Please clarify: I thought the waste was kept in a spent fuel pool with no active cooling at all. Spent fuel isn't that hot, so a still water swimming pool is sufficient. Did the earthquake empty some of the pools as was theorized in the beginning? I think that is why they were trying to pump water into them, not because they needed active cooling. Although certainly a metal heat sink would not wash away in an earthquake so your idea is still valid.
I hate the TSA too, but expecting them to waste time pouring out your shampoo and measuring it is hilarious! I have this image of 3 TSA guys standing around after weighing the bottle, trying to determine the specific gravity of shampoo so they can calculate the volume without actually pouring it out. Unfortunately, they would never get to finish because everyone in line behind you would kick your ass and throw out your shampoo before they get to finish.
I am amazed at how well the authorities responded to this. They are taking this as evidence of a security breach rather than a chance to make political enemies. The president's advisor says "we'll have to learn some lessons" and the interior minister said "we have to understand what's behind this [security] malfunction" and is reviewing the security breach. That's amazingly coherent, logical, and useful!
Here in America, I imagine the intruders would be shot, labeled terrorists, and used as an excuse to invalid [insert random non-nuclear nation here].
Sounds like they didn't protest against nuclear energy. They protested against lax security. This is one of the best white-hat real-world sneaks I've every heard of in my life. What a way to make their point!
IBM may well cite that prior art in their patent application. Contrary to what Slashdot may make you believe, prior art does not invalidate patents. Most patents explicitly list the prior art that led them their. The fact that someone did this with a mercury delay line would in no way invalidate a patent on doing it electronically. This is certainly novel and not obvious. You wouldn't invalidate a patent on a transistor because someone created a switch out of water and gears 100 years ago.
This is exactly the kind of good research that patents are intended to protect. Companies spending time and money to try and solve a problem no one has solved before in order to advance technology. If IBM truly delivers a memory chip that is an order of magnitude smaller and/or faster than DRAM they deserve the royalties from that patent. We should happily pay it in each chip we buy knowing that the patent system gave them an incentive to push technology.
I think people just don't understand what composting is. Education is necessary. Example:
I just moved into a new neighborhood and everyone here has a small bit of land and trees. The houses are nearby to woods. I am shocked to find that everyone rakes their leaves and throws them away in the Monday yard waste pick-up. What are they doing!?!?!?!? Do people not realize that you are throwing away your soil when you do this? So one Sunday evening I got up and took all my neighbors nicely bagged leaves and composted them in the woods behind my house. My yard has trees, but it barely grows grass. The ground is clay about an inch below the surface. The tree roots are sticking up from the ground from years of losing topsoil. Some of the neighbors use Chemlawn. Why would you throw away your fertile soil, then pay someone to spray it with an artificial version? The only reason I can figure is that they just don't understand what they are doing.
At least it doesn't go out with the trash. I think the county lets you get free bags of compost in the summer, so maybe the smart ones can at least get their own land back once they wise up.
Why is something like this patentable? This is similar to patenting how auctions work, or a betting system, a voting system, or card counting. It isn't software, it isn't hardware, it isn't really even an algorithm.
I don't understand judicial power in these types of things.
What power does a judge have to order a company to modify it's database? Unless that company is named as part of a lawsuit and loses the suit, what power does the judge have to compel any 3rd-party to do anything? Am I compelled by this ruling to delete any bookmarks I have? What if I run my own search engine?what
Instead of burning the printer, I would more worry about someone logging all the print jobs. Long ago I joked with some coworkers that this wouldn't be too tough on a typical Windows network. Just change your IP address or machine name to match the printer, and you could intercept the jobs. I wanted to insert spelling errors or Dilbert comics into the document. But someone could be malicious and send the information to a competitor or a hedge fund.
Agreed about CO2. The original discussion was about CO2, but I was addressing your bigger concept of "economic deniers" rather than the CO2 issue specifically. As for the rest - yes it is definitely not a free lunch.
economy deniers, who don't actually believe that their policies have economic cost (and may in fact praise them for "creating jobs").
Fair enough, but the "economy deniers" I hear are usually on the other side of the debate though.
