Not really relevant, but usually the presumption is one-to-one for sake comparison. The fact that SSE3 is available in multiple products from both AMD and Intel makes general comparison of multi-core performance between SSE3 and AltiVec difficult.
The original poster's intent (which is clear enough to me) wasn't either for or against the "copyright infringement isn't theft" argument. His entire argument is that whether copyright infringement is technically defined as theft or not is a moot point. The original poster did nothing to refute the argument.
What the original poster did emphasize is that while copyright infringement isn't properly defined as theft, it does not in any way mean that copyright infringement is a legal practice, because it is most certainly not.
No matter what little theory you choose to delude yourself with, copyright infringement is illegal
The original poster was making a strawman argument. No one who claims "copyright infringement != theft" thinks it's therefore not illegal. The "not theft" argument is an attempt to explain to the apparently willfully ignorant that copright is an unnatural monopoly on the exchange of information and is, on the scale of human history, a very recent development. With the exception of a few isolated tribes who essentially have nothing anyway, most of humanity has always considered the taking of someone else's stuff to be wrong. The singing of someone else's songs or telling of someone else's stories, however, had been encouraged as the passing of oral history until a mere 500 years ago with the invention of the printing press. Once a way was discovered to commit such things to salable form, however, governments created the notion of copyright as a way to cash in on the information trade.
I think you completely missed the point of the argument. The point of the poster you quoted is that it is still illegal, and that the semantics of the argument used to justify breaking that law are absurd.
Actually, I think you are missing the point. Calling it "theft" inaccurately frames the infraction as something universally regarded as immoral: the taking of another's property. Copyright infringement falls very much in a gray area. Heck, the very notion of copyright didn't even exist for the majority of recorded history. The fact that copyright infringement is currently a crime doesn't automatically promote it to the same level as theft. The justification for breaking the law is that the law is bad. Legality and morality are not always 1:1.
Besides, you took the definition for larceny, not necessarily theft. Also, there are legal definitions and social definitions, they vary in accuracy and meaning.
Yeah, you can easily muddle the argument with non-legal usages of the word "theft", but they're essentially irrelevant to the question of the legality of copyright infringement, and the morality aspect is purely a matter of opinion. No reasonable person would ever attempt to claim legal or moral equivalence for a vernacular usage (e.g. "That bitch stole my boyfriend" is not rational debate), so claiming the OP could have been referring to common usage when it was a clear reference to debate. Clearly, society does not agree on that copyright infringement is the moral equivalent of theft, otherwise there'd be a whole lot less of it. Social mores are a consensual thing-- they don't exist on their own.
The article notes that a Pentium 4 had been overclocked faster earlier this year, but at that speed it was not possible for the machine to function beyond BIOS.
I'd say that not getting out of BIOS doesn't count as actually successfully overclocking at that speed. That's like saying you raised your car's compression to 150:1 successfully, with the one shortcoming being that the head shattered into fragments when the first spark plug fired.
So in summary, I'm not saying there isn't a dark side to our industry (like every single other friggin industry in existence), I'm just saying that everybody seems to focus on the bad and ignore the good.
If people want some proof that good advertising exists, check out the Cannes Lion Awards. They have videos of all the winners, and I'm sure most Slashdotters would approve.
You're confusing "good" with "entertaining". Advertising is, nearly without exception, an uninvited attempt to insinuate into people consciousness. I challenge you to give an example of advertising that truly does good-- not simply amuses, but does something whose value approaches even a fraction of the depths of its reciprocal, the bad.
> AltiVec (or whatever the generic name is)
Intel's version is called SSE.
I'm told that AltiVec is vastly different (and superior) to SSE.
They're not very different at all, actually. Both are SIMD instruction sets essentially designed to achieve the same goals. That AltiVec is superior to SSE is true, but only if read literally. SSE2 is about an even match, with each having a few advantages over the other. SSE3 pretty much added all the horizontal data movement instructions previous incarnations lacked and is actually somewhat better than AltiVec.
Speaking of logos. Did Intel ever use a logo that looked like the current AMD logo?
I have this old 286 motherboard with a soldered-on Intel CPU, but the logo looks like AMD's.
Any ideas?
Looks like one of these? AMD made chips under contract for Intel back in the early days. That's the origin of that pesky cross-licensing agreement that allows AMD and National to make x86 hardware.
