There is not a single permanent disposal site world-wide.
Then where do we get our uranium from? The fact is these radioactive elements occur naturally in many places in the world and they do not cause us any problems. Nature does a very good job of containing radiactive material for thousands upon thousands of years without causing harm to the environment. You don't have the problem of uranium leaking from uranium ore into groundwater and then to rivers and oceans for instance.
Safe disposal of nuclear waste is possible - and we know it is because nature has done it before. Instead of using half-baked solutions such as storing it in stainless steel tanks (which can break or corrode under certain environments) or melting it into glass (which crack due to stress from continued exposure to radioactivity), we have to learn put nature and materials science to work on the best way to chemically immobolise radioactive materials so that they do not escape in the face of fractures, corrosion or heat.
Politically though the storage of nuclear waste will always be an explosive issue. Perhaps this is the reason we don't have a permanent disposal site?
and (a) which does not relate (1) to the business of the employer
I wonder what happens if you work for a really really big corporation that has its finger in almost every conceivable market. Would that make 2870 close to worthless?
Other than for reasons of anti-competitiveness I don't see a good reason to not allow other types of software to be used.
You may not see that there are other reasons, but there are.
For instance promoting technical expertise in a nation that doesn't have much of it yet is best served by purchasing software and support from local suppliers - and because entry into the software market is so difficult, support for open source gives local developers a head start because they don't need to start writing their software from scratch.
This way, even if the government spends more money in paying for locally customised and supported, but slightly less functional open source solutions, the money stays in the country and comes back in the form of tax. At the same time the nation's know-how is all the better.
Money sent to Microsoft is likely gone for good and the nation's software industry isn't in a much better position.
These are but two more reasons open source is a good choice.
"(4)Voters could optionally tear off a bar coded tag from their ballot. They could then go to a specially set up election facility, present their tag and positive ID, then see how their vote was tallied on a secure, private terminal."
I don't agree with #4, because it allows someone to verify they voted a certain way. This would allow the mob or some other coercive organization to pay for your vote, you give them your slip, and then they check the result. Currently, it's pointless to try and influence voters this way since you can't proove you voted with the mob.
If you also distribute randomly generated barcodes for anyone who wants them, you can throw enough doubt into the authenticity of the barcode bought from voters and the market disappears.
Another problem, though, is that you don't actually gain anything because you can't verify that the vote you lookup from your barcode is actually part of the tally.
Realize that around 70% of Americans are christian. Now, lets vote on whether or not to allow that mosque or synagogue (sp) to open its doors on the corner, or whether gays should be allowed to parade, etc..
As another poster has mentioned, there is direct and indirect democracy. And these things have already happened in an indirect democracy.
There is really no such thing as 'true' democracy. There are those that work well, and those that don't. About all we can say is that some democracies function better than others.
In order for a democracy to work well, having an efficient, secure and fair voting system isn't enough. A better voting system by itself will only legitimise the opinions of a misinformed public.
The greatest potential for the application of technology isn't in the voting procedure, but in the means of keeping the citizens of a nation well informed about all aspects of the issues that occupy our government. Technology should be used to allow citizens to pool their knowledge together easily and track the progress of legislation, and verify that the law was carried out as intended and access government studies and so forth.
A well functioning democracy needs an well informed public.
Its even better than that! Internal combustion engines are only about 25% efficient, so for every ten gallons of gas you put into your car, only 2.5 gallons are actually used to propel you forward, the rest is just used to heat up the engine and exhaust.
And 100% of that 25% is lost to friction. Imagine if we could eliminate friction. We'd be able to accelerate to speed and just coast without using any gas, all the way around the world.
For that reason - space flight is probably the most efficient mode of transport to date! Strange - it doesn't feel that way.
Intel, in response to IBM's 'on-demand' corporate strategy has responded with one of their own, heralding a new era of computing ubiquity... "computing on-tap".
