Nothing can be built to withstand anything. However, the cleanest energy around (wind power) still requires some auxiliary source of power for low-wind periods, and an entirely different distribution infrastructure. What auxiliary power do you have in mind? The candidates right now are basically fossil fuels or nuclear power sources; hydroelectric is somewhat useful but there is not enough water pressure to go around.
If it takes a combination of an extremely rare high-magnitude earthquake and a tsunami to create the sort of situation that Japan is facing, that is not so bad. It is made better with newer reactor designs, which feature passive safely (no need for a backup generator to keep the coolant flowing). I'll take a 4th generation nuclear plant in my backyard long before coal or natural gas.
That was the problem in Japan: one event was able to take out locally-generated power (because the reactors scrammed), grid power and backup generators
As I understand, it took two events to do that: the earthquake and the tsunami. It also took an earthquake that was extremely rare in terms of the power of the quake. Really, while there are some questions about the way that the Japanese government handled the situation, I would not assign any blame to the engineering of the reactor. Nothing can be built to withstand anything.
Thorium cycle systems, given how much more Thorium we can obtain than Uranium
Passively safe reactors e.g. pebble beds, which do not require the sort of active cooling systems that current nuclear reactors require
Nuclear power is not inherently bad, and in terms of the impact on the environment, nuclear power is a whole lot better than coal. Yes, we need cheap power in the world -- when oil is not as plentiful, we are going to need ways to power tractors or else people are going to starve to death. We are also going to need ways to create petroleum products without using crude oil i.e. to make fertilizers, plastics, medicines, etc. Anything else means watching billions of people die. Nuclear power is a good way to augment things like wind and hydroelectric power, especially with reactor designs that can suffer complete failures of their cooling systems without spewing radiation everywhere.
Funding for what, exactly? There is no reason journals need to print and bind paper copies (the only places you really see those is in the library of a research institution, and those places are entirely capable of binding things on their own if they need to), nor do we need journals to host archives of papers (which any big university is more than capable of doing). Journals do not pay for peer review, nor do journals fund research. So what money do journals need to secure?
He did not receive stock, he received stock options, which are contracts that allowed him to buy stock at a particular price. The particular options he received came with terms that differ from "standardized options," which is not uncommon when employers give options to their employees. One of the terms of the contract allowed the company to repurchase the stock, and leave him with zero net gain, which is what he is complaining about.
Had he read the contract, he would have seen that it referenced another document. He admits that he did not read the other document; I suspect that he did not read (or read but did not understand) the contract that he was signing. I might feel a little sympathy for him if he didn't have a history of working for a company for a year or so, then quitting and working for a different company; had he stuck with his job, he could have gotten the money. In 12 years, he has apparently signed up to work for nine different employers, which is excessive even by the standards of programmers (at least the programmers I have known, who generally stayed put for at least three years).
I doubt that anyone is bidding high enough to justify the cost of even a single semester's tuition. My guess is that these login credentials are either being obtained by some unauthorized means or that some undergrad whose parents are paying for his education is selling his login to get some extra money.
So universities can maintain microfilm archives in addition to providing electronic access. The question that lingers in my mind is, why do we still have academic publishers making boatloads of money selling access to journals, when there is no longer any real reason for those publishers to exist?
You know that many of the researchers who participate in the peer review process are volunteers, right? Peer review is important enough to research that researchers will often do it for the greater good; it is also looks pretty good on a CV to be invited to review articles for a prestigious journal.
ripping off the digital copy that some company has made available online at its own expense?
Expenses that are paid for by universities without regard to who access the paper. These companies are not suffering because someone accesses these papers; their income is as close to guaranteed as is conceivable.
don't be surprised if the online publishers close up shop
When they have such a cozy arrangement with researchers, why would they close up shop? These journals are not paying for the papers they host, they are not paying the reviewers (in many cases the reviewers are volunteers) and they are getting enormous amounts of money from the subscription fees that research institutions pay. There would be no reason for the publishers to close shop, when they are not losing money.
awesome locations where you can get the information more or less for free
You mean a "university." Or perhaps the library system of a major city. Or even a community college, as many community colleges do pay for subscriptions to prominent journals. These publishers get money from a lot of places, and the revenue stream is not going to go away until someone establishes a better system for making articles available to the world.
