It only seems that way, Belgium is on the verge of economic breakdown.
The whole developed world is. In the US the basic problem is that they've been listening to Randian superhero fantasies for too long, and in Europe it's that the few sinking boats are chained to all the sound ones and thus take them with them. And simulatenously energy continues getting more and more expensive, climate change and associated extreme weather are hitting the big gear, Arab world is getting even more unstable, and various free-trade agreements make it difficult for any country to develop its own economy.
I'm sure sites will get upgraded nice and quickly once their customers start telephoning and saying 'my browser gave a scary warning when I tried to enter my credit card details!'
Except, of course, the customers don't do that. They simply figure this is one of the endless list of pointless natter comfirmations computers bombard them with, and click on it until it goes away.
Trying to cast an object into an incompatible type results in an exception. Trying to use a null pointer results in an exception. Both exceptions can be caught and handled. They don't leave the program into an undefined state, as they do in C or C++.
Once it's dead, the horde of Java "programmers" can go back to being fry cooks like they were before Java was created.
I wonder if this is the real reason why Java gets so much crap. More generally, I wonder if this is the reason why there are so few programming systems that would be easy to use and produce efficient code.
Forcing major changes onto companies that Oracle has by the implementation & licensing balls is one thing, but trying to force major changes onto the real world will only lead to a backlash and the adoption of alternatives to Java.
Are there alternatives to Java? Mandatory bounds checking, garbage collection and all that implies, and inability to break type safety combined with good execution speed are not easy to implement, especially in a multi-platform way.
The problem with nuclear disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima is that they leave large portions of land unusable for millenia.
Chernobyl is already usable right now (and in fact people live there and it's heavily forested), it's simply pointless to take the risk in a country that does not lack space.
Also, a radioactive material that's still present a thousand years after in significant quantities would need to have a half-life of at least a century, which in turn means it produces so little radiation per second as to be pretty much harmless. Do you people think radioactivity is some kind of death magic from Negative Energy Plane or something?
* direct solar source
Meaning what, exactly speaking?
* increase in efficiency of use
That only works so far before the laws of physics come calling.
* and please keep the population down.
It is declining in all Western countries, but energy usage isn't. And why should it, when we can tap into near-limitless energy source anytime we want to? It's only the "nuclear is scary" lobby that's keeping us from doing so.
I know an easy way to store hydrogen safely at room temperature: make a chain of carbon atoms, then join hydrogen atoms in the leftover "slots".
Seriously, the whole idea of "hydrogen economy" is simply stupid. It's not going to do anyone any good unless you have a power source to produce the hydrogen; and if you have said power source, it really isn't that hard to crack carbon dioxide and water to produce hydrocarbons rather than just water to produce hydrogen. Either produces carbon-neutral fuel, but hydrocarbons are far safer to store and use and hold more energy per mass or volume unit. Hydrocarbons also have the advantage of being compatible with existing vehicles and distribution network, being another name for oil.
The final nail in the coffin of hydrogen is that biofuels are hydrocarbons. That's understandable, since biofuel projects are simply trying to mimic, hasten and optimize the same processes that formed oil in the first place. However, that means that a hydrogen-burning vehicle can't use biofuels, at least not without losing massive amounts of efficiency.
Robots and drones are already being utilized in domestic law enforcement, so how long would it be before these fully-automated weapons systems were used domestically? You know they will be eventually if we allow it. History shows us that human nature is all too predictable when it comes to governments having immense power over relatively defenseless citizens. Governments always seek more power & control, and it never ends well once they achieve a large amount of it.
All of which is true, but you're ignoring one imortant thing: with increasing automation, any job can eventually be done by a robot. Which, in turn, means that you are not needed. As automation advances, the rich and powerful no longer need the rest of us to exist in order to live in luxury, and have the power to exterminate us.
All of which means that we have one last chance to stop treating the government as an enemy and start treating it as an enforcer of our collective will, and use it to fill the growing gap between the haves and have-nots. Failure means death.
Relatively starved for registers, although since it's not a load/store arch (another issue, imho) that matters less than it does in, say, ARM.
One might argue that the whole concept of (general) registers is an ugly hack to get around limited or nonexistent cache controllers in old processors. It certainly isn't "elegant" by any stretch of imagination to divide general storage into two separate namespaces, and it also wastes memory with what are basically explicit cache control commands (load/store).
Also, don't forget that the more registers you have, the more state the OS has to save and restore at task switch time.
For example, if the government started taxing sodas, people would complain that the greedy PepsiCo is raising their prices, not that they are paying more in taxes.
So don't tax sodas, tax PepsiCo's profits. PepsiCo already has incentive to maximize them - that's what it exists for - and taxing them doesn't change the soda can price point that maximizes them, thus it doesn't affect the price of soda.
What you have given is actually an argument against sales taxes and for income taxes.
Actually, its a larger incentive to not even bother playing the game and relocate to china, russia, or anywhere else that provides less disincentives to operate.
Given that both of those countries have proven they know exactly how to treat arrogant plutocrats with delusions of grandeur, I'd say good riddance.
