It was not only squids but other deep-see fish that were discovered when submarines could dive deeper and deeper.
I remember reading as a kid some old books/magazines from the 1960ies about the amazing discoveries of weird deep-see fish that were done as submarines started to explore the deep see. They discovered fish living at debts that were not thought to be able to exist..there wasn't any mythological about them, no information or stories that they existed.. scientists up to then believed the bottom of the ocean was just dead as there was no light and pressure was too high. So they were amazed to discover some fish had adapted and could live in thi environment.
I remember watching a documentary about spontanious human combustion in school during english class (about 20 years ago).. Half of the class was spooked because it was such a weird topic..
I remember they discussed some deaths (showing burn marks on floors, carpets,..) but scientifically there wasn't any explenation yet.. Anyone know if there's one now ?
In most countries (afaik but I'm not an accountant/lawyer with international experience) there are restrictions..
Especially the first months/year a company starts, the people who run it can be held personal liable. So don't think of starting a company, getting loans from a bank, increasing debt by not paying your suppliers, and just declare yourself bankrupt after a few months and get away with it. If your business plan wasn't wel defined and you didn't raise enough initial (own) capital to survive 1 or 2 years, you can be held liable (and prevented of starting a new company for the next years)
Same for the last 6 months or so when a company goes bust, all transactions can be examined and reversed, so ie the owner can't sell assets to himself/friends for a price that is too low. Had this once at a startup company that was in trouble, an employee that left wanted to buy a laptop from the company that he had used, but the director would not do this as he was afraid to be liable if the curator later decided the laptop had been sold too cheap.
Any why limited-liability companies are allowed - to allow for big companies to form. In a Ltd, investors can only lose the amount money they have invested and not more. If you wouldn't have this protection, no-one would invest anymore in a company, as the risk would be too big when they were also held personally liable for part of the debts.
Probably the same reason as why the jews in concentration camps didn't all revolt against their guards as they were with many more.. no-one wants to get killed in an attempt for saving others..
And you say you would have tried to try to fight him. Don't know your age, if you have any experience fighting,.. you may think otherwise then them. These were young kids. Probably have no self-defense skills whatsoever. Someone starts shooting, everyone panics and runs away, you can't try to find 10 or 20 people and come up with a plan to attack the guy. And playing games will not help you fight someone with a gun when you don't have a gun (or knife or any other means to defend yourself). (first rule of a gun fight: bring a gun:-)
Nothing new, this exists for a few years already.. Not east but very west (near the dutch border) Germany.
I visited this park about 2 years ago. Very suiteable with small children (ages 3 - 7) - very interesting concept: you pay entry once and not only get access to all attractions for free, but trough the whole park there are food stands where you can get food (french fries) and drinks (soda, water) for free.. Portions are rather small and sometimes you have to stand a long time in line - so the abuse of free food is rather limited, but yes if you could you could spend all day eating french fries there:-) But still it was a nice change from other amusement parks that overcharge on food and drinks..
Anyway it was never used as nuclear reactor and apart from the large cooling tower there's nothing that would indicate that use.. Most articles about this make it a bigger issue than it is. It's just an amusement park that has an ugly concrete tower in it, nothing more, nothing less..
Now I wonder - it's an html5 tag. Should I already implement it on my own website which isn't html5 or would google then just ignore it ? I can already put it on my own site, blog, facebook,.. but if it's going to be ignored then I won't bother..
probably nothing.. as well as another site copying your site can just remove your tag and replace it with theirs, claiming they're the original author..
True, speed has become virtualised through the net. Most business depends less on how fast they can move things around physically, it's become more important how fast they can get data around virtually.
Maybe it's not just a matter of being stupid but just not being adult enough or understanding the consequences of what he did.
I once got on an irc channel of some guys (kids ?) that wanted to start their own cracking group. Followed their conversation for 2 minutes and it was obvious they were like 14yo script kiddies that had no idea what they were doing or what the consequences could be. They thought they could legally trade cracked software for a few days, because one of the large groups put something like 'try this for 5 days and then buy it if you like it' (don't remember the exact words), so those kiddies thought it was perfectly legal for them to keep illegal software for 5 days, trade it to other people, and then delete it.
