"it would be really nice to see the other UN nations with a humanitarian bent take some real action."
yes but 'officially' the war has been over since 2003, i mean having 11 bands of roving armed militias killing and raping wherever they please isn't a 'war' after all they're not taking over territory, just raping, killing and looting... even if they've been doing it for 5 years running...
they even hold elections you see, and they kill people for not voting, even though there was only one guy on the ballot to vote for..
why ever would the UN do anything about several countries that have fallen into anarchy, even if they were places that once fed much of africa...
you might want to take a lesson in the great African war, that has been going on (no the press don't cover it much, they're just black folks killing other black folks, after all, it's not newsworthy... )
the war has made it very hard to be a civilian, even one on a farm. food shortages are very serious, and any food sent in for aid is confiscated by military groups.
when the technology to feed billions falls apart, with no way to sustain it, it will involve war, not half starved masses. after all gunpowder is a renewable resource, and any easily melted metal can be used for slugs.
besides, technology to feed people isn't about to collapse any time soon, yeah the price of food is up massively, and globally, but the actual resources needed are not even close to running out.
the oil companies are claiming that if America would drill more wells in places where we have oil there would be 60 years of supply... but some of those resources are expensive to tap, which is why they haven't been tapped when oil was cheap, and the current oil predictions assumes that people won't develop these reserves, some of which the DOE hasn't even categorized, because the resources were not being tapped for environmental concerns...
anyways, i doubt a massive world war is about to break out anytime soon, unless Africa is some how unified, despite everyone trying to kill everyone else...
Besides, there is more than enough wind energy, and solar to power all the machines needed to support massive mechanized farming, if conventional energy becomes too expensive it only makes renewable energy seem cheaper by comparison.
people starving because they cant afford food at the 'new' prices, might not cause massive riots etc, and it certainly won't cause massive starvation especially in first world nations... well except America, where there Is a poverty cast who can barely feed themselves..personally i live far enough from the cities that could have riots over food and energy price problems to not have to worry, and besides, riots are just riots, they can't persist if they starve to death.
it sucks to be poor, especially if you are working and don't meet requirements for food stamps etc...
there are nice constant dessert regions where solar power can be generated every day, because the number of cloudy days are numbered in the single digits. HVDC looses less than 3% of the power and is viable for any stretch beyond 600 km.
yeah, HVDC adds cost, and complexity, but being able to get power every day, store it, use it at night whatever, especially on worthless land you can snap up for a fraction of the cost of renting space on a warehouse... and you would be renting space there, they wouldn't' let you put stuff up there without paying for it... plus the not knowing you're going to generate power, even having to rent space...
well, it makes remote power generation, and shipping it seem like the more reasonable approach. how much do you think warehouse district space in California would run, compared to buying land in death valley, and using HVDC to sell the power to Californians, at a premium, because its 'green' energy...
yeah, i think the buying worthless land model works better, look at how well it worked for las vegas.
the ice that's melting is all sea ice, the sea water is melting the ice..
thus there has been no flooding, ice floating on top of water, is already in equilibrium.
Besides, i've always banked on plate tectonics preventing costal flooding, you could say i'd wager the combo of all that wight coming off land, with the effect of putting all that weight on the sea, will cause geological shits in heights and depths of tectonic plates.
the amount of geothermal energy available in iceland and greenland would tend to vie for my theory, that all that volcanic activity is a result of the ice having melted in the past, or as a result of the weight of the ice etc...
coastal flooding is just fear mongering, we don't have the science to prove it, and unlike global warming we don't have any evidence of it already happening.
okay, i should have wiki'd 8 hours in an office is equivalent to 1 minute of sun exposure, the question is if that low a UV exposure can create any vitamin D or not.
did they say you need as much uv as the sun to make vitamin d? where is the cut off, how low of an exposure can create enough vitamin d.
i am not a scientist, if the body is in need for D it might possibly be able to make vitamin D faster than if it doesn't need it... there are a lot of factors.
well, perhaps a republican can explain to me how a 'big government' democrat like bill clinton could shut down the government 3 times, because the congress spent too much in their budgets, while 8 years of dubba have caused a catastrophic rise in the national debt, nearly doubling it.
i realize, dubba is being called a republican in name only, but then where does that put clinton? a democrat in name only? Dinos and rinos oh my.
well, i have seen some very bad looking windows, that completely distorted the view, as one of those people that 'bought' into the idea that glass can flow, it never occurred to me to think that a brand new window, 40 years age would come with enough distortions to be visible clearly visible... i think i have photos of it, and i know we still have the window, but it has been replaced with a modern, perfect distortion free low-e glass...
also optical grade glass is made differently from ordinary glass. oh well. but 40 years ago they should have had the technology to make good windows, after all television sets need good optical grade glass, perhaps the people that owned the place used cut rate glass made from older technology and thus it had all the imperfections from day 1...
