As much as Barbie annoyed me, I was never the target audience. I was the target audience for GI Joe. I would watch the TV show every day after school. I had at least fifty dolls... err... action figures and a dozen vehicles. I even had a bunch of the comic books. Solve all problems with a gun. Guns guns guns. Shoot the bad guy.
Personally I think Pokemon was a step up, but they're all fluff. That's fine. So are most movies. Fluff can be fun. And that's the point of the toys: to have fun. Sure someone's profiting from child-targeted marketing, but I sure had fun with my GI Joe dudes.
For most of late teens and early twenties, I was a pacifist. Go figure hunh? Today, I believe violence should be mostly avoided but not in all circumstances. Too much study in history to believe that aggression hasn't caused more problems than it solved. Also too much study of history to believe that voilence solves nothing. Case in point: Winston Churchill vs. Neville Chamberlain.
But my point is, don't blame Barbie. It's a children's toy just like GI Joe. Kids believe a lot of things. Young children go for the old Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, and Tooth Fairy gigs for years. Older children go for the toys marketed to them on TV. Almost all of us grow out of it and are not unduly scarred by the experiences.
You're right. It's a scarcity of materials and land area issue more than a power issue. Well...the power issue is lessened greatly. You still have weather, cleanliness of cells, and degredation issues. But you're right, the overall power output was a major fubar.
You do see the game that the author of the article is playing don't you? He's given you the number in the form of a percentage of a small percentage to make the number look bigger.
Fair enough. But let's be completely fair. We've had over a hundred years to refine coal power production. Nuclear power has come into its own much faster than coal. You say that nuclear is an expensive way to boil water. Fine. Light water reactors can only get 3-6% of the actinide-based material to fission. Light water reactors require a great deal in complexity to maintain safety. Please not that I have never questioned nor contradicted those statements. I have never promoted the use of light water reactors. (Check my previous posts.) I have been talking about IFR nuclear reactors. Their designs are simpler, they rely on passive safety features, they use less fuel, they are never refueld in their estimated 70 year lifespan, and 10-20% of the nuclear fuel actually fissions to produce power in between cycles (multiple cycles per plant operating life).
And fuel, once converted for use in an IFR (not difficult) is extremely difficult to repurpose for weapons use. How difficult? It would not be possible to divert fuel from this reactor to make bombs, as several of the transuranics spontaniously fission rapidly enough that any assembly would simply melt before it could be completed.
It was at a uranium mine. Water from the mine was piped by accident into the water supply. It was noticed when large numbers of miners became ill after a shower, and uranium was later found in the town water supply in the early stages of the investigation.
How much? Have accidents like this ever happened from coal mines?
I don't mean to belittle it. Far from it. But I must point out that it is beside the point from the type of nuclear I am discussing. IFR reactors can use spent fuel from older light water reactors and the transuranics formerly used in nuclear warheads. Although I can't speak to the British Isles, the U.S. has large stockpiles of uranium already mined. You do not necessarily have to mine new ore for it.
Assuming you did have to mine new ore, you must only mine 1/100 of the uranium as coal to get the same amount of power. Less mining should equate to fewer accidents. Yes, I know coal is more common than uranium. Perhaps I am being far too U.S.-centric, but North America has more than enough uranium so as to not be a strong issue of scarcity.
Oh yeah, I forgot. Thorium, a much more common element, can be used in breeder reactors.
France had military reasons.
France also got their asses kicked by the oil embargos of the 1970s. Let's not forget the loss of fossil fuels for that was the primary impetus for the expansion of nuclear power in France. France is not as fossil fuel rich as many other countries.
If weapons work was their primary motivator, why did it start its crash program on building nuclear reactors when they did? Why not earlier? Why not later? Seems a bit arbitrary to me. Did they use their power program as a facilitator to weapons? Sure, I do not dispute that. I do however dispute that this was their primary motivator. Their primary motivator in my opinion was keeping the lights on and reduce foreign fuel dependence.
