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Stories and comments across the archive that link to answers.com.
Comments · 2,034
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Re:Same article 100 years ago...
Authors should not be in the business of making copies, they should be in the business of writing.
Publishers will always be paid to publish, the cost of an individual book will be slightly above the cost of it's printing.
How would one write a book and make money?
One would write it, and then sell it's release. The price would be based on what the market (the fans) are willing to pay.
Street Performer Protocol
Even brand new artists could sell their work this way by releasing samples or showing the work to reviewers.
Write a song, you get paid what it's worth. You get paid for doing work, just like every other industry. Copyright has artists getting paid for mselling copies, which is not their art. -
Re:Same article 100 years ago...
The street performer protol is one such way.
It is a simple fact of a free market that if someone has a skill that is in demand (such as making music) he will be able to get a price for it. If people desire new music, they will pay someone to make it. Copyright is not required.
Performing concerts is another such moral way to get paid. -
Re:Uh...
Yes; of course it is. ^_^
Look up the definition of axiom. One of the basic axiom's we use everday is that our memory of the past is accurate, and that events we remember will influence the present and the future.
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2 birds with 1 stone
What a great way to get aging (i.e., expensive health benefits) workers off your payroll, but make them productive members of society in another role.
We have approx 76 mln pre-k - 12 students in the US. Do we really need 250k math & science teachers?
Assume 1 teacher can teach 4 classes per year to 20 students per class and that means that 20mln students aren't getting the math & science education they need? over 1 in 4? wow! -
Re:Might be usefull to link the inukshuk web page
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Re:Might be usefull to link the inukshuk web page
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Re:And who has the authority to adopt this policy?Then what's the reasoning behind the Bay of Tonkin Incident? Why would Lyndon B. Johnson need lies to invade Vietnam if the president had such power? More info:
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Re:Truth be told.
While it's nice that his memory looks attractive in photographs, it'd probably be more useful if it were photographic
:) -
sedition
sedition
Acts that incite rebellion or civil disorder against an established government.
thanks, .
In case anyone was wondering. Like me... Is this what Brits call "treason"? Except that treason is against the monarchy, and sedition is against the government (elected by the people who might rise up against them and boot them out) -
Re:CRM [ ]
I was going to laugh at people that aren't in the click that they don't know that single piece terminology and look far superior in one mighty stroke.
...or looked equally inferior :) -
Re:Theory of the Professions
"Big Dipper" - ie big ladle. Which it does look like.
"In North America it is commonly known as the Big Dipper, because the major stars can be seen to follow the rough outline of a large ladle, or dipper;" - Answers.com
I think that if someone knows only one constellation, it's that one or it's little cousin. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find people in the English-speaking world (I can't speak for other languages) who have looked at the stars and don't know that. Constellations were my first introduction to stars, and I should imagine most others'. The first thing you realise is, it's like looking at clouds - not everyone sees the same things, but once it's reasoned to you it's easy. -
Uh, no> As a province, [Quebec] doesn't have the right to charge any sort of taxes
> except sales taxUh, no. Quebec has levied its own income tax since 1954.
That gives it about as much money per capita as any other part of Canada, which is to say, enough to fund surprisingly decent schools.
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Wrong. You can spell it either way
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Not a military term
"Mission Critical" is not a military term:
mission critical "Vital to the operation of the organization. The term is very popular for describing the applications required to run the day-to-day business."
It may once have been a military term, but its usage has long ago become more generalised, so that usage is now strictly a part of the etymology i.e. history of the phrase. Language changes, and the correct version of a word is the one in use today.
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Re:Have to try it out
Ubuntu has supported the development of Smeg, which for months has been a very good menu editor for Gnome.
I'm not using anything called smeg because it's too similar to this. Who the hell named that anyway? -
Re:It could be useful
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Plasma Cosmology...Plasma Cosmology is not the same thing as Physical Cosmology. Asuming that stars aren't balls of flaming fusion and are nodes in a giant intergalactic powerline, well... you don't have to be a nuclear physicist to realize thats a strange idea.