Are you sure about that?... You make it sound easy, but when the time comes it really won't be.
No, I'm not sure - that's why I asked: I asked a question and suggested the consequences of one of the possible answers. I didn't suggest the answer is correct.
Even if the copy isn't the original, under some circumstances, the option I propose may be desireable. For instance, if the hardware is in such a sorry state that it is likely to fail in the near future and any attempt at fixing it risks destroying the intelligent being altogether, then making a backup may be the only acceptable choice and it is conceivable the intelligent being in question is willing to come to terms with it.
Another question might be if suspension and resumption can be considered killing and resurrecting, or if it means nothing other than waking from a coma or anaesthesia.
Is the intellegence of the an intellegent computer stored in its hardware or its software state? If it is the software state, then transfering that state to a different hardware so that the old hardware can be destroyed or upgraded would not be considered killing.
Sometime afterwards the owner of the car is sent a fine in the mail, with zero effective chance of being able to avoid paying it unless he can somehow find someone else to admit to driving.
Offtopic.
Also, the time of the offense and the time of the find is so far removed, there is no tight feedback loop to correct a driver's behaviour to what the state considers proper. The driver could be fined many many times before he realises he has been fined for them.
The brilliant aspect of this is that its powered off of waste that was already present in the region.
I wonder what happens when the changing tastes of consumers abandon macadamia nuts? Or a drought hits local nut production? Could we be left a powerplant with no nuts? Can't be worse than depending on sunshine or the window though.
Ideally, for something like this, you'd build lots of smaller facilities, wherever burnable bio-waste is produced.
Good thing with building lots of small facilities is that they can be diverse. This way if one type becomes inactive for temporary reasons, they'd be other sources to take over the work.
Oh, for the umpteenth time: Apple mice use one button because their research indicates that non-professional computer users never know what to do with a second mouse button anyway. My wife and in-laws are experienced consumers, and they never touch the second button, even after I tell them what they can do with it.
It's probably more to do with the brain not wired to realise subconsciously that the button even exists. I'm sure if they played games that requires reflexive right button clicking, they'll learning pretty quickly to realise that its there.
This is an example of why it is dangerous to use proprietary DRM software. If your documents really are so important to you that you need to use DRM software to secure them, it makes even less sense to put so much trust in a single software corporation.
I believe that the reason that this is coming up with a vote at all is that the WIPO requires 'harmonization' of patent laws in all WIPO-member countries, and everybody is being encouraged to harmonize to the insane US status quo ante.
It's not a particularly convincing reason either.
Why must harmonization always be towards a reduction in liberties? Modifying US patent laws to suit the EU is just as valid a method of harmonization.
Whatever the new social structure - it needs to be backwards compatible and interoperable with what's already there. Otherwise, it will have no chance short of a universally catastrophic failure of the old system.
Ooops, it looks like I accidentally sent this email to 20,000 people on my spam list instead of my 5 established customers! How can that have happened? I'll make sure that doesn't happen until tomorrow at least!
The only good thing is it basically gives each spammer one "freebie" - surely a court won't believe they KEEP "inadvertently" sending spam. Will they?
I am sure, no software is intelligent enough to crack all these questions.
Spammers don't need software agents to be able to answer all the questions. As long as their agents can answer a reasonable percentage of questions, they can code their agents to keep on retrying until they get a question that the agent is capable of answering.
I can't believe this got modded insightful. It looks like a troll to me. Nonetheless, I'll bite.
There is no fundamental right to be able to earn a living by making music.
In the US there is. It's in the Constitution.
I'm not so sure. It says:
The Constitution of the United States provides that Congress has the power to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
As far as I'm concerned, congress is entitled to not exercise that power if it chooses. Furthermore, congress is only entitled to do so if they can demonstrate that it will promote the progress of sciences and useful arts. If they cannot do this, they have overstepped their powers.
