Tell me, since you don't come out and say it exactly but your post seems to imply that a public entity could run a Nuclear power station more safely. I don't think this is true because they will be subject to the same fiscal pressure a private corporation is.
No, I don't have much confidence in public run plants either. More confidence than in privately run plants certainly; but I wouldn't describe myself as being confident in them.
By the way, your other missed example was the Challenger Disaster.
All that said, if we do need to have nuclear plants, I'd prefer to see them run by a transparent, accountable public body. We can design the plant to be as safe as we like, but if we don't safely design the organisation running it as well, then the whole plant may as well be rigged to explode.
What happened? Free enterprise happened. Deregulation happened. Cosy relationships between Industry and regulators happened. Marketism happened.
As more details emerge, one thing is becoming clear: This accident did not happen as a result of any tsunami. The tsunami merely kicked in the door of a rotten structure which swiftly collapsed. Cost cutting, poor safety, inadequate oversight, etc, etc; These are the real causes of the radiation leaks happening at Fukushima at present.Some very dirty laundry is being aired in very public view.
At this happened in Japan for chirstsake. Japan! The country where people have ceremonies and procedures for handing over business cards. A nation world famous for its engineering and industrial management. Japan! If things in their nuclear industry were that bad what horrors await at our own nuclear plants.
It boils down to this: You can have nuclear reactors, run by private entities, but you must be prepared for one of these rickety, slipshod operations to go belly up every decade or so. That's really all there is too it. Show me the reactor too sophisticated to melt down and I'll show you the company that will run it glowing white hot into the ground.
There are several glaring parallels between this incident and the recent banking crisis. Systemic disregard for risk, incompetent and/or uncaring management, and wanton abuse of public trust. The public doesn't trust these people anymore--with good reason. You're not going to win that trust back with fancy blueprints and paid experts' opinions. Honesty and accountability are what is needed. However, both are in short supply these days.
That's a wonderful story about the financial sector and its service to academia, and most of it is actually true.
It's also a story that conveniently omits the essentially fact that the finance industry is as crooked as a Nigerian oil committee, and that most of their research funding has a hugely corrupting influence on academia, on economics in particular.
In short, most of your arguments could be equally well applied if the funding was coming from Colombian drug lords, the mafia, the Chinese government, or Colonel Gadaffi. In some cases they have. Strangely though, most would be unwilling to extend the same level of credence to the latter group as they would to financeers.
And so we come to the essential paradox of our age. Despite the proven record of corruption by bankers and CEOs, despite the massive damage and hardship they have caused, and despite mass public embitterment towards them, somehow collectively, our society still trusts these people with custodianship of our collective wealth, power, and future. What is wrong with us?
The Penny Arcade strip was actually a send up of all the ridiculous hype surrounding the device. It can't actually restore sight to... you know what, never mind. Yeah, the Kinect is the digital manifestation of the second coming. It is the apex of technological development for the human race.
This isn't about rationality. This is about the people who run and implement SSL being pig-headedly stuck in their ways, refusing to permit any other system except their own, and being in chronic denial about existing problems with that system.
If you want a better encryption and/or authentication system for http traffic, you're going to have to code your own.
Well, I'd have preferred to see a face off between the XeForce Dual XF9801-Deluxe and the Radeon SDD 7370-01 Xtreme, both of which can be considered as upgrades from by Niforce 13005-FX2, as is obvious from the version numbers.
That plant could go Nova and wipe out Tokyo and you and certain other posters on Slashdot would still be claiming that
The spread of Nuclear Fallout worldwide would be substantially less than the hysterical media predicted
Like Hiroshima, Tokyo would not be rendered completely uninhabitable and could still be rebuilt, and moreover
The fact that the plants lasted so long after a titanic earthquake and tsunami before burning brighter than a thousand suns is proof of just how safe nuclear power is!!
I'm only being half facetious. There's a brigade of posters on this site for whom nuclear plants can do no wrong under no circumstances, and who throw up any and all flack and argument to avoid the plain truth; To wit: That this is a nuclear disaster of the most serious proportions, which should have been completely and totally avoidable; and that its occurrence is a damning indictment of the private nuclear power industry as a whole, both technically, professionally, and publicly.
Go on about bananas all you like. The credibility of safe nuclear power has been(justifiably) shot by this ongoing debacle at the Fukushima plant, and no amount of flimsy excuses are going to rectify that. If you want nuclear power to have a future within the next three decades, it would be better to start by admitting mistakes and making apologies.
We now return you to the wider and more significant humanitarian crisis in Japan.
