This is slashdot, so you're running linux. All you have to do is remap those useless windows keys to be compose keys, and it works, voilà. See? Now go RTFM, you n00b.
If so, it's Nicholas from Marc's class back at Oly... perhaps you won't remember me, heh.
Anyway, cheers to a small world...
Yes, you did manage to find me slumming on slashdot. (I didn't reply, because by the time I actually looked back at my comment history and noticed the reply, the thread was closed. I'm terrible about following up. So, instead, I've just been stalking you via your user profile.)
I'm running Slackware 10.1, but 10.0 also worked (didn't try to get Xine working with any earlier versions).
So: 1) Install Slackware 2) Grab the codecs off of the MPlayer webpage 3) Put them in/usr/lib/win32 4) Play WMV files (and others) 5) ??? 6) Profit!
Again, Xine works great under Slackware. All you have to do is grab the codecs off of the MPlayer site and drop them into/usr/lib/win32, and it works with the default Xine package.
Pat's the man. He'd never purposely cripple a package. $25 for the subscription, $40 to just order the CDs as a oneshot. (And yes, I'm a complete Slackware fanboy.)
I consider this table more as a design/art piece than a functional version, however, the layout is impressive to me.
It is the normal table, just yanked around into a circle. So, to make it truly functional, first get rid of the pretty background and make the cells bigger to put atomic weight back in. Next, take the noble gasses and put them at the very top and make them verticle. Now, all the relations that were in the table before are still there.
Down is now out, right is now counter-clockwise, left is clockwise and up is in. So for electronegativity, the elements just clockwise of the top and closest to the center have the highest electronegativity, and those just counter-clockwise and furthest out have the most electronegativity.
This table has the added benefit of better showing the progression of additional electron shells and it has a logical place for the neutron.
You don't see it right off because you learned on the standard table. I would contend that anyone who learned on this table would be able to estimate an element's properties simply by looking at the table as well.
main reason for this is president jimmy carter put out an execuitive order banning fast breeder reactors (aka reprocessing) from the US. All we need to do is overturn that. I expect that reprocessing the fuel will be cheaper than storing it as is. Much more environmentally friendly too.
Good point on this being more enviromentally friendly. It's also more manageable. Only the really high-grade extremely radioactive stuff gets dumped. That sounds worse, until you realize that that is the stuff that goes away after 500-1000 years, where after 4 billion years, we still have Uranium 238 on the planet.
My impression is what's keeping that order from being overturned is presnit monkey's thing against ter'rists. I think we can overcome the security problems associated with reprocessing, and that they aren't as big a deal as they would make you think (remember, in the last 20 years, only 3000 Americans have died in the continental US from terrorist attacks. We are a nation of 280 million. If that truly scares you, stop driving, it's much more dangerous).
Sadly, the words of "Chernobyl" are so well rehearsed by this community that they fail to realize the fact that Chernobyl was running at 130% capacity at the time -- a situtation which does not happen in current reactors due partially to the government regulations, partially to the IAEA, and partially to political pressures. That, and it's fucking common sense for crying out loud! Nuclear scientists and engineers know what they are working with now more than ever.
That and Chernobyl was a stupid design. It had a positive void-coefficient (if the cooling water got too hot and boiled, this would act as a positive feedback into the system and cause the reactor to run-away), and they had more graphite moderator on the bottom of the control rods.
Essentially, the reactor started to run away and boil its water, causing it to overheat more and boil more water, and so on. When they slammed the control rods, the reacto first saw the graphite spacers at the bottom which added moderator to the system, which increased the available thermal neutrons in the reactor, causing the reactor to go full-on supercritical in the period between when the bottom of the spacers hit and when the control rods got fully inserted into the reactor. Once the thing is supercritical, there really isn't any way the control rods are going to help (at least, not enough).
US, Canadian and European reactors are designed to have negative void coefficients (boiling water causes the reactor to slow down), or they are gas cooled and have no void coefficient (coolant boiling isn't a problem because it is already a gas). And nobody, I mean nobody, puts spacers made of the same material as the moderator on the bottom of the fuel rods anymore (all the RBMK reactors got their spacers changed out after Chernobyl).
