Slashdot Mirror

My bachelor's degree, from the University of Nevada Reno is a Mathematics BA (Statistics emphasis). The difference between that degree and a Mathematics BS (Statistics emphasis) is that the BA requires a foreign language, does not require any CS, and is not required to take numerical modeling (which is essentially a CS class). Otherwise, the requirements for the two degrees are identical. The same structure exists for the other possible emphases in mathematics: the BA requires a foreign language and does not require any CS.

My bachelor's degree, from the University of Nevada Reno is a Mathematics BA (Statistics emphasis). The difference between that degree and a Mathematics BS (Statistics emphasis) is that the BA requires a foreign language, does not require any CS, and is not required to take numerical modeling (which is essentially a CS class). Otherwise, the requirements for the two degrees are identical. The same structure exists for the other possible emphases in mathematics: the BA requires a foreign language and does not require any CS.

The imagery looks like the actual measurements are LiDAR derived.
Similar levels of accuracy are available from the GPS system when differential GPS is used. More information about GPS here:
Continuously Operating Reference Station (CORS) http://geodesy.noaa.gov/CORS/

It is rocket science, however today not surprising. The really hard part of this is that the data is available in near real time. See the Sentinel mission website
https://sentinel.esa.int/web/sentinel/missions.

Any time a building incurs settlement like this I wounder if the foundation layer - likely some sort of clay - is a thixotropic material potentially subject to liquefaction when shaken. Reference Jan. 17, 1995 Hyogo-Ken Nanbu Earthquake:Technical Paper on Liquifaction and,Earthquake Impact on Kobe

Interestingly enough, if you talk to anyone who actually knows what they're talking about a work schedule set by the employer is actually a minuscule bit of the IRS's three tests. Tenured college profs, for example, only actually have a set schedule on when they have to teach classes. Their office hours, when they're doing research, etc. are their own damn business. Even the much abused Associate Prof is an employee, and they don't even have to be in the state except for class time (which is negotiated with the school, not set from on-high) or office hours (which is set by the prof). Just about any high-level employee can similarly re-negotiate his work schedule and get a paid half-day off to help out at his kid's field trip.

It's also incredibly easy to find examples of contractors who have set schedules. You get hired as a contractor to fix an interior door in a building which is locked except during office hours, and the contract specifies you don't get paid unless you're done lickety–split, plus a nice juicy bonus if it's done tomorow, guess what you're doing from 9-5 tomorrow?

At-risk capital is much more important (Uber drivers own their vehicles, so they do have at--risk capital which indicates contractor), as is employer control (and since Uber drivers are damn near paranoid about pissing off the company, and act like Uber controls them, it does indicating employee), as is the nature of the business (if Uber's lawyers are right, and they aren't a transportation company this indicates contractor; if anyone sane is right and they sell cab rides it indicates employee).

Three prominent closed gravity minima along the south edge of the study area may reveal underlying calderas, which are masked by younger Tertiary rocks. The largest possible caldera is about 10.52 by 15.5 mi (17 by 25 km) in size, and, if the assumed underlying tuffaceous sedimentary rocks are, on the average, 0.2 g/cm3 less dense than the surrounding volcanic rocks, the caldera extends to a depth of about 1.7 mi (2.7 km). The areas along the edges of the postulated calderas are considered sites for possible future mineral exploration.

and

In the southwestern part of the Range, gravity and magnetic anomalies of substantial size suggest the possible existence of a caldera or buried pluton. The widespread geochemical anomalies in this area are similar in size and magnitude to the mineralized McDermitt Caldera approximately 82 mi (132 km) to the northwest in the Opalite mining district. Whether a caldera or buried pluton is present in the area, the geochemical data suggest that area C shown on figure 2 has a possible potential for concealed mercury and complex precious metal sulfide deposits.

Also, the link to the McDonalds reference is: http://www.datapointed.net/201...

Highly unlikely. According to this map of oil and gas potential in Nevada [PDF], there aren't any oil and gas wells in that part of the state (western edge of Sheldon National Antelope Refuge), and even the oil and gas potential in that area is essentially nil due to the geology, such as the presence of an old volcanic caldera there (the northwesternmost red blob is practically on top of the area of the earthquake swarm). The conodont samples referred to on that map are a way to assess how much the local rocks have been heated. To the east of the earthquake area the square dots are red, indicating the rocks are thoroughly roasted. Other geology maps indicate the area is mostly volcanic and intrusive igneous rocks. There's no oil and gas drilling there. Zip.