The Republicans in particular spout this meme that environmental policy is bad for the economy. It is a frustrating one because it is only true in the short term. In the long run, such R&D is usually good. Ask Toyota if making the Prius was a mistake. They developed it back when Ford, GM, and Chrysler were complaining to the Bush administration that raising the fuel efficiency standards would cost a million jobs. That was only true because they hadn't invested in the technology.
Keeping clean air and waterways helps the fishing and tourism industries. It reduces health care costs. It raises worker productivity.
(and may in fact praise them for "creating jobs").
True that they don't directly "create jobs." But companies not investing in tech means they fall behind and lose those jobs eventually.
Others look at historical debt levels and aren't that fussed.
Very interesting charts! That chart shows why an economist would look at historical levels. It shows that 30% - 40% level is very sustainable. The level goes above that around bad times -- WW1 and WW2 where GDP obviously goes down. War spending is not stimulus (amazing how many people think otherwise). The smaller spike today is around 60% as the European debt crisis mounts. This is exactly what the US is afraid of. With debt levels around 70% the US could be in big trouble if a double-dip recession hits. Hence the dilemma: increase the debt and hope for stimulus, or contract the debt before it overwhelms the economy? Let me get my crystal ball out here...
A national economy in which everyone, including the government, pays down debt and cuts spending significantly is an economy that is shrinking.... Austerity programmes shrink GDP... Debt servicing costs increase as lenders worry about the fall in GDP
Agreed. Sorry if I was nitpicking - I just wanted to make sure you weren't saying that paying off debt will always result in a loss of GDP. Ideally, you pay off debt when times are good and build yourself the nest egg - much like the home-spun analogy. It might slow the growth, but that prevents bubbles.
This is what is happening in Europe now - government bond rates rise as the market fears buying government debt. Bankruptcy shrinks the economy *very* quickly.:-) Better to pay sooner rather than later. I suspect that if Europe was not in such bad shape, the US bond rates would be rising much faster. Right now, our problems are eclipsed by someone else's problems so they are contributing to keeping bond rates low. The US would probably be in great shape if it didn't decide to enter 2 wars during a recession. We could use a few trillion dollars to pay off debt or for stimulus.
I agree with everything you said, and nothing you said disagrees with anything I said, so I'm confused.
First off, even with compulsory voting (ie, Australia), nowhere near 100% of people actually vote
Agreed. Your statement implies that I said something about compulsory voting, or that getting 100% voter turnout was possible. I did not.
the 3rd party is blamed and castigated, not embraced
Yep. I never said they would be embraced. This is one of the consequences of the plurality system, as you pointed out in your original post.
Finally, there is the so-called "electoral college" which is just another way to repress votes.
Normally I would just nod my head and a agree, but since this is a list of reasons why I am wrong, I strive to figure out what I said that conflicts with this. The electoral college system had an interesting purpose that is probably pointless now.
To say that people aren't smart enough to do basic electoral math is blaming the victim.
It would be. Fortunately, no one said anything about the electoral college or math.
While you are right, this is only half of the cause. The other half is that the disgusted people choose to not vote, instead of voting for 3rd parties. If the 3rd-parties just get 5% they get federal funding and recognition in debates. So I think the voters are as much to blame as the voting system.
Consider this: voter turnout is ~50%. If the remaining 50% chose randomly amongst 10 parties, that would be 5% to each of those parties. 10 recognized parties with federal finding would be an enormous change to how elections are conducted, and it would just require non-voters to get off the couch, close their eyes, and fill in a random bubble on a sheet of paper.
I thought the Republican party lost it's way when they decided to follow Bush, long before the Tea Party group came along. Since then, the Tea Party actually did some good by reigniting the libertarian wing of the Republican party. Unfortunately, like all movements, the mob took over. Still, it gave me hope that the Republican party could reinvent itself. I would have preferred it die and split into two parties, then we might actually get debate and choices again in the US.
Don't get too upset, because although it is a simplification, it is still correct.
It ignores the enormous scale effects which differentiate national economics from household economics
Granted that there is a difference in scale, but the same rule applies. The difference is that with a nation, instead of the ratio of debt-to-income, it is the ratio of debt-to-GDP. And the constant value for that ratio changes. For individuals, 3x your annual income is the debt ceiling. For a government, economists debate if the number is 30% or 40%. Right now the US debt-to-GDP ratio is around 70%.
