I go get an oil change and one of the "mechanics" comes out to tell me I need new wiper blades. He then follows up with a claim that he can swap them for new ones for the low low price of $30. I did not notice a problem but he claims to be an expert. So I take that into advisement. I find out later that I can buy new wiper blades from an auto parts store for $10 and replace them myself in 15 minutes. It only took that long because I didn't read the instructions first. I saw no improvement in my ability to view the road. Now, wiper blades do wear out and so I don't feel bad about getting new ones every so often. If I replaced my windshield wipers every time that an "expert" told me I must, and paid their price to do so, then I'd be out a lot of money for the benefit of the "experts".
I see a report from the IPCC, a part of the UN, saying that the experts see a problem with the climate. I saw no problems but they are the experts so I tend to believe them. I then find out that the UN plans to address this problem by taking money from the USA and spreading it over the poor nations of the world. I then see that there is another solution, nuclear power.
I see an entity with an interest of taking my money. They show a problem to me and propose a solution. Assuming it is in fact a problem then I would expect a truly disinterested party to propose many solutions, including those by which this party would not benefit. The UN is in my eyes no different than that oil change "mechanic". That "expert opinion" serves their purposes, growing the power of the UN and enriching nations at the expense of a few wealthier nations.
Of course these papers on climate change do not mention nuclear power, because if they did then more people might consider it even if the paper said nuclear power would be worse than climate change. If they say nuclear power is worse than climate change then we'd have people trying to improve nuclear power, show that in fact nuclear power is better than climate change, or people conclude that perhaps climate change would not be that bad after all. They cannot even acknowledge nuclear power exists, they must only show that climate change is bad and that they have a solution. If they cannot show a solution then people will merely accept defeat.
So we have the UN telling us we have a big problem with carbon output, they propose a solution that benefits them. If we agree to their solutions then we'd be out a lot of money, empowering the UN and enriching many of it's members (which are largely made up of tyrannical assholes), and perhaps see no benefit. I will agree that burning oil and coal is a problem, just not the big problem they claim. I see something that reduces our carbon output, reduces our dependence on one set of tyrannical assholes, does not require giving money to another set of tyrannical assholes, but also destroys the tyranny I see in my own nation.
I do the math and I see that perhaps the people that claim we have a problem are perhaps not telling me everything, are not being completely truthful about the problem, and are doing so because ignorance makes them more wealthy and/or powerful. I do the math on nuclear power and it looks to be like a solution that is too good to be true. But then if it was too good to be true then we'd have no nuclear power plants at all. Nuclear power is cheap, clean, safe, and exists now. It seems to me that the only thing holding it back is ignorance and misinformation spread by the people that would gain from a global warming scare.
I can recall a few poster children in recent history, though for gun control.
James Brady is the poster child for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Their goal is to ban "assault weapons" and "high capacity" magazines because those things are dangerous. Ignore the fact that James Brady was shot with a.22 caliber rim-fire six shot revolver. The organization where James Brady is the poster child used to be called Handgun Control Incorporated, which I supposed made sense at the time but after the change in name and mission that connection was lost.
Gabby Giffords is touring the nation calling for universal background checks on gun transfers. This is nonsense because the person that shot her had passed a background check.
Carolyn McCarthy wants childproof trigger lock, an assault weapons ban, background checks for all gun transfers, magazine capacity limits, and more gun control. Ignore the facts that the man that killed her husband passed a background check, purchased his gun lawfully at a gun store, it was a.380 caliber handgun, and the man (at 69 years old) was not a child.
I could go on but those are probably the top three poster children for gun control right now. The solutions they call for would have done nothing to prevent what brought them to the cause. A lot like climate change advocates.
Climate change alarmists almost always call for more government but it's government that is the problem. We have a solution for the climate change problem (assuming it is in fact a problem and carbon in the air is the cause) and that is nuclear power. We'd have solved this problem decades ago if only the government got out of the way and allowed more nuclear power plants to be built.
To those that claim nuclear power would only introduce new problems I ask what is worse, making the entire world uninhabitable or making a few small locations upon it uninhabitable? Presumably the problem is that we'd have nuclear power plants exploding every day if we replaced coal plants with nuclear ones. It sounds like the alternative is billions displaced from their homes, billions more dying from resource wars, and billions more dying from extreme weather events. What is an easier solution, finding a way to keep nuclear power plants from exploding or finding a way to stay warm in Alaska when the sun doesn't shine for days on end? Wind power is great but how many windmills will it take to heat a home in Alaska during the winter? Wait, forget Alaska, try Oklahoma.
Is nuclear power safe? That's like asking is a car safe, or is an airplane safe. There are many ways to build a car or airplane. When people think of "airplane" they will normally think of a Boeing 747 and not the Wright Flyer. When people think of "car" they will think of what they drive, some iconic car from recent history, but not a car highlighted in Unsafe at Any Speed.
Ask people about nuclear power and often they don't think of the hundreds of nuclear reactors that have operated safely and continue to operate safely, they will think of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, or Fukushima.
Why is that? Why does the mention of nuclear power bring up images of exploding buildings when that is such a rare event?
Could it be that, as the article points out, there is a concerted effort to prevent people from accepting nuclear power as safe? If there is a concerted effort to prevent man made climate change from being accepted by the public then certainly it is possible to believe that there is a similar effort to prevent nuclear power from growing, no?
Give me a minute while I put on my aluminum foil conspiracy theorist helmet....
Oil, natural gas, and coal, are all big business and they will hire people to spread information, and misinformation, to protect that business and I understand that. On the other side we have the big business of government and these people will likewise also spread information, and misinformation, to protect their business. Wind and solar survive on government subsidy, remove that subsidy and those business models collapse. But energy is more than just fossil fuels and "green" energy, we have nuclear power. So you have "big oil" and "big wind" both fighting to keep nuclear power from becoming a viable option in the minds of the public and the policy makers. Should nuclear power gain acceptance then both models are likely to fail.
From this we have a lot of misinformation floating around such as nuclear power is expensive. Nuclear power is expensive only because the government deems it so. The DOE has a habit of revoking permits in the middle of constructing a nuclear power plant. Banks know this risk and so they set a high bar on the issuance of loans to fund the building of a nuclear power plant, such as high interest rates, a requirement for a government backing, and more. That also leads to another myth, that nuclear power plants are so expensive that only a government can fund it.
If the federal government allowed for the issuance of a permit like they do for a $500 million Boeing 747 then we would not need a government backed loan for a $500 million nuclear power plant. Unless the federal government is on the hook for the loan then they have no incentive to see the power plant built, it's not their money. If the loan is not paid back, because the plant was not completed, then the political pressure to revoke the license is much greater as no one has to answer for a half billion dollars disappearing from the budget.
