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Torvalds ABCNews Transcripts 84

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-read dept.
yuri-g sent us a link to the transcripts of last nights ABCNews Chat with Linus. While he doesn't say what Transmeta does, he talks about the Cult of Linus, Linux on Consumer Electronics, Distributions, and the ever popular LiGnuX debate. Somewhat lengthy, but a good summary, with some new info too.
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Torvalds ABCNews Transcripts More

Torvalds ABCNews Transcripts

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  • Re:The best quote from Linus was... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    We may, linus won't. Linus built the kernel. Not the system. RMS is being a fool. The Linux kernel *is* the Linux operating system. The Linux *platform* makes extensive use of GNU (and yes, X). There is no reason whatsoever to use GNU/Linux or LiGnuX (or whatever) since GNU had nothing to do with the kernel. Shall we call it GNU/Windows since Cygnus did a port of the Gnu utilities to windows? NO. GNU/OS/2? NO. I think you get the point....

  • Re:Replacing Linus -> FSF (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    RMS is more important to free software than Linus. But if RMS kicks off, we still have the FSF to keep things on track. Linus should either will his code to the FSF or start some other organization that will maintain his work in the spirit of free software. If he doesn't we've always got HURD. Free software will go on with or with out linux.

  • Re:microsoft and oracle asking questions ? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Maybe the guy really wanted to know the future of gaming on Linux, and he happens to work for MS. Believe it or not, there are *some* good people that work for MS, its a job and it pays their rent.


    I had a friend who interned at MS last summer. When he came back I gave him crap about being assimilated by Bill and that whole thing. He suprised me by saying that there is a silent majority within the ranks of MS who see their jobs as just that, a job. He even said there are a couple guys there who love linux and use it often.
    Remember there's more to MS than Office and WinXX, there are some people there with high levels of *nix experience that work on projects such as interopability between NT & *nix.


    If the guy is interested in gaming on Linux, thats a valid question no matter where you work :)

  • Re:Replacing Linus (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    com-mu-ni-ty n. 1. A group of people living in the same locality... 2. A social group or class. 3. Similarity: a community of interests

    Community is a valid term to describe what is going on. That the media and others overuse the term does not make it any less acurate to describe an autonomous collective of motivated individuals who happen to share an affinity for a certain unix-like operating system.

    I'm sure the term 'collective' conjures up positive images in the minds of those who would seek to demean us.

    Get over it.



  • Nuclear Plants (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 06, 1999 @01:49PM (#1901931)
    I did some moderation on this section, so I have to post as an AC. That aside, I think that something needs to be said in response to the individual above who posted defamatory remarks about the nuclear power industry.

    First, it should be observed that there have not been any problems with the nuclear industry in the US despite well over 50 years of nuclear power generation. Yes, Three Mile Island had a partial meltdown, but the total radiation exposure for the residents of the surrounding area as a result of the meltdown was far less than the total radiation exposure of the residents of Colorado during the same period of time. Read some of the books by Bernard L. Cohen.

    I've studied this issue up and down, and the only reasonable conclusion is that with proper safeguards, nuclear power is completely harmless and totally efficient. Note that I said proper safeguard. The Chernobyl disaster is an example of not using proper safeguards. In the US, not only do plants have safeguards in place, but due to the irrational fears encouraged by the anti-nuclear activists, the NRC has actually put in place measures that are overly tight.

    The regulations in effect are so bureaucratic today that it takes six different people to change a light bulb at some plants. And that's just to change a light bulb. The control room operators get periodic drug tests, and failure of a drug test results in the operator being fired (not to mention that he/she cannot get any other jobs in the industry). Did you know that eating a poppyseed roll even two weeks before a drug test will make you test positive for opium use? Let's think about that one for a minute....