Modern fission reactors are much more reliable. They dump less radioactivity into the atmosphere than coal plants, and the nuclear industry is much safer (because of tighter regulations) than the coal and oil industry. A lot more people die ever year to bring you coal generated electricity than nuclear generated electricity, even scaling for supply percentages (50% of US electricity is coal based, whereas nuke is in the 7% range).
This is where reprocessing comes into play. If you reprocess the fuel, you can build a reactor that breeds plutonium out of the U238 and extends your fuel supply quite a bit (remember, natural Uranium is about 0.7% U235, the rest is almost entirely U238, so theoretically, you could get that much more life out of the fuel with reprocessing). However, this comes with the usual issues of proliferation and security surrounding any enrichment plant. This is the main reason the US doesn't reprocess.
Breeding and reprocessing plants are also possible using Thorium as a feedstock instead of U238. This is still experimental, but Thorium is much more abundant, and could last us thousands of years.
My point is, nuclear fission isn't as limited as much by the high grade Uranium supply, however.
Renewables have their own problems and are still much more expensive than coal. They also aren't proven to scale as fission can. We don't have a renewable that we can scale up. If we are going to stop using fossil fuel now, then nuclear is going to be a big part of that.
The accident record for nuclear is excellent, particularly in comparison to coal and oil. I won't compare it to renewables, because they aren't viable yet. They are still in research and small scale stage.
Others have already commented on the green house gas production of they cycle. The solution to that is to get a liquid fuel into production that doesn't come from fossil sources (I'm a big fan of biodiesel, there are still some scaling problems, but the algae derived stuff looks promising).
Our nuke tech isn't very different from Canada or Europe. We use Pressurized Light Water Reactors. The fundamental design hasn't changed since the 50s or so.
Canada uses Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors. PLWRs require the use of enriched Uranium, whereas PHWRs will run on natural Uranium, requiring no refining. That's the big difference. Everyone is still heating water and running it through a steam cycle to generate the electricity. That's right, Nuke Plants are little more than coal plants with uranium going in and fissioning instead of coal going in and burning. About the only thing Canada has on us is not having to expend energy to enrich the fuel (which isn't that much, IIRC). This also means, that from an efficiency stand-point, Canadian and European reactors aren't much better than ours.
The big hangup in our fuel cycle is that it ends in the plants. We won't reprocess it. While increases the life time of the non-renewable resource, there are proliferation concerns. Worse yet, we won't even dispose of it. Every single gram of Uranium that has gone into a power plant in the US is still there. This is what needs to be fixed, and Yucca Mountain is as good a solution as I've seen. If you're going to poo-poo it, and you want me to listen, you better have an alternative plan which doesn't involve leaving the waste in the power plant.
The thing which has improved is safety (our nuclear industry is the safest of all the power industries, and not too bad on the cleanliness either, except that we refuse to figure out how to dispose of spent fuel).
As far as efficiency goes, we haven't had any interesting improvements there. We still use enriched fuel, and the plants are only about 30% efficient. They are limited to steam temperatures of about 350 C (because of materials), which really hurts the efficiency of the steam cycle that they are hooked into.
What would be nice is getting the HTGRs working (High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactors). They use Helium as the coolant, and can sustain significantly higher temperatures (better efficiency), they run the heated He gas through a gas turbine (better efficiency than a steam cycle) and they have no void-coefficient (meaning, a Chernobyl style accident is physically impossible). They're a good design, and it might be possible to modify the design to use a combined cycle to further improve efficiency.
Pebble Bed reactors are similar to HTGRs. The main difference is that the fuel comes in ceramic balls instead of rods. They are still gas cooled, and can use a gas turbine, and they can be outfitted to use a combined cycle or combined heat and power system to further improve energy efficiency.
Personally, I feel that nuclear power is much less of an environmental hazard than continued use of coal plants. Right now, our coal plants produce much more radiation (in the form of Thorium and Uranium in the exhaust particles) than our nuclear reactors release by quite a bit. Responsible disposal of nuclear waste is possible. We need more nuke plants. We need to put more into developing and deploying next generation gas cooled reactors. Until then, we should be commisioning more nuke plants in favor of fossil fuel.
The problem is economic incentive. The nuclear industry is heavily regulated to the point of being significantly more expensive than coal or oil. My solution to this problem is not to de-reg (that would hurt the incredible safety record of the nuclear industry and hurt public opinion further). Instead, coal and oil should be as tightly regulated. That would level the playing field and make nuke plants more favorable. And yes, I know what this does to electricity prices, I don't want to hear about it, IANALibertarian, and never will be. Besides, it would maintain the good working conditions of the nuke industry, and improve those in the fossil fuel industry. Coal wouldn't be paid for in as many miner deaths anymore.