Nevada being a rather tectonically active area, suspecting it is from hydraulic fracturing is pretty unlikely in the first place. I know hydraulic fracturing is the favorite punching bag of people these days for anything related to any geological hazard, but there are plenty of natural causes before leaping to that conclusion.

A Yale professor named John H. Langbein wrote an interesting paper comparing our system of plea bargaining with the medieval European law of torture. It is a very interesting read.

You said 2 tenths of a gigaton. That's only 200 million tons no matter how you cut it.

Mount Saint Helens emitted less than 1 cubic mile of material and it wasn't all magma. Pinatubo, the biggest eruption in the last 100 years only emitted about 2.4 cubic miles of material. Most eruptions don't even come close to the size of Pinatubo.

I have a hard time believing your numbers about how much CO2/SO2 can come from magma. Do you have a reference for that?

Finally, if what you say is true there would have been a big spike in atmospheric CO2 levels from the eruption of Pinatubo in 1991. That didn't happen. There was a spike in SO2 but CO2 and SO2 have opposite effects on temperatures. The SO2 from the eruption did cause a measurable cooling for a couple of years.

Science says volcanoes typically emit about 242 million tonnes of CO2 per year.

I don't have time to get into the details of you fuel consumption numbers but the numbers published say humans emit around 30 gigatonnes of CO2 a year, over 100 times the emissions of volcanoes.

There's at least one company, Virtual Gold, doing data mining in basketball and their product, Advanced Scout, has been in use since the 90s. Here is a paper on it. I don't think the analysis is the same as this one, but Moneyball style stuff is not new to the NBA.

There was also this article in the NYTimes by Michael Lewis that discussed some aspects of this kind of analysis, e.g. " Battier learns a lot from studying the data on the superstars he is usually assigned to guard. For instance, the numbers show him that Allen Iverson is one of the most efficient scorers in the N.B.A. when he goes to his right; when he goes to his left he kills his team. The Golden State Warriors forward Stephen Jackson is an even stranger case. “Steve Jackson,” Battier says, “is statistically better going to his right, but he loves to go to his left — and goes to his left almost twice as often.”"

It's important to realise that individual academics and students within instituations don't directly pay for access to most papers from our budgets just like we don't directly pay for "core" software (we do pay for some more specialised software out of our own budgets but windows, office, matlab, endnote and so on are all covered centrally). Those things are paid for centrally as part of block subscriptions. If academics actually had to pay the prices that are shown to the general public I suspect there would be a very quick move towards open access journals.

That's part of the 40-44% Facilities and Administrative costs (F&A) that comes out of your grant.

Snark on slashdot is business as usual. Being skeptical of the phrase "fusion reactor" tossed around lightly in the press is nothing to feel bad about. Why the writer wasn't more careful in phrasing the article to begin with is a more revealing question. Calling a fusor a fusion reactor misses the whole point of what a fusion reactor would be should one ever exist.

Why no skepticism here, though, about the description of this purported "Little Man Tate" school:

http://www.davidsonacademy.unr.edu/

We're to believe 1) that a significant population of PROFOUNDLY Gifted (emphasis in the original) kids exists in Reno, a city of just 200,000, and 2) that for some reason such populations don't exist in your own city or state for your local University to turn into mutant leaders of tomorrow? This is just charter school hyperbole and "Mismeasure of Man" crap about standardized testing. The school has been around for five years. What are the Reno odds that it will still be around after another five?

Regarding the science fair skepticism ("Daddy must have done it"), I might suggest that you seek out your local science fair with your own local population of regular old students. Annual judging day never fails to make me feel good about the future even given a general dearth of sources of neutrons irradiating the hall.

Whatever happened to the concept that you'd just push your cart through an RFID portal, everything in your cart would be interrogated, and you'd get an immediate bill? Wal-Mart was behind that. NCR demonstrated it in 2004. That was a more promising idea.

Vision systems for checkout are available. There's LaneHawk, for recognizing big items at the bottom of the cart, and VeggieVision, for recognizing vegetables on a scale pan. Automated checkout is getting better.

