Not really. A reader is a $10-$20 part that can easily be added to any system. An external reader could easily market for $20-$50. The end result is that the smart card is going to be cheaper in the long run. (Keep in mind that each person who uses the computer is going to need two cards/keys. Things get particularly dicey in family situations.)
If you look at a diagram for a smart card sometime, you'll notice how simple the things are. Basically, they fab small RAM, ROM, and processor chips right onto the card itself. This makes them cheaper to produce than wiring components together on breadboard, then encasing them in plastic.
Everyone has USB, why not use this instead of requiring a card reader?
The only reason is that smart cards are cheap. I can pack all the security info I need on a card that costs $1.00 - $5.00 each. In comparison, a USB key has to have a variety of communications electronics that make its minimum price somewhere arounf $15.00 a key.
Am I the only one who thinks that computers should start shipping with a pack of smart cards? You simply create your identity on the card, then it acts as a universal "computer key" for computers you have access to. i.e. One could think of it as a car key for their computer.
Such a design would be pretty transparent to users, and could easily fit in with the way they expect day to day things to work. You can even recommend that they make a backup card at card creation time, so that they can stash it in a safe place (say they lose their original card or something). When the backup card is inserted, the user would be prompted to revoke the old keys and create a new key set.
You're telling me there are no Mac users (besides myself) that can see The Mysterious Future(TM)? Very well then. Here's a preview of the next article. SuSE 9.2 is out. There, I said it. Now prepare something insightful to say.:-)
Yikes! The replies to this story are completely screwed up. I'm starting to feel sorry I ever tried to make a joke. I figured others would have something more insightful to say. Well, since no one else will, I'll try to say something insightful.
It seems to me that most OS X users are pretty quiet on the topic because they can't find anything to say. Not because they're ashamed, but more because OS X Just Works(TM). Since the OS Just Works(TM), security guidelines like this are nothing more than hints on how to prevent users from accidentally opening security holes.
Contrast this with Windows, where everyone is always looking for the "magic solution" that will allow them to completely close of the machine from attack. Yet Windows insists on requiring various services (e.g. RPC) to be running and publicly available before it will run properly.
Some might argue that OS X is so secure because the developers had an opportunity to view OSes which came before them. This may seem like a reasonable argument, but quickly falls apart once OS X's heritage is investigated. You see, OS X is really the next major release of NeXTSTEPl an OS that pre-dates Microsoft's creation of Windows NT & 95. NeXT got it right back then. Why can't other OS makers get it right today?
The skin looks much nicer, but there's a couple of things that still annoy me:
1. Kill the WikiWords! It was a nice idea when the Wiki was invented, but WikiWords just make documents look unprofessional and more difficult to read. The best thing Wikipedia and MediaWiki ever did was drop the Wikiwords concept. (The former iteration of Wikipedia was quite ugly.)
2. TWiki needs to stop shipping so much default nonsense. The first thing one has to do when they install it, is go through and delete all the extraneous garbage.
If we're talking about HTA applications, then yes. It is possible. Here's an example of an HTML application that reads and writes from disk. The network is obviously easy.
Alternatively, you could install "small" distributions of the server app on people's machines, that replicate themselves like traditional applications.
I think you're missing the point. Most companies don't NEED a massively distributed database. They need a single point to track various business documents and information. Lotus Notes gives them that, and Wikis give them that. Wikis are cheaper and easier.
FWIW, Wiki replication is easy. In many wikis, you're talking about nothing more than a large number of versioned files (similar to RCS). This means that the latest data can be bundled together in a single archive for easy downloading and replication.
No one has done it yet, but it is doable with an HTA application. I'm not sure how you'd handle edits, though. It might be a good idea to either queue them up, or disallow them altogether.
The idea is to divorce the database functionality from the email/calendaring functionality. You could use a regular client for the later (such as Outlook) while you'd develop documents dealing with projects inside the Wiki.
[I]s the whole world going to be using wikis instead of the proprietary dinosaurs like Lotus Notes?
God, I hope so. Lotus Notes is a beast. It stops working whenever it feels like it, and occasionally corrupts the database just to make your day.
OTOH, I don't know if TWiki is the answer. Something like it perhaps, but TWiki itself tends to be unwieldily, visually confusing, and ugly. PHPWiki solved many of the problems by taking the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid!) path, but lost a lot of functionality along the way. MediaWiki (the Wiki that runs Wikipedia) is probably the best compromise, but it lacks some of the security features that make TWiki viable in a corporate environment.
