I know you were being facetious, but the Japanese governments opposition to avoid unemployment at all costs may have factored into their decision not to shut down Fukushima earlier. Fukushima was actually due to be decommissioned in March 2011, but was granted a large extension in January/February. Part of what may have caused the government to rubber stamp the extension was the fact that allowing the plant to shut down would have resulted in a lot of well-paying jobs being lost.
The fact that the plant is in Fukushima probably exacerbated that fact. The Japanese political system is set up sort of like the US system in that the rural prefectures have a disproportionate amount of influence in the Diet. Couple that with the fact that rural Japan has been bleeding population(Fukushima lost 3% of its population between 2005 and 2010, keep in mind the earthquake was in 2011...) and you can see why there was a lot of pressure to keep good jobs in Fukushima. Unfortunately for Fukushima the pressure to keep jobs there had a lot of unfortunate circumstances, and although there aren't firm numbers to be had yet, my guess is the flight of people from Fukushima to elsewhere is only going to increase.
*Yes I am aware that even if the extension to run the plant had not been granted there still would have been a calamity at Fukushima. But it may not have been as bad, the CEO of Tepco initially did not want to dump seawater on the reactors because he thought he could save them. If you dump seawater on them there is no way they can ever be used again. Had the plant already been in the process of shutdown, there may not have been nearly as many hydrogen explosions at the plant.
Nope. You won't find many Christians who believe that, especially in Texas. Nice try though.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, moron. Where do I begin? David Vitter? Scott DesJarlais? Both solidly "pro-life moral Republicans" who were given passes because hey, they praise Jeebus. Need something a little closer to Texas? Tom Delay work for you? Everyone knew of his little extra-cirriculars, but since Jeebus he was handily re-elected up until he got arrested. Yes, false dichotomies are rarely advocated by those seeking truth.
Being a fuckwit doesnt mean you are "seeking truth", unless that truth is Jeebus.
The reason there are lots of politicians hell-bent on teaching Intelligent Design is really very similar to the reason the muslim world is currently the most fundamentalist on the planet: there is a perverse incentive in re-enforcing religious dogma. We will take Texas first because its easier, and for the most part, more familiar. Currently in large swaths of Texas "religious" is conflated with "good" and "moral". Therefore, anyone who wants power has to present themselves as being Christian, and thus "good" and "moral". Of course if you claim you are Gods warrior, anything you do in His name is justified, and thus you can plunder and steal as much as you want. Provided of course you are still rabidly defending "God". However if you start to weaken peoples fervent religious devotion and encourage them to think for themselves, well then they probably are a bit more likely to call you out for having your hand in the cookie jar, no matter how holy you claim to be.
The situation is very similar in the Islamic world as well, with the huge amount of oil money coming in perhaps even exacerbating it. A lot of people(chief among them hardcore Christians) point to Quranic verses etc as proof that Islam is unable to modernize, but in reality, with one important exception(which I will get to later), the rules between the Abrahamic religions are very similar. The only difference is that modern Muslims actually adhere to them, whereas very few Christians actually follow the bible with any sort of rigor.
The obvious question of course then is why? If the religions are fundamentally the same, why the discrepancy in how closely modern believers follow the rules? The answer again lies in perverse incentives. The fact that the industrial revolution was born in Europe gave Muslim leaders and interesting case study, what happens to religious leaders when society "modernizes"? The answer is that in most of the Western world(with the rural US pretty much being the only real exception) religious leaders went from the top of the social pyramid to near the bottom in a very short period of time. Muslim leaders like being at the top of the pyramid, especially since the aforementioned difference between the religions, the acceptance of polygamy by most Islamic societies, mean that being at the bottom of the social period means that you will have very few chances to get married(and in conservative societies, that often translates to very few opportunities to have sex). So you better believe that they will resist social modernization as much as possible.
