Also, the remaining 50% will simply quit once they are overworked with the busywork that the bottom 50% used to do.
The issue is that the bottom 50% needs to be heavily managed so they can produce useful output. Sure, some of them are probably complete crap and need to be let go, but there is plenty of trained-monkey work to be done in a large organization.
Granted, it really depends on the org and situation. If the bottom 50% are made up of people that wield unusually large power (Such as, a company that has seniority rules based on age and years with the company.). Or the 50% are actively doing work to hurt the good 50%.
But in reality, if a company has a large number of useless employees, it is probably the management that needs to be fired.
and programmers are, by nature, terrible managers, so when you set them to managing programmers who actually need managing, you lose the productivity of all of them, including the now manager.
every human project follows the same path; first, a few committed brilliant individuals who share a common vision and work together well to achieve it. then, people get attracted who aren't quite as 100% tuned in, and things need to be managed a bit. then, people get attracted who just see something's happening and want to be attached to it, but not necessarily are any kind of positive contribution. finally, the idiots, crazies, psychopaths and criminals make their contributions. the history of every human endeavor; any given religion, country, charity, company, kid's playgroup, you name it.
I'll go with you, we're definitely stuck on the nonoptimum design. "Hey, this works great in a submarine in the Navy, how's about we just make it really huge and stick it on land and hire whoever will run it for us at the cheapest salaries?" "Sounds good to me, we can save a ton if we have no advanced research budget"
> First priority for electricity is big hidro / biomass from biodigestors+other natural wastes.
> Then nuclear.
> Then rooftop solar PV.
> Then wind.
[snip]
> it will take 20 years just to license the first MSR reactor
So, is your argument that we should do nothing for 20 years? No, I know, I'm being silly. But the point in there is valid: nuclear is too slow to fix the problem.
> US NRC and their NATO counterparts are working really hard in making nuclear as expensive as they can
This tired old bromide. *sigh*
Regulatory load, the favourite bugaboo of nuclear supporters, accounts for 5 to 10% of system cost. It has no real effect, as one can see by the fact that regulatory load has fallen from as much as 20% to 5% over the last 30 years yet the number of reactor projects plummeted.
The actual problem, as it has been well known for decades, is size. Economic efficiency scales with reactor and plant size, which means the sweet spot is somewhere around 900 to 1100 MW per reactor, and 2 to 4 reactors per plant. This means that building costs alone push the price into the $30 billion range. And when you turn on such a system, supply and demand drops your spot price and your profit margins. Everyone's known this for decades, which is why there were efforts like CANDU6 and SMRs, but none of these exactly took the world by storm because their economic performance sucked.
This year the average price for new nuclear is $7.50/W and wind is $1.25/W. The cost of integrating wind is actually lower than nuclear, contrary to other bromides. Even scaling for CF, wind is at least 1/2 the price of nuclear on a kWh basis. That is everything you need to know about the state of the nuclear industry right there.
True. The only role for nuclear in the foreseeable future would be to extend the lifespan of existing plants that are nearing their planned end of life. As unpalatable that is, it might be better than new coal fired. As for new nuke plants, by the time they come on line it'll be a decade from now and they'll all be underwater.
On top of the normal maintenance etc., the problem with the current crop of "renewable" energy is you cannot count on them producing enough energy when you actually need it. You may be able to count on a mean or average amount, but consumption is more of a constant. You have to have backup power (non-renewable) or very expensive storage systems to provide power when the wind dies down (or sun goes down, etc.) or you end up with rolling or regional blackouts when you don't have the power available. Those backup sources require maintenance and upkeep as well as the renewable energy.
When you hear puffery about how much the renewable energy will save - they tend to omit those backup plants etc. My father was given the option of "paying for" wind power in a coastal area or just the grid power.... when I mentioned that the electricity goes on the same grid and you don't get what you pay for (someone else might) and the cost of having someone else use the power that you are paying more for.... he opted for the normal power grid power. Without subsidies, it was more expensive.
Consumption is a constant? Midsummer afternoon AC load isn't a problem, even in the northern states? There isn't excess capacity at night, that the electric companies are dying to sell to you as recharging time for your car?
Using wind energy to power our cities still converts electricity into heat. This heat warms the atmosphere and creates stronger winds for us to harvest. The more wind energy we use the stronger the winds, it's a vicious cycle.
I am saying CO2 is bad. The fact that some climate change believers use hype and crap science to support that conclusion does not change the fact that it is true.
It's the typical denialist distraction reductionism. "Given the physical properties of carbon dioxide, and its known effect on the climate given the naturally occurring fraction in the atmosphere, I think it's risky to start raising that fraction by 30, 50, 75%" "Are you saying carbon dioxide is bad? It's not a poison! Plants need it!"
The plant you cited is a boondoggle of an outdated design, would expect it got built by highly motivated politicians. In general fission power is expensive due to excessive regulation, put there with the intent to make it expensive. Idiotic bits like things less radioactive than humans, being treated like deady contaminated objects.