I use fluorescent, compact fluorescent lighting, and LED lighting exclusively, and they're All based on converting (some) of the UV light into white light. oh yeah, i bought like 4 'reading' CF bulbs one winter to see if constant exposure could reduce the effects of SAD (and verified the amount of light was enough by growing tomatoes indoors as a sideline to the project)
So, do modern lighting arrays provide enough UV exposure, without putting massive arrays of CF bulbs?
i know lots of people still use conventional bulbs, but i switched in the 90s and i don't feel a need to go back, nor did i have a vitamin d deficiency when i was tested for all my blood work
"Thorium has a short enough half-life that a thorium fuel rod would contaminate itself with helium-3 which would shutdown the fission reaction by the time you shipped the thorium rod from the factory and installed it."
nobody said we'd use thorium 231 or 234, which have half-lives of 25 hours and 24 days respectively. the research is on thorium 232*, which has a half life of 1.405Ã--10 ^10 years. a billion year half life is plenty stable, thanks, and the research isn't on pure thorium anyways, because thorium doesn't emit the neutron radiation necessary to get fission from thorium, usually plutonium is used, since plutonium is good at giving off neutrons.
thorium reactors are a reality, the science behind them is pretty basic, take the right isotope of thorium, with a cheap neutron source, and you get very cheap, vastly more widely available atomic energy.
*= there are actually 4 isotopes of thorium with long enough half lives to be usable, and only 2 that aren't. I'm not sure if any of them besides 232 is unstable enough to be a fission source, though.
"The Linux update system you are talking about is similar to Windows Update and Windows Update does not require "login/pass" to work.
Companies/Organisations typically use SMS and similar sort of update software in order to: 1) update THEIR own (custom, 3rd party) software, and 2) to have more control over it (less bandwidth used, updates only happen on known dates).
So in this case Linux wouldn't work so well either, they'd to do the same thing which could have similar problems username/password incorrect, repository pointed to out of date address etc."
two things with linux, a typical linux repository will have all the software you need, if not, the source is open, and you can contribute code to the community to implement features you need, so a repository is nothing like windows update, it's more like have a 50 DVD set of every software package imaginable, but you only download and install the ones you need.
if for whatever reason company deploying linux wants to use proprietary software, all they need to do is build their own repository, have a private key, and do exactly what winehq has done http://www.winehq.org/site/download-deb
only instead of posting the key on a webserver, the sysadmins manually install the key on every pc, or however you want to roll your own repository. Windows Update can't compare, to what a good repository system can do, and here you don't need a login/pass just a generic repository key, and all the code can be closed source even!
the best thing is that by rolling your own repository, you can mix n match open source with closed source, and create dependencies on existing Free open source software to cut your deployment time over a completely proprietary system.
"There is no excuse for giving someone a used laptop or workstation that hasn't been cleaned."
2006 called, the polymorphic rootkit, with BIOS memory infection, and automagical reinstallation, that can't be detected by 100% of specialized malware/rootkit removal software, unless it hasn't been triggered on a system yet.
It's a lot harder to wipe every bios in a computer system, all at the same time, without loading windows... have you ever tried to reload a DVD or CDrom bios? it's always a windows tool ugh, HDD makers don't even disclose how to replace the firmware on a HDD, because they're corporate secrets' corporate secrets available to mafia hackers, for the right price, you didn't think that $30 hdd came from modernization of production of HDDs did you, it still costs an awful lot to make a HDD, if it wasn't for kickbacks from organized crime...
if you get a polymorphic self reinstalling virus, there are 2 options. 1. switch to linux. 2. throw it away. I've been spending the past year since they let me out of the mental hospitals trying to find a way to 'clean' a polymorphic bios infecting windows rootkit that was released in 2006. if it supports your bios, you're hosed, it just keeps coming back.
FWIW i do have the verified bios of an infected system, my dad's PC bios tools allowed the corrupted bios to be saved to a floppy, prior to my reflashing it, checksums verified it was not the version it reported on boot ups, and i submitted it to several AV research places... it's scary to claim a format and reinstall will purge all malicious code, when circa 2006 it no longer is a guarantee.
There fixed that for you. HD encryption with do nothing to protect you from windows based malware.
do you ever wonder why at hacking competitions, the linux laptop never gets hacked? its because tools to hack linux systems just don't exist. it's too hard, linux is written too well, and hackers get paid to hack windows or apple PCs, apple at least has 3% market share, linux has what? 0% of desktop computers? every hack against linux, is against linux servers, because there ARE linux servers. and some of them get neglected for years even with critical security vulnerabilities announced and patches available.
when there is a Backdoor.exe on the system that downloads pr0n everytime a net connection is enabled, that's almost as good as a DNA fingerprinting to proove that that MR so and so is innocent.
