Why should the government be in charge of my retirement?
To be frank, a lot (if not most) of people can't be trusted to plan for their own retirement. You may not be one of them, but if the situation is comparable to healthcare then I don't think a country without a state pension or a culture of looking after elderly family members would be very pleasant. Well, not for the elderly anyway.
As much as I'd like a nice increase on my salary from not having to pay for the welfare of those who didn't plan ahead; I don't think I could stomach the idea of the unemployable* having no other source of income. On balance I think the welfare state is a Good Thing.
If you're advocating the abolition of social security then - without meaning any offence - I might think you were heartless. If on the other hand you're suggesting that people should be able to opt-out and provide for themselves then in principle I would agree. However, what happens if your investments fail? Do you then get all the benefits of SS without having to pay for them?
*You can take this a number of ways: on the cynical side there're the employers that will find some way of getting round age discrimination. Alternatively, just bear in mind that infirmity does tend to come with age; unless you have the dubious good fortune of simply dropping dead there will come a point when you simply can't earn a living wage.
Does it work when it's vertical (i.e. axis of rotation is horizontal)? It's been a long, long time since my desktop was actually on my desk rather than stood beside it.
Disclaimer: I only skimmed the PDF, I didn't RTFA at all.
It's a Scottish confection (so by no means a sports drink, hur hur:P). I don't know if it's available in the US. It's a more carbonated soft drink than most, with added caffeine and together with a full English (i.e. lots of fried, greasy meat) breakfast it's an excellent hangover cure. Not as good as a pint of water before bed but I so often forget that on account of being tired and drunk.
The advantage of a mechanical wrist watch is that it doesn't have a battery to die.
As I'm sure you know, they have springs that run down but since self-winders are common among electronic and mechanical watches I confess that I've missed whatever point you were trying to make with this statement.
While many if not most watch-wearers have them to accessorise as you say, I wear one to tell the time. The only reason I might spend more than a few dollars on a watch is to get one that has a scratch-proof glass (I prefer to wear it on the inside of the wrist) and a quick-release strap. By the way, professionalism is subjective like so many other things; if I see someone flaunting an expensive watch I'm inclined to think they have more money than sense. I can only imagine what people think of my watch but I'd rather be thought of as stingy than to spend so much on something that has to do perform only one simple task.
Sorry, but I was just talking about socks there. When it comes to white coats, why not try paper? You could impregnate it with this chemical and recycle or just throw into an incinerator after use.
I freely admit I'm pretty ignorant of microbiology but given the choice I'd wager heavily that boiling water is more efficacious than than a chemical treatment. In fact, I'd go even further and also bet that adapting to such high temperatures will take a lot longer for staph. and it's ilk - we've been using it for quite some time successfully after all.
I once attended a lecture about the many useful attributes of brass (including its bacteriostatic properties) but I still wouldn't recommend it over regular hand washing. Was it even me that you were calling ignorant, anyway? I couldn't tell.
I'm reminded of an argument/discussion I once had with a friend of mine who read environmental *ahem* engineering about the differences between biological and synthetic systems, specifically plants vs. solar panels. He argued that trees are inherently superior to solar panels because they grow unaided from such a small thing as a seed. I didn't dispute this point, but couldn't help point out that you can't make a tree that's identical to the one next to it, even down to the metre or centimetre scale, much less micrometre.
One can't deny the merits of a living, self-repairing and self-assembling system like a tree or an insect, but if you want to have more than one copy you have to build it yourself. Robots with tactile senses are naturally going to have a big advantage of those that don't, but I think the best way to go about it would be to follow the same route as SKYNET supposedly did: build a metal robot, but give it a flesh coating. We can build large moving machines more efficiently than nature and given the manufacturing technology we might be able to do the same for smaller-scale parts too, but for the moment nature really does beat technology when it comes to producing things that function at small scales in bulk. Take image sensors as an example: we could probably make an artificial retina that's much more sensitive than the real thing but to produce a lot of them it's probably better just to settle for the squishy kind and replace the problems with silicon processing with petri dishes and simple nutrient broth.
And you have fallen into the trap of assuming that a private company must be able to do it better than a government department.
I've got news for you: government IT systems usually are produced by private companies under contract. And when it comes to the NHS their record is especially bad.