Uh, 14kW solar power does NOT equal 18.77 horsepower.
Uh, yeah it does. 745.7 kilowatts per horsepower. Converts directly.
For example, if on average you drive an hour or two a day, even in less than ideal conditions you'll have far more power than that availible.
This assumes a storage mechanism of some sort, which greatly complicates the issue. Even the most pie-in-the-sky prediction for PV efficiency tops out at 65%, the most optimistic battery prediction at 85%, and the actual solar energy available under good terrestrial conditions tops out at an average.75kw per square meter for 8 hours a day for a non-tracking area. A small electric vehicle might manage 3m^2 roof area. This gives you a grand total of a hair under 10kW hours (9.945). The Toyota Prius manages to average about 36 kW hours per gallon of gasoline, and average 50mpg city driving. Given a small electric vehicle with performance approximating the Prius, that gives you a range of 13.5 miles-- but only if you stay in the sun all day. OK, I'll concede that it's theoretically possible (though on the very ragged edge of probability) to run some future vehicle on sun power alone for short distances. Not at all practical, though, and I still doubt the added expense of a PV roof would ever even pay for itself.
Well too bad for you. Meanwhile cars like the original VW Beatle have about 30 horespower
For purposes of my example, the VW Beetle (a Beatle is a guy from Liverpool) has far less than 10 square meters of roof area (less than 3, actually) so it'd actually be worse off.
Your VW might have 95HP PEAK, but at the wheels, especially while climbing, I bet you're getting a fraction of that.
Dynoed at 77HP at the wheels, only a 19% loss. That 14kW for 10 square meters assumes the impossible, i.e. perfect conversion, high noon at the equator on the equinox, in a vaccuum , sunlight hitting the photocells at a perfect perpendicular all the time. You can bet your ass the real life numbers will be a hell of a lot more than 19% lower.
But that's really irrelevant, anyhow. The parent didn't even suggest that solar panels would be the sole source of fuel for future vehicles. If you've got an electric car, put a solar panel on the roof/hood/trunk, and you get more range. You'll save money from not having to plug-in as often.
Not entirely irrelevant. My illustration shows that even under the best conditions, conditions beyond the possible, sunlight hardly even adds the barest trickle of a charge. Throw into that the loss from conversion, both at the photovoltaics and in the battry bank, and the not insignificant limitation on available sunlight imposed by the atmosphere, weather, trees, parking garage roofs, two story buildings on narrow streets at any time other than high noon, and seasonal variation in the sun's angle, and you're going to get almost nothing for your trouble wiring in a photovoltaic roof.
Horror movies will run out of plots, as people that run out of fuel in the middle of nowhere need only wait in their cars for an hour, (while it recharges itself) before continuing to drive. And people that use their vehicles for short, infrequent trips might never need to plug their vehicles in.
Show me the math. Tell me how big a perfect photovoltaic panel you'd need to charge a battery enough in one hour to move a car any significant distance. Tell me the weight of said automobile and how much energy it requires at the wheels for a day's use, and then show me how you're going to get that out of less than 1.4kW per square meter. The math just isn't there, man. Solar is a dilute energy source. You need large fields to collect any useful quantity of it.
I did some looking about myself and answered my own question. The wikipedia article on peat moss doesn't actually address my query at all, only mentioning something about peat forming when dead stuff doesn't decay. Check out the wikipedia on permafrost for a truly relevant explaination.
As a result, a million square kilometers (the area of France and Germany) of frozen peat bog have been found to be melting
So, wait....if it's not natural for this formerly "permafrost" peat bog to be melting, how is it that this peat moss was, at some point, able to grow in the first place?
Yeah, but an earth-fill damn can never power a car, hydrogen can.
RTF post I wrote: "The only real advantage to hydrogen is that it burns very cleanly, in theory making it an ideal vehicle fuel." Also, you may have noticed that we're not talking about hydrogen's suitablility as a vehicle fuel, we're talking about how SCE is going to store solar energy for nighttime use. Get with the program. Read what people are writing so you can actually follow the conversation.
What I've understood from geologists is, is that even if it is true, this source doesn't produce all that much oil per year.
Sure, if all you do is try to collect it near the surface like we do now. All you have to do is drill deeper to find more. The Russians are currently pumping oil out of wells 8 miles deep. The stuff we're pumping out at the top is only that little bit that seeps into easily reachable pockets.