After you RTFA and think to yourself "I haven't heard that much non-sensical technobabble since Star Trek!" head over to Wiki's Plasma Cosmology page. Or this more detailed page. Its contested, mainly because this is a contested field and the article is overly broad, but I think it fills in some of the holes.
Honestly if their predictions are true it will change everything in cosmology. And if my predictions are true I'll win the Lotto. I'm not sure who has better odds....
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Re:From the captain-obvious department
>>Big flood along the Mississippi? OK...we'll just abandon it, and not bother to use the river.
>What a maroon.
Is this idiocy or supposed to be a play on words? If you actually look up the 'maroon' it refers to both a color and a descendant of slaves (either of which makes the comment sound racist), as well as abandonment meanings which sort of supports the play on words theory. -
Re:Sweet mother of God
10^100 is spelled googol, not google. -
Re:Going to die?
The original Copyright Act of 1790 set the term to 14 years, plus a one time renewal term of an additional 14 years if the author was living.
See this page for more information... -
Re:Bodies Float -- Bush Smiling, Playing Guitar
Definition of Complacent: Contented to a fault; self-satisfied and unconcerned: He had become complacent after years of success.
US involvement with broad international affairs was not really active until after WWII.
http://www.answers.com/topic/isolationism
The Marshall Plan was enacted BECAUSE europe was totally destroyed in the power play between Britain, the US, Germany and the Soviet Union. The US/Britain conquered Germany, divided up europe with the soviets, and then rebuilt the place. So what? Thats what the winners do in war, rebuild their newly found economic sub-states.
Vietnam? What did that conflict have to do with the United States? It was a country trying to wrestle freedom from the French imperialists. I thought the US supported this. Where did you learn your history anyway?
The Korean conflict was a "police action" fronted by the UN in order to allow the US to send troops without a declaration of war, as called for in our constitution. Again, what threat did this war pose to the United States? Who exactly were we helping? The folks we killed, or the folks who shared our economic ideals?
Umm.. The US leads the world in prison population and has for many years:
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/rel/icps/worldbrief/hi ghest_to_lowest_rates.html
What "communists" funded the "insurgent rebel groups" in South America? They fought their civil wars with shitty weapons, no funding and little but idealogical support. Fortunately for the US, the fascist despots won most revolutionary wars in south america due to our heavy involvement.
The United States INVENTED nuclear weapons (oh - and used them, btw). China did not. The Russians did not. Something is only invented once you know. Information from the manhatten project filtered into russion hands, which is what fueled their nuke program. China obtained the information in the same way.
Anyway I'm really not interested in arguing this with you. Check out Amnesty International's report on North America:
http://web.amnesty.org/report2005/2am-index-eng
I've had this same tired argument on the internet for over a decade. Do I dig US foreign policy? No. Do I think we are an admirable nation? No. Do I think the US government is evil? Yes. So, there you go. You're not going to convince me otherwise. So go buy your "support the troops" stickers or whatever, and I'll continue to keep saying "NUKE THE TROOPS." -
Re:Sig reply...Oh... Interesting.
For those who are interested, the sig in question was:chip n dip? Did you mean Slashdot?
More info is available from various interviews and magazine articles found via Google.The things you learn from the old hands... Thanks for the tip. This is the kind of stuff which probably should have made it into the Wikipedia...
Interesing Malda quote, which fell out from that research: "You can go to CNN and see very straight-laced, spell-checked, fact-checked summary of the day's events. Or you can go somewhere like Slashdot..."
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Re:Power of the pulpit
"That would mean Slashdot might be held liable in a lawsuit, amiright?"
Possibly. But I doubt it."Also, if you're not allowed to make negative comments about people on the Internet, then about 98% of all blogs ever written would be in violation of the law."
You do know the difference between a negative comment and libel, don't you?
libel:
1. A false publication, as in writing, print, signs, or pictures, that damages a person's reputation.
2. The act of presenting such material to the public. -
Re:Sounds like Carpenter tooting his hornGoood point regarding Szady's comment. I hadn't taken that into consideration.