It's indeed just a thought experiment. To understand it and put it in perspective you have to read some of his older blog posts, like about taxation: http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/taxation/ and he has a few about cheapatopia: http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/cheapatopia__internet/ which could be compared with some kind of commune. He also has some posts about solving US deficit, healthcare,..
Most of them are similar - you give up part of your privacy/individual choices and there are benefits for the whole group. When looking at a macro-economic scale there are advantages for the whole community. Large healthcare costs for older people can be reduced if people are monitored (and get better food, sport,..) when they're young.
There can be huge reductions on basic living expenses if some things are done on a global scale instead of individual. Food can be cheaper if bought in bulk - so let the commune order and cook instead of everyone individually. There are many more examples like this in his posts..
But everything is indeed very one-sided, utopian. Capitalism and greed are never far away and his ideas can easily be misused.
I follow Scotts blog and most posts about the utopian city are just brainstorming things, what-if scenarios. Pretty interesting but not realistic. While some of the things he says in todays posts make sense (ie road safety, crime) - the whole concept sounds bizarre and probably will be misused by companies.
Suppose there'll be some utopian city like he describes, it's a small step for companies to exploit this with ie flexible pricing (even though Scott says companies must follow some rules about prices - but as the city can set the rules, the city can allow this if it's in their goal, ie the city gets more taxes from companies then through taxes from its citizens).
The shop/company/city knows how much money you earn and how much you have left at each specific point in time. Very easy for them to change prices at will. You want a soda from this vending machine ? Sure, it's hot, you've been jogging and are very sweaty and thirsty - and you have $2000 left of this months wage ? Instead of $2 the machine charges you $20, and you still buy it as you're really thirsty. Next person in line in not thirsty and has only $50 left and still needs to pay $30 later that day ? He can have it for.50
Why not take his idea further to a next level (getting even more into socialism/communism/welfare state whatever you want to call it). Why still have money/cash ? Just abandon it as it's already virtual in his idea.
Once you enter the city you give up cash. You even give up saving money. You work for the city who provides everything for you. A house, food,.. Maybe have some kind of credits so that those who do better jobs (that would earn more in the real world) can have more options than those who do less (ie lobster while others eat steak and others spagetti). You give up saving, at the end of each month you don't have any money left (flexible pricing would also lead to this). Work long enough and the city will take care of you as you get old.
How different is this from the real world (for a lot of people) ?:-)
and while having no privacy at all is a weird concept, it'd indeed make for some cool apps like he says.
Problem with this (and yoru homeowners example) is that it's never black or white. Most people don't really fit in a category, and the question is always where do you draw the line ? How does one decide your neighbour is a lunatic (if he really was then he would be in a mental institution) or just behaves a bit weird sometimes or is just not social ?
There may be not 1 serial number, but individual parts will still have them.
As I read the article (no serial numberS) I understand it as the serial on components like the harddisk itself, dvddrive, mobo,.. would all be removed. When I'd plant a bug like this I would also do this, making it more difficult to track where components were bought..
I do the opposite and started to delete more photos.
Before I also didn't want to delete photos, and copied everything from camera onto my computer into a 'tosort' folder, then moved the best over to a 'good pictures' folder, and the bad stayed in the tosort folder. Everything was backed up to an external disk too, including the bad shots. (about every 2 weeks I connect it) Every year I backup to dvds too and delete the older tosort, to save some diskspace..
Problem with that setup is, you keep a lot of junk pictures you will never need again. If you want to search for a good picture you remember, you still have to sort through a lot of bad ones.
I usually used my pc upstairs for editing pics, but nowadays I sit more often with laptop in living room. On the pc I started to collect gigs of pictures I still needed to go through.. And as I'm taking more pictures (just started a project 365) this situation wasn't going to improve.
Recently I changed my whole process. I bought a BlackArmor NAS 110. I can connect to this from both computers in my house (that was the main reason) - no more searching for pictures that are only stored on the other computer or external disk.