Gaddafi brought this on himself, and I have to wonder at anybody that sheds a tear because that vile bastard is about to get his ass hammered.
What about all those defense company workers who won't be getting their Christmas bonuses because Gaddafi won't be resupplying next year? What happens if they get fired?
What about celebrities and politicians who give concerts and pose for pictures with the dictator? Who will fill in their unused time slots?
What about all those Alpha Gerbils in the stock market who are betting on those companies? What happens if they have to run faster or change direction in their wheels?
Your entire spiel on Banqiao is an elaborate straw man. China has been subject to catastrophic floods for millennia. It has a lot to do with geography, but basically China is flat as a pancake and its major rivers have enormous watersheds. The dam is only part of the problem.
Meanwhile. devastating as the floods were, the waters receeded(Floods do not make regions uninhabitable). The dam was rebuilt and people's homes can also be rebuilt. Chernobyl on the other hand is a write off for up to 100 years. The Fukushima plant disaster now risks making a 30km radius semicircle of land uninhabitable for decades in one of the most densely populated countries in the world.
Only nuclear power can inflict that kind of long term, irrecoverable damage in the event of an accident; Can and has, on more than one occasion.
Would you build one of these plants within 30km of a major city like Tokyo, London or New York? Will you take the risk that the plant will operate smoothly and without incident for 100 years? Will you take the risk with 100-200 such plants near major cities worldwide? Are you prepared to write off one major metropolitan area every thirty years or so?
I'm not.
Nuclear energy lost its gloss for me after this incident. Nuclear engineers and particularly private companies cannot be relied upon to keep hot rods cool in an emergency. When the chips are down, they are too likely to fail, and the potential long term damage is simply too much to risk.
Or maybe they were just mortified by an obtuse gesture from corporate culture which had just been injected into the conversation. This isn't a practice most people engage in, or necessarily want to engage in.
I've had people give me business cards, in what I consider to be an almost random way. They then usually proceed to spin the existing conversation towards future opportunities and the like. The remainder of the encounter becomes a rather awkward and unpleasant experience.
Coupled with the ongoing debacle with the plant in Japan, stories like this really make me wonder if I ever should have changed my position on nuclear power.
A few years ago, my views on nuclear energy began to shift. Part of this was due to "self-education" on nuclear power, and finding out from many online sources that nuclear energy was "totally safe", and that the dangers were "overblown", and that the public was simply being irrational and hysterical.
But over the last few days, watching the reactors in Fukushima explode one by one, seeing hundreds of thousands of residents forced to evacuate, and witnessing engineers from one of the most technological and disciplined countries in the world fail to simply keep something cool, I begin to wonder if my faith in the nuclear industry was misplaced all along. I'm beginning to think I was simply conned by a kind of passive nuclear industry PR campaign, and that nuclear energy is simply too dangerous to justify the benefits.
Nuclear power has lost a lot of credibility with me over the last few days. Now, I'm not sure if I should ever have given it any.
Video game products contain plenty of art, but it's product art, which is to say, kitsch art. Kitsch art is not bad art. It's commercial art. Art designed to be sold, easily and in quantity. And the bigger the audience, the kitschier it's gonna get.
People who talk about "Kitch" art are generally the kind of people who think that true "Art" consists of splotches of paint on canvas and rusty iron walls. I'm not going to dwell on this, but I will add that yes, some art is crass and cheap.
But some art is heartfelt, and worked hard on, and that shows through in the final product. And there are video games which meet that standard.
Since art is in the eye of the beholder, we could all list off a half dozen games which we consider to be artistic or art, or artsy. These all generally follow some notion of what the general public considers to be "high art", or at least we'd like to think they do. I'm sure art critics would probably scoff.
But under one of the primary definitions of art, something that evokes emotional response or intellectual thought, it's actually very clear that games are art. I think most people on the forum will have played a game--however primitive--which moved them deeply in some way. And moved them in a more genuine and heartfelt way than any picture of circles has ever moved any art critic.
I'm sure that for many years, if not forever, games will be dismissed as shallow, sophomoric art. And while it's true that many indeed are, such prejudices will always deny truely great games the recognition, or even the respect, that they honestly deserve.
The UN isn't based on what every country says goes, it's based on international consensus.
If they can get consensus for a minutes silence for the 9/11 victims, they can get consensus to censor the internet, probably under a similar set of circumstances.
Listening to CEOs and PR reps is a waste of time, they have no idea what's really going on underneath them.
The top men know exactly what's going on. They have set up the system to be filled with incompetence and overwork because that enables them to get away with defrauding billions from millions.