    As for the computers, well, that's a different matter. For the obvious reasons, nuclear plants use stable computing systems. One power plant that I know of uses VAX/VMS machines. We've seen the stability tests for Linux and UNIX versus NT. I haven't seen any stability tests for VAX/VMS, but I imagine that such tests would compare with UNIX. Would you believe that some of these plants actually have Windows- and NT-based PC's? Not in any critical application of course....they're usually used to model the fuel dyanmics or monitor the control systems. Wouldn't Linux be a far more reasonable choice for these systems? Probably.

    Did you know that the critical systems in the power plant are almost all mechanical? SCRAMing the plant works by closing an electrical current to the control rods, dropping them into the core. And in the US, the control rods are usually above the core, so gravity can be used if something fails. The pumping mechanisms are mechanical, as is the turbine. When computers don't have direct access to the core, suggesting that computer failure would cause a meltdown (let alone the deaths of "millions" of people) is laughable.

    Sometimes I think that people on slashdot need to do a little more research before spouting off. While I haven't actually worked in the nuclear industry, I know someone who does, and have watched him work. He explained to me what he does, and has given me a good feel for the way things work. A couple of weeks ago he caught a human error in a company that will go unmentioned. The error had happened at another plant, (notice that human error is almost always the problem) resulting in the termination of a high-level manager. By finding the error himself, this man that I know was rewarded with an unheard-of lump sum of cash (to the tune of double the average cash reward for finding serious problems).

    How many ways do I need to say it? The industry is safe. The computers are not a potential problem even if they are running Windows or NT . And people really need to know their ground before spouting off....

  • "Oh, Gods, not the lignux thing again..."



    --synaptik

  • Re:Nuclear Plants (Score:3)

    by Bobort ( 289 ) on Thursday May 06, 1999 @06:52PM (#1901933) Homepage
    He makes a very valid point about TMI: nobody was hurt. The outcome of the TMI accident is a great testament to the good design of American power reactors. If the same thing had happened to, say, a Russian RBMK reactor, it would have been another Chernobyl, no question. You can't expect anything nearly as complicated as a power reactor to go for decades in hundreds of installations across the country without having problems; but the fact that they have done so without harming *people* shows how reliable the system is. Regardless of how underhanded a utility company may be, the NRC is pervasive and persistent enough to keep them out of trouble. I've seen NRC inspections first hand, and those guys absolutely will not let anything slip by them. Popular paranoia about corruption goes to really extreme levels. I was talking with an NRC examiner the other day (I was taking a license exam) and he was telling me that when they visit a power plant for inspection, they have to go to ridiculous extremes to avoid being seen in public with any plant personnel, because people from "watchdog groups" follow them around and publicly accuse them of being in the plant officials' pocket if they're seen together.

    The entire bit about terrorists is bogus. First of all, nothing in a power reactor, or just about any other reactor for that matter, is of any use to terrorists. The fuel is of a very low enrichment, and furthermore the plutonium produced by neutron activation of U238 contains too many other Pu isotopes to be of any use without doing isotope separation, which no terrorist organization is even remotely capable of doing. Not to mention that new fuel is immediately irradiated to make it impossible to remove from the facility without killing yourself. Bombing a power plant is also not a real threat. Power reactor containment structures are designed to withstand being directly hit by crashing jetliners. If a terrorist has weapons of similar power and is planning on using them, people should definitely be concerned about more than just the threat to power reactors. You also seem to misunderstand what the effects of bombing a reactor would be: it would be just like bombing any other building, except that if you succeeded in blowing it open you'd release radioactive material. There is absolutely *no* *way* you can make a reactor do anything like a nuclesar weapon. The worst-case scenario is much more akin to Chernobyl than to Hiroshima.
  • I commonly call my car "my big ol' V-8 wagon"...
  • Well, you don't anymore.

    glibc is obviously a part of the GNU OS, and was written as such. Since it, and other pieces of the not-yet-completed GNU OS are currently used in conjunction with the Linux kernel (since Hurd isn't yet complete), that makes the resulting OS a GNU/Linux hybrid.