Not to mention that you have to actually talk to the woman sometimes. I mean, I've got UT to play
I play Quake with my fiance. She doesn't like deathmatch, but coop is much more fun than single player (I'm hoping Quake4 has a good coop mode).
and/. to post on!
You probably can't talk her into/. (I mean, this is a pretty scary den of idiots and trolls, see the LA Times Wiki debacle).
And to top it off, I gotta pay a whole dollar to have sex?
You don't need to pay a buck to have sex with her, it's more of an insurance plan against a possible liability of tens of thousands of dollars per year for the next 18-24 years.
Man, I'm glad I have a right hand!
Try your left hand sometime. And no, it isn't cheating.
Jeez, if 211893 is low, make me some offers people.
Jeff
Re:DRM support good. DRM on consumer product bad.
on
DRM Advocate Violates DRM
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
You can wrap it with ten tons of DRM Snake oil, but if the recipient can read it, it can be copied. Accessing = copying.
For instance, if I am a commie spy, and you send me a DRM'd double-super-secret document that becomes visible on my screen, such that it can be seen and read, well, I can utilize some archaic technology to circumvent the DRM, in fact, this is a classic commie spy technique: I can write it down on paper or take a picture of the screen with a camera.
This public service announcement was just to drive home the point about how unbelievably stupid the thought of using DRM for protecting secret documents is. If the destination isn't trusted, you can't send them information. It simply doesn't matter how you diddle with it.
You ever seen a kernel oops? I have (faulty hardware). It's a spray of hexadecimal and cryptic CPU register names to the screen with the word "Oops!" at the top. It has a much better "scary computer entrails" look to it than any of those you've listed.
Myself, when Discovery lifts again I'm going to raise a glass to all of my heroes from the shuttle program... And I'll take a drink for every name on the roll of honor for Challenger and Columbia.
I will raise that glass with you. To Dreams and Heroes.
It's neat, the actuators are a decent design, but it won't replace even a basic guitarist. It can only hold a note down and pick said note. It can't slide, tap, pick harmonics, bend notes, fret hand mute, palm mute or any of a number of other techniques that I can think of.
However, I can understand why they didn't go for those extra features; they would be a bitch to design. So, kudos to them for the whole design, it looks cool, but/. editors should know better than to declare musicians will lose to a machine.
For that matter, people still play chess even.
Jeff
PS Sorry for the rant, it's late, I'm tired, and I'm a guitarist. Struck a nerve...
Some sort of non-gaming application that uses a graphics card. Having trouble thinking of one now, but I know they exist somewhere;)
Oh, try things like BRL-CAD, Maya, Custom VR applications (eg, built using things like Maverik). There are a lot of other apps. Go cruise freshmeat for them. Some F/OSS, some not, but the reason nVidia puts a decent amount of effort into their Linux drivers is they want to be the 3D solution for GNU/Linux workstations.
I, personally, am learning BRL-CAD, and I've used Maverik and OpenGL to make physics visualization software (personal use, I never got any of it to release quality).
Many of these don't use the whiz-bang new features on the newer cards, but the cards are clocked faster and are still improvements over the older cards even for simple OpenGL based apps. Some of the stuff can make use of the new features.
I do all my gaming under Linux, and I get my fix just fine (admittedly, I like (and play exclusively) gun-fu FPS games, with Id Software having written all my favorite engines, so I've never had compatibility problems, because I don't care about games written only for Windows).
Speaking of games, the parent missed an important one, Tenebrae, a modification of the original Quake engine which adds pixel shaders to the renderer (among other things). It's gorgeous. Someone also just started a similar project for the Quake2 engine, here.
To boot, X.org 6.8.1+ have support for true transparency, which needs hardware acceleration. Again, newer cards are not strictly necessary for this, but they help. You can get some pretty impressive eye candy on the latest X.org releases (if you're willing to tinker, but you're using GNU/Linux, so I assume you are. If you aren't, you'll have to wait for the Longhorn/DNF super-bundle to come out, or just buy a Mac).
I've been using Slackware GNU/Linux for 3D work for a while now, and I've been very happy with it.
