"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back." - Heinlein, Life Line, 1939
(Actually read that story yesterday. On real paper.)
So she votes to make something illegal that she doesn't even understand?
I think that sums up the work of your average politician.
Yep, seems par for the course.
RIAA representative goes in and gives their version of the P2P story.
Politician rolls eyes.
Politician goes to parliament and repeats story.
Law passed.
I don't think her understanding is important, none of the people who vote on the law would understand it either. The only problem with the system is that only the RIAA representative gets to tell his side of the story, the people aren't represented.
Yep, the main problem with nuclear power is political, not technical. Research funding is practically zero. We see headlines like "15 million allocated for energy research" while trillions are being spent on wars and bailouts.
Plentiful energy would do more to fix the economy in the long-term than anything else, but noooo...
it doesn't matter that not so many people were killed, it matters that *huge swaths of land are being made uninhabitable for generations*.
Um, no. The damage done by the tsunami is far more significant. 20,000 dead, entire villages completely destroyed, economies wrecked.
This is what, the second time this has happened in all of history? Shall we count up how many coal miners have died over the years, the destruction of acid rain and huge areas made uninhabitable by mining? The effects of global warming if we keep on burning fossils...?
I'm not saying nuclear power is ideal but the alternatives aren't really much better.
The proper reaction to Fukushima is alarm about how they could be so stupid and wonder how many other plants are unsafe due to human factors.
The proper response is to start fixing other known-flawed reactors and vow not to build any more like that.
Nuclear power can be far safer than any other workable solution. The real problem is the politicians and NIMBYs. We're fine spending trillions and trillions of dollars on wars, industry bailouts and fixing greedy banker's economy-sinking actions. Invest in energy production? Something which would do more to fix the long-term economy and ecology of the planet than anything else...? No can do.
Five meters? Was that seriously the best they could do?
You have to make an assessment of the risk and if something completely outside the bounds of what was probable happens, you need to learn from that experience and avoid making the same mistake twice.
No, you have to do a cost analysis and figure that building a tall wall is dirt cheap in the overall scheme of things (and given the history of the area it might be a good idea to build one).
PS: The wall was six meters and the tsunami wasn't 15 meters tall at the plant. I've seen analysis that two or three meters more could have saved the plant (eg. The BBC's Horizon special)
Are you saying nuclear power produces greenhouse gases?
Or are you saying people are against coal?
Neither makes any sense.
The real question is how much are these people doing to reduce their energy footprint given that pretty much all of today's power generation methods release radiation and/or stuff like mercury into the atmosphere....
Are the anti-nuclear crowd going to drive their cars to the protest? After letting the TSA spend billions of dollars to trample their rights on the flight over there? And receiving a decent dose of radiation on that flight.
Tell me again about "risk analysis" and how good the average person is at it...
Slashdot Mirror
...so can anybody from the old BBS days.
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back." - Heinlein, Life Line, 1939
(Actually read that story yesterday. On real paper.)
Yeah, the USA never produced a single conman or scammer. Ever.
And they certainly wouldn't try to sell billions of worthless mortgages to the Chinese. Noooo....
Isn't that what SSDs are for?
What happens if you avoid buying a new one? Keep the old one for a while longer... eg. until it actually stops working.
So she votes to make something illegal that she doesn't even understand?
I think that sums up the work of your average politician.
Yep, seems par for the course.
RIAA representative goes in and gives their version of the P2P story.
Politician rolls eyes.
Politician goes to parliament and repeats story.
Law passed.
I don't think her understanding is important, none of the people who vote on the law would understand it either. The only problem with the system is that only the RIAA representative gets to tell his side of the story, the people aren't represented.
So we are choosing to be more efficient than fast?
Nope. We've figured out by trial and error that traveling faster than sound isn't a good idea. It's expensive and makes people unhappy.
With the laws of physics setting an upper limit on speed it makes sense to concentrate on fuel economy within that limit.