Long story short, if someone is vilifying science and praising religion, they are doing it solely for the sake of their own pocket book(and perhaps marital bed)
You mention rsync etc.... is this really necessary? From your description it sounds like the biggest potential cost for you is going to be network(followed by storage), but depending on where you are using the data the charges can vary wildly. For instance, incoming traffic from the internet TO Amazon is actually free, but outgoing is not free. If you really want to save money you are probably better off actually doing your processing in the cloud as well. Otherwise those bandwidth charges are going to eat you alive.
Um, the "discounts" you get are hardly really discounts at all, 4000 yen tops, aren't aren't really all that flexible(you have to buy 5 days in advance, have to have them mailed to you etc). Compare this to what they have in Germany, which is a real logistics system that does a pretty good job of maximizing the number of riders on the ICE trains. JRs price system is still incredibly inflexible, even if you can jump through a few hoops to save a couple thousand yen.
While the speed is all well and good, I have to wonder how much more energy this consumes than the current technology(or perhaps it's more efficient?) With the proliferation of mobile internet technology, I don't really see a whole lot of advantage in shaving off a few minutes on my travel time if it makes the ticket much more expensive(due to increased energy costs). I can get almost as much work/play done on the train as I can on the ground...
Also, from TFA: Despite the falling national population, Tokyo continues to grow. Japan is hoping that the L-Zero maglev train will persuade millions of people to fly and drive less.
People would take the train more and fly/drive less if JR weren't stupidly inflexible about ticket prices. Unlike planes(and high speed trains in places like Europe for that matter), there is basically 0 flexibility in their prices. Going during prime hours costs the same as going early in the morning or on weekends etc. The reason people fly instead of taking the trains is simple, the trains are often times more expensive. It's already faster to take the train in most cases(esp. if you are going from Tokyo to Nagoya), but since the train is often times 2x as expensive as flying, even when the train is almost empty, I'm willing to put up with the extra time required to fly. So maybe instead of pouring massive amounts of money into faster trains, they should maybe think about hiring a couple of good logisticians who can actually work out a pricing system that actually takes advantage of these newfangled devices called "computers" to dynamically adjust prices to make JR more money AND give better customer satisfaction...... Meh, knowing JR, that's just a pipe dream. Bring on the maglevs!
This exodus is exacerbated by larger trends in more rural places like Fukushima. Even before the earthquake Fukushima was rapidly losing population(a combination of more births than deaths and a large # of young people moving to Tokyo/Osaka to find work). Now there is even less of a reason for young people to stay in Fukushima. Even if this mess gets cleaned up properly, the future of Fukushima prefecture does not look very bright.
They had a worse incident where they were carrying uranium in a bucket and it went super-critical in 1999. That was a level 4. 2 people died of multiple organ failure.
These systems are in a constant state of flux, there is immense pressure to get new algos installed and pushed out ASAP, with little chance for review and thorough testing. Something like this will happen again, it's not a question of but of when.
The nuke plant gets all the play, and it is an ongoing expensive headache, but there are 18,000 people who would have rather been in Fukushima that day.
Sigh, I KNEW there was going to be one of these comments here.... Guess what, I know you don't know this, but I feel it's important to pass this info on: NO MATTER HOW BAD YOU FEEL ABOUT THE PEOPLE WHO DIED, THEY ARE DEAD.
People like you really piss me off because you seem to think that if all we do is throw a big pity party then the people who died in the tsunami will come back to life. But you have really BELIEVE they will, and only talk about them and absolutely nothing else. Guess what, it sucks that they died, it sucks hard, but there isn't a god damn thing you can do about, no matter how much you talk about it. But the people's friends and relatives DO have to deal with the nuclear issue. They DO have to deal with being kicked out of their homes for who knows how long. Unlike the dead people their situation can be changed(for better or worse). So yeah, unlike your self-righteous claims to the contrary, talking about the nuclear situation is in fact more productive than a constant pity party. Moron.
