IMO, a meltdown is an acceptable outcome in this kind of disaster. A meltdown does not imply a massive radiation leak.
Personally, I take events like this as a sign of the inherent safety of these systems. The only real problem here is the fact that people are scared of nuclear power, apparently far more so than they are scared of earthquakes and tsunamis...
No. You would not have to design the reactor to survive, or even be repairable after a 9.5. You would simply have to design the reactor so that it would not leak massive amounts of radiation after such a quake. There's always a cost vs. reward balance that must be met. If the cost of building the reactor to withstand such a great quake is greater than simply cleaning up and rebuilding the reactor, hardening it to that point really doesn't make sense.
Obviously, loss of life and PR concerns have a huge influence on the cost/benefit ratio, but in terms of physical impact, what's happening in Fukushima is in the league of a 3 mile island event, rather than a Chernobyl event.
Obligatory car reference:
We could design a car to survive and be drivable after hitting a tree at 100 miles per hour, however such a car would not be practical for day to day use. That's fine, because 100 mile per hour accidents are not a typical accident scenario for a passenger car. So long as the car doesn't kill everyone in the vicinity in such a crash*, we're okay.
* Which is more or less what killed the Ford Nucleon...
I say this as a guy who loves motorcycles... Think about them most of the day, commute on one, race one.
I do not want to die 'doing what I love.' I would rather die quietly in my sleep at an old age. I take some solace in the fact that a falling death is probably one of the less painful 'accidental deaths, still... I would hope for much better.
It's only wise to expose criminal conduct when you hare irrefutable proof of such. SCO could just as easily argue that he was incompetent at his job, and then pursue him for violating a NDA. And given that his statement is such a blow to their case, I think we can all reasonably expect them to do so.
A great example of proper tension was System Shock 2. The game features very little gore, none of which had any real impact on me during the first play-through.
But during the first play through, when you as the player haven't learned the strategies to really succeed at the game... There's a huge sense of tension. You're weak, slow, and low on ammo. You're not always sure which weapon is going to be the most effective. You wander around, hearing the monsters clank around... The game is built on the Theif Engine, and you know that subtly can avoid a monster confrontation... But if the enemy notices you before you notice them, you will quickly find yourself dead or seriously injured, and you know that healing supplies are limited.
The worst part was the respawing enemies. The respawn rate is very reasonable, in that it simulates monsters wondering into areas you'd already cleared out. Those monsters provide the greatest tension, because you aren't really expecting them.
Great game!
There's a psi power in the game that provides a radar map, showing where the monsters are. I learned that knowing where the enemies are going to ambush you turns system shock 2 into a rather mediocre shooter.
I race motorcycles. So yes, I understand that increased speed equates to exponentially greater stopping distances.
Previous poster implied that by driving a vehicle in a way that is enjoyable, you are treating that vehicle as a toy. First, it makes the assumption that vehicles are not toys (invalid, even your insurance provider understands the difference between owning a recreational vehicle and a commuter vehicle,) and goes on to make the assumption that by driving a vehicle in a way that is fun, the driver is not treating the vehicle with respect ('guns are not toys!')
You're making the assumption that speed is a bad habit. The state of California makes the opposite assumption, that the majority of drivers travel at a speed which is reasonable and prudent. When the 80th speed of traffic exceeds a prima face speed limit (that is, a speed set by CVC 22350 rather than 22349,) the speed limit is considered to be in error, rather than the people (of course, proving that the speed limit is in error can be difficult.)
If you want to speak about safety: misuse of signals, unsafe merging, and improper lane discipline is a far bigger issue than travelling with the flow of traffic above the posted limit. The vast majority of unsafe situations I've encountered are attributed to those common errors.
Most drivers slow down when the sun gets in their eyes. And what would you have them do? Stop and causing someone to rear end them? Driving into the sun is dangerous, no matter how you slice it.
FWIW, speeds like those mentioned are *very* atypical for me. In free flowing traffic, I typically go about 15 miles per hour above the limit, and at most 10% faster than the prevailing speed of traffic. As traffic density increases, I also reduce my speed differential, increase my flowing distance and attempt to increase my range of vision.