Major universities have a lot of computers available; it would not take a tremendous effort for those universities to host archives of peer-reviewed papers, paid for with tuition dollars. If tuition dollars can be spent replanting the grass on Ivy League campuses year after year (yes, I have seen numerous schools simply tear up old grass and replant it during the summer), why can't tuition dollars be spent making knowledge available to the world? Peer review is often done by volunteers, and so the only justification journals have for their ludicrous fees is that they host electronic copies of the papers (yes they also bind paper copies sometimes; however, this is something that could just as easily be done by any university that hosts an archive).
Generally I have seen lower prices (around $25/paper) but otherwise I agree. It is disgraceful that publishers are doing this, especially considering the fact that a lot of the researchers who participate in the peer review process -- the whole point of having journals -- are volunteers who never see a penny of the proceeds. If we were still publishing journals by printing them, the fee might make sense, but in an age of electronic access there is absolutely no reason for these prices, other than greed on the part of people who contribute nothing to the research.
As an alternative, I would propose that universities host archives of peer reviewed papers, and grant access to everyone. Put those tuition dollars to something worthwhile, instead of replanting the grass every year.
He is not taking Skype's side; this is not a "us or them" issue. The point is that we have no reason to feel any sympathy for this particular employee, who did not bother to read the terms of the contract that he signed, and jumped ship at nine other companies before signing up to work for Skype. He is whining about how their contract included a clause that the other contracts did not, and how it is unfair for him to be expected to actually read what he signed.
If you're really going to read the entire stack of morgage papers, you're going to need a few days
Heaven forbid someone take a few days to read and understand the terms of such a large loan and purchase. It's not like people spend a large fraction of their lives repaying a mortgage. It's not like people might have to deal with the mortgage rate changing on them a few years down the line.
And there's no chance in hell you're going to catch anything shady like the above unless you have a lawyer there the entire time, and you can bet that's going to be an expensive few days.
We're not talking about buying a laptop, we are talking about buying a house. Yes, I would want to have a lawyer look over the contract before I agree to repay hundreds of thousands of dollars to the bank.
the offending bit of legalese wasn't even in the document he signed
So he should have either asked for the document that the contract referenced.
He couldn't possibly have caught that
Yes he could have, if he had actually read what he was signing. He did not read it, he just assumed that he could work at Skype for a year or so and then jump ship, like he had done nine times beforehand. Why are we feeling sorry for this guy?
You RTFA; he didn't bother to read the agreement. He received options under particular terms; why should we feel sorry that he didn't read those terms before agreeing to them?
No, according to TFA the terms of the options were spelled out in a document that the guy had not read. Why am I supposed to feel sorry for someone who failed to read and understand the terms of the contract that he signed? Just because some companies offer options contracts that work in the manner you expect does not mean that every company does.
TFS makes it seem as though this guy was supposed to receive stock but did not. That is not true. The guy received options, under specific terms which he neglected to read.
This is not an example of working for shares of stock, but rather of working for stock options. Options contracts work differently from shares of stock. Why is this such a big deal? Are people just now waking up to the reality that times have changed, and that companies don't give them actual shares of stock anymore?
Especially since we are talking about law enforcement agencies. These are people who are given the legal authority to deprive other people of their rights -- that is the last group of people that I want operating in secret.
Anyone who signs up for that kind of work (drug enforcement) knows they are taking on that kind of risk. If that is not something that society wants -- if we don't want to put families in danger as part of the "war on drugs" -- the answer is to reevaluate our policy on drugs, not to spend even more energy trying to keep the identities of our drug enforcement personnel secret.