The people who are pushing nuclear energy always talk about how the science and engineering is getting better. If that's the case, I vote we work toward a source of energy that won't require a heavily centralized corporate structure to control it.
Please be more specific: what energy source are you referring to? Because that step seems to be omitted from most "let's skip nuclear" -plans; they vaguely reference "renewables" without bothering to specify what to build, where, and how do you solve the associated logistical problems: energy transfer, energy storage, and the sheer amount of industrial output that needs to be devoted to building and maintaining thousands upon thousands of low-power windmills, solar power plants, etc.
Let's skip the flawed fission energy. It's only a temporary solution in any case.
There are no permanent solutions in an ever-changing world. Nor are there no flawless solutions in an imperfect world. And Earth is both.
Unfortunate, though. Slashdot is usually a great place to find opinions from those with first hand experience. However, when it comes to nuclear power, it might as well be a site for the nuclear lobby. Those with first hand experience are either too intimidated to post or accused of being liars when they do.
There has been two truly serious (someone gets hurt) accidents in the 60-year history of nuclear power: Chernobyl and Fukushima. Chernobyl killed 31 people; Fukushima has yet to kill anyone. Both were caused by a combination of corruption and exceptional circumstances. Contrast this with the 100,000 people who die yearly as a result of coal power working exactly as it's designed to: nuclear power wins hands down on pretty much every metric, even if we count the evacuees of Chernobyl and Fukushima as casualties.
So, while "first hand experience" of things going wrong makes for nice propaganda for Greenpeace, there simply aren't that many people with it. Decisions should be based on actual statistics, not on who can come up with the most moving sob story. Unless, of course, you don't actually care about making the best or even a good decision, but only on adhering to your ideology (Greenpeace) or getting re-elected (Germany).
CERN was founded by a political decision, and is publicly funded. So yes, politics do have business there. The very article says so: "It is a vital part of our mission to build bridges between nations." That's a political agenda right there.
And in any case, allowing Israel in is a political decision. CERN is publicly operated, so any and all decisions concerning it are political by definition.
Even if I tell you the risk of something is insignificant, that doesn't equate to zero, and that means it can still happen.
"Insignificant" does not mean "very small", it means "not worth considering". Don't make such value judgements unless you're willing to be held responsible for them.
If democracy is a illusion we got more pressing problems the dealing with private monopolies.
No: if democracy is an illusion then you have no more pressing problems than dealing with private monopolies, since those are precisely what makes democracy an illusion.
It intrigues me that so many people still don't understand the huge disadvantages that come with government control, especially when they bitch so much about corporate monopolies. Governments don't have to compete for you as a customer because you're forced to use them, and you're required by law to fund their paychecks.
That is an outright lie: you can simply move if you really dislike your government. There's competiton right there. Also, for most private de facto areal monopolies it's the same thing.
Of course you're required to pay taxes in any place you're likely to want to to move to; there's a correlation there.
Your point, sir, if you have one? The issue is not about the non-existence of feelings. Nor is the issue related to the hardness-is-good meme or the ideal of humans as emotionless robots, nor even ideological captialism.
The issue is related to all of those. Your entire argument rests on the assumption that hurt feelings aren't sufficient cause for any consequences. The UK court disagrees, and I agree with them.
Rather, it is about depriving somebody of their freedom *because* of feelings. If someone puts their emotions on display in public, they are going to be mocked in public.
And if you mock someone's feelings beyond a certain point you're going to face jail time, at least in the UK. What's your point, sir?
I submit that people should not have to fear incarceration because they mock somebody's hurt feelings. I eagerly await your (hopefully) strawman-free response.
The UK court disagrees with you, and I agree with the UK court. As for strawmen, I could hardly attack your points since you didn't make any, besides asserting your opinion.
Slashdot Mirror
Because discussion - or "opining" - is the whole point of Slashdot?
The whole developed world is. In the US the basic problem is that they've been listening to Randian superhero fantasies for too long, and in Europe it's that the few sinking boats are chained to all the sound ones and thus take them with them. And simulatenously energy continues getting more and more expensive, climate change and associated extreme weather are hitting the big gear, Arab world is getting even more unstable, and various free-trade agreements make it difficult for any country to develop its own economy.
It's just too many things coming to boil at once.
Except, of course, the customers don't do that. They simply figure this is one of the endless list of pointless natter comfirmations computers bombard them with, and click on it until it goes away.
Trying to cast an object into an incompatible type results in an exception. Trying to use a null pointer results in an exception. Both exceptions can be caught and handled. They don't leave the program into an undefined state, as they do in C or C++.
I wonder if this is the real reason why Java gets so much crap. More generally, I wonder if this is the reason why there are so few programming systems that would be easy to use and produce efficient code.
Are there alternatives to Java? Mandatory bounds checking, garbage collection and all that implies, and inability to break type safety combined with good execution speed are not easy to implement, especially in a multi-platform way.
Chernobyl is already usable right now (and in fact people live there and it's heavily forested), it's simply pointless to take the risk in a country that does not lack space.
Also, a radioactive material that's still present a thousand years after in significant quantities would need to have a half-life of at least a century, which in turn means it produces so little radiation per second as to be pretty much harmless. Do you people think radioactivity is some kind of death magic from Negative Energy Plane or something?
