If I can buy a used CD for five bucks, rip it and get the quality I want, why the fuck would I pay twice that for the download?
If I can make better bread than the shop sells at a fraction of the price, why would I buy bread from a shop?
I suspect many of us here have bought PCs ready made, dispite having the skills to build from parts, and knowing where to go for good prices on those parts.
People are more than willing to take a quality/price hit in exchange for convinience on most things. Which things this applies to differs from person to person.
but you have to compile it! That's a serious investment in time, even with a multi-GHz P4, if you long for a recent - say - KDE?
But it's not your time, it's your computer's time. So in reality it is a small investment of electricity. Unless you have a fast connection you are only trading download time for compile time.
You could, of course, download precompiled packages. The only difference really is that FBSD documents build from source as the default.
Command line is fine, but X would be nice.
X comes with the instalation (though it is an option because you may be installing on a firewall or something).
(near the top of p. 29) it takes about a million years for the spent fuel to decay to the point of being as toxic as the uranium ore used to produce it.
That's for old spent fuel. For fuel reprocessed withing 160 days it looks to be closer to 10,000 years.
And it does seem to be talking about the waste itself, not the result of diluting it in inert material. (since if it were diluted they would presumably say by what factor).
So it looks to me that we are probably talking about something on the order of 1,000 years. That's a long time from a human POV, but the kind of timespan we do deal with for things we consider important.
As well, the fuel that goes in is much more radioactive than the ore (because it has been concentrated). The ore itself is barely more radioactive than any other rock.
Which would seem to imply that you need to mix the spent fuel with an amount of concrete or glass or other bulk matter equivalent to the ore it came from to get back down to the same order of dangerousness.
I can't find hard numbers saying how radioactive the products will be after 200000 years
Because it is a meaningless question. It depends how much bulk you mix the waste with.
The other risk is the risk of chemical contamination of groundwater.
If you are sticking ot in the hole it came out of, you can at least say that the risk is no greater than it would be had you never done anything at all. If you use glass as your bulk filler, then you have almost certainly have massively reduced the likelyhood of groundwater contamination (it's mch harder to leech stuff out of glass than out of random rock).
From what I have read, the high level waste is not the big problem. There isn't much of it. The problem comes from the medium level waste, for instance all the crap you end up with when you dismantle a reactor. There can be a hell of a lot of that, and it dodn't come from a hole in the ground already radioactive.
This is the big problem with fusion -- all the mechanisms which look reasonable in the medium term produce lots of neutrons or whatever and so produce the same kind of medium level waste problem as fission.
no-one can run a worthwhile train company in the UK under Railtrack and the pricing restrictions, but of those that try, Virgin is by far the best
The hell it is. Try Virgin vs GNER for a Scotland to London trip. Virgin is slower, less reliable and the rolling stock is a joke. Last time I was stupid enough to travel on a Beardy train the mysery was only releaved by the entertainment of watching the staff using a huge metal spike to lever the toilet door open to let someone out.
As for pricing restrictions, the train fair is already almost an order of magnitude greater than flying (80 quid Edinburgh to Nottingham return a few weeks ago, anywhere from 2.50 up for a single on EasyJet if I'd been organised enough to book, add in a local train journey from airport to Nottingham), so they are hardly having their prices nailed to the floor.
The problem is factoring in the cost of running a nuclear waste compound for 200,000 years
You only need to run it for long enough to get to the point where the waste mixed with the carrier is slightly less radioactive than the ore you originally mined. Then shove it back down the mine (or dig a new equivalent) and the whole cycle reduces the radiological hazards in the world.
"It could cost us up to $100 million to invest,..."
That's quite a bit for a one-off publicity stunt,
`Could' is the important word here.
entirely aside from the 14 Million Pounds already invested.
Which 14 million?
The licensing deal with M.A.V. could be worth up to £14 million ($21.5 million) over the next fifteen years depending on the number of spaceships built by Virgin.
So they haven't actually committed to 14 million. Indeed the press release doesn't say how much they have comitted to, so we can assume it is not very much -- or MAV would be crowing about it.
In fact it is/was better than I get on cable from Teleworst, who for some reason can't manage to show tomorrow's programmes, let alone anything from later in the week.
When you consider that cable or satellite over here is just wall-to-wall shitey unfunny comedies
Not fair! You are forgetting the whole batch of channels devoted to replaying old BBC content, hence including good comedy. Of course they (UK*) are half owned by the Beeb.
somehow I am the childish one, even though I am offering reasoned debate and you are taking the piss?
I believe we have just hit a cultural difference of profound depth.
let's consult an authority on the English language
The only authority on the English language is the set of all native English speakers.