Slashdot Mirror
As have the FAA and TSA, who have pre-emptively banned these devices on all flights pending approval.
No, I don't have much confidence in public run plants either. More confidence than in privately run plants certainly; but I wouldn't describe myself as being confident in them.
By the way, your other missed example was the Challenger Disaster.
All that said, if we do need to have nuclear plants, I'd prefer to see them run by a transparent, accountable public body. We can design the plant to be as safe as we like, but if we don't safely design the organisation running it as well, then the whole plant may as well be rigged to explode.
Just not well enough.
What happened? Free enterprise happened. Deregulation happened. Cosy relationships between Industry and regulators happened. Marketism happened.
As more details emerge, one thing is becoming clear: This accident did not happen as a result of any tsunami. The tsunami merely kicked in the door of a rotten structure which swiftly collapsed. Cost cutting, poor safety, inadequate oversight, etc, etc; These are the real causes of the radiation leaks happening at Fukushima at present.Some very dirty laundry is being aired in very public view.
At this happened in Japan for chirstsake. Japan! The country where people have ceremonies and procedures for handing over business cards. A nation world famous for its engineering and industrial management. Japan! If things in their nuclear industry were that bad what horrors await at our own nuclear plants.
It boils down to this: You can have nuclear reactors, run by private entities, but you must be prepared for one of these rickety, slipshod operations to go belly up every decade or so. That's really all there is too it. Show me the reactor too sophisticated to melt down and I'll show you the company that will run it glowing white hot into the ground.
There are several glaring parallels between this incident and the recent banking crisis. Systemic disregard for risk, incompetent and/or uncaring management, and wanton abuse of public trust. The public doesn't trust these people anymore--with good reason. You're not going to win that trust back with fancy blueprints and paid experts' opinions. Honesty and accountability are what is needed. However, both are in short supply these days.
That's a wonderful story about the financial sector and its service to academia, and most of it is actually true.
It's also a story that conveniently omits the essentially fact that the finance industry is as crooked as a Nigerian oil committee, and that most of their research funding has a hugely corrupting influence on academia, on economics in particular.
In short, most of your arguments could be equally well applied if the funding was coming from Colombian drug lords, the mafia, the Chinese government, or Colonel Gadaffi. In some cases they have. Strangely though, most would be unwilling to extend the same level of credence to the latter group as they would to financeers.
And so we come to the essential paradox of our age. Despite the proven record of corruption by bankers and CEOs, despite the massive damage and hardship they have caused, and despite mass public embitterment towards them, somehow collectively, our society still trusts these people with custodianship of our collective wealth, power, and future. What is wrong with us?
The Penny Arcade strip was actually a send up of all the ridiculous hype surrounding the device. It can't actually restore sight to... you know what, never mind. Yeah, the Kinect is the digital manifestation of the second coming. It is the apex of technological development for the human race.
This isn't about rationality. This is about the people who run and implement SSL being pig-headedly stuck in their ways, refusing to permit any other system except their own, and being in chronic denial about existing problems with that system.
If you want a better encryption and/or authentication system for http traffic, you're going to have to code your own.
The article uses scientific notation to give the radiation release in becquerels.
It is impossible to be sensationalist when using scientific notation!
Somewhere, lurking behind this decision, is a substantial personal performance bonus.
Well, I'd have preferred to see a face off between the XeForce Dual XF9801-Deluxe and the Radeon SDD 7370-01 Xtreme, both of which can be considered as upgrades from by Niforce 13005-FX2, as is obvious from the version numbers.
Persons who are being or who are thought to ever have been .... suspicious.
Well, the little ping appeared over your house on the map, so I assume it did.
That and the fact that Firefox takes vexatious umbrage at even the very mention of a self signed cert of any description.
Dartz,.... I am disappoint.
Ahh, thank goodness for the simple pleasures of a vegetable garden.
That plant could go Nova and wipe out Tokyo and you and certain other posters on Slashdot would still be claiming that
I'm only being half facetious. There's a brigade of posters on this site for whom nuclear plants can do no wrong under no circumstances, and who throw up any and all flack and argument to avoid the plain truth; To wit: That this is a nuclear disaster of the most serious proportions, which should have been completely and totally avoidable; and that its occurrence is a damning indictment of the private nuclear power industry as a whole, both technically, professionally, and publicly.
Go on about bananas all you like. The credibility of safe nuclear power has been(justifiably) shot by this ongoing debacle at the Fukushima plant, and no amount of flimsy excuses are going to rectify that. If you want nuclear power to have a future within the next three decades, it would be better to start by admitting mistakes and making apologies.
