Why would they sue, do they have the rights on the likeness? I thought that would apply only to living persons. Incidentally, does apple also hold a Jobs trademark? That's quite gross in my book, akin to the way Communist parties in Eastern Europe used to keep the mummies of their leaders for the subjects to bow to. I can almost believe the conspiracy theories that they timed the release of the last iphone with the death of the Dear Leader.
This time around it doesn't look like a free speech issue, but more like a preparation for succession issue. The current leadership in China is already old (this is the Deng cohort, pres. Hu is already 70), and he seem to be getting China ready for a new generation of political leaders. When you do leadership change in this kind of regime, you do everything to ensure smooth succession to the people you chose.
There was even an old Soviet joke about the perils of transition. If memory serves, Radio Yerevan was asked "What is bloody sex?". "Pulling out a member from the Politbureau", replied the radio.
Without a smooth translation, the situation in China could get much more unpleasant than that.
It is the same with software, really. Bits (and most bytes) are standard, the languages used are similar enough, implementations for most algorithms exist in very similar libraries on virtually all platforms, and even the technologies that are used for communication and user interactions - from hardware up to the protocols are very similar.
The only thing a developer must do is to know these standards and apply them to his software so that his app works reasonably on all platforms. Basically in the same way Nissan or Porche know the specs for various car components by different manufacturers and various government safety standards, and build their cars around them.
the most likely political effect of which will be attempts to extend it*
* assuming, of course, that the regulation is structured like copyright -- that is, a partial adjustment of a large market, such that the costs of the regulation are distributed over a large enough group of participants, while the economic profits go to a small group of beneficiaries.
You're still totally missing the point -- any regulation that creates excess, or economic profits (you can look up the definition elsewhere) will create incentives, the most likely political effect of which will be attempts to extend it. This will happen always, because
1. the people who benefit from it will have greater return on investment into political action, not innovation, and
2. the people who are harmed by it will not be harmed enough to have incentive to invest in political action
Consequently, all political action that will result up to a very serious level of economic harm, will be one in support of such legislation, and in opposition of legislation that shortens the copyright terms.
The corruption of government is not an issue at all, and does not enter this argument. The issue is purely economic -- the ratio of harm/benefit to cost of political action for the different groups of actors that have legislative initiative. Again, the fundamental problem is the structure of incentives that the copyright rules create, not the "corrupt" government. In other words, copyrights don't work "right" even if you consider them in an ideal democracy.
Had you read carefully what's being discussed, you'd know I am not considering a "typical monopoly", but regulations that artificially create one where it isn't possible, the re-distribution of resources and the change in incentives those regulations create and how these play out in a democratic system. You don't even touch on my argument, you just pile some angry sentences there. Also, your ideas about how monopoly works are slightly wrong.
The key to understanding what I'm talking about is to re-read this part of your post:
becuase the government, representing the public, all too often lets itself become controlled by those private entities and allows abuse
and ask yourself "how did it happen", and then "why". There are many books on the history of copyrights, pick one, read it, and follow the process. It is really simple -- regulations create excess profits for few and small losses for many. The people who "win" use the extra profits to organize and lobby, nationally and internationally. As a result, new regulations are created that extend the excess profits, which leads to more regulations. It is a vicious circle. These days there are complications, but they are only in the mechanisms of abuse, not the basic economic story behind it.
In theory, the process continues until the harm done to the many individuals is so great, that individual members are strongly hurt from it and organize politically to counter it. Even theoretically this kind of problems will not be corrected in the short run, and may or may not be corrected in the long run. And, as you may have heard, in the "long run" (as it is defined by the dismal science) we're all dead. The problem can also be perpetuated if the people who get the rents keep the harm at the "optimal" level, where it will be an annoyance, but not create enough harm to result in motivation for large-scale political action. If you think for a while, you'll see that explains why some violations are tolerated, why sometimes copyright holders back off of particularly abusive legislation, etc. Incidentally, virtually every empirical economic research on the topic has also confirmed that copyrights are stifling creativity and patents are stifling innovation, exactly the opposite of what their holders claim.
