Use a nuclear reactor to make drinking water - what could possibly go wrong?
Given that the pressurized water heated by the reaction is kept in separate pipes from the water that turns to steam, not much. Any leaks or other issues would cause big enough problems that the last thing you'd worry about is clean drinking water.
I guess you haven't been to Chernobyl lately. The down sides to any nuclear power is its nuclear. It could blow and take a whole lot with it.
When was the last nuclear power plant accident that happened while its operators were following all prescribed safety procedures? Nuclear power is extremely safe, even more so than traditional coal plants. As long as the operators are trained properly, they perform maintenance as required, etc. there isn't much of a problem.
Name me one nuclear power plant accident and I guarantee it was caused by plant operators not doing what they were supposed to. Sure, this is part of the overall risk. However, it is no different than any other method of producing power. A negligent coal plant operator could cause an explosion or a really big, dirty fire.
Is this a surprise? The Bush admin is waging a war on porn and this is a logical step.
No, not really surprising, but not really relevant either. I think the closest thing I can find is like SCO and IBM. SCO is looking for trouble and wants their defendant, IBM, to dig for evidence to convict themselves! Absolutely retarded. Rather than go to google.com and type shit in to see what comes up, Justice Dept. wants Google to do all the legwork to serve their agenda. Sure, Google isn't a defendant, but it's just as bad. They want to serve a subpeona requiring tons and tons of work on Google's part with no clear benefit to Google or even the American people.
This is the same Justice Dept. whose Secretary covered up a statue because it had an exposed breast. The same Secretary who, despite being married for decades, was probably still a virgin because "that's what good conservative Christians do."
For the most part, I think sequels are stupid and pointless. Movies tend to stand alone very well unless they were written from the beginning to be part of a series (e.g. Star Wars). Sometimes, a sequel works well despite not being written to be a series (e.g. Toy Story 2, Lethal Weapon 2-4). However, the other 99% of the time, sequels are hack jobs that try to inject new content into a balanced movie, and rarely works out well.
If, as you say, this movie just exists in the same movie universe but isn't directly connected to the story, it may very well be a good movie. Rather than pile on more stuff into the existing characters and story, leave well enough alone and just reuse the same themes and ideas into a new movie in the same "universe."
Now, as long as they make the movie from a bunch of ghetto low-budget muppets, it should be perfect!
I think a sequel to Dark Crystal makes about as much sense as a sequel to Bambi: none. In both cases, it is the result of a movie studio unable to come up with original material.
It's sad that mmorpg gaming counts as "quality time" with their family for some people.
I play World of Warcraft with my brother, who lives 850 miles away. It's either that or talking on the phone. At least in the game we can not only chat, but "do" something together. My wife also plays. While we don't count that as quality time together, it is just one more activity that we do together to have fun. Hell, our son even joins in sometimes. Just about all he can do is mash the keyboard to make our guys do random stuff like run around in circles and jump, but he loves it.
The key is that this is just one thing we do together. We play, we have fun, and we do other stuff, too.
(Besides, who really needs HD for the crap that passes for television programming? A decent analog set does fine, works with cable and my cheap DVD player, and will continue to do so for a long time.)
You said it -- DVDs. Try getting widescreen or high resolution from a SDTV. Ain't gonna happen. There are a few nice things on HDTV channels, too. I watched some of the Olympics in 1080i, it looked absolutely gorgeous. Comparing the same event on a HD channel and a SD channel is like comparing.... well I don't know what, let's just say the HD channel was a million times better.
As far as sitcoms and other bullshit that spews out of the goddamn idiot box, I don't care. Even on "nerd" channels like Discovery, I find very little content worth watching. Oh well. At least I can still watch DVDs... I hope.
Gun control is being able to hold the barrel steady as you aim.