Chenobyl was not a hydrogen bomb - it was a steam explosion that scattered radioactive materials - simple mundane heat and water. It was still a disaster.
Another poster already handled this. At the same time, the Soviet Union also failed to tell citizens what had happened right away. They took no preventative measures (iodine tables to greatly reduce the chance of thyroid cancer). Chernobyl was a disaster for far more reasons than the explosion.
All the associated machinery required to run it and contain it is not cheap. All those rare earths in
Thanks for the sentiment. But if you have specific, verifiable reasons for choosing a course of action, it's by definition not knee-jerk.:-)
If someone came up with substanitive and verifiable reasons why IFR would be an unreasonable hazard, that the data surrounding IFRs was basically fraudulant, etc., I would change my tune and go back to the anti-nuclear camp -- where I was before learning more about the history of nuclear in the U.S.
On the contrary, the Bush administration have been proponents of nuclear power -- especially Cheney. Republican presidents in the U.S. have historically been more favorable to nuclear power generation than democrats. Clinton and Carter were quite anti-nuclear as far as their policies were concerned.
This doesn't make me a Republican nor does it make me a fan of Bush/Cheney; I didn't vote for them last time and I certainly won't be voting for them this time. For all I know, they came to the conclusion of nuclear for reasons that would make my stomach turn. Maybe I actually agree with their reasons. Whatever. Just because I have a loathing of those individuals and general ideological differences with their party doesn't make them automatically wrong on every issue.
Since France went nuclear, the country experienced a five fold decrease in air pollution.
My bad. This is what I get for not doing better fact checking. This number is greatly overstating the matter.
From The Energy Information Awareness division of the U.S. Department of Energy: "France's commitment to the use of nuclear power has allowed the country to keep a lid on its carbon emissions, since nuclear power emits no carbon or other greenhouse gases. Since 1980, when France emitted approximately 136 million metric tons of carbon, the country has cut its energy-related carbon emissions by just over 20%, to 108 million metric tons in 2001. By contrast, carbon emissions by the United States over that same time period have grown by almost 22%, from 1.29 billion metric tons of carbon in 1980 to 1.57 billion metric tons in 2001."
That sounds more correct to me sice automobiles are a (the?) major contributor to air pollution in most industrialized nations.
"France's move towards nuclear energy and away from fossil fuels such as coal is clearly evident in its reduced level of carbon intensity. In 2001, France's carbon intensity was 0.06 metric tons of carbon per thousand 1995$--exactly half the country's carbon intensity level in 1980. France's level of carbon intensity in 2001 compares favorably with its neighbors in western Europe, as the UK (0.12 metric tons of carbon per thousand 1995$), Spain (0.11), and Italy (0.10), and Germany (0.08) all posted higher levels of carbon intensity than France in 2001."
No CO2 emissions. No 10% more sunshine/10% less rain.
Solar?
Americans used 3,720 billion kWh (kilowatt hours) in 2001 according to the Energy Information Administration [doe.gov], a branch of the U.S. Department of Energy [doe.gov]. Yes, that's billion with a 'b'.
From the Wikipedia: "Sunlight provides about 1.36 kilowatts per square meter, and most solar cells are between 8 and 12 percent efficient." There are 9,158,918 square kilometers in the U.S. Each square kilometer is equal to one million square meters (remember 1km = 1,000m; so a square of 1km by 1km is 1,000m by 1,000m).
A kilowatt hour (kWh) is 1 kilowatt of output sustained over one hour.
So, 9,158,918 (number of square kilometers in the U.S.) times 1,000,000 (square meters in a square kilometer) times 0.68 (number of kilowatts with 50% efficiency) to get kilowatt hours. Multiply that by 8 (average number of hours in the day with usable sunlight) times 365 (days in a year).
18,185,947,580,800 kWh. That's more than 3,720,000,000,000 kWh by a factor of five, right? Solved!
Oh...ummm... This assumes that all of the cells are at that 50% laboratory record-setting level as opposed to the ones in use today. If we go off the 8%-12& mark, we're already at the bare minimum for energy requirements with no margin for error.
