Demanding an end to private property is about as greedy as you can get.
Good thing communism doesn't demand that, then.
'That is not your Ferrari, it is the People's Ferrari. Now give me the keys or else!'
'The profits from a Ferrari factory belongs to the people who designed, marketed, and built the Ferrari's, not someone who did none of these but simply owns the factory.'
The core of communism is that the working class, not the owning class, should get the fruits of said work. If you want a Ferrari, you should do something useful to earn money, rather than impose a de facto tax on other people. In practice, this is done by unifying the classes: the workers own the means of production they use, so they get to keep the profits, and you can't simply own and rent the means of production (which is one wya of looking at capitalism - a factory owner rents a factory to the people who work there in exchange of any profit beyond a (usually very small) share (wage)) and thus can't get paid for someone else's work.
Communism: the idea that you shouldn't be able to use other people as wage slaves.
Hate to break to you. But this is AMERICA. Did you expect to see all whities running around? This is not Japan or Germany. I am a foreign born US Citizen in the tech industry and there isn't a place on earth that will provide me with the opportunity that this great country gave me. This article is a joke.
Did you get your education in your former country or in America? Because it seems to me that USA having such a shortage of tech people that it becomes cost-effective to import them is evidence for, not against, the article.
This is such a tired and stupid argument. Even if the "tech" people aren't in the US (even though they are), what good is tech without good business and management?
Bankrupt. You know, how US companies have been going for the past few decades. Which rises a question: why would anyone look for business experts or managers from the US, when all the former knows is how to raid the company into an empty shell and walk away just before it collapses, and the latter gives inspiration for Dilbert?
Maybe US can get its act together, but more likely it will continue worshipping greed, and reaping the rewards.
Why do all you techie code monkeys need managers? Exactly.
"Code monkey" is not a techie. "Code monkey" is a glorified secretary who's purpose is to translate the plans made by the designer - the actual techie - into code. A code monkey is the assembly line worker of the software industry, and as AI continues to evolve, the position will eventually be automated and disappear.
Also, please don't confuse code monkey with a techie who can code.
You forgot one thing: If you cut too many corners then you might find your passengers vote for your competitor (with their wallets).
No, because every single downgrade is a small one and takes time to show in statistics. However, the savings is immediate, which means your competitors follow ASAP to stay competitive, so by the time planes start falling there is nowhere to go. And of course all this assumes the passengers know where to get trustworthy statistics.
"Buyer beware" doesn't work. That's why there's safety regulations in the first place.
The real problem with the TSA is that even a child can see they're not actually increasing security. Mostly they're just making scanner manufacturers/shareholders rich and keeping unemployment figures down. All at taxpayer expense and passenger inconvenience.
How is it a problem that a racket is inept? At least this way it might get changed.
Yes. Botnets exist right now, yet the Internet works just fine. What is the benefit their non-existence would create? Would this presumed benefit be sufficient to justify causing grief to ordinary people?
Your proposal would, for all intents and purposes, shut everyone who isn't a computer expert outside of information society. It is questionable if that consequence can be justified at all, but if it can, it requires a huge, imminent-collapse-of-society -level justification. Botnets are far from apocalyptic threats. They are nuisances. So what's the benefit that justifies making grandma a second-class citizen?
Actually, yes, somewhat. Ecological niches get filled. They can also be created or destroyed. So...
The niche here is "general-purpose computers capable of communicating with one another". And, from my observations, it seems there's another law of nature: the harder you want something gone, the hardier it is:(.
What does "approved by some authority" have to do with anything, especially when you were pointing out that repositories could be pwned? What's stopping someone from pwning the iTunes store?
It is impossible to enumerate badness, because there are an infinite number of programs that could be bad. So, you either inspect every piece of code before running it - which is impossible in practice, especially for grandma - or only run programs inspected by some authority. Do neither, and you'll get an occasional malware infestation.
They're a nuisance until they hit you up for extortion money -- pay us or we'll DDoS you. Or maybe they start collecting data from their hosts -- credit card numbers, etc.
Keyloggers don't require botnets to work. And extortion means money trail, which can be followed.
We don't require everyone to go around armed just because there's real-life pickpockets and mafiosos. We certainly wouldn't dream of installing metal detectors to their front doors and refusing to let them through if they're not packing heat. Why should such demands become acceptable in the Internet?
