Name someone who's sacrificed more and has more dedication to serving his nation than John McCain
Let me actually take a moment to say something here, because I do think it's important: John McCain is probably the man with the strongest integrity of all the candidates. He has had one hell of a life, but he has lived it fully in the service of others. There is a lot to be proud of there.
That being said, he scares me as a presidential candidate. The same drive and determination that has brought him through horrific times that most of us can't even imagine is the same drive that often gets him in trouble. He'll get an idea in his head, then he will bullishly run it through to conclusion. The problem is, his facts may be incomplete, making for some rather... undesirable outcomes.
That's my 2 cents, anyway. Take it for what it's worth.
For a while, Opera was giving away their browser for Wii users. Now you have to pay if you want to access the Internet using your Wii, and Opera is your only choice.
And your point is... ? Nintendo and Opera made no secret about the fact that the Internet Channel was going to cost money. The reason why it was free for a time was that the browser was in public beta testing. The early testers had to put up with constant crashes, freezes, corrupted renderings, and a rather primitive user interface. But Opera used the feedback on the browser to create the superior final product. Those who had participated in the beta got to keep the browser at no cost.
So get your facts straight, eh? You made it sound like they did something evil.
And yes, I agree that fingering DU as the culprit of sicknesses in a modern war zone is silly. Maybe if the environmentalists looked at the hundreds of other chemicals dumped by warfare combined with the poor water and sewage in affected areas, they might find a more realistic cause.
Uranium is not a big deal in most forms. Plutonium comes in two primary forms, though: One that's relatively cool and useful for nuclear weapons (Pu-239), and another that's hotter than hades and not really good for touching (Pu-238).:-)
point exactly. sophistication is needed to enrich nuclear materials.
Which was actually my point. You suggested that it was "easy" for individuals or militant groups to obtain nuclear weaponry. Yet they can't do it without a heavy industrial base to create Uranium and/or reactors. In the grand scheme of things, it's a lot easier to enrich uranium than it is to make an implosion bomb. (If any of the aspects of construction are off by even the slightest bit, the bomb will NOT fission.)
P.S. 10 PPM of uranium in coal is hardly "loaded"
It's more than enough. Any more and it would Uranium, not coal.:-P
There is 350% more roof top space on buildings alone than is needed to supply all US electricity given current technology.
You need to provide cites for this and the other statements you made. Because I can tell you right now that your figures are WAY off. At best they sound like back of the envelope calculations that rely on best-cases and ignore the realities of real-world solar and wind usage. At worst, they sound simply made up.
Think of it this way: If there is 350% more rooftop space than necessary to power the power entire infrastructure, then there is enough power in an ideal situation for a single home to convert. What is the ideal situation? A single-story family home with a roof. That home must be capable of generating at least 350% of the home's energy needs to meet your figures. Once you factor in tall structures like skyscrapers, family homes will need to generate far in excess of 350% in order to make up the difference of the non-power producing surfaces of these buildings.
Running features like computers, monitors, TVs, heaters, air conditioners, stoves, refrigerators, and lights can easily place the average home's power requirements in the area of dozens of kilowatts. Some back of the envelope calculations might suggest that it's possible to power a home using solar panels on the roof (e.g. an 80x16 ft manufactured home would have a theoretical output of 61kW using the "new" 40% efficient solar panels), but those calculations ignore a great number of problems with solar power.
For one, roofs aren't flat. You will get different power outputs at different points of the roof at different times of day. Secondly, the light fall on the earth (1.3kW/m^2) is significantly reduced by atmospheric reflection and is thus not consistent in all locations. Areas along the equator will receive a greater amount of light energy than areas in the United States. Thirdly, solar panels are high maintenance. Unless they are kept 100% clean at all times, the power generation will drop significantly from the time of install. Fourthly, any obstruction (shadow from a tree, leaves blowing, birds, clouds, etc.) will reduce the power generated. Fifthly, power generation is significantly impacted by seasons where the Earth's distance from the sun impacts the amount of solar radiation we receive. Finally, we have such a thing as nightfall. Unless you have a method of easily storing terajoules of energy for when power production drops off, you can forget about Solar being the primary driver of the electrical grid.
Wind has even more problems that I won't go into as I've already used up way too much space.
