The huge advantage of using one of these device payment systems over taking out your wallet and swiping your credit card is security. When you use a tokenizing NFC payment system, the merchant gets a credit card number that works exactly like a real credit card number, but can only be used once. Nobody can rip you off by skimming the number from the point-of-sale device or by some logger hidden in the store software.
If you want to be a real Luddite, carry wads of cash around everywhere.
"One anecdote that is related indirectly to the topic is the ignorance of the nature of stars. Someone in my family didn't know that stars are like our sun but much further away. "
So after you explained this to her, is she vaccinating her kids again?
There should be enough CS in the general eduction system to do two different things: give all students an appreciation for what software can and can't do and how it works, while identifying and channeling the small number of people who will be able to take it up as a career.
It's an "aviation problem," that's all. Gaining the ability to fly was highly dangerous, but the advantages were so great that there was no way we could not do it.
The place to start with human genetic engineering is by knocking out specific single genes we know are associated with diseases life CF or Tay-Sachs. As we learn more about the genome, we will gradually expand into enhancements, like giving everyone tetrachromat vision. Should be recuse from genetic engineering because of the potential danger? If we did, we would inevitably lose out to societies that were willing to take more risks.
Not for those who practice it, but for the rest of us it should be, so that we will support the scientists rather than being afraid of everything they accomplish.
Making sure that 1 in 1000 kid gets the start in science he or she needs to make those breakthroughs is a worthy goal of science education, but just as important is getting the other 999 kids to understand why science and its applications are wothwhile. If we could accomplish this, we wouldn't have to watch Asian countries stride boldly into the future without us.
Huh? All of Nevada is well-positioned for sunlight. But as compared to, say, the wilds of Esmeralda County, Reno is a nice place to live. So why not locate a data center there?
Where I live, a distant band of coyotes starts baying every morning about 4 am. This causes one hopeful local dog to bark. That dog is our village Tyson, vainly trying to communicate with aliens.
"The building of a new reactor was not delayed by Greenpeace, champ"
This is true. The Green movement has none of the power in Japan that it does in the US and Europe, which accounts for a large fraction of Japan's economic strength since the Seventies, when our own building of industry and infrastructure was stifled by Greenpeace and its even more radical ilk. When I lived in Tokyo during this period, there was an annual antinuclear rally that drew perhaps a hundred people, in a city of over 30 million.
After Fukushima, foreign Greens and their pet journalists swarmed in to fire up a mass movement like the ones in Western countries. Their rallies drew big crowds at first, during the initial "How bad is this going to get?" period, largely by capitalizing in a newfound mistrust of government that flared up after the disaster - in which, remember, the nuclear accident was only a sidebar to the deaths of 16,000 people. As time went on, the initial fears subsided and the antinuclear rallies are back to drawing mostly flies, as before. Today, after a series of extra safety checks, the reactors are being started up again.
The Fukushima issue in Japan revolves around, "How did our reputation for long-term planning fail so spectacularly in Tohoku ('Northeast', their term for the disaster as a whole). Seacoast towns had ancient markers detailing the exact place where historical tsunamis had reached, ignored in the postwar rush for coastal development. After the grid failure prevented Fukushima from maintaining core coolant circulation after shutdown, the crew went to Plan B, which was to hook up fire trucks to maintain the circulation. But, whoopsie, the plumbing connections didn't match. These are the sort of screwups that turn an inconvenience into a meltdown. But because there is no anti-technology movement in Japan, they will figure out how to do better next time.
Looked at in this way, the 'hysteria death toll' from Fukushima was far higher still in the US. At the time I had California relatives calling me to see if my state had secret stockpiles of KI pills that they could draw on after their desperate drives from pharmacy to pharmacy had come up empty. I'm wondering how the number of people who actually moved away from the coasts of the three pacific states, with the usual number of deaths in a migration, compared with the evacuations at the plants. Then you have to consider the "extra" deaths from coal emissions going on longer than they otherwise would have.
"Interestingly, a tidbit is that the children thyroid exposure at Chernobyl was 1000 times that of a child in the Fukushima district."
And a major exacerbating factor at Chernobyl was the crappy Soviet diet. If a cloud of radioactive iodine blows past Russian peasants, their bodies applaud "Yippee! Iodine at last!" not being able to distinguish it from the stable isotope. But when the same thing happens on the Japanese seacoast, the iodine-sated bodies of people with a fishy diet have no particular interest in absorbing it.