Driverless cars still won't ENTIRELY remove the human element. For starters you are counting on humans to actually check and maintain all the equipment. One of the most common causes of plane crashes over the past 20 years has been faulty data being fed to the autopilot, usually as the result of poor maintenance practices. Now planes have very strict oversight and yet things like tape being left over the pitot tubes still happen. Now imagine you have a lot less oversight and a lot more vehicles.
Maintenance and input error handling are really the only significant technical hurdles left for driverless cars, but as all SEs know the edge cases are always a bitch. And making sure your sensors are actually feeding you good data is a HUGE ball of edge cases....
It's not just tumor cells, cells infected with a wide variety of viruses do the same thing. Probably the most infamous among them are the herpes family and HIV. The cell immortality combined with the ability for the virus to remain latent are actually what makes both of those impossible to cure with current tech. However researchers into both viruses are pushing forward with techniques that could potentially prevent the virus from becoming latent which will cause the cell to die when the virus activates, thus allowing the virus to potentially be cleared from the body.
Free markets only operate efficiently when demand for the good/service is sufficiently fluid as to allow competition. However health care is not one of those markets due to barriers put up by the insurance companies themselves as well as the nature of the beast. I can shop around for the best deal on garlic bread without worrying about dying before I find a good deal, I cannot do so if I've just been shot. Therefore, like all common-good services where demand is incredibly unfluid(roads, military etc.) healthcare works best when managed by a government. The statistics support me on that one.
Yup, good management is actually pretty hard, you have to take a lot of competing goals/priorities etc into account and make decisions that can have a major impact on the project/team/company. That being said, I think part of the reason that management gets such a bad rap is because while being a good manager is hard, being an "empire builder" is quite easy, and unfortunately in most companies, it's the latter that actually get promoted...
An empire builder is someone who doesn't do any actual work, but basically sits around and looks for opportunities to either take credit for someone else's work and/or deflect blame when something goes wrong, which isn't too hard because only the people that take risks(i.e. real managers) are the ones that can fail. The empire builder never fails because he never assumes any risk.
Good managers don't have the time to both manage AND fend off the empire builders, so while good managers hit a ceiling, the phbs of the world keep on getting promoted, and get larger and larger salaries for being progressively useless.... Welcome to corporate America I guess.
Do you have any data that says they have more issues than private companies who undertake IT systems of a similar size? You are probably just more aware of the failures of the government systems because they are by nature public(obviously excluding NSA CIA etc....). Any sort of large IT system has plenty of places it can fail, slipping deadlines aren't exactly solely a "government" thing.
Forcing successful people to pay for insurance for the dregs of society is just wrong.
Exactly, that's why I love public health insurance. I don't have to buy a 3rd yacht some insurance exec whose daddy got him a cushy job. I get better health care and CHEAPER then I ever got with my garbage "high end" health insurance in the states. Yeah I may pay a bit more than a poor person(and probably pay some of their share), but not having to support worthless execs means that it is cheaper than that private garbage.
Before mouthing off about costs, how about do a little research? Like the fact that the US spends roughly 2x as much(as a % of GDP) than any other industrialized nation(who all have public health insurance) and yet the health outcomes are not any better for all that cash spent. Oh I'm sorry, did I use facts with a Republican? My mistake.
Also, let me know what airports in Europe you can operate a for-profit taxi service out of without paying the requisite fees and having the proper licenses. I would REALLY want to know. Because, you know, "In most of Europe yes; the regulations are there in order to improve people's lives and especially safety."
HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA, Funniest thing I have read on/. in a LONG while. You really think most European regulations are actually about safety? Whatever you are smoking, I want some. I lived in Germany and the regulations were almost universally there for one purpose, to funnel as much tax money into politicians hands as they can get. Your self-righteousness has got to the point that you aren't even remotely cognizant of reality anymore(i.e. a European)
Slashdot Mirror
I know you were being facetious, but the Japanese governments opposition to avoid unemployment at all costs may have factored into their decision not to shut down Fukushima earlier. Fukushima was actually due to be decommissioned in March 2011, but was granted a large extension in January/February. Part of what may have caused the government to rubber stamp the extension was the fact that allowing the plant to shut down would have resulted in a lot of well-paying jobs being lost.