In other words, both the evidence and the theory say you're wrong. The problems with government regulations that create artificial monopolies are inherent in the regulations, not in the government that implements them. These regulations are economically inefficient by nature, and tend to create a situation in which they are self-perpetuating. If you want to resolve the problems they create, you have to start with modifying the process so that the "right" incentives are created, not seek to "correct" the actors who rationally follow the incentives, created by the excess profits.
Actually, this kind of abuse is exactly a feature of copyright. The economic reasoning is simple enough that it is covered in microeconomics introduction. The problem is similar with all regulations that create monopolistic profits.
This is money you get in excess of what you'd be making in a fully efficient, competitive market. Since this is money in excess of the cost of all factors of production (and, btw, that includes the return on your investment in R&D), you don't get extra profit by spending it on your main business. Instead, you're better off if you spend that extra lobbying for activity that extends the regulations that give you the extra profit.
The problem is made worse because this kind of behavior (called rent-seeking activity, if memory serves) is not self-correcting. Since distribution of cost and benefit is extremely uneven (small cost to many people vs. large benefits to very few large publishers in the case of copyright), there is very little in terms of political incentive for change.
It is funny that you complain the article is logically flawed when you make an argument from authority and complain about the messenger instead of the message.
Copyright law is an agreement that has two sides -- the copyright holders and their society. The agreement goes like this: society grants a temporary monopoly to the copyright holders, which hurts the society. In exchange, the copyright holders agree to relinquish the copyrights after the term has expired, an act which restores the "normal" situation where everyone can copy everyone else. This is obviously beneficial to society (shoulders of giants, etc.).
Ideally, the harm to society that happens because of the monopoly effects is negated by the "creativity boom" caused by the extra profits. Was this effect ever observed? Rarely, if at all.
What other effects have been observed? Well, originally, the term was 14 years or so. Part of the profits that these 14 years generated went repeatedly into lobbying for extension of the copyright terms. Currently, they are extended for so long a time that a copyright monopoly is practically perpetual.
I.e. the original contract is already invalid -- the copyright holders benefit from the monopoly at the expense of everyone else. This is extremely unethical. The "illegal" copying you observe is just the backlash against the abuse of the copyright system.
The very early, self-organized guilds in Europe were usually created as religious groups, not on grounds of common occupation, so there wasn't much in terms of trade secrets and techniques passed between the members at that time.
The "guilds" in the sense you're using it were institutions legislated by the various rulers in Europe. The express purpose of this kind of legislation was ability to better tax guild members, not ensure that trade secrets were kept. There is enough research that suggests that most extra profits from the monopolies granted were squeezed from the guilds and passed on to the rulers to undermine your thesis.
Also, it is known that most skilled and innovative tradesmen (i.e. those that would, in your view, benefit most by the guild regime) tended to run away from cities where guilds were the norm into the so-called "free cities", where techniques usually flourished. Why would this be happening at all if guilds were essential for "innovation"?
And why should I pay 0.99 cents for bad copy of a song, precisely? I pay (quite dearly too) for concerts or club performances, because the performers actually work during the performance to entertain me.
But why should I pay some lawyers and Yoko Ono 99 cents for the copy of work someone who they fucked did 40 years ago? Because the said lawyers came up with the fiction that copyright costs money? They can all collectively suck my dick. The copy has a marginal cost of zero, and that's all they can reasonably expect to receive.
Sponsoring lawyers and other sleazy people who use dirty tricks like lobbying to screw people into repeatedly paying them obscene amounts of money for work done by others decades ago, and abuse international organizations like WIPO and IFPI to sidestep the national legislative process is worse than sponsoring Osama bin Laden.
In Japan, public payphones (with or without booths) have all but disappeared in the past 15 years. It seems that since everyone has a cellphone, nobody uses the public payphones anymore and it is too expensive to maintain. There are some public payphones/booths still at airports and large stations, but they are few and far between.
Also, it seems this is not only a Japanese phenomenon. I visit several Eastern European countries regularly, and the situation there is similar to Japan. There are very few phone booths/public phones because (I'm told) of vandalism and because mostly everyone has a mobile anyways. Kudos to Latvia for managing to keep the public payphone infrastructure in place in spite of the onslaught of mobile phones.