Why HMG keeps choosing those fuckwits EDS and Accenture, I'll never know. Maybe they always give the lowest tender, yet they go over budget without fail - so why doesn't HMG just tell them to sod off?!
Now, please correct me if I'm wrong, and I may be wrong, but:
6.02e23 / 100 000 == 6.02e18 pulses to process one mole of boron
6.02e18 / 75e6 == 8.02e11 seconds to process one mole of boron
300e6 W / 8.02e11 seconds == 3.7e-3 W/sec
I can't tell you how that compares with an ion drive.
steveha
Sorry, but I think you are wrong. wwagerrp wanted to know the energy the machine would get from 1 mol of boron fuel, the article gives us something in watts, and you gave something in watts/second when in fact what is needed will be in watt-seconds (or joules as most people say).
This might be better: 75e6 * 1e5 gives 75e11 particles released per second. But, the article doesn't say how many of those go on to fuse, etc so this is all academic. Assuming it wasn't, though, 300e6 (Joule/second) / 750e11 (1/second) gives 4e-6 Joules/particle. 8.7 MeV ~= 1.4e-12 Joules so there's something definitely wrong here.
To sum up, article on spectrum is light on details and written pretty badly. If you want to actually know how this thing is supposed to work try and find the paper because frankly I've seen better science reporting in the free paper they have on the bus.
The impulse engines are canonically fusion drives with a magic inertia-mitigating field thrown in for good measure; as memory serves they ran on deuterium.
These devices could be scaled down to power electric vehicles such as cars, trucks, trains, and aircraft as well as our homes without the need for fossil fuels. What do you think?
I think that scaling isn't as simple as that and also that maintaining a hard vacuum is probably a lot easier in space.
When the proton hits the boron-11 nucleus they fuse giving an excited (that bit's important) carbon-12, which in very short order (sorry, the exact time escapes me) splits into a helium nucleus and a beryllium-8 nucleus, which in turn splits into another two helium nuclei. So what you have in effect is a fusion-fission reaction but the fission part isn't usually mentioned - something to do with OMG nuke! types, perhaps?
However, I suppose it is true that all of the energy is coming from fusion, as 12C -> 4He + 4He + 4He is exothermic. (The reverse reaction is an energy source for stars under some circumstances.)
Actually, the triple-alpha process, which produces carbon in some stars is closer to this:
He + He -> Be
Be + He -> C
I expect that the probability of a 3-body collision between 3 helium nuclei is so vanishingly small as to be insignificant, but hopefully someone who knows this subject well can fill in that particular blank.
As for why the carbon that gets produced doesn't immediately decay like the one made in a p+B11 fusion reactor, I couldn't say as IANANP (just an interested layman) but I imagine it's something to do with that business of being in an excited state I touched upon earlier.
P.S. A dictionary isn't a good place to start learning about nuclear physics; try an encyclopaedia instead. In fact, here is a good article, which was the second result Google gave when I searched for p+B11. To address your issue with particles: yes, more atoms come out than go in, but the number of nucleons remains the same.
So, there's an Earth-like body, which I took to mean atmosphere, composition and climate, going round a star at an Earth-like distance. Is there any problem with radiation coming from gas giant nearby?
Serendipity is a famous English example: the concept of finding something when looking for something else. For instance you might be looking down the back of the sofa for the TV remote, fail to find it (it's actually under the sofa) but you do find a £2 coin while you're there.
I disagree with the quoted point that some things are expressible in one language but not in another, but there are some ideas that have a single word in one language but not in another. As another example take Schadenfreude; I could explain what it means to another anglophone, but we had to borrow the word because we didn't have a direct translation.
Slashdot Mirror
Why should the government be in charge of my retirement?
To be frank, a lot (if not most) of people can't be trusted to plan for their own retirement. You may not be one of them, but if the situation is comparable to healthcare then I don't think a country without a state pension or a culture of looking after elderly family members would be very pleasant. Well, not for the elderly anyway.
As much as I'd like a nice increase on my salary from not having to pay for the welfare of those who didn't plan ahead; I don't think I could stomach the idea of the unemployable* having no other source of income. On balance I think the welfare state is a Good Thing.
