I can't undertand why, but some slashdotters, despite overwhelming evidence, seem to believe that nuclear power is the only way to solve global warming, that it actually provides a considerable amount of relatively safe and clean energy, and that's it's the future. All of these propositions are wrong, based on the scientific data available.
Nuclear power provides about 6% of the world's energy, whereas about 19% of global final energy consumption comes from renewables.
A study published in July 2010 by John O. Blackburn and Sam Cunningham from Duke University details how electricity from new solar installations is now cheaper than electricity from proposed new nuclear plants.
An analysis published in Energy Policy by researchers from Stanford University and the University of California-Davis and authored by Mark Z. Jacobson and UC-Davis researcher Mark A. Delucchi states: "There are no technological or economic barriers to converting the entire world to clean, renewable energy sources", and to power 100 percent of the world for all purposes from wind, water and solar resources, the footprint needed is about 0.4 percent of the world's land (mostly solar footprint) and the spacing between installations is another 0.6 percent of the world's land (mostly wind-turbine spacing). And we can do it before 2050, Jacobson said.
Another analysis shows how solar will become the cheapest source of energy of all, even chapter than coal, in justa a few years, while nuclear costs will keep rising.
Notice in the first chart how steadily manufacturing costs have come down, from $60 a watt in the mid-1970’s to $1.50 today. People often point to a “Moore’s Law” in solar – meaning that for every cumulative doubling of manufacturing capacity, costs fall 20%. In solar PV manufacturing, costs have fallen about 18% for every doubling of production. “It holds up very closely,” says Solaria’s Shugar.
The “Moore’s Law” analogy doesn’t necessarily work on the installation side, as you have all kinds of variables in permitting, financing and hardware costs. But with incredible advances in web-based tools to make sales and permitting easier; new sophisticated racking, wiring and inverter technologies to make installation faster and cheaper; and all kinds of innovative businesses providing point-of-sale financing (think auto sales), costs on the installation side have fallen steadily as well. The Rocky Mountain Institute projects that these costs will fall by 50% in the next five years.
So, if you are still blinded by your emotional attachment to nuclear and can't seem to reason straight, think about this:
That 17 GW installed in 2010 is the equivalent of 17 nuclear power plants – manufactured, shipped and installed in one year. It can take decades just to install a nuclear plant. Think about that. I heard Bill Gates recently call solar “cute.” Well, that’s 17 GW of “cute” ad
In any case, a robot will not survive 15 minutes in a classroom with average European (or american for that matter) kids. I know what my daughter will do. If she cannot get her hands on a screwdriver she will craft herself a replacement out of whatever she can find and start disassembling the thing until she has figured out what makes it tick or it is so dead that she will lose interest. That is probably still better than the reaction of her brother who would simply use it for target practice.
However this may be true for some children, today, you fail to recognise the cultural importance of this phenomenon. It is ultimately how we educate our children and the environment they live in that determines what they do. In TFA is described how these robotic teachers will be in support of their human counterparts, they will not substitute them. It is a necessary step, because on one hand AIs need need to develop significantly if they want to handle complex situations on the spot (children behaviour); on the other hand, the cultural spirit of the society needs to upgrade to the point that children will be interested in learning this way. Not to mention the (manly) nonsensical fear that people display in regards to robots, especially in the "Western countries".
It's a double process, technology and culture have to grow together, symbiotically. Let's not rush it, but let's not ignore the immense help that these possibilities could bring. A robot can explain something to a child 20 times over, in different ways, accessing databases of information beyond human capabilities, without getting pissed, bored, or angry. Children can learn without feeling stupid or ashamed if they make mistakes. Robotic teachers do not try to impose religious dogmas and do not abuse of children, unless they are specifically programmed to do so.
The problem is not the robots, but how they are programmed and tested. I propose that the software they run on must be publicly accessible, free and open source, as well as the database they feed from.