The Student Lab Manual for the Art of Electronics has a great design for an MC68008 based computer that you can build on a large breadboard (48 pin DIP package on the processor, discrete CMOS logic for the "chipset" and 8K of RAM, however, it is a simple exercise to add more).
Some of the components can be kind of expensive (the hex displays and the ADC/DACs, most notably), and you'll definitely need a logic probe and an oscilloscope (although, those should be considered required for any project like this).
The University of Washington Physics Department uses AoE as the textbook for their electronics labs, and the advanced one is building the 68008 computer and making it do something (I wrote & built a multi-threaded oscilloscope pong game). I highly suggest the book, it is truly excellent to learn from and as a reference.
I eat oatmeal every morning, however, I soak it over night using a half cup oatmeal, a half cup water and a tablespoon or two of buttermilk. Let it sit in a warm spot for at least 7 hours (just prepare directly before going to bed and get that full night's sleep they mentioned in TFA). In the morning, boil another half cup of water, add the oatmeal, cook over medium for 5 minutes, let stand for 3. I eat it with a couple scoops of plain yogurt and a tablespoon of molasses. This gets me vitamin E, more protien from the yogurt (the oatmeal has a decent amount on its own), and tons of other good stuff. It's also a fire and forget kind of thing, I usually put together my lunch for the day during the 10 minutes it takes to cook.
The soak process allows lacto-bacteria to go to work on the oatmeal. They reduce the antinutrients and otherwise improve nutrient uptake (including partially processing the carbs for you). I've noticed a huge difference between it and normal oatmeal. These bacteria processes are well known and well studied.
Take note: my metabolism functions on the same principle of that of the horse. In other words, my body inefficiently processes the food to grab the easiest nutrients and leave the rest, thus requiring me to eat vast quantities of food (I'm a skinny git with a nasty monthly food budget). So, you may or may not notice a difference, my girlfriend didn't.
The problem with the majority of Christians in this country is that they worship the Bible instead of God. Instead of asking themselves "What would a kind and compassionate God think of homosexuality (for example)" they point to the Bible and say "look- it says here that that is wrong!"
You know what the funny thing is? The only section of the Bible which says unequivocally that homosexuality is wrong is the same section which states that men should be bound by levirate marriage (my brother dies without an heir, I am required to have sex with his widow until she bears a male hier for him). It also states that prostitutes are sinners, but not the men who visit them, but even though prostitutes themselves are sinners, the practice is ok. It also states that polygamy is an upstanding practice. This is all in the Old Testament.
The only place where homosexuality is mentioned in the New Testament is a quote by Paul, and he makes his argument based on the act being "unnatural." Well, that's a flimsy argument, particularly when homosexual behavior is seen across the board in the animal kingdom.
Now, think about that previous paragraph. Who did not say a single word about homosexuality? That's right, Jesus. The son of God. He doesn't have anything to say on the topic. Or at least, nothing that got written down.
Next time some evangelical nutwad spouts off at you about homosexuality and the bible, ask him what he thinks about prostitution. Ask him about homosexual behavior in animals. Ask him where Jesus says "I hate fags and you should too" in the Bible. It is not there.
I am a Christian. Those of us who are reasonable folks get quite annoyed at the loud, stupid ones. Particularly when their vanguard ends up being a bunch of hypocritical jackholes.
10 trains filled with what? Coal? You must be an advisor for Bush's new energy plan.
Man I still haven't stopped laughing at his suggestion of a 6 billion dollar investment in 'coal research'. Bahahahah..
50% of the United State's electricity is generated by burning coal in old style boilers, and that's been on the rise for the last 40 years. It's just about the only type of plant with real growth prospects right now.
I'm not saying I agree with using coal, but you should learn something about how this country gets its energy before you spout off about coal.
So with the 50% marker in mind, we probably burned about 5 trains filled with coal. If the grandparent didn't account for plant efficiency, it's more like 15 trains full just to break RC-64.
Slashdot Mirror
This is slashdot, so you're running linux. All you have to do is remap those useless windows keys to be compose keys, and it works, voilà. See? Now go RTFM, you n00b.
Jeff
(PS, I am, of course, kidding.)
Holy shit! Frasca, is that you?
;)
If so, it's Nicholas from Marc's class back at Oly... perhaps you won't remember me, heh.