Seriously, I strongly advocate freedom to bear arms. Do we need some limits? Yes, I don't want my neighbor installing an M-60 cage on top of his pickup truck, or carrying a bazooka with him when he walks the dog. But those are extreme cases. I feel that every American has the responsibility to be armed at all times unless that right has been removed by due process of law (to include minors, mentally handicapped, and (ex)convicts, et al). Would this happen? Hell no. But I think it would make society much more safe. Want to mug me? You *know* I have a firearm. You can be reasonably certain that I have formal training in how to use it effectively. The real question is, do you feel lucky, punk? Do ya?
Yes, there is a U.S. Code, aka "federal law." http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/. Further, the GP said "US-American law," not "state law." I will not debate state laws as there are too many and I am not familiar with them all. It would not surprise me one bit if there were state laws that force corporations to maximize profit, but I am not aware of any federal law that says so.
One interesting section I saw was when Yahoo was being quizzed about handing over information to the Chinese Government about a Blogger. They were asked if they would have done the same if the Nazi's asked them the location of Anne frank.
I would ask if they would do the same if the FBI came knocking on their door asking for customer information without a warrant, but waving the ill-named USA PATRIOT Act around. "Terrorism!" "Security reasons!" "Other buzzword that makes it sound like you aren't a true red-blooded American if you don't comply!" This whole thing really pisses me off. Congress is more than willing to tear down trade barriers with China, allow some corporations to run sweat shops over there, while criticising the tech companies for doing something similar. Sure, there aren't sweat shops, but paying some poor guy 12 cents an hour in dangerous conditions is surely at least as bad, from a freedom and democracy standpoint, as providing a censored web search to their population.
I guess some "most favored nations" are more favored than others. Since Britain and China are both MFN, why should we treat them differently? If China needs to be treated differently, why don't they lose their MFN status?
US-American law requires that a publically traded company maximize their revenue. The executive-staff could be prosecuted for deliberately ignoring the Chinese market.
Care to back this up with a quote from the U.S. Code? I know they have a responsibility to their shareholders as spelled out in pretty much any corporate charter, but civil or criminal liability? I seriously doubt it unless it was a case of willful negligence or stock abuse (e.g. Enron). Just failing to meet an opportunity to make more money is hardly illegal. The worst case is that the shareholders would vote out whichever board member messed up.
Re:That's all well and good...
on
KDE 4 Screenshots
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I think you have some good points, in fact, it reminds me of a Slashdot article a while back that basically said that the more complex an interface is, the more intimidating it is to most people. If you have a zillion widgets to click and boxes to look at, people tend to get lost and give up. In the comments of that article, several people made good points. For example, putting common tasks in the front and hiding the advanced stuff in another tab or window with a button to access it.
I think one of the key issues surrounding KDE is choice: you choose to run KDE, or you choose not to. Unix-based systems give the user/admin the choice of which window manager to run. Don't like KDE? Try a different one. Hell, you can even contact the KDE team, report bugs, and give feedback. While most large OSS project teams are busy as hell and aren't always the most receptive to outside communication, they are a lot more receptive than, say, Microsoft. Think it's too damn complex? Give constructive criticism to the KDE team. The other beauty of it is that besides the KDE core, a lot of "KDE" applications are third-party software that is just written for KDE and follows a specific set of guidelines. Odds are for some of the problems people have, they can contact a lone developer who has less to worry about and can dedicate more time to each problem.
We recommend AVG Free for most people, but for business users we sell NAV.
AVG is an excellent product. I have been using it for a couple of weeks now with zero problems, minimal performance/CPU/RAM impact, etc. I am so impressed with it that I am actually going to pay for it, despite the free version working "good enough" for me.
At work, NAV sucks my computer dry. Sure, it works well enough, but the cure is worse than the disease. Too bad my employer is in bed with MS and Norton, no room for AVG...
That's not my point. I'm saying that while time appears to go slower, it didn't actually speed down. Sure, the tree grew more slowly, but that doesn't change the fact that time itself did not.
It took less time as you observe it. To use one of the standard ways of explaining relativity: there are two astronauts. One stays on Earth to train, while the other goes on a mission, zipping around the solar system near the speed of light. When he returns, he aged 1 month, while the astronaut on Earth aged 1 year. What gives? Well, the same amount of time "happened." Both spent one year on their individual tasks. The one that went on the space missions feels like one month passed, but that's just because of how he observed time. Time is constant. Time did not pass at different speeds.