Pictures are copied from camera onto laptop/pc. As I can chose which, I process pictures faster (and don't store weeks of pictures before getting to edit them). I only keep the good ones that are worth showing. This means when I take like 50 shots a day for my project 365, I may only keep 2 or 3 (and post 1). All the others were tests, to learn, or too similar. (before I would keep a lot more). Some days I even delete everything, if the picture posted online isn't worth keeping/I don't see any reason for re-using it. For pictures of my family, I also delete about 1/4th of pics I took - some are bad, some too similar,..
After editing everything is copied onto the NAS, and it stays on the computer where it was edited. Only then I will format the memory card of the camera.
Every few weeks I plug in the external disk to the NAS and sync these. External disk is stored out of the house (gameroom at back of the garden). Don't know yet if I'm still going to do yearly dvd backups or not.
As redundancy, I always have at least 2 copies. When my house burns down I may loose a few days (what was not backed up onto the external disk). I'm planning on running a network cable to the back of the garden and store the nas there:)
Storing data on flash cards sounds like a bad idea - I've had expensive Sandisk cards fail:( Harddisks are most reliable to me. As harddisks still increase in size every few years, it's cheaper to keep everything on one or two harddisks, and in a few years upgrade to a bigger disk and copy everything over.
As for the OP, sounds like he only has a laptop and not much more of other computers/network/.. I'd get at least a 1tb external drive, also backup everything onto dvds and keep them off-site. While data on dvds won't keep for 10 years, it'll be good for at least 2-3 years. So should your external harddisk fail the next years, you have everything on dvd (or your laptop). Within a few years you upgrade to a new laptop with much bigger harddisk, copy everything over to that. Maybe then buy a new external disk (by then they'll be 4 or 5 tb or more).
And finally - if you have a few pictures that are really really good and you want to keep for a long time and show to visitors: have a professional lab print and frame them ! As long as they're on a harddisk they're not pictures but just files with 0's and 1's. Have the very best printed (professionally so they last for years) and hang them in your house. You'll get more pleasure out of them, be reminded more often of the great holiday you had.
Only in this situation it's more like the guy who calibrates the roulette wheels puts deliberately a specific flaw into them so you already know what numbers will pay out more.
Sounds like a good strategy, you're probably not the only one who does this.
Reminds me of Joel on software's book 'smart and gets things done' about interview techniques. He has about the same goal - therefor the title of his book, he wants smart people but at the same time they need to get things done. Not only just smart people that spend time learning and being smart but don't produce anything.. or people that produce but aren't smart enough so what they produce isn't useful.. ideally you need the right combination of both.
Their web app probably dumps your password into an ascii file that's uploaded to a mainframe which cannot handle anything else because of incompatible character sets..
Very true.. and if the HFO fuel can't be used at all anymore, what are refineries going to do ? Dump the stuff in sea ?:-) and increase prices of their other fuel products..
Yes you can and it's being done. No matter what flag a vessel has, if it wants to enter a port in usa/europe it has to abide safety standards and will be inspected (and can be grounded until it's fixed). Inspections come from local port authorities, Lloyds register ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd's_Register ),..
If you want to operate a shipping line between South America and Africa you can get away with using an old vessel that barely doesn't sink. Want to enter other ports ? Be prepared for high investments and maintenance..
Since a few years ships are already required to switch to low-sulfor fuel when they come near the coast or enter ports..
Several types of marine fuel exist: MGO, MDO, HFO,.. HFO (heavy fuel oil) is getting banned in some parts of the world. And yes this means vessels actually have 2 or 3 different types of fuel on board and switch over from one type to another.
The economic crash of 2 years ago was beneficiary for the environment btw. The years before it, prices for renting a ship (baltic dry index) was so high that only the rent made up the largest part of the cost, fuel costs were low in comparison. So cargo vessels were instructed to go full speed (and consume/pollute more). Now the BDI dropped, the rent is lower and it's again a matter of optimising days at sea / consumption (slower speed = less consumption, so renting a vessel 1 or 2 days longer can be better because fuel savings are more than the extra rent you pay for these days).
