I don't know much about the alternatives, just that there are ones.
As I understand, subduction zone dumping goes like this: an area is picked around a subduction zone (like the coast of California, if I remember my geography correctly - not the transform fault). The waste would be buried/dropped as close as humanly (or robotically) possible. Hopefully in a short period of time (this could be a long period of time, don't know exactly how long), they'll be subducted, melted, etc.
The major problem is with volcanoes. If those long half-life isotopes stick around for the next Mt. St. Helens, a lot of people won't be happy. No one really knows if this could happen or not. Certainly not me.
"Seahorse is a GNOME front-end for GnuGP. It can be used for sign, encript, verify and decrypt text and files. The text can be taken from the clipboard, or written directly in the little editor it has. Seahorse is also a keymanager, which can be used to edit almost all the properties of the keys stored in your keyrings.
Seahorse currently consists of two projects. Along with Seahorse itself, a bonobo component called Seahorse-bonobo is being developed. This bonobo component will serve as a backend to Seahorse, as the most gnupg common functions are being implemented in it.
All the dialogs and windows had been developed using Glade, and they are loaded in runtime execution using libglade.
Both Seahorse and Seahorse-bonobo are released under the terms of the General Public License (GPL)." [from the website]
It's really nice. Has a whole keymanager, simplifies creating keys and (de)(en)crypting messages. Easy to use.
>
Let me spell it out for you: Not approving Yucca mountain doesn't cause that waste to disappear. Instead it's kept in big swimming pool like storage tanks close to populaton centers.
>
I agree, that's a big problem. The US spends millions a year trying to contain wastes in temporary storage facilities. But putting it in Yucca Mountain doesn't keep nuclear swimming pools away from population centers; instead, it creates what amounts to a giant nuclear lake just a little ways away from one major population center.
>
So approving Yucca mountain is probably the safest thing to do. Even the greenies know that.
>
That would be incorrect. It's no safer than the current alternative of temporary storage, but when (not if) the waste gets loose, it only affects Nevada.
>
So why are the greenies still raising a stink ? Because they have to make sure that Yucca mountain is so expensive, politically as well as financially, that no new nuclear power plants are built. (That's their goal, whether or not it is smart is a separate issue.)
>
No new nuclear power plants have been commissioned since 1979. All orders for nuclear power plants since 1973 have been cancelled. You're ill informed.
>
So the Greenies are yapping and suing but they know they don't want to win. They just want to make sure that the conservatives don't get the idea that now that we have Yucca mountain, they can start putting nuclear power plants in every county.
>
Not everyone who is concerned about Yucca Mountain is a greenie. The greenies are not some sort of worldwide secret organization.
Countries around the world are halting the use of nuclear power. France, who gets most of its power from nukes, has cancelled all new projects. The Scandanavian countries, also heavy users, are scaling back as well. The only country that isn't is China, but equating them with being worried about their populance doesn't have any real precedent.
>
There is no reason why you can't on one hand have the position that current waste should be stored in Yucca, but no new plants should be built to make more waste. Which is probably what will happen as a result of the political balencing act.
>
Balancing act? Again, there haven't been any new power plants in most 20-something's lifetimes. You don't seem to be old enough to remember Three Mile Island. Or old enough to read the above article.
There are several better ways of going about this - I won't go into detail, but they are: shoot it into the sun (bad idea), put it under the ice caps (bad idea), store it in the Pacific muck (good idea), put it in a subduction zone (no one knows if it's a good idea), or store it under the water table of a large city (bad idea) - oh, wait, that last one is already being done.
Nukes are more expensive than just about any fuels.
Right now, world-wide, nukes and solar cost $.10-.20 per KWH. Solar is so expensive because there just hasn't been enough research into it. Nukes are expensive because, again, using subatomic particles to heat water is really quite inefficient. Coal is about $.08-.09 per KWH. It's in pretty good supply, and will last beyond my lifetime.
However, hydro power is only $.03-.05 per KWH. That's cheap. And it's renewable. Wind is also about $.05 per KWH. Geothermal is $.10 per KWH. Those are cheap! However, the US government is not putting any money into these projects, as they suggest a distributed micropower solution instead of the current centralized macropower gig - that won't sit well with the commercial energy industry.