Anyway, cheers to a small world...
Yes, you did manage to find me slumming on slashdot. (I didn't reply, because by the time I actually looked back at my comment history and noticed the reply, the thread was closed. I'm terrible about following up. So, instead, I've just been stalking you via your user profile.)
How's things?
Take care.
Jeff
I'm running Slackware 10.1, but 10.0 also worked (didn't try to get Xine working with any earlier versions).
/usr/lib/win32
/usr/lib/win32, and it works with the default Xine package.
So:
1) Install Slackware
2) Grab the codecs off of the MPlayer webpage
3) Put them in
4) Play WMV files (and others)
5) ???
6) Profit!
Again, Xine works great under Slackware. All you have to do is grab the codecs off of the MPlayer site and drop them into
Pat's the man. He'd never purposely cripple a package. $25 for the subscription, $40 to just order the CDs as a oneshot. (And yes, I'm a complete Slackware fanboy.)
Jeff
Ah yes, as my stat mech professor taught us, Gallium-Arsenide, material of the future. Always has been, always will be.
Do you think they'll port DNF to it?
Jeff
All that information is still there.
I consider this table more as a design/art piece than a functional version, however, the layout is impressive to me.
It is the normal table, just yanked around into a circle. So, to make it truly functional, first get rid of the pretty background and make the cells bigger to put atomic weight back in. Next, take the noble gasses and put them at the very top and make them verticle. Now, all the relations that were in the table before are still there.
Down is now out, right is now counter-clockwise, left is clockwise and up is in. So for electronegativity, the elements just clockwise of the top and closest to the center have the highest electronegativity, and those just counter-clockwise and furthest out have the most electronegativity.
This table has the added benefit of better showing the progression of additional electron shells and it has a logical place for the neutron.
You don't see it right off because you learned on the standard table. I would contend that anyone who learned on this table would be able to estimate an element's properties simply by looking at the table as well.
Jeff
(no text)
main reason for this is president jimmy carter put out an execuitive order banning fast breeder reactors (aka reprocessing) from the US. All we need to do is overturn that. I expect that reprocessing the fuel will be cheaper than storing it as is. Much more environmentally friendly too.
Good point on this being more enviromentally friendly. It's also more manageable. Only the really high-grade extremely radioactive stuff gets dumped. That sounds worse, until you realize that that is the stuff that goes away after 500-1000 years, where after 4 billion years, we still have Uranium 238 on the planet.
My impression is what's keeping that order from being overturned is presnit monkey's thing against ter'rists. I think we can overcome the security problems associated with reprocessing, and that they aren't as big a deal as they would make you think (remember, in the last 20 years, only 3000 Americans have died in the continental US from terrorist attacks. We are a nation of 280 million. If that truly scares you, stop driving, it's much more dangerous).
Jeff
Sadly, the words of "Chernobyl" are so well rehearsed by this community that they fail to realize the fact that Chernobyl was running at 130% capacity at the time -- a situtation which does not happen in current reactors due partially to the government regulations, partially to the IAEA, and partially to political pressures. That, and it's fucking common sense for crying out loud! Nuclear scientists and engineers know what they are working with now more than ever.
That and Chernobyl was a stupid design. It had a positive void-coefficient (if the cooling water got too hot and boiled, this would act as a positive feedback into the system and cause the reactor to run-away), and they had more graphite moderator on the bottom of the control rods.
Essentially, the reactor started to run away and boil its water, causing it to overheat more and boil more water, and so on. When they slammed the control rods, the reacto first saw the graphite spacers at the bottom which added moderator to the system, which increased the available thermal neutrons in the reactor, causing the reactor to go full-on supercritical in the period between when the bottom of the spacers hit and when the control rods got fully inserted into the reactor. Once the thing is supercritical, there really isn't any way the control rods are going to help (at least, not enough).
US, Canadian and European reactors are designed to have negative void coefficients (boiling water causes the reactor to slow down), or they are gas cooled and have no void coefficient (coolant boiling isn't a problem because it is already a gas). And nobody, I mean nobody, puts spacers made of the same material as the moderator on the bottom of the fuel rods anymore (all the RBMK reactors got their spacers changed out after Chernobyl).