Pot smoke contains most of the same carcinogens as regular tobacco smoke.
Except that marijuana smoke does not contain any Tobacco-specific nitrosamines, and the evidence so far is that marijuana smokers are not more likely to develop cancer than non-smokers. That aside, smoking is not the only means by which marijuana is consumed, and non-smoking methods of use appear to have no permanent effects (as opposed to non-smoking methods of using tobacco, which still increase the risk of cancer).
You would be much more accurate to say that: "Marijuana is no more dangerous than alcohol or tobacco."
Actually, it is significantly less dangerous, to the point where we can only guess at what the lethal dosage is (since there are no recorded cases of someone overdosing). There is scant evidence of long term health effects following the cessation of marijuana use. THC and CBD also have neuroprotective properties, which may actually make marijuana use somewhat beneficial (more research needs to be done here).
100% safe? Nothing is 100% safe. You could have an unknown allergy to marijuana, or there may be some kind of mutation in a particular crop that causes a danger. Or your government might have laced your marijuana with poison:
cocaine, yeah, the upper middle class white mans drug. There some mighty racism right there.
You forget that cocaine was made illegal nearly a century ago. Times have changed. Here is what the New York Times was saying about cocaine circa 1914:
I can only conclude that pot smokers are too dumb to get pot legalized.
It is not just about pot smokers. Anyone who does not want to live in a society where law enforcement agencies are paramilitary forces, where property is appraised before the property owner is arrested, and where the government is using popular TV shows as a means of spreading propaganda should support ending the war on drugs. Anyone who thinks that it is a problem for the DEA to have the power to declare a drug illegal without congressional action, or for our nuclear command and control system to be used to track drug smugglers should support ending the war on drugs.
Unfortunately, we have been engaged in the war on drugs for so long that nobody can even remember that there was a time when things were not this way.
Slashdot Mirror
Nothing can be built to withstand anything. However, the cleanest energy around (wind power) still requires some auxiliary source of power for low-wind periods, and an entirely different distribution infrastructure. What auxiliary power do you have in mind? The candidates right now are basically fossil fuels or nuclear power sources; hydroelectric is somewhat useful but there is not enough water pressure to go around.
If it takes a combination of an extremely rare high-magnitude earthquake and a tsunami to create the sort of situation that Japan is facing, that is not so bad. It is made better with newer reactor designs, which feature passive safely (no need for a backup generator to keep the coolant flowing). I'll take a 4th generation nuclear plant in my backyard long before coal or natural gas.
That was the problem in Japan: one event was able to take out locally-generated power (because the reactors scrammed), grid power and backup generators
As I understand, it took two events to do that: the earthquake and the tsunami. It also took an earthquake that was extremely rare in terms of the power of the quake. Really, while there are some questions about the way that the Japanese government handled the situation, I would not assign any blame to the engineering of the reactor. Nothing can be built to withstand anything.
Nuclear power is not inherently bad, and in terms of the impact on the environment, nuclear power is a whole lot better than coal. Yes, we need cheap power in the world -- when oil is not as plentiful, we are going to need ways to power tractors or else people are going to starve to death. We are also going to need ways to create petroleum products without using crude oil i.e. to make fertilizers, plastics, medicines, etc. Anything else means watching billions of people die. Nuclear power is a good way to augment things like wind and hydroelectric power, especially with reactor designs that can suffer complete failures of their cooling systems without spewing radiation everywhere.
journals need to secure their funding
Funding for what, exactly? There is no reason journals need to print and bind paper copies (the only places you really see those is in the library of a research institution, and those places are entirely capable of binding things on their own if they need to), nor do we need journals to host archives of papers (which any big university is more than capable of doing). Journals do not pay for peer review, nor do journals fund research. So what money do journals need to secure?