As for the writing down, you can easily write a technical piece for a non-technical audience if you curb the sensationalism and take time to explain instead of waving your hands. I've done it. If the Time audience can sift through an explanation of Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA or accounting fraud mechanism, they could survive a couple of explanatory sidebars about computer terms. Don't you think? Or don't you have any faith in your fellow human? (You don't? Good. There is a sysadmin carreer in your future
:-) )Finally, as for media verifying their sources, recent affairs demonstrated that the biggest media really don't care about checking a story. You need to work for a magazine for a few months, that would cure your illusions.
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Re:Prior Art?
IIRC, Blood (released in 1997, three years before Nintendo's claim) had something *very* similar if you got bitten by the spiders:
Spiders
Despite their small size, Blood's spiders are in no way mere nuisances. Depending on their species, their bite can cause either delirium or blindness. The smaller, reddish brown spider will give the player a sense of delirium, the screen swaying back and forth and tilting. (Almost as though Caleb was intoxicated or high.) The second spider, which is larger and green-colored will also bite you, causing the screen to dim. Both of these effects are accumulative (but temporary), meaning that with multiple spider bites a player could become totally blind, delirious or both. The third type of spider is the giant mother spider, detailed below. (...) (Source). -
Re:It's not "nanotech" -- it's a chemical coating
http://www.answers.com/nanotechnology
I just don't see why chemistry doesn't just stay chemistry. It's like we've got to give it a fancy name to make it appeal to the masses. Because, you know, if we don't, no one will give a damn.
If this article read "Chemical Coating Prevents Fogging," it never would have made it to slashdot. This is relatively boring inorganic chemistry given a zippier name. Smart marketing is what it is. Marketing for what, though, I'm not sure, since it's not like you can go buy the stuff at Autozone or whatever.
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2nd Amendment, the right to own BFG9000
You never know when demon mutant zombies will attack! You will need A BFG9000
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Re:Why are you bullshitting your customers?
The intelligent ones will see right through [...] such faggotry.
Yes! Do not leave small bundles of sticks lying around your NOC. Rural types will be comforted to see something familiar, but for ultra-super-intelligent types like the previous poster, they will be a disappointment. -
Buddhism?
The author, citing Robert Christopher, suggests that Buddhists take a different view of robots than do Christians because Buddhism "does not place man at the center of the universe, and in fact, makes no particular distinction between the animate and the inanimate." Samurai swords have souls, and machines have ghosts.
That doesn't sound like Buddhism to me, that sounds like animism, represented in Japan by Shinto. Of course, many Buddhist countries have animist traditions, but in a lot of these there is a rivalry between the two religions. -
Buddhism?
The author, citing Robert Christopher, suggests that Buddhists take a different view of robots than do Christians because Buddhism "does not place man at the center of the universe, and in fact, makes no particular distinction between the animate and the inanimate." Samurai swords have souls, and machines have ghosts.
That doesn't sound like Buddhism to me, that sounds like animism, represented in Japan by Shinto. Of course, many Buddhist countries have animist traditions, but in a lot of these there is a rivalry between the two religions. -
Re:Missunderstanding
Until there is a concrete and accepted definition of human intelligence there can be no study about who is more intelligent than whom.
There is: "The capacity to acquire and apply knowledge, especially toward a purposeful goal." Basically, "intelligence" is the ability to solve problems using knowledge.
It is NOT, however, the sum total of all that the brain is needed for. "Knowledge", of course, is the data stored in our brains or otherwise available to it. Then there's "intuition", a genuinely valuable skill which is completely independent of logic and intelligence. And the skill of absorbing information through the senses is another mental ability that some wield better than others.
In short, there is an accepted definition of intelligence. But intelligence is not the only function of the human brain, or even the most important one. It is merely the function which primarily allows us to adapt to change. -
Re:A great man, leaving behind a wide wake
A visit from Bob Moog might mean [...] the Fourier transforms of trumpets and coronets.
And just how does one perform a Fourier transform on a coronet, I wonder?