And this assumes that all of the panels are kept clean; Remember, less power if there's dust and grime on the solar cells.
And this assumes that it's never cloudy/rainy/snowy.
And this assumes that U.S. never increases their power usage from 2001 levels. (Note, I'm not getting into a discussion of the value of energy conservation. It's immaterial here. If you can get all ~300 million Americans to halt the growth of their usage let alone lower it, I will kiss the ground you walk upon.)
And this assumes that materials are sufficiently abundant and practical to build all of those panels.
And leaving things out in the sun for extended periods of time tends to do bad things to most items: sun-bleached hair, ruined paintings, less efficient solar cells, etc. Solar cells drop in efficiency by 2%-5% every year of their operating life; Best case scenario, your solar cell is working at 90% after five years; 80% after twelve years. (Remember, that's 90% of 12%.)
And, most important, this assumes that all the land area in the continental U.S. including Alaska is covered in solar panels! This means no food grown, no basking in the sunlight, an epidemic of Rickets Disease, etc.
Solar is only good for supplementary power generation: lowering the drain on the grid.
It's not about nuclear being warm and fuzzy. It's not about going with the solution with no risks. No technology available to us today can provide even close to all of the power used with 100% safety. Large scale energy is not and will never be 100% safe. However the use of fossil fuels is worse. Fossil fuels emit too many pollutants that get into our air and water.
It's time to bite the bullet and go for the IFRs. Why it is called an "Integral" Fast Reactor? Once the initial fuel is loaded no fuel goes in and no waste comes out for the entire 70 year life cycle. This will greatly reduce the current 90,000 nuclear shipments a year on trains and trucks. At the end of the 70 years, the nuclear "ash" of the IFR needs to be stored for only 300 years as opposed to 30,000. The actinides are used and recycled over and over until they are depleted. Current nuclear waste and the material for nuclear warheads can be reused as fuel for an IFR instead of being dumped in Yucca Mountain. The purity of that fuel once used in an IFR cannot again be easily transformed into weapons-grade material. It is as hard as converting the original uranium ore. If IFRs are implemented, uranium need not be mined for 500 years; Existing stock piles of uranium ore, nuclear waste, and obsolete weapons will be more than adequ
Except that the uranium and thorium are dispersed throughout all of the ash, not in "lumps... lying in the street."
From the article: "Coal ash is composed primarily of oxides of silicon, aluminum, iron, calcium, magnesium, titanium, sodium, potassium, arsenic, mercury, and sulfur plus small quantities of uranium and thorium. Fly ash is primarily composed of non-combustible silicon compounds (glass) melted during combustion. Tiny glass spheres form the bulk of the fly ash."
If anything is tin foil, it was my tone, not the content of the article. I do apologize for the tone of my previous comment. I am not saying that you will die (immediately) from hanging out in front of coal plants, but you are indeed exposed to higher levels of radiation outside of a coal plant than a nuclear plant.
Take a Geiger counter. See for yourself. The radiation levels are indeed higher than the surrounding environment. Are those levels high enough to harm an individual? Probably not. But the levels outside of a nuclear plant definitely won't. This was the point I was trying to make.
"Coal ash is composed primarily of oxides of silicon, aluminum, iron, calcium, magnesium, titanium, sodium, potassium, arsenic, mercury, and sulfur plus small quantities of uranium and thorium. Fly ash is primarily composed of non-combustible silicon compounds (glass) melted during combustion. Tiny glass spheres form the bulk of the fly ash.
"Since the 1960s particulate precipitators have been used by U.S. coal-fired power plants to retain significant amounts of fly ash rather than letting it escape to the atmosphere. When functioning properly, these precipitators are approximately 99.5% efficient. Utilities also collect furnace ash, cinders, and slag, which are kept in cinder piles or deposited in ash ponds on coal-plant sites along with the captured fly ash.