Also, you say 'right now' in your post - it's right now and looking like forever. There haven't been any new nuke plants commissioned since 1979. All orders after 1973 have been cancelled. Nuclear power is on its way out as a consumer power supply.
It's too bad everyone thinks nuclear power is the way of the future, if only we can contain the wastes. Never mind that, even when subsidized, it's still the most expensive way to boil water.
What worries me is situations like this in the future. This is just (!) after some atmospheric testing. In 10-30 years, when all the US nuclear reactors go offline, all the fuel rods and other radioactive waste (I'm not sure, but I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable if I knew that I was drinking water formerly used as steam heated by uranium) have to be dealt with. Right now, as a previous slashdot story has noted, the US will be dumping its nuclear wastes in an earthquake-prone area likely to contaminate the water table in the area of Las Vegas. Even a small amount of radioactivity, as seen in this story, can cause mutation, to say nothing of the level of contamination during that Japanese disaster a decade or three back. Think about what happens when a large US city is exposed to bunches of radiation. It suddenly becomes not far off on another continent, but in our own back yard too late to do anything about it.
Write your congressman about Yucca Mountain. Hope that state's rights prevail and the governor of Nevada can nix the project. It's our future. This isn't something like the DMCA or the SSSCA - this is nuclear waste in our back yard.
It could very well be in your local well. With all the water being drained out of aquifers these days (especailly midwest), there's always the possiblility that salt water could seep in to fill the place of the removed fresh water. Can't remember off the top of my head (or google search) where I read about this happening, but happen it does.
Saying the craziest audiophiles prefer analog for audio is like saying the craziest computer users use Windows. Yup, they're crazy. Nope, that doesn't make them experts. Lots of audiophiles would laugh at you if you said vinyl sounds the best, just like lots of computer users would laugh at you if you said Windows was the most stable operating system.
I don't know my facts enough to say that analog isn't inherently lower in quality. I do know, however, that in practice digital is of higher quality than analog. Consider Sprint's position: they market PCS (digital) as clearer than analog. Guess what? It is. Digital can be just as crappy as analog, but analog can't be as good as digital. A rectangle is a square but a square ain't a rectangle.
When my dad was setting up our home theater, one thing he complained about was having to use analog out to connect to his digital controller. Why? Because digital -> digital would have been much better. And for listning purposes, it makes a difference.
Honestly, which would you rather have to listen to if you had your choice and were buying a system? Analog or digital?
How about this time everyone lets.NET get into place _before_ ripping it apart? I mean, all this does is give MS time to patch it before it becomes mainstream. It's like cracking the Cactus copy protection, or the CSS... it isn't a standard yet, so it doesn't hurt the company much.
That's why they want to do stuff like eliminate the digital out on media devices. If you can't make that digital copy, and have to use (ugh) analog, there's a big quality drop.
The federal gov't would pay for it - and, I would guess, we'd be sending checks into them for the license if they do make it a national ID. As soon as the word 'national' comes up, it becomes the problem/responsibility of the federal government. Constitutional complications, anyone?
I don't understand quantum computing, but when I heard 'stores light to be later emitted', the first thing I thought about were lasers. I mean, if you could store a lot of light, then emit it into some sort of focusing ray all at once, that'd be pretty cool.
I have to say it was really refreshing to go see a movie with a good plot. And some charachter development.
There _were_ some grand themes that stood out in the plot. One was how easily good can turn into bad. Like Romeo & Juliet, where everyone is laughing and having a great time being in love until some people get killed, the Shire is a beautiful place, full of humanity (the image of the Hobbit father who changes his look of content into a grimace when his wife looks at him pops into mind). Then, quite suddenly, the mighty wizard himself looks scared witless, frantically saying "Is it secret? Is it safe?". I thought that was really well done. This contrast also gave the story some backing - some purpose for Frodo and company to be risking their lives. Preserve the good things.
Another grand theme that was really obvious was the shortness of life and that one should make the best of it. In Moira, Gandalf makes his noble speech about how even the wisest can't see all ends and who is anyone to be dealing out death. He then goes on to say stuff about how we should all make the best of the time that was given to us after Frodo starts whining about how much he wishes he didn't have the ring. That speech moved me. And it was lifted pretty much directly out of the book (I think it appears somewhere during a flashback in the Return of the King, but am not sure).