;-) -
Re:Secures computers need Windowsz 95
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Re:Stereo sound
Speaking of wireless, I have some wireless NES controllers in a box right next to me. "DOUBLE PLAYER" in big blue font, they have the Acclaim logo on them. Huh. (I haven't looked at them in a while.)
Of course, they're the type that need a line of sight to the receiver, I'm sure, but still.. wireless.
The page I linked to says "The technology was found by users to be highly unreliable." I don't remember. It's been a long long time. :)
And a NES can be modded to have stereo sound, so I've read. -
Re:Power concerns - Batteries
Batteries do seem to be slowly but surely advancing. In my personal experience, I fly some RC helicopters. I have the standard NiCad, NiMH, and now, Lithium Polymer(LiPo) batteries.
I've never liked or had much luck with any type of rechargeable battery, regardless of type, or what it was used in. Laptops, PDAs, 2-way radios, R/C, they all just sucked. Long charge times, and bad run times that get worse with every charge until finally, they may as well be a paperweight.
That was before I decided to shell out for a LiPo battery for my heli. I opened the package and was amazed. (And it wasn't even charged yet!) The battery was a higher amperage (mAh) than any of the other more common types of rechargeables, and it weighed less than half of any of the others. The case is softer and more flexible, not like a metal "can".
I excitedly threw it on the charger, but wasn't looking forward to the always long wait of the first charge. Imagine my surprise when less than an hour later the battery was fully charged.
Plugged it up to the helicopter and couldn't believe it when I got over double the flight time of any of the other batteries. I know I've discharged and recharged at least 30 times and it still flies the same duration every time.
I've read that they are trying to introduce these batteries into PDAs and laptops. Maybe they, or an even better technology that's under tight R&D wraps somewhere can hold us over until we get those much vaunted fuel cells.
A bit more info can be found on LiPo cells at http://www.answers.com/topic/lithium-polymer/
(I am not affiliated in any way with any battery company/technology or the website I linked, just a user of the best battery technology I've seen come out in a while.) -
Funny...
Google Talk is a word game which uses Google to complete a sentence. http://www.answers.com/topic/google-talk
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Technology
From http://www.answers.com/technology&r=67
1a. The application of science, especially to industrial or commercial objectives.
1b. The scientific method and material used to achieve a commercial or industrial objective.
2. Electronic or digital products and systems considered as a group: a store specializing in office technology.
3. Anthropology. The body of knowledge available to a society that is of use in fashioning implements, practicing manual arts and skills, and extracting or collecting materials.
To me, technology, like any other -ology, is the knowledge of something, especially using the scientific method. Everybody knows themselves and somebody else and animals, but they are not psychologists. Everybody knows a group of people, but they are not a sociologist. Most everybody has seen a calculator or a computer, but that does not make them a technologist either. Give a computer or a calculator to someone that does not know how to add, and they will not know how to add with the calculator either.
My point being is that there are a number of prerequisites besides hardware for technology to be applied in education. I get annoyed at the concept that technology is something that spontaneously does stuff for people. It doesn't.
Americans are already behind the most of the world in basic education like math, science, and history. I believe that all aspects of education should be reexamined. The feel good, "I'm confident in my ignorance", attitude simply cannot last much longer, unless we start outsourcing that too. -
Sigggghhhhh
Apparently, you need to learn the difference between the count of glaciers vs. size of glaciers.It is why the GP refers to Antarctica "Monster" glaciers. All alpine glaciers (whose total count is much higher than the total number on Antarctica) are receding. In addition, glaciers on greenland are receding.
"The ocean temperatures are rising"
And you thought the Texans were distorting data? More reading material for you.
which leads toAnyway, what's the crime here? About 0.11 C of ocean warming in 40 years. That's 0.027C per decade, which is several times lower than the initial estimates for ocean warming that got this issue onto the front burner in the first place. The bottom line is that warming of the next 100 years is going to be wimpy. That can be gleaned from another model used in the same paper, which does not have volcanoes and assumes the sun is constant. It gives an ocean warming rate that corresponds to about 0.6C in the next 100 years, which translates to a total global warming only around 1.4C. This is far from the 5.8C making the newspapers these days.