    Saying that glibc is not part of the OS would be like saying that all the DLLs and the registry are not part of Windows - only kernel32 is. That obviously makes no sense.
  • On a somewhat unrelated note, people often cite the VB runtime module as a disadvantage of VB, yet they cite the dynamic linking of Linux as an advantage of Linux. How can it be both at the same time?
  • Posted by Mike@ABC:

    Never underestimate the power of the Linux community. That was, by far, the most popular chat held in the Technology section. Linus was a true sport in the face of nearly 1,000 questions -- 500 of which were posted during the hour he was on. My thanks to all the slashdot folks who stopped by.

    And, just to answer the post above about the nuclear power plants....would you prefer they were run on WinNT? Just food for thought.

  • The point isn't that nuclear power is a magical source of energy. There's nothing magical about it. Neither is it harmless if handled without care. The point is that it is far less harmless and far more efficient than the alternatives. Lets consider some:

    1. Coal--As several other individuals have noted, coal causes respiratory problems, not to mention explosions in coal mines, acid rain from the stuff that goes up the stack, and the enormous amount of ash that has to be hauled away from the plant after the burn. Oh, and the smell. Ever visit a coal plant? They STINK.
    2. Gas--Gas has potential since it is the cleanest burning fuel, but is not without its problems. First, it takes a lot of effort to transport it from A to B. Second, it is volatile. When gas plants blow (and they do, from time to time) they level everything around them. I don't know about you, but I'm not to keen on the idea of exploding power plants....
    3. Solar Power--This is another "bright" idea (no pun intended), but has its own problems. First, its remarkably inefficient. To get any kind of decent power (say the 50 megawatt range), you need acres of power cells....not to mention all the piping and cooling towers that go along with those acres of cells.
    4. Oil--This has some of the same problems as coal (although not the mining issues). Oil spills happen all the time....and they are arguably worse than nuclear plant meltdowns. Remember Chernobyl? The people there certainly suffered...cancer and other nasty things. Remember the Exxon Valdez? People and wildlife suffered there too. Guess which one is still being cleaned up? Yep...its the Valdez.
    5. Hydroelectric Power--Water is definitely clean...no nasty ecological problems at all...until the dam breaks and washes out the entire basin, kills a few thousand people, destroys plant and animal life, and erodes the landscape. Other than that, it's a reasonably good source of power.

    I don't know about you, but I think I'd much rather have a nuclear plant living down the road from me than any of the others. Ever visit a nuclear plant? The ones I've seen all have a nice thick treeline surrounding them so you can't see them. The only thing they belch into the air is steam (from the cooling towers). And as for waste disposal, that isn't a problem either. For one thing, most of the waste generated by nuclear plants in the US is still sitting in spent fuel pools on site because "environmentalists" (translate: people with a political agenda to take away property rights under the ulterior guise of "saving the planet") run around yelling that the sky will fall if the waste is put in a nice salt shaft somewhere. Fact: when nuclear waste is prepared for burial, it is diluted and then fused into leaded glass balls or pellets. The glass prevents the escape of any radioactive liquids, the lead blocks the radiation, and the filler material reduces the concentration of the radioactive material so that it doesn't go critical. Fact: even if the material goes critical, the reaction will remain contained. There is a country in Africa (I forget the name off-hand) where a natural nuclear reaction took place underground in a salt cavern. Scientists have determined that the entire reaction remained contained in the cavern.

    My point is that Nuclear Power, while not the perfect solution, is better than the alternatives (unless you get lots of eating money from people by running around shouting that it's unsafe).


    Who am I?
    Why am here?
    Where is the chocolate?
  • Boy I really want to have Linus over for dinner. If your ever in St.Louis my wife makes fried chicken. ( bring the family )
  • >This will become more of a problem as the Hurd matures. The HURD really doesn't matter any more. It's time has come and gone. History has passed it by. The future is with Linux and the various BSD's, not the HURD. Get over it.

  • Well... (Score:1)

    by Noel ( 1451 )
    Do you refer to your hot rod by the name of its engine?

    I drive a V-8...

    Well, mine's a Hemi...

    Yeah, well, I've got a Turbo...

    "She's real fine, my 409"... Q.E.D.