The future of retail looks more like WebVan. WebVan was a flop, but not because of customer acceptance. WebVan was popular, but the operating costs were too high. "Soap.com" (acquired by Amazon) is now doing the WebVan thing of delivering routine items. But now, with Kiva robotic order picking, it's profitable. Kiva's system is now doing about 10% of online order picking in the US. Costs are about 1/5 of human picking.

Delivery uses less fuel than driving a ton of car to the store to move a few pounds of merchandise. At $4 per gallon and up, Soap.com's shipping rates (Max of $5, free for orders over $39) look really good.

The future of retail is online ordering and delivery. Been to a record store lately? A video rental store? A bank branch? A travel agency? Look at all the vacant retail space that will never again be occupied.

British Geological Survey is reporting up to 13 ft. to the east. Revisions will probably settle down and start agreeing in a couple of weeks.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12732335
http://www.slate.com/id/2288382/

Remember folks, the piece of earth that moved can be larger than the country sitting on top of it. In the case of Japan it almost is. When you jog a table it doesn't break your dinner plates in half.
http://crack.seismo.unr.edu/ftp/pub/updates/louie/kobe/kobe-sci.html

The problem with you "alternative" energy types is that you have no sense of proportion. You could entirely cover the Sahara (according to a British study) in photovoltaic cells and still not cover Europe's energy needs.

Citation requested.

Here's my own: A Solar Grand Plan. Another one, Hooked on Subsidies. Yet, another one, The elusive negawatt. Still another: Renewable Energy Maps of Nevada. Also Renewable Energy for America.

That isn't to say we shouldn't move to more alternative fuels (we should), but to naively think that will be sufficient is just blind.

To say alternative energy can't be sufficient is just blind. Requiring people to pay the full cost of the energy they use, including but not only eliminating subsidies and paying for pollution, then people won't be as wasteful.

Falcon

Fill the Great Lakes and every coast, the Gulf, and all of the Alaskan Coast with towers?

Not needed in the USA. The Rockies contain enough potential wind energy to power the 48 contiguous states. Of course the West Coast from BC to southern CA contains a lot too. Turn eastward in SCal going through AZ and NM to west Texas and there's more. On the East Coast hike up the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine to find more prime wind energy. Of course you can find more offshore but plenty can be found on land.

And that's just considering wind. A Solar Grand Plan goes into how solar power can supply "69 percent of the U.S.’s electricity and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050". Not only does Nevada have a lot of solar potential but it also has a lot of potential geothermal and wind energy.

Of course the pseudo-environmentalists NIMBYs will oppose these.

Falcon

All this will take up a massive amount of space compared to LFTR and comes with problems of its own.

And we have plenty of space. The National Renewable Energy Lab's Wind Atlas details the wind potential of different regions of the US. The Rocky Mountains alone contain enough potential wind energy to supply all 48 contiguous states with electricity. However that's not all. On the Pacific Coast from British Colombia south through southern California then east to western Texas, there's more. Why during California's rolling blackouts in the early 2000s, there was an idle wind farm in the Mojave capable of generating 10 megawatts per hour. Over on the Atlantic Coast from Maine to Cape Hatteras off the North Carolina coast there are good sites for wind farms. As senator before his death Ed Kennedy was one of the NIMBYs opposing one such wind farm, on Cape Cod. On-shore through the Appalachian Mountains north from Georgia then into Pennsylvania's Poconos and New York's Catskills Mountains, hell all along the Appalachian Trail to Maine, there is good wind potential.

That's just wind, solar adds more. Again according to DOE, just 100 square miles of land in Nevada, that's an area of 10 miles by 10 miles, "could supply all U.S. electricity needs with current (~10%) commercial efficiency rates." But Nevada isn't the place with good solar potential. Now let's go back geothermal. According to an MIT led panel sponsored by DOE geothermal can be a "key U.S. energy source". Here's some info on geothermal in New York state, and more for Minnesota and Wisconsin. I've already mentioned California and Yellowstone, recently there was a discussion of how West Virginia Is Geothermically Active.

With today's technology solar and wind can provide the US's peak electricity, while geothermal and existing natural gas and nuclear power plants supply the baseload until more geothermal capacity and storage is developed.

Falcon

You've got to be kidding. Here in the USA, the law is for the rich and their lawyers.