Consider the recent boycotts of BofA, and Godaddy.
I am not sure which boycotts of BoA you have in mind, because I don't recall a major boycott, and my searches on CNN, BBC and Reuters don't turn up any relevant news. I'll say that if there was such a boycott, it was pretty much a failure.
As for GoDaddy, how is GoDaddy's position anywhere near Apple's? Godaddy is an ISP that supports extrajudicial domain hijacking, which can directly harm its customers. Apple is a very successful company, which, in the eyes of its customers at least, is protecting its excellent products from copycats. If anything, the illusion of exclusivity that Apple is creating for its customers will have them support the actions of the company. You only need to look at the religious fervor of the fanbois on slashdot to see what I mean.
People should understand that buying from is bad for everybody
"From" being every company that has patents, I presume?
I'm not saying it was the right thing to do but it wasn't deliberate lying either, just extreme conservatism.
Well, I guess you can put it this way as well. IMHO, the best way to lie is to tell only part of the truth, and that is what happened in the weeks after the accident on a national scale.
all the anti-nuclear protests and the government keeping 80% of reactors shut down for safety checks even while there was a major power shortage and many industries had to shut down temporarily
Yes, I noticed them. The protests were (and are) genuine, but a lot less than what would have happened had the issues been covered properly -- in sufficient detail and earlier. People in Tokyo were lining up for hours outside of the train and metro stations in March. Kind of like people in Kiev and Minsk were marching for the Mayday parades on May 1st 1986.
As for the government reaction, spare me. Long-term complacency, pressure to "calm down" the seriousness of the accident in the aftermath, populist attempts to plug the disappearing electoral support and short-term desperate emergency measures after every accident are obviously the sane way to develop safe nuclear power in the long term.
Notice how shortly after the plant achieved cold shutdown the shit started to hit the fan. Priorities and all that.
There is no shit hitting the fan yet, not for the culprits anyways. We'll see how far things will get, but considering past history of industrial accidents, the cost will be borne by the government (i.e. the taxpayers), not by the guilty.
That is just the reality of nuclear power economics: no company would run it if it wasn't heavily subsidised and protected by the government.
Aside from it being a major problem for the economy if it did fail (similar to bank failures TEPCO is loaded with debt that would default) they want to ensure that people are compensated properly by TEPCO.
And this is exactly the problem with nuclear. Nuclear power has always been vastly more expensive than the figures shown by the nuclear lobby. Who knows where we would have been if all that money had been spent on better alternatives. Instead, we now have to pay for TEPCO's cleanup. This is why companies should not be allowed to operate on a scale where their assets would be insufficient to compensate for the damages they can cause.
There will be more accidents in future, but that is the nature of nuclear power,
This is the nature of the kind of nuclear power that has developed with heavy government involvement, mostly as a side effect of the nuclear weapons programs. That is why costs are never an issue, "security" (and coverups) are the norm, and openness and transparency are the last priorities on the list.
The obvious rebuttal is that the zinc cladding reacts with water at temperatures cooler than what are needed to melt the fuel rods.
We're not talking trace amounts of hydrogen here, we're talking an amount that blew off the concrete enclosure completely and sent it flying. You need to update on the March news. You want to rebut? Please calculate the amount of energy needed to produce that much hydrogen. What do your calculations show? Come on, surprise us, show us the numbers. For a genius of your calibre it should be easy.
What evidence of wrongdoing is there?
You are really behind on the news. Again, read more, write less. You could start with the report in TFA.
normally have aren't particularly serious
You're a fat, ignorant troll. The Japanese nuclear companies think nothing of disclosure regulations and have attempted to cover most accidents, especially those in which there was a radiation leak. That is as serious as the lack of information from Iran regarding their nuclear program, or USSR hiding Chernobyl for weeks. I am not going to look through every random idiot's posting history, but from your tone I am somehow sure you're very, very hard on Iran every time the subject comes up here.
to phase out the old designs rather than worry about why accidents don't always result in criminal charges.