My suggestion would severely cut down on botnets, and I don't see how it makes these platforms less open -- nor do I see a closed Internet and computation platform making botnets much more difficult than open systems with ever so slightly more educated individuals -- and the only way to make that happen is to provide an incentive.
Your "incentive" would cause lots of harm to Joe Average, and give little if any benefit whatsoever. That is unacceptable.
I'd certainly be willing to offer classes, but this problem is not going to be solved -- ever -- until those people start seeing some consequences to their lack of security. In this case, grandma calls her ISP because she can't get online. Her ISP says "Oh, you can't get online because your machine's infected." She takes it to her local geek relative or computer shop to get it cleaned, so there is now one less bot in the world.
Yes. Now weight the pretty much non-existent benefits of that against the harm caused to grandma.
Maybe she keeps it clean. But maybe, a few weeks later, it happens again. Sooner or later, she's going to decide that enough is enough and decide to make a point of learning something about security.
Yeah. Namely, that it's impossible - even actual experts get hacked. Thus grandma either gives up computers completely, or continues to go through the cycle. And the same goes to everyone else too - yes, including you. One of these days a bot will contact your machine before it can apply an update, and then you're p0wned.
Even if you use Linux, your web browser is bound to have bugs, and those allow bots to your machine - or perhaps one manages to break into a package repository. And the kernel itself has had holes before, and likely still does.
Yeah, it does kind of suck for grandma, but what's your alternative, other than botnets forever?
All ecological niches get fulfilled, that's one of the basic laws of nature. The Internet is an ecosystem, botnets have a niche, they will continue to exist as long as computers can run code not approved by some authority and talk to each other. And so what? They're a nuisance, nothing more.
The existence of malware is the price for having open computation platforms, and the existence of botnets is the price for an open Internet.
Still, if there's a way to single these machines out, I agree with the original poster -- join a botnet, get disconnected.
Thus further reinforcing the notion that ISPs have the right - nay, the duty - to inspect the traffic flowing through them, and blocking content and users deemed... disruptive.
I yearn for the day when we get rid of ISPs entirely and have a worldwide mesh network where it's impossible to disconnect anyone. We've been moving that way ever since Gutenberg invented his press, and will hopefully continue doing so, never mind some control freaks being outraged at the thought of people being able to talk to each other without their approval.
Consider that nodes need a direct route, and that it's unlikely to need store-and-forward where messages are waiting in a queue. Cut a few key nodes and synchronicity is lost. Seeding instructions requires a number of reliable nodes; lose some of those, and you're hosed.
Nope. You just connect a machine into the Net and wait for it to get infected. Then you can insert instructions through that local node.
Oh, I guess it's technically true, but a dollar per disk is not relevant overhead for a 20-dollar product. It certainly doesn't excuse charging 50 dollars instead.
Profitable companies force their employees to get the job done.
No they don't. Profitable companies cooperate with their employees with the understanding that both need the other to get their money. This plays nicely with human instincts to belong to a society, breeding goodwill, loyalty, and unwillingness to defect.
Companies that treat their employees like enemies to be forced get just that - enemies.
Why don't the developers form/join a union? That would seem the best way to get that law written.
Because that would mean admitting that they are merely average and that even if they weren't, even if they were the very best, they would not indispensable.
It's the same mechanism that makes people who aren't rich vote right-wing - just in case they some day might be.
A right is not a guarantee. An unalienable right that is violated by a nation still exists as an unalienable right - it is not taken away, it is violated.
In what way is this distinction a meaningful one? Whether your right to life is taken away or violated, you are just as dead. It doesn't matter to you, it doesn't matter to anyone who cares about you or depends on you, and it doesn't matter to the state. Who does that leave, to whom it might make any difference whatsoever?
If someone is able to limit your right by asserting theirs, then you didn't have a right in the first place. The reason they are called inalienable or basic human rights is because they cannot be reduced by others (without violating said right).
No, an "inalienable" right means a right you can't give up through legal agreements.
So, in the United States, there is a current trend to ban smoking in public places. Why? Because all people have a right to breathe clean air (as clean as it may or may not be). Smokers on the other hand complain about their right to smoke, but there is no such right.
On what basis do you claim such a right? And does it also forbid farting? If yes, what happens if you have stomach troubles - are you denied access to public places altogether? And how about the smell of sweat - are there minimum hygiene standards, and if they are, on what basis are you demanding your right to clean air trumps my right to see to conduct my personal hygiene as I see fit? And if the questions to "farting" and/or "hygiene" were negative, this starts seeming more about attacking smokers and less about anyone else's rights.