All the other claims on problems of waste, contamination, and other hazards are irrelevant as we don't build nuclear power plants like Fukushima, Three Mile Island, and certainly not like Chernobyl. In fact the only reason nuclear power could be called unsafe today is because we have not built a new nuclear power plant in decades.
We rely on nuclear power right now to keep the lights on. We can build more nuclear power plants, build more coal plants, or cover our ears on the deafening sucking sound that is wind and solar. That sucking sound that is wind and solar will end with a crash as our economy comes falling down or in the unlikely event we get some leap in technology that makes wind and solar viable.
Am I a climate change denier? Yes, and here's why. I conclude that climate change does not pose the threat to society that people claim largely because of the reluctance to embrace nuclear power. These people claim to be "scientific" about how they came to their conclusion and yet ignore the "sc
Perhaps that just shows what high quality "hobby" parts have achieved.
That's the thing with mass production and economies of scale can do, improve quality while lowering costs. Things that no so long ago would have been an expensive custom item are now cheap enough and of a high enough quality that someone would be stupid to go back to that custom item.
I suspect that it is quite possible that people will make passenger carrying craft with the same chips used in toys. The difference between an RC toy autopilot and a Boeing 787 autopilot is largely in the amount of technical review done on the code. If those chips are made in quantity then the cost of that review can be spread among more product. Sell the chips to hobbyists knowing that they'd want bragging rights that the code it runs is the same as on a Boeing 787.
I would imagine that if *I* left an inert explosive on a school bus after a training exercise I had that I would not get off as lightly as these people in the CIA just did.
I also noticed that the wording is such that the implication is that these were not in fact explosives but they stopped at saying that. If they were not explosives then they would say that these were not explosives. Since they were explosives then they have to make it sound like it wasn't a big deal by calling them "inert".
I guess that everything is "inert" until it isn't. What would they call an explosive that was no longer 'inert"? Wouldn't they call that "hot gasses"?
This is a problem and people should lose their job over this, or at least get a few days without pay to think about what they did.
One question, doesn't the CIA have enough money to just *buy* a school bus for training like this?
I admit I'm no crypto expert but I have had a few IT security certifications over the years. It seems simple enough to have a key exchange with the remote by a cable, so people can't sniff it out of the air, and then have the drone look for that key in every control packet. Of course there would need to be some computation on that key but we have special purpose chips that can do that with minimal delay or power. The algorithms are open source and highly secure so there is little risk or cost there.
I guess adding a $1 port and a $2 codec chip on both the controller and drone is too much to ask for protecting a $28k drone from being stolen or destroyed by a prankster.
The concern seems to be the delay. Perhaps the commands could be passed through and the commands verified after the fact. If the commands fail then the drone could go in a limited performance mode where every packet needs to be verified, or it goes into a "go home" mode and ignores some or all commands.
No doubt this is what happens in the early development of almost every technology. I recall some similar security failings in the early days of long distance telephones. Some of those security holes may still survive today. People could make long distance phone calls without paying by using a whistle that came free with breakfast cereal. People could steal high end cars by shorting out the right wires.
People that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Even though you are more than a decade older than me I will say I have seen similar trends.
Before air conditioning we'd see more people go to a swimming pool to cool off. If not that then people would at least sweat off some calories.
Before computers and video games people would be more likely to go outside to play. This has some overlap with the air conditioning thing since people are also just as likely to read a book or play a board game inside as opposed to going out in the heat. Even when outside people will play with electronics rather than go climb a tree.
It's not just soda that makes us fat, it's fruit juices, breakfast cereals, and so many other sweet foods that got cheaper. Also with more money it's easier to treat yourself to something sweet than if you don't have as much money. I say this is true even of the "poor" since poverty in the USA is not like poverty in other places. Even the "poor" in the USA can afford a candy bar once in a while. It's a cheap and easy to get treat.
The trend to do less biking, hiking, and exploring is because of a (IMHO, highly irrational) fear of injury, abductions, and so forth that parents have of their children. At a young age my brothers and I asked our parents if we could walk the two miles home from school to avoid the lengthy ride on the bus. The bus would drive in a big loop and we were the last to get dropped off. If the weather was nice we'd walk. Few parents would let their children do that today out of a fear that their kids could get run over, kidnapped, molested, or get lost.
I will agree that there has been a shift in the public acceptance of being overweight. I don't watch a lot of TV but I do notice that there are more heavy actors on TV than I recall before. When there were fat characters in the past their weight was usually seen as a flaw or somehow an aspect of the character. Now we have obviously overweight people on TV but their weight is rarely mentioned.
No, not really. Cancer rates are up because of all the ways for people to die cancer is one that we haven't figured out yet. Modern farming has allowed us to avoid starvation. Finding out how to make heat and light from coal and oil has made it much less likely to die of food poisoning, freezing, and bumping into wild animals at night. Modern medicine has kept us from dying from industrial accidents, wars, infections, heart attacks, diabetes, and on and on. Electricity, electronics, and school systems educate the masses on nutrition, how to safely cross a street, first aid, and more. The only thing left that we have not found out how to keep from killing us is cancer.
Basically we are now living long enough that our chances of having cancer kill us is growing. I recall hearing somewhere that the chances of a male dying from cancer is about 50%. I'm not sure if this was in the USA, world wide, some other nation but that stuck with me.
You are what you eat isn't just a cute little moniker.
With all we know now on what can cause cancer I doubt it's what we eat that causes this.
I'd think that this gun would fall under the BATFE classification as "any other weapon" under Title II, making it very difficult to purchase in most states. It is a gun designed to not look like a gun, which even if it was allowed by federal law would make it prohibited as a "zip gun" or some other designation by state law.
I believe that the problem is the hopolophobes can't stand the idea of people being armed for their own defense. Disguising weapons to look like something else is only going to make their phobia worse.
I also believe that this is an inevitable development. People have been looking for ways to conceal their ability to defend themselves for many reasons for many years. Swords and guns that look like canes are not a new idea. There have been pocket pistols that look like pocket watches since the Civil War, if not earlier. With technologies like 3D printing getting cheaper and more widely available ideas like this will be easier to implement and more difficult for law enforcement to control.
Not I new idea, far from it. What is new, I suppose, is that this guy wants to market it at a time and place where they've been effectively banned for a century. The laws are changing though. Expect the BATFE to either throw a fit over this or make some ruling that will open the flood gates on guns like this again.