Which, of course, is why the IRS has an entire section dedicated to starting a business and why Nevada also provides the same. Heck, Nevada even has an FAQ, and the IRS gives you a checklist. I'm willing to bet that, if you hit your local Chamber of Commerce, you'll find information there, too. Heck, even my local university has online resources available for new businesses.

For the rich and the lawyers indeed.

As one who has studied entomology, especially Biological Control; I am aware that there were faulty methods of evaluating suitable insects for attacking imported pests. The USDA has stricter standards now for evaluating host specificity (how likely is the critter going to pick on a native vs target insect) of a biocontrol agent (= phorid flies in this case).

True, in the case of ants, since there are so many species, foolproof bioagents can be difficult to get, but there have been successes too. I personally have worked with Cereal Leaf Beetle and the complex of wasps we used to control the critters have successfully kept them in check...and kept wheat production costs down.

The economy has done better when the President is a Democrat than when the President is a Republican.

http://www.slate.com/id/2199810/
http://www.coba.unr.edu/econ/wp/papers/UNRECONWP06008.pdf
http://www.boom2bust.com/2008/09/10/are-democrats-or-republicans-better-for-the-us-economy/

That may be true now but currently plastic is a petrochemical product. As oil prices rise so will the prices of plastic fibers. Copper will rise as well but at least in the US copper can be locally mined thus reducing transportation costs.

This page (scroll down to the header "Seismic Energy") lists richter 4.0 as corresponding to 1kT and 4.5 as 5.1kT (richter is a log scale). So kind of a pissy sub-tactical range yield (i.e. nothing you'd want to be close to, but not a city killer either). For comparison's sake, Trinity, Fat Man, and Little Boy were all in the 12-22kT range.

I'd like to see one of these website claim they have an AI bot, but actually join two users together. Then post the conversation somewhere.

This has been done, with fascinating results. See Douglas Hofstadter's Conversation with NICOLAI (scroll halfway down the page, to the Post Scriptum), where Hofstadter was fooled into believing he was conversing with an AI, then tried to rationalize the AI's responses during the conversation. This was in 1983!

A two-week-old sea horse can consume 3,600 baby shrimps in one dayup to 25 times its body weight.

When a mosquito sucks blood from a human, it will take in twice its body weight in blood. To decrease this added weight, the mosquito urinates on its victim to release fluids.

Learn a lesson from Kobe, Japan... Many assumptions were tested in that quake. I wonder, for instance, how useful the tuned mass damper would be for Rayleigh waves (the up-and-down variety). Though presumably Taipei 101 is pretty strong horizontally! IANAS. :)

The Modified Mercalli Scale of Earthquake Intensity perhaps?

While "outdated," it actually provides a more realistic interpretation of the actual affects of an earthquake. Whereas an 7.0 magnitude earthquake on the Richter scale could cause no damage at all in an area full of bedrock, it could completely flatten an area built on silt and mud. (Eastern California vs. St. Louis, for example)

Yes. Shindo and Mercalli

Modified Mercalli Insensity Scale

KFG

> No, but because of it's bendability, it can actually dodge incomming plains.

But how fast can these incomming plains, that you mention, move? . . and is this all due totectonic plate creap?
http://www.seismo.unr.edu/ftp/pub/louie/class/100/ plate-tectonics.html
.

"Sometimes, it's an institutional thing, as noted by postings to this article about certain countries offering entire courses centered around this competition."

Like these ones, for instance:

http://www.cse.unr.edu/~westphal/spring2005/cs491F /
http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~skiena/392/
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~hilfingr/csx98/
http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~dodds/ACM/homeACM.html

The money quote:

"My analysis of Hilbert's mutilated proofs therefore cannot prove that Einstein copied from Hilbert," he says. "It proves less, which is that it cannot be proved that Einstein could not have copied from Hilbert. But it proves that Hilbert had not copied from Einstein, as it has been insinuated following the paper by Corry, Renn and Stachel."

The original paper by Prof. Winterbottom was published but a rebuttal to that paper by Corry, Renn and Stachel was not.