Coming up with new "rights" to stop other people from doing things that don't concern you is a pretty nasty abuse of the concept.
In the United States, the constitution grants the right to free speech. In reality, that right exists with or without the constitution.
In reality, it doesn't exist, with or without the Constitution. Your courts have a long history of deciding the First Amendment doesn't cover something because it's "obscene", never mind that the Amendment itself doesn't mention the word.
People would be better served if they understood what is actually a right, and what their actual rights were.
I don't recall being present at these negotiations. Yet somehow, I am not exempt from them. This passes for "civilized society" by today's standards, but I don't think it's all that great.
You don't have a rules-enforcing chip in your brain, I presume? So just stop partaking in civil society and see if you'll do better without. Just don't whine about being thrown to prison or executed, since getting killed when you annoy someone more powerful than yourself is how life goes without civil society.
You want to partake of the benefits of an organized society (otherwise you'd just head for the nearest forest), and you want others to adhere to certain rules concerning you (otherwise you'd just break the law and ignore the consequences), yet you complain that you are bound by them too. Or perhaps you just want the rules to be entirely dictated by you. Either way, it's not very sympathy-inducing.
Of course, if your entirely complaint is about a particular rule - such as being able to smoke pot - you are in the luck: civil society has built-in means to try and renegotiate them, commonly known as the political system. Just don't confuse "negotiation" - where you talk with others about changing the rule, and could well fail - with "dictation", where you say the rule must be changed and it will be, no matter what anyone else wants.
And I don't think the police could stop someone from killing you any better than you can yourself. They provide "justice" afterward.
Which actually does quite a lot to stop people from killing you.
Perhaps it could come from the indignation of slashdotters who think that the way we have always done things is necessarily the best way.
If you know of a better way of generating power, say it. Rhetoric doesn't cut it in engineering.
I oppose nuclear power because of accidents, yes. We have had every kind of nuclear accident imaginable already, and there are no signs that we're getting any smarter about nuclear power; we are still building them in places where no reactor should be built, for example.
And with all these accidents combined, what is the total enviromental effect? Pretty much zero (and possibly total positive, if you count the de facto natural reservoir Chernobyl has turned into). And death toll? A few thousand people, and most of those entirely hypothetical (increased cancer risk near Chernobyl). Contrast these with the 100,000+ deaths coal causes each year, and I presume you have at least some idea of the magnitude of its enviromental effects.
A respect for human rights would prevent forced sterilisation, but that doesn't mean they can't be nudged towards it with a combination of shame and bribery.
"We don't force you, but unless you want to be ostracised and die in the streets, you'd better comply."
One of the reasons past efforts at eugenics failed is their lack of real science - they were just used as ways to punish the social lower classes without good cause. Genetics, on the other hand, don't have any personal bias against poor people. They don't judge the moral character of the subject. They are mostly neutral regarding race, sickle cell aside, and even then it's only a correlation.
Past efforts at eugenics failed for two reasons:
1) Every human being carries genetic defects; that is, every human being carries genes which may cause problems in som environments or when combined with genes from some other person. The level of science and technology required to even begin to sort it out would also make it utterly pointless, since it's far easier to simply treat any problems that actualyl do end up happening.
2) Eugenics takes a complete monster to implement. And despite common cynicism, being a complete monster is actually hard work. Apart from a few oddball psychopaths, who are the last persons you'd trust with power over the future of human race, it requires either stamping out any trace of empathy and hardening oneself or lying to yourself. Self-deception ends up letting the psychopaths in charge - because they're the only ones who can be honest about their assesment of the situation - while constantly fighting with your conscience results in completely irrational behavior. Either way, the whole thing ends up as a nasty parody of a scientific project at best.
Eugenics is simply a bad idea. Let's not go down that road again.
Almost, but not quite. Remember how we treated DDT or thalidomide before we admitted they were evil?
They aren't evil, they are potentially dangerous chemicals, and both are still being used.
Nobody said anything about airplanes figuring out what went on under a roof, but since you don't know what you're talking about you jumped straight there. I'm talking about atmospheric monitoring. Have a nice day in lackofimaginationland.
Atmospheric monitoring? And, pray tell, what did these supposedly monitor that couldn't be more easily monitored from the ground?
You're not really this dumb, right?
This, from someone who named himself after Tubgirl?