The fact that the plant is in Fukushima probably exacerbated that fact. The Japanese political system is set up sort of like the US system in that the rural prefectures have a disproportionate amount of influence in the Diet. Couple that with the fact that rural Japan has been bleeding population(Fukushima lost 3% of its population between 2005 and 2010, keep in mind the earthquake was in 2011...) and you can see why there was a lot of pressure to keep good jobs in Fukushima. Unfortunately for Fukushima the pressure to keep jobs there had a lot of unfortunate circumstances, and although there aren't firm numbers to be had yet, my guess is the flight of people from Fukushima to elsewhere is only going to increase.
*Yes I am aware that even if the extension to run the plant had not been granted there still would have been a calamity at Fukushima. But it may not have been as bad, the CEO of Tepco initially did not want to dump seawater on the reactors because he thought he could save them. If you dump seawater on them there is no way they can ever be used again. Had the plant already been in the process of shutdown, there may not have been nearly as many hydrogen explosions at the plant.
Nope. You won't find many Christians who believe that, especially in Texas. Nice try though.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, moron. Where do I begin? David Vitter? Scott DesJarlais? Both solidly "pro-life moral Republicans" who were given passes because hey, they praise Jeebus. Need something a little closer to Texas? Tom Delay work for you? Everyone knew of his little extra-cirriculars, but since Jeebus he was handily re-elected up until he got arrested.
Yes, false dichotomies are rarely advocated by those seeking truth.
Being a fuckwit doesnt mean you are "seeking truth", unless that truth is Jeebus.
The reason there are lots of politicians hell-bent on teaching Intelligent Design is really very similar to the reason the muslim world is currently the most fundamentalist on the planet: there is a perverse incentive in re-enforcing religious dogma. We will take Texas first because its easier, and for the most part, more familiar. Currently in large swaths of Texas "religious" is conflated with "good" and "moral". Therefore, anyone who wants power has to present themselves as being Christian, and thus "good" and "moral". Of course if you claim you are Gods warrior, anything you do in His name is justified, and thus you can plunder and steal as much as you want. Provided of course you are still rabidly defending "God". However if you start to weaken peoples fervent religious devotion and encourage them to think for themselves, well then they probably are a bit more likely to call you out for having your hand in the cookie jar, no matter how holy you claim to be.
The situation is very similar in the Islamic world as well, with the huge amount of oil money coming in perhaps even exacerbating it. A lot of people(chief among them hardcore Christians) point to Quranic verses etc as proof that Islam is unable to modernize, but in reality, with one important exception(which I will get to later), the rules between the Abrahamic religions are very similar. The only difference is that modern Muslims actually adhere to them, whereas very few Christians actually follow the bible with any sort of rigor.
The obvious question of course then is why? If the religions are fundamentally the same, why the discrepancy in how closely modern believers follow the rules? The answer again lies in perverse incentives. The fact that the industrial revolution was born in Europe gave Muslim leaders and interesting case study, what happens to religious leaders when society "modernizes"? The answer is that in most of the Western world(with the rural US pretty much being the only real exception) religious leaders went from the top of the social pyramid to near the bottom in a very short period of time. Muslim leaders like being at the top of the pyramid, especially since the aforementioned difference between the religions, the acceptance of polygamy by most Islamic societies, mean that being at the bottom of the social period means that you will have very few chances to get married(and in conservative societies, that often translates to very few opportunities to have sex). So you better believe that they will resist social modernization as much as possible.
Long story short, if someone is vilifying science and praising religion, they are doing it solely for the sake of their own pocket book(and perhaps marital bed)
You mention rsync etc.... is this really necessary? From your description it sounds like the biggest potential cost for you is going to be network(followed by storage), but depending on where you are using the data the charges can vary wildly. For instance, incoming traffic from the internet TO Amazon is actually free, but outgoing is not free. If you really want to save money you are probably better off actually doing your processing in the cloud as well. Otherwise those bandwidth charges are going to eat you alive.