Now that I think about it, I've done 150+ indicated a 55 zone, so technically 95 over the limit, and nearly triple the posted maximum speed. Justification is pretty simple: speed in and of it's self isn't as dangerous as people make it out to be so long as it's done responsibly. I don't have blood stains on the front of my vehicle because I don't do that kind of stuff in places where there are pedestrians or other drivers.
Speed is safe or dangerous depending on the conditions, and there are a number of situations where I will drive under the speed limit. Hitting a wall at 40MPH with no impact protection is almost guaranteed to be fatal, whereas 150+ MPH on a closed course is actually relatively common and safe.
Avoiding tickets is a combination of dumb luck, situational awareness, and observation of police behaviour. I do occasionally get cited, typically in situations where I was travelling at what I would consider to be a relatively mellow pace.
I do race motorcycles. I say that not as a justification for my speed, but to make a point... On the race track, we commonly see speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour, and I have on many occasions passed people with my head, physically a foot or two from their wheels. We accomplish this in relative safety, with no signals, no brake lights, and no inter-rider communication.
Predictability is far more important to safety than speed control -- It's just a lot more difficult to post on a sign.
The market knows he is not the messiah, and Apple as a mega corp will continue on with the wisdom of many other vested parties.
Seems like you weren't in computing in the '90s. Without Steve, Apple was in pretty bad shape, and slowly working it's way towards irrelevance. Apple was losing ground to Wintel, the clones were on the market, and the company seemed to be fated to fade into a beige oblivion. It was a great time to be a Windows fanboy.
Steve returned, and with him brought the iMac, OS X replaced the obsolete and horrible OS 9. The iPod came out. Apple shifted to an Intel platform. Apple achieved a kind of dominance and success that surprised a lot of us.
It's a bit of a coin toss what will happen to the company without Steve. I expect it to run on momentum for quite some time, but I could see it just as easily stagnate as it could continue to thrive without a suitable replacement for Steve. All it would take is a single Carley Fiorina at the helm to doom the company.
I say all this as a guy who has never owned an Apple product.
That's just the way it works. When we are young and essentially have not much money money and little responsibility and are getting supported more or less by the government through the education system, we selfishly want the government to continue those social and educational benefit programs which benefit us, then when we get older, get a job, get responsibilities, get taxed, we tend to selfishly want to keep the money which we have been working so hard to get. Looking out for number one is the name of the game in both cases, but don't feel bad, because if it weren't for looking out for number one, then we wouldn't be here today.
Blue states, as a whole, tend to pay more in taxes than they take in in government services. Red states as a whole, tend to consume more resources than they contribute. I'm a young, left leaning professional. I pay my share of the taxes, and in fact, if every family paid as much in taxes as I do, there would be no national debt. This is very true for a lot of the high income earners in my part of the world.
That begs the question, if someone drives 10 miles per hour above the limit, does that they do not take driving seriously (treating the car as a toy?) If someone enjoys driving, does that mean that they do not take it seriously?
Also... Your job isn't a toy, but I suspect you, like most of us here, try to make it fun.
I average about 20,000 miles of driving per year, which results in approximately 270 hours a year on the road at 75mph, or 310 hours a year on the road at 65. That's about a 40 hour difference each year, or an entire work week, for a relatively conservative difference in speed.
In practice, my average speed is closer to 45MPH (based on my trip computer.) By maintaining an average speed 10 miles per hour above someone who averages 35 miles per hour, I save 127 hours per year. Given 8 hours of sleep, we have about 5840 waking hours per year. That means, by increasing my average speed by 10 miles per hour, I save approximately 1 full year of waking time, over a 50 year lifetime of driving.
Of course, there's a better argument for speed... I enjoy driving. By driving at the speed I find to be enjoyable, the 2.5 years of my life spent in a car will be something I look back upon as being relatively pleasurable, whereas someone who drives at a conservative pace is more likely to view the 3.2 years they spend in their car as a waste.
Personally, I tend to drive somewhere in the range of 15 to 70MPH above the speed limit, depending on the situation. So the time savings are somewhat more radical.
Good business people look for the approach that's going to bring in profit. That's not always the cheap way of doing things, and corporate culture can have a big influence on what the business people see as being profitable.
For example, Carly Fiorina felt that the most profitable approach for HP was to cut into development budget, and outsource as much as possible. You can see how well that approach worked for them. Contrast to Steve Jobs who took a totally different approach from Apple - one where the company maintains as much control over their products as possible, while also attempting to deliver a product that is perceived to be of incredibly high quality.
