Yes, I seem to remember reading somewhere that, at the world's current load, there is only enough nuclear fuel to last about 100 years (that's the world, mind you, so who knows about just the US)
That's just U-235. U-235 accounts for only 0.7% of the uranium available. The other 99.3% is U-238. U-238 can't be used as fuel in our current reactors, but can be used in breeder reactors. What's more, spent fuel from current reactors can also be fed into a breeder reactor. With breeder reactors that 100 years turns into about 100,000. And we haven't even touched on non-uranium fueled reactors yet.
What we essentially do is re-enrich and purify it. The problem with this is that it is that it is the same process used to create weapons grade material.
Actually, it's not the same process, just a similar process. A fuel-reprocessing reactor will produce a mixture of Pu239, Pu240, Pu241, and Pu242. Weapons-grade plutonium is pure Pu239. If you don't have pure Pu239, your bomb won't work. No one has ever successfully separated Pu239 from a mix with Pu240-242. This is what makes president Carter's ban on breeder reactors in 1977 so baffling. Here's a man who's a nuclear engineer who bans breeder reactors because terrorists might get ahold of the plutonium and make a bomb, even though he should know that refining the Pu239 from the mix is impossible.
1) What will we do with the waste?
2) Do we have enough fissionable fuel to accomplish this?
I know #1 is a problem, I honestly don't know the answer to #2. Either way, these need to be addressed *before* we build more reactors.
Already been addressed: breeder reactors essentially reprocess waste into more fuel. The initial load of a breeder reactor is U-238, which is 140 times more plentiful than U-235 (our current fission fuel). The fuel supply is effectively unlimited. Too bad President Carter decided to ban breeder reactors in 1977.
That's the answer I was looking for. I was just wondering how a resource that's even less renewable than fossil fuels is "nearly infinite", even though it's relatively plentiful.
"Nearly infinite" is admittedly inaccurate, but the abundance of U-238 is such that the fuel supply for breeder reactors is "effectively unlimited".
If you allow nuclear reactor operators to reprocess waste in a manner that Al Gore had banned when he was in the Senate....
Wow, I didn't realize Al Gore ruled the United States by royal decree from the Senate.
Maybe he's talking about the Clinch River breeder reactor research that had its funding die in the senate in 1983 because it was killed by the Democrats. Of course the interesting thing there is that Gore broke ranks with the other Democrats and voted FOR it. Given Gore's record on the subject before and since, it seems likely that he just wanted to be seen as representing his state's interest, being that the Clinch River reactor was in Tennesee, and knew that it wasn't going to happen. Still doesn't jibe with the OP's premise.
Well, we're talking about very small companies. And I'm more specifically referring to Aluria possibly writing spyware, rather than a traditional virus coming from a bigger AV outfit like Norton or Symantec or McAfee.
I don't know why you're brining up Aluria and spyware. This thread is a tangent unrelated to the main issue. Let me quote the post from which this entire thread sprang:
reminds me of the age old question of whether anti virus companies created virii just to keep their own operations alive.
The article is about spyware. This particular thread is about the stupid virus conspiracy theory, i.e. Symantec has people writing viruses to boost their bottom line.
Percentage of eligible voters is a separate metric. He's talking about Dem percentage vs. Rep percentage. In that case, the only relevant figure is number of votes cast. You're talking about turnout, he's talking about margin of victory.
Yes. It's Enron. Or HealthSouth. Or Arthur Andersen. Or Adelphia Communications. Or Global Crossing.
I have to agree with grandparent. That you can't imagine a successful antivirus company risking legal ramifications to ramp up business says less about corporate wisdom and more about your defective imagination.
There's a distinct difference between cooking the books and stealing from your investors and attacking your customers so you can make more money when they call upon you to save the day. Enron didn't sneak into people's houses and turn on their lights so they could sell more electricity. HealthSouth didn't slip streptococcus into our Sunday dinners to get us to go to the hospital. Adelphia didn't send guys around beating DirecTV dishes with bats to get more people to subscribe to cable. Global Crossing didn't run around town randomly snipping competitors' fiber lines to bring in clients. Their legal transgressions were in their accounting departments, something that goes on in pretty much any business.