Um, the "discounts" you get are hardly really discounts at all, 4000 yen tops, aren't aren't really all that flexible(you have to buy 5 days in advance, have to have them mailed to you etc). Compare this to what they have in Germany, which is a real logistics system that does a pretty good job of maximizing the number of riders on the ICE trains. JRs price system is still incredibly inflexible, even if you can jump through a few hoops to save a couple thousand yen.
While the speed is all well and good, I have to wonder how much more energy this consumes than the current technology(or perhaps it's more efficient?) With the proliferation of mobile internet technology, I don't really see a whole lot of advantage in shaving off a few minutes on my travel time if it makes the ticket much more expensive(due to increased energy costs). I can get almost as much work/play done on the train as I can on the ground...
Also, from TFA:
Despite the falling national population, Tokyo continues to grow. Japan is hoping that the L-Zero maglev train will persuade millions of people to fly and drive less.
People would take the train more and fly/drive less if JR weren't stupidly inflexible about ticket prices. Unlike planes(and high speed trains in places like Europe for that matter), there is basically 0 flexibility in their prices. Going during prime hours costs the same as going early in the morning or on weekends etc. The reason people fly instead of taking the trains is simple, the trains are often times more expensive. It's already faster to take the train in most cases(esp. if you are going from Tokyo to Nagoya), but since the train is often times 2x as expensive as flying, even when the train is almost empty, I'm willing to put up with the extra time required to fly. So maybe instead of pouring massive amounts of money into faster trains, they should maybe think about hiring a couple of good logisticians who can actually work out a pricing system that actually takes advantage of these newfangled devices called "computers" to dynamically adjust prices to make JR more money AND give better customer satisfaction...... Meh, knowing JR, that's just a pipe dream. Bring on the maglevs!
The large, sweaty men are all working in the server room.
Lets just hope they keep their shirts on....
My speedo only goes to 85!
. That sounds like a personal issue, not a mechanical one...
This exodus is exacerbated by larger trends in more rural places like Fukushima. Even before the earthquake Fukushima was rapidly losing population(a combination of more births than deaths and a large # of young people moving to Tokyo/Osaka to find work). Now there is even less of a reason for young people to stay in Fukushima. Even if this mess gets cleaned up properly, the future of Fukushima prefecture does not look very bright.
They had a worse incident where they were carrying uranium in a bucket and it went super-critical in 1999. That was a level 4. 2 people died of multiple organ failure.
Worst trick-or-treat candy ever.
These systems are in a constant state of flux, there is immense pressure to get new algos installed and pushed out ASAP, with little chance for review and thorough testing. Something like this will happen again, it's not a question of but of when.
Do you have any actual evidence to back that up?
He said "between", which can mean either direction.
there's roughly 5975 days between today and 1st January 2013.
/. post from the future? Why are you speculating on what may happen, you already know. Now share!
Holy shit, is this our first
It turns out Verizon's "Can You Beer Me Now?" employee morale program wasn't such a bright idea.
*ducks
The nuke plant gets all the play, and it is an ongoing expensive headache, but there are 18,000 people who would have rather been in Fukushima that day.
Sigh, I KNEW there was going to be one of these comments here.... Guess what, I know you don't know this, but I feel it's important to pass this info on: NO MATTER HOW BAD YOU FEEL ABOUT THE PEOPLE WHO DIED, THEY ARE DEAD.
People like you really piss me off because you seem to think that if all we do is throw a big pity party then the people who died in the tsunami will come back to life. But you have really BELIEVE they will, and only talk about them and absolutely nothing else. Guess what, it sucks that they died, it sucks hard, but there isn't a god damn thing you can do about, no matter how much you talk about it. But the people's friends and relatives DO have to deal with the nuclear issue. They DO have to deal with being kicked out of their homes for who knows how long. Unlike the dead people their situation can be changed(for better or worse). So yeah, unlike your self-righteous claims to the contrary, talking about the nuclear situation is in fact more productive than a constant pity party. Moron.