"Trace quantities of uranium in coal range from less than 1 part per million (ppm) in some samples to around 10 ppm in others. Generally, the amount of thorium contained in coal is about 2.5 times greater than the amount of uranium. For a large number of coal samples, according to Environmental Protection Agency figures released in 1984, average values of uranium and thorium content have been determined to be 1.3 ppm and 3.2 ppm, respectively. Using these values along with reported consumption and projected consumption of coal by utilities provides a means of calculating the amounts of potentially recoverable breedable and fissionable elements (see sidebar). The concentration of fissionable uranium-235 (the current fuel for nuclear power plants) has been established to be 0.71% of uranium content."
Oh, but I forgot. Anyone who doesn't speak well of coal is a nuclear industry shill.
No I didn't, and I suspect the only people who do know have read some pamphlet on behalf of the nuclear industry. It sounds very unlikely to me - where is it all going to come from?
From the coal beds themselves. Uranium and thorium are naturally occuring materials.
If that was the case every plant would fail unles it is built in a place with low background radiation. I suggest you read about radiation from physics, chemistry or radiography texts.
"The NRC allows 10 mrems per year to persons living next to the property line of a nuclear plant, but its guidelines recommend a maximum of 5 mrems per year, and in point of fact, it starts investigating when this guideline limit is even approached.
"In comparison, a person receives an internal dose of about 20 mrems per year from his/her own blood (mainly due to potassium 40, contained in many protein foods), 35 mrems from building materials, 35 from cosmic rays, 25 from food, 11 from the ground, 5 from the air, 103 from X-rays diagnostics, etc."
Source: Nuclear Power and the Environment, International AEC, Vienna and The US Environmental Protection Agency
Once again - straight out of an advertisement instead of reality. Invoking secrecy is a great way to cook the books and pretend you are breaking even without a subsidy - British Nuclear Fuels had no such luxury so we know how many billions they have lost.
So am I to understand that France is losing money hand over fist because they are a nuclear-heavy country with 76% of all electricity there coming from nuclear? Why does Germany have so many nuclear reactors if they are so expensive? Are they cooking the books as well? Are you also factoring the more than $1 billion paid each year to sufferers of Black Lung?
In the land of the SUV with Bush as President the greens dictate energy policy? Please think before you make such assertions. The USA stopp
...gas at a few hundred degrees will certainly burn, ash will bury.
You were aware that coal ash is highly toxic as well as radioactive, weren't you? With direct exposure to nuclear waste, you could die from radiation sickness (needing something like >10,000 rems to do that) or get cancer somewhere down the road. With direct exposure to coal ash, you could get poisoned by toxins, die from cancer somewhere down the road from that exposure, or die from cancer from the outputs of that power plant in the groundwater or air. Did you know that radioactivity in and around coal plants is higher by two orders of magnitude than those found outside a nuclear power plant? Did you know that the NRC rules for radioactivity outside a power plant are lower than the ambient radioactivity found in nature? Did you know that Grand Central Station in NYC would be automatically disqualified as a site for a nuclear power plant simply because the amount of radioactivity in its granite construction exceeds NRC maximum levels?
"Yes, the American taxpayer has paid $1 billion [as of 1980] to research nuclear safety... the American taxpayer also pays $1 billion, not total, but year after year, to Black Lung victims -- not to cure or eliminate it, but just to compensate its victims."
"... the US government... has very few enterprises that make money. But one of the them is uranium enrichment, for which the fuel manufacturers pay through their noses, and another is Price-Anderson insurance, the premia for which are paid by utilities, partly to private insurance pools, partly to the US government. The private insurances pay first, and they have so far paid $400,000 for 26 minor claims; Uncle Sam hasn't paid anything yet (and probably never will), but sits on a fund of $8 million of as yet unused premia. And, of course, the utilities pay taxes -- local, state, and federal -- with the stockholders paying a second round of taxes from their dividends. You call that a subsidy?"
The only reason nuclear could be more expensive (though still cheaper per kilowatt than solar) is because of the much expanded regulations on the nuclear industry that do not exist in the other industries.