If I had to choose, I'd probably say that extending MediaWiki would result in the best option. MediaWiki is clean, easy to use, and (always important) extremely feature rich. The advantage is that it got that way through several rewrites and careful coding by its maintainers. The disadvantage is that another rewrite might leave you stranded with a difficult upgrade path.
One way or another, a Wiki design is definitely the right idea for corporate "document" databases.
,i>And who turned this into a semantic argument? You started picking on me mentioning "pressurized", which it distinctly is; there is very high pressure gas going right through the middle of the fuel rods.
Fine, blame me. As long as we agree to disagree.
Meltdown on the Lenin, 30 unconfirmed.
That's 30 rumored, not unconfirmed. The Lenin's descendent ship, the Yamal, is now the first nuclear cruise ship.
Meltdown on a nuclear sub in Chazhma bay, 10 officers confirmed killed right-out, and large amounts of land contaminated.
1. That's less than the dozen in one event. So count it toward the total to see if we go over 100. 2. The radiation did NOT reach land. From TFA:
Ten officers are killed, but the deadly cloud of radioactivity does not reach Vladivostok.
124-270,000 people exposed to dangerous levels of radiation at Chelyabinsk, and over 500,000 to high levels (unknown number of deaths resultant)
1. The number of deaths was unknown. "Probably in the hundreds" can be counted toward the unconfirmed. Which adds to the "unconfirmed" total.
2. Noticing a pattern? We really should not let the Russians anywhere near nuclear tech.
270,000 people near the Hanford Site were exposed to a lesser degree. Dozens of cancer deaths are attributed to the Windscale Pile accident. An unknown number of deaths from the dumping of huge amounts of radioactive material into rivers, bays, etc (for example, 600,000 gallons of high level waste into Lake Erie and Lake Ontario is just one case). And many other events.
Altogether, we've still haven't reached a dozen in one confirmed event, more than 100 confirmed total, and no more than a few hundred unconfirmed. Meanwhile, coal goes on killing millions, especially in Asian countries where scrubbers can't be afforded.
But as I mentioned, deaths aren't the big problem with radioactive material - it's the fact that it's so darn hard to clean up, and covers such a large area.
Which is a reasonable concern. That's why US regulations are so intent on forcing proper handling of radioactive materials. While many precautions have been taken to make sure that the population wouldn't suffer from such events (food is screened, water is purified, Iodine is fortified, etc.), land damage is always a concern. You'll note that in the 50+ years of nuclear technology, the US has not once unintentionally contaminated a large area of habitable land. Even TMI (which was full of screw ups) scrammed as designed.
Most iodine that you eat/take in food is in a salt form, such as potassium iodide (I was being kind and assuming that you meant potassium iodide when you said "iodine", which is what you give to people if they're at risk of being exposed to radioactive iodine, and to lesser benefit if they were just exposed). "Regular" iodine (I2) is toxic and is used as a surface disinfectant.
Ok. Seems I was under the mistaken impression that regular iodine was used for fortification. Thanks for the info.:-) Still, that's even better. Every man, woman, and child in America gets sufficient amounts of Iodine to prevent issues with Iodine radioisotopes. Which reinforces my point, that Russia's people were malnourished.
Unfortunately, this hasn't changed all that much, despite the improving economy. My wife says that women over there (even in Moscow!) often have weaker teeth and hair after having a child. This is an unfortunate indication that their bodies are taking nourishment from other areas and giving it to the baby.:-(
You can get out of orbit using any thrust level without changing the required delta-V - the timing just changes. That's why they're able to get out of orbit with ion drives (you spiral somewhat instead of doing a direct Hohmann transf
The idea is that you don't have to rewrite your existing C/C++ programs. i.e. I could make a Mozilla or OpenOffice binary that works on all platforms. This would allow me to switch out the hardware architecture at a whim and still provide customers with backward compatibility. Better than modifying the chip to run old op codes, anyway.
I seem to remember that IBM has an OS out there that already does this. I can't remember what it is, though.
My wife is from Russia, so I often hear about the various radioactive fruits on the market illegally. My father-in-law has talked about it a few times when he's been over here as well.
That would be an interesting idea, except that TCC only targets Intel chips.