He did not receive stock, he received stock options, which are contracts that allowed him to buy stock at a particular price. The particular options he received came with terms that differ from "standardized options," which is not uncommon when employers give options to their employees. One of the terms of the contract allowed the company to repurchase the stock, and leave him with zero net gain, which is what he is complaining about.
Had he read the contract, he would have seen that it referenced another document. He admits that he did not read the other document; I suspect that he did not read (or read but did not understand) the contract that he was signing. I might feel a little sympathy for him if he didn't have a history of working for a company for a year or so, then quitting and working for a different company; had he stuck with his job, he could have gotten the money. In 12 years, he has apparently signed up to work for nine different employers, which is excessive even by the standards of programmers (at least the programmers I have known, who generally stayed put for at least three years).
I doubt that anyone is bidding high enough to justify the cost of even a single semester's tuition. My guess is that these login credentials are either being obtained by some unauthorized means or that some undergrad whose parents are paying for his education is selling his login to get some extra money.
So universities can maintain microfilm archives in addition to providing electronic access. The question that lingers in my mind is, why do we still have academic publishers making boatloads of money selling access to journals, when there is no longer any real reason for those publishers to exist?
You know that many of the researchers who participate in the peer review process are volunteers, right? Peer review is important enough to research that researchers will often do it for the greater good; it is also looks pretty good on a CV to be invited to review articles for a prestigious journal.
ripping off the digital copy that some company has made available online at its own expense?
Expenses that are paid for by universities without regard to who access the paper. These companies are not suffering because someone accesses these papers; their income is as close to guaranteed as is conceivable.
don't be surprised if the online publishers close up shop
When they have such a cozy arrangement with researchers, why would they close up shop? These journals are not paying for the papers they host, they are not paying the reviewers (in many cases the reviewers are volunteers) and they are getting enormous amounts of money from the subscription fees that research institutions pay. There would be no reason for the publishers to close shop, when they are not losing money.
awesome locations where you can get the information more or less for free
You mean a "university." Or perhaps the library system of a major city. Or even a community college, as many community colleges do pay for subscriptions to prominent journals. These publishers get money from a lot of places, and the revenue stream is not going to go away until someone establishes a better system for making articles available to the world.
Major universities have a lot of computers available; it would not take a tremendous effort for those universities to host archives of peer-reviewed papers, paid for with tuition dollars. If tuition dollars can be spent replanting the grass on Ivy League campuses year after year (yes, I have seen numerous schools simply tear up old grass and replant it during the summer), why can't tuition dollars be spent making knowledge available to the world? Peer review is often done by volunteers, and so the only justification journals have for their ludicrous fees is that they host electronic copies of the papers (yes they also bind paper copies sometimes; however, this is something that could just as easily be done by any university that hosts an archive).
Generally I have seen lower prices (around $25/paper) but otherwise I agree. It is disgraceful that publishers are doing this, especially considering the fact that a lot of the researchers who participate in the peer review process -- the whole point of having journals -- are volunteers who never see a penny of the proceeds. If we were still publishing journals by printing them, the fee might make sense, but in an age of electronic access there is absolutely no reason for these prices, other than greed on the part of people who contribute nothing to the research.
As an alternative, I would propose that universities host archives of peer reviewed papers, and grant access to everyone. Put those tuition dollars to something worthwhile, instead of replanting the grass every year.
No, not "or no job." The guy had a job before he decided to work for Skype.
He is not taking Skype's side; this is not a "us or them" issue. The point is that we have no reason to feel any sympathy for this particular employee, who did not bother to read the terms of the contract that he signed, and jumped ship at nine other companies before signing up to work for Skype. He is whining about how their contract included a clause that the other contracts did not, and how it is unfair for him to be expected to actually read what he signed.
If you're really going to read the entire stack of morgage papers, you're going to need a few days
Heaven forbid someone take a few days to read and understand the terms of such a large loan and purchase. It's not like people spend a large fraction of their lives repaying a mortgage. It's not like people might have to deal with the mortgage rate changing on them a few years down the line.