A lot of old (and more polluting) vessels also were laid in docks or are scrapped the past 2 years as there suddenly wasn't enough cargo to transport..
disclaimer: I work at the it department of a group of companies that operates cargo vessels.. have worked on a program to register their trips and optimize fuel costs/speed/...
"... assuming that the radiation in a backscatter X-ray is about a hundredth the dose of a dental X-ray, we find that a backscatter X-ray increases the odds of dying from cancer by about 16 ten millionths of one percent. That suggests that for every billion passengers screened with backscatter radiation, about 16 will die from cancer as a result."
"Given that there will be 600 million airplane passengers per year, that makes the machines deadlier than the terrorists."
I'm no statistics genius but is his logic correct ? Scan of 1 person increases his risk with 16 ten mill%, so given a billion scans, 16 people WILL die ?
As far as I know my statistiscs, in this type every scan of a person is a singular event that doesn't have a relation with the next one (ie throw a coin for heads or tails, and the chance is still 50% no matter how many billion times you've thrown before) ?
Only if the same person is scanned a few million times he will die from cancer as a result ? But scan a billion different persons and the chance for each of them to die of cancer has increased an (insignificant ?) amount ?
You've got a soldier with a bullet somewhere in the middle of a desert.. it's easier and faster to put him somewhere in a closed container somewhere at the military base, where he can be operated fast.. no need to fly a medical team to a dangerous area, and no need to fly a wounded soldier who might not survive the flight without being operated first.
The doctor himself can be in the usa, and opeate dozens of patients a day located over the whole world..
You just need the 'remote box' at a military base to which you bring a patient in.. you could have dozens of these boxes set up over the world, without the need to have a team of surgeons at each and every base on the battlefield..
Slashdot Mirror
It was not only squids but other deep-see fish that were discovered when submarines could dive deeper and deeper.
I remember reading as a kid some old books/magazines from the 1960ies about the amazing discoveries of weird deep-see fish that were done as submarines started to explore the deep see. They discovered fish living at debts that were not thought to be able to exist..there wasn't any mythological about them, no information or stories that they existed.. scientists up to then believed the bottom of the ocean was just dead as there was no light and pressure was too high. So they were amazed to discover some fish had adapted and could live in thi environment.
I remember watching a documentary about spontanious human combustion in school during english class (about 20 years ago)..
Half of the class was spooked because it was such a weird topic..
I remember they discussed some deaths (showing burn marks on floors, carpets, ..) but scientifically there wasn't any explenation yet..
Anyone know if there's one now ?
In most countries (afaik but I'm not an accountant/lawyer with international experience) there are restrictions..
Especially the first months/year a company starts, the people who run it can be held personal liable.
So don't think of starting a company, getting loans from a bank, increasing debt by not paying your suppliers, and just declare yourself bankrupt after a few months and get away with it. If your business plan wasn't wel defined and you didn't raise enough initial (own) capital to survive 1 or 2 years, you can be held liable (and prevented of starting a new company for the next years)
Same for the last 6 months or so when a company goes bust, all transactions can be examined and reversed, so ie the owner can't sell assets to himself/friends for a price that is too low.
Had this once at a startup company that was in trouble, an employee that left wanted to buy a laptop from the company that he had used, but the director would not do this as he was afraid to be liable if the curator later decided the laptop had been sold too cheap.
Any why limited-liability companies are allowed - to allow for big companies to form. In a Ltd, investors can only lose the amount money they have invested and not more.
If you wouldn't have this protection, no-one would invest anymore in a company, as the risk would be too big when they were also held personally liable for part of the debts.
Probably the same reason as why the jews in concentration camps didn't all revolt against their guards as they were with many more.. no-one wants to get killed in an attempt for saving others..
And you say you would have tried to try to fight him. Don't know your age, if you have any experience fighting, .. you may think otherwise then them. :-)
These were young kids.
Probably have no self-defense skills whatsoever.
Someone starts shooting, everyone panics and runs away, you can't try to find 10 or 20 people and come up with a plan to attack the guy.
And playing games will not help you fight someone with a gun when you don't have a gun (or knife or any other means to defend yourself).