I thought the movie stayed pretty true to the themes of the book, if not always the scenes themselves. I don't know how you managed to be not captivated.
Quick question that I haven't really ever understood:
Is "software piracy" theft or a copyright violation?
Is it theft because... well... yeah, it's taking without paying
Or is it copyright violation in the same way xeroxing a piece of music is? After all, we don't buy the software, we buy a limited license, just like we can buy a license to copy of x copies of music? And then if we make a copy of it, we're committing copyright violation?
Is the term "software piracy" tantamount to "intellectual property" - just a misnomer?
Just a question that's been spinning in my mind. Little off topic, but if youth are to be educated, it'd be nice to have a starting point.
KUPS is a nice CUPS front-end (again, part of the KDE infrastructure). It really simplifies things, especially when doing Samba for connecting to Windows printers and choosing drivers. With KUPS I can browse through a tree of workgroups and computers instead of remembering printer names and host names and hoping I have everything capitalized right. Also, the not-in-default-directory driver lets lazy me just download something from linuxprinting.org's CUPS-O-MATIC into my/home and not worry about finding the right directory.
>> I, too, used to think that taking Slashdot to a read-for-free, pay-for-post model would be a good thing, keeping some of the riffraff out. But I don't think so any more.
I really have to agree. I post about once every three months, and my posts get ignored anyhow. I'd just read. I'm sure it would be the same for a whole lot of people.
Plus, who would pay to comment on how cool a beowulf cluster of cowboyneals would be?
Although I agree with your point in general - it'll be ready for the clueless when logging in doesn't happen - I've found that it's not true in all cases. In any sort of networked Windows situation, Windows prompts for a user and password. At my school, our teachers are equipped with laptops. From what I've seen, they have little problem figuring out how to log in. Maybe the trick is to say "you need to log onto the network" instead of "you need to log onto the computer". Or maybe it should be related to e-mail - yeah, you're probably the only one who would want to use your e-mail account, but you never know. Anyhow, most students recognize that they have to type in a password if they reboot a library computer. They've just become use to it. Maybe that's another key. I don't know.
[plug for my distro]
Mandrake has gotten the auto-install hardware/auto-update down pretty well. Although I haven't changed out a huge number of components through my use of Mandrake, I sometimes switch between a PS/2 and a USB mouse. Mandrake has no problem detecting and installing drivers for it. It works.
Package management is also halfway decent. I say halfway and mean it. Getting the packages is hard as hell (for me at least) - lots of times the sources won't add properly. Security updates are a breeze, but the Cooker (development version) won't always connect. I mirrored it (1.8 GB isn't too bad) and keep it updated with cron, but that's a bit over the average user's head (and HD space/modem time). Once I get the packages, the old package hell can happen - right now, I updated CUPS but unfortunatly it's now having problems because something else isn't installed. My slackware-using friend just laughs at me. Very hard.
Packaging isn't ready for prime time but the hardware detection certainly is. I actually found installing Mandrake was easier than Windows - but keeping Windows up to date far outdoes Mandrake.
Games like the Sims (remember the Mandrake bundle a while back?), Half-Life, Starcraft, Alice, Baldur's Gate II, and others already work and are supported. Games (in order of usability) can be found at http://www.transgaming.com/dosearch.php?order=work ing
Disclaimer:
(from http://www.transgaming.com/gamepage.php?gameid=9 - The Sims)
TransGaming's fully optimized Linux version of Maxis' hit title works perfectly. Packaged Windows version will *not* work well with standard WineX due to lack of optimizations
It seems like they still have to optimize, but it's encouraging that these things are working in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know much about the alternatives, just that there are ones.
As I understand, subduction zone dumping goes like this: an area is picked around a subduction zone (like the coast of California, if I remember my geography correctly - not the transform fault). The waste would be buried/dropped as close as humanly (or robotically) possible. Hopefully in a short period of time (this could be a long period of time, don't know exactly how long), they'll be subducted, melted, etc.