So the moral of the story? if you're going to download kiddy porn at work, r00t your system with a nice backdoor, that does the same.
great, now all the pedos can still dl porn, but someone caught in a tubgirl/goatse redirect has nothing to protect them from being fired.
you're forgetting something important here, most hackers nowadays work for various organized crime families.
script kiddies are a bit different, as are sysadmins who have enough technical knowledge to use script kiddie tools, etc.
extortion is a classic of crime families, put the pr0n on your system, then you're over a barrel, and they can extort you because you'll get sacked, and the market is weak, if they report you, and you probably don't have the technical knowledge etc to fix it, if you did, then the hackers probably wouldn't have got you.
anyways, its a scary world using windows on the internet. i have 3 firewalls. and i Still don't feel safe. I've gotten to the point where i power off my system and short all the RAM leads* between switching HDDs to boot to use the internet on windows, vs using software i don't trust, and i can't afford to replace right now...
I'm seriously considering switching to wine, for playing games online, i'm pretty sure my favorite internet game works with wine. if i do, the user that plays online games won't have sudo/su permissions, i know that much.
if it wasn't for linux, i probably would never use a computer on the internet ever again.
*= i am paranoid schizophrenic, shorting the ram leads to ensure no memory is left written between boots with a piece of tinfoil is now part of my daily routine
"The initial accuser was eventually found to suffer paranoid schizophrenia and severe chronic alcoholism."
If you had that mental illness, you'd understand that to that person everything they say is happening is more real that anything anyone else can tell you about anything, no matter how crazy what they say is happening is.
but it only affects 1% of people, so there aren't many routine screenings, and even specialists have a hard time pinpointing the mental illness, because in every other way, the person seems totally normal, except they get really really afraid of problems they believe are real.
other than one doctor when i was a child, nobody even thought i had a mental illness until i got to age 30, and started to have severe side effects. nobody had even thought twice about any of my fears, or my lack of socialization, which was driven by fears... until i was so sick i was loosing whole months to blackouts (blackouts are a very severe effect usually only seen in unmedicated adults with Paranoid schizophrenia)
alcohol is used by a lot of the 'mentally ill' as a patch for the problems caused by their mental illness, drinking makes them feel the same as everyone else... helps them get through life with a mental illness... ironically some drugs can a make side effects more noticeable, but alcohol is a sedative, and many anti psychotic meds are sedatives. so you can to a small degree self medicate with alcohol.
Linux would have helped, instead of having a sophisticated network system where you need a valid login/pass to get access to the updates for your computer system... all the updates needed come from trusted repositories, no password or login needed, oh and, if the end user isn't given permission to install software, instead of having a dumb script on the system that logs in to a server, there can be a central server that runs a script that logs in as the admin user on each system to force updates, without having to create a new login/pass every time a new user grabs a linux laptop.
linux doesn't fix the dancing pigs problem, but by being a inherently secure platform, remote administration isn't a joke feature thrown in as a 'buzz' word to movie more copies and try to avoid loosing important corporate customers to more secure products.
Linux would have solved All the problems this company ran into. As a matter of fact, i've run across compromised windows systems where even after a format with a DOD level file system erase were automatically reinfected by malware that had corrupted the bios of the motherboard. the only thing that worked, was switching those machines to linux, and reflashing the bios (because it kept having problems with stability until the bios was reflashed)
and if you think, well security software must have caught up by now, the sad truth is that about 3% of malware and rootkits released in 2006 are Actually protected against by security suites. the problem is, the way windows lets any administrator process to re write almost any file instantly, and any file with a reboot.
once the software infects, disinfecting a system is very hard, doing a complete wipe, and flash of all programmable chips (optical drive, the main bios, there are even viruses that can infect the memory of a HDD's internal controller, which isn't normally accessible to the end user) a lot of people just throw computers away when the malware comes back, after a format.
windows really really pisses me off more and more everyday because of how the way windows was designed, despite decades of end user knowledge in developing secure UNIX systems for college campuses, all because windows was completely managed by greedy, profiteers who didn't care a whit about how things were designed as long as they were number one, and had no serious competitors.
oh and hey, even if the guy was running linux, and it wasn't auto updating, since it was a desktop and not a server, it probably wouldn't have run any of the popular programs hackers who target linux target.
