And plant management can open up a nifty Excel worksheet, pulling out the numbers from the plant immediately...
In other news a nuclear power plant outside Spokane Washington melted down today. When asked what happened the plant's CEO responded with "We're not sure yet, but our safety control system registered 100,000 technobabbles where it should have registered 65,535."
One must take into account the amount of CO2 emitted during nuclear fuel production. Has anybody done the math?
You don't need to "do the math". Apply some common sense. Common sense tells you that it doesn't take thousands of megawatts to dig ore out of the ground and refine it. Have you ever seen the trainloads of coal that arrive at your local coal power plant on a routine basis? Do you think it takes anywhere near that amount of energy to dig ore out of the ground and process it?
See this on a./er's sig so I can't take credit for it, but it sums up the situation nicely: Nuclear power. Global warming. Agrarian society. Pick one.
The enviro-nazi's would seem to prefer the Agrarian society option. We can't use nuclear, we can't use coal, we can't use natural gas, we can't build more hydro -- so what exactly is going to replace the base load part of the power grid? Solar and wind will never scale that well and aren't appropriate for base load anyways. We never should have stopped building nuclear power plants. The environmentalist movement really shot themselves in the foot with that one. How much CO2 has been released into the atmosphere by the coal/gas power plants brought online to replace the nuclear ones that we never built?
We should also extend a nice fat middle finger at Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford for unilaterally abandoning reprocessing technology. How does the United States not reprocessing our spent nuclear fuel prevent nuclear proliferation anyway? Was there some third world dictator who thought to himself "Gee, I'd like to have a nuclear bomb but the US abandoned reprocessing technology so why should I even bother to try?"
Only in some countries, several countries are sensible enough to refuse the scientologists recognition as an official religion.
How is that "sensible"? Do you really think it's a proper role for government to decide what is and is not a "religion"? Is the Scientology story really any less absurd than God sending his only son to die for our sins or Athena popping out of Zeus' head?
Mind you, I don't happen to believe in their doctrine. I just don't think it's wise for the Government to be able to determine what makes a religion "valid". Separation of Church and State, remember?
Some thieves broke into my college's computer labs and stole all the four-year-old iMacs. They turned their noses up at the brand new Dell Precisions in the same lab...
That's because Dell outsources their criminal support line to India and the thieves didn't have the patience to wait for "Mike" to get bold enough to venture off his script;)
Yeah. And the way they were slapping them closed and handling them, I'd be surprised if a few screens and drives didn't work well after this. It'll make it hard to fence them.
Because people who buy stolen property from the back of a van are known for thoroughly testing it first?
If you can't see the drawbacks of giving the Government the power to decide which speech is "good" and which is "bad" then I'm afraid that we are so far apart that further conservation isn't likely to be fruitful.
widespread, we (the people) don't trust it anymore.
No, widespread a handful of educated computer literate people who follow politics don't trust it anymore. The majority of the voting population doesn't know enough about voting technology to care.
paper (canada uses that!) is trustable.
Pretty sure I said our system retains the paper ballots. I hope we never have to use them but they are there if needed. Why do I hope we never have to use them? Because paper ballots wind up being entirely too subjective if they have to be counted by hand. One campaign will claim that a ballot with "Lizard people" and a vote for their candidate should be counted -- then will next claim that a similarly screwed up vote for the other guy should be discarded.
I'm glad the paper ballots are there so we can audit the optical scan machines but I really hope we never have to rely on them to decide a close election. There's a reason why the election official's creed is "Lord, let it be a landslide"
Because then your vote could be verified by people with a vested interest in intimidating you into voting the way they want? Do you really want your employer/union official/wife/etc to be able to see how you voted? Having any sort of mechanism that allows individual votes to be identified after the election would allow this to happen.
I've been an Elections Inspector in New York State for the last five years. Every time one of these stories crop up I wrote a detailed summary of the procedures and technology we use. In spite of these procedures including the retention of paper ballots I still can't convince the tinfoil hat crowd that our elections aren't being decided by a shadowy cabal working out of the Diebold offices. I've about given up on trying to convince them otherwise.