At this point, the expositor usually makes some grandiose statement about how Euler’s identity relates 0, 1, e, i, and Pi —sometimes called the “five most important numbers in mathematics”. Alert readers might then complain that, because it’s missing 0, Euler’s identity with Tau relates only four of those five. We can address this objection by noting that, since sin(Tau) = 0, we were already there:
e^(i*tau) = 1 + 0
This formula, without rearrangement, actually does relate the five most important numbers in mathematics: 0, 1, e, i, and Tau.
As mathematician Bob Palais notes in his delightful article “Pi Is Wrong!”, Pi is wrong. It’s time to set things right. (More info).
Most common question in response to this argument:
Are you serious?
Of course. I mean, I’m having fun with this, and the tone is occasionally lighthearted, but there is a serious purpose. Setting the circle constant equal to the circumference over the diameter is an awkward and confusing convention. Although I would love to see mathematicians change their ways, I’m not particularly worried about them; they can take care of themselves. It is the neophytes I am most worried about, for they take the brunt of the damage: as noted in Section 2.1,Pi is a pedagogical disaster. Try explaining to a twelve-year-old (or to a thirty-year-old) why the angle measure for an eighth of a circle—one slice of pizza—is Pi/8. Wait, I meant Pi/4. See what I mean? It’s madness—sheer, unadulterated madness.
The pirates are coming. At this point, there's no stopping them.
Therir weapons have evolved over time. I can see them riding their bloodthirsty kangaroos, screaming in excitement.
to/etc/hosts was of no use. Using OpenDNS did not help. Probably back home, by having complete control over my internet connection, I could get around it somehow, but from here all I could do to make it work was to use a free online proxy (name yours, I used http://www.youtubeproxy.ws/ for the sake of the example). The Italian blogosphere reports that Tor works as well, but this is a much easier and faster solution IMHO, which does not require additional software installation.
As I wrote on the coverage of the event, this will only help strengthen the popularity of the torrent community and stimulate ways to circumvent government censorships. Italian politicians are generally very ignorant about internet-related topics, and this case makes no exception.
I can still remember when colombo-bt, the biggest Italian torrent tracker, was shut down by the police, the replacement page was made with front page....
At least the article about the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 is present,
including the picture of "the man with the bags" (the Tank Man/the Unknown Rebel)
The question is not that simple. Google earned a "(mod) +1 not evil" to the eyes of the community, or at least to a certain extend of it. See, by not releasing the code you don't actually "support Linux", or whatever OS. You support the specific OS in which you compiled the binaries, period.
It's the same problem with companies such as Skype. Yes, they do release a Linux/Windows/Mac version, but by not releasing the code people like me, who run on a powerpc are just out of the games. Just becasue we are a minority does that mean that we are not allowed to have that piece of software? Is this discrimination really justified for the sake of the "precious source code" that the company wrote?
In the end these "good companies" don't really listen to the community most of the times, only when they like to. Google summer code is cool, but what about the Skype support for powerpc, or *BSD, SPARC, why not? The answer in the forum was:
We have received quite a lot of requests for this. And even Torvalds himself runs it on G5 Wink so yes, don't hold your breath, but it might happen sometime.
Google is acting the same way. Picasa rus through WINE, which only works on x86. Let us not talk about Macromedia before I beat the **** out of them...
sentio sentire sensi sensum [to feel , perceive; to experience, feel the force of a thing; to realize a truth; to hold an opinion, judge, suppose]; legal, [to decide, to vote]. N. pl. of partic. as subst. sensa -orum, [thoughts, sentiments].
It roughly translates: "I think some people in togas are plotting against me"
Senito (to my knowledge) does not exist, it may be confused with senatus -us (or -i) , m. [a council of elders, the Senate];'senatus (senati) consultum', [a formal resolution of the senate]., which changes completely the significance of the sentence, given that you could make a sense out of a phrase with no first person verb.
Probably one could say: "Some people in the senate are plotting against me.", but it makes no real sense in latin anyways.