A national economy in which everyone, including the government, pays down debt and stops spending is an economy that is shrinking.
Now *that* is an oversimplification. We never completely stop spending. And you can pay down debt while the economy is growing. Spending and paying down debt happen at once, at a different ratio. If the national debt is too high, pay down more than you spend. If it is too low, you can spend more than you pay down. GDP can be growing in both cases.
We are in this mess because the US *never* pays down debt. It just waits and hopes that the next boom increases GDP enough for the debt level to look better. It is like a homeowner who decides that instead of paying credit card debt, they will just pay the monthly minimum while they look for a higher paying job. (I couldn't resist a home-spun analogy for you!)
While I agree with most of what you say, most vehemently with your comment about the wars, your assumptions about the tax cuts are wrong.
In fact, the math and the facts overwhelmingly demonstrate that Bush's tax cuts on the rich are the primary structural driver of our deficit...
It is a foregone conclusion on Slashdot that the term "Bush tax cuts" refers to tax cuts for the rich when in fact they were across the board tax cuts, and there is much debate over who actually benefited the most. The Wikipedia article goes into more detail, but just a few quick notes:
- Every income tax bracket was reduced - Capital gains taxes were reduced if you held stocks for 5 years or more - Estate taxes were lowered
In short: it is you, sir, who is uneducated, ill-informed, and completely wrong about the Constitution.
I appreciate the context you added, but there was no need to insult the original poster, especially when you said nothing that disagreed with his point. His point was:
While I can appreciate your position, your assumption that the founders set up the Republic to have limited government because of communications restrictions is specious at best.
The context you provided only amplified that point. The fact that Madison was a Federalist and he still believed in limited government goes to show how far we have gone from the original intent.
When someone quotes a bunch of smart people and provides relevant insight, you are welcome to provide additional context, clarification, and correction - but don't insult them.
That is a good point, but I think your analogy makes it unclear. I would like to clarify for anyone else reading this.
By cramming this act of "recognition" into the judicial system, we end up where we are now: the government can do whatever it wants until it hurts someone.
This is true because if the government passes an unconstitutional law, it can only be challenged in court by someone who has "standing." Standing is gained only once you are the victim of the law. And with some laws like the Patriot Act, the legislation actually forbids you from bringing suit. So who can challenge the law? Someone who was affected by it, but who is not bound by the secrecy clauses. That's no one. So there is no way to challenge the law. The wiretapping laws were that way too - a citizen could not sue the government or AT&T for spying on them until after it happened, and only then if they could prove harm. As a result, unconstitutional laws tend to stick on the books for a very long time, and many people can be repressed by them until they make it to the Supreme Court and have it changed.
sometimes you have to be able to say "no, don't do that" before someone gets hurt,
The implication being that there needs to be a way to prevent unconstitutional laws from being passed. I'm not sure how to do that though. Did the authors of the constitution figure that government officials would be honest enough people that such laws would never be passed, or that they would be quickly removed from office for even trying? That would be nice if it were so. I wonder what they would say if they were here today. Having a constitution is pointless if there is no one to enforce it. I for one would like to see it a crime to vote on a law that is deemed unconstitutional by the courts. It still would take too long to get to that point and the damage is already done, but it might help.
By making something like internet access an inalienable right, the government would be required to ensure every single person in the United States has not only access to an internet connection, but also a means of connection.
This a misunderstanding of what a right is under the US constitution. A right is not something that the government must provide. This is an enormous problem with how people perceive rights. Under the constitution, a right is something the government may not inhibit you from doing. It is not something the government must assist you with doing. For example, Americans have the right to bear arms. That does not mean the government must provide Americans with arms.
Slashdot Mirror
Please clarify: I thought the waste was kept in a spent fuel pool with no active cooling at all. Spent fuel isn't that hot, so a still water swimming pool is sufficient. Did the earthquake empty some of the pools as was theorized in the beginning? I think that is why they were trying to pump water into them, not because they needed active cooling. Although certainly a metal heat sink would not wash away in an earthquake so your idea is still valid.