That's the plan for Smart Grid. The idea is to have as many different fluctuating sources on the same grid as possible, so that power can be wheeled over short periods o time from one place to the other as demand and supply both fluctuate. The big dream of renewable enthusiasts is that at any moment there will always be enough power coming from somewhere to meet the demand. Control of your major appliances through smart meters is a way of adjusting the demand when necessary.
Not a problem, so long as when space is developed through private efforts, you don't try to establish control over our resource extraction and colonization on behalf of a "nature" you claim doesn't exist up there today.
"We would need a whole new power grid to really make wind and solar work like people want it to"
This is a really significant factor. Utilities propose building a 'smart grid' to accommodate large amounts of renewables, while at the same time adding long-neglected protection against EMP and solar storms. The first component of Smart Grid is the 'smart meter' which continuously monitors load and reports it electronically. Right now my town is embroiled in controversy over installation of smart meters, because all the hippie moms think they emit "radiation" (a word which represents evil to the left, in the same way as "abortion" does for the right) and are paying Arizona Public Service large amounts of extra money to opt out of Smart Meter. I had mine installed about a year ago when they made their installation round, and I haven't grown an extra head yet.
The second generation of Smart Meter is going to generate an even broader controversy, because it will give the utility the German-style ability to switch each subscriber's major appliances on and off as the daily supply changes. If it's windy in South Dakota this morning, Smart Grid will feed that pulse through to Arizona subscribers, whose Smart Meters will turn down everyone's A/C a few extra degrees to absorb the surge, with a corresponding ability to turn off appliances when the supply is low.
Note how the largest single determinant of nuclear cost is the discount, or assumed interest rate. We're missing a huge bargain by not having started to build during this halcyon era of near-zero interest cost.
Slashdot Mirror
This patient seriously needs to move away from San Francisco.
The huge advantage of using one of these device payment systems over taking out your wallet and swiping your credit card is security. When you use a tokenizing NFC payment system, the merchant gets a credit card number that works exactly like a real credit card number, but can only be used once. Nobody can rip you off by skimming the number from the point-of-sale device or by some logger hidden in the store software.
If you want to be a real Luddite, carry wads of cash around everywhere.
The discovery says nothing about past or present life, but it does mean that there WILL be life on Mars.
No, because journalists assume that their entire audience is dumbasses.
"Dude, that's religion racism."
Because religious beliefs are encoded in your DNA, right!
"One anecdote that is related indirectly to the topic is the ignorance of the nature of stars. Someone in my family didn't know that stars are like our sun but much further away. "
So after you explained this to her, is she vaccinating her kids again?
There should be enough CS in the general eduction system to do two different things: give all students an appreciation for what software can and can't do and how it works, while identifying and channeling the small number of people who will be able to take it up as a career.
It's an "aviation problem," that's all. Gaining the ability to fly was highly dangerous, but the advantages were so great that there was no way we could not do it.
The place to start with human genetic engineering is by knocking out specific single genes we know are associated with diseases life CF or Tay-Sachs. As we learn more about the genome, we will gradually expand into enhancements, like giving everyone tetrachromat vision. Should be recuse from genetic engineering because of the potential danger? If we did, we would inevitably lose out to societies that were willing to take more risks.
"You could use the same argument for a lot of drug dealers. "
And we do use exactly that argument.
An "illegal market" is the kind that arises naturally.
"Pretty sure "the future" is available to everyone, so it's really not clear what you're trying to say."
Let me make it a little more clear:
http://maunaawakea.com/posts/l...
http://dgrnewsservice.org/2015...
"Science isn't supposed to be fun."
Not for those who practice it, but for the rest of us it should be, so that we will support the scientists rather than being afraid of everything they accomplish.
Yes, I Fucking Love Science and I'm proud of it.
Making sure that 1 in 1000 kid gets the start in science he or she needs to make those breakthroughs is a worthy goal of science education, but just as important is getting the other 999 kids to understand why science and its applications are wothwhile. If we could accomplish this, we wouldn't have to watch Asian countries stride boldly into the future without us.
Huh? All of Nevada is well-positioned for sunlight. But as compared to, say, the wilds of Esmeralda County, Reno is a nice place to live. So why not locate a data center there?
Where I live, a distant band of coyotes starts baying every morning about 4 am. This causes one hopeful local dog to bark. That dog is our village Tyson, vainly trying to communicate with aliens.