Secondly, you find remains of plants in oil, which almost makes you wonder how they got the idea it came from a biological source, not
You don't so much find "plants" in oil, you find "organic matter". Biogenic fuel theory says it's from zooplankton and phytoplankton. The reason abiogenic petroleum theory was initially rejected was that in the 19th century it was believed that microbial life could not exist in such extreme conditions, thus the petroleum itself must have come come from decayed organic matter. We've since discovered numerous extremophile forms of microbial life, but the whole "fossil fuel" notion has become so ingrained that the loss of a major part of it's theoretical underpinning has essentially been ignored.
Photovoltaics have been getting cheaper and more efficient too. Someday we'll all have them on our roofs. Maybe even on our cars.
Sunlight has an approximate maximum of 1.4kW per square meter. Even assuming ideal conditions and perfect conversion with an array the size of a large van roof (2m x 5m = 10m^2), you only get 14kW which is 18.77 horsepower. My VW Vanagon has a hard time climbing hills with 95 horsepower. Sunlight is too dilute to push around anything resembling a normal automobile.
Nature gives us a great battery with the name "hydrogen".
Actually, hydrogen isn't that great a "battery" at all. Cracking hydrogen is a pretty lossy process, hydrogen is dificult to store (smallest atom, leaks out ANY hole-- and there are ALWAYS holes), and all the necessary equipment is pretty complicated. The only real advantage to hydrogen is that it burns very cleanly, in theory making it an ideal vehicle fuel. But for storing extra energy from solar to be used later at night, the best way is the way they've always done it. They use the excess generated electricity to pump water uphill into reservoirs, then generate power hydroelectrically when they need it. No hydrogen "battery" will ever be so simple, reliable, and efficient as a turbine driven generator at the base of an earth-fill dam.
I would assume that Pabst's lawsuit would claim that the fashion boutique had created a derivative work.
A derivative work is one in which one copies a portion of the original work. Selling a piece of a beer can is as legal as selling an ordinary music CD or vinyl record with all but Track 1 cut off. Doctrine of first sale-- they got their money, now that particular copy is yours.
f*ck you mods for thinking the parent was 'informative'.
1) Our government has 3 branches, the post office is not one of them, however it is part of one of them.
Nitpicking motherfucker, you need to chill. Yeah, the word "branch" is a malapropism, but his obvious intent in using the word was to convey the notion that the USPS is a part of the federal government. In that regard he's absolutely goddamn right. Jackass ACs, man....
I'm not missing the point. The game has nothing going for it, compared to other racers, except stylised graphics, and you said yourself graphics don't make the game.
You ARE missing the point. Surely you're not so daft that you didn't notice the lower left, where it said "Drivey (graphic test) 0.13". That's the version number. Of course is has nothing going for it yet. It's a fucking GRAPHICS TEST!
A manual gearbox will give... 10% better fuel economy across the board...
The others I grant you, but this one's not so much the casee anymore. Back in the days when torque converters were non-locking and auto trannies were simple hydraulic controlled dual Simpson planetary gear sets with 3 forward and 1 reverse, yeah, you could count on a significant loss of efficiency. Modern computer controlled transmissions with locking torque converters and five (or even six) gears, the loss is negligible.
By setting the control equipment up on the right side of our cars and driving on the left, we ensure that drivers approach down each other's right-hand side, which makes a lot of sense considering how much of the population is right-handed.
Handed-ness is largely irrelevant as far as ease of passage on one side or the other. Handedness is pretty much solely about fine motor coordination.
It doesn't make any sense at all to waste the dextrous right hand on the gearshift
It actually requires more manual dexterity to maneuver the stick through the shift gates than it does to manage a steering wheel. This is, however, also largely irrelevant because the amount of manual dexterity required for either task is quite minimal. As other posters have noted, the reason for left vs right predates automobiles and is based on mounted combat fighting (pass left) and teamstering (pass right).
Nonsense. More choices can give us better choices, but they can also just lead to confusion and stagnation. Look at the competing Blu-Ray and HD-DVD standards. The most likely route is the two choices will only confuse consumers into sticking with DVD. No one likes adopting dead-end technology.
Point taken, but I don't think wimax is in the same category. THe problem with Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD is that there are multiple dependent industries that can't afford to support two incompatible standards because it will cost them up to twice as much. In this case, when the service provider is likely going to be providing the receiving equipment, having more than one standard is less significant. DSL providers don't have to agonize over ATM vs Frame Relay because they only have to send you one DSL modem and then forget about it.