There have been quakes that went up to 9.0 (or even 9.5, depending on your source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_scale or http://www.seismo.unr.edu/ftp/pub/louie/class/100/ magnitude.html), being the Chilean Earthquake of 1960. The second link also hints at a magnitude 10 event as being "San-Andreas type fault circling Earth"

According to this site, a magitude 10 would release some 1 trillion tons equivalent of energy, and would be the equivalent of a "San-Andreas type fault circling Earth."

A magnitude 12 would be 160 trillion tons equivalent, and would "fault Earth in half through center."

That seems wrong... an 8.0 is equivalent to ~1,000 Megatons of TNT. Reference

This energy released by this quake was ~30,000 Megatons!

It's called Oobleck.

Whoever made this gawdawful graphic should take a gander at this fine paper entitled 14 ways to say nothing with scientific visualization.

That's what they taught us in econ 101/102, using a text by Lester Thurow, and called it the circular flow economy, and basically said the same thing, that manufacturing has to pay the factors of production (labor) enough to BUY BACK the stuff produced.

From what I understand of Trademark law there are a few rules which have to be followed in the United States:

1. Not in use prior to the origination of trademarks as a general term. (ie: "Windows" is a general term, "Microsoft Windows" is not. Microsoft's big problem is that they trademarked just "Windows". (If I remember correctly.) Therein lies the rub.) This is where the "Olympics" problem also occurs. Since the Greeks coined the phrase "Olympics" over 2,000 years ago - no one can claim to own the word "Olympics" and would be laughed out of court for trying to claim it. (However, again - you first have to go to court and be willing to fight for it in order to have it thrown out. And that is the catch. If you aren't willing to stand up to a bunch of bullies - then you get what you deserve. And that is why things are the way they are.)

2. Trademarks can be made to cover entire areas or everything dependent upon how the wording is done on the application. (See Apple Computer Inc.'s having to deal with the company who created the Macintosh Stereo Systems. Or look at the Beatles trademarking the "Apple" logo for their records. [Notice also that the Beatles' Apple logo isn't just the word but is also a pictograph. So that has to be taken into consideration as well.)

3. Trademarks have to be defended or they return to the general public. This is why you see so many threats of lawsuits. McDonald's is very aggressive in their pursuit of anyone who might have a name even remotely sounding like theirs.

4. Trademarks also can not become general terms. This is called "dilution of a trademark." This is also why people can no longer refer to making a copy of something on a copying machine as "Xerox'ing something" or "making a Xerox". Why colas sold in restaurants have to be distinguished by trademark name and not just as "cokes", and why you use a tissue and not a "kleenex". All of these companies had to fight to keep their trademarks from becoming so diluted in normal speech that they no longer were considered trademarks.

(Offtopic: I have a new idea for submitting stuff to SlashDot - integrated spell checker! Put it next to "Submit" and "Preview". I know I could have used one writing this up. :-) )

Can this explain it?:

"A planet's magnetosphere is provided through its magnetic field. To create a magnetic field, a planet or moon must have magnetic material such has iron, which is warm enough to move around to form currents within the planet."

And isn't earth(s core) cooling down? - Can't this affect our magnetosphere? If the magnetic materail stop flowing?


My imaginary plot (IMHO):

Now I'm thinging that when earth switched poles, the core coold down, reversal happened, sometime after that earth got hit by a large enough meteor to restart our core (how elese could the core be restarted? there wasn't atomic weapons and the like back in those days, no! Good ol' fashion meteors had to suffice : )). Then earth keept it's (reverse) position till it coold down again, and re-reversed itself again. Sometime after, BAda'BOOM eine large enough meteor struck again, restarted our engine, and we keept on ticking.... untill soon enough (if we think 1000 year or more is soon..) when our core will stop flowing.

Can someone please look up how long ago earth was struck by a large enough meteor to turn earth in to a giant blob of lava? : )
I put my money on lets say 780 000 to one millon years ago :) (when the last revelsal was presumed to have happened.)


Earth cooling down:

Here's the tricky part; How much must the earth's core cool down for reversal to happen? Because for it to cool down entirilely it will take more than 1000 years.


Reference:
http://www.seismo.unr.edu/ftp/pub/louie/class/100/ interior.html
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/moon/ moon_magnetic_field.html&edu=high
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/physical_sc ience/magnetism/magnetic_materials.html&edu=hi gh
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 92152
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,69 03,837058,00.html

Although I usually do not recommend this approach, consider obtaining security through obscurity.