Cite sources for your information. Otherwise it's as good as made up.
And? The point was reactor grade plutonium can be, and has been, successfully used in nuclear weapons.
No, the point was that you claimed nuclear materials other than Uranium and Plutonium have been used. Now you're doing an about-face. Which is it?
No, the whole point is the only thing complicated is making the material, and simple weapon, is VERY easy.
I don't know what to tell you other than I use multitouch on my MacBook every day. Two fingers to scroll, two fingers + Click to right click*, and a whole host of other multitouch features I haven't turned on or figured out how to use yet. (I've had my new MacBook for about a month.) I know for a fact that I don't have a MacBook Pro. Mine is a mid-range, 13", white MacBook that you can find here.
Searching the 'net, I see no reason to doubt your information except for the fact that I use multi-touch features on my laptop. So they probably snuck it into the last refresh of the model and simply didn't make a big deal out of it. (Being a big selling point for the pricer Pro models and all.)
* I love this feature as it finally lets me get rid of the attachment mouse I was keeping around for Remote Desktop sessions to Windows machines. CTRL+Click sadly doesn't work for RDP sessions.:-(
Also, plutonium has very little radiation emitted from it, in fact so does uranium, you can get away with holding either in your bare hand for a short period of time with no problems what so ever
Larger pieces of plutonium [238] give off sufficient heat to boil water.
They also forgot to mention that it glows red hot from its own heat. So good luck with that.:-P
it's when ingested that the problems arise.
To date, there is no clinical evidence that Plutonium is dangerous to digest. It is such a touch metal that it tends to pass through the thickly lined digestive tract without causing too many problems. Plutonium tends to be more of a concern when inhaled, where it can get lodged in the soft tissues of the lungs and cause problems. Thankfully, that's incredibly difficult to do.
You're probably thinking of isotopes like Sr-90 which is chemically similar to Calcium and is thus deposited into bones by your body, thus exposing the sensitive marrow to radiation.
If we shut down the world-wide nuclear power industry - and supplant it with renewables (for instance), it becomes very easy to manage the flow of nuclear materials, there world becomes a much safer place.
There are two critical flaws in that statement:
1. You can't manage the flow of nuclear materials. Uranium is literally (yes, literally) found in your back yard. All that coal we burn in coal-fired plants? Loaded with uranium. Shutting down the world-wide nuclear power industry would do zilch to stop a rouge, industrialized country from developing nuclear weapons technology.
2. "Renewables" is a buzz word with no actual meaning. We can generate SOME power off of sources like wind, solar, geothermal, and waves, but there's currently no technology capable of replacing our infrastructure. All those technologies combined still wouldn't manage to meet our current energy demands. With current technologies, they can only manage a few percent of our current power generation needs.
If a "renewable" technology really existed that could economically replace our existing infrastructure, you can bet that power companies would be all over it. It's bloody difficult to build a power plant these days, which is part of the reason why they have tried to appease the public by installing alternative power generation technologies.
Uranium isn't the only weaponizable material. Many of the fuels or waste materials of breeders, pebble beds, etc can be used to form a critical mass.
Uranium and Plutonium are the only materials that have been successfully weaponized. It is currently beyond reason to expect a country with a fledgling nuclear program to be capable of doing the R&D to produce a next-generation nuclear weapon that uses alternative materials and/or avoids pre-detonation/fizzling.
You need to keep in mind that you aren't looking for a mere critical reaction. You're looking for a super-critical reaction. If the reaction is not super-critical, all you get is a molten lump of radioactive material.
We are coming to a point, that the technology is so easy given sufficient nuclear material generation, and lots of plants world-wide, that individuals and groups could have their own nuclear weapons.
I think you underestimate the degree of industrial capacity required to produce nuclear weapons. Any "individual" attempting to own a nuclear weapon would be likely to kill himself with a large radiation dose long before he succeeded in creating his device. Look up the radioactive boyscout sometime for a story of a kid (and later as an adult!) who attempted to construct his own nuclear reactor. Things didn't quite go as planned.
(The bIOS flash utilities I've found for that model require a working OS, and this one fails about 30 seconds after boot. )
Oh yes, I forgot about that. Ugh. Did you ever see the useless flying duck? I hated that duck. Worst BIOS interface ever. I haven't been in the Thinkpad BIOS's in a long time, but I hope they've since repaired that hideous design fault.