So now your debate is not that ocean warming is occurring, but the degree of it? In fact, here is a more telling link. Why the man would call himself an authority and then threaten to sue because experts in the field declared him a 2-bit player, is beside me. Reminds me of a SCO type guy.
Yes, BS needs to be stopped, but I would say that I will listen to real experts, rather than self-proclaimed nobodies.
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Re:This is a surprise?
"The discrepancy comes from my treating gun-deaths as the only source of murders, which, they are not."
There wasn't a discrepancy, what you said was flat wrong. The parent said:
"Canada has a remarkably low murder rate."
You said:
"It's on a par with the U.S., per capita."
Its not. Its 3X higher in the U.S. So now you are claiming you were talking about murder with guns. Well in fact murder with guns is lower still. Only 1/3 of murders in Canada used guns versus 2/3rds in the U.S.
Here is a good article with charts. Violent crime is just consistently higher in the U.S. while Canada is at about parity in non violent property crimes. Here is the wikipedia article on the subject though Wikipedia isn't a very reliable source. It does say:
"Compared to the United States Canada has far lower rates of violent crime such as murder, assault, and rape. Through the 1990s, the homicide rate in the United States was three times higher than it was in Canada, while the American rate for aggravated assault was double the Canadian rate. The rate for robberies was 65% higher in the United States."
"Canada's crime rate is close to the average of Western Europe. Canada has a fair bit more crime than Japan. Canada has a lower crime rate than almost every country in the developing world."
"One of the most common explanations of the higher violent crime rate in the United States are guns. Gun crimes are far more common in the United States. Only one third of Canadian murders involve firearms compared to two thirds in the States. Guns are far more likely to be used in robberies in the United States. Gun ownership rates are much higher in the United States, especially handguns. Most Canadian weapons are rifles or shot guns owned by farmers and target shooters, and are less likely to be used in crimes. More assault weapons are banned in Canada than the United States. Canada also has a national gun registry. Even before the creation of the national gun registry, the two biggest provinces, Ontario and Quebec had a long history of strict gun controls. Paradoxically, however, after declining since the late 1970s, Canada's homicide rate has actually increased slightly since the national gun registry was enacted.
Canada has more guns and fewer controls on them than Western Europe or Japan."
Now to your next claim since you've completely veered off murder since you've been completely debunked there:
"violent crime against women is double in Canada, per capita, than what it is in the U.S."
Why don't you provide a URL to support that. First off I think you mean rape or maybe sexual assault not violent crime. Murder and assault are across the board higher in the U.S. and that doesn't change for women.
Now rape you might have a case because a few of the statistics I find do show Canada is 2X higher per capita than the U.S. But there is a problem. The definition of rape is different in every country, state, etc. This article says this about Rape law in Canada:
"Rape. In 1982, new legislation replaced the offense of rape with the new offense of "sexual assault." Sexual assault can take the form of unwanted touching, and need not involve penetration. There are three levels of sexual assault, graded by the amount of violence involved."
Rape is unfortunately statistically impossible to track. The definition varies in every jurisdiction. The percentage of actual versus reported cases is also wildly unpredictable. A place with strong shield laws is going to have more rapes cases filed than one that doesn't.
To be honest if this is the best you can do in your crusade to crucify your homeland maybe you should go back to the drawing board. -
Re:Plagiarist?
Other sites have similar info on Olinto de Pretto.
answers.com -
Re:façade?
http://www.answers.com/facade&r=67
Yup, seems that's really how you spell it. The C must have a freedom accent on it. -
Re:Better luck next time
There's a few good ones here http://www.answers.com/topic/pointy-haired-boss
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Re:Hmmmm...
It is called accessory after the fact I am not sure that it would ever be applied to the technician, but you never know.
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Re:I think they already did this...
Actually, as much as I hate McDonalds food (for christ sake, they can't even do ketchup right), they do, however, use real beef.
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Apple Revisionsism.