I think the biggest mistake we make as engineers is that we focus too much on building a product or infrastructure, and not enough on how that product is going to help the company. When you can explain to a business person who a multi-million dollar IT budget is in the companies best interests, you gain a lot of freedom to build the infrastructure you want to build.
Sorry, but why should I care about going above 1920x1080? Honestly, the only reason I would run my games at that resolution was because it's the native resolution of my monitor. When I had a CRT, I'd often play games at 1280x1024. High enough resolution for everything to appear clear, but low enough to maintain reasonable frame rates on a system that cost less than $1000 new.
IMO, the only reason to go higher than 1080p is when you're sitting up close to the aforementioned 30 inch display.
. The main one, is that kids just aren't that interested in science. They barely pay attention when we have to derive something, they do not know how to study anymore, and if anything resembles hard work to them, they turn away from it. I can remember when I was in high school, I liked physics and math just because of the mental exercise.
I'd like to point out something... You said that you enjoyed Science when you were a kid? What about your classmates?
I loved science when I was in school, but I observed that I was a small minority in that respect. I'd point out that your students not sharing the passion you had for science when you were their age, does not necessarily say anything about today's youth. Personally, I don't think the kids have changed that much in the last 20-60 years. Sure, you might have been behaved... But I remember all kinds of stuff from when I was young. Lots of things we didn't take seriously then, that I would probably take more seriously now (E.g. I remember once making plans to lead a revolt and overthrow the facility at my elementary school...)
You call dating based on physical attractiveness shallow... Fair enough. I would counter with the question: Why should I date people who aren't attractive to me? Why is physical attractiveness any less important than emotional attractiveness? I'd agree that it's shallow to date on looks alone... But speaking as someone who has tried having romantic relationships relationships with people he isn't physically attracted to, I can say that it doesn't work any better than a relationship with someone I'm physically attracted to but emotionally uninterested in.
You make a great point though that you can't expect to date outside your league. Want a hot chick who's totally intellectual and into nerdy guys? Be an intellectual nerd who has a bit of a sense of style and works out.
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IMO, a meltdown is an acceptable outcome in this kind of disaster. A meltdown does not imply a massive radiation leak.
Personally, I take events like this as a sign of the inherent safety of these systems. The only real problem here is the fact that people are scared of nuclear power, apparently far more so than they are scared of earthquakes and tsunamis...
Bad news there, Chief...
No. You would not have to design the reactor to survive, or even be repairable after a 9.5. You would simply have to design the reactor so that it would not leak massive amounts of radiation after such a quake. There's always a cost vs. reward balance that must be met. If the cost of building the reactor to withstand such a great quake is greater than simply cleaning up and rebuilding the reactor, hardening it to that point really doesn't make sense.
Obviously, loss of life and PR concerns have a huge influence on the cost/benefit ratio, but in terms of physical impact, what's happening in Fukushima is in the league of a 3 mile island event, rather than a Chernobyl event.
Obligatory car reference:
We could design a car to survive and be drivable after hitting a tree at 100 miles per hour, however such a car would not be practical for day to day use. That's fine, because 100 mile per hour accidents are not a typical accident scenario for a passenger car. So long as the car doesn't kill everyone in the vicinity in such a crash*, we're okay.
* Which is more or less what killed the Ford Nucleon...
I say this as a guy who loves motorcycles... Think about them most of the day, commute on one, race one.
I do not want to die 'doing what I love.' I would rather die quietly in my sleep at an old age. I take some solace in the fact that a falling death is probably one of the less painful 'accidental deaths, still... I would hope for much better.
It's only wise to expose criminal conduct when you hare irrefutable proof of such. SCO could just as easily argue that he was incompetent at his job, and then pursue him for violating a NDA. And given that his statement is such a blow to their case, I think we can all reasonably expect them to do so.
In the same way that Mubarak was overthrown by a bunch of guys hanging out and talking loudly.
Was anyone disappointed when they found out that this didn't mean Google was rolling tanks out out of mountain view?
A great example of proper tension was System Shock 2. The game features very little gore, none of which had any real impact on me during the first play-through.