You don't have permission to access/installation/index.php on this server. Apache/2.0.55 (Trustix Secure Linux/Linux) PHP/4.4.2 Server at www.trustix.net Port 80
WOW! Now that is secure.
At least you can reach this site, which looks awfully commercial-style with no community.
All I can say is that this is a major loss of culture, a step forward for technology and a step backwards for culture.
Is it really so difficult to undertand that we have to find some sort of equilibrium in the development of our daylife?
It is a good thing that they are inserting new computers in libraries, since the methods of lerning and communicatinga are develping rapidly, but we don't ahve to forget the importance of the books.
The most appropriate solution is to have a parallel work of both books and computer, technology and tradition. That is because now thay are two mutually inclusinve elements, which menas that one cannot have an acceptable knowloge without both of them together.
Just when you think that we are evolving, you see that truly we are declining.
SuSe uses the Red Hat Package Manager, Debian uses the apt-get.
What I am saying is that it is easier to find out on the news that SuSe was installed in a large system
Check these out, you'll notice that in the long run Debian is about projects based on it and communities, SuSe is about business with goverments, schools, companies..
Whoever modded you flamebait should be hit with a large fish.
Well, thanks. I was starting to think that my contribution were not appropriate, even though I thought that I was not off-topic.
It is pleasant to hear, though I do realize I should not have done these typing mistakes of mine, next time I will double check the post with the preview.
I guess the point here is that instead of having a solid Debian or a powerful Gentoo GNU/Linux, institution, companies, schools, prefer to have technical assistance and a commercial product in general, which will then be open source.
Do not forget that together with the SuSe package (that I do not really like myself) it comes a very well organized guide oriented for that distribution in particular, plus they have a phone number to call if they want professional help.
On the other hand, if the system adminnistrator was good enough to do everything in his own, he could have install e Debian through the whole netowrk, asking help to the community when needed.
But that doesn't happen often, so you get these commercial packages.
I do not think that this is a problem, as long as it is Linux and not some creepy linux-similar distribution with tons of closed source application is fine to me.
This robot is a nice toy, but we all know that what matters in music is not the execution, which anybody with some training is able to do after a while.
What really matters is the composition, and
No time for big-words effect, useless invention a part from its technical achievement.
Slashdot is an open window to the World as it is, without any filter/check/censorship, which has its own good aspects, but in the end it is NOT a reliable source of information, well organized and control by people who have the authority to check the source of information.
Isn't it a bit strange that these events oftne take place during either a G8 summit or some other important discussion among the heads of the countries?
And I am not simply referring to what is the political meaning of these disgraceful attacks, but also they distract us from the big picture.
The journalists are already doing their job of creating that filter of fear among the people making up numbers of uncertain deaths, trying to make the whole event look even worse than it already is.
I hope this terrible act of non-civilization will not take our attention away from what the content of the G8 summit will be.
I remember last year in Genova, people were much more interested in discussing the violence on the streets and the police behavior that nobody knew what actually was said during the G8 itself.
I suggest everyone to use a reliable source of information, such as wikipedia, as it was done in the above article.
However, I noticed that for some elite (like my sister) are habituated to use the correct form in their proper way since they are chilndren, so that it becomes natural to ameliorate their skills as writers and as orators.
It's a fairly simple construct, but I've seen English teachers get it wrong, and worse, teach the exact opposite.
I myself, am not an English native speaker. Even so, I never found it difficult to use this particular type of sentence in its correct form, though I realize that the mistakes I make are not sporadic or only driven by not enough accuracy in writing, I do realize that often the periphrasis that I formulate do not make real sense in the English language. That is mainly because I occasionally still reason in my mother language and then translate the concept into English.
But a part from that, I try to make myself understandable, especially when I am writing documentation or technical texts.
One of the rules of hacking is, if I recall correctly, to master your mother language, as well as at least a programming language, so I think we should all try to do so.