"The waste produced by a coal plant is more radioactive [sciam.com] than nuclear waste"
you know, the radium could be used in breeder reactors, and the thorium in thorium reactors
the problem is that coal companies just dump the stuff in mines and landfills, we could be using the results of burning coal for electricity to make important nuclear fuel, cheaply, that would allow more and more safe, practical nuclear energy, perhaps to create the 'hydrogen' economy to switch vehicles from burning oil, to either burning hydrogen, or to use fuel cells to produce electricity from hydrogen.
too bad we're putting radioactive materials into the soil and water, instead of using it to make more fuel, that would make nuclear power even more attractive. (imo, nuclear is the only attractive fuel source that isn't base on renewable green energy)
if you spend 1/3rd of your income, on housing that comes to $2,500 a month, on 87k, i don't know how much taxes takes, at that bracket, and raw salary has nothing to do with stock options etc.
apple was hot and big early in the computer years, if you sold high, and then bought back in low, before the ipod, and osx skyrocketed apple to new heights.. and hey they showed quite a few people in lines to get iphones, and a few people have said 'if you're used to a mouse, touch screen smartphones are the only way to browse mobile'
so, basically if you can get stock options, apple is still riding waves of enthusiasm, being the defacto choice of portable mp3 players... apple computer is doing quite well in consumer PC sales, it's a good time to be an apple employee.
if anything, vista has helped apple computer become even more popular as a consumer brand, and if you are banking on windows 7 being any better than vista, well... nothing is impossible, but all the snow in hell won't stop microsoft from being microsoft... they've done things the same basic way since they were founded... windows 95 was bad, win 98 better, win me was bad, win2k/xp better, vista was bad, windows 7 will be better, windows 8 will suck, then windows 9 will get it right... but by then you'll need a quantum computer with a flux capacitor to begin the processing a week before you tried to boot the system up to get decent performance..
i was reading a review site the other day, and directx9 ran almost everything faster than directx 10. yet another reason to avoid vista.
just see how glowing all the reviews of windows 7 are, after all the struggle with vista that sucked... it's almost like MS intentionally releases crummy software so we can see how much better an upgrade to the hottest latest thing can be. almost, the mac commercial about people downgrading to xp was a classic, though...
"Have you ever tried sitting on a desk in front of a 46" Monitor? I wouldnt be able to work (or game) "
in my specific setting i will be 4 feet from the monitor on my couch. a desk it might be harder, but i know how i'm building my next system, and where i'm using it, my fall back plan if to have a computer desk, in front of the tv stand my hdtv is on, i'll still be 2-3 feet away, which is plenty. my folks just got a 50" tv, so i have a really good idea just how far back i need to sit, i wasn't thinking in the least about working, since I've never been able to handle anything harder than working at a taco bell.
as for where i'm getting the money, and why i have to spend it, don't blame me, blame the way social security is set up, if they had approved me on day 1 i would have had a tiny little back pay check, and i wouldn't have had enough to waste on a $4 grand home entertainment system. but they didn't approve me, and it will still be some time before i'm on disability, but once i get the cash, i only have 6 months to get rid of all but 2 grand of it, although a burial trust is also exempt (a limited one though, no frills by today's standards) anyways, I've already been researching HDTV sets for use with PCs, and just about every set i've seen that actually had a VGA input on the back looked as crystal clear from 2-3 feet away as a real LCD monitor.
you brought up an excellent point. i thought the same thing--so i did it. hooked up a beautiful 40" 1080p LCD TV to my computer (but keep in mind u need a DVI-HDMI converter).
But a big problem occured that I didn't account for. Eveyrthing is blurry and all text and images look like crap. Forget even being close to sharp. Everything looks like it was run through high JPEG compression.
As it turns out, LCD TV's can't do lower than 96 dpi. most LCD *monitors* do much lower, which we take for granted--it makes monitors look so sharp. So unfortunately, unless u barely use ur computer or u just don't care, that 30" or or any LCD monitor for that matter, is necessary. which set, specifically were you looking at? some sets literally do run the image through some form of conversion/compression. some LCD tvs actually Are computer monitor guts, YMMV but there are sets that can do better than 96dpi.
you specifically mentioned a 'dvi to hdmi' cable, the set i'm looking at has a standard VGA jack in the back. with a dvi to hdmi link, you have to be very careful, to use a DVI-dual link cable that converts to HDMI, if you use a half link cable, there won't be enough bandwidth for 1080P resolution, if you bought your cable on the cheap, it could be the very cable you bought that causes the image to look like crap. also, DVI even in DVI dual mode uses GTF blanking, a process whereby frames are blanked by the system to achieve the resolution needed for display.
maybe you should have researched your purchase harder, there are sets that run all inputs through an image filter, to make SDTV look better, when it's detected, and even to make HD signals from lossy sources (like digital cable) look better.
the linked newegg monitor was given 5 stars by several PC users, including at least one HTPC user.
I plan on buying a new HDtv and using it as a monitor with a gaming pc, but whichever model i go with, it will have to be well reviewed for up close viewing, and as being great to hook a PC up to it with.
