to create artificial ecologies that are sustainable in the long-term"
The rest of your post is spot on but AFAIK current "biodome" technology can only sustain a habitat suitable for humans for ~2yrs maximum. I wholeheartedly agree with the GP's research priorities and suggest the next POTUS should put the phrase "To understand and protect our home planet" back into NASA's mission statement to undo the attempted strangulation of NASA's Earth facing budget.
Don't get me wrong I'm all for sending men to Mars and the stars but to do that we need to know how the biosphere on Earth ticks and how to replicate it well enough to support a given number of people indefinitely. Even if you get past the incredible gaul and short-sightedness of the neocons "Trash the planet and go to Mars" project AND work out how to keep a small tribe of humans alive for a couple of generations, you still have the phycolocical aspect.
Will the great-great-grandchildren of the original crew still know what the hell was going on when they got to their destination? - One closet scientologist in the original crew, even a "difficult child" who dominates his peers... Just the fact that the crew are human is what will doom galactic voyages, including the one we hijacked a mere 40k years ago and are still trying to figure out how it works.
So before we put a handfull of teenagers and their hormones in a tin can and launch them toward the nearest star we should at least survey what needs repairing on the mothership we are currently living on...
I'm not fat or American, I'm an Aussie and I'm all heart.
Suppose we had such a situation as you suggest and thousands of reviewers pawed over the code making it "as good as it gets". How do you verify the code that was reviewed is the code that is running?
"if they're all insecure anyway, any system is as bad as any other."
It is true that all voting systems are open to fraud, however rigging a paper election is orders of magnitude more difficult than rigging an electronic election simply because of the number of people needed to implement the "hack".
With all due respect, people who believe electronic voting can be made "better than" or even "as good as" traditional paper voting have no idea how the counting of traditional paper ballots is conducted.
"they'll just change their name"
You haven't met many bikers have you.
"They'll never be able to switch insurance again. Leave one job and move to another with different medical - nope."
The US still has a lot of people who think UHC is a communist plot that will "ruin the economy" and "degrade the quality of care". Those people should really take a good look at the rest of the western world where the health systems have progressed well past the 1950's leaving US citizens paying for the most expensive system in the world that arguably produces the worst outcomes in the western world...
Chriton is a brilliant story teller, the sad part is he belives his own bullshit.
"...down to the good old 5.25" floppies. Any small linux machine could do this..."
Insensitive clod! - My kids are on super 8 from the 80's, now get off my lawn or I'll call homeland security and tell them about your concealed linux machine.
"Capitalism is essentially economic anarchy. If it's good enough for our money, what's to stop it from being good enough for us?"
By the same criteria and taking mankind as a whole, who's to say we are not already practising anarchy? - I mean aside from the wrath of your peers and their agents, what's stopping you from doing what you want right now?
Thanks for the informative clarification, it makes my original point stronger.
Although I have always known "something" about the middle ages I'm certainly no historian, I became interested in English history after going "back home" a few years ago. Found out my ancestors (family name anyway) contributed 22 Viking boats to William's invasion and likely fought beside him. William's patronage set the family up as key players in English politics for the next 400yrs.
Contrary to Mel Gibson it was Roger Mortimer who was bonking Queen Isabella not William Wallace. I have my own pet theory that the British colloquialisim "a right royal rogering" was inspired by one of my ancestors (the 1st Earl of March), sticking a red hot poker up king Henry II's arse. The other lords thought he went a bit too far, so (as with Braveheart), they stuck his head on a pike, quarted him, and spread the bits around the country.
Yes, we have the one bill "feature" too.
To continue with the Telstra example they have three basic arms defined as three different companies, all of which will accept checks written out to "Testra". The three arms are ISP, retail phone services, wholesale network service, cable/sattelite TV is a fourth arm in partnership with Fox. The retail and wholesale arms are required by Australian law to be different entities, the wholesale arm (the common carrier) is also required by law to treat all customers (ISP's and retail phone services) equally to avoid monopolistic advantage.
"The world needs a scapegoat, so here I am." - Marilyn Manson, about 2yrs prior to people pointing fingers at him after Colombine.
Disclaimer: I'm old fart who could not name a single Manson track, just looking at him on stage offends my sensibilities. OTOH I'm also old enough to realise there is an insightfull and intelligent person behind the stage persona.
Heh, you're right "common carrier" does not seem to be explicitly defined by treaty (ie: it's more of a tradition than a rule) - found this on the WIPO site...