Driverless cars still won't ENTIRELY remove the human element. For starters you are counting on humans to actually check and maintain all the equipment. One of the most common causes of plane crashes over the past 20 years has been faulty data being fed to the autopilot, usually as the result of poor maintenance practices. Now planes have very strict oversight and yet things like tape being left over the pitot tubes still happen. Now imagine you have a lot less oversight and a lot more vehicles.
Maintenance and input error handling are really the only significant technical hurdles left for driverless cars, but as all SEs know the edge cases are always a bitch. And making sure your sensors are actually feeding you good data is a HUGE ball of edge cases....
Bob Garfield, you are on slashdot?
It's not just tumor cells, cells infected with a wide variety of viruses do the same thing. Probably the most infamous among them are the herpes family and HIV. The cell immortality combined with the ability for the virus to remain latent are actually what makes both of those impossible to cure with current tech. However researchers into both viruses are pushing forward with techniques that could potentially prevent the virus from becoming latent which will cause the cell to die when the virus activates, thus allowing the virus to potentially be cleared from the body.
Free markets only operate efficiently when demand for the good/service is sufficiently fluid as to allow competition. However health care is not one of those markets due to barriers put up by the insurance companies themselves as well as the nature of the beast. I can shop around for the best deal on garlic bread without worrying about dying before I find a good deal, I cannot do so if I've just been shot. Therefore, like all common-good services where demand is incredibly unfluid(roads, military etc.) healthcare works best when managed by a government. The statistics support me on that one.
Yup, good management is actually pretty hard, you have to take a lot of competing goals/priorities etc into account and make decisions that can have a major impact on the project/team/company. That being said, I think part of the reason that management gets such a bad rap is because while being a good manager is hard, being an "empire builder" is quite easy, and unfortunately in most companies, it's the latter that actually get promoted...
An empire builder is someone who doesn't do any actual work, but basically sits around and looks for opportunities to either take credit for someone else's work and/or deflect blame when something goes wrong, which isn't too hard because only the people that take risks(i.e. real managers) are the ones that can fail. The empire builder never fails because he never assumes any risk.
Good managers don't have the time to both manage AND fend off the empire builders, so while good managers hit a ceiling, the phbs of the world keep on getting promoted, and get larger and larger salaries for being progressively useless.... Welcome to corporate America I guess.
Do you have any data that says they have more issues than private companies who undertake IT systems of a similar size? You are probably just more aware of the failures of the government systems because they are by nature public(obviously excluding NSA CIA etc....). Any sort of large IT system has plenty of places it can fail, slipping deadlines aren't exactly solely a "government" thing.
Forcing successful people to pay for insurance for the dregs of society is just wrong.
Exactly, that's why I love public health insurance. I don't have to buy a 3rd yacht some insurance exec whose daddy got him a cushy job. I get better health care and CHEAPER then I ever got with my garbage "high end" health insurance in the states. Yeah I may pay a bit more than a poor person(and probably pay some of their share), but not having to support worthless execs means that it is cheaper than that private garbage.
Before mouthing off about costs, how about do a little research? Like the fact that the US spends roughly 2x as much(as a % of GDP) than any other industrialized nation(who all have public health insurance) and yet the health outcomes are not any better for all that cash spent. Oh I'm sorry, did I use facts with a Republican? My mistake.
Also, let me know what airports in Europe you can operate a for-profit taxi service out of without paying the requisite fees and having the proper licenses. I would REALLY want to know. Because, you know, "In most of Europe yes; the regulations are there in order to improve people's lives and especially safety."
HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA, Funniest thing I have read on /. in a LONG while. You really think most European regulations are actually about safety? Whatever you are smoking, I want some. I lived in Germany and the regulations were almost universally there for one purpose, to funnel as much tax money into politicians hands as they can get. Your self-righteousness has got to the point that you aren't even remotely cognizant of reality anymore(i.e. a European)