Does the world really need another player when the future is still so unclear?"
What an idiotic statement (and it is a statement, disguised as question). The future is determined by the choices we make today. More choices allows us to pick the best of those available, thus resulting in the "best future".
Can some one please explein this to me, both Netflix and BlockBuster advertise service as "unlimited online rentals" How can some one rent UNLIMITED DVD a month. Do thay have "UNLIMITED" DVD in store? There is a limit like 10-24 DVD a month (3 out plan) or We have 45K DVD titles. rent as musch as you like. How is this UNLIMITED?
Don't be daft. "Unlimited" as they use it clearly means that the terms of DVD rental have no hard number limiting your rentals, but rather the number of movies you get is limited only by the number of movies available and the logistics of getting those movies to you. Just like the "bottomless cup" of coffee they offer at the local diner isn't really bottomless, but is simply a regular cup that they will refill until you've had enough and leave.
Yes, but being radioactive alone isn't a big deal. What's the half-life and what type of radiation does it emit?
Keep in mind that some "radioactive" materials are so harmlessly radioactive (most commonly depleted uranium) that they can be used as radiation shields around stuff that is dangerous.
Indeed, an important point to be sure. Strontioum-90, though, is a pretty nasty character. Half life of 28.78 years, very high energy beta particle emitter, and it readily substitutes for calcium if ingested, so it sticks in your bones and doesn't leave.
Slashdot Mirror
On how many Altivec cores?
Not really relevant, but usually the presumption is one-to-one for sake comparison. The fact that SSE3 is available in multiple products from both AMD and Intel makes general comparison of multi-core performance between SSE3 and AltiVec difficult.
The original poster was making a strawman argument. No one who claims "copyright infringement != theft" thinks it's therefore not illegal. The "not theft" argument is an attempt to explain to the apparently willfully ignorant that copright is an unnatural monopoly on the exchange of information and is, on the scale of human history, a very recent development. With the exception of a few isolated tribes who essentially have nothing anyway, most of humanity has always considered the taking of someone else's stuff to be wrong. The singing of someone else's songs or telling of someone else's stories, however, had been encouraged as the passing of oral history until a mere 500 years ago with the invention of the printing press. Once a way was discovered to commit such things to salable form, however, governments created the notion of copyright as a way to cash in on the information trade.
Actually, I think you are missing the point. Calling it "theft" inaccurately frames the infraction as something universally regarded as immoral: the taking of another's property. Copyright infringement falls very much in a gray area. Heck, the very notion of copyright didn't even exist for the majority of recorded history. The fact that copyright infringement is currently a crime doesn't automatically promote it to the same level as theft. The justification for breaking the law is that the law is bad. Legality and morality are not always 1:1.
Besides, you took the definition for larceny, not necessarily theft. Also, there are legal definitions and social definitions, they vary in accuracy and meaning.
Yeah, you can easily muddle the argument with non-legal usages of the word "theft", but they're essentially irrelevant to the question of the legality of copyright infringement, and the morality aspect is purely a matter of opinion. No reasonable person would ever attempt to claim legal or moral equivalence for a vernacular usage (e.g. "That bitch stole my boyfriend" is not rational debate), so claiming the OP could have been referring to common usage when it was a clear reference to debate. Clearly, society does not agree on that copyright infringement is the moral equivalent of theft, otherwise there'd be a whole lot less of it. Social mores are a consensual thing-- they don't exist on their own.
I'd say that not getting out of BIOS doesn't count as actually successfully overclocking at that speed. That's like saying you raised your car's compression to 150:1 successfully, with the one shortcoming being that the head shattered into fragments when the first spark plug fired.
If people want some proof that good advertising exists, check out the Cannes Lion Awards. They have videos of all the winners, and I'm sure most Slashdotters would approve.
You're confusing "good" with "entertaining". Advertising is, nearly without exception, an uninvited attempt to insinuate into people consciousness. I challenge you to give an example of advertising that truly does good-- not simply amuses, but does something whose value approaches even a fraction of the depths of its reciprocal, the bad.
I'm told that AltiVec is vastly different (and superior) to SSE.