That's probably a temporary issue. Someone already mentioned ARM support being available.
It does. Hardly any "real" compiler compiles directly to the target instruction set
I know. Where do you think I got the idea from?:-)
The way I see it, a few minor modifications to GCC and the OS would allow for truly platform independent binaries. When the user installs the program, the GCC on their end would pick up the intermediary code and finish the compile. Voila! One cross-platform binary.
The only thing that worries me are the darn pre-processor instructions. If the preprocessor tailors the code to the platform, then it simply isn't portable at all.:-(
It runs *Right Through Cladded Channels In The Middle Of The Fuel Rods*. RTFA. When the reactor is generating thrust, there *are* high pressure gasses in it.
I read TFA, and I still disagree. It's like comparing a super-soaker to pressure cooker. Yes, pressure does force the water through the super soaker, but the pressure is transient. i.e. The super soaker isn't going to blow up from squeezing the trigger, while a pressure cooker may very well do so.
One way or another, we're just arguing semantics here. My point is that the rocket reactor is really nothing like a power generating reactor. The pressure induced in the system is insufficient to cause destruction of the reactor. The only way that would change is if someone plugged the back of the rocket.
If the fire on the plane burned up nuclear material, I'd still count it; it is completely applicable.
Fine. My point was to remove the accidents where a fire caused a plane to go down, but really had no impact on the nuclear materials.
(although your numbers are WAY off; you apparently need to re-read)
Cite a single figure other than Chernobyl where a dozen or more people were confirmed killed by a nuclear accident. How many unconfirmed accidents?
And a sub sinking because its super-structure failed DOES NOT COUNT AS A NUCLEAR ACCIDENT. Neither does a propulsion failure. (The same thing could happen to a diesel sub.) You have to count the incidents where nuclear materials killed people. Otherwise we're just talking industrial accidents. (Thousands of people die of industrial or work related accidents each year.)
Nope. First off, Potassium iodide is designed to reduce, not eliminate the likelyhood of iodine intake.
Who said anything about Potassium Iodine? The standard prevention measure is to make sure people get enough regular iodine. If their system has sufficient iodine, then the body will not attempt to deposit the radioactive iodine. That's why our salt is fortified with Iodine, and why you didn't see widespread thyroid problems when nuclear materials release did occur in the US. (Check your own link.)
1. The area to "bulldoze" is three times the size of New Jersey (and you can't just "bulldoze" and be done with it - you need to bring in new material to overlay)).
You obviously wouldn't want to simply clear the entire area outright, but making individual chunks habitable is a doable thing. i.e. Chernobyl the city could be bulldozed and rebuilt. Surrounding areas could be similarly terraformed as is economically feasible.
Then why add the LOX injection? There's no reason for the LOX unless you need to launch from a gravity well.
The article stated quite clearly that it was there to help boost heavier cargos out of orbit. i.e. Exchange some fuel efficiency for greater temporary thrust. This can be important if you're trying to achieve something like a Hohmann transfer, as timing is very critical. If you take too long, your orbit will be misshapen or will miss the target all together.
This could allow for platform independent Linux programs! i.e. If programs could be compiled on the fly from source bundles as an acceptable speed, then there would be no need to distribute binaries any longer. One source bundle, and you'll rule them all!
Failing that, one could always fall back on my previous plan. My thought was that if GCC compiled to P-Code instead of the final binary, the target GCC could complete the P-Code conversion at install time.
Mine cost about $20, plus a serivce contract. I'm guessing that the phones manage the same function (albeit with fewer bells and whistles).
My sunglasses costs more.
My eyeglasses don't even cost that much. My wife wears sunglasses, but we always get her the cheap ones because she either loses them or breaks them.
My wrist watch costs more.
That better be a Rolex.
My ring.
So does mine (a handsome wedding band), but I'm not likely to lose it.:-)
Honestly, it's great if you're the type of person who can keep track of little things like sunglasses and mobile phones. If you are, a more expensive option is probably warrented. But the rest of us are often too absent minded.
Even if the concern isn't about losing the object, there's still the matter of banging up your portable game console. With a Game Boy, you don't worry quite so much because it's a comparitively cheap device. (i.e. a toy) With a PSP, you suddenly have to treat it as a "serious" device that need excellent care, simply because you spent a lot of money on it.
