These were just conversation. I have no idea whether NDAs applied or anything. I don't want to get anyone in trouble. But, yeah, the guy who told me about the hydrology said that the first study didn't consider the effects of shear or of water leaching up. Apparently it was a strait static analysis of the statistics of water getting in and out of the storage area based on its current configuration and gravity.

Here's a tiny tip of the iceberg of design work on Yucca mountain: http://www.desertspace.org/wwwroot/warning_sign/index.html. All I can say is that there was money available to build granite statues and icons of demons or whatever might scare the shit out of people. I thought it was a REALLY GREAT idea given a 10,000 year timeframe.

Sorry, I'm not invested enough to get clearance from friends and relations to name them.

1. A friend of mine was on a team that was tasked with confirming the first hydrology study of Yucca Mountain that was used to select it for nuclear waste storage. Their results showed significant risk to the water table over the 10,000 year use period. Their results were tables and another confirmation study was done that looked remarkably like the first study.

2. A relative of mine works at WED - Disney's design firm. He was asked to bid on a project for some branch of the government; I think it was the Department of Energy. The project was to come up with a combination of sculture and architecture for Yucca Mountain that was so primordially frightening that it would keep humans away for 10,000 years even if they couldn't read warning and no matter what culture had evolved.

Just some fun data points for my fellow /. community members.

No he's not. He's just saying that the defaults are there for not technical people. That's not a criticism. Someone's not a "mouth breathing moron" just because they aren't capable of managing a rooted smart phone!

This was really insightful. Anyone got mod points?

The absence of a MicroSD slot is a big signal that this device is meant to drive more usage of online storage. It's a portal into GoogleDrive just as Amazon's products are portals into their storefront and storage. The devices are beautiful and they have enough storage available to strike a balance. I, for one, am more tolerant and trusting of Google than of phone carriers (which isn't saying much). We have all kinds of options for open hardware. This isn't totally open, it's a relatively fair balance which is to be expected from Google.

My company, Otixo.com, was created to give people (like iPad users) more freedom in situations like this by using WebDAV. It doesn't replace the MicroSD slot but at least it gives you the choice of any storage provider including any server with FTP or WebDAV....

I'm looking at the Nexus 4 to replace my aging HTC Inspire from AT&T. If I choose it, it will be a hell of a lot more open than what I've got.

I'm not much of a believer in regulating ANY drugs. If people want to use these types of drugs to enhance their performance, that's their prerogative. The least risk is that in order to continue to advance at the pace they now find acceptable they will need to keep paying for the drug. There are obviously greater risks given that knowledge is not perfect and taking drugs on a regular basis tends to have side effects and interactions that don't come out in clinical trials.

This is a classic risk-reward scenario. People should be free to take their risks and their rewards.

At first I was shocked by parents talking about not pushing their kids to know difficult subject and thought it was a bad idea. I've changed my mind. PLEASE, let your kids off easy. I'll keep a fire under my kid and she can then smoke your kids for her entire adult life!!

Again, PLEASE go easy on your kids. They deserve better than to be forced to do ANYTHING they don't want to do. Oh, one more thing though.... Please vote for more cops and prisons.

They didn't bid! It was a No-Bid contract negotiated behind closed doors. The only other contractor involved was Bechtel and they weren't bidding. In fact, nobody to date has disclosed what their involvement in the process was. The Iraq war took our focus off Tora Bora where we had Al Queda and Bin Laden pinned down. Saddam was an asshole but that doesn't change the fact that we went into Iraq for all the wrong reasons and at exactly the wrong time.

Tried starting with Slackware in 1996(?) - poked around half lost

Bought a gray box with Redhat at Fries Electronics in 1997(?)

Used RedHat for server and desktop stuff

Used a short-lived Linux distro from the Wordperfect guys on laptop - worked pretty good

Used Fedora for desktop on desk and laptop

Used CentOs for server stuff - still do for all but AWS where I use Ubuntu

Used Ubuntu from first version on until the obvious reason why so many people now use Mint ;)

Also used FreeBSD to poke around ZFS.

Actually, Zen is counted as a religion and it doesn't posit the existence of God. It recommends a set of precepts and encourages it practitioners to look to the phenomena they are experiencing and beyond it to a state void of that experience. There's plenty of evidence that the practice of Zen meditation among experienced practitioners alters their brain waves in ways that could objectively indicate that they are experiencing the states Zen claims are available. Unless you choose to claim that Zen is not a religion, I don't see how you get around it as the case that invalidates your assertion.

I think the core of the strategy is HTML5. The web hasn't disappeared in smartphone/tablet app onslaught. FF makes it trivial for developers to adapt HTML5 apps to phones (if you even have to). It let's the owners of these phones and pads get straight at value on the web in a way where it's nicely integrated with the phone. This is a move to serve people who DON'T WANT TO BUY APPS not people who don't want to buy expensive hardware.

"The debate raging in India parallels a similar one that has simmered in the United States for decades."

The debate in the US hasn't been going on "for decades." It's been going on for about one decade give or take a few years. It matters that it hasn't been going on "for decades" because it's essentially a result of scavenging science budgets for warfare and debt service and of the decline of US commitment to science as the global warming debate has soured Republican lawmakers on science in general.

Ultimately cloud storage itself is a commodity. In fact, it's a commodity that loses a LOT of value if its a walled garden. Microsoft will have to compete on the value that sits on top of that storage. Just like Google and Apple have to compete on that plain. There are a bunch of aggregators coming on the scene that are proving this out. I work for one. It's called Otixo.com and it pulls together 21 different services including Skydrive, GoogleDrive, DropBox, etc and WebDAV and FTP into one big online harddrive and WebDAV share.

We are really careful not to step on the toes of these providers so we try to identify what their value is beyond storage and enhance it or at least stay out of the way. Ultimately, SkyDrive makes it easy to collaborate with the Office Suite and to eventually store XBox stuff. Microsoft's value prop is still Office, Sharepoint, MSSQL & it's Analysis Services, .NET and XBox. I think it's hard for them to break out of that even when there are contenders beating up on it daily. SkyDrive is a path to greater presence in the cloud which they sorely need but it's not a strategy in and of itself and it won't save them.

What Microsoft has needed for at least the last 10 years is to build bridges to Linux and Apple. They needed to make it as easy as possible for all boats to float. It's probably too late for that now....

Why does Harvard Business Review always get credit for discussions and idea that people beat to death on Compuserve in the mid 90s?