They're not very different at all, actually. Both are SIMD instruction sets essentially designed to achieve the same goals. That AltiVec is superior to SSE is true, but only if read literally. SSE2 is about an even match, with each having a few advantages over the other. SSE3 pretty much added all the horizontal data movement instructions previous incarnations lacked and is actually somewhat better than AltiVec.
Looks like one of these? AMD made chips under contract for Intel back in the early days. That's the origin of that pesky cross-licensing agreement that allows AMD and National to make x86 hardware.
Uh, yeah it does. 745.7 kilowatts per horsepower. Converts directly.
For example, if on average you drive an hour or two a day, even in less than ideal conditions you'll have far more power than that availible.
This assumes a storage mechanism of some sort, which greatly complicates the issue. Even the most pie-in-the-sky prediction for PV efficiency tops out at 65%, the most optimistic battery prediction at 85%, and the actual solar energy available under good terrestrial conditions tops out at an average .75kw per square meter for 8 hours a day for a non-tracking area. A small electric vehicle might manage 3m^2 roof area. This gives you a grand total of a hair under 10kW hours (9.945). The Toyota Prius manages to average about 36 kW hours per gallon of gasoline, and average 50mpg city driving. Given a small electric vehicle with performance approximating the Prius, that gives you a range of 13.5 miles-- but only if you stay in the sun all day. OK, I'll concede that it's theoretically possible (though on the very ragged edge of probability) to run some future vehicle on sun power alone for short distances. Not at all practical, though, and I still doubt the added expense of a PV roof would ever even pay for itself.
For purposes of my example, the VW Beetle (a Beatle is a guy from Liverpool) has far less than 10 square meters of roof area (less than 3, actually) so it'd actually be worse off.
Your VW might have 95HP PEAK, but at the wheels, especially while climbing, I bet you're getting a fraction of that.
Dynoed at 77HP at the wheels, only a 19% loss. That 14kW for 10 square meters assumes the impossible, i.e. perfect conversion, high noon at the equator on the equinox, in a vaccuum , sunlight hitting the photocells at a perfect perpendicular all the time. You can bet your ass the real life numbers will be a hell of a lot more than 19% lower.
But that's really irrelevant, anyhow. The parent didn't even suggest that solar panels would be the sole source of fuel for future vehicles. If you've got an electric car, put a solar panel on the roof/hood/trunk, and you get more range. You'll save money from not having to plug-in as often.
Not entirely irrelevant. My illustration shows that even under the best conditions, conditions beyond the possible, sunlight hardly even adds the barest trickle of a charge. Throw into that the loss from conversion, both at the photovoltaics and in the battry bank, and the not insignificant limitation on available sunlight imposed by the atmosphere, weather, trees, parking garage roofs, two story buildings on narrow streets at any time other than high noon, and seasonal variation in the sun's angle, and you're going to get almost nothing for your trouble wiring in a photovoltaic roof.
Horror movies will run out of plots, as people that run out of fuel in the middle of nowhere need only wait in their cars for an hour, (while it recharges itself) before continuing to drive. And people that use their vehicles for short, infrequent trips might never need to plug their vehicles in.
Show me the math. Tell me how big a perfect photovoltaic panel you'd need to charge a battery enough in one hour to move a car any significant distance. Tell me the weight of said automobile and how much energy it requires at the wheels for a day's use, and then show me how you're going to get that out of less than 1.4kW per square meter. The math just isn't there, man. Solar is a dilute energy source. You need large fields to collect any useful quantity of it.
I did some looking about myself and answered my own question. The wikipedia article on peat moss doesn't actually address my query at all, only mentioning something about peat forming when dead stuff doesn't decay. Check out the wikipedia on permafrost for a truly relevant explaination.
So, wait....if it's not natural for this formerly "permafrost" peat bog to be melting, how is it that this peat moss was, at some point, able to grow in the first place?
RTF post I wrote: "The only real advantage to hydrogen is that it burns very cleanly, in theory making it an ideal vehicle fuel." Also, you may have noticed that we're not talking about hydrogen's suitablility as a vehicle fuel, we're talking about how SCE is going to store solar energy for nighttime use. Get with the program. Read what people are writing so you can actually follow the conversation.
Sure, if all you do is try to collect it near the surface like we do now. All you have to do is drill deeper to find more. The Russians are currently pumping oil out of wells 8 miles deep. The stuff we're pumping out at the top is only that little bit that seeps into easily reachable pockets.