Two hundred smackers for something you might accidentally leave on the bus. Nintendo has the right idea, I think. $80 for a brand new Game Boy SP, with older models selling at even cheaper prices.
You should visit NuclearSpace.com more often. Several engineers feel that GCNRs are something of a pipe dream at the moment. Solid Core rockets, OTOH, are well understood and tested.
BTW, who do you think posted the original Slashdot article about the Liberty Ship.;-)
Honestly, the Tory design isn't all that different from the NERVA and Triton designs. So you can somewhat look at the later two as space application of the former.
I think you misunderstood my post. I was not attacking you, but rather addressing the common concerns you presented. The second one is particularly important, as most people (the ones who don't whine about "space pollution" anyway) wouldn't mind nuclear power in "space". In "orbit" is scary, but not in "space". After all, how do sci-fi movie heros always solve the "big explosion" problem? They eject it into space!
If you ever hear either of the arguments you presented, I highly recommend responding with the counter arguments I presented. They are very difficult for people to refute, and may even change their minds about nuclear power.
It's only too bad that there's no way to pass the same information to everyone at once.
And you're not listening to me. PWR and LWR ARE pressurized reactors. In the case of the rocket, the reaction mass IS NOT PART OF THE REACTOR. In fact, the reactor runs just fine without any reaction mass. (i.e. The "idling" feature that allows it produce shipboard power.) Lumping it in with the class of pressurized reactors is simply WRONG. Its design is actually far closer to that of Pebble Bed Reactors. The technical class of the reactor is Fast Spectrum Nuclear Thermal Reactor.
There is hot pressurized hydrogen passing through cladded channels right in the middle of the fuel rods.
Erm, not quite. From the article:
BB: Are the CERMET Tungsten fuel elements porous in nature to allow for hydrogen gas flow?
RJ: No, it's of solid nature.
BB: So, Hydrogen gas surrounds for example, a single CERMET tungsten fuel element unit.
RJ: Not quite, the hydrogen flows through each of the elements that have several Tungsten-Rhenium coolant tubes or channels and the fuel element is also cladded on the exterior. Each has a Tungsten-Rhenium cladding that wraps each individual fuel element.
In short, the hydrogen passes near the reactor, and is heated via convection.
First off, I think you need to look at the totality of nuclear power accidents:
Look, I know of just about every nuclear accident that ever happened. And yes, I have read that page. Now try this: remove the items that were conventional accidents with nuclear materials nearby. (e.g. A fire on a plane carrying nuclear weapons, or a submarine sinking from propulsion problems.) Now remove all the accidents where people didn't die. What are you left with? Less than 100 people dead. Only a few hundred if you factor in the "estimated but unconfirmed" deaths.
if you include radiation-induced thyroid cancer, you get around 1,800, most of which were exposed immediately after the fact; there are also 600 people who have returned to the dead zone, who are undoubtedly going to die young
And almost all were successfully treated. If, in fact, these people had Iodine supplements like we use in the US, it is likely that no one would have experienced Thyroid cancer. Again, it's a major tragedy, but it was a preventable one.
The main impact of Chernobyl is how large of a region it ruined, and the impact of it on nuclear power worldwide. As for the area ruined, you can look at a map:
You mean like the coal fires of Centralia, PA destroyed, or the hundreds of thousands of acres destroyed by chemical spills? Industry is destructive. Chernobyl was another type of destructive industry. FWIW, they could probably bulldoze the land (basically burying the radioisotopes) and rebuild (as Hiroshima and Nagasaki did) since the background radiation levels are now acceptable. You probably still wouldn't want to grow anything there for another sixty years (which doesn't seem to stop the Russian fruit market), but otherwise the land is habitable.
Heck, even a non-meltdown accident on such a craft would be disastrous for the nuclear power industry - look at the relatively minor accident at 3 mile island, for example (far from our nation's worst, but it got publicity).
Publicity, but no deaths. Do you ever notice how nuclear "oopsies" always get press, but when chemical companies kill a bunch of people, it gets swept under the rug?
One way or another, we're talking about a space born engine. The engine is not (at least currently) designed for ground firing, and would not be dangerous until it is started. (U235 is pretty safe.) And once the engines are in a high enough orbit, there isn't ANYTHING that's bringing them down short of a retro-boost.