If you're advocating the abolition of social security then - without meaning any offence - I might think you were heartless. If on the other hand you're suggesting that people should be able to opt-out and provide for themselves then in principle I would agree. However, what happens if your investments fail? Do you then get all the benefits of SS without having to pay for them?
*You can take this a number of ways: on the cynical side there're the employers that will find some way of getting round age discrimination. Alternatively, just bear in mind that infirmity does tend to come with age; unless you have the dubious good fortune of simply dropping dead there will come a point when you simply can't earn a living wage.
There wasn't anything for Vista that wouldn't work on XP.
There was, but I think most people had played it already.
Does it work when it's vertical (i.e. axis of rotation is horizontal)? It's been a long, long time since my desktop was actually on my desk rather than stood beside it.
Disclaimer: I only skimmed the PDF, I didn't RTFA at all.
As Humpy said in my favourite quote of his: "You have to get behind someone before you can stab them in the back."
It's a Scottish confection (so by no means a sports drink, hur hur :P). I don't know if it's available in the US. It's a more carbonated soft drink than most, with added caffeine and together with a full English (i.e. lots of fried, greasy meat) breakfast it's an excellent hangover cure. Not as good as a pint of water before bed but I so often forget that on account of being tired and drunk.
"I love humans. Always seeing patterns in things that aren't there."
McGann made a good Doctor.
I really like it on mornings when I'm hungover....
Try Irn Bru, there's nothing better in my opinion.
Really? I'd heard it was two days ago. Sure it was word of mouth, but still more reliable than anything that was ever in that squalid little rag.
Seems that Inquisitus beat me to it.
The advantage of a mechanical wrist watch is that it doesn't have a battery to die.
As I'm sure you know, they have springs that run down but since self-winders are common among electronic and mechanical watches I confess that I've missed whatever point you were trying to make with this statement.
While many if not most watch-wearers have them to accessorise as you say, I wear one to tell the time. The only reason I might spend more than a few dollars on a watch is to get one that has a scratch-proof glass (I prefer to wear it on the inside of the wrist) and a quick-release strap. By the way, professionalism is subjective like so many other things; if I see someone flaunting an expensive watch I'm inclined to think they have more money than sense. I can only imagine what people think of my watch but I'd rather be thought of as stingy than to spend so much on something that has to do perform only one simple task.
Sorry, but I was just talking about socks there. When it comes to white coats, why not try paper? You could impregnate it with this chemical and recycle or just throw into an incinerator after use.
I freely admit I'm pretty ignorant of microbiology but given the choice I'd wager heavily that boiling water is more efficacious than than a chemical treatment. In fact, I'd go even further and also bet that adapting to such high temperatures will take a lot longer for staph. and it's ilk - we've been using it for quite some time successfully after all.
I once attended a lecture about the many useful attributes of brass (including its bacteriostatic properties) but I still wouldn't recommend it over regular hand washing. Was it even me that you were calling ignorant, anyway? I couldn't tell.
When it comes to hospital sheets I'd rather have a boil wash, followed by another one if possible.
Until the resistant variety comes along, that is.
What's wrong with just washing the damn things?
Windows 7 won't allow repair installs without running setup.exe from within the installation that needs repairing.
How does one do a repair install if Windows 7 won't boot?
It seems silly to restrict repair installs to cases where the OS can boot anyway.
I'm reminded of an argument/discussion I once had with a friend of mine who read environmental *ahem* engineering about the differences between biological and synthetic systems, specifically plants vs. solar panels. He argued that trees are inherently superior to solar panels because they grow unaided from such a small thing as a seed. I didn't dispute this point, but couldn't help point out that you can't make a tree that's identical to the one next to it, even down to the metre or centimetre scale, much less micrometre.
One can't deny the merits of a living, self-repairing and self-assembling system like a tree or an insect, but if you want to have more than one copy you have to build it yourself. Robots with tactile senses are naturally going to have a big advantage of those that don't, but I think the best way to go about it would be to follow the same route as SKYNET supposedly did: build a metal robot, but give it a flesh coating. We can build large moving machines more efficiently than nature and given the manufacturing technology we might be able to do the same for smaller-scale parts too, but for the moment nature really does beat technology when it comes to producing things that function at small scales in bulk. Take image sensors as an example: we could probably make an artificial retina that's much more sensitive than the real thing but to produce a lot of them it's probably better just to settle for the squishy kind and replace the problems with silicon processing with petri dishes and simple nutrient broth.