(first rule of a gun fight: bring a gun
Still have some Amiga magazines in my basement - some over 20 years old now, also have the last Amiga Format they've published.
Any I have 16 pinball machines at home, that's enough retro/nostalgia :)
Nothing new, this exists for a few years already..
Not east but very west (near the dutch border) Germany.
I visited this park about 2 years ago. Very suiteable with small children (ages 3 - 7) - very interesting concept: you pay entry once and not only get access to all attractions for free, but trough the whole park there are food stands where you can get food (french fries) and drinks (soda, water) for free.. :-)
Portions are rather small and sometimes you have to stand a long time in line - so the abuse of free food is rather limited, but yes if you could you could spend all day eating french fries there
But still it was a nice change from other amusement parks that overcharge on food and drinks..
Anyway it was never used as nuclear reactor and apart from the large cooling tower there's nothing that would indicate that use..
Most articles about this make it a bigger issue than it is.
It's just an amusement park that has an ugly concrete tower in it, nothing more, nothing less..
Replying to myself: seems it has to be reciprocal to work.So that's stopping someone from linking to an official author.
You need rel=me on both sites linking to eachother.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=1229920
Now I wonder - it's an html5 tag. Should I already implement it on my own website which isn't html5 or would google then just ignore it ? .. but if it's going to be ignored then I won't bother..
I can already put it on my own site, blog, facebook,
probably nothing.. as well as another site copying your site can just remove your tag and replace it with theirs, claiming they're the original author..
True, speed has become virtualised through the net.
Most business depends less on how fast they can move things around physically, it's become more important how fast they can get data around virtually.
Maybe it's not just a matter of being stupid but just not being adult enough or understanding the consequences of what he did.
I once got on an irc channel of some guys (kids ?) that wanted to start their own cracking group. Followed their conversation for 2 minutes and it was obvious they were like 14yo script kiddies that had no idea what they were doing or what the consequences could be.
They thought they could legally trade cracked software for a few days, because one of the large groups put something like 'try this for 5 days and then buy it if you like it' (don't remember the exact words), so those kiddies thought it was perfectly legal for them to keep illegal software for 5 days, trade it to other people, and then delete it.
It's indeed just a thought experiment. To understand it and put it in perspective you have to read some of his older blog posts, like about taxation: http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/taxation/ ..
and he has a few about cheapatopia: http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/cheapatopia__internet/
which could be compared with some kind of commune. He also has some posts about solving US deficit, healthcare,
Most of them are similar - you give up part of your privacy/individual choices and there are benefits for the whole group. When looking at a macro-economic scale there are advantages for the whole community. ..) when they're young.
Large healthcare costs for older people can be reduced if people are monitored (and get better food, sport,
There can be huge reductions on basic living expenses if some things are done on a global scale instead of individual. Food can be cheaper if bought in bulk - so let the commune order and cook instead of everyone individually. There are many more examples like this in his posts..
But everything is indeed very one-sided, utopian. Capitalism and greed are never far away and his ideas can easily be misused.
I follow Scotts blog and most posts about the utopian city are just brainstorming things, what-if scenarios. Pretty interesting but not realistic.
While some of the things he says in todays posts make sense (ie road safety, crime) - the whole concept sounds bizarre and probably will be misused by companies.
Suppose there'll be some utopian city like he describes, it's a small step for companies to exploit this with ie flexible pricing (even though Scott says companies must follow some rules about prices - but as the city can set the rules, the city can allow this if it's in their goal, ie the city gets more taxes from companies then through taxes from its citizens).
The shop/company/city knows how much money you earn and how much you have left at each specific point in time. Very easy for them to change prices at will. .50
You want a soda from this vending machine ? Sure, it's hot, you've been jogging and are very sweaty and thirsty - and you have $2000 left of this months wage ? Instead of $2 the machine charges you $20, and you still buy it as you're really thirsty.
Next person in line in not thirsty and has only $50 left and still needs to pay $30 later that day ? He can have it for
Why not take his idea further to a next level (getting even more into socialism/communism/welfare state whatever you want to call it).
Why still have money/cash ? Just abandon it as it's already virtual in his idea.