  • Er, an operating system is more than just a kernel. It is a set of cooperating processes to get a task done.

    And RMS is certainly not a fool. Stubborn, perhaps, but not a fool. Personally, I find that stubborn people are generally the best at finding and killing bugs.


  • Some points are overlooked here:

    1) GNU is much more than a set of tools. As a proper noun it is the name that Richard Stallman gave to a free operating system, and as an adjective it describes software produced under the auspicies of the GNU Project, who's primary goal the is realization of a free operating system.

    A strong case can be made that anyone who has used the GNU tools to put together a free operating system should pay homage to the GNU Project by adopting the GNU name for the operating system.

    Now this does not mean that one has to do this, but it is a nice way to honour Richard Stallman's vision of free software. I encourage those who take position, but am not particularly upset if someone doesn't.

    The GPL doesn't require it, though RMS may regret this.

    2) Linux properly refers to the O/S/ kernel. Calling the entire operating system "Linux" is somewhat of a mis-nomer. Qualifying Linux by the name of the dustributor is still less than satisfactory. This will become more of a problem as the Hurd matures.

    Now, personally I think that the only thing that should be called GNU/Linux, without any chance for argument, would be a "Linux" distribution released by the GNU Project, or released with their blessing. Debian GNU/Linux fits this bill.

    Furthermore, if the GNU Project does not retain sufficient control over the GNU moniker, it may be used to describe operating systems that are not completely free. This would be a bad thing (and an insult to RMS).

  • Maybe this is a good reason: so the community won't go through crippling emotional spasms if Linus has to give up control over the kernel for some reason.

    Similarly, so the rest of the world doesn't think that Linux is going to take a major downturn once Linus is out of it. Confidence in Linux could drop massively - people aren't inclined to go with a computing solution that doesn't seem to have a future.

    In practically every major press report about Linux it's described as "the operating system created by Linus Torvalds" - I think this is bad not just for the reasons above, but because it's horribly inaccurate and unfair on the hundreds of others who have contributed. Remember that Linux has one of the largest kernel dev teams in the world and this is one of its strengths. I think the idea that it was developed by one guy in his spare time does more harm than good. (Though it's also good that Linus gets the credit he deserves for starting and managing the whole thing.)

  • If I remember correctly, it was RMS himself whom invented the 'lignux' name when he released a version of Emacs that generated 'lignux' as the OS in the configuration. Or something like that, I was pretty new to Linux and GNU stuff at the time and didn't have a clear understanding of exactly what it is he made generate the 'lignux' identifier. But there was a huge shitstorm on the GNU and Linux newsgroups about it. In fact, a quick DejaNews search reveals it was the 19.31 release of Emacs, released in late May, 1996. Here is a URL for those of you interested in this piece of nomenclature history:

    http://www.dejanews.com/[ST_rn=qs]/getdoc.xp?AN= 157611483

    This was the first round of arguments concerning Linux, GNU and the proper nomenclature and it was started by a unilateral act by RMS. It is amazing reading these old threads years later how the arguments on either side basically have not changed one bit since the inception of the debate.
    My favorite from the time was 'since GNU software makes so much of the WWWeb work, why don't we call it the WWWegnub?" I didn't see that particular post in my searches, but I remember laughing hysterically when I first read it.


    Cheers
    Eric Geyer
    corduroy@sfo.com

  • Kids needs heroes...and Linus is a perfect hero.

    Instead of crackers breaking in to computers... Or game crackers... why don't have Linus as role model.

    But as he is (almost) always political correct in his statements, he sees that a lot of people do a lot of work on the Linux OS and he gets the credits. So it is his obligation to tell the world that he alone didn't made Linux possible.

  • I don't believe that Microsoft workers are evil (just a bit misguided), and the question was well founded. There aren't a lot of games for Linux.