Slashdot Mirror
Not really. A reader is a $10-$20 part that can easily be added to any system. An external reader could easily market for $20-$50. The end result is that the smart card is going to be cheaper in the long run. (Keep in mind that each person who uses the computer is going to need two cards/keys. Things get particularly dicey in family situations.)
If you look at a diagram for a smart card sometime, you'll notice how simple the things are. Basically, they fab small RAM, ROM, and processor chips right onto the card itself. This makes them cheaper to produce than wiring components together on breadboard, then encasing them in plastic.
Everyone has USB, why not use this instead of requiring a card reader?
:-)
The only reason is that smart cards are cheap. I can pack all the security info I need on a card that costs $1.00 - $5.00 each. In comparison, a USB key has to have a variety of communications electronics that make its minimum price somewhere arounf $15.00 a key.
So it's really a matter of economics.
Am I the only one who thinks that computers should start shipping with a pack of smart cards? You simply create your identity on the card, then it acts as a universal "computer key" for computers you have access to. i.e. One could think of it as a car key for their computer.
Such a design would be pretty transparent to users, and could easily fit in with the way they expect day to day things to work. You can even recommend that they make a backup card at card creation time, so that they can stash it in a safe place (say they lose their original card or something). When the backup card is inserted, the user would be prompted to revoke the old keys and create a new key set.
You're telling me there are no Mac users (besides myself) that can see The Mysterious Future(TM)? Very well then. Here's a preview of the next article. SuSE 9.2 is out. There, I said it. Now prepare something insightful to say. :-)
Yikes! The replies to this story are completely screwed up. I'm starting to feel sorry I ever tried to make a joke. I figured others would have something more insightful to say. Well, since no one else will, I'll try to say something insightful.
It seems to me that most OS X users are pretty quiet on the topic because they can't find anything to say. Not because they're ashamed, but more because OS X Just Works(TM). Since the OS Just Works(TM), security guidelines like this are nothing more than hints on how to prevent users from accidentally opening security holes.
Contrast this with Windows, where everyone is always looking for the "magic solution" that will allow them to completely close of the machine from attack. Yet Windows insists on requiring various services (e.g. RPC) to be running and publicly available before it will run properly.
Some might argue that OS X is so secure because the developers had an opportunity to view OSes which came before them. This may seem like a reasonable argument, but quickly falls apart once OS X's heritage is investigated. You see, OS X is really the next major release of NeXTSTEPl an OS that pre-dates Microsoft's creation of Windows NT & 95. NeXT got it right back then. Why can't other OS makers get it right today?
Lex: "It's a UNIX system! I know this!"
The skin looks much nicer, but there's a couple of things that still annoy me:
:-)
1. Kill the WikiWords! It was a nice idea when the Wiki was invented, but WikiWords just make documents look unprofessional and more difficult to read. The best thing Wikipedia and MediaWiki ever did was drop the Wikiwords concept. (The former iteration of Wikipedia was quite ugly.)
2. TWiki needs to stop shipping so much default nonsense. The first thing one has to do when they install it, is go through and delete all the extraneous garbage.
Still, TWiki is definitely improving.
If we're talking about HTA applications, then yes. It is possible. Here's an example of an HTML application that reads and writes from disk. The network is obviously easy.
Alternatively, you could install "small" distributions of the server app on people's machines, that replicate themselves like traditional applications.
I think you're missing the point. Most companies don't NEED a massively distributed database. They need a single point to track various business documents and information. Lotus Notes gives them that, and Wikis give them that. Wikis are cheaper and easier.
FWIW, Wiki replication is easy. In many wikis, you're talking about nothing more than a large number of versioned files (similar to RCS). This means that the latest data can be bundled together in a single archive for easy downloading and replication.
No one has done it yet, but it is doable with an HTA application. I'm not sure how you'd handle edits, though. It might be a good idea to either queue them up, or disallow them altogether.
The idea is to divorce the database functionality from the email/calendaring functionality. You could use a regular client for the later (such as Outlook) while you'd develop documents dealing with projects inside the Wiki.
[I]s the whole world going to be using wikis instead of the proprietary dinosaurs like Lotus Notes?
God, I hope so. Lotus Notes is a beast. It stops working whenever it feels like it, and occasionally corrupts the database just to make your day.