Secondly, you find remains of plants in oil, which almost makes you wonder how they got the idea it came from a biological source, not
You don't so much find "plants" in oil, you find "organic matter". Biogenic fuel theory says it's from zooplankton and phytoplankton. The reason abiogenic petroleum theory was initially rejected was that in the 19th century it was believed that microbial life could not exist in such extreme conditions, thus the petroleum itself must have come come from decayed organic matter. We've since discovered numerous extremophile forms of microbial life, but the whole "fossil fuel" notion has become so ingrained that the loss of a major part of it's theoretical underpinning has essentially been ignored.
Sunlight has an approximate maximum of 1.4kW per square meter. Even assuming ideal conditions and perfect conversion with an array the size of a large van roof (2m x 5m = 10m^2), you only get 14kW which is 18.77 horsepower. My VW Vanagon has a hard time climbing hills with 95 horsepower. Sunlight is too dilute to push around anything resembling a normal automobile.
Actually, hydrogen isn't that great a "battery" at all. Cracking hydrogen is a pretty lossy process, hydrogen is dificult to store (smallest atom, leaks out ANY hole-- and there are ALWAYS holes), and all the necessary equipment is pretty complicated. The only real advantage to hydrogen is that it burns very cleanly, in theory making it an ideal vehicle fuel. But for storing extra energy from solar to be used later at night, the best way is the way they've always done it. They use the excess generated electricity to pump water uphill into reservoirs, then generate power hydroelectrically when they need it. No hydrogen "battery" will ever be so simple, reliable, and efficient as a turbine driven generator at the base of an earth-fill dam.
A derivative work is one in which one copies a portion of the original work. Selling a piece of a beer can is as legal as selling an ordinary music CD or vinyl record with all but Track 1 cut off. Doctrine of first sale-- they got their money, now that particular copy is yours.
Nitpicking motherfucker, you need to chill. Yeah, the word "branch" is a malapropism, but his obvious intent in using the word was to convey the notion that the USPS is a part of the federal government. In that regard he's absolutely goddamn right. Jackass ACs, man....
You ARE missing the point. Surely you're not so daft that you didn't notice the lower left, where it said "Drivey (graphic test) 0.13". That's the version number. Of course is has nothing going for it yet. It's a fucking GRAPHICS TEST!
The others I grant you, but this one's not so much the casee anymore. Back in the days when torque converters were non-locking and auto trannies were simple hydraulic controlled dual Simpson planetary gear sets with 3 forward and 1 reverse, yeah, you could count on a significant loss of efficiency. Modern computer controlled transmissions with locking torque converters and five (or even six) gears, the loss is negligible.
Handed-ness is largely irrelevant as far as ease of passage on one side or the other. Handedness is pretty much solely about fine motor coordination.
It doesn't make any sense at all to waste the dextrous right hand on the gearshift
It actually requires more manual dexterity to maneuver the stick through the shift gates than it does to manage a steering wheel. This is, however, also largely irrelevant because the amount of manual dexterity required for either task is quite minimal. As other posters have noted, the reason for left vs right predates automobiles and is based on mounted combat fighting (pass left) and teamstering (pass right).
Point taken, but I don't think wimax is in the same category. THe problem with Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD is that there are multiple dependent industries that can't afford to support two incompatible standards because it will cost them up to twice as much. In this case, when the service provider is likely going to be providing the receiving equipment, having more than one standard is less significant. DSL providers don't have to agonize over ATM vs Frame Relay because they only have to send you one DSL modem and then forget about it.
Bad spelling is more a sign of laziness than bad handwriting is.
What an idiotic statement (and it is a statement, disguised as question). The future is determined by the choices we make today. More choices allows us to pick the best of those available, thus resulting in the "best future".
Don't be daft. "Unlimited" as they use it clearly means that the terms of DVD rental have no hard number limiting your rentals, but rather the number of movies you get is limited only by the number of movies available and the logistics of getting those movies to you. Just like the "bottomless cup" of coffee they offer at the local diner isn't really bottomless, but is simply a regular cup that they will refill until you've had enough and leave.
Indeed, an important point to be sure. Strontioum-90, though, is a pretty nasty character. Half life of 28.78 years, very high energy beta particle emitter, and it readily substitutes for calcium if ingested, so it sticks in your bones and doesn't leave.