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User: Jack_Frost

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  1. Parent post was insightful right up to the bait. on Task Force Finds Blackout Was Preventable · · Score: 1

    I'll bite. Your attitude betrays your own ignorance and prejudiced sterotypes about the United States. Many Americans are concerned about energy, energy policy, and conservation.

    The screed on driving everywhere is easy to understand if you've never been the U.S. Lots of Americans live in cities and can commute on foot in places like Manhattan. That is simply not practical in a state like Kansas or Iowa. The countryside is vast. Hell we have a state the size of the entire European continent. Texas is the same size as France. We're working on a different scale which isn't easy to appreciate without having seen the rolling plains of the Midwest first hand.

  2. The article glosses over a significant source of H on The End of the Oil Age · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The linked article (gasp I read it first) notes that hydrogen can be generated from any electrical source, even nuclear. Electrolysis is an energy intensive process - using the electrical output of a nuclear plant to crack water would be a waste of useful electricity. Radiolysis, the breakdown of water into hydrogen and oxygen by the action of neutrons, is a by-product of the nuclear reaction in water moderated reactors (virtually every commercial nuclear plant in the U.S.).

    Using the nuclear reactors to make electricity, sans greenhouse emissions, and siphoning off the hydrogen evolved from radiolysis is a much more efficient solution. One pound of nuclear fuel ( 5% U-235) can generate an absurd amount of hydrogen. A lot more than the electricity evolved from that same amount of fuel could through electrolysis.

  3. Off the top of my head... on European Moon Mission Ready for Launch · · Score: 1

    No need to design a complicated solar array when a simple RTG will do. They are essentially solid state with no moving parts at all, making them very easy to assemble on the surface of the moon.

    Additionally I am unfamiliar with the efficiency and durability of Lunar era solar cells, it may well be that the RTG was a more reliable power source.

  4. They don't need RTG's because of solar proximity. on European Moon Mission Ready for Launch · · Score: 3, Informative

    Solar panels work great when you're this far into the solar system. From Mars and beyond the solar intensity is much lower and solar panels would need to be prohibitively large and heavy to provide the same amount of power as a 45 pound radioisotope thermal generator.

  5. You are lending your only copy... on Orson Scott Card on mp3 File Sharing · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Which is perfectly within your First Sale and Fair Use rights. No new copy has been created, thus there is no question of a copyright violation.

    The situation is quite a bit different if you burn a copy for each of your friends in the neighborhood.

  6. Add the "Dune Lite" books to that list... on New Heinlein Novel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Brian Herbert's books are cereal box covers compared to the depth of the originals turned out by Frank Herbert. Still though, I won't call this graverobbing until I read it.

  7. Scandal! on When 54 Mbps isn't 54 Mbps: 802.11g's Real Speed · · Score: 3, Funny

    100 Megabit Network does not actually deliver 100 Megabit transfer speeds. Film at 11.

  8. Bayesian Filtering Should Still Work. on The Growing Field Guide To Spam Techniques · · Score: 2, Informative

    My Bayesian filter analyzes the message in raw text, including any HTML tags. A handful of HTML "enhanced" spams might make it through the first few times until I classify the new messages as junk. Once that happens the filter learns that random HTML tags increase the chances of it being spam and it's off to the junk pile.

  9. None of the drives tested support all DVD formats. on DVD Burner Round-up · · Score: 1

    Murphy's law says that as soon as I buy one standard compliant model the entire market will shift to the other.

    Given the current standards mix I have to disagree with the article's claim that DVD's will become a standard within a year's time. None of the profiled drives offer totally compatibility with the competing +/- R and RW standards. There are several drives from other manufacturers that support all four formats for about the same price though.

  10. "Linux TiVo..." on New Linux PVR Box · · Score: 1

    TiVo runs on Linux of course.

    It's funny because it's true.

  11. Or Plan B - Use nuclear reactors... on Widespread Use of Hydrogen May Hurt Ozone Layer · · Score: 1

    Radiolysis is a very efficient means to crack water. An ultra-low emissions system would use reactors to generate both electricity and large volumes of hydrogen as a by-product. The electricity has obvious uses and the hydrogen can be used as a portable source of energy for combustion applications, etc.

    It would require a large investment in new reactor types but in the long run it would be a very cheap and clean method of driving a hydrogen economy.

    Ill-informed public opinion will be the greatest obstacle though.

  12. Except for that whole reduced boiling point thing. on Force Field. No, Really · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The body can stand immense positive pressure, but nasty things happen with very low pressures. The boiling points for things like water (which your flesh has in abundance) come way down. Check out the water phase diagram sometime. Interesting things happen at sufficiently low pressures, like room temperature boiling, sublimation, etc that are beyond the normal intuitive understanding of everyday materials.

  13. It's too late for that... on New Ultra-Intrusive Pop-up Ads Introduced · · Score: 5, Funny

    RealMedia has cornered the market on "ass penetrating" software for the past several years.

  14. Any software in particular you use? on Rabid TiVo Fanaticism · · Score: 1

    I'm in the process of installing a TurboNet card in my TiVo and enabling shell access, ftp, etc. Ultimately I want to push stuff to my computer in the same manner as you described.