Another thing, concealed carry is getting popular. Nine states in the USA now have provisions in law that do not prohibit concealed carry without first obtaining government permission. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The ability to do what you suggest isn't sufficient to prove viability so it's a waste of money to do it.
Huh? I suppose it might be insufficient but it is also necessary. A solar powered future must have all solar panel factories powered by the sun at some point.
I trained with some people in the Army that were going to become parachute riggers. Part of the job description is that they will be required to jump out of an airplane with parachutes that they packed themselves. Why would the Army do this? Simple. If these riggers don't have the faith in their own skill as a rigger then they would not trust their own chutes. If a solar panel manufacturer refuses to build a factory powered by the solar panels they make then it shows the rest of the world that they don't have faith in their own product.
This is why I will not trust solar power to be viable until I see a solar panel manufacturer build a factory that is powered only by solar power. That proves to me that they have faith in their product. If they don't have faith in their own product to keep the lights on then I cannot place my faith in them either.
I'd expect any advocate of solar power would support a solar powered solar panel factory. I'd not only expect them to support it I would expect them to demand it. Solar power is supposed to be the greenest, safest, cheapest, energy source we have. If solar power is so cheap then building a factory off the grid should actually save them money for not having to invest in the power lines.
There is an industry term for this, "eating your own dog food". Alternatively, "drinking your own champagne", "eating your own cooking", or in computing circles it would be "self hosting". It's not only a good idea to have a solar powered solar panel factory, it is inevitable if we are to move to a solar powered future. It's often a matter of pride for someone to use their own product within the company. Would you use Linux if the people coding it were running Windows? Would you buy a Ford if all the employees drove a Honda to work? Would you fly in a Boeing airplane if the Boeing employees refused to fly in anything but an Airbus? Would you jump out of an airplane if the person that packed your parachute refused to jump with you?
I refuse to believe that solar power is viable if the people making the panels refuse to build a factory powered by the sun.
Point is that this is an old problem that predates computers. Some basic "sanity checks" on data input can fail even with a human parsing the data.
Also, fake identity cards are not a new phenomenon either. I do not recall if the soldiers out on the town had ID or not. Presumably they were in uniform and/or produced military ID prompting the call to the First Sergeant rather than checking with some other authority to verify ID.
However, it might be impractical to site the solar panel factory where there were 100 square miles of land with good solar exposure available where panels could be installed.
Where better to place a solar panel factory where there are few people, plenty of sun, and plenty of silicon to mine like in a desert? I suspect that there are a number of places with deserts that would love to welcome a solar panel factory to give them jobs, tax income, and solar panels.
I will grant that the first factory that produces these panels would not necessarily be solar powered since this is a basic bootstrap problem. What should happen, if only for PR reasons, is that there should be at least one such factory in existence before I can believe that solar power is anything more than just hype.
If we are going to have a world powered by solar energy then we would necessarily need a solar panel factory powered by solar panels. This should be obvious, if we cannot build a solar powered solar panel factory then we will never be a solar powered society. If solar power is cheap enough then the cost of the grid connection would not provide any gain to the solar panel factory. Of course they'd have to run off of stored solar energy during the night, perhaps not at full capacity of production, but there would have to be enough reserve to keep security systems running and power whatever systems needed to bring the factory back to full power in the morning.
The fact the factory is drawing from the grid doesn't mean it's not practical.
No, but unless it is off grid there will always be doubt on its ability to be practical.
You need to compare the kWh required to produce a panel with the kWh it will generate during its 20+ year lifetime.
Can you think of a better way to do that than have a factory that runs off of the panels it produced? The first set would be trucked in from another factory but replacements should only come from stock it produced itself.
If you don't report the theft of a phone, don't be surprised if SWAT storms your house.
WTF!?!
Did those laws prevent terrorism in NL? Not a single instance of it.
Double WTF!?!
Not only did you show the law is pointless but also a waste of police resources.
For those that think this through a bit it also shows a massive government overreach. If you lose your phone then the government has a blank check to storm into your house and search it. It doesn't even seem to go that far, if the government *believes* you lost your phone then they get to bust down your door. Also, armed people busting into an occupied residence is just asking for someone to get killed.
You didn't help your case with showing the results from this. Quite the opposite really.
I heard a story from a college friend of mine about someone in his family, his dad I think, getting in some trouble while drinking with some Army buddies. So these three friends go out and have a few too many and are picked up by the local police for public intoxication or something similar. The cop asked for their names. They replied in turn, Dicks, Cox, and Bahl (pronounced like "ball"). The cop thought they were trying to be funny. They were hauled off to the station and were only released after the First Sergeant showed up to verify their names.
That's fine if you live in mountainous territory, those of us in the Midwest USA don't have a lot of high places to pump water.
I took a tour of a pumped hydro plant, or rather I got to see the visitor center and the plant from across a fence, proper tours were cancelled for "security reasons" after 9/11. Anyway, the plant is run by the Tennessee Valley Authority and is used as both peak power (daily variation) and seasonal power (monthly variation) to allow the coal and nuclear power plants they own to operate more efficiently.
Energy storage systems benefit coal and nuclear just as much as wind and solar. Don't think that cheap storage technology will make wind and sun competitive with coal, nuclear, natural gas, or whatever else comes along.
The only thing that can save solar from becoming worth less than it already is would be some sort of leap in production techniques that makes them exceedingly cheap to produce. Much of the cost is in the energy in refining of the silicon, which again any gains in the price of energy makes everything else cheaper to produce too.
I will believe that solar power is competitive only when we see solar panel factories powered by solar panels alone. If they are on the grid then they must be selling excess power, not just using the grid for storage. When that happens they've then proven the technology works. If they cannot produce new solar panels from solar power alone then they've proven that solar cannot stand alone or compete with other energy sources.
Okay, fine, but there are a number of other situations where this fails. What if someone did not know it was stolen? What of a phone was cloned? What kind of time frame would a person have to report it before being considered an accessory to the crime? What of a phone given to a child? Do we hold the child criminally liable or the parent?
Phones are not like houses, something large and valuable that people see everyday. They are small, cheap, move about regularly, and therefore easily lost, stolen, or destroyed. Someone normally might not think of calling their cell provider or the police immediately for a misplaced cell phone, criminalizing the loss of a phone is just a recipe for making a lot of people criminals for being cell phone owners. Kind of like how gun control works, isn't it?
Stolen items are regularly reported, so it's not like people have a habit of not reporting things stolen to the police, insurance, etc. When it comes to items with services attached to them like credit cards and cell phones people will also tend to have those services cut off.