Once you enter the city you give up cash. You even give up saving money. You work for the city who provides everything for you. A house, food, .. Maybe have some kind of credits so that those who do better jobs (that would earn more in the real world) can have more options than those who do less (ie lobster while others eat steak and others spagetti). You give up saving, at the end of each month you don't have any money left (flexible pricing would also lead to this). Work long enough and the city will take care of you as you get old.
How different is this from the real world (for a lot of people) ? :-)
Interesting topic - just read Dilberts blog about this:
http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/seeing_the_past/
and while having no privacy at all is a weird concept, it'd indeed make for some cool apps like he says.
Problem with this (and yoru homeowners example) is that it's never black or white. Most people don't really fit in a category, and the question is always where do you draw the line ? How does one decide your neighbour is a lunatic (if he really was then he would be in a mental institution) or just behaves a bit weird sometimes or is just not social ?
I remember something similar back on the Commodore 64.. there was one demo that also controlled the cpu in the diskdrive to let it generate music.
There may be not 1 serial number, but individual parts will still have them.
As I read the article (no serial numberS) I understand it as the serial on components like the harddisk itself, dvddrive, mobo, .. would all be removed.
When I'd plant a bug like this I would also do this, making it more difficult to track where components were bought..
I do the opposite and started to delete more photos.
Before I also didn't want to delete photos, and copied everything from camera onto my computer into a 'tosort' folder, then moved the best over to a 'good pictures' folder, and the bad stayed in the tosort folder.
Everything was backed up to an external disk too, including the bad shots. (about every 2 weeks I connect it)
Every year I backup to dvds too and delete the older tosort, to save some diskspace..
Problem with that setup is, you keep a lot of junk pictures you will never need again.
If you want to search for a good picture you remember, you still have to sort through a lot of bad ones.
I usually used my pc upstairs for editing pics, but nowadays I sit more often with laptop in living room. On the pc I started to collect gigs of pictures I still needed to go through..
And as I'm taking more pictures (just started a project 365) this situation wasn't going to improve.
Recently I changed my whole process.
I bought a BlackArmor NAS 110. I can connect to this from both computers in my house (that was the main reason) - no more searching for pictures that are only stored on the other computer or external disk.
Pictures are copied from camera onto laptop/pc. As I can chose which, I process pictures faster (and don't store weeks of pictures before getting to edit them). ..
I only keep the good ones that are worth showing. This means when I take like 50 shots a day for my project 365, I may only keep 2 or 3 (and post 1). All the others were tests, to learn, or too similar. (before I would keep a lot more). Some days I even delete everything, if the picture posted online isn't worth keeping/I don't see any reason for re-using it.
For pictures of my family, I also delete about 1/4th of pics I took - some are bad, some too similar,
After editing everything is copied onto the NAS, and it stays on the computer where it was edited.
Only then I will format the memory card of the camera.
Every few weeks I plug in the external disk to the NAS and sync these. External disk is stored out of the house (gameroom at back of the garden). Don't know yet if I'm still going to do yearly dvd backups or not.
As redundancy, I always have at least 2 copies. When my house burns down I may loose a few days (what was not backed up onto the external disk). I'm planning on running a network cable to the back of the garden and store the nas there :)
Storing data on flash cards sounds like a bad idea - I've had expensive Sandisk cards fail :(
Harddisks are most reliable to me. As harddisks still increase in size every few years, it's cheaper to keep everything on one or two harddisks, and in a few years upgrade to a bigger disk and copy everything over.
As for the OP, sounds like he only has a laptop and not much more of other computers/network/..
I'd get at least a 1tb external drive, also backup everything onto dvds and keep them off-site.
While data on dvds won't keep for 10 years, it'll be good for at least 2-3 years. So should your external harddisk fail the next years, you have everything on dvd (or your laptop).
Within a few years you upgrade to a new laptop with much bigger harddisk, copy everything over to that. Maybe then buy a new external disk (by then they'll be 4 or 5 tb or more).
And finally - if you have a few pictures that are really really good and you want to keep for a long time and show to visitors: have a professional lab print and frame them !
