Nuclear is scarier in the same way that people are more afraid of airplane crashes then car crashes. It's the big spectacular events that scare us the most, even if they are extremely rare. Nuclear also has a real public relations problem. You can't tour a plant. You might even get detained by police for taking a picture of one. The whole issue of what to do with the waste hasn't been worked out (sure it's mostly politics but the fact is it hasn't been taken care of). The average person doesn't have a Geiger counter so it's impossible to know if they are leaking radiation or not. It also doesn't help that in most countries environmental regulation is handled by one department and nuclear power is handled by a separate often very secretive branch. If nuke plants held once a month community tours with free BBQ hamburgers and let people buy a subsidized Geiger counter on their way out through the gift shop things might be different.

The funny thing is that when nuclear power was first being developed in the 1950s there was talk of unmetered billing. The electricity from nuclear would be so cheap that you would just be charged a flat rate each month.

Slightly off topic. We've all heard how as soon as fusion is developed it will solve all our energy problems but is it going to be any better? I've heard the design of a fusion reactor will be very similar to a fission reactor. There will be a nuclear core that generates heat and drives steam turbines. A cement containment building to contain any leaks or explosions. The core will be radioactive so you need specially trained workers and procedures. From a cost/operating standpoint it sounds a lot like a fission plant.

I should mention there are a few big pluses to fusion though.

• The containment vessel becomes much more radioactive then fission waste. However it will only take about 200 years to decay to safe levels making finding a safe disposal site easier
• An radiation that escapes from the plant should decay to background levels by the time it reaches the fence around the perimeter of the plant
• Uranium fuel currently accounts for about 30% of the cost of running a fission plant. So there is that savings. Although until a fusion plant is actually built we won't know if there are any additional costs that fission didn't have

At the moment it seems interstellar travel will require humans to live onboard a space ship for a very very long time. A good baby step might be to develop manufacturing technology that can create almost any part needed as well as recycle old parts. This technology could also be very useful on space stations as well as remote locations on earth.

A wise old businessman once told me how companies are like people. They are born with lots of energy and enthusiasm, go through growing pains and assuming they live long enough hit the prime of their life. Then, like people companies eventually grow old and get hardening of the arteries before finally dying.

They're not advocating abolishing IP. They propose getting rid of Patents and Copyright and replacing it with private contracts between a buyer and seller. With added laws to enforce fair use saying things like a seller can't stop a buyer from loaning or renting.

One interesting quote in the book

So whatever we do we should do it slowly and monitor the impact it is having.

You can't seriously be advocating abolishing corporations and IP. You probably take it for granted that the computer you're using was created by a bunch of investors who pooled millions of dollars through a corporation and funded the very expensive CPU development knowing that their investment would be protected by patents. They used very complicated software to design the CPU which is protected by copyright. They marketed the CPU under a brand name protected by a trademark so consumers wouldn't get ripped off buying a fake hunk of plastic.

Corporations, patents and copyright have a lot of problems (particularly in the US as laws have slowly changed over the last few decades) but getting rid of them is like getting rid of our legal system because our drug laws don't make sense.

For a properly functioning power plant Coal puts out about 100 times the radiation of Nuclear. However even if you live near a coal plant it will only up your anual background radiation does by about 0.5%.

The coal industry will put out about 101 PBq of radiation for the years 1937-2040. By comparision Fukushima has spit out about 130-150 PBq of iodine-131 and Chernobyl was about 1760 PBq.

Having said all that I think neither are great solutions and we should really be investing more money in alternatives.

Plant operators are more interested about their bottom line then safety. And that's the problem

Not sure about the Netherlands in particular but the general issue is that jury trials are considered unpredictable. A judge must write out a lengthy decision that logically explains the facts, applicable law and why the person is guilty. A jury is usually made up of people too stupid to get out of jury duty and are not required to explain their reasoning. This leads to the argument that only guilty people want a jury trial because they have nothing to lose. You can look at examples like the OJ Simpson trial or the Rodney King beating as examples where the defendants likely got away because of the jury.

Where I live in Canada a bench trial (trial by judge alone) is the norm but a defendant has the right to a jury trial in any case where the sentence is potentially greater then 5 years. The advantage is that the defendant gets a choice. Bench trial for a predictable logical judgement. Jury trial to prevent tyranny and unjust laws by the state. Downside is guilty defendants can charm or confuse a jury into an acquittal.

Don't worry. Just as soon as the next "pro business" administration gets into office Google won't have to worry about these left wing communist job killing audits anymore.

Google seems to be going through the same pattern as a lot of other high tech juggernauts. They invent one or two hit products that turn them into a household name. Unfortunately for them (lucky for a competitive market) despite having mountains of cash corporate bureaucracy sets in and they never really get much else going.

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Slightly off topic but it seems like these giant high tech companies tend to be bad stock investments. Initially they seem good because they have explosive revenue growth and a huge pile of cash saved for a rainy day. However, like all companies they invariably jump the shark and then burn through their cash reserves. Having, payed out little if anything in dividends. It seems like you buy tech stocks in the hopes of passing it on to a greater fool.
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If this is true then wouldn't it mean that IPv6 won't get adopted until 2018? 20 years after the original RFC was published.

I personally think the problem is that compatibility with IPv4 seems like it was an afterthought. The designers of IPv6 should have designed the system so that individual computers/routers/networks could be upgraded independently of each other in much the same way you can easily upgrade your network from 100mb to GigE.

The actual article seems like a troll as it only reports a couple of snipits. Here's a better one with the full quote I found via google. The Pope was actually talking about the way modern media reports the news.

Use a Speed Cushion. You can also buy prefab rubber ones that just need to be bolted down to a street.