Slashdot Mirror
The summary is misleading, and it seems that there is much confusion and emotion regarding this issue.
Let's look at the facts, shall we?
54,79% of Italians voted. Of those, 94,05% voted against nuclear energy.
I can't undertand why, but some slashdotters, despite overwhelming evidence, seem to believe that nuclear power is the only way to solve global warming, that it actually provides a considerable amount of relatively safe and clean energy, and that's it's the future. All of these propositions are wrong, based on the scientific data available.
Nuclear power provides about 6% of the world's energy, whereas about 19% of global final energy consumption comes from renewables.
A study published in July 2010 by John O. Blackburn and Sam Cunningham from Duke University details how electricity from new solar installations is now cheaper than electricity from proposed new nuclear plants.
An analysis published in Energy Policy by researchers from Stanford University and the University of California-Davis and authored by Mark Z. Jacobson and UC-Davis researcher Mark A. Delucchi states: "There are no technological or economic barriers to converting the entire world to clean, renewable energy sources", and to power 100 percent of the world for all purposes from wind, water and solar resources, the footprint needed is about 0.4 percent of the world's land (mostly solar footprint) and the spacing between installations is another 0.6 percent of the world's land (mostly wind-turbine spacing). And we can do it before 2050, Jacobson said.
Another analysis shows how solar will become the cheapest source of energy of all, even chapter than coal, in justa a few years, while nuclear costs will keep rising.
From TFA:
And here's the paper from The Rocky Mountain Institute.
So, if you are still blinded by your emotional attachment to nuclear and can't seem to reason straight, think about this:
In any case, a robot will not survive 15 minutes in a classroom with average European (or american for that matter) kids. I know what my daughter will do. If she cannot get her hands on a screwdriver she will craft herself a replacement out of whatever she can find and start disassembling the thing until she has figured out what makes it tick or it is so dead that she will lose interest. That is probably still better than the reaction of her brother who would simply use it for target practice.
However this may be true for some children, today, you fail to recognise the cultural importance of this phenomenon. It is ultimately how we educate our children and the environment they live in that determines what they do. In TFA is described how these robotic teachers will be in support of their human counterparts, they will not substitute them. It is a necessary step, because on one hand AIs need need to develop significantly if they want to handle complex situations on the spot (children behaviour); on the other hand, the cultural spirit of the society needs to upgrade to the point that children will be interested in learning this way. Not to mention the (manly) nonsensical fear that people display in regards to robots, especially in the "Western countries".
It's a double process, technology and culture have to grow together, symbiotically. Let's not rush it, but let's not ignore the immense help that these possibilities could bring. A robot can explain something to a child 20 times over, in different ways, accessing databases of information beyond human capabilities, without getting pissed, bored, or angry. Children can learn without feeling stupid or ashamed if they make mistakes. Robotic teachers do not try to impose religious dogmas and do not abuse of children, unless they are specifically programmed to do so.
The problem is not the robots, but how they are programmed and tested. I propose that the software they run on must be publicly accessible, free and open source, as well as the database they feed from.
I would go for Euler's equation, but using Tau instead of Pi.
e^(i*tau) = 1
At this point, the expositor usually makes some grandiose statement about how Euler’s identity relates 0, 1, e, i, and Pi —sometimes called the “five most important numbers in mathematics”. Alert readers might then complain that, because it’s missing 0, Euler’s identity with Tau relates only four of those five. We can address this objection by noting that, since sin(Tau) = 0, we were already there:
e^(i*tau) = 1 + 0
This formula, without rearrangement, actually does relate the five most important numbers in mathematics: 0, 1, e, i, and Tau.
As mathematician Bob Palais notes in his delightful article “Pi Is Wrong!”, Pi is wrong. It’s time to set things right. (More info).
Most common question in response to this argument:
Are you serious?