But you're dodging reality by handwaving it away as "stupid conspiracy theory".
It's happened here. I'm from Minneapolis. You may know that we get snow around here in the winters. Remember, snowfall means fender-benders, and body shops hereabouts live for the winter repair season. One mild winter an employee of a local bodyshop was found guilty of driving around the city in a beat-up old wreck, sideswiping parked cars in an attempt to give his business enough work.
There's a difference between something that falls under the "one idiot" category and actual corporate conspiracy. We had One Idiot here where I live that owned a window glass company that used to drive his truck down the main drag near his shop at 2am shooting out the front windows of shops with a BB gun when business was slow. You can always find One Idiot willing to do just about anything. Several people at a corporation conspiring to do so as a matter of business policy is different.
Aren't willing to put out any effort to change the system?
...a notion you haven't disabused. Are you actually working to change the system in one of these "work-outside-the-system" ways? Or are you just an armchair revolutionary?
Actually, since the discussion is about why he doesn't vote or otherwise participate in the current system, his non-system-participatory revolutionary activities are irrelevant. You are the one that claimed participation was necessary in order to voice your displeasure with the current system. Your attempt to re-cast that last phrase "Aren't willing to put out any effort to change the system?" as being about NON-participatory efforts is absurd, as the rest of your post is (like the entire thread before it) about voting or running for office.
Anyway, while shielding yourself and working hard at not seeing it seems very silly, you could just peruse his very long list of references for every remark in his movie. Kinda makes those "it's all lies!" people seem mentally challenged, but that's just me.
It's not that hard to find rebuttals to Moore's references. It all comes down to which set of lunatics you already agree with.
It stayed in the nicotine, because nicotine IS A CARCINOGEN.
Hey dumbass, read the title of the paper you link: "How Nicotine Becomes A Carcinogen" (emphasis mine) TSNA, the carcinogen the paper talks about, is produced via fermentation, curing, and/or burning of tobacco-- none of which takes place in the case of these "electric cigarettes".
Take a guess where the carcinogens stayed after they extracted the nicotine from the tobacco.
Cancer is not the only risk associated with smoking.
Didn't say it was. I was only countering a smartass comment that was, in fact, incorrect. I wouldn't characterize nicotine as harmless, but I do characterize wiseguys who don't know what they're talking about as dumbasses.
Take a candel and take a piece of metal say a knife. Put the knife over the flame where the smoke is coming from. Wait about 5 minutes and look at the tar on your knife.
That's not tar, that's candle soot from unburned wax. Cigarettes do not deposit candle soot in your lungs. A better thing to have him do is cut open the filter after smoking the cigarette. Then again, that never stopped ME...
Yeah, until the five becomes ten. And the ten becomes twenty.
You speak as though this is a foregone conclusion. There are people who can smoke 5 or fewer cigarettes a day and stay at that level indefinitely. I smoked 1 or 2 a day, three or four days a week for five years before I decided I was wasting my time and just stopped. I tried heroin three or four times and didn't get addicted to that either. Not everyone is a junkie. I'd even go so far as to say most people aren't junkies. The reason we hear about the ones that are is that not getting addicted to something doesn't make a very good story.
Upset? They'd go INSANE! They sell so much Spam in Hawaii (6.9 million cans a year) that there's actually competition in the canned meat trade that Hormel has had to try to counter withSpecial Hawaiian Collector's Edition Spam.
There's gotta be a better way to model what a user's password can be than just all combinations of only letters, or a list of common passwords plus substitutions. I think these are the only ones I've seen. But this doesn't really reflect that "fiqojeio" is a much less likely password than say "foo7bar+".
I see this as mostly just a harbinger of Things To Come. At what point will it become a trivial matter to generate a database of all possible hashes of all possible passwords (incl. all symbols and numbers), and what will we do when that point is reached? Hide the hash file? Isn't that why we moved to hashes in the first place, because hiding the password file just didn't work?