    Do you have any software recommendations for stripping ads and the like?

  15. A TiVo is a luxury item, why bash it for the fee? on Tivo 2 Features On the Horizon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    TiVo is, in my humble opinion as a TiVo user, the best thing that's happened to TV. Posters who complain about the fee, saying that the same services can be had for free simply don't get it. It's a luxury item, my monthly fee pays for a service that I find highly valuable, and for $15 a month it's well worth it.

    If you're interested in assembling your own computer PVR that's great, go ahead. But for me, and tons of other TiVo users, the value of TiVo can't be beat. The time it would take to cobble together and support a home-rolled box is non-trivial and personally, my time is worth more than the paltry fee I pay each month.

    It's just like any other luxury item or service. I drive a sports-lux sedan because I value the extra pleasure I derive from driving it. If you don't want to drive a sports sedan that's fine, but your preference doesn't invalidate the choice for the rest of us that are willing to pay for it.

  16. Check out "Six Degrees of Separation" on Will Smith as I, Robot · · Score: 1

    Will Smith made that quite a while ago before he was a huge box office draw. Not a bad movie and he does show off some range outside of the comedic lead roles he's been doing recently.

  17. I agree that waste heat is produced by powerplants on LANL Warning About Radioactive Trees · · Score: 1

    That's true for any steam plant. Thermal efficiency for fossil and nuclear plants is about the same ~ 34% (with fossil plants being slightly more thermally efficient due to superheating). That's due to thermodynamics and can't really be changed.

    Zero emissions in the context of power plants refers to greenhouse gases, arsenic releases, air pollution releases, etc. Fossil plants produce millions of tons of these emissions each year.

    Look at it another way: the thermal and water vapor effects caused by power plants cannot be used to distinguish between nuclear and fossil fueled steam plants. If you were shown statistics on waste heat from various power stations you would not be able to distinguish nuclear from fossil stations. If you were to look at CO2 emissions you'd see a night and day difference. Sort of a Turing test for power stations if you will.

    There are currently 442 operating nuclear power stations in the world. Assuming they produce an average of 1000 megawatts electrical output each gives a total capacity of 442,000 megawatts. The total thermal output would be approximately three times this number, (132600 megawatts) roughly 1.33 terawatts.

    That's the total thermal output... the waste energy must be some fraction of that total number. We assumed that 1/3 of the thermal output was converted to electricity leaving a little less than .9 terawatts of waste heat being released by nuclear stations alone. Nearly *one* terawatt, not terawatts.

    I'm just nitting back but your point is a valid one.

  18. Correct... on LANL Warning About Radioactive Trees · · Score: 1

    Exposing living tissue to radiation without the attenuation caused by the epidermis would result in higher doses, but the smoke itself is a much more immediate threat to your health, as your sagebrush experience demonstrates.

  19. Bzzzt... thanks for playing the FUD game on LANL Warning About Radioactive Trees · · Score: 1

    A 1000 megawatt (that'd be a gigawatt) power station generates approximately 3400 megawatts of thermal power (that'd be 3.4 gigawatts). A terrawatt is 1000 gigawatts, or 1,000,000 megawatts.

  20. Not really... the dose levels are still really low on LANL Warning About Radioactive Trees · · Score: 5, Informative

    You're still talking about a few hundred millirem per year... only about twice what you'd receive from the sun at the same elevation. You need about 50 REM in the space of a few hours to alter blood cells. Inhaling the smoke would lead to slightly higher dose rates, but in that case the smoke will kill you long before the exposure does anything to the living tissue.

  21. Wooden missles? on LANL Warning About Radioactive Trees · · Score: 5, Funny

    Aren't those more commonly known as "arrows?"

  22. That's the beauty of Bayesian filters... on Mozilla Adding Spam Filters · · Score: 1

    It's based on the spam that *you* receive. You train it on the messages that you actually receive, based on what you think counts as spam. I'm totally enamored with Popfile (a stand alone Bayesian mail proxy). It's just about bulletproof now after one week of training.

  23. Slight mistake in the article... on Run Your Laptop On Nuclear Energy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Of the three types of decay radiation alpha particles are the safest, then beta, and finally gamma. Alpha particles are bare helium nuclei while a beta particle is basically a free electron. Alpha cannot penetrate the skin, and will only travel about 1 inch in air before it snags a couple electrons and turns into regular helium. Beta particles are much lighter and tend to have higher energies. They can penetrate skin but will be shielded by thin layers of metal or plastic. Though in a battery casing this wouldn't matter much.

  24. Oh so they want forged headers to be illegal? on Direct Marketers Association Asks To Be Regulated · · Score: 1

    Here's an idea. Give them their law, along with the opt-out model, but tack in a stipulation that all legal spam has to have an identifier in the header that clearly marks it as spam so I can filter it out.

    Or will not reading DMA spam be stealing?

  25. That's transparent alumina... on Using Microwaves to Drill Through Glass · · Score: 1

    Alumina is Al203, a very stable oxide of aluminum. Its properties are entirely different from aluminum and making a ceramic clear isn't that novel.