Factory-installed keyless entry / remote starter systems all come from the same company, so if you get a Dodge Intrepid with an installed system, it will be identical to every other Dodge Intrepid's system. If you're afraid of someone scanning the remote's codes to gain access to your car, consider getting an aftermarket system. They're abundant in today's DYI market, and every automotive store carries a few different brands. Most of them are likely to have varying circuitry, varying frequencies, varying communication protocols, which make it that much harder and impractical for a would-be thief to get a scanner for (instead, get a scanner that caters to a wider "audience", if you will).

Naturally, a thief bent on stealing your car might get frustrated with not being able to crack your remote's code, perhaps to the point of using a jimmy and scratching the precious paint job, or even using a blunt object and simply breaking the glass. But at least your car will still be there :)

Personally, I use a remote system from ICDynamics. It gives me remote start, keyless entry and trunk release options, and that's good enough for me. Gets good range, too (over 300ft), so I can start my car up from the comfort of my home on days like today (a few degrees below freezing).

No, I do not work for them :) I'm just a happy customer.

• SCSI Support
• Easily reinstalled nodes
• Pre-installed queue software
• brain dead admin tools
• No French Government

Check it out: Rocksclusters

The industry and government made a major effort to install breeder reactors 30 years ago, but the anti-nuclear lobby killed it in the '70s. I remember it well, as I remember my strong disappointment when the anti-nuke crowd succeeded.

While the waste is transported to Yucca from nuclear power stations, it will pass within 2 miles of 90% of the US population -- it will be in your backyard too.

Small amounts at a time, and they can be moved as necessary.

The Feds have lied about a number of key facts.

I doubt that, but the anti-nuke segment certainly has.

The government claims that the area is a seismic (sp?) dead zone.

What do you think that means?

Yet there was an earthquake at Yucca mountain about a month ago

That's what I thought; you don't know much about seismic activity.

There is no such thing as a region of Earth that doesn't have some seismic wave (aka "earthquake") go through it at some point. The important question to ask is, "How powerful is the seismic wave?" How much energy and destructive force does the seismic wave contain?

Here is a map of all earthquakes of magnitude greater than 3.0 in Nevada's Southern Great Basin from 1978 to 2000. If you only want to see Year 2000's data, click here. Be sure to visit the Yucca Mountain Seismic Monitoring by the Nevada Seismological Laboratory Web page.

and a major fault line about 300 miles away.

Too far away to be significant.

There is also a possibilty that any waste that leaks from the mountain will contaminate an aquifer which provides water to millions.

The waste is all solid. It isn't going to leak anywhere, even if the canisters were ruptured. There also hasn't been any water leak through the area in a very long time.

No matter how you put it, Yucca mountain is a bad deal for everyone.

Yucca Mountain is the best option.

(Number of submission attempts before this message posted: 1)

The industry and government made a major effort to install breeder reactors 30 years ago, but the anti-nuclear lobby killed it in the '70s. I remember it well, as I remember my strong disappointment when the anti-nuke crowd succeeded.

While the waste is transported to Yucca from nuclear power stations, it will pass within 2 miles of 90% of the US population -- it will be in your backyard too.

Small amounts at a time, and they can be moved as necessary.

The Feds have lied about a number of key facts.

I doubt that, but the anti-nuke segment certainly has.

The government claims that the area is a seismic (sp?) dead zone.

What do you think that means?

Yet there was an earthquake at Yucca mountain about a month ago

That's what I thought; you don't know much about seismic activity.

There is no such thing as a region of Earth that doesn't have some seismic wave (aka "earthquake") go through it at some point. The important question to ask is, "How powerful is the seismic wave?" How much energy and destructive force does the seismic wave contain?

Here is a map of all earthquakes of magnitude greater than 3.0 in Nevada's Southern Great Basin from 1978 to 2000. If you only want to see Year 2000's data, click here. Be sure to visit the Yucca Mountain Seismic Monitoring by the Nevada Seismological Laboratory Web page.

and a major fault line about 300 miles away.

Too far away to be significant.

There is also a possibilty that any waste that leaks from the mountain will contaminate an aquifer which provides water to millions.

The waste is all solid. It isn't going to leak anywhere, even if the canisters were ruptured. There also hasn't been any water leak through the area in a very long time.