Of course. I mean, I’m having fun with this, and the tone is occasionally lighthearted, but there is a serious purpose. Setting the circle constant equal to the circumference over the diameter is an awkward and confusing convention. Although I would love to see mathematicians change their ways, I’m not particularly worried about them; they can take care of themselves. It is the neophytes I am most worried about, for they take the brunt of the damage: as noted in Section 2.1,Pi is a pedagogical disaster. Try explaining to a twelve-year-old (or to a thirty-year-old) why the angle measure for an eighth of a circle—one slice of pizza—is Pi/8. Wait, I meant Pi/4. See what I mean? It’s madness—sheer, unadulterated madness.
How about MPlayer and its various Grafical User Interfaces?
The pirates are coming. At this point, there's no stopping them.
Therir weapons have evolved over time. I can see them riding their bloodthirsty kangaroos, screaming in excitement.
Run. RUN!
I've been reading over this over the last days. Right now I'm on a free WiFi on a camping in Italy (yes, I do this even in vacation ^_^).
Here is the current situation. http://labaia.org/ was accessible yesterday night, currently http://thepiratebay.org/ http://labaia.org/ and even 83.140.176.200 try to point to localhost, so adding
to /etc/hosts was of no use. Using OpenDNS did not help. Probably back home, by having complete control over my internet connection, I could get around it somehow, but from here all I could do to make it work was to use a free online proxy (name yours, I used http://www.youtubeproxy.ws/ for the sake of the example). The Italian blogosphere reports that Tor works as well, but this is a much easier and faster solution IMHO, which does not require additional software installation.
As I wrote on the coverage of the event, this will only help strengthen the popularity of the torrent community and stimulate ways to circumvent government censorships. Italian politicians are generally very ignorant about internet-related topics, and this case makes no exception.
I can still remember when colombo-bt, the biggest Italian torrent tracker, was shut down by the police, the replacement page was made with front page....
At least the article about the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 is present, including the picture of "the man with the bags" (the Tank Man/the Unknown Rebel)
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%85%AD%E5%9B%9B%EThe question is not that simple. Google earned a "(mod) +1 not evil" to the eyes of the community, or at least to a certain extend of it. See, by not releasing the code you don't actually "support Linux", or whatever OS. You support the specific OS in which you compiled the binaries, period.
It's the same problem with companies such as Skype. Yes, they do release a Linux/Windows/Mac version, but by not releasing the code people like me, who run on a powerpc are just out of the games. Just becasue we are a minority does that mean that we are not allowed to have that piece of software? Is this discrimination really justified for the sake of the "precious source code" that the company wrote?
In the end these "good companies" don't really listen to the community most of the times, only when they like to. Google summer code is cool, but what about the Skype support for powerpc, or *BSD, SPARC, why not? The answer in the forum was:
Link http://forum.skype.com/viewtopic.php?t=4153&highli ght=powerpc
After two years, we are still waiting.
Google is acting the same way. Picasa rus through WINE, which only works on x86. Let us not talk about Macromedia before I beat the **** out of them...
[OT_forgive_me]
From your signature:
Senito aliquos togatos contra me conspirare
Should be:
Sentio aliquos togatos contra me conspirare
sentio sentire sensi sensum [to feel , perceive; to experience, feel the force of a thing; to realize a truth; to hold an opinion, judge, suppose]; legal, [to decide, to vote]. N. pl. of partic. as subst. sensa -orum, [thoughts, sentiments].
It roughly translates: "I think some people in togas are plotting against me"
Senito (to my knowledge) does not exist, it may be confused with senatus -us (or -i) , m. [a council of elders, the Senate];'senatus (senati) consultum', [a formal resolution of the senate]., which changes completely the significance of the sentence, given that you could make a sense out of a phrase with no first person verb.
Probably one could say: "Some people in the senate are plotting against me.", but it makes no real sense in latin anyways.
http://www.trustix.org/installation/index.php
http://www.trustix.net/
http://www.trustix.net/installation/index.php
WOW! Now that is secure.