Anyone feel that a article summary with this much technical detail should have some links or explanation of what it's actually talking about? And since I'm one of the ignorati who doesn't understand, could some please explain to me?
In simple terms, a hash is a sort of "one-way" function. Passwords are often saved as hashes. THe password is fed in one end, and the hash comes out the other. The hash is saved in a file. When one logs in and types in one's password, the system feeds what you typed in through the hash function and checks if the result matches the hash of your password. Since there is no way to reverse the hash process, it's been considered fairly safe to leave these hashes moderately unprotected. This database is, presumably, a sorted collection of the possible hashes from all letters-only passwords up to a certain length. The hash can't be reversed to get the password it came from, but a huge database of all possible hashes and their originating passwords certainly makes that irrelevant.
While I agree with this once the child has learned to use their vocal cords and are actually making attempts to communicate, I believe that the first few bits of babbling and such are most likely the child attempting to gain control over his/her body.
I agree. When you apply this sort of reasoning to certain words, their origin becomes clear. For example, the word "MAMA", cited by the GP poster, shows up in many languages because it has a common root: the first noise a baby can reliably reproduce, as it's simply voicing an "ah" noise and opening and closing the mouth. Turning this simple noisemaking into a word provides the opportunity to reward the child for a step towards intentional speech.
Does "doggy" refer to creatures with four legs, with fur, with four legs and fur, with a tail, with long ears, to an animal? You can check with your tutor that you've understood the referent, but babies can't do that.
If you're gonna throw stuff like THAT into the equation, I can point to my 3.5 year old nephew who calls all chihuahua dogs "kitty", and say that it takes 3.5 years for babies to learn. Really, most language learning comes from pure exposure, not explaination. The US Army spent a year teaching me Russian, and we spent less than 20% of our time having the language mechanics explained to us in English. Most of our time was spent reading and conversing.
Essentially, it does take babies longer to learn language than adults because they have no frame of reference to build from. What's amazing is not their ability to learn a language itself, but the apparent ability to "bootstrap" themselves up from nothing via phonetic analysis. Learning a language isn't so impressive as learning what language is.
What effect will it have on the creation/evolution debate? The same effect that all the other mounds of evidence in favor of evolution have so far had on the debate.
True, but the eye is pretty much the Big One. The "intelligent design" argument for the eye was one of the earliest against evolution, and was even addressed by Darwin himself: (from TFA)
Darwin himself confessed that it was "absurd" to propose that the human eye, an "organ of extreme perfection and complication" evolved through spontaneous mutation and natural selection. But he also reasoned that "if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist" then this difficulty should be overcome
So basically, the one item the creationists have been able to rally around from the beginning has finally been shown to have a possible evolutionary origin. This is a pretty heavy blow. They can no longer shut down debates by repeatedly shouting "show me the evolutionary path of the eye, then!" (a tactic I found quite irritating back in my "coffee house philosopher" days).
"When I saw this vertebrate-type molecule active in the cells of the Playtnereis brain - it was clear that these cells and the vertebrate rods and cones shared a molecular fingerprint. This was concrete evidence of common evolutionary origin. We had finally solved one of the big mysteries in human eye evolution."
Can someone explain how this information is conclusive?
It's not actually conclusive, but it represents what was previously a large gap in the evolutionary chain-- specifically, the primitive verion of certain structures found in the human retina. Before this, there was no clear indication where the eye came from. Things either "had an eye", or "didn't". They've sound something that doesn't have an eye, but has something that resembles one.
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That's just U-235. U-235 accounts for only 0.7% of the uranium available. The other 99.3% is U-238. U-238 can't be used as fuel in our current reactors, but can be used in breeder reactors. What's more, spent fuel from current reactors can also be fed into a breeder reactor. With breeder reactors that 100 years turns into about 100,000. And we haven't even touched on non-uranium fueled reactors yet.