Another way of thinking about it is driving along a highway, watching a mountain, forest, clouds, or some other large object at a distance. Nearby objects appear to move faster relative to your car, while the farther away objects appear to move slower. The road sign and the mountain are both standing still, but appear to move at different speeds relative to your car. This is similar to time. You may observe different events at different speeds, or two astronauts may observe the same event at a different speed, but time itself is constant.
While I don't know much about organic chemistry, you sound like you know what you are talking about, so I'll agree with you. Anyway, this is why we need to keep sending out these probes and learning stuff. Maybe we will reveal clues about the origins of life, and whether there is life out there or not. Hell, we might discover an intelligent life form. And, to paraphrase some wise man who I think was a SciFi author but I don't remember who: we must discover if there is intelligent life in this universe so we can build spaceships, travel to meet them, and obliterate them.
I guess the choice between frames and CSS might be classified as a religious one.
eh? It's perfectly possible to use both. They don't exclude each other.
When most people compare frames and CSS, they are talking about layout -- specifically, using frames to position data as opposed to CSS absolute positioning. More often, people compare CSS to table-based layout, though.
Actually, the only required tag is . Everything else is optional, and implied. Note that this is only in HTML 4.01, I think the major structural tags () are required in XHTML. Also, the declaration is technically required for SGML derivatives, but not strictly part of the HTML/XHTML language.
How, exactly, to you go from discussing the technical aspect of space fuel tank construction, to starting a debate on friggin intelligent design?
This is an interview on several topics relevant to NASA. If you read the article, you would see that they were not debating intelligent design. The interviewer asked if NASA should be mindful of it. Obviously, some people in the USA believe in it, most do not. Part of NASA's job is to search for clues about the creation of the universe, solar system, Earth, and life itself. This falls squarely in the arena of religion and intelligent designm, because they seek to answer the same questions. I really liked Michael Griffin's response: he isn't going to discuss politics, sex, or religion. He just follows orders given to him by Congress and the President.
If I were the principal of a middle school, I would be running a government institution bound to the restrictions of the U.S. Constitution. Blizzard are a corporation, not required to enforce freedom of speech, religion, sexuality, etc.
And yes, add the "nofollow". It doesn't detract from the story one bit, but it does kill some of the story spammer's motivation.
Even better, link to the user's Slashdot user page. Don't have one? Then you are an anonymous coward and don't get a link. That treats everyone fairly, spammer or not, while removing the incentive to turn Slashdot submissions into a link farm.
The other day I was playing my paladin and partied with some random guy to work on a quest. He mentioned that he loves partying with paladins because they can buff, heal, and tank. I came up with a quote that captures the essence of the class:
My paladin does not die, and neither do his enemies.
Other than that, I am looking forward to linked auction houses. As it stands right now, all of my characters use Ironforge as their base of operations. While I have a good computer and don't get lag running around, I do get lag when initially loading all those textures and junk from the hard drive. All the memory and GPU in the world won't help you load about 400 MB of data from a hard disk. So, spreading the load around between capitol cities will certainly help. Hell, Darnassus might actually be useful for something now.
Gates of Ahn'Qiraj: meh. Sounds cool at first, but we already have raid instances so it's nothing new. Apparently it will take a few hundred players to unlock the instance. The word "clusterfuck" comes to mind, especially considering that horde and alliance are supposed to work together to git'r done. As if Ironforge and Orgrimmar weren't bad enough, now we're going to have some massive world event that will not only turn our framerate into a slideshow, but likely crash the server as well. Anyone remember the huge battles on the Dark Iron server between PA and PvP? This will be ten times worse.
Still, overall, it sounds like a good patch and it just got done updating my files. I am looking forward to this so bye bye, I have an addiction to support:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Use a nuclear reactor to make drinking water - what could possibly go wrong?