By criminalizing the failure to report then it may actually discourage reporting. Why? Imagine a law that says you must report a lost or stolen phone within 24 hours or you could be held liable for any crime attached to it. A person misplaces a phone, doesn't recall when it was last seen. Did the 24 hours already pass? Doesn't know. So it goes unreported because the chances of being held liable for failure to report approaches 100% while the chances of that phone being used in a crime approaches 0% over time.
At the same time a criminal that knowingly transfers a phone to a known terrorists will absolutely report it stolen. That way the criminal will not be held liable but the terrorist gets a few hours of use from the phone in the mean time.
So if I'm kidnapped and my phone taken from me then I'd be considered an accessory to my own kidnapping? What if the people stealing the phone just kill me instead?
I believe that you didn't think this through before replying.
Solar panels do not need rare earths, they can be made without them, same goes for wind turbines.
Doing so means the solar panels and wind turbines are less efficient than if they used rare earths. Rare earth magnets are used in windmills to make generators that are lighter and more efficient than ones made without.
"the energy cost of creating solar panels isn't" [falling]: Flat out wrong, see: WhatÃ(TM)s the EROI of Solar? | Ramez Naam
Solar with an EROEI of 25 is still 1/3 of nuclear, 1/2 of hydro, and still not better than coal. Solar still cannot compete, even after decades of government backed R&D.
Rare earths are sourced from China because they sell them cheap.
That's because they don't have this irrational fear of thorium. Thorium is a mildly radioactive element with numerous industrial uses. It can also be used as fuel in a fission breeder reactor. For some reason that baffles me the US federal government has declared thorium an element that is deemed as weapon grade material, even after a government experimentation proved a thorium based weapon nonviable. Thorium is worthless for bombs but if it is a byproduct of rare earth mining, and it almost always is, then that thorium must be disposed of as if it was weapons grade plutonium. That makes rare earth mining in the USA very expensive. There are rare earth mines in the USA but they don't produce like those in China, the mines in the USA must have little of thorium as possible making viable rare earth mines very hard to find.
A huge transition to solar panels will occur for one simple reason: price, solar+battery storage is expected to continue falling to as low as 2c per kWh of solar+battery.
If we get energy storage that cheap then that would make coal and nuclear much cleaner and cheaper too. A few big problems with coal and nuclear is that they don't like changing loads, they work best when run at near "full throttle", and they are a large investment making them difficult to fund. With cheap storage these plants can be built and run full throttle almost immediately, with the storage systems leveling out the load through the day. This also would make the payback period shorter since they can cash in from the people storing the energy, which should make investment much more attractive.
So, sure, bring on the storage technology. Doing so helps nuclear and coal as much as, or perhaps more than, solar would gain.
Yes, coal mining and uranium mining both move a lot of earth about. What of mining for silicon? That doesn't disturb the soil? What of mining for aluminum?
Mining does disturb the soil. Doing it poorly can do damage to the water supply. What uranium mining does do is provide massive amounts of energy compared to the amount of soil moved.
Oh, and radioactive isotopes are everywhere. When you dig up the dirt for silicon, aluminum, copper, or whatever you are going to get some radioactive stuff. Once the stuff that is wanted from the mine is carried away the stuff left over is now more radioactive than the original dirt.
I find it difficult to believe that uranium mining would leave the soil more radioactive than it was to begin with. Uranium is radioactive and removed from the soil. What is left behind should be LESS radioactive that what was there before. Uranium mining does not create more radioactive material since nothing has yet undergone fission.
Then find a person with a phone, steal the phone, and kill the person. If you pick some random person that can give you hours or days of use on that phone before it is deactivated. For someone in the final stages of planning a major terror attack I would not think they'd mind having to do something like this.
What of stolen phones? What if the phone owner is "stolen" and then phone taken from them?
I recall a similar law being proposed in Mexico to address children of wealthy families being kidnapped and taken for ransom. The common response was that the kidnappers would just call from the child's phone.
This bill will do nothing.
This reminds me of a lot of gun control laws meaning to control crime as a lot of the same issues apply here. A background check only checks for past behavior, and any contact information is also from the past. Future behavior may be predicted by past behavior but it can only do so much. ID and pictures are worthless if the phone or gun is stolen. Attacking the phone service is like having to show ID to buy bullets, people will just have a straw buyer, go to a black market, or steal.
Also like gun control a bill like this will increase costs and create an inconvenience for many but do next to nothing to actually prevent the activity it is targeting. I can say this because for every one criminal that uses a phone or gun in a crime there are millions of law abiding people that will have to show ID.
I don't know which best applies, needle in a haystack, witch hunt, wild goose chase, or all the above.
I'm not sure that's very naive at all. In fact, "help us your we'll kill your family" is a very powerful motivator.
I could rephrase that question into something much less convincing, "Be an accessory to murder and we might let you and your family live long enough to get blown up by the bomb you helped us make, or we kill you, still kill many people, but you die without blood on your hands." Certainly they won't explain it as I just did but someone that cares about others just as much as themselves might not be so willing to help.
I'd think that if you want to be more convincing then you'd get your radioactive material as far away from the target as possible. Or at least lead the person from which you want help that the bomb is not going to be any where near them or their family, and also be unlikely to get traced back to them.
I also have to wonder how they expected to build this bomb. They might not care if they soak up too much gamma to survive in the long term as they intended to perish from the bomb too. What they would care about is success. Soaking up too much radiation could mean they die even before the bomb is built. If they survive that long they still must be healthy enough to carry the bomb to the target and not be puking up blood and having fingers rot off which would bring them more attention than they'd want.
Also, this radioactive material is dangerous because it is concentrated. If you blow up the pile of radioactive stuff then you are spreading it thinner. Spread it too thin and no one dies, at least not from the radiation. Spread it too thick and the clean up is too easy.
I can imagine a few people getting hit with radioactive "chunks" from the dirty bomb. Those people will die but at what kind of threat does that radioactive shrapnel hold that not radioactive shrapnel does not?
I know, I know, people aren't logical and terrorism isn't about the body count but the fear. If we see dirty bombs on a regular basis, people get good at cleaning up the mess, and people see them as no more a threat than any other bomb wrapped with bits of metal, then people could lose the fear of these threats.
Then let's get back to this researcher, he'd have to survive bringing the material from the lab. If the radiation poisoning doesn't get him it could be a high velocity case of lead poisoning from the security detail at the lab. Again, this researcher would have to be convinced that the terrorists would let him live if they were successful.