I hate the TSA too, but expecting them to waste time pouring out your shampoo and measuring it is hilarious! I have this image of 3 TSA guys standing around after weighing the bottle, trying to determine the specific gravity of shampoo so they can calculate the volume without actually pouring it out. Unfortunately, they would never get to finish because everyone in line behind you would kick your ass and throw out your shampoo before they get to finish.
I am amazed at how well the authorities responded to this. They are taking this as evidence of a security breach rather than a chance to make political enemies. The president's advisor says "we'll have to learn some lessons" and the interior minister said "we have to understand what's behind this [security] malfunction" and is reviewing the security breach. That's amazingly coherent, logical, and useful!
Here in America, I imagine the intruders would be shot, labeled terrorists, and used as an excuse to invalid [insert random non-nuclear nation here].
Sounds like they didn't protest against nuclear energy. They protested against lax security. This is one of the best white-hat real-world sneaks I've every heard of in my life. What a way to make their point!
IBM may well cite that prior art in their patent application. Contrary to what Slashdot may make you believe, prior art does not invalidate patents. Most patents explicitly list the prior art that led them their. The fact that someone did this with a mercury delay line would in no way invalidate a patent on doing it electronically. This is certainly novel and not obvious. You wouldn't invalidate a patent on a transistor because someone created a switch out of water and gears 100 years ago.
This is exactly the kind of good research that patents are intended to protect. Companies spending time and money to try and solve a problem no one has solved before in order to advance technology. If IBM truly delivers a memory chip that is an order of magnitude smaller and/or faster than DRAM they deserve the royalties from that patent. We should happily pay it in each chip we buy knowing that the patent system gave them an incentive to push technology.
I think people just don't understand what composting is. Education is necessary. Example:
I just moved into a new neighborhood and everyone here has a small bit of land and trees. The houses are nearby to woods. I am shocked to find that everyone rakes their leaves and throws them away in the Monday yard waste pick-up. What are they doing!?!?!?!? Do people not realize that you are throwing away your soil when you do this? So one Sunday evening I got up and took all my neighbors nicely bagged leaves and composted them in the woods behind my house. My yard has trees, but it barely grows grass. The ground is clay about an inch below the surface. The tree roots are sticking up from the ground from years of losing topsoil. Some of the neighbors use Chemlawn. Why would you throw away your fertile soil, then pay someone to spray it with an artificial version? The only reason I can figure is that they just don't understand what they are doing.
At least it doesn't go out with the trash. I think the county lets you get free bags of compost in the summer, so maybe the smart ones can at least get their own land back once they wise up.
Why is something like this patentable? This is similar to patenting how auctions work, or a betting system, a voting system, or card counting. It isn't software, it isn't hardware, it isn't really even an algorithm.
So, the people that want speed, spend the money for a real SSD and use cheap reliable HD's for mass storage in a nas.
Doesn't work for laptops. :-( The hybrid drive listed in the article is in a laptop form factor so it is the best alternative for that case.
I don't understand judicial power in these types of things.
What power does a judge have to order a company to modify it's database? Unless that company is named as part of a lawsuit and loses the suit, what power does the judge have to compel any 3rd-party to do anything? Am I compelled by this ruling to delete any bookmarks I have? What if I run my own search engine?what
Instead of burning the printer, I would more worry about someone logging all the print jobs. Long ago I joked with some coworkers that this wouldn't be too tough on a typical Windows network. Just change your IP address or machine name to match the printer, and you could intercept the jobs. I wanted to insert spelling errors or Dilbert comics into the document. But someone could be malicious and send the information to a competitor or a hedge fund.
Agreed about CO2. The original discussion was about CO2, but I was addressing your bigger concept of "economic deniers" rather than the CO2 issue specifically. As for the rest - yes it is definitely not a free lunch.
Why do you think statistics of a pre-industrial revolution economy trump more modern statistics?
economy deniers, who don't actually believe that their policies have economic cost (and may in fact praise them for "creating jobs").
Fair enough, but the "economy deniers" I hear are usually on the other side of the debate though.