Do you have any clue why those "old designs" are not being phased out, but used until they cause trouble? Also, what about the private property that was destroyed by accident? Are you also in favor of having newer locks locks on houses instead of persecuting the thieves?
Go troll somewhere else.
Firstly Apple are actively pushing to block other devices at a county level.
So? Would have it been better if they'd done it on a state level? Or federally? How is thar fault faultier? And, btw, wtf is "county level"?
Secondly and very importantly, Apples recent patents are all at such an obvious level as to be utterly vile.
There is no conspicuous difference between the actions of one company that has bogus or semi-bogus patents and uses them (call it Apple), and any company that does the same (call it Nokia, RIM, Motorola, whatever). In the phone biz everyone sues everyone else, cue the famous picture file, and the point is to delay the products of the competition and to capture fleeting market share. All of the lot are all utterly vile in the same way, if they weren't, they would not be among the majors.
The vile that were innovative in some way and swept the stakes at some point (like Nokia, RIM, Apple), then got complacent and lost share. All the suing and patents did not save them. Any reason this will not befall Apple as well?
the low bar at the patent office
The mess at the patent office is not the fault of Apple, it is the fault of the American electorate who elect politicians that suck corporate dick for a cash. Wanna change? Hold them responsible. Educate them. Intrigue them. Try. Maybe they will suck you for free.
/ Sent from my non-Apple device running Debian arm
If Apple decides that it is time to stop innovating their products (or successfully copying and integrating other people's designs in them, as some see it) and start suing and doing other dirty tricks instead, they would have already lost more than half the battle. Trying to squash competition has never worked well in the long run, and trying to squash it with dirty tricks has worked even worse.
Apple cannot realistically threaten the rest of the industry long term. They aren't that big, their products aren't that pervasive and they simply cannot afford a wide enough product range to compete with everyone. Even if they could become the new Microsoft, in a decade or so everyone would have been tired enough of them to switch to something else.
Besides, boycott may be counterproductive -- Apple left on its own can well generate more bad will than Apple pestered by boycotts. So, instead of recommending a boycott, inform your readers about the problems Apple is creating and help them make informed and rational decisions about their purchases. And if they decide Apple is good for them, then let them have it -- it is their choice, after all.
There will be a shift away from nuclear power, though. The general consensus is that most people don't have the stomach for it anymore, and based on many reports on TV, it's clear that Japan was essentially forced into using nuclear power in the first place.
Yeah, it looks that is likely to happen. I, for one, hope that the likes of Toshiba can develop safer nuclear that can be deployed on a smaller scale so that nuclear industry does not rely on few "too big to fail" behemots with too much control (although that will probably remain a dream). I also hope that people in Japan will start thinking out of the box - maybe about solar farms on unused land like Mr. Son from Softbank does, maybe about harnessing geothermal and tidal energy, or, who knows, maybe about breakthrough in fusion power.
you mentioned that NHK is in the pocket of the government, and they are, but NHK has produced some of the best documentaries on the disaster,
They were pretty complacent in the beginning of the drama, IMHO. I was away from Japan for a few months in the summer. When I got back, they were, as you mentioned, already making some better journalist coverage on the issues. But it took them some time to get a spine. And large parts of the serious press -- especially Asahi shimbun -- still visibly shy away from covering big company troubles.
Japan has huge potential and it makes me really sad to see it being extinguished slowly by decades of utter lack of leadership and massive irresponsibility by the political elite and by the senior management of many large companies.
Exactly, the headline makes it sound like there is nothing at all in terms of scripting capability on the two major phone platforms when in fact the opposite is true. I also agree that lua is a very good language to begin programming with. Maybe I'll dust off the iphone and check it out;)
Slashdot Mirror
Why would they sue, do they have the rights on the likeness? I thought that would apply only to living persons. Incidentally, does apple also hold a Jobs trademark? That's quite gross in my book, akin to the way Communist parties in Eastern Europe used to keep the mummies of their leaders for the subjects to bow to. I can almost believe the conspiracy theories that they timed the release of the last iphone with the death of the Dear Leader.