Slashdot Mirror
"it would be really nice to see the other UN nations with a humanitarian bent take some real action."
yes but 'officially' the war has been over since 2003, i mean having 11 bands of roving armed militias killing and raping wherever they please isn't a 'war' after all they're not taking over territory, just raping, killing and looting... even if they've been doing it for 5 years running...
they even hold elections you see, and they kill people for not voting, even though there was only one guy on the ballot to vote for..
why ever would the UN do anything about several countries that have fallen into anarchy, even if they were places that once fed much of africa...
you might want to take a lesson in the great African war, that has been going on (no the press don't cover it much, they're just black folks killing other black folks, after all, it's not newsworthy... )
the war has made it very hard to be a civilian, even one on a farm. food shortages are very serious, and any food sent in for aid is confiscated by military groups.
when the technology to feed billions falls apart, with no way to sustain it, it will involve war, not half starved masses. after all gunpowder is a renewable resource, and any easily melted metal can be used for slugs.
besides, technology to feed people isn't about to collapse any time soon, yeah the price of food is up massively, and globally, but the actual resources needed are not even close to running out.
the oil companies are claiming that if America would drill more wells in places where we have oil there would be 60 years of supply... but some of those resources are expensive to tap, which is why they haven't been tapped when oil was cheap, and the current oil predictions assumes that people won't develop these reserves, some of which the DOE hasn't even categorized, because the resources were not being tapped for environmental concerns...
anyways, i doubt a massive world war is about to break out anytime soon, unless Africa is some how unified, despite everyone trying to kill everyone else...
Besides, there is more than enough wind energy, and solar to power all the machines needed to support massive mechanized farming, if conventional energy becomes too expensive it only makes renewable energy seem cheaper by comparison.
people starving because they cant afford food at the 'new' prices, might not cause massive riots etc, and it certainly won't cause massive starvation especially in first world nations... well except America, where there Is a poverty cast who can barely feed themselves..personally i live far enough from the cities that could have riots over food and energy price problems to not have to worry, and besides, riots are just riots, they can't persist if they starve to death.it sucks to be poor, especially if you are working and don't meet requirements for food stamps etc...
there are nice constant dessert regions where solar power can be generated every day, because the number of cloudy days are numbered in the single digits. HVDC looses less than 3% of the power and is viable for any stretch beyond 600 km.
yeah, HVDC adds cost, and complexity, but being able to get power every day, store it, use it at night whatever, especially on worthless land you can snap up for a fraction of the cost of renting space on a warehouse... and you would be renting space there, they wouldn't' let you put stuff up there without paying for it... plus the not knowing you're going to generate power, even having to rent space...
well, it makes remote power generation, and shipping it seem like the more reasonable approach. how much do you think warehouse district space in California would run, compared to buying land in death valley, and using HVDC to sell the power to Californians, at a premium, because its 'green' energy...
yeah, i think the buying worthless land model works better, look at how well it worked for las vegas.
you forgot drink coffee that was shat out by a civet.
really, you mention rubbing yourself in poo, but forget drinking Coffee from an animal's feces?!?!?
the ice that's melting is all sea ice, the sea water is melting the ice..
thus there has been no flooding, ice floating on top of water, is already in equilibrium.
Besides, i've always banked on plate tectonics preventing costal flooding, you could say i'd wager the combo of all that wight coming off land, with the effect of putting all that weight on the sea, will cause geological shits in heights and depths of tectonic plates.
the amount of geothermal energy available in iceland and greenland would tend to vie for my theory, that all that volcanic activity is a result of the ice having melted in the past, or as a result of the weight of the ice etc...
coastal flooding is just fear mongering, we don't have the science to prove it, and unlike global warming we don't have any evidence of it already happening.
non-stop siberia to iceland, in the same time it takes to get from new york to england!
i'd think all the iceburgs would make it a bit risky, think of all the drowned pirates!
it's counter-intuitive, but just as timberwolves are good for deer, polar bears are good for seals.
because there are polar bears eating the slow, weak seals, the strong healthy seals have better feeding grounds, and are less likely to go hungry.
okay, i should have wiki'd 8 hours in an office is equivalent to 1 minute of sun exposure, the question is if that low a UV exposure can create any vitamin D or not.
did they say you need as much uv as the sun to make vitamin d? where is the cut off, how low of an exposure can create enough vitamin d.
i am not a scientist, if the body is in need for D it might possibly be able to make vitamin D faster than if it doesn't need it... there are a lot of factors.
well, perhaps a republican can explain to me how a 'big government' democrat like bill clinton could shut down the government 3 times, because the congress spent too much in their budgets, while 8 years of dubba have caused a catastrophic rise in the national debt, nearly doubling it.
i realize, dubba is being called a republican in name only, but then where does that put clinton? a democrat in name only? Dinos and rinos oh my.
well, i have seen some very bad looking windows, that completely distorted the view, as one of those people that 'bought' into the idea that glass can flow, it never occurred to me to think that a brand new window, 40 years age would come with enough distortions to be visible clearly visible... i think i have photos of it, and i know we still have the window, but it has been replaced with a modern, perfect distortion free low-e glass...
also optical grade glass is made differently from ordinary glass. oh well. but 40 years ago they should have had the technology to make good windows, after all television sets need good optical grade glass, perhaps the people that owned the place used cut rate glass made from older technology and thus it had all the imperfections from day 1...