Why would it wipe the platters? They're encrypted and it would take an hour or so to complete...
FTB.
Nope. It doesn't wipe the platters, it wipes the encryption key from the controller.
Removing the encrypted platters won't help you.
Why are these laws always "rushed through" as if copyright infringement was a national emergency...?
Yep, the main problem with nuclear power is political, not technical. Research funding is practically zero. We see headlines like "15 million allocated for energy research" while trillions are being spent on wars and bailouts.
Plentiful energy would do more to fix the economy in the long-term than anything else, but noooo...
it doesn't matter that not so many people were killed, it matters that *huge swaths of land are being made uninhabitable for generations*.
Um, no. The damage done by the tsunami is far more significant. 20,000 dead, entire villages completely destroyed, economies wrecked.
This is what, the second time this has happened in all of history? Shall we count up how many coal miners have died over the years, the destruction of acid rain and huge areas made uninhabitable by mining? The effects of global warming if we keep on burning fossils...?
I'm not saying nuclear power is ideal but the alternatives aren't really much better.
Ukraine certainly gave up nuclear power after Chernobyl didn't they? Oh, wait...
The long-half-life stuff isn't bad. The reason it lasts a long time is that it doesn't decay much or emit much radiation.
The proper reaction to Fukushima is alarm about how they could be so stupid and wonder how many other plants are unsafe due to human factors.
The proper response is to start fixing other known-flawed reactors and vow not to build any more like that.
Nuclear power can be far safer than any other workable solution. The real problem is the politicians and NIMBYs. We're fine spending trillions and trillions of dollars on wars, industry bailouts and fixing greedy banker's economy-sinking actions. Invest in energy production? Something which would do more to fix the long-term economy and ecology of the planet than anything else...? No can do.
Five meters? Was that seriously the best they could do?
You have to make an assessment of the risk and if something completely outside the bounds of what was probable happens, you need to learn from that experience and avoid making the same mistake twice.
No, you have to do a cost analysis and figure that building a tall wall is dirt cheap in the overall scheme of things (and given the history of the area it might be a good idea to build one).
PS: The wall was six meters and the tsunami wasn't 15 meters tall at the plant. I've seen analysis that two or three meters more could have saved the plant (eg. The BBC's Horizon special)
What about the CO2? Is it a good idea to melt the ice?
This reactor was built by people who do earthquake drills at school and whose traditional art has paintings of huge waves destroying things.
These very same people built a reactor right on the sea shore and ignored recommendations to build a tall wall around it.
As Mythbusters would say: "There's your problem".
Are you saying nuclear power produces greenhouse gases?
Or are you saying people are against coal?
Neither makes any sense.
The real question is how much are these people doing to reduce their energy footprint given that pretty much all of today's power generation methods release radiation and/or stuff like mercury into the atmosphere....
[sound of crickets chirping]
... you don't understand risk analysis
Are the anti-nuclear crowd going to drive their cars to the protest? After letting the TSA spend billions of dollars to trample their rights on the flight over there? And receiving a decent dose of radiation on that flight.
Tell me again about "risk analysis" and how good the average person is at it...
it's not hysteria going on here. really
Uhuh.
Are we allowed be against 1950s bomb-maker-reactors and for newer no-accident-possible-and-practically-no-residue reactors?
You needed a BASIC program for the quadratic formula...?
There's no telling if the Winklevii would have taken the site in the same direction...
I think we can be pretty sure they wouldn't have. In all probability one of the other sites (and there were plenty) would have 'won'.
WTF? If there's one place NOT to spamvertise Swarovski Crystals... they just found it.
On the other hand, as far as anyone can tell, they did come up with the idea...
For social networking? No they didn't.
For Facebook? No they didn't, they had an idea which was much more restricted and close-minded.
Without Zuckerberg their idea would have died in six months, leaving them in debt. They've done zero work and they're multi-millionaires now.
If I had their money I'd be retired on an island somewhere. STFU already.