The major problem is with volcanoes. If those long half-life isotopes stick around for the next Mt. St. Helens, a lot of people won't be happy. No one really knows if this could happen or not. Certainly not me.
http://seahorse.sourceforge.net/
"Seahorse is a GNOME front-end for GnuGP. It can be used for sign, encript, verify and decrypt text and files. The text can be taken from the clipboard, or written directly in the little editor it has. Seahorse is also a keymanager, which can be used to edit almost all the properties of the keys stored in your keyrings.
Seahorse currently consists of two projects. Along with Seahorse itself, a bonobo component called Seahorse-bonobo is being developed. This bonobo component will serve as a backend to Seahorse, as the most gnupg common functions are being implemented in it.
All the dialogs and windows had been developed using Glade, and they are loaded in runtime execution using libglade.
Both Seahorse and Seahorse-bonobo are released under the terms of the General Public License (GPL)." [from the website]
It's really nice. Has a whole keymanager, simplifies creating keys and (de)(en)crypting messages. Easy to use.
>
Let me spell it out for you: Not approving Yucca mountain doesn't cause that waste to disappear. Instead it's kept in big swimming pool like storage tanks close to populaton centers.
>
I agree, that's a big problem. The US spends millions a year trying to contain wastes in temporary storage facilities. But putting it in Yucca Mountain doesn't keep nuclear swimming pools away from population centers; instead, it creates what amounts to a giant nuclear lake just a little ways away from one major population center.
>
So approving Yucca mountain is probably the safest thing to do. Even the greenies know that.
>
That would be incorrect. It's no safer than the current alternative of temporary storage, but when (not if) the waste gets loose, it only affects Nevada.
>
So why are the greenies still raising a stink ? Because they have to make sure that Yucca mountain is so expensive, politically as well as financially, that no new nuclear power plants are built. (That's their goal, whether or not it is smart is a separate issue.)
>
No new nuclear power plants have been commissioned since 1979. All orders for nuclear power plants since 1973 have been cancelled. You're ill informed.
>
So the Greenies are yapping and suing but they know they don't want to win. They just want to make sure that the conservatives don't get the idea that now that we have Yucca mountain, they can start putting nuclear power plants in every county.
>
Not everyone who is concerned about Yucca Mountain is a greenie. The greenies are not some sort of worldwide secret organization.
Countries around the world are halting the use of nuclear power. France, who gets most of its power from nukes, has cancelled all new projects. The Scandanavian countries, also heavy users, are scaling back as well. The only country that isn't is China, but equating them with being worried about their populance doesn't have any real precedent.
>
There is no reason why you can't on one hand have the position that current waste should be stored in Yucca, but no new plants should be built to make more waste. Which is probably what will happen as a result of the political balencing act.
>
Balancing act? Again, there haven't been any new power plants in most 20-something's lifetimes. You don't seem to be old enough to remember Three Mile Island. Or old enough to read the above article.
There are several better ways of going about this - I won't go into detail, but they are: shoot it into the sun (bad idea), put it under the ice caps (bad idea), store it in the Pacific muck (good idea), put it in a subduction zone (no one knows if it's a good idea), or store it under the water table of a large city (bad idea) - oh, wait, that last one is already being done.
Nukes are more expensive than just about any fuels.
Right now, world-wide, nukes and solar cost $.10-.20 per KWH. Solar is so expensive because there just hasn't been enough research into it. Nukes are expensive because, again, using subatomic particles to heat water is really quite inefficient. Coal is about $.08-.09 per KWH. It's in pretty good supply, and will last beyond my lifetime.
However, hydro power is only $.03-.05 per KWH. That's cheap. And it's renewable. Wind is also about $.05 per KWH. Geothermal is $.10 per KWH. Those are cheap! However, the US government is not putting any money into these projects, as they suggest a distributed micropower solution instead of the current centralized macropower gig - that won't sit well with the commercial energy industry.
Also, you say 'right now' in your post - it's right now and looking like forever. There haven't been any new nuke plants commissioned since 1979. All orders after 1973 have been cancelled. Nuclear power is on its way out as a consumer power supply.
It's too bad everyone thinks nuclear power is the way of the future, if only we can contain the wastes. Never mind that, even when subsidized, it's still the most expensive way to boil water.