OTOH, I don't know if TWiki is the answer. Something like it perhaps, but TWiki itself tends to be unwieldily, visually confusing, and ugly. PHPWiki solved many of the problems by taking the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid!) path, but lost a lot of functionality along the way. MediaWiki (the Wiki that runs Wikipedia) is probably the best compromise, but it lacks some of the security features that make TWiki viable in a corporate environment.
If I had to choose, I'd probably say that extending MediaWiki would result in the best option. MediaWiki is clean, easy to use, and (always important) extremely feature rich. The advantage is that it got that way through several rewrites and careful coding by its maintainers. The disadvantage is that another rewrite might leave you stranded with a difficult upgrade path.
One way or another, a Wiki design is definitely the right idea for corporate "document" databases.
Fine, blame me. As long as we agree to disagree.
Meltdown on the Lenin, 30 unconfirmed.
That's 30 rumored, not unconfirmed. The Lenin's descendent ship, the Yamal, is now the first nuclear cruise ship.
Meltdown on a nuclear sub in Chazhma bay, 10 officers confirmed killed right-out, and large amounts of land contaminated.
1. That's less than the dozen in one event. So count it toward the total to see if we go over 100.
2. The radiation did NOT reach land. From TFA:
124-270,000 people exposed to dangerous levels of radiation at Chelyabinsk, and over 500,000 to high levels (unknown number of deaths resultant)
:-) Still, that's even better. Every man, woman, and child in America gets sufficient amounts of Iodine to prevent issues with Iodine radioisotopes. Which reinforces my point, that Russia's people were malnourished.
:-(
1. The number of deaths was unknown. "Probably in the hundreds" can be counted toward the unconfirmed. Which adds to the "unconfirmed" total.
2. Noticing a pattern? We really should not let the Russians anywhere near nuclear tech.
270,000 people near the Hanford Site were exposed to a lesser degree. Dozens of cancer deaths are attributed to the Windscale Pile accident. An unknown number of deaths from the dumping of huge amounts of radioactive material into rivers, bays, etc (for example, 600,000 gallons of high level waste into Lake Erie and Lake Ontario is just one case). And many other events.
Altogether, we've still haven't reached a dozen in one confirmed event, more than 100 confirmed total, and no more than a few hundred unconfirmed. Meanwhile, coal goes on killing millions, especially in Asian countries where scrubbers can't be afforded.
But as I mentioned, deaths aren't the big problem with radioactive material - it's the fact that it's so darn hard to clean up, and covers such a large area.
Which is a reasonable concern. That's why US regulations are so intent on forcing proper handling of radioactive materials. While many precautions have been taken to make sure that the population wouldn't suffer from such events (food is screened, water is purified, Iodine is fortified, etc.), land damage is always a concern. You'll note that in the 50+ years of nuclear technology, the US has not once unintentionally contaminated a large area of habitable land.
Even TMI (which was full of screw ups) scrammed as designed.
Most iodine that you eat/take in food is in a salt form, such as potassium iodide (I was being kind and assuming that you meant potassium iodide when you said "iodine", which is what you give to people if they're at risk of being exposed to radioactive iodine, and to lesser benefit if they were just exposed). "Regular" iodine (I2) is toxic and is used as a surface disinfectant.
Ok. Seems I was under the mistaken impression that regular iodine was used for fortification. Thanks for the info.
Unfortunately, this hasn't changed all that much, despite the improving economy. My wife says that women over there (even in Moscow!) often have weaker teeth and hair after having a child. This is an unfortunate indication that their bodies are taking nourishment from other areas and giving it to the baby.
You can get out of orbit using any thrust level without changing the required delta-V - the timing just changes. That's why they're able to get out of orbit with ion drives (you spiral somewhat instead of doing a direct Hohmann transf
The idea is that you don't have to rewrite your existing C/C++ programs. i.e. I could make a Mozilla or OpenOffice binary that works on all platforms. This would allow me to switch out the hardware architecture at a whim and still provide customers with backward compatibility. Better than modifying the chip to run old op codes, anyway.
I seem to remember that IBM has an OS out there that already does this. I can't remember what it is, though.
Sorry, forgot about the produce. Here's a link:
6 08325082.html?oneclick=true
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/09/13/1031
My wife is from Russia, so I often hear about the various radioactive fruits on the market illegally. My father-in-law has talked about it a few times when he's been over here as well.
Showing off are we? :-D
That would be an interesting idea, except that TCC only targets Intel chips.
:-)
:-(
That's probably a temporary issue. Someone already mentioned ARM support being available.