    PS.
    Yesterday I bought my first Linux game (Civilization CTP)
  • First, it should be observed that there have not been any problems with the nuclear industry in the US despite well over 50 years of nuclear power generation. Yes, Three Mile Island had a partial meltdown, but the total radiation exposure for the residents of the surrounding area as a result of the meltdown was far less than the total radiation exposure of the residents of Colorado during the same period of time. [ ... ] I've studied this issue up and down, and the only reasonable conclusion is that with proper safeguards, nuclear power is completely harmless and totally efficient. Note that I said proper safeguard. [ ... ]

    Any comment on the Brown's Ferry incident?

    Schwab

  • Lignux! That's it! From now on, I'm calling it Lignux. Who's with me here?
  • i was just reading the transcript and saw that that's exactly what was being suggested (except witht he extra xfree bit). sorry about the noise guys.
  • While he doesn't say what Transmeta does...

    hehe, Did you really Expect him to? :P

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • Ken Thomson, author of Unix, recently criticized Linux as "unreliable" and poorly written. What do you think?

    When the heck was this? Anybody have links/more info? Was it posted on /. and I slept through it?

  • I always thought that programmers died by being hit by buses. Most places I have worked seemed concerned about that in particular ;)


  • Linus' response to calling Linux LiGnuX:
    "Your midwife doesn't select the name of your babies.."
    RMS is gonna have a fit over that one ;)
  • Well my favorite Linus quote ever was when he was interviewed by CNN and said:

    "Their operating systems just suck!"

    The best part of that was the funny grin on his face when he said it...

  • I thought he nailed it with the following:

    "There's a lot of GNU code out there, but it should stand on its own instead of trying to get a free ride on the Linux name recognition. "

    Although I'm not nearly foolish enough to think that this will be the end of the flames or anything :-)

    --Brian
  • Linus is a popular figure and is admired, nay, revered by the community. How could this be an
    undesirable thing?

    Argh! Enough of this crap about 'the community!' While the collective actions of its more vocal users are important to the continuing growth and outreach potential of linux, they are not more important than the functionality of the OS to a single user.


    I think that might be what Linus was getting at. If not, well, there's my opinion. Community is a buzzword, and is becoming as damning as it is encouraging. We've got the mass-media dolts saying things like "well, the linux community is pushing for linux in the enterprise!" Total crap. Let's not be a community. Let's be an autonomous collective of motivated individuals who happen to share an affinity for a certain unix-like operating system.


    IMHO, the diversity of linux users and developers is far, far more important than our similiarites. Viva la differenace! Down with the followers. :)
  • Midwife/Baby is probably not the best analogy for the GNU-Linux relationship.

    The GNU utilities are a bunch of tools, Linux is something to use those tools on. In that sense it's more like a hot rod and mechanics tools. Someone who wants to use/tune/mess around with the Linux Hot Rod could make all of their own tools or they can walk down and pick up a set of GNU tools. Either way, it's the Hot Rod that they're interested in, not the tools. I don't name my Rod after my tools.

  • microsoft and oracle asking questions ? (Score:4)

    by Lennie ( 16154 ) on Thursday May 06, 1999 @01:12PM (#1901961)
    while I was reading the article I came acrose the some of the addresses (that are behind the name of the poster) of the posters:
    most are just IP names,
    but some are IP addresses, see what I found:

    'Mike Armentano from [205.227.43.11]:
    Are you still working with Transmeta... and so on'

    Name: inet-fw1-o.oracle.com
    Address: 205.227.43.11

    'The Keeper from [32.97.136.234], at 2:53pm ET
    Java seems to be the latest technology that is taking the computer industry by storm. Is there a port of the Java VM and JDK to the Linux platform and where can I get it? How do you feel that Java can benefit Linux and vice versa?'

    Name: ss04.nc.us.ibm.com
    Address: 32.97.136.234

    maybe more interresting:
    'ndex from [131.107.3.76], at 2:42pm ET
    One of the biggest drawbacks to having a linux only desktop is that there aren't many supported games. This is keeping a lot of people on Win9x whether they like it or not. Are you planning to do anything to promote or facilitate the porting of games to Linux?'