What worries me is situations like this in the future. This is just (!) after some atmospheric testing. In 10-30 years, when all the US nuclear reactors go offline, all the fuel rods and other radioactive waste (I'm not sure, but I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable if I knew that I was drinking water formerly used as steam heated by uranium) have to be dealt with. Right now, as a previous slashdot story has noted, the US will be dumping its nuclear wastes in an earthquake-prone area likely to contaminate the water table in the area of Las Vegas. Even a small amount of radioactivity, as seen in this story, can cause mutation, to say nothing of the level of contamination during that Japanese disaster a decade or three back. Think about what happens when a large US city is exposed to bunches of radiation. It suddenly becomes not far off on another continent, but in our own back yard too late to do anything about it.
Write your congressman about Yucca Mountain. Hope that state's rights prevail and the governor of Nevada can nix the project. It's our future. This isn't something like the DMCA or the SSSCA - this is nuclear waste in our back yard.
So... if EULAs are un-enforceable, then...
A) I can use one Windows CD(-Key) on multiple computers
B) I can incorporate GPL into my for-sale products
This could be bad or good. I see a bunch of "Yay! EULAs that I hate are gone for good!" This seems bad.
Congradulations, you've invented Product Activation!
It could very well be in your local well. With all the water being drained out of aquifers these days (especailly midwest), there's always the possiblility that salt water could seep in to fill the place of the removed fresh water. Can't remember off the top of my head (or google search) where I read about this happening, but happen it does.
Plus, what about desalinization in California?
Saying the craziest audiophiles prefer analog for audio is like saying the craziest computer users use Windows. Yup, they're crazy. Nope, that doesn't make them experts. Lots of audiophiles would laugh at you if you said vinyl sounds the best, just like lots of computer users would laugh at you if you said Windows was the most stable operating system.
I don't know my facts enough to say that analog isn't inherently lower in quality. I do know, however, that in practice digital is of higher quality than analog. Consider Sprint's position: they market PCS (digital) as clearer than analog. Guess what? It is. Digital can be just as crappy as analog, but analog can't be as good as digital. A rectangle is a square but a square ain't a rectangle.
When my dad was setting up our home theater, one thing he complained about was having to use analog out to connect to his digital controller. Why? Because digital -> digital would have been much better. And for listning purposes, it makes a difference.
Honestly, which would you rather have to listen to if you had your choice and were buying a system? Analog or digital?
How about this time everyone lets .NET get into place _before_ ripping it apart? I mean, all this does is give MS time to patch it before it becomes mainstream. It's like cracking the Cactus copy protection, or the CSS... it isn't a standard yet, so it doesn't hurt the company much.
That's why they want to do stuff like eliminate the digital out on media devices. If you can't make that digital copy, and have to use (ugh) analog, there's a big quality drop.
The federal gov't would pay for it - and, I would guess, we'd be sending checks into them for the license if they do make it a national ID. As soon as the word 'national' comes up, it becomes the problem/responsibility of the federal government. Constitutional complications, anyone?
I don't understand quantum computing, but when I heard 'stores light to be later emitted', the first thing I thought about were lasers. I mean, if you could store a lot of light, then emit it into some sort of focusing ray all at once, that'd be pretty cool.
Of course, I could be dreaming... any thoughts?
I have to say it was really refreshing to go see a movie with a good plot. And some charachter development.
There _were_ some grand themes that stood out in the plot. One was how easily good can turn into bad. Like Romeo & Juliet, where everyone is laughing and having a great time being in love until some people get killed, the Shire is a beautiful place, full of humanity (the image of the Hobbit father who changes his look of content into a grimace when his wife looks at him pops into mind). Then, quite suddenly, the mighty wizard himself looks scared witless, frantically saying "Is it secret? Is it safe?". I thought that was really well done. This contrast also gave the story some backing - some purpose for Frodo and company to be risking their lives. Preserve the good things.
Another grand theme that was really obvious was the shortness of life and that one should make the best of it. In Moira, Gandalf makes his noble speech about how even the wisest can't see all ends and who is anyone to be dealing out death. He then goes on to say stuff about how we should all make the best of the time that was given to us after Frodo starts whining about how much he wishes he didn't have the ring. That speech moved me. And it was lifted pretty much directly out of the book (I think it appears somewhere during a flashback in the Return of the King, but am not sure).
I thought the movie stayed pretty true to the themes of the book, if not always the scenes themselves. I don't know how you managed to be not captivated.