This time around it doesn't look like a free speech issue, but more like a preparation for succession issue. The current leadership in China is already old (this is the Deng cohort, pres. Hu is already 70), and he seem to be getting China ready for a new generation of political leaders. When you do leadership change in this kind of regime, you do everything to ensure smooth succession to the people you chose.
There was even an old Soviet joke about the perils of transition. If memory serves, Radio Yerevan was asked "What is bloody sex?". "Pulling out a member from the Politbureau", replied the radio.
Without a smooth translation, the situation in China could get much more unpleasant than that.
It is the same with software, really. Bits (and most bytes) are standard, the languages used are similar enough, implementations for most algorithms exist in very similar libraries on virtually all platforms, and even the technologies that are used for communication and user interactions - from hardware up to the protocols are very similar.
The only thing a developer must do is to know these standards and apply them to his software so that his app works reasonably on all platforms. Basically in the same way Nissan or Porche know the specs for various car components by different manufacturers and various government safety standards, and build their cars around them.
the most likely political effect of which will be attempts to extend it*
* assuming, of course, that the regulation is structured like copyright -- that is, a partial adjustment of a large market, such that the costs of the regulation are distributed over a large enough group of participants, while the economic profits go to a small group of beneficiaries.
You're still totally missing the point -- any regulation that creates excess, or economic profits (you can look up the definition elsewhere) will create incentives, the most likely political effect of which will be attempts to extend it. This will happen always, because
1. the people who benefit from it will have greater return on investment into political action, not innovation, and
2. the people who are harmed by it will not be harmed enough to have incentive to invest in political action
Consequently, all political action that will result up to a very serious level of economic harm, will be one in support of such legislation, and in opposition of legislation that shortens the copyright terms.
The corruption of government is not an issue at all, and does not enter this argument. The issue is purely economic -- the ratio of harm/benefit to cost of political action for the different groups of actors that have legislative initiative. Again, the fundamental problem is the structure of incentives that the copyright rules create, not the "corrupt" government. In other words, copyrights don't work "right" even if you consider them in an ideal democracy.
Had you read carefully what's being discussed, you'd know I am not considering a "typical monopoly", but regulations that artificially create one where it isn't possible, the re-distribution of resources and the change in incentives those regulations create and how these play out in a democratic system. You don't even touch on my argument, you just pile some angry sentences there. Also, your ideas about how monopoly works are slightly wrong.
The key to understanding what I'm talking about is to re-read this part of your post:
becuase the government, representing the public, all too often lets itself become controlled by those private entities and allows abuse
and ask yourself "how did it happen", and then "why". There are many books on the history of copyrights, pick one, read it, and follow the process. It is really simple -- regulations create excess profits for few and small losses for many. The people who "win" use the extra profits to organize and lobby, nationally and internationally. As a result, new regulations are created that extend the excess profits, which leads to more regulations. It is a vicious circle. These days there are complications, but they are only in the mechanisms of abuse, not the basic economic story behind it.
In theory, the process continues until the harm done to the many individuals is so great, that individual members are strongly hurt from it and organize politically to counter it. Even theoretically this kind of problems will not be corrected in the short run, and may or may not be corrected in the long run. And, as you may have heard, in the "long run" (as it is defined by the dismal science) we're all dead. The problem can also be perpetuated if the people who get the rents keep the harm at the "optimal" level, where it will be an annoyance, but not create enough harm to result in motivation for large-scale political action. If you think for a while, you'll see that explains why some violations are tolerated, why sometimes copyright holders back off of particularly abusive legislation, etc. Incidentally, virtually every empirical economic research on the topic has also confirmed that copyrights are stifling creativity and patents are stifling innovation, exactly the opposite of what their holders claim.
In other words, both the evidence and the theory say you're wrong. The problems with government regulations that create artificial monopolies are inherent in the regulations, not in the government that implements them. These regulations are economically inefficient by nature, and tend to create a situation in which they are self-perpetuating. If you want to resolve the problems they create, you have to start with modifying the process so that the "right" incentives are created, not seek to "correct" the actors who rationally follow the incentives, created by the excess profits.