    Name: tide76.microsoft.com
    Address: 131.107.3.76

    (but, they are probably not talking officially,
    but then again, the microsoft guy... I dunno, seems like FUD to me (-; ).
  • give me the chicken, you'de just scare Linus anyway.
  • Ok tough guy, taking things way to far..

    Your assuming Linux runs system critical devices that may cause harm to the general public, but that is only aa asumption. Most likely linux is running things that are independent of any nuclear control systems.

    As far as everything else you said, I think you want to be flamed, which I won't do, and youll be moderated out anyway.

  • It's very obvious that the current "Linus personality cult" has to go.

    I've always been puzzled about the whole cult surrounding this guy. Sure he started the ball rolling and is the guy at the top, but so what? That doesn't necessarily make him a saint, does it?

  • Regarding the midwife quote, I wonder if it was really the best way to describe it? After all,
    two parents create a baby and bring it 90% of the way. All the midwife does it get you over the last hurdle to introduce it to the world. Then it goes back to being the parents' responsibility.

    In Stallman's eyes, wouldn't the "GNU System" be the baby ready to be born, and Linux is the midwife? Doesn't that make it sound like Linux is just the GNU delivery mechanism?

  • I like this one:

    "My ego likes it. It's the ego trip of the century to write your own operating system. Highly recommended, two thumbs up!"

  • Replacing Linus (Score:3)

    by Jburkholder ( 28127 ) on Thursday May 06, 1999 @12:05PM (#1901968)
    There are some interesting questions and answers on the topic of Linus' position as 'posterboy' for Linux and his role as keeper of the kernel.

    What would really happen if (God forbid, crosses himself) Linus got killed in a car crash tomorrow, or some other circumstance arose that precluded him from continuing to manage the kernel?

    Sure, Linus says there are lots of people who are capable of overseeing the coordination of kernel development. He names Alan and David as people whom he trusts and I don't think many would argue that they aren't capable of doing the job or that they wouldn't have the respect in the community that Linus enjoys.

    But I think the more interesting question might be the non-technical aspects to Linus' leadership and how those shoes could be filled in his sudden absence. Linus makes mention of the 'personality cult' that must go. At first my reaction was "why?", Linus is a popular figure and is admired, nay, revered by the community. How could this be an undesirable thing?

    Maybe this is a good reason: so the community won't go through crippling emotional spasms if Linus has to give up control over the kernel for some reason.

    What do you think? How would the community cope with the sudden absence of Linus Torvalds?


  • Just out of interest, did you actually read the interview? Because you're taking the midwife thing out of context.

    Linus wasn't calling the "GNU System" the midwife, he was talking about gcc. He was saying that having a good compiler available helped the system to grow... making "midwife" quite a good analogy IMO.
  • Was it posted on /. and I slept through it?

    Yes. [slashdot.org]

  • worked for Jesus.
  • If you want the analogy to be cars, then Linux is definitely the engine, and GNU the rest of car, the tools, and the factories that manufacture it all.

    Do you refer to your hot rod by the name of its engine? Well, it's an important part of your car, so maybe?
  • Um, no. RMS calls the kernel Linux, and the entire system GNU/Linux.

    Meept or somebody calls it LiGnuX.

    And because of BSD/Linux and GNU/Hurd, we may soon have practical reasons to call it GNU/Linux.
  • It's very obvious that the current "Linus personality cult" has to go.

    Of course there is any easy way for that to happen. Linus could just start acting like a jerk. But somehow I don't really expect that to happen. It is no accident that the "personality cult" exists... Linus has the just right mix of humility, likeability, and brashness to result in this sort of thing, intential or not. Linux would not have been nearly as popular as quickly if Linus had been otherwise.

    I hold up Bill Jolitz as the counter-example. 386bsd was a hit when he first released it, but (IMHO) his attitude and treatment of fellow developers drove people away from the project and eventually caused it to split into FreeBSD, NetBSD, etc. Linus has done much to hold the Linux movement together. In that respect, the "cult" is a Good Thing.