That's from the dictionary.
Ah, the dictionary. You are the person who posesses that mythica beast are you?
because you aren't removing anything.
I am removing your ability to choose the effects of your actions.
But you see, this is hair splitting, exactly what one would expect from trying to follow a childish argument.
It doesn't matter whether one calls it theft or enslavement or fraud. These are all just shorthands for`being a greedy bastard who wants the benefits of work without doing any'.
Can you give reasons why you believe common law is better than constitutional law?
I'm not sure what you are asking. Common law and constitutions are not incompatable. Indeed, ASAIK most US states have common law systems and constitutions. Usually the oppositions are common law vs civil law, as a choice of system, and common law vs statute law, as the two parts of a system.
Are there any limits to what Parliament can pass?
No. There are no limits on what congress can pass. Limits are in implementation, and are the same in the US and UK systems. Dispite the propoganda, written constitutions do not limit state power, since they are interpreted and enforced by the state. Considder the various constitutions of the USSR, or cases in the US such as Jackson vs the Chreokee or the internment of citizens of japanese decent during WWII.
Written constitutions are expressions of hope. They have the advantage of creating a benchmark people can monitor drift against, but the disadvantage of diverting attention from realities to legalities. Eg, gun control arguments in the US which degenerate into pointless hairsplitting over the meaning of `militia' rather than addressing real world risks and rewards.
On the whole, I can see the advantage of a written constitution in a new state where things tend to be fragile for a few decades. The US constitution seems to have been completely burried under layers of politics, to the point where to know what it is taken to mean in practice you would need a lot of political and legal knowledge. I think we could date the final death of the US constitution to the passing of the 18th amendment. At that point it had clearly become just a method of extending state power, rather than a limit on it. Proposals for an flag burning and gay marriage amendments are just farsical reminders of that death.
[...] I think they did a fantastic job of handling the [lack of PJ].
I'm not sure they did the right thing for the radio. Perhaps they'd have been better just dropping the new voice in.
OTOH, for the CDs, this was right -- since people will often listen to them all in order.
Mind you, it occured to me that they might have done this trick (which I'm trying not to describe and spoil things for people yet to hear it) with a much more distinct voice. Perhaps a suitable woman's voice.
[deep nostalgia mode] The thing about PJ was that he combined lovely enunciation with a kind of not-quite-all-there vagueness, his trademark in other things too, which for me sounded exactly like a very advanced speech synthesis system would. The guide doesn't understand what it is saying -- it gets the intonation and stress just right, but somehow it is not a personality.
Then you will notice that since I wasn't addressing whatever you were shouting about, I could not have been making an ad-hominem argument. I was taking the piss. Similarly, your posting as AC is irrelevent to whatever your argument might be, but very relevent to whether anyone should bother to try and work out what that argument is. How would you react to an argument shouted in the street by someone with a bag over their head?
Are you saying that you don't accept the UK government as an authority on whether something is theft or not?
Of course I am. Just as I don't accept the Indiana state government as an authority on the value of pi.
Copyright is defined by statute, but theft is not, theft was a pre-existing concept recognised by common law, and some aspects formalised in statute. People were accusing each other of theft (though clearly in their own language) long before there was any written law.
While I know it must be an easy confusion to make if you live in the USA, lawyers do not define reality, or even English.:-)
The UK or US courts have the ability to say whether some action is coverred by such and such a statute, or such and such a prescident, but not to say whether it is theft.
Consider the old chestnut of whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable. Clearly in ordinary English it is both, because classifications of bits of plants and classification of foodstuffs overlap. Certain badly written laws require a decision and courts have to decide. What they decide is relevent to people worried about import duties or whatever, but it doesn't change which bit of the plant it is, nor it's culinary uses.
The big gap will be the lack of Peter Jones. I wouldn't like to be the guy trying to fill those shoes.
ISTM this is one of the few cases where using modern technology to create a virtual performer would have been acceptable. There must be enough PJ from Just A Minute alone to form the basis of a voice.
Just think of all the Guide fans who would pay an arm and a leg to get the technology to have that voice. Use the money to set up a charity to research repetition, hesitation and deviation.
You need to find out what an ad-hominem argument is. I was not attempting to refute your point by laughing at you. I was laughing at you because you felt the need to shout, and ignoring your point, if any.
Argument from authority is almost as impressive as shouting, but not quite.
If you post as AC, and use such strategy, you can hardly expect to be engaged in reasoned debate. If you don't take the subject seriously enough to bother to sign in, why would you expect me to do other than troll you?