We now return you to the wider and more significant humanitarian crisis in Japan.
Yet you're perfectly happy to pay for a newspaper laden with dishonest advertisements and astroturf articles. What gives?
What about all those defense company workers who won't be getting their Christmas bonuses because Gaddafi won't be resupplying next year? What happens if they get fired?
What about celebrities and politicians who give concerts and pose for pictures with the dictator? Who will fill in their unused time slots?
What about all those Alpha Gerbils in the stock market who are betting on those companies? What happens if they have to run faster or change direction in their wheels?
Have you no conscience?!
It's not clear from your comment, but what mantras do you find many repeating? Those opposing or supporting nuclear power, or both kinds?
Your entire spiel on Banqiao is an elaborate straw man. China has been subject to catastrophic floods for millennia. It has a lot to do with geography, but basically China is flat as a pancake and its major rivers have enormous watersheds. The dam is only part of the problem.
Meanwhile. devastating as the floods were, the waters receeded(Floods do not make regions uninhabitable). The dam was rebuilt and people's homes can also be rebuilt. Chernobyl on the other hand is a write off for up to 100 years. The Fukushima plant disaster now risks making a 30km radius semicircle of land uninhabitable for decades in one of the most densely populated countries in the world.
Only nuclear power can inflict that kind of long term, irrecoverable damage in the event of an accident; Can and has, on more than one occasion.
Would you build one of these plants within 30km of a major city like Tokyo, London or New York? Will you take the risk that the plant will operate smoothly and without incident for 100 years? Will you take the risk with 100-200 such plants near major cities worldwide? Are you prepared to write off one major metropolitan area every thirty years or so?
I'm not.
Nuclear energy lost its gloss for me after this incident. Nuclear engineers and particularly private companies cannot be relied upon to keep hot rods cool in an emergency. When the chips are down, they are too likely to fail, and the potential long term damage is simply too much to risk.
Or maybe they were just mortified by an obtuse gesture from corporate culture which had just been injected into the conversation. This isn't a practice most people engage in, or necessarily want to engage in.
I've had people give me business cards, in what I consider to be an almost random way. They then usually proceed to spin the existing conversation towards future opportunities and the like. The remainder of the encounter becomes a rather awkward and unpleasant experience.
I usually wash my hands after handling these.
Coupled with the ongoing debacle with the plant in Japan, stories like this really make me wonder if I ever should have changed my position on nuclear power.
A few years ago, my views on nuclear energy began to shift. Part of this was due to "self-education" on nuclear power, and finding out from many online sources that nuclear energy was "totally safe", and that the dangers were "overblown", and that the public was simply being irrational and hysterical.
But over the last few days, watching the reactors in Fukushima explode one by one, seeing hundreds of thousands of residents forced to evacuate, and witnessing engineers from one of the most technological and disciplined countries in the world fail to simply keep something cool, I begin to wonder if my faith in the nuclear industry was misplaced all along. I'm beginning to think I was simply conned by a kind of passive nuclear industry PR campaign, and that nuclear energy is simply too dangerous to justify the benefits.
Nuclear power has lost a lot of credibility with me over the last few days. Now, I'm not sure if I should ever have given it any.
People who talk about "Kitch" art are generally the kind of people who think that true "Art" consists of splotches of paint on canvas and rusty iron walls. I'm not going to dwell on this, but I will add that yes, some art is crass and cheap.
But some art is heartfelt, and worked hard on, and that shows through in the final product. And there are video games which meet that standard.
Since art is in the eye of the beholder, we could all list off a half dozen games which we consider to be artistic or art, or artsy. These all generally follow some notion of what the general public considers to be "high art", or at least we'd like to think they do. I'm sure art critics would probably scoff.
But under one of the primary definitions of art, something that evokes emotional response or intellectual thought, it's actually very clear that games are art. I think most people on the forum will have played a game--however primitive--which moved them deeply in some way. And moved them in a more genuine and heartfelt way than any picture of circles has ever moved any art critic.
I'm sure that for many years, if not forever, games will be dismissed as shallow, sophomoric art. And while it's true that many indeed are, such prejudices will always deny truely great games the recognition, or even the respect, that they honestly deserve.
If they can get consensus for a minutes silence for the 9/11 victims, they can get consensus to censor the internet, probably under a similar set of circumstances.
The top men know exactly what's going on. They have set up the system to be filled with incompetence and overwork because that enables them to get away with defrauding billions from millions.
The system is broken by design.