There are legitimate concerns surrounding so-called DRE (direct electronic record) systems but why those concerns have morphed into people being suspicious of other technology is beyond me. Some days it seems that nothing will satisfy this crowd short of a system where everybody raises their hand.
I'm glad Florida switched away from a DRE system. Don't be surprised when people crop up and start fretting that the optical scan system is pwned though.
No matter how bad things get, as long as we have honest elections, we have a chance to fix them. If we lose that... forget it, it's over. Democrat, Republican, black, white, whatever: if the people in charge have the means to ensure they stay in charge regardless of the will of the people, they will use that power, and we are permanently screwed.
I hate to break it to you but they already have the means to remain in charge regardless of the will of the people. What good does an honest election do you when the politicians get to decide who their voters are instead of the other way around?
In short, AC, don't assume everyone else shares your level of asshole cynicism.
What's wrong with cynicism towards the political parties? They are all a bunch of lying hypocrites. You just feel good about yourself because the guy you regard as evil happened to lose. That doesn't change the fact that the two major parties are both propping up a system that undermines our representative republic and that the major difference between the two of them is which freedoms you'll lose when they are in charge.
Unless a gun is aimed at somebody that's exactly what it is. The same with the noose. A noose in of itself is just an inanimate object. Ditto for a gun. It's the action of those wielding such objects that determines whether or not they are a threat or just a symbol.
Hanging a noose from a tree != threat. Hanging a noose from a tree while screaming for your friends to go round up the nearest black person == threat.
Want a more recent example? Wearing an AR-15 to a political protest protest != threat. Aiming that AR-15 at the protesters on the other side of the issue == threat.
Yeah, if only Hitler had spent some time behind bars he probably never would have come to power.
Oh, wait, never mind I guess. He spent time in prison for high treason but all it would have taken to stop him would have been a law against hate speech. Yeah, that makes sense.....
Next you're going to argue that all those white-hooded men with torches and burning crosses are just having a variation of a "Burning Man"-festival? Or those photos of a White House lawn full of watermelons were just well-wishes for a bountiful harvest?
No, I wouldn't argue anything of the kind. What I would argue is that neither action you describe represents a threat to anyone. It's a form of expression and expression in our country is protected no matter how offensive it is. Burning a cross in the middle of the woods harms no one. Photoshopping an image of the White House harms no one.
The only time I would seek to go after cross burners would be when they light up a cross on someone's front lawn as a form of intimidation. If they are doing it the private property of one of their own or as part of a legal protest then I don't think it's any business of the Government.
Set an legal minimum standard for health insurance that all employers are required to provide to all of their employees, without exception (think similar to minimum wage laws)
And that will have the exact same effect that minimum wage laws do: Less jobs will be available because less employers will be able to afford to hire people.
Introduce what is essentially a government run health insurer that meets the requirements and that any employer unwilling or unable to meet the requirement otherwise may use. Also open this insurer up to individual purchase, if possible.
Such a program will drive private insurers out of business because they will be forced to compete with an "enterprise" that has bottomless pockets and no requirement to balance the books or turn a profit.
Increase payroll/income taxes (one, the other, or both) by an amount sufficient to pay for it. Offer a tax credit that completely covers the increase (as in said persons/groups are paying no extra taxes due to this legislation as said credit covers the full amount exactly) to any employer (and that employers respective employees) that receives private insurance meeting the guidelines instead of the government ran option.
So basically you are going to blackmail me into purchasing insurance and take away my freedom to decline to do so? Thanks but no thanks. What if I decide I don't want insurance?
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For decades, the typical American has exhibited an abysmal understanding of basic physics.
France and Japan will profit immensely when their companies build plants in the USA for the science-challenged Americans.
Stereotype much?
And plant management can open up a nifty Excel worksheet, pulling out the numbers from the plant immediately...
In other news a nuclear power plant outside Spokane Washington melted down today. When asked what happened the plant's CEO responded with "We're not sure yet, but our safety control system registered 100,000 technobabbles where it should have registered 65,535."
One must take into account the amount of CO2 emitted during nuclear fuel production. Has anybody done the math?