A hairline crack was found in the plumbing of stand-by equipment in a nuclear power plant some years back. This was found by visual inspection. There was no leakage -- even taking into account that this was not radioactive water in the pipes. So what was the NRC's decision? Take down this plant and every nuclear plant in the country with the same design -- I believe something like 22 of them at the time. And what did they find? The one hairline crack: the one originally found by regular visual inspection. If ANY industry were held to the same safety standards as nuclear, they would be bankrupt. As it stands, nuclear is still competitive. If such ornerous (ridiculous) safety checks were not in place, it would be substantially more reliable and cost effective than any alternative.
Well, that and the fact that rabid Greens have lobbied successfully against breeder reactors in the U.S. which could make nuclear power generation even more profitable than it is today. IFR reactors could process the "waste" waiting to be stuck into Yucca Mountain AND repurpose nuclear warheads for power generation -- a proper end in my opinion to a large portion of our current nuclear stockpile.
Please do not misunderstand. I welcome increased usage of solar, wind, and to some extend tidal, but these are not enough to supply 3,720 billion kilowatt hours of po
Uh hunh... Please read my comment from another thread. Solar doesn't scale. It runs up against the 1st Law of Themodynamics. A calculator is not the same as serving all of our country's energy needs.
Thanks for the correction. In truth, I was spending some time on that comment (that very few will probably ever read). In the editing/revision process, that ended up as an unwanted artifact from an earlier draft.
An effective way to use renewable energy exclusively is to build huge solar arrays in space (where there is lots of room) and beam the energy to Earth as microwaves. Using asteroids, etc., as raw materials will reduce the pollution/energy costs associated with producing the materials on Earth and sending them into space.
Danger Will Robinson! How do we get the huge solar arrays into space? Rockets: those huge cylinders that dump enormous amounts of pollutants into the atmosphere at every launch. Then add the cost of launching these satellites. Then calculate the number of solar collectors that must be launched. Then calculate the amount per square meter of solar energy that can be collected using the state of the art. I personally don't have all of those numbers. I would love to see them if you would be willing to post them.
Note: this is making the assumption that we won't use nuclear. Nuclear: cleaner than sending up a bunch of rockets. Cheaper than sending up a bunch of rockets. More power than you will get from a solar array. So why aren't you advocating nuclear? We could take those coal plants offline within ten or twenty years. For every 100 coal plants (at least), we could replace it with a nuclear plant which is cleaner than just one of those coal plants. And power demands are met in spades. So what's the problem? The waste? Did you read my previous comment? So let's review: hypothetically build a massive amount of solar panels, load them onto rockets, beam the energy back via microwaves, etc. OR build nuclear plants for which we lready have plans, have already implemented a prototype, have examples running in Europe, and can prove -- not a hypothetical number -- but prove that electricity output will be at least the levels we have previously seen.
Personally, I'd prefer just sticking to plans for making solar panels for homes more efficient and affordable here on Earth.
As far as asteroids and construction in space, asteroids would be useful for manufacturing space vehicles in space so that one would not have to overcome Earth's gravity nor pollute our environment. This may not solve our domestic energy problems (I'm waiting on the numbers for those solar panels in orbit). Another problem with asteroids is that we would have to have a sizeable asteroid come reasonably close to the Earth so that we could rendezvous. Then we'd have to stop its movement or make that further movement more accessible to us in the future. And then we have to sep up mining facilities on it.
The technology to do this is not too far beyond present-day.
That depends on what your definition of "too far beyond" is. So far, we as a species have only ever even orbited an asteroid exactly once let alone landed on it, altered its movement, surveyed it, established facilities, mined materials even in the smallest scale in space, etc. And this presupposes that our first dozen attempts will be even close to profitable.
You are of course correct. And while I have come across as quite strident in my views, I am actually an advocate for solar, wind, and to a limited extend tidal. Our energy shouldn't come from just one source.
I am however utterly convinced that coal, oil, and natural gas should not be energy sources we fall back upon. (Note: 51% of today's power generation is from coal.)