If you're a country of a few million and only are the size of a small new england state, the change is pretty cheap and easy. When your huge, there is a massive infastructure change cost. and trying to re-wire 300 million peoples brains to a new way takes a lot more work.
It doesn't follow. 300 million people is just 100 x 3 million people. In other words it should cost the same per person. It's just an excuse for what is actually a lack of political will.
I've been finding that unit testing helps a lot. Writing the unit tests themselves are a chore, but having written them, I find it makes the debugging experience all the more rewarding. This is especially the case because doing so ensures the code has been written with testing and debugging in mind.
how beautifull would a car that looks good but keeps breaking down be?
A car that looks good but breaks down is not very beautiful. But isn't that the point? Beautiful things are suppose to work.
there is a place in ergonomic to write "beautifull software", but a serious piece of software does need some science.
Maths is beautiful. Science is beautiful.
Beauty is when reality and mind connect. When abstractions resemble the concrete. When interacting concepts are mutually consistent. When expectations converge with results.
For us hackers, it is when the programmer, problem, design, code and execution are one.
Slashdot Mirror
There is not a single permanent disposal site world-wide.
Then where do we get our uranium from? The fact is these radioactive elements occur naturally in many places in the world and they do not cause us any problems. Nature does a very good job of containing radiactive material for thousands upon thousands of years without causing harm to the environment. You don't have the problem of uranium leaking from uranium ore into groundwater and then to rivers and oceans for instance.
Safe disposal of nuclear waste is possible - and we know it is because nature has done it before. Instead of using half-baked solutions such as storing it in stainless steel tanks (which can break or corrode under certain environments) or melting it into glass (which crack due to stress from continued exposure to radioactivity), we have to learn put nature and materials science to work on the best way to chemically immobolise radioactive materials so that they do not escape in the face of fractures, corrosion or heat.
Politically though the storage of nuclear waste will always be an explosive issue. Perhaps this is the reason we don't have a permanent disposal site?
I wonder what happens if you work for a really really big corporation that has its finger in almost every conceivable market. Would that make 2870 close to worthless?
You may not see that there are other reasons, but there are.
For instance promoting technical expertise in a nation that doesn't have much of it yet is best served by purchasing software and support from local suppliers - and because entry into the software market is so difficult, support for open source gives local developers a head start because they don't need to start writing their software from scratch.
This way, even if the government spends more money in paying for locally customised and supported, but slightly less functional open source solutions, the money stays in the country and comes back in the form of tax. At the same time the nation's know-how is all the better.
Money sent to Microsoft is likely gone for good and the nation's software industry isn't in a much better position.
These are but two more reasons open source is a good choice.
I don't agree with #4, because it allows someone to verify they voted a certain way. This would allow the mob or some other coercive organization to pay for your vote, you give them your slip, and then they check the result. Currently, it's pointless to try and influence voters this way since you can't proove you voted with the mob.
If you also distribute randomly generated barcodes for anyone who wants them, you can throw enough doubt into the authenticity of the barcode bought from voters and the market disappears.
Another problem, though, is that you don't actually gain anything because you can't verify that the vote you lookup from your barcode is actually part of the tally.
As another poster has mentioned, there is direct and indirect democracy. And these things have already happened in an indirect democracy.
There is really no such thing as 'true' democracy. There are those that work well, and those that don't. About all we can say is that some democracies function better than others.
In order for a democracy to work well, having an efficient, secure and fair voting system isn't enough. A better voting system by itself will only legitimise the opinions of a misinformed public.
The greatest potential for the application of technology isn't in the voting procedure, but in the means of keeping the citizens of a nation well informed about all aspects of the issues that occupy our government. Technology should be used to allow citizens to pool their knowledge together easily and track the progress of legislation, and verify that the law was carried out as intended and access government studies and so forth.
A well functioning democracy needs an well informed public.
Reading your link, it seems they are a vegetable only in commerce or in trade rather than legally as a whole.