The Republicans in particular spout this meme that environmental policy is bad for the economy. It is a frustrating one because it is only true in the short term. In the long run, such R&D is usually good. Ask Toyota if making the Prius was a mistake. They developed it back when Ford, GM, and Chrysler were complaining to the Bush administration that raising the fuel efficiency standards would cost a million jobs. That was only true because they hadn't invested in the technology.
Keeping clean air and waterways helps the fishing and tourism industries. It reduces health care costs. It raises worker productivity.
(and may in fact praise them for "creating jobs").
True that they don't directly "create jobs." But companies not investing in tech means they fall behind and lose those jobs eventually.
Others look at historical debt levels and aren't that fussed.
Very interesting charts! That chart shows why an economist would look at historical levels. It shows that 30% - 40% level is very sustainable. The level goes above that around bad times -- WW1 and WW2 where GDP obviously goes down. War spending is not stimulus (amazing how many people think otherwise). The smaller spike today is around 60% as the European debt crisis mounts. This is exactly what the US is afraid of. With debt levels around 70% the US could be in big trouble if a double-dip recession hits. Hence the dilemma: increase the debt and hope for stimulus, or contract the debt before it overwhelms the economy? Let me get my crystal ball out here...
A national economy in which everyone, including the government, pays down debt and cuts spending significantly is an economy that is shrinking.... Austerity programmes shrink GDP... Debt servicing costs increase as lenders worry about the fall in GDP
Agreed. Sorry if I was nitpicking - I just wanted to make sure you weren't saying that paying off debt will always result in a loss of GDP. Ideally, you pay off debt when times are good and build yourself the nest egg - much like the home-spun analogy. It might slow the growth, but that prevents bubbles.
This is what is happening in Europe now - government bond rates rise as the market fears buying government debt. Bankruptcy shrinks the economy *very* quickly. :-) Better to pay sooner rather than later. I suspect that if Europe was not in such bad shape, the US bond rates would be rising much faster. Right now, our problems are eclipsed by someone else's problems so they are contributing to keeping bond rates low. The US would probably be in great shape if it didn't decide to enter 2 wars during a recession. We could use a few trillion dollars to pay off debt or for stimulus.
I agree with everything you said, and nothing you said disagrees with anything I said, so I'm confused.
First off, even with compulsory voting (ie, Australia), nowhere near 100% of people actually vote
Agreed. Your statement implies that I said something about compulsory voting, or that getting 100% voter turnout was possible. I did not.
the 3rd party is blamed and castigated, not embraced
Yep. I never said they would be embraced. This is one of the consequences of the plurality system, as you pointed out in your original post.
Finally, there is the so-called "electoral college" which is just another way to repress votes.
Normally I would just nod my head and a agree, but since this is a list of reasons why I am wrong, I strive to figure out what I said that conflicts with this. The electoral college system had an interesting purpose that is probably pointless now.
To say that people aren't smart enough to do basic electoral math is blaming the victim.
It would be. Fortunately, no one said anything about the electoral college or math.
I'll show you two things that the American government can do that will be unthinkable in Germany or France.
-1 Frightening.
one of them is willing to sell the country down the shitter to achieve their goal.
Wow, I'm not sure which party you are referring to. This could go either way.
will ensure they lose their seat by cutting off their campaign funding
Crux of all the problems in the US is right here: Most of our representatives main goal is to get elected again.
While you are right, this is only half of the cause. The other half is that the disgusted people choose to not vote, instead of voting for 3rd parties. If the 3rd-parties just get 5% they get federal funding and recognition in debates. So I think the voters are as much to blame as the voting system.
Consider this: voter turnout is ~50%. If the remaining 50% chose randomly amongst 10 parties, that would be 5% to each of those parties. 10 recognized parties with federal finding would be an enormous change to how elections are conducted, and it would just require non-voters to get off the couch, close their eyes, and fill in a random bubble on a sheet of paper.
I thought the Republican party lost it's way when they decided to follow Bush, long before the Tea Party group came along. Since then, the Tea Party actually did some good by reigniting the libertarian wing of the Republican party. Unfortunately, like all movements, the mob took over. Still, it gave me hope that the Republican party could reinvent itself. I would have preferred it die and split into two parties, then we might actually get debate and choices again in the US.