At least you can reach this site, which looks awfully commercial-style with no community.
http://www.trustix.com/I'm sure someone else wrote it before, but I did not see it.
Since the site it's been slashdotted, check the article at ign
ArticleAll I can say is that this is a major loss of culture, a step forward for technology and a step backwards for culture.
Is it really so difficult to undertand that we have to find some sort of equilibrium in the development of our daylife?
It is a good thing that they are inserting new computers in libraries, since the methods of lerning and communicatinga are develping rapidly, but we don't ahve to forget the importance of the books.
The most appropriate solution is to have a parallel work of both books and computer, technology and tradition. That is because now thay are two mutually inclusinve elements, which menas that one cannot have an acceptable knowloge without both of them together.
Just when you think that we are evolving, you see that truly we are declining.
Shame
That is why Novell and red Hat are making millions of Euros and Dollars even though they are OSS
.XD
?????
SuSe uses the Red Hat Package Manager, Debian uses the apt-get.
What I am saying is that it is easier to find out on the news that SuSe was installed in a large system
Check these out, you'll notice that in the long run Debian is about projects based on it and communities, SuSe is about business with goverments, schools, companies..
Even though I personally think Debian is a better distro, there are seriuos reasons for which it is not commonly installed
Well, thanks. I was starting to think that my contribution were not appropriate, even though I thought that I was not off-topic.
It is pleasant to hear, though I do realize I should not have done these typing mistakes of mine, next time I will double check the post with the preview.
I guess the point here is that instead of having a solid Debian or a powerful Gentoo GNU/Linux, institution, companies, schools, prefer to have technical assistance and a commercial product in general, which will then be open source.
Do not forget that together with the SuSe package (that I do not really like myself) it comes a very well organized guide oriented for that distribution in particular, plus they have a phone number to call if they want professional help.
On the other hand, if the system adminnistrator was good enough to do everything in his own, he could have install e Debian through the whole netowrk, asking help to the community when needed. But that doesn't happen often, so you get these commercial packages.
I do not think that this is a problem, as long as it is Linux and not some creepy linux-similar distribution with tons of closed source application is fine to me.
RegardsThis robot is a nice toy, but we all know that what matters in music is not the execution, which anybody with some training is able to do after a while.
What really matters is the composition, and
No time for big-words effect, useless invention a part from its technical achievement.
I very much disagree with that.
Slashdot is an open window to the World as it is, without any filter/check/censorship, which has its own good aspects, but in the end it is NOT a reliable source of information, well organized and control by people who have the authority to check the source of information.
Slashot is idealistic, wiki is encyclopedic.
Isn't it a bit strange that these events oftne take place during either a G8 summit or some other important discussion among the heads of the countries?
And I am not simply referring to what is the political meaning of these disgraceful attacks, but also they distract us from the big picture.
The journalists are already doing their job of creating that filter of fear among the people making up numbers of uncertain deaths, trying to make the whole event look even worse than it already is.
I hope this terrible act of non-civilization will not take our attention away from what the content of the G8 summit will be.
I remember last year in Genova, people were much more interested in discussing the violence on the streets and the police behavior that nobody knew what actually was said during the G8 itself.
I suggest everyone to use a reliable source of information, such as wikipedia, as it was done in the above article.
That is indeed true for most of the people.
However, I noticed that for some elite (like my sister) are habituated to use the correct form in their proper way since they are chilndren, so that it becomes natural to ameliorate their skills as writers and as orators.
I myself, am not an English native speaker. Even so, I never found it difficult to use this particular type of sentence in its correct form, though I realize that the mistakes I make are not sporadic or only driven by not enough accuracy in writing, I do realize that often the periphrasis that I formulate do not make real sense in the English language. That is mainly because I occasionally still reason in my mother language and then translate the concept into English.
But a part from that, I try to make myself understandable, especially when I am writing documentation or technical texts.
One of the rules of hacking is, if I recall correctly, to master your mother language, as well as at least a programming language, so I think we should all try to do so.