Slashdot Mirror
If I can make better bread than the shop sells at a fraction of the price, why would I buy bread from a shop?
I suspect many of us here have bought PCs ready made, dispite having the skills to build from parts, and knowing where to go for good prices on those parts.
People are more than willing to take a quality/price hit in exchange for convinience on most things. Which things this applies to differs from person to person.
But it's not your time, it's your computer's time. So in reality it is a small investment of electricity. Unless you have a fast connection you are only trading download time for compile time.
You could, of course, download precompiled packages. The only difference really is that FBSD documents build from source as the default.
Command line is fine, but X would be nice.
X comes with the instalation (though it is an option because you may be installing on a firewall or something).
That's for old spent fuel. For fuel reprocessed withing 160 days it looks to be closer to 10,000 years.
And it does seem to be talking about the waste itself, not the result of diluting it in inert material. (since if it were diluted they would presumably say by what factor).
So it looks to me that we are probably talking about something on the order of 1,000 years. That's a long time from a human POV, but the kind of timespan we do deal with for things we consider important.
Which would seem to imply that you need to mix the spent fuel with an amount of concrete or glass or other bulk matter equivalent to the ore it came from to get back down to the same order of dangerousness.
I can't find hard numbers saying how radioactive the products will be after 200000 years
Because it is a meaningless question. It depends how much bulk you mix the waste with.
The other risk is the risk of chemical contamination of groundwater.
If you are sticking ot in the hole it came out of, you can at least say that the risk is no greater than it would be had you never done anything at all. If you use glass as your bulk filler, then you have almost certainly have massively reduced the likelyhood of groundwater contamination (it's mch harder to leech stuff out of glass than out of random rock).
From what I have read, the high level waste is not the big problem. There isn't much of it. The problem comes from the medium level waste, for instance all the crap you end up with when you dismantle a reactor. There can be a hell of a lot of that, and it dodn't come from a hole in the ground already radioactive.
This is the big problem with fusion -- all the mechanisms which look reasonable in the medium term produce lots of neutrons or whatever and so produce the same kind of medium level waste problem as fission.
The hell it is. Try Virgin vs GNER for a Scotland to London trip. Virgin is slower, less reliable and the rolling stock is a joke. Last time I was stupid enough to travel on a Beardy train the mysery was only releaved by the entertainment of watching the staff using a huge metal spike to lever the toilet door open to let someone out.
As for pricing restrictions, the train fair is already almost an order of magnitude greater than flying (80 quid Edinburgh to Nottingham return a few weeks ago, anywhere from 2.50 up for a single on EasyJet if I'd been organised enough to book, add in a local train journey from airport to Nottingham), so they are hardly having their prices nailed to the floor.
You only need to run it for long enough to get to the point where the waste mixed with the carrier is slightly less radioactive than the ore you originally mined. Then shove it back down the mine (or dig a new equivalent) and the whole cycle reduces the radiological hazards in the world.
That's quite a bit for a one-off publicity stunt,
`Could' is the important word here.
entirely aside from the 14 Million Pounds already invested.
Which 14 million?
So they haven't actually committed to 14 million. Indeed the press release doesn't say how much they have comitted to, so we can assume it is not very much -- or MAV would be crowing about it.Might I suggest that `in your parts' must translate to `in that place in the mall where the owner giggles as he takes my money'.
Even over here in the Uk where electronics are very expensive I saw one the other day for 33 quid - $60.
Only if you are completely unfamiliar with the way the words `stunt' and `publicity' can be arranged into a well known phrase or saying.
Beardie can't even run a worthwhile train company.
We, yes, this guy `found' his own article and submitted it.
It's bad enough when people dont read the original article, but clearly you didn't even read the bloody /. summary!
When the rantings on a xenophobic loonie site are presented as fact.
In fact it is/was better than I get on cable from Teleworst, who for some reason can't manage to show tomorrow's programmes, let alone anything from later in the week.
Not fair! You are forgetting the whole batch of channels devoted to replaying old BBC content, hence including good comedy. Of course they (UK*) are half owned by the Beeb.
but it was too late, she'd already been wormed.
You remember when she told you that looking at `those' pictures was bad...
I believe we have just hit a cultural difference of profound depth.
let's consult an authority on the English language
The only authority on the English language is the set of all native English speakers.
That's from the dictionary.
Ah, the dictionary. You are the person who posesses that mythica beast are you?
because you aren't removing anything.
I am removing your ability to choose the effects of your actions.
But you see, this is hair splitting, exactly what one would expect from trying to follow a childish argument.
It doesn't matter whether one calls it theft or enslavement or fraud. These are all just shorthands for`being a greedy bastard who wants the benefits of work without doing any'.