Because they never have problems, and when they do it's never very significant or expensive. That's why insurance companies are lining up to sell liability insurance to them.
"The Puppet Masters" was actually pretty decent, given their limitations. (They ran out of budget to do decent alien spaceships, and they're obviously not going to be able to take it as far as Schedule Suntan without getting a kiss-of-death NC-17 rating.) Donald Sutherland absolutely nailed the rold of The Old Man. And how did they get that chimp to act so *creepy* when hag-ridden? Much of the dialog was straight from the book, and a number of scenes were very close to the book, modulo moving the setting to the present day from a future where there are Venus colonies. It was made by people who read and loved the book.
In comparison to the run of the mill SF flicks, Puppet Masters was a masterpiece.
There was also Starship Troopers 2, Starship Troopers 3, and Starship Troopers: Invasion. Of those, I only watched Invasion (all CGI). It was OK, which made it way better than the 1997 one. The others frankly look even worse. Anyway, I have high hopes and low expectations with Uprising.
I liked 2 and 3, but I'm in the minority. They were less consciously tongue in cheek than the original, more straightforward SF flick; 2 had a pretty hardhitting satire of militarism etc that went with the tongue in cheek militarism of the original; 3 just tossed out any attempt at subtlety or satire but kept the same antiauthoritarianism theme.
That's what happens when you don't throw away everything in the old universe.
I don't understand God. He throws out perfectly good organisms just because they get old, but he leaves all these old galaxies lying around gathering dust.
At least until we get some indisputable evidence, we need to continue to question our theories, record our observations - and try to see where the puzzle pieces fit. Being a dogmatic scientist is worse than being ignorant - the scientist should know better.
It's got a solid audience share, and is viewed by audiences in the coveted young adult age bracket.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, the remaining 50% will simply quit once they are overworked with the busywork that the bottom 50% used to do.
The issue is that the bottom 50% needs to be heavily managed so they can produce useful output. Sure, some of them are probably complete crap and need to be let go, but there is plenty of trained-monkey work to be done in a large organization.
Granted, it really depends on the org and situation. If the bottom 50% are made up of people that wield unusually large power (Such as, a company that has seniority rules based on age and years with the company.). Or the 50% are actively doing work to hurt the good 50%.
But in reality, if a company has a large number of useless employees, it is probably the management that needs to be fired.
and programmers are, by nature, terrible managers, so when you set them to managing programmers who actually need managing, you lose the productivity of all of them, including the now manager.
somebody's got to empty the waste baskets and go for coffee.
give them a vitally important side project to work on, which is so important they can't afford to be interrupted to deal with anything else.
every human project follows the same path; first, a few committed brilliant individuals who share a common vision and work together well to achieve it. then, people get attracted who aren't quite as 100% tuned in, and things need to be managed a bit. then, people get attracted who just see something's happening and want to be attached to it, but not necessarily are any kind of positive contribution. finally, the idiots, crazies, psychopaths and criminals make their contributions. the history of every human endeavor; any given religion, country, charity, company, kid's playgroup, you name it.
Who would want to track people attending a bris?
the Do No Evil project. I miss that one.
always does it for me.
I'll go with you, we're definitely stuck on the nonoptimum design. "Hey, this works great in a submarine in the Navy, how's about we just make it really huge and stick it on land and hire whoever will run it for us at the cheapest salaries?" "Sounds good to me, we can save a ton if we have no advanced research budget"
> First priority for electricity is big hidro / biomass from biodigestors+other natural wastes. > Then nuclear. > Then rooftop solar PV. > Then wind. [snip] > it will take 20 years just to license the first MSR reactor
So, is your argument that we should do nothing for 20 years? No, I know, I'm being silly. But the point in there is valid: nuclear is too slow to fix the problem.
> US NRC and their NATO counterparts are working really hard in making nuclear as expensive as they can
This tired old bromide. *sigh*
Regulatory load, the favourite bugaboo of nuclear supporters, accounts for 5 to 10% of system cost. It has no real effect, as one can see by the fact that regulatory load has fallen from as much as 20% to 5% over the last 30 years yet the number of reactor projects plummeted.
The actual problem, as it has been well known for decades, is size. Economic efficiency scales with reactor and plant size, which means the sweet spot is somewhere around 900 to 1100 MW per reactor, and 2 to 4 reactors per plant. This means that building costs alone push the price into the $30 billion range. And when you turn on such a system, supply and demand drops your spot price and your profit margins. Everyone's known this for decades, which is why there were efforts like CANDU6 and SMRs, but none of these exactly took the world by storm because their economic performance sucked.
This year the average price for new nuclear is $7.50/W and wind is $1.25/W. The cost of integrating wind is actually lower than nuclear, contrary to other bromides. Even scaling for CF, wind is at least 1/2 the price of nuclear on a kWh basis. That is everything you need to know about the state of the nuclear industry right there.
True. The only role for nuclear in the foreseeable future would be to extend the lifespan of existing plants that are nearing their planned end of life. As unpalatable that is, it might be better than new coal fired. As for new nuke plants, by the time they come on line it'll be a decade from now and they'll all be underwater.