And 100% of that 25% is lost to friction. Imagine if we could eliminate friction. We'd be able to accelerate to speed and just coast without using any gas, all the way around the world.
For that reason - space flight is probably the most efficient mode of transport to date! Strange - it doesn't feel that way.
Intel, in response to IBM's 'on-demand' corporate strategy has responded with one of their own, heralding a new era of computing ubiquity ... "computing on-tap".
No, I'm not sure - that's why I asked: I asked a question and suggested the consequences of one of the possible answers. I didn't suggest the answer is correct.
Even if the copy isn't the original, under some circumstances, the option I propose may be desireable. For instance, if the hardware is in such a sorry state that it is likely to fail in the near future and any attempt at fixing it risks destroying the intelligent being altogether, then making a backup may be the only acceptable choice and it is conceivable the intelligent being in question is willing to come to terms with it.
Another question might be if suspension and resumption can be considered killing and resurrecting, or if it means nothing other than waking from a coma or anaesthesia.
Is the intellegence of the an intellegent computer stored in its hardware or its software state? If it is the software state, then transfering that state to a different hardware so that the old hardware can be destroyed or upgraded would not be considered killing.
Offtopic.
Also, the time of the offense and the time of the find is so far removed, there is no tight feedback loop to correct a driver's behaviour to what the state considers proper. The driver could be fined many many times before he realises he has been fined for them.
I wonder what happens when the changing tastes of consumers abandon macadamia nuts? Or a drought hits local nut production? Could we be left a powerplant with no nuts? Can't be worse than depending on sunshine or the window though.
Ideally, for something like this, you'd build lots of smaller facilities, wherever burnable bio-waste is produced.
Good thing with building lots of small facilities is that they can be diverse. This way if one type becomes inactive for temporary reasons, they'd be other sources to take over the work.
It's probably more to do with the brain not wired to realise subconsciously that the button even exists. I'm sure if they played games that requires reflexive right button clicking, they'll learning pretty quickly to realise that its there.
This is an example of why it is dangerous to use proprietary DRM software. If your documents really are so important to you that you need to use DRM software to secure them, it makes even less sense to put so much trust in a single software corporation.
It's not a particularly convincing reason either.
Why must harmonization always be towards a reduction in liberties? Modifying US patent laws to suit the EU is just as valid a method of harmonization.
Whatever the new social structure - it needs to be backwards compatible and interoperable with what's already there. Otherwise, it will have no chance short of a universally catastrophic failure of the old system.
The only good thing is it basically gives each spammer one "freebie" - surely a court won't believe they KEEP "inadvertently" sending spam. Will they?
Better make that "freebie" count then eh?
Spammers don't need software agents to be able to answer all the questions. As long as their agents can answer a reasonable percentage of questions, they can code their agents to keep on retrying until they get a question that the agent is capable of answering.
They're pretty good artists though - maybe they should consider changing professions.
Unless web standards could be changed to allow google differentiate between links.
If you're a country of a few million and only are the size of a small new england state, the change is pretty cheap and easy. When your huge, there is a massive infastructure change cost. and trying to re-wire 300 million peoples brains to a new way takes a lot more work. It doesn't follow. 300 million people is just 100 x 3 million people. In other words it should cost the same per person. It's just an excuse for what is actually a lack of political will.
I've been finding that unit testing helps a lot. Writing the unit tests themselves are a chore, but having written them, I find it makes the debugging experience all the more rewarding. This is especially the case because doing so ensures the code has been written with testing and debugging in mind.
A car that looks good but breaks down is not very beautiful. But isn't that the point? Beautiful things are suppose to work.
there is a place in ergonomic to write "beautifull software", but a serious piece of software does need some science.
Maths is beautiful. Science is beautiful.
Beauty is when reality and mind connect. When abstractions resemble the concrete. When interacting concepts are mutually consistent. When expectations converge with results.
For us hackers, it is when the programmer, problem, design, code and execution are one.