But during the first play through, when you as the player haven't learned the strategies to really succeed at the game... There's a huge sense of tension. You're weak, slow, and low on ammo. You're not always sure which weapon is going to be the most effective. You wander around, hearing the monsters clank around... The game is built on the Theif Engine, and you know that subtly can avoid a monster confrontation... But if the enemy notices you before you notice them, you will quickly find yourself dead or seriously injured, and you know that healing supplies are limited.
The worst part was the respawing enemies. The respawn rate is very reasonable, in that it simulates monsters wondering into areas you'd already cleared out. Those monsters provide the greatest tension, because you aren't really expecting them.
Great game!
There's a psi power in the game that provides a radar map, showing where the monsters are. I learned that knowing where the enemies are going to ambush you turns system shock 2 into a rather mediocre shooter.
I race motorcycles. So yes, I understand that increased speed equates to exponentially greater stopping distances.
Previous poster implied that by driving a vehicle in a way that is enjoyable, you are treating that vehicle as a toy. First, it makes the assumption that vehicles are not toys (invalid, even your insurance provider understands the difference between owning a recreational vehicle and a commuter vehicle,) and goes on to make the assumption that by driving a vehicle in a way that is fun, the driver is not treating the vehicle with respect ('guns are not toys!')
You're making the assumption that speed is a bad habit. The state of California makes the opposite assumption, that the majority of drivers travel at a speed which is reasonable and prudent. When the 80th speed of traffic exceeds a prima face speed limit (that is, a speed set by CVC 22350 rather than 22349,) the speed limit is considered to be in error, rather than the people (of course, proving that the speed limit is in error can be difficult.)
If you want to speak about safety: misuse of signals, unsafe merging, and improper lane discipline is a far bigger issue than travelling with the flow of traffic above the posted limit. The vast majority of unsafe situations I've encountered are attributed to those common errors.
Most drivers slow down when the sun gets in their eyes. And what would you have them do? Stop and causing someone to rear end them? Driving into the sun is dangerous, no matter how you slice it.
FWIW, speeds like those mentioned are *very* atypical for me. In free flowing traffic, I typically go about 15 miles per hour above the limit, and at most 10% faster than the prevailing speed of traffic. As traffic density increases, I also reduce my speed differential, increase my flowing distance and attempt to increase my range of vision.
Now that I think about it, I've done 150+ indicated a 55 zone, so technically 95 over the limit, and nearly triple the posted maximum speed. Justification is pretty simple: speed in and of it's self isn't as dangerous as people make it out to be so long as it's done responsibly. I don't have blood stains on the front of my vehicle because I don't do that kind of stuff in places where there are pedestrians or other drivers.
Speed is safe or dangerous depending on the conditions, and there are a number of situations where I will drive under the speed limit. Hitting a wall at 40MPH with no impact protection is almost guaranteed to be fatal, whereas 150+ MPH on a closed course is actually relatively common and safe.
Avoiding tickets is a combination of dumb luck, situational awareness, and observation of police behaviour. I do occasionally get cited, typically in situations where I was travelling at what I would consider to be a relatively mellow pace.
I do race motorcycles. I say that not as a justification for my speed, but to make a point... On the race track, we commonly see speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour, and I have on many occasions passed people with my head, physically a foot or two from their wheels. We accomplish this in relative safety, with no signals, no brake lights, and no inter-rider communication.
Predictability is far more important to safety than speed control -- It's just a lot more difficult to post on a sign.
Seems like you weren't in computing in the '90s. Without Steve, Apple was in pretty bad shape, and slowly working it's way towards irrelevance. Apple was losing ground to Wintel, the clones were on the market, and the company seemed to be fated to fade into a beige oblivion. It was a great time to be a Windows fanboy.
Steve returned, and with him brought the iMac, OS X replaced the obsolete and horrible OS 9. The iPod came out. Apple shifted to an Intel platform. Apple achieved a kind of dominance and success that surprised a lot of us.
It's a bit of a coin toss what will happen to the company without Steve. I expect it to run on momentum for quite some time, but I could see it just as easily stagnate as it could continue to thrive without a suitable replacement for Steve. All it would take is a single Carley Fiorina at the helm to doom the company.
I say all this as a guy who has never owned an Apple product.