Slashdot Mirror
I go get an oil change and one of the "mechanics" comes out to tell me I need new wiper blades. He then follows up with a claim that he can swap them for new ones for the low low price of $30. I did not notice a problem but he claims to be an expert. So I take that into advisement. I find out later that I can buy new wiper blades from an auto parts store for $10 and replace them myself in 15 minutes. It only took that long because I didn't read the instructions first. I saw no improvement in my ability to view the road. Now, wiper blades do wear out and so I don't feel bad about getting new ones every so often. If I replaced my windshield wipers every time that an "expert" told me I must, and paid their price to do so, then I'd be out a lot of money for the benefit of the "experts".
I see a report from the IPCC, a part of the UN, saying that the experts see a problem with the climate. I saw no problems but they are the experts so I tend to believe them. I then find out that the UN plans to address this problem by taking money from the USA and spreading it over the poor nations of the world. I then see that there is another solution, nuclear power.
I see an entity with an interest of taking my money. They show a problem to me and propose a solution. Assuming it is in fact a problem then I would expect a truly disinterested party to propose many solutions, including those by which this party would not benefit. The UN is in my eyes no different than that oil change "mechanic". That "expert opinion" serves their purposes, growing the power of the UN and enriching nations at the expense of a few wealthier nations.
Of course these papers on climate change do not mention nuclear power, because if they did then more people might consider it even if the paper said nuclear power would be worse than climate change. If they say nuclear power is worse than climate change then we'd have people trying to improve nuclear power, show that in fact nuclear power is better than climate change, or people conclude that perhaps climate change would not be that bad after all. They cannot even acknowledge nuclear power exists, they must only show that climate change is bad and that they have a solution. If they cannot show a solution then people will merely accept defeat.
So we have the UN telling us we have a big problem with carbon output, they propose a solution that benefits them. If we agree to their solutions then we'd be out a lot of money, empowering the UN and enriching many of it's members (which are largely made up of tyrannical assholes), and perhaps see no benefit. I will agree that burning oil and coal is a problem, just not the big problem they claim. I see something that reduces our carbon output, reduces our dependence on one set of tyrannical assholes, does not require giving money to another set of tyrannical assholes, but also destroys the tyranny I see in my own nation.
I do the math and I see that perhaps the people that claim we have a problem are perhaps not telling me everything, are not being completely truthful about the problem, and are doing so because ignorance makes them more wealthy and/or powerful. I do the math on nuclear power and it looks to be like a solution that is too good to be true. But then if it was too good to be true then we'd have no nuclear power plants at all. Nuclear power is cheap, clean, safe, and exists now. It seems to me that the only thing holding it back is ignorance and misinformation spread by the people that would gain from a global warming scare.
Mod parent up.
I can recall a few poster children in recent history, though for gun control.
James Brady is the poster child for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Their goal is to ban "assault weapons" and "high capacity" magazines because those things are dangerous. Ignore the fact that James Brady was shot with a .22 caliber rim-fire six shot revolver. The organization where James Brady is the poster child used to be called Handgun Control Incorporated, which I supposed made sense at the time but after the change in name and mission that connection was lost.
Gabby Giffords is touring the nation calling for universal background checks on gun transfers. This is nonsense because the person that shot her had passed a background check.
Carolyn McCarthy wants childproof trigger lock, an assault weapons ban, background checks for all gun transfers, magazine capacity limits, and more gun control. Ignore the facts that the man that killed her husband passed a background check, purchased his gun lawfully at a gun store, it was a .380 caliber handgun, and the man (at 69 years old) was not a child.
I could go on but those are probably the top three poster children for gun control right now. The solutions they call for would have done nothing to prevent what brought them to the cause. A lot like climate change advocates.
Climate change alarmists almost always call for more government but it's government that is the problem. We have a solution for the climate change problem (assuming it is in fact a problem and carbon in the air is the cause) and that is nuclear power. We'd have solved this problem decades ago if only the government got out of the way and allowed more nuclear power plants to be built.
To those that claim nuclear power would only introduce new problems I ask what is worse, making the entire world uninhabitable or making a few small locations upon it uninhabitable? Presumably the problem is that we'd have nuclear power plants exploding every day if we replaced coal plants with nuclear ones. It sounds like the alternative is billions displaced from their homes, billions more dying from resource wars, and billions more dying from extreme weather events. What is an easier solution, finding a way to keep nuclear power plants from exploding or finding a way to stay warm in Alaska when the sun doesn't shine for days on end? Wind power is great but how many windmills will it take to heat a home in Alaska during the winter? Wait, forget Alaska, try Oklahoma.
Is nuclear power safe? That's like asking is a car safe, or is an airplane safe. There are many ways to build a car or airplane. When people think of "airplane" they will normally think of a Boeing 747 and not the Wright Flyer. When people think of "car" they will think of what they drive, some iconic car from recent history, but not a car highlighted in Unsafe at Any Speed.
Ask people about nuclear power and often they don't think of the hundreds of nuclear reactors that have operated safely and continue to operate safely, they will think of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, or Fukushima.
Why is that? Why does the mention of nuclear power bring up images of exploding buildings when that is such a rare event?
Could it be that, as the article points out, there is a concerted effort to prevent people from accepting nuclear power as safe? If there is a concerted effort to prevent man made climate change from being accepted by the public then certainly it is possible to believe that there is a similar effort to prevent nuclear power from growing, no?
Give me a minute while I put on my aluminum foil conspiracy theorist helmet....
Oil, natural gas, and coal, are all big business and they will hire people to spread information, and misinformation, to protect that business and I understand that. On the other side we have the big business of government and these people will likewise also spread information, and misinformation, to protect their business. Wind and solar survive on government subsidy, remove that subsidy and those business models collapse. But energy is more than just fossil fuels and "green" energy, we have nuclear power. So you have "big oil" and "big wind" both fighting to keep nuclear power from becoming a viable option in the minds of the public and the policy makers. Should nuclear power gain acceptance then both models are likely to fail.
From this we have a lot of misinformation floating around such as nuclear power is expensive. Nuclear power is expensive only because the government deems it so. The DOE has a habit of revoking permits in the middle of constructing a nuclear power plant. Banks know this risk and so they set a high bar on the issuance of loans to fund the building of a nuclear power plant, such as high interest rates, a requirement for a government backing, and more. That also leads to another myth, that nuclear power plants are so expensive that only a government can fund it.
If the federal government allowed for the issuance of a permit like they do for a $500 million Boeing 747 then we would not need a government backed loan for a $500 million nuclear power plant. Unless the federal government is on the hook for the loan then they have no incentive to see the power plant built, it's not their money. If the loan is not paid back, because the plant was not completed, then the political pressure to revoke the license is much greater as no one has to answer for a half billion dollars disappearing from the budget.