"63 The concept of a "common carrier," dating from 16th century English common law, captures private entities that perform public functions. Since at least the middle ages, most significant carriers of communications and commerce have been regulated as common carriers. Common carrier rules have resolved the disputed issues of duty to serve, nondiscrimination, and interconnection. Facilities such as railroads, telegraphs and telephone companies were obliged either by common law or by legislation to implement an equal "duty to serve" regime. The history of common carrier duties illuminates three reasons supporting the imposition (and the occasional elimination) of those requirements. Common carrier duties have been imposed variously upon theories of de facto and de jure monopoly, on the theory that the enterprise had become "essential," and upon theories that the enterprise was publicly concerned in a particular manner (See James B. Speta, A Common Carrier Approach to Internet Interconnection, 54 Fed. Comm. L.J. 225 (2002) (surveying the history of common carriers and arguing that the same reason justify a general interconnection obligation for Internet carriers)."
Yep, the "fight" is never ending. However over the last 800yrs we have been 'winning' by forcing various layers of overlords to cead power. eg: The Magna Carta only applied to "freemen", "freemen" were basically land owners, land owners were basically nobility and the upper class.
The US constitution eliminated this distinction with the "All men are created equal" thing, of course the politicians then argued that women and non-Europeans were not "men" and kept on beating their wives and slaves until they agreed...
"My ISP is AT&T. They're not a common carrier?
The AC is correct in what he is saying about common carriers. Check out the registered company name of your ISP and I will wager that it is not AT&T but rather a subsiduary of AT&T (ie: a seperate company in the eyes of the law).
This is how the telco's in Australia with common carrier status get around the rule against sniffing the line, eg: Australia's "Telstra" is not an ISP but "Telstra Big Pond" is an ISP. Since common carrier rules are international I dare say AT&T do exactly the same thing.
"The sad thing is they actually have representation now."
I know a lot of American's belive the "fight for freedom" started with the Boston tea party. However the English started limiting the power of their own overlords way back in 1215 when a group of Barons forced King John to sign the "Magna Carta Libertatum" (Great Charter of Freedoms).
"But what your so sure of you shouldn't be."
Good advise, but your own risk assesment that you are 'so sure about' doesn't have any probability caveates at all?
The GP did have one such caveate (ie: 'likely'), the best science available says 'very likely'. But maybe I have misunderstood, maybe you are talking about the GP's implicit assumption that humans are causing the climate to change, if that's the case then the science says 'certain'.
"...they can sell them to their own people..."
Indeed, China's earnings from exporting goods and services stands at ~25% of GDP, the US accounts for less than half of that. This is good for the economy here in Australia, not so good for the economy in the US. As for China, if the US stopped importing from them tomorrow their growth rate of ~10% would make up for the loss in ~1yr.
It's also interesting to note that China lifted it's ban on buying and selling gold 2-3yrs ago (when oil & gold abruptly started climbing). For a while the government encoraged China's middle class to put some of their savings into the traditional 'rainy day' plan of hoarding gold in the form of trinkets. The middle class really didn't need much encouraging, China's new retail gold market drove the gold price up for the first 6-12 months of it's operation.
Disclaimer: Even though it was concieved by Newton I am not calling for a return to the gold standard.
"If that ain't a bank of sorts, what is?"
1. An agency mandated to have a US citizen leading it, it's purpose is to hide the identity of predatory lenders who blackmail impoverished governments via their tresuries. Largely financed by the industrial/military complex to keep the oil flowing to the military/industrial complex.
2. An agency that used the Bretton Woods system to rebuild western Europe, and has gone on to bring democracy, wealth and good govanance to much of S.America, S.E Asia, and Eastern Europe.
I have heard "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" and suspect both definitions are correct at one time or another.
The people at the coal face make up their own interpretations of the rules, they apply them using vaugely defined subjective criteria and a mental dartboard.
I flew from Australia to HK to London back to HK and then someone spotted the scissors in the sowing kit that had remained in a pocket of my carry-on bag the whole trip.
On the same trip I had the window half open and was watching the twilight (the flight path had created an extended sunset). A stewardess (who basically wanted her cattle to go to sleep) came over and demanded I close the blind because "the light could disturb other people". At this point the guy next to me who had been sleeping opened one eye toward the stewardess and said (paraphrase): "I don't mind the light but your actions are disturbing people right now". She was left speechless and walked off, a few people chuckled quietly, I went back to looking out the window.