So what is the hard part? Getting the fissile materials. For that you need nothing other than one of a number of nuclear reactor designs. For this reason alone, the US should lead the world in not using Nuclear technologies.
Uranium is enriched without a reactor. All that's needed is heavy industry to separate the isotopes and make yellowcake. So your argument against reactors makes no sense. I would actually argue the opposite: Developing nuclear industry will help control the technology for positive uses. e.g. The "portable" reactors are designed to be tamper-proof in that they are sealed and can easily be checked for signs of tampering. That would prevent the "bad guys" from using the nuclear materials while still providing them with the benefits of nuclear power.
In general, it's not a good idea to suppress disruptive market forces. The end result of the suppression usually does a great deal more damage than embracing the change.
I was using a 10 year old Thinkpad up until 6 months ago. They are rock solid machines.
It's funny, because my experience has always been the opposite. When I was supporting those laptops, we had MORE failures with Thinkpads than with any other laptop we worked with. Yet the business folks kept demanding them because they were "fit for an executive".
Plus no one will be questioning my sexuality.
Question all you want. I have work to do, which my Apple will get done a lot better than any Thinkpad I've ever used. (Speaking from personal experience of just having had my MacBook handy while stuck on the tarmac for three hours. I love the battery life on these new units, too.)
I would be mighty impressed if you got a NEW battery for a 5 year old laptop for only $50. Batteries for older hardware get more expensive over time, not less.
802.11g wireless card is $30 and goes in the mini-PCI slot where the useless modem was. No dongles.
Except for that huge antenna sticking out. And the majority of older laptops would have to go the PCMCIA route, which is both expensive and requires more to stick out.
You've spent at least $600 and have a laptop that smells like a chemical factory. I've spend $400 and have a laptop and $200 left in my pocket.
I've spent at least $600 and have a piece of hardware which will serve me well over the next five years and keeps up with my computing needs. You've spent $200 for something that is likely to be unreliable and will continue to drain money from you, albeit not up front.
The way I see it, there's no real reason to throw good money after bad. If he needs a better laptop, shell out the dough and get a better laptop. Don't screw around with a money pit or you'll end up shelling out just as much in the long run. (Need a new battery? Oops. More money. LCD backlight getting dim? More money. Need Wifi? Keep bleeding.) Even worse, you'll have all kinds of weird dongles hanging out just to upgrade to support modern features like Wifi and Bluetooth. (Assuming he doesn't already have the optical disc and floppy drive dongling.:-P)
On the other hand, upgrading RAM, keyboard and hard drive don't get you a smaller (netbook-style) computer, a new battery, or the transflective screen on the Toshiba linked above.
Amen. Not to mention that the plastic casing is almost certainly weaker than a new laptop, making it more susceptible to damage. Just pay the $1099 and get a new MacBook. You'll get the latest in WiFi and Bluetooth capabilities, a beautiful TFT screen, a fast dual-core processor, plenty of RAM, a battery that's new, battery life that his 5 yr old laptop could only dream about when it was new, a massive hard disk, a multi-touch touchpad (cue nipple-warriors), and a better operating system. All in all, a pretty good deal.;-)
If the code you posted is the best obfuscated Java code you can come up with, then I'm impressed. I've seen MUCH worse Perl, C, and even Python. Your code was at least understandable (albeit unnecessarily obtuse), thus demonstrating the unexpected readability advantages of the Java language.
Strictly speaking, water is a highly stable molecule and cannot become radioactive. Radioactive liquids in reactor areas come from two sources:
1. Contaminates in the water can be irradiated and become mildly radioactive. This can be mediated by using a pure form of water or heavy water.
2. The water is pumped directly past the radioactive materials. Some of the material erodes and is carried by the water. This can be mediated by physically separating the water from the actual materials, and actually using the "spent" materials rather than leaving them to sit in a cooling pool.
is Plutonium (the waste) way more radioactive then the fuel (Uranium)?
Yes. Natural uranium produces very little radiation. It isn't until it's enriched and undergoes fission that it gives off massive amounts of radiation. (Which is actually GOOD in this case, because we use those radioactive particles to heat the working fluid in the generators.)