Modern fission reactors are much more reliable. They dump less radioactivity into the atmosphere than coal plants, and the nuclear industry is much safer (because of tighter regulations) than the coal and oil industry. A lot more people die ever year to bring you coal generated electricity than nuclear generated electricity, even scaling for supply percentages (50% of US electricity is coal based, whereas nuke is in the 7% range).
Jeff
This is where reprocessing comes into play. If you reprocess the fuel, you can build a reactor that breeds plutonium out of the U238 and extends your fuel supply quite a bit (remember, natural Uranium is about 0.7% U235, the rest is almost entirely U238, so theoretically, you could get that much more life out of the fuel with reprocessing). However, this comes with the usual issues of proliferation and security surrounding any enrichment plant. This is the main reason the US doesn't reprocess.
Breeding and reprocessing plants are also possible using Thorium as a feedstock instead of U238. This is still experimental, but Thorium is much more abundant, and could last us thousands of years.
My point is, nuclear fission isn't as limited as much by the high grade Uranium supply, however.
Renewables have their own problems and are still much more expensive than coal. They also aren't proven to scale as fission can. We don't have a renewable that we can scale up. If we are going to stop using fossil fuel now, then nuclear is going to be a big part of that.
The accident record for nuclear is excellent, particularly in comparison to coal and oil. I won't compare it to renewables, because they aren't viable yet. They are still in research and small scale stage.
Others have already commented on the green house gas production of they cycle. The solution to that is to get a liquid fuel into production that doesn't come from fossil sources (I'm a big fan of biodiesel, there are still some scaling problems, but the algae derived stuff looks promising).
Jeff
Our nuke tech isn't very different from Canada or Europe. We use Pressurized Light Water Reactors. The fundamental design hasn't changed since the 50s or so.
Canada uses Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors. PLWRs require the use of enriched Uranium, whereas PHWRs will run on natural Uranium, requiring no refining. That's the big difference. Everyone is still heating water and running it through a steam cycle to generate the electricity. That's right, Nuke Plants are little more than coal plants with uranium going in and fissioning instead of coal going in and burning. About the only thing Canada has on us is not having to expend energy to enrich the fuel (which isn't that much, IIRC). This also means, that from an efficiency stand-point, Canadian and European reactors aren't much better than ours.
The big hangup in our fuel cycle is that it ends in the plants. We won't reprocess it. While increases the life time of the non-renewable resource, there are proliferation concerns. Worse yet, we won't even dispose of it. Every single gram of Uranium that has gone into a power plant in the US is still there. This is what needs to be fixed, and Yucca Mountain is as good a solution as I've seen. If you're going to poo-poo it, and you want me to listen, you better have an alternative plan which doesn't involve leaving the waste in the power plant.
The thing which has improved is safety (our nuclear industry is the safest of all the power industries, and not too bad on the cleanliness either, except that we refuse to figure out how to dispose of spent fuel).
As far as efficiency goes, we haven't had any interesting improvements there. We still use enriched fuel, and the plants are only about 30% efficient. They are limited to steam temperatures of about 350 C (because of materials), which really hurts the efficiency of the steam cycle that they are hooked into.
What would be nice is getting the HTGRs working (High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactors). They use Helium as the coolant, and can sustain significantly higher temperatures (better efficiency), they run the heated He gas through a gas turbine (better efficiency than a steam cycle) and they have no void-coefficient (meaning, a Chernobyl style accident is physically impossible). They're a good design, and it might be possible to modify the design to use a combined cycle to further improve efficiency.
Pebble Bed reactors are similar to HTGRs. The main difference is that the fuel comes in ceramic balls instead of rods. They are still gas cooled, and can use a gas turbine, and they can be outfitted to use a combined cycle or combined heat and power system to further improve energy efficiency.
Personally, I feel that nuclear power is much less of an environmental hazard than continued use of coal plants. Right now, our coal plants produce much more radiation (in the form of Thorium and Uranium in the exhaust particles) than our nuclear reactors release by quite a bit. Responsible disposal of nuclear waste is possible. We need more nuke plants. We need to put more into developing and deploying next generation gas cooled reactors. Until then, we should be commisioning more nuke plants in favor of fossil fuel.