Wait... so 5% of the net is avalible on the Slashdot home page at any given time?
Quick question that I haven't really ever understood:
Is "software piracy" theft or a copyright violation?
Is it theft because... well... yeah, it's taking without paying
Or is it copyright violation in the same way xeroxing a piece of music is? After all, we don't buy the software, we buy a limited license, just like we can buy a license to copy of x copies of music? And then if we make a copy of it, we're committing copyright violation?
Is the term "software piracy" tantamount to "intellectual property" - just a misnomer?
Just a question that's been spinning in my mind. Little off topic, but if youth are to be educated, it'd be nice to have a starting point.
KUPS is a nice CUPS front-end (again, part of the KDE infrastructure). It really simplifies things, especially when doing Samba for connecting to Windows printers and choosing drivers. With KUPS I can browse through a tree of workgroups and computers instead of remembering printer names and host names and hoping I have everything capitalized right. Also, the not-in-default-directory driver lets lazy me just download something from linuxprinting.org's CUPS-O-MATIC into my /home and not worry about finding the right directory.
Give it a shot.
Seeing this, and remembering I wanted to give it a try, I quickly head to the URL.
Foolish me.
Damn... slashdotted not once, but twice.
Although I guess /. is technically a multinational corporation, I somehow doubt that it can buy the legal system if a PayPal scheme can't work.
What are any of these company's plans for HDTV? Can any record HDTV, is it not feasible because of size? Will they support HDTV in the future?
I'd like my DVR to last past the HDTV rollover...
>>This "peculiar arrangement" (verbatim from the patent app)
When was the last time we heard about a 'peculiar institution'? Torches, nothing, we had a damn war!
I'm no Marxist. I'm just a leech who doesn't want to pay for anything!
>> I, too, used to think that taking Slashdot to a read-for-free, pay-for-post model would be a good thing, keeping some of the riffraff out. But I don't think so any more.
I really have to agree. I post about once every three months, and my posts get ignored anyhow. I'd just read. I'm sure it would be the same for a whole lot of people.
Plus, who would pay to comment on how cool a beowulf cluster of cowboyneals would be?
Although I agree with your point in general - it'll be ready for the clueless when logging in doesn't happen - I've found that it's not true in all cases. In any sort of networked Windows situation, Windows prompts for a user and password. At my school, our teachers are equipped with laptops. From what I've seen, they have little problem figuring out how to log in. Maybe the trick is to say "you need to log onto the network" instead of "you need to log onto the computer". Or maybe it should be related to e-mail - yeah, you're probably the only one who would want to use your e-mail account, but you never know. Anyhow, most students recognize that they have to type in a password if they reboot a library computer. They've just become use to it. Maybe that's another key. I don't know.
[plug for my distro]
Mandrake has gotten the auto-install hardware/auto-update down pretty well. Although I haven't changed out a huge number of components through my use of Mandrake, I sometimes switch between a PS/2 and a USB mouse. Mandrake has no problem detecting and installing drivers for it. It works.
Package management is also halfway decent. I say halfway and mean it. Getting the packages is hard as hell (for me at least) - lots of times the sources won't add properly. Security updates are a breeze, but the Cooker (development version) won't always connect. I mirrored it (1.8 GB isn't too bad) and keep it updated with cron, but that's a bit over the average user's head (and HD space/modem time). Once I get the packages, the old package hell can happen - right now, I updated CUPS but unfortunatly it's now having problems because something else isn't installed. My slackware-using friend just laughs at me. Very hard.
Packaging isn't ready for prime time but the hardware detection certainly is. I actually found installing Mandrake was easier than Windows - but keeping Windows up to date far outdoes Mandrake.
Games like the Sims (remember the Mandrake bundle a while back?), Half-Life, Starcraft, Alice, Baldur's Gate II, and others already work and are supported. Games (in order of usability) can be found at http://www.transgaming.com/dosearch.php?order=work ing
Disclaimer:
(from http://www.transgaming.com/gamepage.php?gameid=9 - The Sims)
TransGaming's fully optimized Linux version of Maxis' hit title works perfectly. Packaged Windows version will *not* work well with standard WineX due to lack of optimizations
It seems like they still have to optimize, but it's encouraging that these things are working in the first place.