Given that the pressurized water heated by the reaction is kept in separate pipes from the water that turns to steam, not much. Any leaks or other issues would cause big enough problems that the last thing you'd worry about is clean drinking water.
I guess you haven't been to Chernobyl lately. The down sides to any nuclear power is its nuclear. It could blow and take a whole lot with it.
When was the last nuclear power plant accident that happened while its operators were following all prescribed safety procedures? Nuclear power is extremely safe, even more so than traditional coal plants. As long as the operators are trained properly, they perform maintenance as required, etc. there isn't much of a problem.
Name me one nuclear power plant accident and I guarantee it was caused by plant operators not doing what they were supposed to. Sure, this is part of the overall risk. However, it is no different than any other method of producing power. A negligent coal plant operator could cause an explosion or a really big, dirty fire.
Is this a surprise? The Bush admin is waging a war on porn and this is a logical step.
No, not really surprising, but not really relevant either. I think the closest thing I can find is like SCO and IBM. SCO is looking for trouble and wants their defendant, IBM, to dig for evidence to convict themselves! Absolutely retarded. Rather than go to google.com and type shit in to see what comes up, Justice Dept. wants Google to do all the legwork to serve their agenda. Sure, Google isn't a defendant, but it's just as bad. They want to serve a subpeona requiring tons and tons of work on Google's part with no clear benefit to Google or even the American people.
This is the same Justice Dept. whose Secretary covered up a statue because it had an exposed breast. The same Secretary who, despite being married for decades, was probably still a virgin because "that's what good conservative Christians do."
For the most part, I think sequels are stupid and pointless. Movies tend to stand alone very well unless they were written from the beginning to be part of a series (e.g. Star Wars). Sometimes, a sequel works well despite not being written to be a series (e.g. Toy Story 2, Lethal Weapon 2-4). However, the other 99% of the time, sequels are hack jobs that try to inject new content into a balanced movie, and rarely works out well.
If, as you say, this movie just exists in the same movie universe but isn't directly connected to the story, it may very well be a good movie. Rather than pile on more stuff into the existing characters and story, leave well enough alone and just reuse the same themes and ideas into a new movie in the same "universe."
Now, as long as they make the movie from a bunch of ghetto low-budget muppets, it should be perfect!
I think a sequel to Dark Crystal makes about as much sense as a sequel to Bambi: none. In both cases, it is the result of a movie studio unable to come up with original material.
Or are they just control freaks?
Bingo!
It's sad that mmorpg gaming counts as "quality time" with their family for some people.
I play World of Warcraft with my brother, who lives 850 miles away. It's either that or talking on the phone. At least in the game we can not only chat, but "do" something together. My wife also plays. While we don't count that as quality time together, it is just one more activity that we do together to have fun. Hell, our son even joins in sometimes. Just about all he can do is mash the keyboard to make our guys do random stuff like run around in circles and jump, but he loves it.
The key is that this is just one thing we do together. We play, we have fun, and we do other stuff, too.
(Besides, who really needs HD for the crap that passes for television programming? A decent analog set does fine, works with cable and my cheap DVD player, and will continue to do so for a long time.)
You said it -- DVDs. Try getting widescreen or high resolution from a SDTV. Ain't gonna happen. There are a few nice things on HDTV channels, too. I watched some of the Olympics in 1080i, it looked absolutely gorgeous. Comparing the same event on a HD channel and a SD channel is like comparing.... well I don't know what, let's just say the HD channel was a million times better.
As far as sitcoms and other bullshit that spews out of the goddamn idiot box, I don't care. Even on "nerd" channels like Discovery, I find very little content worth watching. Oh well. At least I can still watch DVDs... I hope.
So what are your feelings on gun control?
Gun control is being able to hold the barrel steady as you aim.