We're not looking for directed communications, but for accidental 'leakage'.
"The building of a new reactor was not delayed by Greenpeace, champ"
This is true. The Green movement has none of the power in Japan that it does in the US and Europe, which accounts for a large fraction of Japan's economic strength since the Seventies, when our own building of industry and infrastructure was stifled by Greenpeace and its even more radical ilk. When I lived in Tokyo during this period, there was an annual antinuclear rally that drew perhaps a hundred people, in a city of over 30 million.
After Fukushima, foreign Greens and their pet journalists swarmed in to fire up a mass movement like the ones in Western countries. Their rallies drew big crowds at first, during the initial "How bad is this going to get?" period, largely by capitalizing in a newfound mistrust of government that flared up after the disaster - in which, remember, the nuclear accident was only a sidebar to the deaths of 16,000 people. As time went on, the initial fears subsided and the antinuclear rallies are back to drawing mostly flies, as before. Today, after a series of extra safety checks, the reactors are being started up again.
The Fukushima issue in Japan revolves around, "How did our reputation for long-term planning fail so spectacularly in Tohoku ('Northeast', their term for the disaster as a whole). Seacoast towns had ancient markers detailing the exact place where historical tsunamis had reached, ignored in the postwar rush for coastal development. After the grid failure prevented Fukushima from maintaining core coolant circulation after shutdown, the crew went to Plan B, which was to hook up fire trucks to maintain the circulation. But, whoopsie, the plumbing connections didn't match. These are the sort of screwups that turn an inconvenience into a meltdown. But because there is no anti-technology movement in Japan, they will figure out how to do better next time.
Looked at in this way, the 'hysteria death toll' from Fukushima was far higher still in the US. At the time I had California relatives calling me to see if my state had secret stockpiles of KI pills that they could draw on after their desperate drives from pharmacy to pharmacy had come up empty. I'm wondering how the number of people who actually moved away from the coasts of the three pacific states, with the usual number of deaths in a migration, compared with the evacuations at the plants. Then you have to consider the "extra" deaths from coal emissions going on longer than they otherwise would have.
"Interestingly, a tidbit is that the children thyroid exposure at Chernobyl was 1000 times that of a child in the Fukushima district."
And a major exacerbating factor at Chernobyl was the crappy Soviet diet. If a cloud of radioactive iodine blows past Russian peasants, their bodies applaud "Yippee! Iodine at last!" not being able to distinguish it from the stable isotope. But when the same thing happens on the Japanese seacoast, the iodine-sated bodies of people with a fishy diet have no particular interest in absorbing it.
As more people understand this tradeoff, the enthusiasm for small renewables will decline.
That's the plan for Smart Grid. The idea is to have as many different fluctuating sources on the same grid as possible, so that power can be wheeled over short periods o time from one place to the other as demand and supply both fluctuate. The big dream of renewable enthusiasts is that at any moment there will always be enough power coming from somewhere to meet the demand. Control of your major appliances through smart meters is a way of adjusting the demand when necessary.
Not a problem, so long as when space is developed through private efforts, you don't try to establish control over our resource extraction and colonization on behalf of a "nature" you claim doesn't exist up there today.
Hanford is a weapons plant, whose troubles are of no relevance to the commercial power industry.
"We would need a whole new power grid to really make wind and solar work like people want it to"
This is a really significant factor. Utilities propose building a 'smart grid' to accommodate large amounts of renewables, while at the same time adding long-neglected protection against EMP and solar storms. The first component of Smart Grid is the 'smart meter' which continuously monitors load and reports it electronically. Right now my town is embroiled in controversy over installation of smart meters, because all the hippie moms think they emit "radiation" (a word which represents evil to the left, in the same way as "abortion" does for the right) and are paying Arizona Public Service large amounts of extra money to opt out of Smart Meter. I had mine installed about a year ago when they made their installation round, and I haven't grown an extra head yet.
The second generation of Smart Meter is going to generate an even broader controversy, because it will give the utility the German-style ability to switch each subscriber's major appliances on and off as the daily supply changes. If it's windy in South Dakota this morning, Smart Grid will feed that pulse through to Arizona subscribers, whose Smart Meters will turn down everyone's A/C a few extra degrees to absorb the surge, with a corresponding ability to turn off appliances when the supply is low.
Note how the largest single determinant of nuclear cost is the discount, or assumed interest rate. We're missing a huge bargain by not having started to build during this halcyon era of near-zero interest cost.