    Thad

  • maybe more interresting:
    'ndex from [131.107.3.76], at 2:42pm ET
    One of the biggest drawbacks to having a linux only desktop is that there aren't many supported games. This is keeping a lot of people on Win9x whether they like it or not. Are you planning to do anything to promote or facilitate the porting of games to Linux?'

    Name: tide76.microsoft.com
    Address: 131.107.3.76

    (but, they are probably not talking officially,
    but then again, the microsoft guy... I dunno, seems like FUD to me (-; ).

    It's not FUD if it's true. If I could get an MS Office replacement that I was happy with, and could play Tribes and some of the other FPS's that I use to destress on Linux, then I'd have an MS free network at home.

  • First, it should be observed that there have not been any problems with the nuclear industry in the US despite well over 50 years of nuclear power generation. Yes, Three Mile Island had a partial meltdown, but the total radiation exposure for the residents of the surrounding area as a result of the meltdown was far less than the total radiation exposure of the residents of Colorado during the same period of time.

    "We haven't had any problems. Okay, we did have one problem, but it wasn't serious. Okay, it was serious, but it could have been worse. Hey, anything's better than Chernobyl, right?" WTF kind of statement is this?

    I've studied this issue up and down, and the only reasonable conclusion is that with proper safeguards, nuclear power is completely harmless and totally efficient. Note that I said proper safeguard. The Chernobyl disaster is an example of not using proper safeguards. In the US, not only do plants have safeguards in place, but due to the irrational fears encouraged by the anti-nuclear activists, the NRC has actually put in place measures that are overly tight.

    This is extremely laughable. "Totally efficient"? Fissile materials are extremely expensive to mine, process, and ship. Factor in the cost of waste shipment, storage, and security (for which no viable long-term plan has been devised), the eventual decommission of one or more reactors (for which no cost estimate has been agreed upon), and the cost of complying with the NRC's draconian safety and security standards, and your "totally efficient" process becomes hard pressed even to pay for itself.

    "Completely harmless"?! How can you make an assertion like this? Nuclear power plants are run by corporations. As history has shown time and time again, corporations are entirely self-serving and committed only to a) the bottom line, and b) the health, wealth, and reputation of their top executives. These are the people you want in charge of some of the deadliest materials and processes known to man? All the accounts of the TMI meltdown that I've seen paint a very negative picture of the people running that plant. True to form, they were terrified of being forced to go public with the fact that there was a problem, so they put it off and put it off in the hope that everything would come up daisies.

    Even if you assume that the company running the plant is on the level, the employees aren't slacking off, and the NRC's safety measures are sufficient to handle any unforeseen events, a nuclear plant is still an extremely tempting target for terrorists and enemy bombers or missiles. Why should Iraq or North Korea or communist China build nuclear warheads when the same effect can be achieved by dropping a few tons of conventional explosives on a nice inviting reactor dome?

  • I recognize that there is no weapons-grade material in a conventional nuclear power facility (I'm not sure how the MOX plan works, but I doubt they'll be shipping anything weapons-grade long distances). There are large quantities of radioactive isotopes. The release of those materials over a wide area (see Chernobyl) would be a massive ecological and humanitarian disaster (see Chernobyl). Perhaps modern reactor design takes threats of war and of terrorism into account, but I haven't seen any mention of those preventive measures in any literature I've run across. If anyone can provide citations, I would be highly grateful.

    Through the history of nuclear power, there have been accidents but they have not even approached the loss of human life and resources caused by _traditional_ power plants during that time. A coal furnace is far more dangerous than a modern nuclear reactor.

    I would also be very interested in seeing facts to back this up. Keep in mind that fossil fuel power has been around for much longer than nuclear power, that it is used on a wider scale, and that there is no hard data available on the long-term consequences of nuclear waste storage/disposal, because no one has figured out what to do with it yet. You can't keep piling it in the duck pond in front of the reactor complex forever -- ask the Russians about that.