Actually, this kind of abuse is exactly a feature of copyright. The economic reasoning is simple enough that it is covered in microeconomics introduction. The problem is similar with all regulations that create monopolistic profits.
This is money you get in excess of what you'd be making in a fully efficient, competitive market. Since this is money in excess of the cost of all factors of production (and, btw, that includes the return on your investment in R&D), you don't get extra profit by spending it on your main business. Instead, you're better off if you spend that extra lobbying for activity that extends the regulations that give you the extra profit.
The problem is made worse because this kind of behavior (called rent-seeking activity, if memory serves) is not self-correcting. Since distribution of cost and benefit is extremely uneven (small cost to many people vs. large benefits to very few large publishers in the case of copyright), there is very little in terms of political incentive for change.
Perhaps not the best spokesperson to get behind.
It is funny that you complain the article is logically flawed when you make an argument from authority and complain about the messenger instead of the message.
No, unlicensed copying IS unethical.
Why?
Copyright law is an agreement that has two sides -- the copyright holders and their society. The agreement goes like this: society grants a temporary monopoly to the copyright holders, which hurts the society. In exchange, the copyright holders agree to relinquish the copyrights after the term has expired, an act which restores the "normal" situation where everyone can copy everyone else. This is obviously beneficial to society (shoulders of giants, etc.).
Ideally, the harm to society that happens because of the monopoly effects is negated by the "creativity boom" caused by the extra profits. Was this effect ever observed? Rarely, if at all.
What other effects have been observed? Well, originally, the term was 14 years or so. Part of the profits that these 14 years generated went repeatedly into lobbying for extension of the copyright terms. Currently, they are extended for so long a time that a copyright monopoly is practically perpetual.
I.e. the original contract is already invalid -- the copyright holders benefit from the monopoly at the expense of everyone else. This is extremely unethical . The "illegal" copying you observe is just the backlash against the abuse of the copyright system.
The very early, self-organized guilds in Europe were usually created as religious groups, not on grounds of common occupation, so there wasn't much in terms of trade secrets and techniques passed between the members at that time.
The "guilds" in the sense you're using it were institutions legislated by the various rulers in Europe. The express purpose of this kind of legislation was ability to better tax guild members, not ensure that trade secrets were kept. There is enough research that suggests that most extra profits from the monopolies granted were squeezed from the guilds and passed on to the rulers to undermine your thesis.
Also, it is known that most skilled and innovative tradesmen (i.e. those that would, in your view, benefit most by the guild regime) tended to run away from cities where guilds were the norm into the so-called "free cities", where techniques usually flourished. Why would this be happening at all if guilds were essential for "innovation"?
And why should I pay 0.99 cents for bad copy of a song, precisely? I pay (quite dearly too) for concerts or club performances, because the performers actually work during the performance to entertain me.
But why should I pay some lawyers and Yoko Ono 99 cents for the copy of work someone who they fucked did 40 years ago? Because the said lawyers came up with the fiction that copyright costs money? They can all collectively suck my dick. The copy has a marginal cost of zero, and that's all they can reasonably expect to receive.
Sponsoring lawyers and other sleazy people who use dirty tricks like lobbying to screw people into repeatedly paying them obscene amounts of money for work done by others decades ago, and abuse international organizations like WIPO and IFPI to sidestep the national legislative process is worse than sponsoring Osama bin Laden.
This is why most anti-terrorist strategies read as if their first, blacked-out paragraph begins with "Imagine a spherical terrorist in vacuum".
You can't argue that the gun isn't to blame for the death of the person who got shot with it in much the same way.
Not really. Umbrella corp. were the good guys. Monsanto will set them up with the zombie virus in the sixth episode, which will be a prequel.
In Japan, public payphones (with or without booths) have all but disappeared in the past 15 years. It seems that since everyone has a cellphone, nobody uses the public payphones anymore and it is too expensive to maintain. There are some public payphones/booths still at airports and large stations, but they are few and far between.
Also, it seems this is not only a Japanese phenomenon. I visit several Eastern European countries regularly, and the situation there is similar to Japan. There are very few phone booths/public phones because (I'm told) of vandalism and because mostly everyone has a mobile anyways. Kudos to Latvia for managing to keep the public payphone infrastructure in place in spite of the onslaught of mobile phones.