The problem is economic incentive. The nuclear industry is heavily regulated to the point of being significantly more expensive than coal or oil. My solution to this problem is not to de-reg (that would hurt the incredible safety record of the nuclear industry and hurt public opinion further). Instead, coal and oil should be as tightly regulated. That would level the playing field and make nuke plants more favorable. And yes, I know what this does to electricity prices, I don't want to hear about it, IANALibertarian, and never will be. Besides, it would maintain the good working conditions of the nuke industry, and improve those in the fossil fuel industry. Coal wouldn't be paid for in as many miner deaths anymore.
Jeff
Not to mention that you have to actually talk to the woman sometimes. I mean, I've got UT to play
/. to post on!
/. (I mean, this is a pretty scary den of idiots and trolls, see the LA Times Wiki debacle).
I play Quake with my fiance. She doesn't like deathmatch, but coop is much more fun than single player (I'm hoping Quake4 has a good coop mode).
and
You probably can't talk her into
And to top it off, I gotta pay a whole dollar to have sex?
You don't need to pay a buck to have sex with her, it's more of an insurance plan against a possible liability of tens of thousands of dollars per year for the next 18-24 years.
Man, I'm glad I have a right hand!
Try your left hand sometime. And no, it isn't cheating.
Jeff
XineHQ
You'll need to also grab the extra codecs off the MPlayer site, check the Xine FAQ for the one about playing WMVs.
Jeff
Jeez, if 211893 is low, make me some offers people.
Jeff
You can wrap it with ten tons of DRM Snake oil, but if the recipient can read it, it can be copied. Accessing = copying.
For instance, if I am a commie spy, and you send me a DRM'd double-super-secret document that becomes visible on my screen, such that it can be seen and read, well, I can utilize some archaic technology to circumvent the DRM, in fact, this is a classic commie spy technique: I can write it down on paper or take a picture of the screen with a camera.
This public service announcement was just to drive home the point about how unbelievably stupid the thought of using DRM for protecting secret documents is. If the destination isn't trusted, you can't send them information. It simply doesn't matter how you diddle with it.
Jeff
You ever seen a kernel oops? I have (faulty hardware). It's a spray of hexadecimal and cryptic CPU register names to the screen with the word "Oops!" at the top. It has a much better "scary computer entrails" look to it than any of those you've listed.
Jeff
Look, who do you think you're kidding here?
Hey man, my girlfriend runs Debian on her laptop and never asks me to fix it for her or install software for her or any of that stuff.
...
No, dead serious.
Jeff
Myself, when Discovery lifts again I'm going to raise a glass to all of my heroes from the shuttle program... And I'll take a drink for every name on the roll of honor for Challenger and Columbia.
I will raise that glass with you. To Dreams and Heroes.
Jeff
It's neat, the actuators are a decent design, but it won't replace even a basic guitarist. It can only hold a note down and pick said note. It can't slide, tap, pick harmonics, bend notes, fret hand mute, palm mute or any of a number of other techniques that I can think of.
/. editors should know better than to declare musicians will lose to a machine.
However, I can understand why they didn't go for those extra features; they would be a bitch to design. So, kudos to them for the whole design, it looks cool, but
For that matter, people still play chess even.
Jeff
PS Sorry for the rant, it's late, I'm tired, and I'm a guitarist. Struck a nerve...
Leaving the participants sweaty and tired at the end does not necessarily make an activity a sport.
I refer you then, sir, to the original alcohol based distinction.
Jeff
One more thing to add to this.
Doom3 Minimum system requirements:
Windows: P4 1.5GHz or Athlon 1500, 384MiB of RAM, graphics card which supports pixel shaders.
Linux: PIII 1GHz, 256MiB of RAM, graphics card which supports pixel shaders.
Jeff
Oh, try things like BRL-CAD, Maya, Custom VR applications (eg, built using things like Maverik). There are a lot of other apps. Go cruise freshmeat for them. Some F/OSS, some not, but the reason nVidia puts a decent amount of effort into their Linux drivers is they want to be the 3D solution for GNU/Linux workstations.
I, personally, am learning BRL-CAD, and I've used Maverik and OpenGL to make physics visualization software (personal use, I never got any of it to release quality).
Many of these don't use the whiz-bang new features on the newer cards, but the cards are clocked faster and are still improvements over the older cards even for simple OpenGL based apps. Some of the stuff can make use of the new features.
I do all my gaming under Linux, and I get my fix just fine (admittedly, I like (and play exclusively) gun-fu FPS games, with Id Software having written all my favorite engines, so I've never had compatibility problems, because I don't care about games written only for Windows).