Actually, it's not the same process, just a similar process. A fuel-reprocessing reactor will produce a mixture of Pu239, Pu240, Pu241, and Pu242. Weapons-grade plutonium is pure Pu239. If you don't have pure Pu239, your bomb won't work. No one has ever successfully separated Pu239 from a mix with Pu240-242. This is what makes president Carter's ban on breeder reactors in 1977 so baffling. Here's a man who's a nuclear engineer who bans breeder reactors because terrorists might get ahold of the plutonium and make a bomb, even though he should know that refining the Pu239 from the mix is impossible.
2) Do we have enough fissionable fuel to accomplish this?
I know #1 is a problem, I honestly don't know the answer to #2. Either way, these need to be addressed *before* we build more reactors.
Already been addressed: breeder reactors essentially reprocess waste into more fuel. The initial load of a breeder reactor is U-238, which is 140 times more plentiful than U-235 (our current fission fuel). The fuel supply is effectively unlimited. Too bad President Carter decided to ban breeder reactors in 1977.
"Nearly infinite" is admittedly inaccurate, but the abundance of U-238 is such that the fuel supply for breeder reactors is "effectively unlimited".
Wow, I didn't realize Al Gore ruled the United States by royal decree from the Senate.
Maybe he's talking about the Clinch River breeder reactor research that had its funding die in the senate in 1983 because it was killed by the Democrats. Of course the interesting thing there is that Gore broke ranks with the other Democrats and voted FOR it. Given Gore's record on the subject before and since, it seems likely that he just wanted to be seen as representing his state's interest, being that the Clinch River reactor was in Tennesee, and knew that it wasn't going to happen. Still doesn't jibe with the OP's premise.
I don't know why you're brining up Aluria and spyware. This thread is a tangent unrelated to the main issue. Let me quote the post from which this entire thread sprang:
The article is about spyware. This particular thread is about the stupid virus conspiracy theory, i.e. Symantec has people writing viruses to boost their bottom line.
wow. never heard that joke before. (eye roll)
Percentage of eligible voters is a separate metric. He's talking about Dem percentage vs. Rep percentage. In that case, the only relevant figure is number of votes cast. You're talking about turnout, he's talking about margin of victory.
I have to agree with grandparent. That you can't imagine a successful antivirus company risking legal ramifications to ramp up business says less about corporate wisdom and more about your defective imagination.
There's a distinct difference between cooking the books and stealing from your investors and attacking your customers so you can make more money when they call upon you to save the day. Enron didn't sneak into people's houses and turn on their lights so they could sell more electricity. HealthSouth didn't slip streptococcus into our Sunday dinners to get us to go to the hospital. Adelphia didn't send guys around beating DirecTV dishes with bats to get more people to subscribe to cable. Global Crossing didn't run around town randomly snipping competitors' fiber lines to bring in clients. Their legal transgressions were in their accounting departments, something that goes on in pretty much any business.
There's a difference between something that falls under the "one idiot" category and actual corporate conspiracy. We had One Idiot here where I live that owned a window glass company that used to drive his truck down the main drag near his shop at 2am shooting out the front windows of shops with a BB gun when business was slow. You can always find One Idiot willing to do just about anything. Several people at a corporation conspiring to do so as a matter of business policy is different.
Aren't willing to put out any effort to change the system?
...a notion you haven't disabused. Are you actually working to change the system in one of these "work-outside-the-system" ways? Or are you just an armchair revolutionary?
Actually, since the discussion is about why he doesn't vote or otherwise participate in the current system, his non-system-participatory revolutionary activities are irrelevant. You are the one that claimed participation was necessary in order to voice your displeasure with the current system. Your attempt to re-cast that last phrase "Aren't willing to put out any effort to change the system?" as being about NON-participatory efforts is absurd, as the rest of your post is (like the entire thread before it) about voting or running for office.
It's not that hard to find rebuttals to Moore's references. It all comes down to which set of lunatics you already agree with.
Hey dumbass, read the title of the paper you link: "How Nicotine Becomes A Carcinogen" (emphasis mine)
TSNA, the carcinogen the paper talks about, is produced via fermentation, curing, and/or burning of tobacco-- none of which takes place in the case of these "electric cigarettes".