Consider the recent boycotts of BofA, and Godaddy.
I am not sure which boycotts of BoA you have in mind, because I don't recall a major boycott, and my searches on CNN, BBC and Reuters don't turn up any relevant news. I'll say that if there was such a boycott, it was pretty much a failure.
As for GoDaddy, how is GoDaddy's position anywhere near Apple's? Godaddy is an ISP that supports extrajudicial domain hijacking, which can directly harm its customers. Apple is a very successful company, which, in the eyes of its customers at least, is protecting its excellent products from copycats. If anything, the illusion of exclusivity that Apple is creating for its customers will have them support the actions of the company. You only need to look at the religious fervor of the fanbois on slashdot to see what I mean.
People should understand that buying from is bad for everybody
"From" being every company that has patents, I presume?
the government decided to let the experts run things.
The experts did an excellent job blowing up three reactors, as you can easily learn by reading the report in the TFA.
I'm not saying it was the right thing to do but it wasn't deliberate lying either, just extreme conservatism.
Well, I guess you can put it this way as well. IMHO, the best way to lie is to tell only part of the truth, and that is what happened in the weeks after the accident on a national scale.
all the anti-nuclear protests and the government keeping 80% of reactors shut down for safety checks even while there was a major power shortage and many industries had to shut down temporarily
Yes, I noticed them. The protests were (and are) genuine, but a lot less than what would have happened had the issues been covered properly -- in sufficient detail and earlier. People in Tokyo were lining up for hours outside of the train and metro stations in March. Kind of like people in Kiev and Minsk were marching for the Mayday parades on May 1st 1986.
As for the government reaction, spare me. Long-term complacency, pressure to "calm down" the seriousness of the accident in the aftermath, populist attempts to plug the disappearing electoral support and short-term desperate emergency measures after every accident are obviously the sane way to develop safe nuclear power in the long term.
Notice how shortly after the plant achieved cold shutdown the shit started to hit the fan. Priorities and all that.
There is no shit hitting the fan yet, not for the culprits anyways. We'll see how far things will get, but considering past history of industrial accidents, the cost will be borne by the government (i.e. the taxpayers), not by the guilty.
That is just the reality of nuclear power economics: no company would run it if it wasn't heavily subsidised and protected by the government.
Aside from it being a major problem for the economy if it did fail (similar to bank failures TEPCO is loaded with debt that would default) they want to ensure that people are compensated properly by TEPCO.
And this is exactly the problem with nuclear. Nuclear power has always been vastly more expensive than the figures shown by the nuclear lobby. Who knows where we would have been if all that money had been spent on better alternatives. Instead, we now have to pay for TEPCO's cleanup. This is why companies should not be allowed to operate on a scale where their assets would be insufficient to compensate for the damages they can cause.
There will be more accidents in future, but that is the nature of nuclear power,
This is the nature of the kind of nuclear power that has developed with heavy government involvement, mostly as a side effect of the nuclear weapons programs. That is why costs are never an issue, "security" (and coverups) are the norm, and openness and transparency are the last priorities on the list.
The obvious rebuttal is that the zinc cladding reacts with water at temperatures cooler than what are needed to melt the fuel rods.
We're not talking trace amounts of hydrogen here, we're talking an amount that blew off the concrete enclosure completely and sent it flying. You need to update on the March news. You want to rebut? Please calculate the amount of energy needed to produce that much hydrogen. What do your calculations show? Come on, surprise us, show us the numbers. For a genius of your calibre it should be easy.
What evidence of wrongdoing is there?
You are really behind on the news. Again, read more, write less. You could start with the report in TFA.
normally have aren't particularly serious
You're a fat, ignorant troll. The Japanese nuclear companies think nothing of disclosure regulations and have attempted to cover most accidents, especially those in which there was a radiation leak. That is as serious as the lack of information from Iran regarding their nuclear program, or USSR hiding Chernobyl for weeks. I am not going to look through every random idiot's posting history, but from your tone I am somehow sure you're very, very hard on Iran every time the subject comes up here.
to phase out the old designs rather than worry about why accidents don't always result in criminal charges.
