It might also be that the bombs we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were quite small by today's standards.

> Its average fatality rate has bee 0.04 deaths per TWh. Please elaborate with facts. Unless otherwise proven, I would tend to assume that you are using statistics for the operational cycle of a reactor. This probably does not include the extensive amount of fossil fuel used to excavate and process nuclear fuel, build the actual plants, nor to deal with the resulting waste. It also does not account for what happens when the current set of extremely old 35 year+ reactors need to be shut down permanently.

Dear Sir or Madam, I am afraid you are tilting at windmills and to some extent burying your head in the sand. A dam failure half a world away away from me does not have a significant probability of harming me or the ecosystem I depend upon. A major radioactive release half a world away from me does. At this point it is possible, though hopefully improbable, that I will be required to leave my home at some point in the future, even though I live thousands of miles away (you may dispute the chance of this, but the news remains ominous and certainties are hard to come by). All of this because of poor decisions made by corporate bureaucrats from a completely different country (over which my fellow citizens have absolutely no influence through voting) a couple decades ago. Perhaps you can see why I am extremely concerned. Holding the world to a standard set by a totalitarian government cutting enormous corners without benefit of oversight or design standards, in comparison with one of the most technologically and knowledgeable advanced countries and corporations supposedly under extremely strict regulations, is completely unfair. Obviously a bunch of idiots will harm far more people than those who make at least a civilized attempt at preventing catastrophe. The question is simply, did those in charge take adequate precautions, and what lasting effects will the lack of planning will have now and in future generations. Let us place the blame squarely for both items in question upon the source: insufficient engineering on points of failure whose catastrophic degradations outside of design parameters due to unforeseen natural disasters caused enormous unforeseen consequences. Let us also recognize that the effects of these have spheres of influence. The dam failure killed a lot of people and nobody will argue that. However, a level 7 nuclear catastrophe will have international effects that far exceed local and natural ones for perhaps hundreds of years. You may deplore those responsible for the massive dam failure, and I concur, and we can debate who should be held accountable, although that is pretty clear. This should not in any way diminish your admonition of those responsible for today's failures by people who supposedly have superior know how, and due to a democratic government as well as historical situational fact, the serious *obligation* to not completely cock it up while involving extremely dangerous and incredibly toxic nuclear materials that have multiple generational consequences. And if the worst were to happen, say, right next to the Pacific Ocean, what exactly would those extremely long term effects be.... we just don't know yet, and I sincerely hope we both agree those will not come to pass.

There are 600 coal plants in the US, generating about 2000TW. A few recent projects for large scale solar range from 50MW to 700MW. It would only take a few hundred of these to make a significant dent in the need for US coal and nuclear generating capacity. What is lacking is determination, and money. The fossil fuel subsidy per year is about $70B and roughly $13B per Nuclear plant. That should pay for a whole lot of alternatives including solar.

You're speculating. Elements, and now Photoshop Express, are not designed to compete with other products, but to extend the brand to the masses. More brand awareness leads to more sales of Photoshop.

FIRE! KILL ALL THE [insert unpopular group here]!

The point here is that speech can in fact be comparable, or an unacceptable incitement, to violence, and therefore can, should, and often is restricted under the US Constitution.

Wait, so a programmer who uses a polling loop instead of an event listener is blameless, but Flash is responsible for all of the CPU usage? Puhleez. Flash is just a tool, and can be very efficient when used properly.

High birth rate != overpopulation. The most overpopulated countries (China, India) have low birth rates, and due to their growing economies have high CO2 emissions, growing rapidly as they ramp up their economies.

This is nothing new. People have been stupid en masse for thousands of years, it's just now we have managed to invent tools to harm ourselves much more effectively. We nearly did ourselves in a few decades ago with nuclear weapons, and to prove our stupidity we still keep them around as a kind of very expensive monument to dumb. As to a worldwide plague, it's only a matter of time -- dense concentrations of people, crop monocultures, breeding better diseases by liberal use of antibacterials.... When it does happen, it will affect everyone without regard to their diplomas, and you can blame those who didn't bother doing something about it, which is 99.9% of the population.

Intelligence is not something you can breed out of humanity. If only high IQ people could make high IQ people, then we wouldn't have any high IQ people. So maybe the current crop of brainy people aren't really so smart as they think they are, and we ought to evolve a different kind of intelligence.

Each of these companies sets employee wages (at annual performance review time) by referring to a survey of all the other companies' wages. Their target is, strangely enough, the "average" wage. This is itself a kind of collusion to keep wages down, by pointing the finger at each other. Sorry! Can't pay you more than everyone else gets paid. But on the other hand, it makes economic sense. Everyone gets a fair wage, which for a software engineer is far more than you'd be making assembling cars, and companies don't in general pay more than they have to. The wild card, of course, is options. Pick the right rocket, and all of these little issues about salary won't matter so much.

while reminders to follow the accounts of people who have long since passed away continue to arrive

A follow reminder from a dead Twitter user would be just plain creepy.

Risk averse is not the way to go. As they say, change is inevitable. I'm *cough* well over 40, and I jumped from a "safe" big company to a startup 6 months ago. A few months after I jumped, there was a reorg and my old project was exported. Yes, I saw it coming. It's happened 3 other times to me.

It's quite simple: big companies (including Google) operate according to profitability, and when that inevitably goes down, the saw comes out. When your project gets cut, or shipped overseas, it's a game of musical chairs. If you think you're completely "safe", and avoid taking risks to remain "safe", then one day you might find yourself without a chair.

The best defense is learning new skills all the time, and taking risks. Yeah, it might take some work. Get used to that. Oh yeah, and I turned down a position with Google.

Do not take this personally. You are someone doing a job. Yes, you think you should be paid fairly for that work, but the company will willingly pay you far less than you are worth, if you are willing. There are two ways to fix this: walk, or negotiate. Negotiating may end up forcing you out -- a lot depends on your attitude, and what are the actual intentions of the company. So if you have any interest in keeping the current job, make a plan B, which is figure out where you would go if the negotiation fails. Futhermore, interviewing elsewhere will let you know what you are actually worth on the open market. And who knows, you may find a job you like far better. Do not threaten. It's business. Also, you say: "With budget cuts and layoffs..." Um, your company may be imploding. Why do you want to stay there? Look around. Believe me, you do not want to stick to a ship that is sinking. I've been there and it is not pretty.

And the alternative you proffer is... nothing.

Benchmark on html5 vs flash video? Right here. Conclusion? "... Flash is efficient on platforms where it can access hardware acceleration and less efficient where it can't."