They're the kind of test you pass simply by not participating.
How about a nice game of chess?
And you have fallen into the trap of assuming that a private company must be able to do it better than a government department.
I've got news for you: government IT systems usually are produced by private companies under contract. And when it comes to the NHS their record is especially bad.
Why HMG keeps choosing those fuckwits EDS and Accenture, I'll never know. Maybe they always give the lowest tender, yet they go over budget without fail - so why doesn't HMG just tell them to sod off?!
Now, please correct me if I'm wrong, and I may be wrong, but:
6.02e23 / 100 000 == 6.02e18 pulses to process one mole of boron
6.02e18 / 75e6 == 8.02e11 seconds to process one mole of boron
300e6 W / 8.02e11 seconds == 3.7e-3 W/sec
I can't tell you how that compares with an ion drive.
steveha
Sorry, but I think you are wrong. wwagerrp wanted to know the energy the machine would get from 1 mol of boron fuel, the article gives us something in watts, and you gave something in watts/second when in fact what is needed will be in watt-seconds (or joules as most people say).
This might be better: 75e6 * 1e5 gives 75e11 particles released per second. But, the article doesn't say how many of those go on to fuse, etc so this is all academic. Assuming it wasn't, though, 300e6 (Joule/second) / 750e11 (1/second) gives 4e-6 Joules/particle. 8.7 MeV ~= 1.4e-12 Joules so there's something definitely wrong here.
To sum up, article on spectrum is light on details and written pretty badly. If you want to actually know how this thing is supposed to work try and find the paper because frankly I've seen better science reporting in the free paper they have on the bus.
The impulse engines are canonically fusion drives with a magic inertia-mitigating field thrown in for good measure; as memory serves they ran on deuterium.
These devices could be scaled down to power electric vehicles such as cars, trucks, trains, and aircraft as well as our homes without the need for fossil fuels. What do you think?
I think that scaling isn't as simple as that and also that maintaining a hard vacuum is probably a lot easier in space.
When the proton hits the boron-11 nucleus they fuse giving an excited (that bit's important) carbon-12, which in very short order (sorry, the exact time escapes me) splits into a helium nucleus and a beryllium-8 nucleus, which in turn splits into another two helium nuclei. So what you have in effect is a fusion-fission reaction but the fission part isn't usually mentioned - something to do with OMG nuke! types, perhaps?
However, I suppose it is true that all of the energy is coming from fusion, as 12C -> 4He + 4He + 4He is exothermic. (The reverse reaction is an energy source for stars under some circumstances.)
Actually, the triple-alpha process, which produces carbon in some stars is closer to this:
He + He -> Be
Be + He -> C
I expect that the probability of a 3-body collision between 3 helium nuclei is so vanishingly small as to be insignificant, but hopefully someone who knows this subject well can fill in that particular blank.
As for why the carbon that gets produced doesn't immediately decay like the one made in a p+B11 fusion reactor, I couldn't say as IANANP (just an interested layman) but I imagine it's something to do with that business of being in an excited state I touched upon earlier.
P.S. A dictionary isn't a good place to start learning about nuclear physics; try an encyclopaedia instead. In fact, here is a good article, which was the second result Google gave when I searched for p+B11. To address your issue with particles: yes, more atoms come out than go in, but the number of nucleons remains the same.
So, there's an Earth-like body, which I took to mean atmosphere, composition and climate, going round a star at an Earth-like distance. Is there any problem with radiation coming from gas giant nearby?
What sort of radiation?
Serendipity is a famous English example: the concept of finding something when looking for something else. For instance you might be looking down the back of the sofa for the TV remote, fail to find it (it's actually under the sofa) but you do find a £2 coin while you're there.
I disagree with the quoted point that some things are expressible in one language but not in another, but there are some ideas that have a single word in one language but not in another. As another example take Schadenfreude; I could explain what it means to another anglophone, but we had to borrow the word because we didn't have a direct translation.