My only other comment on this is that switching infrastructures -- such as widespread adoption of home solar panels -- will not be a quick endevour even if the political will were there. People are stubborn. Americans many times doubly so. Most people have always received power from their local power company. Switching the mental paradigm will probably take longer than switching the technology.
I find it odd that the first page says "Myth: Solar living means sacrificing conveniences," while later on it says, "A PV system provides the required electricity. This type of design is not the norm by far--it's just a little too expensive up front for most people--and it might require the owners to put on a sweater indoors a few times a year." Turning up the heat when you're cold is a convenience. Having to put sweaters on, however simple and beneficial a solution it may be, is NOT a convenience. Hint: If you are forced to seek an alternative, it is not as convenient.
Myth: You can't use solar energy in far northern latitudes.
When it's sunny, yes, you can use it in northern latitudes. What happens during the rainy season? In many northern states, the rainy season is at least half the year. Go on battery the whole time the sun isn't visible? What happens if (when!) the battery goes dead? Americans used
And let's discuss cost. The brochure you presented states that costs are so bad. Last I checked, good solar panels for the home were upwards of $30,000. If you are already paying for a new house, the extra cost of setting up solar is marginal. For folks who are just getting by (everyone with kids in college), $30,000 just isn't there. Costs from environmental damage where we don't immediately see the price tag? That's fair. Absolutely that's a fair statement to make. Then again so is saying, "What about the hidden costs of completely ripping out an established infrastructure in favor of a new one?" Isn't that fair too?
The idea is to minimize the impact of microhydro by following some simple rules. Always leave enough flow in the stream bed for aquatic life. If migratory fish use your stream, make sure that they and their fry can swim past our diversion, and cannot be drawn into the enstock intake. Always put the diverted water back into the same stream bed in a way that does not cause erosion.
Once again, a fair statement. However how is microhydro going to handle the macro scale when you (a) can't pack them closely together and (b) cannot disrupt the normal activity of the surrounding water? Put more in to get more energy? Remember the 1st Law of Thermodynamics. As it is not created nor destroyed, if you use a sufficient amount of energy in one system, that amount is removed from another system. Environmentally sound? Reducing the energy by a significant amount would be environmentally sound? Most of the world's creatures live at or near a coastline. Carefully consider whether or not you want to mess with this substantially.
Nukes produce nuclear waste, and even after spending billions of taxpayer and ratepayer dollars, no acceptable disposal solution has been brought to the table.
This one kills me. First of all, the term "nukes" usually refers to "nuclear weapons." The requirements for nuclear power are dramatically different from those of bombs. You might as well assert that electricity should be banned because electric chairs are made. It has no place in a power generation conversation. Second of all, there are nuclear reactors such as IFR (Integral Fast Reactor) which were designed specifically to address critics' problems with nuclear. It does not rely on coolant, computer control, or human interaction/intervention to prevent accidents; Safety is dependant upon natural phenomena and the laws of physics to operate. The working prototype for IFR conducted a series of tests where coolant was shut off and all of the usual precursors to a meltdown were put into place. No damage. No leakage. Nothing but a safe, controlled shutdown -- without human or computer interaction. This is not hypothetical. This is historical fact. In fact,
He has the ability to define the specific subset of XHTML he wishes to support.
Pray tell, how would this be done? With the crap XML editors out there that are only vaguely better than using Notepad? If there were good XML editors, he would just use DocBook XML. Hint: If you have to interact with the tags, it's not a good editor. <para> especially. Correction: <para> included. <br/> especially.
A WYSIWYG with XHTML? Show me one without presentational controls and I'll listen. If there's a "bold" button, don't bother. This isn't about me. I can write XML by hand just fine. This is for the folks who can't and have absolutely no aspirations to write raw XML. They want to write content. And good on them for that. But they will use the "bold" or "18pt arial" control if it is made available to them -- especially if "them" refers to more than a few different people.
No, the only solution is to remove the presentational controls. And no XHTML editor does this. If there were one, I see no reason why a DocBook one wouldn't exist as well. Given a choice, I would choose DocBook XML over XHTML 1.x any day of the week and on holidays.