You're just trying to make it look like I'm the one who doesn't know what he's talking about?
No, that appearance is entirely your own doing.
The point was to prove that our government uses no-fly zones to hide malfeasance, and I did this thing.
There are numerous potential uses for no-fly zones, and you've done exactly nothing to prove these nuclear no-fly zones were about hiding malfeasance.
False dichotomy between nuclear and nothing. When you have a valid point to make, then make it. Until then, why don't you try a little harder?
Okay: if you want to keep using energy - and that means staying alive, not just keeping the lights on - that energy needs to be generated somehow. The two alternatives now and in the foreseeable future are nuclear power and fossil fuels. Refuse to use nuclear, and you need more fossils, increasing the chances that's there an accident related to them.
people live in the environment, so that's a dumb thing to say. If you crap on the environment you crap on ALL people. If a few miners die, then a few miners die.
Drinkypoo is on the roll again.
Of course, when you burn coal (does anyone really believe that the byproducts from the coal to coal gas process will be disposed of properly?) then you release radioactives that also crap on ALL people. You kill people with cancer. So really we should be spending our energy moving away from coal. We also have no strategy for sequestering the CO2 as fast as we can release it so if you love life you should hate coal.
And knowing this, you still oppose nuclear power. Not because of any actual accidents, but because "Remember how we treated DDT or thalidomide before we admitted they were evil?"
Where do you think the power is going to come from? Pixy dust?
The average Western government each allows tens of millions of people to enjoy basic freedoms under the rule of law with a reasonably impartial justice system.
No, the average Western government doesn't "allow" this, it's just along for the ride. The social structure and memes generated in the last couple hundred years allow it. And they are slowly but surely being eroded, in part by said governments.
There are plenty of nuclear failures all the time, but of course they are not publicized.
No, of course not. If there are failures, it means nuclear power is unsafe, and if there aren't any failures, it means that they are kept secret. Perfect logic.
Greenpeace has zero credibility concerning nuclear power, and frankly anything else either nowadays. Don't bother linking there; they've been caught lying too many times. Even their own founder thinks they've gone nuts.
America reactors are known to contain unreported defects.
And yet, oddly, this doesn't seem to cause any drama. Strange. It's almost like they were... safe.
Meanwhile areas around threatened reactors in the USA have been declared no-fly zones. You don't do this unless it's actually dangerous, or you have something to hide, or both.
Or you think some nut might be planning to ram an airplane into the plant. Which seems more likely than someone trying to hide what goes on under a roof from airplanes.
You know, like when they declared the entire gulf to be a no-fly zone in an attempt to hide the extent of the devastation... and of the spraying of dispersants, which occurred at a level vastly above what it should be. No-fly zones are for hiding malfeasance, barring long-running ones above airports and test sites.
And this has to do with nuclear power exactly what? Apart from, you know, us not needing oil so badly if we relied more on nuclear power, so the entire Gulf oil spill might not have happened.
But it's nice to know that this operation was a failure, since apparently you know exactly what went on there. Good work, agent Poo.
OK nutcase - go find an article that paints nuclear power in a warm, rose colored blush. That's what Firehose is for. Unfortunately, nuclear power is not getting very good press and for very good reasons.
Yeah: "nuclear power plant working perfectly fine as planned" doesn't make the news.
You know, as the majority of them do, year after year, decade after decade. It's just not very exciting, you know? Not like Three-Mile Island, or Chernobyl, or Fukushima? Except, of course, that Three-Mile Island didn't blow up and hurt nobody, Chernobyl blew up (because of a chemical reaction) and hurt a few hundred to few thousand people and is rabidly turning into a de facto natural reservoir, Fukushima has this far not hurt anybody, while coal power (the alternative) kills 100,000+ people a year and nobody bats an eyelash.
The engineering isn't all that it is cracked up to be and isn't at all what it needs to be.
You do realize that "the fourt-biggest earthquake in human history hitting a nuclear plant might have cause a leak that may or may not cause any harm to anyone" is not exactly a deal-brealer, right? Especially when the plant has delivered who-knows-how-many terawatt-hours already?
Again, it's not the long term waste problem that's going to kill commercial nuclear power (although that is a big issue that we're not handling well). It's going to be bad engineering decisions pushed on staff because of economic considerations. Short term gain, long term pain.
No, it's the short-term hysteria of idiots. That's going to doom us all to either climate change or to "green" (energy-deprived) future or both.