I use fluorescent, compact fluorescent lighting, and LED lighting exclusively, and they're All based on converting (some) of the UV light into white light. oh yeah, i bought like 4 'reading' CF bulbs one winter to see if constant exposure could reduce the effects of SAD (and verified the amount of light was enough by growing tomatoes indoors as a sideline to the project)
So, do modern lighting arrays provide enough UV exposure, without putting massive arrays of CF bulbs?
i know lots of people still use conventional bulbs, but i switched in the 90s and i don't feel a need to go back, nor did i have a vitamin d deficiency when i was tested for all my blood work
and the wiki-nazis took the page down.
google has a cache yet.
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:Mi0h0YEwLp8J:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clerk_Maxwell+James+Clerk+Maxwell&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us&client=firefox-a
"Thorium has a short enough half-life that a thorium fuel rod would contaminate itself with helium-3 which would shutdown the fission reaction by the time you shipped the thorium rod from the factory and installed it."
nobody said we'd use thorium 231 or 234, which have half-lives of 25 hours and 24 days respectively. the research is on thorium 232*, which has a half life of 1.405Ã--10 ^10 years. a billion year half life is plenty stable, thanks, and the research isn't on pure thorium anyways, because thorium doesn't emit the neutron radiation necessary to get fission from thorium, usually plutonium is used, since plutonium is good at giving off neutrons.
thorium reactors are a reality, the science behind them is pretty basic, take the right isotope of thorium, with a cheap neutron source, and you get very cheap, vastly more widely available atomic energy.
*= there are actually 4 isotopes of thorium with long enough half lives to be usable, and only 2 that aren't. I'm not sure if any of them besides 232 is unstable enough to be a fission source, though.
"The Linux update system you are talking about is similar to Windows Update and Windows Update does not require "login/pass" to work.
Companies/Organisations typically use SMS and similar sort of update software in order to:
1) update THEIR own (custom, 3rd party) software, and
2) to have more control over it (less bandwidth used, updates only happen on known dates).
So in this case Linux wouldn't work so well either, they'd to do the same thing which could have similar problems username/password incorrect, repository pointed to out of date address etc."
two things with linux, a typical linux repository will have all the software you need, if not, the source is open, and you can contribute code to the community to implement features you need, so a repository is nothing like windows update, it's more like have a 50 DVD set of every software package imaginable, but you only download and install the ones you need.
if for whatever reason company deploying linux wants to use proprietary software, all they need to do is build their own repository, have a private key, and do exactly what winehq has done http://www.winehq.org/site/download-deb
only instead of posting the key on a webserver, the sysadmins manually install the key on every pc, or however you want to roll your own repository. Windows Update can't compare, to what a good repository system can do, and here you don't need a login/pass just a generic repository key, and all the code can be closed source even!
the best thing is that by rolling your own repository, you can mix n match open source with closed source, and create dependencies on existing Free open source software to cut your deployment time over a completely proprietary system.
then there is ntfsclone... too, part of a larger suite of tools.
http://man.linux-ntfs.org/ntfsclone.8.html
"There is no excuse for giving someone a used laptop or workstation that hasn't been cleaned."
2006 called, the polymorphic rootkit, with BIOS memory infection, and automagical reinstallation, that can't be detected by 100% of specialized malware/rootkit removal software, unless it hasn't been triggered on a system yet.
It's a lot harder to wipe every bios in a computer system, all at the same time, without loading windows... have you ever tried to reload a DVD or CDrom bios? it's always a windows tool ugh, HDD makers don't even disclose how to replace the firmware on a HDD, because they're corporate secrets' corporate secrets available to mafia hackers, for the right price, you didn't think that $30 hdd came from modernization of production of HDDs did you, it still costs an awful lot to make a HDD, if it wasn't for kickbacks from organized crime...
if you get a polymorphic self reinstalling virus, there are 2 options. 1. switch to linux. 2. throw it away. I've been spending the past year since they let me out of the mental hospitals trying to find a way to 'clean' a polymorphic bios infecting windows rootkit that was released in 2006. if it supports your bios, you're hosed, it just keeps coming back.
FWIW i do have the verified bios of an infected system, my dad's PC bios tools allowed the corrupted bios to be saved to a floppy, prior to my reflashing it, checksums verified it was not the version it reported on boot ups, and i submitted it to several AV research places... it's scary to claim a format and reinstall will purge all malicious code, when circa 2006 it no longer is a guarantee.
"How to defend against this? Install Linux."