You don't need to "do the math". Apply some common sense. Common sense tells you that it doesn't take thousands of megawatts to dig ore out of the ground and refine it. Have you ever seen the trainloads of coal that arrive at your local coal power plant on a routine basis? Do you think it takes anywhere near that amount of energy to dig ore out of the ground and process it?
See this on a ./er's sig so I can't take credit for it, but it sums up the situation nicely: Nuclear power. Global warming. Agrarian society. Pick one.
The enviro-nazi's would seem to prefer the Agrarian society option. We can't use nuclear, we can't use coal, we can't use natural gas, we can't build more hydro -- so what exactly is going to replace the base load part of the power grid? Solar and wind will never scale that well and aren't appropriate for base load anyways. We never should have stopped building nuclear power plants. The environmentalist movement really shot themselves in the foot with that one. How much CO2 has been released into the atmosphere by the coal/gas power plants brought online to replace the nuclear ones that we never built?
We should also extend a nice fat middle finger at Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford for unilaterally abandoning reprocessing technology. How does the United States not reprocessing our spent nuclear fuel prevent nuclear proliferation anyway? Was there some third world dictator who thought to himself "Gee, I'd like to have a nuclear bomb but the US abandoned reprocessing technology so why should I even bother to try?"
Is there ever any news of mergers that hit Slashdot that aren't probed by the EU?
I don't recall the EU probing Slashdot's merger with Sourceforge ;)
and only the US has ever been stupid enough to use nuclear weapons in war.
That "stupid" move saved hundreds of thousands of Allied lives and probably millions of Japanese ones.
How is it coercion if you willingly go and are free to leave at any time? Or are you not free to leave?
Only in some countries, several countries are sensible enough to refuse the scientologists recognition as an official religion.
How is that "sensible"? Do you really think it's a proper role for government to decide what is and is not a "religion"? Is the Scientology story really any less absurd than God sending his only son to die for our sins or Athena popping out of Zeus' head?
Mind you, I don't happen to believe in their doctrine. I just don't think it's wise for the Government to be able to determine what makes a religion "valid". Separation of Church and State, remember?
Some thieves broke into my college's computer labs and stole all the four-year-old iMacs. They turned their noses up at the brand new Dell Precisions in the same lab...
That's because Dell outsources their criminal support line to India and the thieves didn't have the patience to wait for "Mike" to get bold enough to venture off his script ;)
Well the made the Security Guard think they had a gun to scare him. Where they did or not would be hard to prove unless it was caught on camera.
The law often doesn't make a distinction between making your victim think you have a deadly weapon and actually possessing one.
Yeah. And the way they were slapping them closed and handling them, I'd be surprised if a few screens and drives didn't work well after this. It'll make it hard to fence them.
Because people who buy stolen property from the back of a van are known for thoroughly testing it first?
If you can't see the drawbacks of giving the Government the power to decide which speech is "good" and which is "bad" then I'm afraid that we are so far apart that further conservation isn't likely to be fruitful.
What's your point? Only 1/3 of our Government and 1/2 of the part we get to vote for has corrupted the process? That's reassuring.....
widespread, we (the people) don't trust it anymore.
No, widespread a handful of educated computer literate people who follow politics don't trust it anymore. The majority of the voting population doesn't know enough about voting technology to care.
paper (canada uses that!) is trustable.
Pretty sure I said our system retains the paper ballots. I hope we never have to use them but they are there if needed. Why do I hope we never have to use them? Because paper ballots wind up being entirely too subjective if they have to be counted by hand. One campaign will claim that a ballot with "Lizard people" and a vote for their candidate should be counted -- then will next claim that a similarly screwed up vote for the other guy should be discarded.
I'm glad the paper ballots are there so we can audit the optical scan machines but I really hope we never have to rely on them to decide a close election. There's a reason why the election official's creed is "Lord, let it be a landslide"
Which is why those cards are stored behind numbered seals. Next you'll say that the seals aren't perfect.
Because then your vote could be verified by people with a vested interest in intimidating you into voting the way they want? Do you really want your employer/union official/wife/etc to be able to see how you voted? Having any sort of mechanism that allows individual votes to be identified after the election would allow this to happen.