Xerox's Star workstation was the first commercial implementation of the graphical user interface. The Star was introduced in 1981 and was the inspiration for the Mac and all the other GUIs that followed.
(reference: http://www.answers.com/topic/gui )
There seems to be an endless need in the Apple Kingdom to reaffirm their decisions by finding like-minded acceptance.
Apple users read reviews on Apple Computers, for instance, after they bought their computer just to
reassure themselves that they made the right decision. When they read a bad things about or criticism of Apple,
they get mad.
This continues to happen decade after decade. Insecurity seems to be pandemic among Macphiles.
This phenomenon is the only thing that explains Mac users still getting so adamant.
If Apple had 90 percent market share you wouldn't hear a peep out of Mac users, since the
market itself would have given them the affirmation they need.
Mac users style themselves as non-conformists; in reality, they insecure and utterly intolerant.
Notice how they mod down reasonable criticism around here.
Notice how they call people "idiots" and revise history. -
Re:Logo?Taking this comment and some of the previous about QBASIC together : I once implemented a turtle library together in QuickBasic (and who remembers that
:-) ?
Hah, here's some of my QuickBASIC 4.5 accomplishments (Note to other posters, QuickBASIC and QBASIC are NOT the same thing.)- I wrote a PILOT interpreter.
- I wrote a
.mod player using a C library - I wrote a BBS external answering program with ANSI auto-detect and some other features.
- I wrote some BBS doors.
- I wrote an implementation of Conway's Life
I also had VB 1.0 for MS-DOS, which was pretty interesting, though it added godawful code bloat if you made use of the forms and such. I did make a good tagline manager program for .QWK offline mail readers (from the BBS days). -
Re:Logo?Taking this comment and some of the previous about QBASIC together : I once implemented a turtle library together in QuickBasic (and who remembers that
:-) ?
Hah, here's some of my QuickBASIC 4.5 accomplishments (Note to other posters, QuickBASIC and QBASIC are NOT the same thing.)- I wrote a PILOT interpreter.
- I wrote a
.mod player using a C library - I wrote a BBS external answering program with ANSI auto-detect and some other features.
- I wrote some BBS doors.
- I wrote an implementation of Conway's Life
I also had VB 1.0 for MS-DOS, which was pretty interesting, though it added godawful code bloat if you made use of the forms and such. I did make a good tagline manager program for .QWK offline mail readers (from the BBS days). -
Re:Bochs is terrible
No, but you can have QEMM. You know, so you can break the 640k memory barrier.
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It is official
Netcraft confirms it. Slashdot is dying
"This site has ceased to be amusing," says one time Slashdot fanatic Kip O'Ryan. "Something that used to be fun is now about as lively as a funeral. In the past, you could come here for sometimes informative articles, and always amusing mirth-filled comments in the discussion section. Now, anything remotely funny just gets modded down as troll, and one of the world's best venues for amateur comedy is gone."
He continued, saying "The sometimes off-color and angry banter back and forth between trolls and the newbies who fed them was a great source of amusement, but has rolled over and died, just like Stephen King, Marlon Wayans, or J.K. Rowling and what a shame! Now, it is too dull to even hold my attention for two minutes. Slashdot will be sorely missed."
It is official. Slashdot it dead. -
Re:I've read that one tooyou've cited on that says there was.
Well, two if you include the WikiPedia article, which appears to have gotten most of the data from this page which I didn't include in my original post since it appears biased against nuclear power in general, as opposed to this page which appears biased in favour of CANDU reactors in particular (that page is where I found the detailed report I cited because it appeared to be both more factual and more balanced than the others.).
But there are more:
The reactor building was contaminated, as well as an area of the Chalk River site, and millions of gallons of radioactive water accumulated in the reactor basement.
when a nuclear reactor at an experimental installation in Chalk River, Canada, suffered a meltdown and some radioactive material escaped into the atmosphere.
"There was some release of radioactivity"Regardless of our little game of Google, I think we can agree on that the release (either through the water only or through air and water) was minimal and all reports I have seen agree that among the servicemen and clean-up crew there has been no rise in fatality or even elevated risks for cancer after the accident.