  • Modern US plants can tolerate a large jet crashing into them. If a terrorist can produce and launch a device big enough to rupture a nuclear plant, they won't be that stupid. They will hit the White House, Congress, a large bridge, or the SuperBowl stadium instead. (they lose destructive effect if the hit an unpopulated power plant)

    As a general rule, Mother Nature and acts of God don't seek out and exploit weaknesses. They use a large amount of force spread evenly (or randomly) across a large area. Deliberate attacks would concentrate a small amount of force in a small (and carefully selected) area. Maybe it can't be done, but I've never seen the facts to prove it.

    He is right. Coal plants kill many people. You have coal miners dying of black lung and mine collapses, coal handlers dying in coal dust explosions and fires, and the general population dying of lung cancer caused by the particles and radioactivity. Yep. Coal plants, by sheer volume of crap spewed out, give off more radioactive waste than nuclear plants do.

    Ever read about the effects of uranium mining and processing? Granted, there are fewer uranium mines than coal mines, but they can be just as hazardous to the local populace (perhaps more so).

    I'll take a few pounds of high-level waste in a pond or cave over thousands of tons of low-level waste (coal smoke) spewed into the air.

    I'm not saying that fossil fuels are necessarily a Good Thing (tm) -- I will dispute the idea that nuclear power is some kind of harmless, magical energy source that will solve all the world's energy problems. I'm banking on cold fusion for that (g).

  • Neither is it harmless if handled without care. The point is that it is far less harmless and far more efficient than the alternatives.

    It has the potential to be less harmful and more efficient than fossil fuels. It also has the potential to be much, much more harmful and much, much less efficient, if handled without the proper care. Call it paranoia if you like, but I just can't summon sufficient faith to make me comfortable with the idea of putting a private company (not that the government is necessarily any better {g}) in charge of something as potentially deadly as a nuclear reactor.

    My point is that Nuclear Power, while not the perfect solution, is better than the alternatives (unless you get lots of eating money from people by running around shouting that it's unsafe).

    No, I get my money in the traditional American fashion: by playing gofer to a greedy, soulless mega-conglomerate. But hey, I'm not bitter or anything...{g}

    If I have anything approaching a hidden agenda, it is to keep people from thinking that fission power is where we want to be tomorrow. That's the kind of thinking that will keep us out of superior technologies (hot and cold fusion, the Patterson power cell, etc.) for another fifty years.

  • "Saying that glibc is not part of the OS would be like saying that all the DLLs and the registry are not part of Windows"

    I view glibc as being more like the VB runtime module. If you had a different compiler to compile VB code with you would no longer need the VB runtime module.

    Looking at it this way it really becomes a POV thing. Both statements (it is, or -it is not a part of the OS) have equal merits.

    Later, Seeker
  • Linus Torvalds makes the kernel and calls it Linux. RMS calls it LiGnuX for what ever reason he has...

    Can I call it Thomax, since I find that name a lot cooler? (You wouldn't know what I would be talking about, but that is applying cryptography without the hassle?!?)


    --

  • Java seems to be the latest technology that is taking the computer industry by storm. Is there a port of the Java VM and JDK to the Linux platform and where can I get it? How do you feel that Java can benefit Linux and vice versa?'

    Name: ss04.nc.us.ibm.com

    Address: 32.97.136.234

    That's IBM's proxy server, used by many thousands of individuals working for IBM in North Carolina (RTP, Charlotte, Raleigh, etc.) to get to the outside world.

    Due to recent developments at IBM (that you all know about), there is an increased personal awareness of Linux and news regarding Linux among individuals working here. There are also a lot of Java developers in RTP.

    This question is most probably from an interested developer that has heard about Linux and wishes to learn more. I'd think that almost anyone with Linux experience would know that a JDK has existed for quite some time now.

  • Isn't libc a GNU piece of the Linux pie? Try booting without your 'OS' without that. By no means can you say that kernel == OS.

    That said, I'm quite happy calling it Linux. I find RMS's personality so objectionable that I'm pleased to call it linux just to annoy him ;-).

    -Bruce

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