Blue states, as a whole, tend to pay more in taxes than they take in in government services. Red states as a whole, tend to consume more resources than they contribute. I'm a young, left leaning professional. I pay my share of the taxes, and in fact, if every family paid as much in taxes as I do, there would be no national debt. This is very true for a lot of the high income earners in my part of the world.
That begs the question, if someone drives 10 miles per hour above the limit, does that they do not take driving seriously (treating the car as a toy?) If someone enjoys driving, does that mean that they do not take it seriously?
Also... Your job isn't a toy, but I suspect you, like most of us here, try to make it fun.
In response to your signature...
I average about 20,000 miles of driving per year, which results in approximately 270 hours a year on the road at 75mph, or 310 hours a year on the road at 65. That's about a 40 hour difference each year, or an entire work week, for a relatively conservative difference in speed.
In practice, my average speed is closer to 45MPH (based on my trip computer.) By maintaining an average speed 10 miles per hour above someone who averages 35 miles per hour, I save 127 hours per year. Given 8 hours of sleep, we have about 5840 waking hours per year. That means, by increasing my average speed by 10 miles per hour, I save approximately 1 full year of waking time, over a 50 year lifetime of driving.
Of course, there's a better argument for speed... I enjoy driving. By driving at the speed I find to be enjoyable, the 2.5 years of my life spent in a car will be something I look back upon as being relatively pleasurable, whereas someone who drives at a conservative pace is more likely to view the 3.2 years they spend in their car as a waste.
Personally, I tend to drive somewhere in the range of 15 to 70MPH above the speed limit, depending on the situation. So the time savings are somewhat more radical.
Good business people look for the approach that's going to bring in profit. That's not always the cheap way of doing things, and corporate culture can have a big influence on what the business people see as being profitable.
For example, Carly Fiorina felt that the most profitable approach for HP was to cut into development budget, and outsource as much as possible. You can see how well that approach worked for them. Contrast to Steve Jobs who took a totally different approach from Apple - one where the company maintains as much control over their products as possible, while also attempting to deliver a product that is perceived to be of incredibly high quality.
I think the biggest mistake we make as engineers is that we focus too much on building a product or infrastructure, and not enough on how that product is going to help the company. When you can explain to a business person who a multi-million dollar IT budget is in the companies best interests, you gain a lot of freedom to build the infrastructure you want to build.
Sorry, but why should I care about going above 1920x1080? Honestly, the only reason I would run my games at that resolution was because it's the native resolution of my monitor. When I had a CRT, I'd often play games at 1280x1024. High enough resolution for everything to appear clear, but low enough to maintain reasonable frame rates on a system that cost less than $1000 new.
IMO, the only reason to go higher than 1080p is when you're sitting up close to the aforementioned 30 inch display.
I'd like to point out something... You said that you enjoyed Science when you were a kid? What about your classmates?
I loved science when I was in school, but I observed that I was a small minority in that respect. I'd point out that your students not sharing the passion you had for science when you were their age, does not necessarily say anything about today's youth. Personally, I don't think the kids have changed that much in the last 20-60 years. Sure, you might have been behaved... But I remember all kinds of stuff from when I was young. Lots of things we didn't take seriously then, that I would probably take more seriously now (E.g. I remember once making plans to lead a revolt and overthrow the facility at my elementary school...)
In fact, one of my favorite uses of WD40 is as a solvent, to clean and remove real lubricants from places that they aren't desirable.
I'm guessing that, as a consultant, having his name on something like this is worth significantly more than $600 a day.
Seriously?
You call dating based on physical attractiveness shallow... Fair enough. I would counter with the question: Why should I date people who aren't attractive to me? Why is physical attractiveness any less important than emotional attractiveness? I'd agree that it's shallow to date on looks alone... But speaking as someone who has tried having romantic relationships relationships with people he isn't physically attracted to, I can say that it doesn't work any better than a relationship with someone I'm physically attracted to but emotionally uninterested in.
You make a great point though that you can't expect to date outside your league. Want a hot chick who's totally intellectual and into nerdy guys? Be an intellectual nerd who has a bit of a sense of style and works out.
Another Czar?
Huh... I must have missed this announcement in the State of the Union address...
Nope. I guess not.
Does the redesign fix the problems with the comment/posting system? Namely that the system sucks?