There fixed that for you. HD encryption with do nothing to protect you from windows based malware.
do you ever wonder why at hacking competitions, the linux laptop never gets hacked? its because tools to hack linux systems just don't exist. it's too hard, linux is written too well, and hackers get paid to hack windows or apple PCs, apple at least has 3% market share, linux has what? 0% of desktop computers? every hack against linux, is against linux servers, because there ARE linux servers. and some of them get neglected for years even with critical security vulnerabilities announced and patches available.
when there is a Backdoor.exe on the system that downloads pr0n everytime a net connection is enabled, that's almost as good as a DNA fingerprinting to proove that that MR so and so is innocent.
So the moral of the story? if you're going to download kiddy porn at work, r00t your system with a nice backdoor, that does the same.
great, now all the pedos can still dl porn, but someone caught in a tubgirl/goatse redirect has nothing to protect them from being fired.
you're forgetting something important here, most hackers nowadays work for various organized crime families.
script kiddies are a bit different, as are sysadmins who have enough technical knowledge to use script kiddie tools, etc.
extortion is a classic of crime families, put the pr0n on your system, then you're over a barrel, and they can extort you because you'll get sacked, and the market is weak, if they report you, and you probably don't have the technical knowledge etc to fix it, if you did, then the hackers probably wouldn't have got you.
anyways, its a scary world using windows on the internet. i have 3 firewalls. and i Still don't feel safe. I've gotten to the point where i power off my system and short all the RAM leads* between switching HDDs to boot to use the internet on windows, vs using software i don't trust, and i can't afford to replace right now...
I'm seriously considering switching to wine, for playing games online, i'm pretty sure my favorite internet game works with wine. if i do, the user that plays online games won't have sudo/su permissions, i know that much.
if it wasn't for linux, i probably would never use a computer on the internet ever again.
*= i am paranoid schizophrenic, shorting the ram leads to ensure no memory is left written between boots with a piece of tinfoil is now part of my daily routine
"The initial accuser was eventually found to suffer paranoid schizophrenia and severe chronic alcoholism."
If you had that mental illness, you'd understand that to that person everything they say is happening is more real that anything anyone else can tell you about anything, no matter how crazy what they say is happening is.
but it only affects 1% of people, so there aren't many routine screenings, and even specialists have a hard time pinpointing the mental illness, because in every other way, the person seems totally normal, except they get really really afraid of problems they believe are real.
other than one doctor when i was a child, nobody even thought i had a mental illness until i got to age 30, and started to have severe side effects. nobody had even thought twice about any of my fears, or my lack of socialization, which was driven by fears... until i was so sick i was loosing whole months to blackouts (blackouts are a very severe effect usually only seen in unmedicated adults with Paranoid schizophrenia)
alcohol is used by a lot of the 'mentally ill' as a patch for the problems caused by their mental illness, drinking makes them feel the same as everyone else... helps them get through life with a mental illness... ironically some drugs can a make side effects more noticeable, but alcohol is a sedative, and many anti psychotic meds are sedatives. so you can to a small degree self medicate with alcohol.
"Lastly, Linux isn't going to help"
Linux would have helped, instead of having a sophisticated network system where you need a valid login/pass to get access to the updates for your computer system... all the updates needed come from trusted repositories, no password or login needed, oh and, if the end user isn't given permission to install software, instead of having a dumb script on the system that logs in to a server, there can be a central server that runs a script that logs in as the admin user on each system to force updates, without having to create a new login/pass every time a new user grabs a linux laptop.
linux doesn't fix the dancing pigs problem, but by being a inherently secure platform, remote administration isn't a joke feature thrown in as a 'buzz' word to movie more copies and try to avoid loosing important corporate customers to more secure products.
Linux would have solved All the problems this company ran into. As a matter of fact, i've run across compromised windows systems where even after a format with a DOD level file system erase were automatically reinfected by malware that had corrupted the bios of the motherboard. the only thing that worked, was switching those machines to linux, and reflashing the bios (because it kept having problems with stability until the bios was reflashed)
and if you think, well security software must have caught up by now, the sad truth is that about 3% of malware and rootkits released in 2006 are Actually protected against by security suites. the problem is, the way windows lets any administrator process to re write almost any file instantly, and any file with a reboot.
once the software infects, disinfecting a system is very hard, doing a complete wipe, and flash of all programmable chips (optical drive, the main bios, there are even viruses that can infect the memory of a HDD's internal controller, which isn't normally accessible to the end user) a lot of people just throw computers away when the malware comes back, after a format.
windows really really pisses me off more and more everyday because of how the way windows was designed, despite decades of end user knowledge in developing secure UNIX systems for college campuses, all because windows was completely managed by greedy, profiteers who didn't care a whit about how things were designed as long as they were number one, and had no serious competitors.
oh and hey, even if the guy was running linux, and it wasn't auto updating, since it was a desktop and not a server, it probably wouldn't have run any of the popular programs hackers who target linux target.