I'm not sure what you are asking. Common law and constitutions are not incompatable. Indeed, ASAIK most US states have common law systems and constitutions. Usually the oppositions are common law vs civil law, as a choice of system, and common law vs statute law, as the two parts of a system.
Are there any limits to what Parliament can pass?
No. There are no limits on what congress can pass. Limits are in implementation, and are the same in the US and UK systems. Dispite the propoganda, written constitutions do not limit state power, since they are interpreted and enforced by the state. Considder the various constitutions of the USSR, or cases in the US such as Jackson vs the Chreokee or the internment of citizens of japanese decent during WWII.
Written constitutions are expressions of hope. They have the advantage of creating a benchmark people can monitor drift against, but the disadvantage of diverting attention from realities to legalities. Eg, gun control arguments in the US which degenerate into pointless hairsplitting over the meaning of `militia' rather than addressing real world risks and rewards.
On the whole, I can see the advantage of a written constitution in a new state where things tend to be fragile for a few decades. The US constitution seems to have been completely burried under layers of politics, to the point where to know what it is taken to mean in practice you would need a lot of political and legal knowledge. I think we could date the final death of the US constitution to the passing of the 18th amendment. At that point it had clearly become just a method of extending state power, rather than a limit on it. Proposals for an flag burning and gay marriage amendments are just farsical reminders of that death.
I'm not sure they did the right thing for the radio. Perhaps they'd have been better just dropping the new voice in.
OTOH, for the CDs, this was right -- since people will often listen to them all in order.
Mind you, it occured to me that they might have done this trick (which I'm trying not to describe and spoil things for people yet to hear it) with a much more distinct voice. Perhaps a suitable woman's voice.
[deep nostalgia mode] The thing about PJ was that he combined lovely enunciation with a kind of not-quite-all-there vagueness, his trademark in other things too, which for me sounded exactly like a very advanced speech synthesis system would. The guide doesn't understand what it is saying -- it gets the intonation and stress just right, but somehow it is not a personality.
Then you will notice that since I wasn't addressing whatever you were shouting about, I could not have been making an ad-hominem argument. I was taking the piss. Similarly, your posting as AC is irrelevent to whatever your argument might be, but very relevent to whether anyone should bother to try and work out what that argument is. How would you react to an argument shouted in the street by someone with a bag over their head?
Are you saying that you don't accept the UK government as an authority on whether something is theft or not?
Of course I am. Just as I don't accept the Indiana state government as an authority on the value of pi.
Copyright is defined by statute, but theft is not, theft was a pre-existing concept recognised by common law, and some aspects formalised in statute. People were accusing each other of theft (though clearly in their own language) long before there was any written law.
While I know it must be an easy confusion to make if you live in the USA, lawyers do not define reality, or even English.:-)
The UK or US courts have the ability to say whether some action is coverred by such and such a statute, or such and such a prescident, but not to say whether it is theft.
Consider the old chestnut of whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable. Clearly in ordinary English it is both, because classifications of bits of plants and classification of foodstuffs overlap. Certain badly written laws require a decision and courts have to decide. What they decide is relevent to people worried about import duties or whatever, but it doesn't change which bit of the plant it is, nor it's culinary uses.
ISTM this is one of the few cases where using modern technology to create a virtual performer would have been acceptable. There must be enough PJ from Just A Minute alone to form the basis of a voice.
Just think of all the Guide fans who would pay an arm and a leg to get the technology to have that voice. Use the money to set up a charity to research repetition, hesitation and deviation.
ad-hominem attacks are worthless
You need to find out what an ad-hominem argument is. I was not attempting to refute your point by laughing at you. I was laughing at you because you felt the need to shout, and ignoring your point, if any.
Argument from authority is almost as impressive as shouting, but not quite.
If you post as AC, and use such strategy, you can hardly expect to be engaged in reasoned debate. If you don't take the subject seriously enough to bother to sign in, why would you expect me to do other than troll you?
routinely violate copyrights on works that are over 14 years old because I don't believe copyrights should last any longer than that.
Have problems with the concept of things which happened before you were born?
The Supreme Court[...]
Imagine how impressed I am with the opinion of some political appointees in a land far far away.
Can someone mod the above `-1, Too much acne, too little life' please.
It was sent to the guy's ISP, and pointed off to someone else's computer claiming it hosted stolen goods. Sounds like libel to me.
Telling people you do business with that you are a thief, with no justification whatsoever, sounds like an attemt to do you damage to me.
I was pointing out that `merit' and `technologically impressive' rarely coincide in the real world.