After the uranium is burned via fission, a number of unstable isotopes remain. These isotopes will decay into other materials until they reach a stable state. This decay produces radiation of various types. Generally speaking, anything that's extremely "hot" will not remain so for very long. Since mass is being directly converted into energy, an isotope that gives off a lot of radiation will reach a less dangerous state faster than an isotope that gives off lower levels of radiation. This works to our advantage as contaminated areas can become safe for cleanup operations fairly quickly. (e.g. The wildlife in the Chernobyl area has already returned and adapted to the higher levels of radiation. In addition, the Chernobyl area is LESS radioactive than some areas of naturally occurring radiation where people are already present and thriving.)
As for what to do with the waste, the best solution is to burn it in a reactor. e.g. PU-239 is a natural by product of the U-238 that even highly enriched uranium contains. It's useful for implosion nuclear weapons (super-hard to construct), but it's also useful as a fuel to further power the nuclear plant. Once the fuels are no longer useful for power generation, they often become useful for a number of industrial, medical, and (*gasp!*) consumer applications. As a result, nearly all of the fuel can eventually be used.
Q: So why is there a problem with nuclear waste? A: Because politicians think that fuels like PU-239 are too dangerous because terrorists or foreign nationals might get hold of the materials and make an implosion bomb. (Did I mention that such bombs are incredibly hard to make?) As a result, they let the spent fuel rods sit in cooling pools where they pile up and become a disposal problem.
The odd part is that the government seems unconcerned that the Uranium fuel rods currently in use are very useful in creating a gun-type bomb. Gun-type bombs are easy to create. Any country with a strong enough industrial base could easily produce a gun-type weapon. Gun-type weapons are dangerous because the chances of the nuclear weapon going off by accident are fairly high in comparison to implosion bombs. But if your aim is to get the bomb by any means necessary, it doesn't seem like a big problem. Especially compared to the incredible amount of effort and testing that has to go into creating an implosion weapon.
Long story short: No, you can't put the materials back in the ground. Thankfully, there is no real reason to do so.
I got as far as "Lik Sang was a pirate company" before I gave up. You don't work for Sony do you?
Lik Sang didn't pirate anything. They were an importer of Japanese goods; many of which were extremely high quality. The company that Sony crushed had the same name as a previous company that sold mod-chips (a legal gray area) but they were not that company. They sold stuff like LCD-compatible light-guns and Japanese-only games.
I won't even bother replying to the rest. Pearls before swine and all that.
Rootkit? Rootkit?!?! You think that's the only reason why people are pissed at Sony? My own decision to boycott them was long after that debacle. Let's look at a short list of some of Sony's many transgressions:
- Rootkit - Irresponsible handling of exploding battery situation - Failure to take responsibility for warrantied CCD failures - Legally crushing Lik-Sang for (ohmygosh) importing the PS3 - Playing customers for stupid with their "All I want for Christmas is my PSP" astroturfing campain
Sony has a demonstrated track record of disdain for their customers. As long as they maintain that disdain, I do not feel the need to be their customer. (Which is upsetting, because I used to see Sony as a great company.)
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That being said, he scares me as a presidential candidate. The same drive and determination that has brought him through horrific times that most of us can't even imagine is the same drive that often gets him in trouble. He'll get an idea in his head, then he will bullishly run it through to conclusion. The problem is, his facts may be incomplete, making for some rather... undesirable outcomes.
That's my 2 cents, anyway. Take it for what it's worth.
*Badoom Crash!* Thank you, I'll be here all week. Be sure to try the quiche!
And your point is... ? Nintendo and Opera made no secret about the fact that the Internet Channel was going to cost money. The reason why it was free for a time was that the browser was in public beta testing. The early testers had to put up with constant crashes, freezes, corrupted renderings, and a rather primitive user interface. But Opera used the feedback on the browser to create the superior final product. Those who had participated in the beta got to keep the browser at no cost.
So get your facts straight, eh? You made it sound like they did something evil.
Thanks, good to know! Wish I'd figured that out a long time ago. :-P
And yes, I agree that fingering DU as the culprit of sicknesses in a modern war zone is silly. Maybe if the environmentalists looked at the hundreds of other chemicals dumped by warfare combined with the poor water and sewage in affected areas, they might find a more realistic cause.