All the other claims on problems of waste, contamination, and other hazards are irrelevant as we don't build nuclear power plants like Fukushima, Three Mile Island, and certainly not like Chernobyl. In fact the only reason nuclear power could be called unsafe today is because we have not built a new nuclear power plant in decades.
We rely on nuclear power right now to keep the lights on. We can build more nuclear power plants, build more coal plants, or cover our ears on the deafening sucking sound that is wind and solar. That sucking sound that is wind and solar will end with a crash as our economy comes falling down or in the unlikely event we get some leap in technology that makes wind and solar viable.
Am I a climate change denier? Yes, and here's why. I conclude that climate change does not pose the threat to society that people claim largely because of the reluctance to embrace nuclear power. These people claim to be "scientific" about how they came to their conclusion and yet ignore the "sc
Perhaps that just shows what high quality "hobby" parts have achieved.
That's the thing with mass production and economies of scale can do, improve quality while lowering costs. Things that no so long ago would have been an expensive custom item are now cheap enough and of a high enough quality that someone would be stupid to go back to that custom item.
I suspect that it is quite possible that people will make passenger carrying craft with the same chips used in toys. The difference between an RC toy autopilot and a Boeing 787 autopilot is largely in the amount of technical review done on the code. If those chips are made in quantity then the cost of that review can be spread among more product. Sell the chips to hobbyists knowing that they'd want bragging rights that the code it runs is the same as on a Boeing 787.
I would imagine that if *I* left an inert explosive on a school bus after a training exercise I had that I would not get off as lightly as these people in the CIA just did.
I also noticed that the wording is such that the implication is that these were not in fact explosives but they stopped at saying that. If they were not explosives then they would say that these were not explosives. Since they were explosives then they have to make it sound like it wasn't a big deal by calling them "inert".
I guess that everything is "inert" until it isn't. What would they call an explosive that was no longer 'inert"? Wouldn't they call that "hot gasses"?
This is a problem and people should lose their job over this, or at least get a few days without pay to think about what they did.
One question, doesn't the CIA have enough money to just *buy* a school bus for training like this?
I admit I'm no crypto expert but I have had a few IT security certifications over the years. It seems simple enough to have a key exchange with the remote by a cable, so people can't sniff it out of the air, and then have the drone look for that key in every control packet. Of course there would need to be some computation on that key but we have special purpose chips that can do that with minimal delay or power. The algorithms are open source and highly secure so there is little risk or cost there.
I guess adding a $1 port and a $2 codec chip on both the controller and drone is too much to ask for protecting a $28k drone from being stolen or destroyed by a prankster.
The concern seems to be the delay. Perhaps the commands could be passed through and the commands verified after the fact. If the commands fail then the drone could go in a limited performance mode where every packet needs to be verified, or it goes into a "go home" mode and ignores some or all commands.
No doubt this is what happens in the early development of almost every technology. I recall some similar security failings in the early days of long distance telephones. Some of those security holes may still survive today. People could make long distance phone calls without paying by using a whistle that came free with breakfast cereal. People could steal high end cars by shorting out the right wires.
People that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Even though you are more than a decade older than me I will say I have seen similar trends.
Before air conditioning we'd see more people go to a swimming pool to cool off. If not that then people would at least sweat off some calories.
Before computers and video games people would be more likely to go outside to play. This has some overlap with the air conditioning thing since people are also just as likely to read a book or play a board game inside as opposed to going out in the heat. Even when outside people will play with electronics rather than go climb a tree.
It's not just soda that makes us fat, it's fruit juices, breakfast cereals, and so many other sweet foods that got cheaper. Also with more money it's easier to treat yourself to something sweet than if you don't have as much money. I say this is true even of the "poor" since poverty in the USA is not like poverty in other places. Even the "poor" in the USA can afford a candy bar once in a while. It's a cheap and easy to get treat.
The trend to do less biking, hiking, and exploring is because of a (IMHO, highly irrational) fear of injury, abductions, and so forth that parents have of their children. At a young age my brothers and I asked our parents if we could walk the two miles home from school to avoid the lengthy ride on the bus. The bus would drive in a big loop and we were the last to get dropped off. If the weather was nice we'd walk. Few parents would let their children do that today out of a fear that their kids could get run over, kidnapped, molested, or get lost.
I will agree that there has been a shift in the public acceptance of being overweight. I don't watch a lot of TV but I do notice that there are more heavy actors on TV than I recall before. When there were fat characters in the past their weight was usually seen as a flaw or somehow an aspect of the character. Now we have obviously overweight people on TV but their weight is rarely mentioned.
Ever wonder why cancer rates are up?
No, not really. Cancer rates are up because of all the ways for people to die cancer is one that we haven't figured out yet. Modern farming has allowed us to avoid starvation. Finding out how to make heat and light from coal and oil has made it much less likely to die of food poisoning, freezing, and bumping into wild animals at night. Modern medicine has kept us from dying from industrial accidents, wars, infections, heart attacks, diabetes, and on and on. Electricity, electronics, and school systems educate the masses on nutrition, how to safely cross a street, first aid, and more. The only thing left that we have not found out how to keep from killing us is cancer.
Basically we are now living long enough that our chances of having cancer kill us is growing. I recall hearing somewhere that the chances of a male dying from cancer is about 50%. I'm not sure if this was in the USA, world wide, some other nation but that stuck with me.
You are what you eat isn't just a cute little moniker.
With all we know now on what can cause cancer I doubt it's what we eat that causes this.
Would that be an ICE pack of lies?
I'd think that this gun would fall under the BATFE classification as "any other weapon" under Title II, making it very difficult to purchase in most states. It is a gun designed to not look like a gun, which even if it was allowed by federal law would make it prohibited as a "zip gun" or some other designation by state law.
I believe that the problem is the hopolophobes can't stand the idea of people being armed for their own defense. Disguising weapons to look like something else is only going to make their phobia worse.
I also believe that this is an inevitable development. People have been looking for ways to conceal their ability to defend themselves for many reasons for many years. Swords and guns that look like canes are not a new idea. There have been pocket pistols that look like pocket watches since the Civil War, if not earlier. With technologies like 3D printing getting cheaper and more widely available ideas like this will be easier to implement and more difficult for law enforcement to control.
Not I new idea, far from it. What is new, I suppose, is that this guy wants to market it at a time and place where they've been effectively banned for a century. The laws are changing though. Expect the BATFE to either throw a fit over this or make some ruling that will open the flood gates on guns like this again.