Seriously, I strongly advocate freedom to bear arms. Do we need some limits? Yes, I don't want my neighbor installing an M-60 cage on top of his pickup truck, or carrying a bazooka with him when he walks the dog. But those are extreme cases. I feel that every American has the responsibility to be armed at all times unless that right has been removed by due process of law (to include minors, mentally handicapped, and (ex)convicts, et al). Would this happen? Hell no. But I think it would make society much more safe. Want to mug me? You *know* I have a firearm. You can be reasonably certain that I have formal training in how to use it effectively. The real question is, do you feel lucky, punk? Do ya?
Yes, there is a U.S. Code, aka "federal law." http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/. Further, the GP said "US-American law," not "state law." I will not debate state laws as there are too many and I am not familiar with them all. It would not surprise me one bit if there were state laws that force corporations to maximize profit, but I am not aware of any federal law that says so.
One interesting section I saw was when Yahoo was being quizzed about handing over information to the Chinese Government about a Blogger. They were asked if they would have done the same if the Nazi's asked them the location of Anne frank.
I would ask if they would do the same if the FBI came knocking on their door asking for customer information without a warrant, but waving the ill-named USA PATRIOT Act around. "Terrorism!" "Security reasons!" "Other buzzword that makes it sound like you aren't a true red-blooded American if you don't comply!" This whole thing really pisses me off. Congress is more than willing to tear down trade barriers with China, allow some corporations to run sweat shops over there, while criticising the tech companies for doing something similar. Sure, there aren't sweat shops, but paying some poor guy 12 cents an hour in dangerous conditions is surely at least as bad, from a freedom and democracy standpoint, as providing a censored web search to their population.
I guess some "most favored nations" are more favored than others. Since Britain and China are both MFN, why should we treat them differently? If China needs to be treated differently, why don't they lose their MFN status?
US-American law requires that a publically traded company maximize their revenue. The executive-staff could be prosecuted for deliberately ignoring the Chinese market.
Care to back this up with a quote from the U.S. Code? I know they have a responsibility to their shareholders as spelled out in pretty much any corporate charter, but civil or criminal liability? I seriously doubt it unless it was a case of willful negligence or stock abuse (e.g. Enron). Just failing to meet an opportunity to make more money is hardly illegal. The worst case is that the shareholders would vote out whichever board member messed up.
I think you have some good points, in fact, it reminds me of a Slashdot article a while back that basically said that the more complex an interface is, the more intimidating it is to most people. If you have a zillion widgets to click and boxes to look at, people tend to get lost and give up. In the comments of that article, several people made good points. For example, putting common tasks in the front and hiding the advanced stuff in another tab or window with a button to access it.
I think one of the key issues surrounding KDE is choice: you choose to run KDE, or you choose not to. Unix-based systems give the user/admin the choice of which window manager to run. Don't like KDE? Try a different one. Hell, you can even contact the KDE team, report bugs, and give feedback. While most large OSS project teams are busy as hell and aren't always the most receptive to outside communication, they are a lot more receptive than, say, Microsoft. Think it's too damn complex? Give constructive criticism to the KDE team. The other beauty of it is that besides the KDE core, a lot of "KDE" applications are third-party software that is just written for KDE and follows a specific set of guidelines. Odds are for some of the problems people have, they can contact a lone developer who has less to worry about and can dedicate more time to each problem.
Whoooooooooosh!
You hear that? It is the sound of a joke sailing straight over your head.
We recommend AVG Free for most people, but for business users we sell NAV.
AVG is an excellent product. I have been using it for a couple of weeks now with zero problems, minimal performance/CPU/RAM impact, etc. I am so impressed with it that I am actually going to pay for it, despite the free version working "good enough" for me.
At work, NAV sucks my computer dry. Sure, it works well enough, but the cure is worse than the disease. Too bad my employer is in bed with MS and Norton, no room for AVG...
That's not my point. I'm saying that while time appears to go slower, it didn't actually speed down. Sure, the tree grew more slowly, but that doesn't change the fact that time itself did not.
It took less time as you observe it. To use one of the standard ways of explaining relativity: there are two astronauts. One stays on Earth to train, while the other goes on a mission, zipping around the solar system near the speed of light. When he returns, he aged 1 month, while the astronaut on Earth aged 1 year. What gives? Well, the same amount of time "happened." Both spent one year on their individual tasks. The one that went on the space missions feels like one month passed, but that's just because of how he observed time. Time is constant. Time did not pass at different speeds.
