Yep, that's exactly the point Lovelock makes in the quote, and it's why I make the distinction. You do realise that the founders of greenpeace were respected scientists, right? Lovelock was one of them, by the mid-90's every single one of the founders had left the organisation they founded in disgust. GP did mankind a great service in the 70's/80's by almost single handedly stopping atmospheric testing in my backyard. However during the late 80's political types had well and truly taken over the organisation and the founding scientists wanted nothing to do with their pseudo-science.

The original scientific evidence that plutonium from atmospheric tests was making it's way into the bones of Aussie children and sheep came from a CSIRO scientist in the late 50's, early 60's, he won his (national security) battle with the Australian authorities and published his findings long before the green movement got started.

Wow! That's mean. As a 40 year old myself, I've learnt a lot from my and other kids. I wonder whether you, Anonymous Coward, have enough life experience to back up your claims?

Correct, it's the indestructible requirement that doesn't scale well. A heavy "package" (AKA indestructible armour) for 5kg or 5g is pretty much the same thing.

Back up a bit, who's the "we"?

I recall seeing testing footage for the RTG in the Cassini probe, among other things the tests involved a large artillery gun and a steel wall a few feet thick. Cassini was particularly controversial because it made a 'sling shot' flyby of earth at a much greater speed than escape velocity. From the tests I saw in the doco decades ago the worst thing that could possibly happen with an RTG is that it falls from the sky directly onto someone's head. Far from being anti-nuke, I'm actually interested the idea of "pebble bed" reactors (materials research is what's needed there). I'm also in favour of "full life cycle" nuclear power as practised in some parts of the EU. I don't know of a -science based- environmentalist/hippie/greenie who thinks otherwise. I've held these views since the early 90's, I'm not alone either, James Lovelock and some other influential greenies expressed similar opinions in the early 2000's

I speak to you today as a scientist and as the originator of Gaia Theory, the earth's system science which describes a self regulating planet which keeps its temperature and its chemical composition always favourable for life. I care deeply about the natural world, but as a scientist I consider that the earth has now reached a state profoundly dangerous to all of us and to our civilisation. And this view is shared by scientists around the world. Unfortunately, governments, especially in Europe, appear to listen less to scientists than they do to Green political parties and to Green lobbies. Now, I am a green myself, so I know that these greens are well intentioned, but they understand people a lot better than they understand the earth, and consequently they recommend inappropriate remedies and action. Lovelock 2005.

Disclaimer: According to my parents I became a Hippie back in 1976. Like any other social group, "Hippies" in general are reasonable people if you stop insulting them and feeding them on bullshit.

I don't think you realise just how indestructible a nuclear battery is, the one on Cassini was designed to withstand a crash that might have occurred on it's slingshot flyby of earth (fortunately we didn't get to test that claim). Testing is done by firing the battery from an artillery gun directly into a solid steel wall several feet thick. What happened to Antares would have merely burnt the paint off the outside a nuclear battery. Basically the only way to get hurt by one of them is to be unlucky enough to be hit on the head with it.

Like the GP, I was also surprised to hear that a probe so far from Earth was solar powered, I wouldn't have thought there was enough light that far out even without the shadows. Sure it's an assumption but it's not baseless, previous deep space probes such as Cassini, pioneer, and voyager are all nuclear powered. Aside from that, who pissd in your fruit loops?

The things I've seen about 'design flaws' have usually been about it being counter to the unix tradition of small programs doing one thing and one thing well, which only ever was true for small cli programs used to manipulate strings of text. It's not so much a proper neckbeard criticism, just some regurgitated nonsense that people will repeat because they've seen it modded to +5, insightful, and repetition is after all the surest way to seem insightful.

Broken shit is to be expected from software. Hopefully most of it gets fixed sooner now that so many have to use it.

A good place to start would be getting the numbers. Do you know any numbers about uptime of web-servers maintained by IT departments?

And that's why no criticism of systemd is to be taken seriously: it's always about how terrible it will become in the future, never about actual problems it might have today.

There's also an expectation of "common business practice".

This is the comment section of slashdot, WTF has the article got to do with anything?

The last lot to increase taxes on my smokes here in Oz were the right wing jesus freaks currently in power, $4/pack = ~20% increase. I'm a left wing smoker (both kinds), have been for ~40yrs, I started back in the 70's when the Marlborough Man was still cool and you could smoke anywhere except places that were likely to explode after striking a match.

-Engage Scottish Accent -
Just one ping! We don't want to be mobbed by hungry seals.

He also forced farmers to devote a certain percentage of their land to growing hemp for the navy.

I don't care about your history or my karma, I have taken your OP at face value. - No "we" don't need (blind) faith, your self-confessed need for it is merely a consequence of your lackluster search for evidence.