Speaking of games, the parent missed an important one, Tenebrae, a modification of the original Quake engine which adds pixel shaders to the renderer (among other things). It's gorgeous. Someone also just started a similar project for the Quake2 engine, here.
To boot, X.org 6.8.1+ have support for true transparency, which needs hardware acceleration. Again, newer cards are not strictly necessary for this, but they help. You can get some pretty impressive eye candy on the latest X.org releases (if you're willing to tinker, but you're using GNU/Linux, so I assume you are. If you aren't, you'll have to wait for the Longhorn/DNF super-bundle to come out, or just buy a Mac).
I've been using Slackware GNU/Linux for 3D work for a while now, and I've been very happy with it.
Jeff
The Student Lab Manual for the Art of Electronics has a great design for an MC68008 based computer that you can build on a large breadboard (48 pin DIP package on the processor, discrete CMOS logic for the "chipset" and 8K of RAM, however, it is a simple exercise to add more).
Some of the components can be kind of expensive (the hex displays and the ADC/DACs, most notably), and you'll definitely need a logic probe and an oscilloscope (although, those should be considered required for any project like this).
The University of Washington Physics Department uses AoE as the textbook for their electronics labs, and the advanced one is building the 68008 computer and making it do something (I wrote & built a multi-threaded oscilloscope pong game). I highly suggest the book, it is truly excellent to learn from and as a reference.
Jeff
I eat oatmeal every morning, however, I soak it over night using a half cup oatmeal, a half cup water and a tablespoon or two of buttermilk. Let it sit in a warm spot for at least 7 hours (just prepare directly before going to bed and get that full night's sleep they mentioned in TFA). In the morning, boil another half cup of water, add the oatmeal, cook over medium for 5 minutes, let stand for 3. I eat it with a couple scoops of plain yogurt and a tablespoon of molasses. This gets me vitamin E, more protien from the yogurt (the oatmeal has a decent amount on its own), and tons of other good stuff. It's also a fire and forget kind of thing, I usually put together my lunch for the day during the 10 minutes it takes to cook.
The soak process allows lacto-bacteria to go to work on the oatmeal. They reduce the antinutrients and otherwise improve nutrient uptake (including partially processing the carbs for you). I've noticed a huge difference between it and normal oatmeal. These bacteria processes are well known and well studied.
Take note: my metabolism functions on the same principle of that of the horse. In other words, my body inefficiently processes the food to grab the easiest nutrients and leave the rest, thus requiring me to eat vast quantities of food (I'm a skinny git with a nasty monthly food budget). So, you may or may not notice a difference, my girlfriend didn't.
Jeff
You know what the funny thing is? The only section of the Bible which says unequivocally that homosexuality is wrong is the same section which states that men should be bound by levirate marriage (my brother dies without an heir, I am required to have sex with his widow until she bears a male hier for him). It also states that prostitutes are sinners, but not the men who visit them, but even though prostitutes themselves are sinners, the practice is ok. It also states that polygamy is an upstanding practice. This is all in the Old Testament.
The only place where homosexuality is mentioned in the New Testament is a quote by Paul, and he makes his argument based on the act being "unnatural." Well, that's a flimsy argument, particularly when homosexual behavior is seen across the board in the animal kingdom.
Now, think about that previous paragraph. Who did not say a single word about homosexuality? That's right, Jesus. The son of God. He doesn't have anything to say on the topic. Or at least, nothing that got written down.
Next time some evangelical nutwad spouts off at you about homosexuality and the bible, ask him what he thinks about prostitution. Ask him about homosexual behavior in animals. Ask him where Jesus says "I hate fags and you should too" in the Bible. It is not there.
I am a Christian. Those of us who are reasonable folks get quite annoyed at the loud, stupid ones. Particularly when their vanguard ends up being a bunch of hypocritical jackholes.
Jeff
50% of the United State's electricity is generated by burning coal in old style boilers, and that's been on the rise for the last 40 years. It's just about the only type of plant with real growth prospects right now.
I'm not saying I agree with using coal, but you should learn something about how this country gets its energy before you spout off about coal.
So with the 50% marker in mind, we probably burned about 5 trains filled with coal. If the grandparent didn't account for plant efficiency, it's more like 15 trains full just to break RC-64.
Jeff