"The waste produced by a coal plant is more radioactive [sciam.com] than nuclear waste"
you know, the radium could be used in breeder reactors, and the thorium in thorium reactors
the problem is that coal companies just dump the stuff in mines and landfills, we could be using the results of burning coal for electricity to make important nuclear fuel, cheaply, that would allow more and more safe, practical nuclear energy, perhaps to create the 'hydrogen' economy to switch vehicles from burning oil, to either burning hydrogen, or to use fuel cells to produce electricity from hydrogen.
too bad we're putting radioactive materials into the soil and water, instead of using it to make more fuel, that would make nuclear power even more attractive. (imo, nuclear is the only attractive fuel source that isn't base on renewable green energy)
if you spend 1/3rd of your income, on housing that comes to $2,500 a month, on 87k, i don't know how much taxes takes, at that bracket, and raw salary has nothing to do with stock options etc.
apple was hot and big early in the computer years, if you sold high, and then bought back in low, before the ipod, and osx skyrocketed apple to new heights.. and hey they showed quite a few people in lines to get iphones, and a few people have said 'if you're used to a mouse, touch screen smartphones are the only way to browse mobile'
so, basically if you can get stock options, apple is still riding waves of enthusiasm, being the defacto choice of portable mp3 players... apple computer is doing quite well in consumer PC sales, it's a good time to be an apple employee.
if anything, vista has helped apple computer become even more popular as a consumer brand, and if you are banking on windows 7 being any better than vista, well... nothing is impossible, but all the snow in hell won't stop microsoft from being microsoft... they've done things the same basic way since they were founded... windows 95 was bad, win 98 better, win me was bad, win2k/xp better, vista was bad, windows 7 will be better, windows 8 will suck, then windows 9 will get it right... but by then you'll need a quantum computer with a flux capacitor to begin the processing a week before you tried to boot the system up to get decent performance..
i was reading a review site the other day, and directx9 ran almost everything faster than directx 10. yet another reason to avoid vista.
just see how glowing all the reviews of windows 7 are, after all the struggle with vista that sucked... it's almost like MS intentionally releases crummy software so we can see how much better an upgrade to the hottest latest thing can be. almost, the mac commercial about people downgrading to xp was a classic, though...
"Have you ever tried sitting on a desk in front of a 46" Monitor? I wouldnt be able to work (or game) "
in my specific setting i will be 4 feet from the monitor on my couch. a desk it might be harder, but i know how i'm building my next system, and where i'm using it, my fall back plan if to have a computer desk, in front of the tv stand my hdtv is on, i'll still be 2-3 feet away, which is plenty. my folks just got a 50" tv, so i have a really good idea just how far back i need to sit, i wasn't thinking in the least about working, since I've never been able to handle anything harder than working at a taco bell.
as for where i'm getting the money, and why i have to spend it, don't blame me, blame the way social security is set up, if they had approved me on day 1 i would have had a tiny little back pay check, and i wouldn't have had enough to waste on a $4 grand home entertainment system. but they didn't approve me, and it will still be some time before i'm on disability, but once i get the cash, i only have 6 months to get rid of all but 2 grand of it, although a burial trust is also exempt (a limited one though, no frills by today's standards) anyways, I've already been researching HDTV sets for use with PCs, and just about every set i've seen that actually had a VGA input on the back looked as crystal clear from 2-3 feet away as a real LCD monitor.
But a big problem occured that I didn't account for. Eveyrthing is blurry and all text and images look like crap. Forget even being close to sharp. Everything looks like it was run through high JPEG compression.
As it turns out, LCD TV's can't do lower than 96 dpi. most LCD *monitors* do much lower, which we take for granted--it makes monitors look so sharp. So unfortunately, unless u barely use ur computer or u just don't care, that 30" or or any LCD monitor for that matter, is necessary. which set, specifically were you looking at? some sets literally do run the image through some form of conversion/compression. some LCD tvs actually Are computer monitor guts, YMMV but there are sets that can do better than 96dpi.
you specifically mentioned a 'dvi to hdmi' cable, the set i'm looking at has a standard VGA jack in the back. with a dvi to hdmi link, you have to be very careful, to use a DVI-dual link cable that converts to HDMI, if you use a half link cable, there won't be enough bandwidth for 1080P resolution, if you bought your cable on the cheap, it could be the very cable you bought that causes the image to look like crap. also, DVI even in DVI dual mode uses GTF blanking, a process whereby frames are blanked by the system to achieve the resolution needed for display.
maybe you should have researched your purchase harder, there are sets that run all inputs through an image filter, to make SDTV look better, when it's detected, and even to make HD signals from lossy sources (like digital cable) look better.
the linked newegg monitor was given 5 stars by several PC users, including at least one HTPC user.
I plan on buying a new HDtv and using it as a monitor with a gaming pc, but whichever model i go with, it will have to be well reviewed for up close viewing, and as being great to hook a PC up to it with.