Do you have any clue why those "old designs" are not being phased out, but used until they cause trouble? Also, what about the private property that was destroyed by accident? Are you also in favor of having newer locks locks on houses instead of persecuting the thieves? Go troll somewhere else.
That’s a supposition, not a fact. But even if you knew that for a fact, how is that an indication of hate?
Man there are a lot of fanbois here.
Whar the fanboi? Kill it with fire!!1!!
Firstly Apple are actively pushing to block other devices at a county level.
So? Would have it been better if they'd done it on a state level? Or federally? How is thar fault faultier? And, btw, wtf is "county level"?
Secondly and very importantly, Apples recent patents are all at such an obvious level as to be utterly vile.
There is no conspicuous difference between the actions of one company that has bogus or semi-bogus patents and uses them (call it Apple), and any company that does the same (call it Nokia, RIM, Motorola, whatever). In the phone biz everyone sues everyone else, cue the famous picture file, and the point is to delay the products of the competition and to capture fleeting market share. All of the lot are all utterly vile in the same way, if they weren't, they would not be among the majors.
The vile that were innovative in some way and swept the stakes at some point (like Nokia, RIM, Apple), then got complacent and lost share. All the suing and patents did not save them. Any reason this will not befall Apple as well?
the low bar at the patent office
The mess at the patent office is not the fault of Apple, it is the fault of the American electorate who elect politicians that suck corporate dick for a cash. Wanna change? Hold them responsible. Educate them. Intrigue them. Try. Maybe they will suck you for free.
/ Sent from my non-Apple device running Debian arm
If Apple decides that it is time to stop innovating their products (or successfully copying and integrating other people's designs in them, as some see it) and start suing and doing other dirty tricks instead, they would have already lost more than half the battle. Trying to squash competition has never worked well in the long run, and trying to squash it with dirty tricks has worked even worse.
Apple cannot realistically threaten the rest of the industry long term. They aren't that big, their products aren't that pervasive and they simply cannot afford a wide enough product range to compete with everyone. Even if they could become the new Microsoft, in a decade or so everyone would have been tired enough of them to switch to something else.
Besides, boycott may be counterproductive -- Apple left on its own can well generate more bad will than Apple pestered by boycotts. So, instead of recommending a boycott, inform your readers about the problems Apple is creating and help them make informed and rational decisions about their purchases. And if they decide Apple is good for them, then let them have it -- it is their choice, after all.
There will be a shift away from nuclear power, though. The general consensus is that most people don't have the stomach for it anymore, and based on many reports on TV, it's clear that Japan was essentially forced into using nuclear power in the first place.
Yeah, it looks that is likely to happen. I, for one, hope that the likes of Toshiba can develop safer nuclear that can be deployed on a smaller scale so that nuclear industry does not rely on few "too big to fail" behemots with too much control (although that will probably remain a dream). I also hope that people in Japan will start thinking out of the box - maybe about solar farms on unused land like Mr. Son from Softbank does, maybe about harnessing geothermal and tidal energy, or, who knows, maybe about breakthrough in fusion power.
you mentioned that NHK is in the pocket of the government, and they are, but NHK has produced some of the best documentaries on the disaster,
They were pretty complacent in the beginning of the drama, IMHO. I was away from Japan for a few months in the summer. When I got back, they were, as you mentioned, already making some better journalist coverage on the issues. But it took them some time to get a spine. And large parts of the serious press -- especially Asahi shimbun -- still visibly shy away from covering big company troubles.
Japan has huge potential and it makes me really sad to see it being extinguished slowly by decades of utter lack of leadership and massive irresponsibility by the political elite and by the senior management of many large companies.
Exactly, the headline makes it sound like there is nothing at all in terms of scripting capability on the two major phone platforms when in fact the opposite is true. I also agree that lua is a very good language to begin programming with. Maybe I'll dust off the iphone and check it out ;)
That is an interesting claim, but what facts do you base it on, trollface?