Another way of thinking about it is driving along a highway, watching a mountain, forest, clouds, or some other large object at a distance. Nearby objects appear to move faster relative to your car, while the farther away objects appear to move slower. The road sign and the mountain are both standing still, but appear to move at different speeds relative to your car. This is similar to time. You may observe different events at different speeds, or two astronauts may observe the same event at a different speed, but time itself is constant.
Pixar is the only company putting out original stuff right now. That, and the gay cowboy movie, I suppose.
You've never been to Texas, or you'd know the gay cowboy thing has already been done a zillion times -- art imitating life.
While I don't know much about organic chemistry, you sound like you know what you are talking about, so I'll agree with you. Anyway, this is why we need to keep sending out these probes and learning stuff. Maybe we will reveal clues about the origins of life, and whether there is life out there or not. Hell, we might discover an intelligent life form. And, to paraphrase some wise man who I think was a SciFi author but I don't remember who: we must discover if there is intelligent life in this universe so we can build spaceships, travel to meet them, and obliterate them.
eh? It's perfectly possible to use both. They don't exclude each other.
When most people compare frames and CSS, they are talking about layout -- specifically, using frames to position data as opposed to CSS absolute positioning. More often, people compare CSS to table-based layout, though.
Actually, the only required tag is . Everything else is optional, and implied. Note that this is only in HTML 4.01, I think the major structural tags () are required in XHTML. Also, the declaration is technically required for SGML derivatives, but not strictly part of the HTML/XHTML language.
How, exactly, to you go from discussing the technical aspect of space fuel tank construction, to starting a debate on friggin intelligent design?
This is an interview on several topics relevant to NASA. If you read the article, you would see that they were not debating intelligent design. The interviewer asked if NASA should be mindful of it. Obviously, some people in the USA believe in it, most do not. Part of NASA's job is to search for clues about the creation of the universe, solar system, Earth, and life itself. This falls squarely in the arena of religion and intelligent designm, because they seek to answer the same questions. I really liked Michael Griffin's response: he isn't going to discuss politics, sex, or religion. He just follows orders given to him by Congress and the President.
If I were the principal of a middle school, I would be running a government institution bound to the restrictions of the U.S. Constitution. Blizzard are a corporation, not required to enforce freedom of speech, religion, sexuality, etc.
And yes, add the "nofollow". It doesn't detract from the story one bit, but it does kill some of the story spammer's motivation.
Even better, link to the user's Slashdot user page. Don't have one? Then you are an anonymous coward and don't get a link. That treats everyone fairly, spammer or not, while removing the incentive to turn Slashdot submissions into a link farm.
The other day I was playing my paladin and partied with some random guy to work on a quest. He mentioned that he loves partying with paladins because they can buff, heal, and tank. I came up with a quote that captures the essence of the class:
Other than that, I am looking forward to linked auction houses. As it stands right now, all of my characters use Ironforge as their base of operations. While I have a good computer and don't get lag running around, I do get lag when initially loading all those textures and junk from the hard drive. All the memory and GPU in the world won't help you load about 400 MB of data from a hard disk. So, spreading the load around between capitol cities will certainly help. Hell, Darnassus might actually be useful for something now.
Gates of Ahn'Qiraj: meh. Sounds cool at first, but we already have raid instances so it's nothing new. Apparently it will take a few hundred players to unlock the instance. The word "clusterfuck" comes to mind, especially considering that horde and alliance are supposed to work together to git'r done. As if Ironforge and Orgrimmar weren't bad enough, now we're going to have some massive world event that will not only turn our framerate into a slideshow, but likely crash the server as well. Anyone remember the huge battles on the Dark Iron server between PA and PvP? This will be ten times worse.
Still, overall, it sounds like a good patch and it just got done updating my files. I am looking forward to this so bye bye, I have an addiction to support :-)