No matter how you put it, Yucca mountain is a bad deal for everyone.

Yucca Mountain is the best option.

(Number of submission attempts before this message posted: 1)

The industry and government made a major effort to install breeder reactors 30 years ago, but the anti-nuclear lobby killed it in the '70s. I remember it well, as I remember my strong disappointment when the anti-nuke crowd succeeded.

While the waste is transported to Yucca from nuclear power stations, it will pass within 2 miles of 90% of the US population -- it will be in your backyard too.

Small amounts at a time, and they can be moved as necessary.

The Feds have lied about a number of key facts.

I doubt that, but the anti-nuke segment certainly has.

The government claims that the area is a seismic (sp?) dead zone.

What do you think that means?

Yet there was an earthquake at Yucca mountain about a month ago

That's what I thought; you don't know much about seismic activity.

There is no such thing as a region of Earth that doesn't have some seismic wave (aka "earthquake") go through it at some point. The important question to ask is, "How powerful is the seismic wave?" How much energy and destructive force does the seismic wave contain?

Here is a map of all earthquakes of magnitude greater than 3.0 in Nevada's Southern Great Basin from 1978 to 2000. If you only want to see Year 2000's data, click here. Be sure to visit the Yucca Mountain Seismic Monitoring by the Nevada Seismological Laboratory Web page.

and a major fault line about 300 miles away.

Too far away to be significant.

There is also a possibilty that any waste that leaks from the mountain will contaminate an aquifer which provides water to millions.

The waste is all solid. It isn't going to leak anywhere, even if the canisters were ruptured. There also hasn't been any water leak through the area in a very long time.

No matter how you put it, Yucca mountain is a bad deal for everyone.

Yucca Mountain is the best option.

(Number of submission attempts before this message posted: 1)

Within the sun there is a finite number of particles, which are made up of a finite number of subatomic particles... and the movement of each particle can be measured exactly if we take in account of all the number of forces acting upon it (which is... you guessed it... finite). Essentially, you would have to make a great deal of computations (...again, finite), but it is possible. The only problems you would get into would be continual motion... if there is such a thing...

Not unless our understanding of atomic and sub-atomic particles is completely wrong. You can NOT measure "the movement of each particle ... exactly", as explained by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. There is a limit to the precision to which you can measure the particle's 'movement'. If you somehow measured the velocity of the particle exactly, you would have a very uncertain idea of its exact location, which would also be a major factor in determining that particle's effects on its surrounding particles. Which is of course necessary if your goal is to be able to calculate the movements of every particle in the Sun.

It would not be possible, and not necessary or useful either, to build a complete model that calculates the exact movement of every part of the Sun. We will just keep creating slightly more accurate models over time, until we have one that is "good enough".

Beowulf has been studied a lot. Check out the names and ancestries of the characters. The epic Beowulf is not English literature, but literature in English, very old English. The action takes place in southern Scandinavia with the southern tip of what is now Sweden actually being Danish at the time.

If you're looking for a more general dead-tree version of Beowulf, then Howell D. Chickering, Jr. 's Beowulf, Anchor Books, Doubleday, New York, 1977 was a good one with both the transcribed Old English version and the modern English version side by side.

So you guys know, Myrinet is a 2Gb peak interconnect with a 7us minimum latency. FULL CROSSBAR SWITCH :-) Fiber or serial.

A interesting fact is that up until a few days ago, Myrinet only supported 1 GIG systems. I ran into this while setting up the University of Nevada beowulf named cortex.

I must admit, IA64 with Myrinet 2000 is gonna kick some serious computational ass.

The article says that Myrinet will run MPI, but it will also run PVM and TCP/IP stuff too.

Check it out at their site

The Anchorage quake (1964) was Magnitude 8.5

Have they included the massive extra cost of building an earthquake-proof tunnels? The whole region between Alaska and the Siberian Peninsula is located over major fault planes. Geologist's have concluded there was a massive quake a few centuries ago that was much bigger than 8.5 and possibly as big as 9.7 (more than one order of magnitude more energy than an 8.5)

Nobody really knows how big the quakes can get out there.

You appear to be correct. According to this short paper by Jessica Apple, it's still uncertain who first invented the telescope, but it wasn't Galileo. (The Dutch gentleman you were trying to remember was Hans Lippershey.)