AOW reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Another thing, concealed carry is getting popular. Nine states in the USA now have provisions in law that do not prohibit concealed carry without first obtaining government permission.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The ability to do what you suggest isn't sufficient to prove viability so it's a waste of money to do it.
Huh? I suppose it might be insufficient but it is also necessary. A solar powered future must have all solar panel factories powered by the sun at some point.
I trained with some people in the Army that were going to become parachute riggers. Part of the job description is that they will be required to jump out of an airplane with parachutes that they packed themselves. Why would the Army do this? Simple. If these riggers don't have the faith in their own skill as a rigger then they would not trust their own chutes. If a solar panel manufacturer refuses to build a factory powered by the solar panels they make then it shows the rest of the world that they don't have faith in their own product.
This is why I will not trust solar power to be viable until I see a solar panel manufacturer build a factory that is powered only by solar power. That proves to me that they have faith in their product. If they don't have faith in their own product to keep the lights on then I cannot place my faith in them either.
I'd expect any advocate of solar power would support a solar powered solar panel factory. I'd not only expect them to support it I would expect them to demand it. Solar power is supposed to be the greenest, safest, cheapest, energy source we have. If solar power is so cheap then building a factory off the grid should actually save them money for not having to invest in the power lines.
There is an industry term for this, "eating your own dog food". Alternatively, "drinking your own champagne", "eating your own cooking", or in computing circles it would be "self hosting". It's not only a good idea to have a solar powered solar panel factory, it is inevitable if we are to move to a solar powered future. It's often a matter of pride for someone to use their own product within the company. Would you use Linux if the people coding it were running Windows? Would you buy a Ford if all the employees drove a Honda to work? Would you fly in a Boeing airplane if the Boeing employees refused to fly in anything but an Airbus? Would you jump out of an airplane if the person that packed your parachute refused to jump with you?
I refuse to believe that solar power is viable if the people making the panels refuse to build a factory powered by the sun.
Point is that this is an old problem that predates computers. Some basic "sanity checks" on data input can fail even with a human parsing the data.
Also, fake identity cards are not a new phenomenon either. I do not recall if the soldiers out on the town had ID or not. Presumably they were in uniform and/or produced military ID prompting the call to the First Sergeant rather than checking with some other authority to verify ID.
However, it might be impractical to site the solar panel factory where there were 100 square miles of land with good solar exposure available where panels could be installed.
Where better to place a solar panel factory where there are few people, plenty of sun, and plenty of silicon to mine like in a desert? I suspect that there are a number of places with deserts that would love to welcome a solar panel factory to give them jobs, tax income, and solar panels.
I will grant that the first factory that produces these panels would not necessarily be solar powered since this is a basic bootstrap problem. What should happen, if only for PR reasons, is that there should be at least one such factory in existence before I can believe that solar power is anything more than just hype.
If we are going to have a world powered by solar energy then we would necessarily need a solar panel factory powered by solar panels. This should be obvious, if we cannot build a solar powered solar panel factory then we will never be a solar powered society. If solar power is cheap enough then the cost of the grid connection would not provide any gain to the solar panel factory. Of course they'd have to run off of stored solar energy during the night, perhaps not at full capacity of production, but there would have to be enough reserve to keep security systems running and power whatever systems needed to bring the factory back to full power in the morning.
The fact the factory is drawing from the grid doesn't mean it's not practical.
No, but unless it is off grid there will always be doubt on its ability to be practical.
You need to compare the kWh required to produce a panel with the kWh it will generate during its 20+ year lifetime.
Can you think of a better way to do that than have a factory that runs off of the panels it produced? The first set would be trucked in from another factory but replacements should only come from stock it produced itself.
If you don't report the theft of a phone, don't be surprised if SWAT storms your house.
WTF!?!
Did those laws prevent terrorism in NL? Not a single instance of it.
Double WTF!?!
Not only did you show the law is pointless but also a waste of police resources.
For those that think this through a bit it also shows a massive government overreach. If you lose your phone then the government has a blank check to storm into your house and search it. It doesn't even seem to go that far, if the government *believes* you lost your phone then they get to bust down your door. Also, armed people busting into an occupied residence is just asking for someone to get killed.
You didn't help your case with showing the results from this. Quite the opposite really.
I heard a story from a college friend of mine about someone in his family, his dad I think, getting in some trouble while drinking with some Army buddies. So these three friends go out and have a few too many and are picked up by the local police for public intoxication or something similar. The cop asked for their names. They replied in turn, Dicks, Cox, and Bahl (pronounced like "ball"). The cop thought they were trying to be funny. They were hauled off to the station and were only released after the First Sergeant showed up to verify their names.
That's fine if you live in mountainous territory, those of us in the Midwest USA don't have a lot of high places to pump water.
I took a tour of a pumped hydro plant, or rather I got to see the visitor center and the plant from across a fence, proper tours were cancelled for "security reasons" after 9/11. Anyway, the plant is run by the Tennessee Valley Authority and is used as both peak power (daily variation) and seasonal power (monthly variation) to allow the coal and nuclear power plants they own to operate more efficiently.
Energy storage systems benefit coal and nuclear just as much as wind and solar. Don't think that cheap storage technology will make wind and sun competitive with coal, nuclear, natural gas, or whatever else comes along.
The only thing that can save solar from becoming worth less than it already is would be some sort of leap in production techniques that makes them exceedingly cheap to produce. Much of the cost is in the energy in refining of the silicon, which again any gains in the price of energy makes everything else cheaper to produce too.
I will believe that solar power is competitive only when we see solar panel factories powered by solar panels alone. If they are on the grid then they must be selling excess power, not just using the grid for storage. When that happens they've then proven the technology works. If they cannot produce new solar panels from solar power alone then they've proven that solar cannot stand alone or compete with other energy sources.
Okay, fine, but there are a number of other situations where this fails. What if someone did not know it was stolen? What of a phone was cloned? What kind of time frame would a person have to report it before being considered an accessory to the crime? What of a phone given to a child? Do we hold the child criminally liable or the parent?
Phones are not like houses, something large and valuable that people see everyday. They are small, cheap, move about regularly, and therefore easily lost, stolen, or destroyed. Someone normally might not think of calling their cell provider or the police immediately for a misplaced cell phone, criminalizing the loss of a phone is just a recipe for making a lot of people criminals for being cell phone owners. Kind of like how gun control works, isn't it?
Stolen items are regularly reported, so it's not like people have a habit of not reporting things stolen to the police, insurance, etc. When it comes to items with services attached to them like credit cards and cell phones people will also tend to have those services cut off.