LOL. Are you trying to imply that CO2 is 'bad' in some way? I guess you take that as read.
www.climatedepot.com www.wattsupwiththat.com
Cool it, Johnny Cochrane; nobody's going to take away CO2's right to bear arms.
On top of the normal maintenance etc., the problem with the current crop of "renewable" energy is you cannot count on them producing enough energy when you actually need it. You may be able to count on a mean or average amount, but consumption is more of a constant. You have to have backup power (non-renewable) or very expensive storage systems to provide power when the wind dies down (or sun goes down, etc.) or you end up with rolling or regional blackouts when you don't have the power available. Those backup sources require maintenance and upkeep as well as the renewable energy. When you hear puffery about how much the renewable energy will save - they tend to omit those backup plants etc. My father was given the option of "paying for" wind power in a coastal area or just the grid power.... when I mentioned that the electricity goes on the same grid and you don't get what you pay for (someone else might) and the cost of having someone else use the power that you are paying more for.... he opted for the normal power grid power. Without subsidies, it was more expensive.
Consumption is a constant? Midsummer afternoon AC load isn't a problem, even in the northern states? There isn't excess capacity at night, that the electric companies are dying to sell to you as recharging time for your car?
Using wind energy to power our cities still converts electricity into heat. This heat warms the atmosphere and creates stronger winds for us to harvest. The more wind energy we use the stronger the winds, it's a vicious cycle.
Perpetual motion. Our energy problems are solved.
I am saying CO2 is bad. The fact that some climate change believers use hype and crap science to support that conclusion does not change the fact that it is true.
It's the typical denialist distraction reductionism. "Given the physical properties of carbon dioxide, and its known effect on the climate given the naturally occurring fraction in the atmosphere, I think it's risky to start raising that fraction by 30, 50, 75%" "Are you saying carbon dioxide is bad? It's not a poison! Plants need it!"
LOL. Are you trying to imply that CO2 is 'bad' in some way? I guess you take that as read.
www.climatedepot.com www.wattsupwiththat.com
Ah, a list of bad science pushers.
The plant you cited is a boondoggle of an outdated design, would expect it got built by highly motivated politicians. In general fission power is expensive due to excessive regulation, put there with the intent to make it expensive. Idiotic bits like things less radioactive than humans, being treated like deady contaminated objects.
Because they never have problems, and when they do it's never very significant or expensive. That's why insurance companies are lining up to sell liability insurance to them.
"The Puppet Masters" was actually pretty decent, given their limitations. (They ran out of budget to do decent alien spaceships, and they're obviously not going to be able to take it as far as Schedule Suntan without getting a kiss-of-death NC-17 rating.) Donald Sutherland absolutely nailed the rold of The Old Man. And how did they get that chimp to act so *creepy* when hag-ridden? Much of the dialog was straight from the book, and a number of scenes were very close to the book, modulo moving the setting to the present day from a future where there are Venus colonies. It was made by people who read and loved the book.
In comparison to the run of the mill SF flicks, Puppet Masters was a masterpiece.
Starship Troopers the movie basically was making sarcastic fun of Starship Troopers the book.
There was also Starship Troopers 2, Starship Troopers 3, and Starship Troopers: Invasion. Of those, I only watched Invasion (all CGI). It was OK, which made it way better than the 1997 one. The others frankly look even worse. Anyway, I have high hopes and low expectations with Uprising.
I liked 2 and 3, but I'm in the minority. They were less consciously tongue in cheek than the original, more straightforward SF flick; 2 had a pretty hardhitting satire of militarism etc that went with the tongue in cheek militarism of the original; 3 just tossed out any attempt at subtlety or satire but kept the same antiauthoritarianism theme.
Perhaps with the term "Mistress" in the title, they were worried that people would confuse it with the 50 Shades genre.
"The Moon is 50 Shades of Gray"
I have a cloaca, you presumptuous clod.
Keep it in the cloaca room.
what would the silver surfer be surfing on otherwise?
That's what happens when you don't throw away everything in the old universe.
I don't understand God. He throws out perfectly good organisms just because they get old, but he leaves all these old galaxies lying around gathering dust.
The big bang theory is just that: a theory. It is not yet proven indisputably as a law of nature.
New ideas and observations, such as this article on new equations and this article on lack of expected gravitational waves put the theorum to the test. Furthermore, the Pope declaring the 'big bang theory right' only increases the need to check our models and assumptions on this subject (and now that I think about it, wouldn't the church have a vested interest in a non-permanent universe to mesh with end-times dogma)?
At least until we get some indisputable evidence, we need to continue to question our theories, record our observations - and try to see where the puzzle pieces fit. Being a dogmatic scientist is worse than being ignorant - the scientist should know better.
It's got a solid audience share, and is viewed by audiences in the coveted young adult age bracket.
it's nearly 6k years old!
I always bugs me when hair extensions are obvious.