Meaning what, exactly speaking?
That only works so far before the laws of physics come calling.
It is declining in all Western countries, but energy usage isn't. And why should it, when we can tap into near-limitless energy source anytime we want to? It's only the "nuclear is scary" lobby that's keeping us from doing so.
Seriously, the whole idea of "hydrogen economy" is simply stupid. It's not going to do anyone any good unless you have a power source to produce the hydrogen; and if you have said power source, it really isn't that hard to crack carbon dioxide and water to produce hydrocarbons rather than just water to produce hydrogen. Either produces carbon-neutral fuel, but hydrocarbons are far safer to store and use and hold more energy per mass or volume unit. Hydrocarbons also have the advantage of being compatible with existing vehicles and distribution network, being another name for oil.
The final nail in the coffin of hydrogen is that biofuels are hydrocarbons. That's understandable, since biofuel projects are simply trying to mimic, hasten and optimize the same processes that formed oil in the first place. However, that means that a hydrogen-burning vehicle can't use biofuels, at least not without losing massive amounts of efficiency.
All of which is true, but you're ignoring one imortant thing: with increasing automation, any job can eventually be done by a robot. Which, in turn, means that you are not needed. As automation advances, the rich and powerful no longer need the rest of us to exist in order to live in luxury, and have the power to exterminate us.
All of which means that we have one last chance to stop treating the government as an enemy and start treating it as an enforcer of our collective will, and use it to fill the growing gap between the haves and have-nots. Failure means death.
One might argue that the whole concept of (general) registers is an ugly hack to get around limited or nonexistent cache controllers in old processors. It certainly isn't "elegant" by any stretch of imagination to divide general storage into two separate namespaces, and it also wastes memory with what are basically explicit cache control commands (load/store).
Also, don't forget that the more registers you have, the more state the OS has to save and restore at task switch time.
So don't tax sodas, tax PepsiCo's profits. PepsiCo already has incentive to maximize them - that's what it exists for - and taxing them doesn't change the soda can price point that maximizes them, thus it doesn't affect the price of soda.
What you have given is actually an argument against sales taxes and for income taxes.
Given that both of those countries have proven they know exactly how to treat arrogant plutocrats with delusions of grandeur, I'd say good riddance.
So, in your view rising taxes is on the same continuum as sending people to prison camps? Really?
Is the right really this crazy?
No, what he's doing is telling you to render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's.
Please be more specific: what energy source are you referring to? Because that step seems to be omitted from most "let's skip nuclear" -plans; they vaguely reference "renewables" without bothering to specify what to build, where, and how do you solve the associated logistical problems: energy transfer, energy storage, and the sheer amount of industrial output that needs to be devoted to building and maintaining thousands upon thousands of low-power windmills, solar power plants, etc.
There are no permanent solutions in an ever-changing world. Nor are there no flawless solutions in an imperfect world. And Earth is both.
What they actually are building is coal plants.
There has been two truly serious (someone gets hurt) accidents in the 60-year history of nuclear power: Chernobyl and Fukushima. Chernobyl killed 31 people; Fukushima has yet to kill anyone. Both were caused by a combination of corruption and exceptional circumstances. Contrast this with the 100,000 people who die yearly as a result of coal power working exactly as it's designed to: nuclear power wins hands down on pretty much every metric, even if we count the evacuees of Chernobyl and Fukushima as casualties.
So, while "first hand experience" of things going wrong makes for nice propaganda for Greenpeace, there simply aren't that many people with it. Decisions should be based on actual statistics, not on who can come up with the most moving sob story. Unless, of course, you don't actually care about making the best or even a good decision, but only on adhering to your ideology (Greenpeace) or getting re-elected (Germany).
So let's hope it gets the remaining 2/3rds from French nuclear plants, rather than the coal plants it's currently building.
CERN was founded by a political decision, and is publicly funded. So yes, politics do have business there. The very article says so: "It is a vital part of our mission to build bridges between nations." That's a political agenda right there.
And in any case, allowing Israel in is a political decision. CERN is publicly operated, so any and all decisions concerning it are political by definition.
"Insignificant" does not mean "very small", it means "not worth considering". Don't make such value judgements unless you're willing to be held responsible for them.
When a large company does it, that means that it is not illegal.
No: if democracy is an illusion then you have no more pressing problems than dealing with private monopolies, since those are precisely what makes democracy an illusion.
That is an outright lie: you can simply move if you really dislike your government. There's competiton right there. Also, for most private de facto areal monopolies it's the same thing.
Of course you're required to pay taxes in any place you're likely to want to to move to; there's a correlation there.
Well, it's better than clinging in to it and pretend it's good to save face, no?
The issue is related to all of those. Your entire argument rests on the assumption that hurt feelings aren't sufficient cause for any consequences. The UK court disagrees, and I agree with them.
And if you mock someone's feelings beyond a certain point you're going to face jail time, at least in the UK. What's your point, sir?
The UK court disagrees with you, and I agree with the UK court. As for strawmen, I could hardly attack your points since you didn't make any, besides asserting your opinion.