As long as they're on a harddisk they're not pictures but just files with 0's and 1's.
Have the very best printed (professionally so they last for years) and hang them in your house.
You'll get more pleasure out of them, be reminded more often of the great holiday you had.
Only in this situation it's more like the guy who calibrates the roulette wheels puts deliberately a specific flaw into them so you already know what numbers will pay out more.
Sounds like a good strategy, you're probably not the only one who does this.
Reminds me of Joel on software's book 'smart and gets things done' about interview techniques.
He has about the same goal - therefor the title of his book, he wants smart people but at the same time they need to get things done.
Not only just smart people that spend time learning and being smart but don't produce anything..
or people that produce but aren't smart enough so what they produce isn't useful.. ideally you need the right combination of both.
Their web app probably dumps your password into an ascii file that's uploaded to a mainframe which cannot handle anything else because of incompatible character sets..
Very true.. :-) and increase prices of their other fuel products..
and if the HFO fuel can't be used at all anymore, what are refineries going to do ?
Dump the stuff in sea ?
Yes you can and it's being done. No matter what flag a vessel has, if it wants to enter a port in usa/europe it has to abide safety standards and will be inspected (and can be grounded until it's fixed). Inspections come from local port authorities, Lloyds register ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd's_Register ), ..
If you want to operate a shipping line between South America and Africa you can get away with using an old vessel that barely doesn't sink. Want to enter other ports ? Be prepared for high investments and maintenance..
Since a few years ships are already required to switch to low-sulfor fuel when they come near the coast or enter ports..
Several types of marine fuel exist: MGO, MDO, HFO,..
HFO (heavy fuel oil) is getting banned in some parts of the world.
And yes this means vessels actually have 2 or 3 different types of fuel on board and switch over from one type to another.
The economic crash of 2 years ago was beneficiary for the environment btw.
The years before it, prices for renting a ship (baltic dry index) was so high that only the rent made up the largest part of the cost, fuel costs were low in comparison. So cargo vessels were instructed to go full speed (and consume/pollute more).
Now the BDI dropped, the rent is lower and it's again a matter of optimising days at sea / consumption (slower speed = less consumption, so renting a vessel 1 or 2 days longer can be better because fuel savings are more than the extra rent you pay for these days).
A lot of old (and more polluting) vessels also were laid in docks or are scrapped the past 2 years as there suddenly wasn't enough cargo to transport..
disclaimer: I work at the it department of a group of companies that operates cargo vessels.. have worked on a program to register their trips and optimize fuel costs/speed/...
"... assuming that the radiation in a backscatter X-ray is about a hundredth the dose of a dental X-ray, we find that a backscatter X-ray increases the odds of dying from cancer by about 16 ten millionths of one percent. That suggests that for every billion passengers screened with backscatter radiation, about 16 will die from cancer as a result."
"Given that there will be 600 million airplane passengers per year, that makes the machines deadlier than the terrorists."
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/11/tsa_backscatter.html
I'm no statistics genius but is his logic correct ? Scan of 1 person increases his risk with 16 ten mill%, so given a billion scans, 16 people WILL die ?
As far as I know my statistiscs, in this type every scan of a person is a singular event that doesn't have a relation with the next one (ie throw a coin for heads or tails, and the chance is still 50% no matter how many billion times you've thrown before) ?
Only if the same person is scanned a few million times he will die from cancer as a result ?
But scan a billion different persons and the chance for each of them to die of cancer has increased an (insignificant ?) amount ?
Military.
You've got a soldier with a bullet somewhere in the middle of a desert.. it's easier and faster to put him somewhere in a closed container somewhere at the military base, where he can be operated fast.. no need to fly a medical team to a dangerous area, and no need to fly a wounded soldier who might not survive the flight without being operated first.
The doctor himself can be in the usa, and opeate dozens of patients a day located over the whole world..
You just need the 'remote box' at a military base to which you bring a patient in .. you could have dozens of these boxes set up over the world, without the need to have a team of surgeons at each and every base on the battlefield..
Check the pinball 101 pages on http://www.flippers.be/ that should teach you most you have to know when buying your first pinball machine..