Uranium is not a big deal in most forms. Plutonium comes in two primary forms, though: One that's relatively cool and useful for nuclear weapons (Pu-239), and another that's hotter than hades and not really good for touching (Pu-238). :-)
Which was actually my point. You suggested that it was "easy" for individuals or militant groups to obtain nuclear weaponry. Yet they can't do it without a heavy industrial base to create Uranium and/or reactors. In the grand scheme of things, it's a lot easier to enrich uranium than it is to make an implosion bomb. (If any of the aspects of construction are off by even the slightest bit, the bomb will NOT fission.)
It's more than enough. Any more and it would Uranium, not coal. :-P
You need to provide cites for this and the other statements you made. Because I can tell you right now that your figures are WAY off. At best they sound like back of the envelope calculations that rely on best-cases and ignore the realities of real-world solar and wind usage. At worst, they sound simply made up.
Think of it this way: If there is 350% more rooftop space than necessary to power the power entire infrastructure, then there is enough power in an ideal situation for a single home to convert. What is the ideal situation? A single-story family home with a roof. That home must be capable of generating at least 350% of the home's energy needs to meet your figures. Once you factor in tall structures like skyscrapers, family homes will need to generate far in excess of 350% in order to make up the difference of the non-power producing surfaces of these buildings.
Running features like computers, monitors, TVs, heaters, air conditioners, stoves, refrigerators, and lights can easily place the average home's power requirements in the area of dozens of kilowatts. Some back of the envelope calculations might suggest that it's possible to power a home using solar panels on the roof (e.g. an 80x16 ft manufactured home would have a theoretical output of 61kW using the "new" 40% efficient solar panels), but those calculations ignore a great number of problems with solar power.
For one, roofs aren't flat. You will get different power outputs at different points of the roof at different times of day. Secondly, the light fall on the earth (1.3kW/m^2) is significantly reduced by atmospheric reflection and is thus not consistent in all locations. Areas along the equator will receive a greater amount of light energy than areas in the United States. Thirdly, solar panels are high maintenance. Unless they are kept 100% clean at all times, the power generation will drop significantly from the time of install. Fourthly, any obstruction (shadow from a tree, leaves blowing, birds, clouds, etc.) will reduce the power generated. Fifthly, power generation is significantly impacted by seasons where the Earth's distance from the sun impacts the amount of solar radiation we receive. Finally, we have such a thing as nightfall. Unless you have a method of easily storing terajoules of energy for when power production drops off, you can forget about Solar being the primary driver of the electrical grid.
Wind has even more problems that I won't go into as I've already used up way too much space.
Cite sources for your information. Otherwise it's as good as made up.
No, the point was that you claimed nuclear materials other than Uranium and Plutonium have been used. Now you're doing an about-face. Which is it?
That was never a que
I don't know what to tell you other than I use multitouch on my MacBook every day. Two fingers to scroll, two fingers + Click to right click*, and a whole host of other multitouch features I haven't turned on or figured out how to use yet. (I've had my new MacBook for about a month.) I know for a fact that I don't have a MacBook Pro. Mine is a mid-range, 13", white MacBook that you can find here.
Searching the 'net, I see no reason to doubt your information except for the fact that I use multi-touch features on my laptop. So they probably snuck it into the last refresh of the model and simply didn't make a big deal out of it. (Being a big selling point for the pricer Pro models and all.)
* I love this feature as it finally lets me get rid of the attachment mouse I was keeping around for Remote Desktop sessions to Windows machines. CTRL+Click sadly doesn't work for RDP sessions. :-(
From http://chemistry.about.com/od/elementfacts/a/plutonium.htm:
They also forgot to mention that it glows red hot from its own heat. So good luck with that. :-P
To date, there is no clinical evidence that Plutonium is dangerous to digest. It is such a touch metal that it tends to pass through the thickly lined digestive tract without causing too many problems. Plutonium tends to be more of a concern when inhaled, where it can get lodged in the soft tissues of the lungs and cause problems. Thankfully, that's incredibly difficult to do.You're probably thinking of isotopes like Sr-90 which is chemically similar to Calcium and is thus deposited into bones by your body, thus exposing the sensitive marrow to radiation.