Oh well. At leat I don't have children to subject to the Green Hell.
We are still busy trying to clean up from the last few "perfectly safe" disasters
"Last few"? Apart from Fukushima, which was caused by the combination of Japanese "safe-the-face" morality and one of the biggest earthquakes to ever hit the human race, just what are you referring to? A disastre which has killed, this far, one Chinese man for overdosing on Iodine tablets in a panic, and two from the tsunami, and none whatsoever from actual radiation - that is, the nuclear plant itself.
You fearmongers want us to get all our power from the Sun and the wind, but that's not possible, so we end up getting it from coal instead. You are the reason why we're having a problem with global warming. You are the reason why hundreds of thousands of people die each year due to both coal production and emissions. Shame on you. A shame on you, you damn Greenpeace murderer.
God damn you and all like you to Hell... So that the rest of us might still surive, by switching to clean and plentiful nuclear power, while we still can.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, it does. It applies even more strongly, since "entice" implies more effort than "import".
That's nice. What do anyone's nationalistic feelings or their target have to do with the quality - or lack of it - of the US education system?
Good thing communism doesn't demand that, then.
'The profits from a Ferrari factory belongs to the people who designed, marketed, and built the Ferrari's, not someone who did none of these but simply owns the factory.'
The core of communism is that the working class, not the owning class, should get the fruits of said work. If you want a Ferrari, you should do something useful to earn money, rather than impose a de facto tax on other people. In practice, this is done by unifying the classes: the workers own the means of production they use, so they get to keep the profits, and you can't simply own and rent the means of production (which is one wya of looking at capitalism - a factory owner rents a factory to the people who work there in exchange of any profit beyond a (usually very small) share (wage)) and thus can't get paid for someone else's work.
Communism: the idea that you shouldn't be able to use other people as wage slaves.
Did you get your education in your former country or in America? Because it seems to me that USA having such a shortage of tech people that it becomes cost-effective to import them is evidence for, not against, the article.
Bankrupt. You know, how US companies have been going for the past few decades. Which rises a question: why would anyone look for business experts or managers from the US, when all the former knows is how to raid the company into an empty shell and walk away just before it collapses, and the latter gives inspiration for Dilbert?
Maybe US can get its act together, but more likely it will continue worshipping greed, and reaping the rewards.
"Code monkey" is not a techie. "Code monkey" is a glorified secretary who's purpose is to translate the plans made by the designer - the actual techie - into code. A code monkey is the assembly line worker of the software industry, and as AI continues to evolve, the position will eventually be automated and disappear.
Also, please don't confuse code monkey with a techie who can code.
No, because every single downgrade is a small one and takes time to show in statistics. However, the savings is immediate, which means your competitors follow ASAP to stay competitive, so by the time planes start falling there is nowhere to go. And of course all this assumes the passengers know where to get trustworthy statistics.
"Buyer beware" doesn't work. That's why there's safety regulations in the first place.
How is it a problem that a racket is inept? At least this way it might get changed.
Yes. Botnets exist right now, yet the Internet works just fine. What is the benefit their non-existence would create? Would this presumed benefit be sufficient to justify causing grief to ordinary people?
Your proposal would, for all intents and purposes, shut everyone who isn't a computer expert outside of information society. It is questionable if that consequence can be justified at all, but if it can, it requires a huge, imminent-collapse-of-society -level justification. Botnets are far from apocalyptic threats. They are nuisances. So what's the benefit that justifies making grandma a second-class citizen?
The niche here is "general-purpose computers capable of communicating with one another". And, from my observations, it seems there's another law of nature: the harder you want something gone, the hardier it is :(.
It is impossible to enumerate badness, because there are an infinite number of programs that could be bad. So, you either inspect every piece of code before running it - which is impossible in practice, especially for grandma - or only run programs inspected by some authority. Do neither, and you'll get an occasional malware infestation.
Keyloggers don't require botnets to work. And extortion means money trail, which can be followed.
We don't require everyone to go around armed just because there's real-life pickpockets and mafiosos. We certainly wouldn't dream of installing metal detectors to their front doors and refusing to let them through if they're not packing heat. Why should such demands become acceptable in the Internet?
Your "incentive" would cause lots of harm to Joe Average, and give little if any benefit whatsoever. That is unacceptable.
Yes. Now weight the pretty much non-existent benefits of that against the harm caused to grandma.