It does. Hardly any "real" compiler compiles directly to the target instruction set
I know. Where do you think I got the idea from?
The way I see it, a few minor modifications to GCC and the OS would allow for truly platform independent binaries. When the user installs the program, the GCC on their end would pick up the intermediary code and finish the compile. Voila! One cross-platform binary.
The only thing that worries me are the darn pre-processor instructions. If the preprocessor tailors the code to the platform, then it simply isn't portable at all.
It runs *Right Through Cladded Channels In The Middle Of The Fuel Rods*. RTFA. When the reactor is generating thrust, there *are* high pressure gasses in it.
4 je11.htm
I read TFA, and I still disagree. It's like comparing a super-soaker to pressure cooker. Yes, pressure does force the water through the super soaker, but the pressure is transient. i.e. The super soaker isn't going to blow up from squeezing the trigger, while a pressure cooker may very well do so.
One way or another, we're just arguing semantics here. My point is that the rocket reactor is really nothing like a power generating reactor. The pressure induced in the system is insufficient to cause destruction of the reactor. The only way that would change is if someone plugged the back of the rocket.
If the fire on the plane burned up nuclear material, I'd still count it; it is completely applicable.
Fine. My point was to remove the accidents where a fire caused a plane to go down, but really had no impact on the nuclear materials.
(although your numbers are WAY off; you apparently need to re-read)
Cite a single figure other than Chernobyl where a dozen or more people were confirmed killed by a nuclear accident. How many unconfirmed accidents?
And a sub sinking because its super-structure failed DOES NOT COUNT AS A NUCLEAR ACCIDENT. Neither does a propulsion failure. (The same thing could happen to a diesel sub.) You have to count the incidents where nuclear materials killed people. Otherwise we're just talking industrial accidents. (Thousands of people die of industrial or work related accidents each year.)
Nope. First off, Potassium iodide is designed to reduce, not eliminate the likelyhood of iodine intake.
Who said anything about Potassium Iodine? The standard prevention measure is to make sure people get enough regular iodine. If their system has sufficient iodine, then the body will not attempt to deposit the radioactive iodine. That's why our salt is fortified with Iodine, and why you didn't see widespread thyroid problems when nuclear materials release did occur in the US. (Check your own link.)
http://www.inchem.org/documents/jecfa/jecmono/v02
1. The area to "bulldoze" is three times the size of New Jersey (and you can't just "bulldoze" and be done with it - you need to bring in new material to overlay)).
You obviously wouldn't want to simply clear the entire area outright, but making individual chunks habitable is a doable thing. i.e. Chernobyl the city could be bulldozed and rebuilt. Surrounding areas could be similarly terraformed as is economically feasible.
Then why add the LOX injection? There's no reason for the LOX unless you need to launch from a gravity well.
The article stated quite clearly that it was there to help boost heavier cargos out of orbit. i.e. Exchange some fuel efficiency for greater temporary thrust. This can be important if you're trying to achieve something like a Hohmann transfer, as timing is very critical. If you take too long, your orbit will be misshapen or will miss the target all together.
This could allow for platform independent Linux programs! i.e. If programs could be compiled on the fly from source bundles as an acceptable speed, then there would be no need to distribute binaries any longer. One source bundle, and you'll rule them all!
Failing that, one could always fall back on my previous plan. My thought was that if GCC compiled to P-Code instead of the final binary, the target GCC could complete the P-Code conversion at install time.
My mobile phone costs A LOT more.
:-)
Mine cost about $20, plus a serivce contract. I'm guessing that the phones manage the same function (albeit with fewer bells and whistles).
My sunglasses costs more.
My eyeglasses don't even cost that much. My wife wears sunglasses, but we always get her the cheap ones because she either loses them or breaks them.
My wrist watch costs more.
That better be a Rolex.
My ring.
So does mine (a handsome wedding band), but I'm not likely to lose it.
Honestly, it's great if you're the type of person who can keep track of little things like sunglasses and mobile phones. If you are, a more expensive option is probably warrented. But the rest of us are often too absent minded.
Even if the concern isn't about losing the object, there's still the matter of banging up your portable game console. With a Game Boy, you don't worry quite so much because it's a comparitively cheap device. (i.e. a toy) With a PSP, you suddenly have to treat it as a "serious" device that need excellent care, simply because you spent a lot of money on it.