By criminalizing the failure to report then it may actually discourage reporting. Why? Imagine a law that says you must report a lost or stolen phone within 24 hours or you could be held liable for any crime attached to it. A person misplaces a phone, doesn't recall when it was last seen. Did the 24 hours already pass? Doesn't know. So it goes unreported because the chances of being held liable for failure to report approaches 100% while the chances of that phone being used in a crime approaches 0% over time.
At the same time a criminal that knowingly transfers a phone to a known terrorists will absolutely report it stolen. That way the criminal will not be held liable but the terrorist gets a few hours of use from the phone in the mean time.
Absolute fail on this one.
So if I'm kidnapped and my phone taken from me then I'd be considered an accessory to my own kidnapping? What if the people stealing the phone just kill me instead?
I believe that you didn't think this through before replying.
Solar panels do not need rare earths, they can be made without them, same goes for wind turbines.
Doing so means the solar panels and wind turbines are less efficient than if they used rare earths. Rare earth magnets are used in windmills to make generators that are lighter and more efficient than ones made without.
"the energy cost of creating solar panels isn't" [falling]: Flat out wrong, see: WhatÃ(TM)s the EROI of Solar? | Ramez Naam
Solar with an EROEI of 25 is still 1/3 of nuclear, 1/2 of hydro, and still not better than coal. Solar still cannot compete, even after decades of government backed R&D.
Rare earths are sourced from China because they sell them cheap.
That's because they don't have this irrational fear of thorium. Thorium is a mildly radioactive element with numerous industrial uses. It can also be used as fuel in a fission breeder reactor. For some reason that baffles me the US federal government has declared thorium an element that is deemed as weapon grade material, even after a government experimentation proved a thorium based weapon nonviable. Thorium is worthless for bombs but if it is a byproduct of rare earth mining, and it almost always is, then that thorium must be disposed of as if it was weapons grade plutonium. That makes rare earth mining in the USA very expensive. There are rare earth mines in the USA but they don't produce like those in China, the mines in the USA must have little of thorium as possible making viable rare earth mines very hard to find.
A huge transition to solar panels will occur for one simple reason: price, solar+battery storage is expected to continue falling to as low as 2c per kWh of solar+battery.
If we get energy storage that cheap then that would make coal and nuclear much cleaner and cheaper too. A few big problems with coal and nuclear is that they don't like changing loads, they work best when run at near "full throttle", and they are a large investment making them difficult to fund. With cheap storage these plants can be built and run full throttle almost immediately, with the storage systems leveling out the load through the day. This also would make the payback period shorter since they can cash in from the people storing the energy, which should make investment much more attractive.
So, sure, bring on the storage technology. Doing so helps nuclear and coal as much as, or perhaps more than, solar would gain.
Yes, coal mining and uranium mining both move a lot of earth about. What of mining for silicon? That doesn't disturb the soil? What of mining for aluminum?
Mining does disturb the soil. Doing it poorly can do damage to the water supply. What uranium mining does do is provide massive amounts of energy compared to the amount of soil moved.
Oh, and radioactive isotopes are everywhere. When you dig up the dirt for silicon, aluminum, copper, or whatever you are going to get some radioactive stuff. Once the stuff that is wanted from the mine is carried away the stuff left over is now more radioactive than the original dirt.
I find it difficult to believe that uranium mining would leave the soil more radioactive than it was to begin with. Uranium is radioactive and removed from the soil. What is left behind should be LESS radioactive that what was there before. Uranium mining does not create more radioactive material since nothing has yet undergone fission.
Bolt action .410 shotguns are not unheard of, my dad had one.
Then find a person with a phone, steal the phone, and kill the person. If you pick some random person that can give you hours or days of use on that phone before it is deactivated. For someone in the final stages of planning a major terror attack I would not think they'd mind having to do something like this.
What of stolen phones? What if the phone owner is "stolen" and then phone taken from them?
I recall a similar law being proposed in Mexico to address children of wealthy families being kidnapped and taken for ransom. The common response was that the kidnappers would just call from the child's phone.
This bill will do nothing.
This reminds me of a lot of gun control laws meaning to control crime as a lot of the same issues apply here. A background check only checks for past behavior, and any contact information is also from the past. Future behavior may be predicted by past behavior but it can only do so much. ID and pictures are worthless if the phone or gun is stolen. Attacking the phone service is like having to show ID to buy bullets, people will just have a straw buyer, go to a black market, or steal.
Also like gun control a bill like this will increase costs and create an inconvenience for many but do next to nothing to actually prevent the activity it is targeting. I can say this because for every one criminal that uses a phone or gun in a crime there are millions of law abiding people that will have to show ID.
I don't know which best applies, needle in a haystack, witch hunt, wild goose chase, or all the above.
I'm not sure that's very naive at all. In fact, "help us your we'll kill your family" is a very powerful motivator.
I could rephrase that question into something much less convincing, "Be an accessory to murder and we might let you and your family live long enough to get blown up by the bomb you helped us make, or we kill you, still kill many people, but you die without blood on your hands." Certainly they won't explain it as I just did but someone that cares about others just as much as themselves might not be so willing to help.
I'd think that if you want to be more convincing then you'd get your radioactive material as far away from the target as possible. Or at least lead the person from which you want help that the bomb is not going to be any where near them or their family, and also be unlikely to get traced back to them.
I also have to wonder how they expected to build this bomb. They might not care if they soak up too much gamma to survive in the long term as they intended to perish from the bomb too. What they would care about is success. Soaking up too much radiation could mean they die even before the bomb is built. If they survive that long they still must be healthy enough to carry the bomb to the target and not be puking up blood and having fingers rot off which would bring them more attention than they'd want.
Also, this radioactive material is dangerous because it is concentrated. If you blow up the pile of radioactive stuff then you are spreading it thinner. Spread it too thin and no one dies, at least not from the radiation. Spread it too thick and the clean up is too easy.
I can imagine a few people getting hit with radioactive "chunks" from the dirty bomb. Those people will die but at what kind of threat does that radioactive shrapnel hold that not radioactive shrapnel does not?
I know, I know, people aren't logical and terrorism isn't about the body count but the fear. If we see dirty bombs on a regular basis, people get good at cleaning up the mess, and people see them as no more a threat than any other bomb wrapped with bits of metal, then people could lose the fear of these threats.
Then let's get back to this researcher, he'd have to survive bringing the material from the lab. If the radiation poisoning doesn't get him it could be a high velocity case of lead poisoning from the security detail at the lab. Again, this researcher would have to be convinced that the terrorists would let him live if they were successful.
Then why aren't you off the grid already?