I've been an Elections Inspector in New York State for the last five years. Every time one of these stories crop up I wrote a detailed summary of the procedures and technology we use. In spite of these procedures including the retention of paper ballots I still can't convince the tinfoil hat crowd that our elections aren't being decided by a shadowy cabal working out of the Diebold offices. I've about given up on trying to convince them otherwise.
There are legitimate concerns surrounding so-called DRE (direct electronic record) systems but why those concerns have morphed into people being suspicious of other technology is beyond me. Some days it seems that nothing will satisfy this crowd short of a system where everybody raises their hand.
I'm glad Florida switched away from a DRE system. Don't be surprised when people crop up and start fretting that the optical scan system is pwned though.
No matter how bad things get, as long as we have honest elections, we have a chance to fix them. If we lose that ... forget it, it's over. Democrat, Republican, black, white, whatever: if the people in charge have the means to ensure they stay in charge regardless of the will of the people, they will use that power, and we are permanently screwed.
I hate to break it to you but they already have the means to remain in charge regardless of the will of the people. What good does an honest election do you when the politicians get to decide who their voters are instead of the other way around?
In short, AC, don't assume everyone else shares your level of asshole cynicism.
What's wrong with cynicism towards the political parties? They are all a bunch of lying hypocrites. You just feel good about yourself because the guy you regard as evil happened to lose. That doesn't change the fact that the two major parties are both propping up a system that undermines our representative republic and that the major difference between the two of them is which freedoms you'll lose when they are in charge.
Because "good" is a subjective term and the "benefits" of the Government outlawing "bad" speech are far outweighed by the drawbacks.
It is no more just a symbol than a gun is
Unless a gun is aimed at somebody that's exactly what it is. The same with the noose. A noose in of itself is just an inanimate object. Ditto for a gun. It's the action of those wielding such objects that determines whether or not they are a threat or just a symbol.
Hanging a noose from a tree != threat. Hanging a noose from a tree while screaming for your friends to go round up the nearest black person == threat.
Want a more recent example? Wearing an AR-15 to a political protest protest != threat. Aiming that AR-15 at the protesters on the other side of the issue == threat.
Yeah, if only Hitler had spent some time behind bars he probably never would have come to power.
Oh, wait, never mind I guess. He spent time in prison for high treason but all it would have taken to stop him would have been a law against hate speech. Yeah, that makes sense.....
Whether or not the speech can be used for "good" is quite irrelevant in a discussion about free speech.
Well done sir :)
Next you're going to argue that all those white-hooded men with torches and burning crosses are just having a variation of a "Burning Man"-festival? Or those photos of a White House lawn full of watermelons were just well-wishes for a bountiful harvest?
No, I wouldn't argue anything of the kind. What I would argue is that neither action you describe represents a threat to anyone. It's a form of expression and expression in our country is protected no matter how offensive it is. Burning a cross in the middle of the woods harms no one. Photoshopping an image of the White House harms no one.
The only time I would seek to go after cross burners would be when they light up a cross on someone's front lawn as a form of intimidation. If they are doing it the private property of one of their own or as part of a legal protest then I don't think it's any business of the Government.
Set an legal minimum standard for health insurance that all employers are required to provide to all of their employees, without exception (think similar to minimum wage laws)
And that will have the exact same effect that minimum wage laws do: Less jobs will be available because less employers will be able to afford to hire people.
Introduce what is essentially a government run health insurer that meets the requirements and that any employer unwilling or unable to meet the requirement otherwise may use. Also open this insurer up to individual purchase, if possible.
Such a program will drive private insurers out of business because they will be forced to compete with an "enterprise" that has bottomless pockets and no requirement to balance the books or turn a profit.
Increase payroll/income taxes (one, the other, or both) by an amount sufficient to pay for it. Offer a tax credit that completely covers the increase (as in said persons/groups are paying no extra taxes due to this legislation as said credit covers the full amount exactly) to any employer (and that employers respective employees) that receives private insurance meeting the guidelines instead of the government ran option.
So basically you are going to blackmail me into purchasing insurance and take away my freedom to decline to do so? Thanks but no thanks. What if I decide I don't want insurance?