Don't get too upset, because although it is a simplification, it is still correct.
It ignores the enormous scale effects which differentiate national economics from household economics
Granted that there is a difference in scale, but the same rule applies. The difference is that with a nation, instead of the ratio of debt-to-income, it is the ratio of debt-to-GDP. And the constant value for that ratio changes. For individuals, 3x your annual income is the debt ceiling. For a government, economists debate if the number is 30% or 40%. Right now the US debt-to-GDP ratio is around 70%.
A national economy in which everyone, including the government, pays down debt and stops spending is an economy that is shrinking.
Now *that* is an oversimplification. We never completely stop spending. And you can pay down debt while the economy is growing. Spending and paying down debt happen at once, at a different ratio. If the national debt is too high, pay down more than you spend. If it is too low, you can spend more than you pay down. GDP can be growing in both cases.
We are in this mess because the US *never* pays down debt. It just waits and hopes that the next boom increases GDP enough for the debt level to look better. It is like a homeowner who decides that instead of paying credit card debt, they will just pay the monthly minimum while they look for a higher paying job. (I couldn't resist a home-spun analogy for you!)
While I agree with most of what you say, most vehemently with your comment about the wars, your assumptions about the tax cuts are wrong.
In fact, the math and the facts overwhelmingly demonstrate that Bush's tax cuts on the rich are the primary structural driver of our deficit...
It is a foregone conclusion on Slashdot that the term "Bush tax cuts" refers to tax cuts for the rich when in fact they were across the board tax cuts, and there is much debate over who actually benefited the most. The Wikipedia article goes into more detail, but just a few quick notes:
- Every income tax bracket was reduced
- Capital gains taxes were reduced if you held stocks for 5 years or more
- Estate taxes were lowered
In short: it is you, sir, who is uneducated, ill-informed, and completely wrong about the Constitution.
I appreciate the context you added, but there was no need to insult the original poster, especially when you said nothing that disagreed with his point. His point was:
While I can appreciate your position, your assumption that the founders set up the Republic to have limited government because of communications restrictions is specious at best.
The context you provided only amplified that point. The fact that Madison was a Federalist and he still believed in limited government goes to show how far we have gone from the original intent.
When someone quotes a bunch of smart people and provides relevant insight, you are welcome to provide additional context, clarification, and correction - but don't insult them.
That is a good point, but I think your analogy makes it unclear. I would like to clarify for anyone else reading this.
By cramming this act of "recognition" into the judicial system, we end up where we are now: the government can do whatever it wants until it hurts someone.
This is true because if the government passes an unconstitutional law, it can only be challenged in court by someone who has "standing." Standing is gained only once you are the victim of the law. And with some laws like the Patriot Act, the legislation actually forbids you from bringing suit. So who can challenge the law? Someone who was affected by it, but who is not bound by the secrecy clauses. That's no one. So there is no way to challenge the law. The wiretapping laws were that way too - a citizen could not sue the government or AT&T for spying on them until after it happened, and only then if they could prove harm. As a result, unconstitutional laws tend to stick on the books for a very long time, and many people can be repressed by them until they make it to the Supreme Court and have it changed.
sometimes you have to be able to say "no, don't do that" before someone gets hurt,
The implication being that there needs to be a way to prevent unconstitutional laws from being passed. I'm not sure how to do that though. Did the authors of the constitution figure that government officials would be honest enough people that such laws would never be passed, or that they would be quickly removed from office for even trying? That would be nice if it were so. I wonder what they would say if they were here today. Having a constitution is pointless if there is no one to enforce it. I for one would like to see it a crime to vote on a law that is deemed unconstitutional by the courts. It still would take too long to get to that point and the damage is already done, but it might help.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_v._Autodesk,_Inc.
Check out the See Also section for some other landmark cases.
By making something like internet access an inalienable right, the government would be required to ensure every single person in the United States has not only access to an internet connection, but also a means of connection.
This a misunderstanding of what a right is under the US constitution. A right is not something that the government must provide. This is an enormous problem with how people perceive rights. Under the constitution, a right is something the government may not inhibit you from doing. It is not something the government must assist you with doing. For example, Americans have the right to bear arms. That does not mean the government must provide Americans with arms.