Yeah. Namely, that it's impossible - even actual experts get hacked. Thus grandma either gives up computers completely, or continues to go through the cycle. And the same goes to everyone else too - yes, including you. One of these days a bot will contact your machine before it can apply an update, and then you're p0wned.
Even if you use Linux, your web browser is bound to have bugs, and those allow bots to your machine - or perhaps one manages to break into a package repository. And the kernel itself has had holes before, and likely still does.
All ecological niches get fulfilled, that's one of the basic laws of nature. The Internet is an ecosystem, botnets have a niche, they will continue to exist as long as computers can run code not approved by some authority and talk to each other. And so what? They're a nuisance, nothing more.
The existence of malware is the price for having open computation platforms, and the existence of botnets is the price for an open Internet.
Thus further reinforcing the notion that ISPs have the right - nay, the duty - to inspect the traffic flowing through them, and blocking content and users deemed... disruptive.
I yearn for the day when we get rid of ISPs entirely and have a worldwide mesh network where it's impossible to disconnect anyone. We've been moving that way ever since Gutenberg invented his press, and will hopefully continue doing so, never mind some control freaks being outraged at the thought of people being able to talk to each other without their approval.
Nope. You just connect a machine into the Net and wait for it to get infected. Then you can insert instructions through that local node.
Bullshit.
Oh, I guess it's technically true, but a dollar per disk is not relevant overhead for a 20-dollar product. It certainly doesn't excuse charging 50 dollars instead.
No they don't. Profitable companies cooperate with their employees with the understanding that both need the other to get their money. This plays nicely with human instincts to belong to a society, breeding goodwill, loyalty, and unwillingness to defect.
Companies that treat their employees like enemies to be forced get just that - enemies.
Because that would mean admitting that they are merely average and that even if they weren't, even if they were the very best, they would not indispensable.
It's the same mechanism that makes people who aren't rich vote right-wing - just in case they some day might be.
In what way is this distinction a meaningful one? Whether your right to life is taken away or violated, you are just as dead. It doesn't matter to you, it doesn't matter to anyone who cares about you or depends on you, and it doesn't matter to the state. Who does that leave, to whom it might make any difference whatsoever?
No, an "inalienable" right means a right you can't give up through legal agreements.
On what basis do you claim such a right? And does it also forbid farting? If yes, what happens if you have stomach troubles - are you denied access to public places altogether? And how about the smell of sweat - are there minimum hygiene standards, and if they are, on what basis are you demanding your right to clean air trumps my right to see to conduct my personal hygiene as I see fit? And if the questions to "farting" and/or "hygiene" were negative, this starts seeming more about attacking smokers and less about anyone else's rights.
Coming up with new "rights" to stop other people from doing things that don't concern you is a pretty nasty abuse of the concept.
In reality, it doesn't exist, with or without the Constitution. Your courts have a long history of deciding the First Amendment doesn't cover something because it's "obscene", never mind that the Amendment itself doesn't mention the word.
Yes, you would.
You don't have a rules-enforcing chip in your brain, I presume? So just stop partaking in civil society and see if you'll do better without. Just don't whine about being thrown to prison or executed, since getting killed when you annoy someone more powerful than yourself is how life goes without civil society.
You want to partake of the benefits of an organized society (otherwise you'd just head for the nearest forest), and you want others to adhere to certain rules concerning you (otherwise you'd just break the law and ignore the consequences), yet you complain that you are bound by them too. Or perhaps you just want the rules to be entirely dictated by you. Either way, it's not very sympathy-inducing.
Of course, if your entirely complaint is about a particular rule - such as being able to smoke pot - you are in the luck: civil society has built-in means to try and renegotiate them, commonly known as the political system. Just don't confuse "negotiation" - where you talk with others about changing the rule, and could well fail - with "dictation", where you say the rule must be changed and it will be, no matter what anyone else wants.
Which actually does quite a lot to stop people from killing you.
3.x won't automatically upgrade to 4, since it's a major version change, but 4 upgrades just fine to 5, since it's just renamed 4.2.
Stupid marketing department, making everyone's life harder...
If you know of a better way of generating power, say it. Rhetoric doesn't cut it in engineering.
And with all these accidents combined, what is the total enviromental effect? Pretty much zero (and possibly total positive, if you count the de facto natural reservoir Chernobyl has turned into). And death toll? A few thousand people, and most of those entirely hypothetical (increased cancer risk near Chernobyl). Contrast these with the 100,000+ deaths coal causes each year, and I presume you have at least some idea of the magnitude of its enviromental effects.