Cancer is not the only risk associated with smoking.
Didn't say it was. I was only countering a smartass comment that was, in fact, incorrect. I wouldn't characterize nicotine as harmless, but I do characterize wiseguys who don't know what they're talking about as dumbasses.
Actually it's Edwards that did that. Kerry made his money by marrying a rich heiress.
Take a guess where the carcinogens stayed after they extracted the nicotine from the tobacco.
That's not tar, that's candle soot from unburned wax. Cigarettes do not deposit candle soot in your lungs. A better thing to have him do is cut open the filter after smoking the cigarette. Then again, that never stopped ME...
You speak as though this is a foregone conclusion. There are people who can smoke 5 or fewer cigarettes a day and stay at that level indefinitely. I smoked 1 or 2 a day, three or four days a week for five years before I decided I was wasting my time and just stopped. I tried heroin three or four times and didn't get addicted to that either. Not everyone is a junkie. I'd even go so far as to say most people aren't junkies. The reason we hear about the ones that are is that not getting addicted to something doesn't make a very good story.
Upset? They'd go INSANE! They sell so much Spam in Hawaii (6.9 million cans a year) that there's actually competition in the canned meat trade that Hormel has had to try to counter withSpecial Hawaiian Collector's Edition Spam.
I see this as mostly just a harbinger of Things To Come. At what point will it become a trivial matter to generate a database of all possible hashes of all possible passwords (incl. all symbols and numbers), and what will we do when that point is reached? Hide the hash file? Isn't that why we moved to hashes in the first place, because hiding the password file just didn't work?
In simple terms, a hash is a sort of "one-way" function. Passwords are often saved as hashes. THe password is fed in one end, and the hash comes out the other. The hash is saved in a file. When one logs in and types in one's password, the system feeds what you typed in through the hash function and checks if the result matches the hash of your password. Since there is no way to reverse the hash process, it's been considered fairly safe to leave these hashes moderately unprotected. This database is, presumably, a sorted collection of the possible hashes from all letters-only passwords up to a certain length. The hash can't be reversed to get the password it came from, but a huge database of all possible hashes and their originating passwords certainly makes that irrelevant.
I agree. When you apply this sort of reasoning to certain words, their origin becomes clear. For example, the word "MAMA", cited by the GP poster, shows up in many languages because it has a common root: the first noise a baby can reliably reproduce, as it's simply voicing an "ah" noise and opening and closing the mouth. Turning this simple noisemaking into a word provides the opportunity to reward the child for a step towards intentional speech.
If you're gonna throw stuff like THAT into the equation, I can point to my 3.5 year old nephew who calls all chihuahua dogs "kitty", and say that it takes 3.5 years for babies to learn. Really, most language learning comes from pure exposure, not explaination. The US Army spent a year teaching me Russian, and we spent less than 20% of our time having the language mechanics explained to us in English. Most of our time was spent reading and conversing.
Essentially, it does take babies longer to learn language than adults because they have no frame of reference to build from. What's amazing is not their ability to learn a language itself, but the apparent ability to "bootstrap" themselves up from nothing via phonetic analysis. Learning a language isn't so impressive as learning what language is.
True, but the eye is pretty much the Big One. The "intelligent design" argument for the eye was one of the earliest against evolution, and was even addressed by Darwin himself: (from TFA)
So basically, the one item the creationists have been able to rally around from the beginning has finally been shown to have a possible evolutionary origin. This is a pretty heavy blow. They can no longer shut down debates by repeatedly shouting "show me the evolutionary path of the eye, then!" (a tactic I found quite irritating back in my "coffee house philosopher" days).
Can someone explain how this information is conclusive?
It's not actually conclusive, but it represents what was previously a large gap in the evolutionary chain-- specifically, the primitive verion of certain structures found in the human retina. Before this, there was no clear indication where the eye came from. Things either "had an eye", or "didn't". They've sound something that doesn't have an eye, but has something that resembles one.