And there's no chance in hell you're going to catch anything shady like the above unless you have a lawyer there the entire time, and you can bet that's going to be an expensive few days.
We're not talking about buying a laptop, we are talking about buying a house. Yes, I would want to have a lawyer look over the contract before I agree to repay hundreds of thousands of dollars to the bank.
the offending bit of legalese wasn't even in the document he signed
So he should have either asked for the document that the contract referenced.
He couldn't possibly have caught that
Yes he could have, if he had actually read what he was signing. He did not read it, he just assumed that he could work at Skype for a year or so and then jump ship, like he had done nine times beforehand. Why are we feeling sorry for this guy?
You RTFA; he didn't bother to read the agreement. He received options under particular terms; why should we feel sorry that he didn't read those terms before agreeing to them?
No, according to TFA the terms of the options were spelled out in a document that the guy had not read. Why am I supposed to feel sorry for someone who failed to read and understand the terms of the contract that he signed? Just because some companies offer options contracts that work in the manner you expect does not mean that every company does.
TFS makes it seem as though this guy was supposed to receive stock but did not. That is not true. The guy received options, under specific terms which he neglected to read.
This is not an example of working for shares of stock, but rather of working for stock options. Options contracts work differently from shares of stock. Why is this such a big deal? Are people just now waking up to the reality that times have changed, and that companies don't give them actual shares of stock anymore?
Perhaps the lulzsec members are US citizens, and they are sick of watching the police operate in secrecy?
Especially since we are talking about law enforcement agencies. These are people who are given the legal authority to deprive other people of their rights -- that is the last group of people that I want operating in secret.
Anyone who signs up for that kind of work (drug enforcement) knows they are taking on that kind of risk. If that is not something that society wants -- if we don't want to put families in danger as part of the "war on drugs" -- the answer is to reevaluate our policy on drugs, not to spend even more energy trying to keep the identities of our drug enforcement personnel secret.
Pot smoke contains most of the same carcinogens as regular tobacco smoke.
Except that marijuana smoke does not contain any Tobacco-specific nitrosamines, and the evidence so far is that marijuana smokers are not more likely to develop cancer than non-smokers. That aside, smoking is not the only means by which marijuana is consumed, and non-smoking methods of use appear to have no permanent effects (as opposed to non-smoking methods of using tobacco, which still increase the risk of cancer).
You would be much more accurate to say that: "Marijuana is no more dangerous than alcohol or tobacco."
Actually, it is significantly less dangerous, to the point where we can only guess at what the lethal dosage is (since there are no recorded cases of someone overdosing). There is scant evidence of long term health effects following the cessation of marijuana use. THC and CBD also have neuroprotective properties, which may actually make marijuana use somewhat beneficial (more research needs to be done here).
100% safe? Nothing is 100% safe. You could have an unknown allergy to marijuana, or there may be some kind of mutation in a particular crop that causes a danger. Or your government might have laced your marijuana with poison:
http://www.cannabisculture.com/v2/articles/1767.html
Many drugs can cause immediate addiction
[citation needed]
cocaine, yeah, the upper middle class white mans drug. There some mighty racism right there.
You forget that cocaine was made illegal nearly a century ago. Times have changed. Here is what the New York Times was saying about cocaine circa 1914:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60B14F7345F13738DDDA10894DA405B848DF1D3
I can only conclude that pot smokers are too dumb to get pot legalized.
It is not just about pot smokers. Anyone who does not want to live in a society where law enforcement agencies are paramilitary forces, where property is appraised before the property owner is arrested, and where the government is using popular TV shows as a means of spreading propaganda should support ending the war on drugs. Anyone who thinks that it is a problem for the DEA to have the power to declare a drug illegal without congressional action, or for our nuclear command and control system to be used to track drug smugglers should support ending the war on drugs.
Unfortunately, we have been engaged in the war on drugs for so long that nobody can even remember that there was a time when things were not this way.