There are two critical flaws in that statement:
1. You can't manage the flow of nuclear materials. Uranium is literally (yes, literally) found in your back yard. All that coal we burn in coal-fired plants? Loaded with uranium. Shutting down the world-wide nuclear power industry would do zilch to stop a rouge, industrialized country from developing nuclear weapons technology.
2. "Renewables" is a buzz word with no actual meaning. We can generate SOME power off of sources like wind, solar, geothermal, and waves, but there's currently no technology capable of replacing our infrastructure. All those technologies combined still wouldn't manage to meet our current energy demands. With current technologies, they can only manage a few percent of our current power generation needs.
If a "renewable" technology really existed that could economically replace our existing infrastructure, you can bet that power companies would be all over it. It's bloody difficult to build a power plant these days, which is part of the reason why they have tried to appease the public by installing alternative power generation technologies.
Uranium and Plutonium are the only materials that have been successfully weaponized. It is currently beyond reason to expect a country with a fledgling nuclear program to be capable of doing the R&D to produce a next-generation nuclear weapon that uses alternative materials and/or avoids pre-detonation/fizzling.
You need to keep in mind that you aren't looking for a mere critical reaction. You're looking for a super-critical reaction. If the reaction is not super-critical, all you get is a molten lump of radioactive material.
I think you underestimate the degree of industrial capacity required to produce nuclear weapons. Any "individual" attempting to own a nuclear weapon would be likely to kill himself with a large radiation dose long before he succeeded in creating his device. Look up the radioactive boyscout sometime for a story of a kid (and later as an adult!) who attempted to construct his own nuclear reactor. Things didn't quite go as planned.
Oh yes, I forgot about that. Ugh. Did you ever see the useless flying duck? I hated that duck. Worst BIOS interface ever. I haven't been in the Thinkpad BIOS's in a long time, but I hope they've since repaired that hideous design fault.
Uranium is enriched without a reactor. All that's needed is heavy industry to separate the isotopes and make yellowcake. So your argument against reactors makes no sense. I would actually argue the opposite: Developing nuclear industry will help control the technology for positive uses. e.g. The "portable" reactors are designed to be tamper-proof in that they are sealed and can easily be checked for signs of tampering. That would prevent the "bad guys" from using the nuclear materials while still providing them with the benefits of nuclear power.
In general, it's not a good idea to suppress disruptive market forces. The end result of the suppression usually does a great deal more damage than embracing the change.
It's funny, because my experience has always been the opposite. When I was supporting those laptops, we had MORE failures with Thinkpads than with any other laptop we worked with. Yet the business folks kept demanding them because they were "fit for an executive".
Question all you want. I have work to do, which my Apple will get done a lot better than any Thinkpad I've ever used. (Speaking from personal experience of just having had my MacBook handy while stuck on the tarmac for three hours. I love the battery life on these new units, too.)
I would be mighty impressed if you got a NEW battery for a 5 year old laptop for only $50. Batteries for older hardware get more expensive over time, not less.
Except for that huge antenna sticking out. And the majority of older laptops would have to go the PCMCIA route, which is both expensive and requires more to stick out.
I've spent at least $600 and have a piece of hardware which will serve me well over the next five years and keeps up with my computing needs. You've spent $200 for something that is likely to be unreliable and will continue to drain money from you, albeit not up front.
The way I see it, there's no real reason to throw good money after bad. If he needs a better laptop, shell out the dough and get a better laptop. Don't screw around with a money pit or you'll end up shelling out just as much in the long run. (Need a new battery? Oops. More money. LCD backlight getting dim? More money. Need Wifi? Keep bleeding.) Even worse, you'll have all kinds of weird dongles hanging out just to upgrade to support modern features like Wifi and Bluetooth. (Assuming he doesn't already have the optical disc and floppy drive dongling. :-P)
If you're stingy and don't need a lot of power, sure. Personally, I would go mad trying to use one of those things. :-P
Amen. Not to mention that the plastic casing is almost certainly weaker than a new laptop, making it more susceptible to damage. Just pay the $1099 and get a new MacBook. You'll get the latest in WiFi and Bluetooth capabilities, a beautiful TFT screen, a fast dual-core processor, plenty of RAM, a battery that's new, battery life that his 5 yr old laptop could only dream about when it was new, a massive hard disk, a multi-touch touchpad (cue nipple-warriors), and a better operating system. All in all, a pretty good deal.