Two hundred smackers for something you might accidentally leave on the bus. Nintendo has the right idea, I think. $80 for a brand new Game Boy SP, with older models selling at even cheaper prices.
You should visit NuclearSpace.com more often. Several engineers feel that GCNRs are something of a pipe dream at the moment. Solid Core rockets, OTOH, are well understood and tested.
;-)
BTW, who do you think posted the original Slashdot article about the Liberty Ship.
Honestly, the Tory design isn't all that different from the NERVA and Triton designs. So you can somewhat look at the later two as space application of the former.
I think you misunderstood my post. I was not attacking you, but rather addressing the common concerns you presented. The second one is particularly important, as most people (the ones who don't whine about "space pollution" anyway) wouldn't mind nuclear power in "space". In "orbit" is scary, but not in "space". After all, how do sci-fi movie heros always solve the "big explosion" problem? They eject it into space!
If you ever hear either of the arguments you presented, I highly recommend responding with the counter arguments I presented. They are very difficult for people to refute, and may even change their minds about nuclear power.
It's only too bad that there's no way to pass the same information to everyone at once.
Once again: I didn't say PWR!
And you're not listening to me. PWR and LWR ARE pressurized reactors. In the case of the rocket, the reaction mass IS NOT PART OF THE REACTOR. In fact, the reactor runs just fine without any reaction mass. (i.e. The "idling" feature that allows it produce shipboard power.) Lumping it in with the class of pressurized reactors is simply WRONG. Its design is actually far closer to that of Pebble Bed Reactors. The technical class of the reactor is Fast Spectrum Nuclear Thermal Reactor.
There is hot pressurized hydrogen passing through cladded channels right in the middle of the fuel rods.
Erm, not quite. From the article:
BB: Are the CERMET Tungsten fuel elements porous in nature to allow for hydrogen gas flow?
RJ: No, it's of solid nature.
BB: So, Hydrogen gas surrounds for example, a single CERMET tungsten fuel element unit.
RJ: Not quite, the hydrogen flows through each of the elements that have several Tungsten-Rhenium coolant tubes or channels and the fuel element is also cladded on the exterior. Each has a Tungsten-Rhenium cladding that wraps each individual fuel element.
In short, the hydrogen passes near the reactor, and is heated via convection.
First off, I think you need to look at the totality of nuclear power accidents:
Look, I know of just about every nuclear accident that ever happened. And yes, I have read that page. Now try this: remove the items that were conventional accidents with nuclear materials nearby. (e.g. A fire on a plane carrying nuclear weapons, or a submarine sinking from propulsion problems.) Now remove all the accidents where people didn't die. What are you left with? Less than 100 people dead. Only a few hundred if you factor in the "estimated but unconfirmed" deaths.
if you include radiation-induced thyroid cancer, you get around 1,800, most of which were exposed immediately after the fact; there are also 600 people who have returned to the dead zone, who are undoubtedly going to die young
And almost all were successfully treated. If, in fact, these people had Iodine supplements like we use in the US, it is likely that no one would have experienced Thyroid cancer. Again, it's a major tragedy, but it was a preventable one.
The main impact of Chernobyl is how large of a region it ruined, and the impact of it on nuclear power worldwide. As for the area ruined, you can look at a map:
You mean like the coal fires of Centralia, PA destroyed, or the hundreds of thousands of acres destroyed by chemical spills? Industry is destructive. Chernobyl was another type of destructive industry. FWIW, they could probably bulldoze the land (basically burying the radioisotopes) and rebuild (as Hiroshima and Nagasaki did) since the background radiation levels are now acceptable. You probably still wouldn't want to grow anything there for another sixty years (which doesn't seem to stop the Russian fruit market), but otherwise the land is habitable.
Heck, even a non-meltdown accident on such a craft would be disastrous for the nuclear power industry - look at the relatively minor accident at 3 mile island, for example (far from our nation's worst, but it got publicity).
Publicity, but no deaths. Do you ever notice how nuclear "oopsies" always get press, but when chemical companies kill a bunch of people, it gets swept under the rug?
One way or another, we're talking about a space born engine. The engine is not (at least currently) designed for ground firing, and would not be dangerous until it is started. (U235 is pretty safe.) And once the engines are in a high enough orbit, there isn't ANYTHING that's bringing them down short of a retro-boost.