"We don't force you, but unless you want to be ostracised and die in the streets, you'd better comply."
Past efforts at eugenics failed for two reasons:
1) Every human being carries genetic defects; that is, every human being carries genes which may cause problems in som environments or when combined with genes from some other person. The level of science and technology required to even begin to sort it out would also make it utterly pointless, since it's far easier to simply treat any problems that actualyl do end up happening.
2) Eugenics takes a complete monster to implement. And despite common cynicism, being a complete monster is actually hard work. Apart from a few oddball psychopaths, who are the last persons you'd trust with power over the future of human race, it requires either stamping out any trace of empathy and hardening oneself or lying to yourself. Self-deception ends up letting the psychopaths in charge - because they're the only ones who can be honest about their assesment of the situation - while constantly fighting with your conscience results in completely irrational behavior. Either way, the whole thing ends up as a nasty parody of a scientific project at best.
Eugenics is simply a bad idea. Let's not go down that road again.
They aren't evil, they are potentially dangerous chemicals, and both are still being used.
Atmospheric monitoring? And, pray tell, what did these supposedly monitor that couldn't be more easily monitored from the ground?
This, from someone who named himself after Tubgirl?
No, that appearance is entirely your own doing.
There are numerous potential uses for no-fly zones, and you've done exactly nothing to prove these nuclear no-fly zones were about hiding malfeasance.
Okay: if you want to keep using energy - and that means staying alive, not just keeping the lights on - that energy needs to be generated somehow. The two alternatives now and in the foreseeable future are nuclear power and fossil fuels. Refuse to use nuclear, and you need more fossils, increasing the chances that's there an accident related to them.
Now did I express myself clearly enough?
Drinkypoo is on the roll again.
And knowing this, you still oppose nuclear power. Not because of any actual accidents, but because "Remember how we treated DDT or thalidomide before we admitted they were evil?"
Where do you think the power is going to come from? Pixy dust?
No, the average Western government doesn't "allow" this, it's just along for the ride. The social structure and memes generated in the last couple hundred years allow it. And they are slowly but surely being eroded, in part by said governments.
No, of course not. If there are failures, it means nuclear power is unsafe, and if there aren't any failures, it means that they are kept secret. Perfect logic.
Greenpeace has zero credibility concerning nuclear power, and frankly anything else either nowadays. Don't bother linking there; they've been caught lying too many times. Even their own founder thinks they've gone nuts.
I dunno, figure out how whatever keeps them floating in the air works and tap that?
Yeah: "nuclear power plant working perfectly fine as planned" doesn't make the news.
You know, as the majority of them do, year after year, decade after decade. It's just not very exciting, you know? Not like Three-Mile Island, or Chernobyl, or Fukushima? Except, of course, that Three-Mile Island didn't blow up and hurt nobody, Chernobyl blew up (because of a chemical reaction) and hurt a few hundred to few thousand people and is rabidly turning into a de facto natural reservoir, Fukushima has this far not hurt anybody, while coal power (the alternative) kills 100,000+ people a year and nobody bats an eyelash.
You do realize that "the fourt-biggest earthquake in human history hitting a nuclear plant might have cause a leak that may or may not cause any harm to anyone" is not exactly a deal-brealer, right? Especially when the plant has delivered who-knows-how-many terawatt-hours already?
No, it's the short-term hysteria of idiots. That's going to doom us all to either climate change or to "green" (energy-deprived) future or both.
Oh well. At leat I don't have children to subject to the Green Hell.
"Last few"? Apart from Fukushima, which was caused by the combination of Japanese "safe-the-face" morality and one of the biggest earthquakes to ever hit the human race, just what are you referring to? A disastre which has killed, this far, one Chinese man for overdosing on Iodine tablets in a panic, and two from the tsunami, and none whatsoever from actual radiation - that is, the nuclear plant itself.
You fearmongers want us to get all our power from the Sun and the wind, but that's not possible, so we end up getting it from coal instead. You are the reason why we're having a problem with global warming. You are the reason why hundreds of thousands of people die each year due to both coal production and emissions. Shame on you. A shame on you, you damn Greenpeace murderer.
God damn you and all like you to Hell... So that the rest of us might still surive, by switching to clean and plentiful nuclear power, while we still can.