It's a beta-emitter. Use tin-foil instead.
If the code you posted is the best obfuscated Java code you can come up with, then I'm impressed. I've seen MUCH worse Perl, C, and even Python. Your code was at least understandable (albeit unnecessarily obtuse), thus demonstrating the unexpected readability advantages of the Java language.
P.S. Import statements are your friend.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_JVMs
Strictly speaking, water is a highly stable molecule and cannot become radioactive. Radioactive liquids in reactor areas come from two sources:
1. Contaminates in the water can be irradiated and become mildly radioactive. This can be mediated by using a pure form of water or heavy water.
2. The water is pumped directly past the radioactive materials. Some of the material erodes and is carried by the water. This can be mediated by physically separating the water from the actual materials, and actually using the "spent" materials rather than leaving them to sit in a cooling pool.
Yes. Natural uranium produces very little radiation. It isn't until it's enriched and undergoes fission that it gives off massive amounts of radiation. (Which is actually GOOD in this case, because we use those radioactive particles to heat the working fluid in the generators.)
After the uranium is burned via fission, a number of unstable isotopes remain. These isotopes will decay into other materials until they reach a stable state. This decay produces radiation of various types. Generally speaking, anything that's extremely "hot" will not remain so for very long. Since mass is being directly converted into energy, an isotope that gives off a lot of radiation will reach a less dangerous state faster than an isotope that gives off lower levels of radiation. This works to our advantage as contaminated areas can become safe for cleanup operations fairly quickly. (e.g. The wildlife in the Chernobyl area has already returned and adapted to the higher levels of radiation. In addition, the Chernobyl area is LESS radioactive than some areas of naturally occurring radiation where people are already present and thriving.)
As for what to do with the waste, the best solution is to burn it in a reactor. e.g. PU-239 is a natural by product of the U-238 that even highly enriched uranium contains. It's useful for implosion nuclear weapons (super-hard to construct), but it's also useful as a fuel to further power the nuclear plant. Once the fuels are no longer useful for power generation, they often become useful for a number of industrial, medical, and (*gasp!*) consumer applications. As a result, nearly all of the fuel can eventually be used.
Q: So why is there a problem with nuclear waste? A: Because politicians think that fuels like PU-239 are too dangerous because terrorists or foreign nationals might get hold of the materials and make an implosion bomb. (Did I mention that such bombs are incredibly hard to make?) As a result, they let the spent fuel rods sit in cooling pools where they pile up and become a disposal problem.
The odd part is that the government seems unconcerned that the Uranium fuel rods currently in use are very useful in creating a gun-type bomb. Gun-type bombs are easy to create. Any country with a strong enough industrial base could easily produce a gun-type weapon. Gun-type weapons are dangerous because the chances of the nuclear weapon going off by accident are fairly high in comparison to implosion bombs. But if your aim is to get the bomb by any means necessary, it doesn't seem like a big problem. Especially compared to the incredible amount of effort and testing that has to go into creating an implosion weapon.
Long story short: No, you can't put the materials back in the ground. Thankfully, there is no real reason to do so.
Holy cow. Pot calling kettle black.
I got as far as "Lik Sang was a pirate company" before I gave up. You don't work for Sony do you?
Lik Sang didn't pirate anything. They were an importer of Japanese goods; many of which were extremely high quality. The company that Sony crushed had the same name as a previous company that sold mod-chips (a legal gray area) but they were not that company. They sold stuff like LCD-compatible light-guns and Japanese-only games.
I won't even bother replying to the rest. Pearls before swine and all that.
You're the guy Spock nerve-pinched on bus, aren'tcha?
Rootkit? Rootkit?!?! You think that's the only reason why people are pissed at Sony? My own decision to boycott them was long after that debacle. Let's look at a short list of some of Sony's many transgressions:
- Rootkit
- Irresponsible handling of exploding battery situation
- Failure to take responsibility for warrantied CCD failures
- Legally crushing Lik-Sang for (ohmygosh) importing the PS3
- Playing customers for stupid with their "All I want for Christmas is my PSP" astroturfing campain
Sony has a demonstrated track record of disdain for their customers. As long as they maintain that disdain, I do not feel the need to be their customer. (Which is upsetting, because I used to see Sony as a great company.)