Well...XHTML 1.0 Strict and XHTML 1.1 separate it. XHTML 1.0 Transitional (in far greater use than the others I mentioned) indeed still has the items I mentioned.
And just because the tools may have them, you aren't forced to use all the buttons!
Indeed. But not everyone cares (or even knows) about that. Even on Slashdot there are a huge number of folks who didn't see the point of the LDP moving to CSS. And this is supposedly a more tech-saavy group than the general public. Setting policy with a tool that follows that policy instead of working against it is always a good thing.
Once again, to my knowledge, no XHTML tool excludes the presentational elements. You're better off using Emacs to help with DocBook XML generation. (ick!)
Perhaps you should TRY LAMP first before disparaging it. Or put yourself in the shoes of a small business owner who needs a web site and doesn't have $20,000 to dedicate to software licenses or a Java professional's time.
I have tried LAMP. Even back in the days when the 'P' used to mean Perl instead of PHP. Linux works well. Apache is top notch. MySQL is a crap datastore by most measurements. Perl is no simpler for an absolute beginner than Java. PHP is the crap spawn of Perl. mysql_connect(...)? Crap. Now of course people are starting(!?!) to talk about database abstraction in PHP with PHP's ADO, but barely any packages use it now.
As far as shop owners, they couldn't care less what language it's written in. Most of the time they never touch code whether it's in Java, Perl, C, PHP, or Brainfuck. They upload a header graphic, input some text, and use the online tools from the storefront their ISP sold to them. PHP/MySQL is a historical accident, not a cogent choice.
And to be blunt, the LAMP site is going to be up in 1/5 the development time and be far more responsive to the user (faster) than the equivalent J2EE site. The J2EE site can be improved to meet the LAMP site's speed, but it's an uphill battle all the way.
A JSP-only page is just as easy to use as PHP. No, I take that back. PHP makes mistakes harder to track down and locks you into a particular database. What? ADO? If someone doesn't know how to program, they don't know about database abstraction. They only know mysql_connect(...). If they do know about database abstraction, they also know to program in something better than PHP.
If you don't like servlet/JSP environments, why not Zope? No 'Z' in LAMP. Or were you going to try to assert some revisionist history by saying the 'P' stands for Python?
Python, Qt, wxWindows, Tcl/Tk, etc., support WAY more platforms than Flash. Where I came from you weren't cross-platform until you supported AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, IRIX, Linux, Windows, and finally Mac OS X.
Yes. And in the real world, the client platforms are MS Windows, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, and (maybe) Linux. If the shop is rare enough to run AIX and need a client graphics engine toolkit, they also have the resources to maintain and author the items you mentioned. In the real world, no one gives a rat's ass about HP-UX client GUI development.
Don't agree? Check out the job listings. Look up "wxWindows developer needed for work on IRIX." Now look up "Flash developer needed for Mac shop." If you can find the former, you have already amazed me. If you can't find the latter, you either weren't looking or you are delusional.
In Java that would take about an hour to write, not due to JDBC but because you have to add external libraries for string manipulation. Perhaps if you tried Perl DBI you'd see why I say it's much faster.
Oh! You got me! I was under the impression that I wrote code like:
my $foo = $query->url_param('somequeryvar');
if ($foo ~=/.*[Ff]oo.*/) {
$foo ~= s/([Ff])oo/$1ubar/g;
}
<sarcasm>Wow! You're right! The Perl is so much simpler and easier to read/write/understand basic string manipulation.</sarcasm>
Perl DBI is "much faster?" What Kool-Aid are you drinking? Unless you are going through the JDBC-ODBC bridge, they are both limited by database and socket speeds, not the implementation library. Oh, I forgot. Perl has the "go faster" bit set. Ple
Except that all (X)HTML tools include sundry items like "bold," "italic," "18pt sans-serif," and "horizontal line," and "red." These are all presentation concerns that have no place in standardized documentation. This is why he mentioned DocBook XML.
I doubt that's a good solution. At least with DocBook you can buy/look up standardized documentation. That's a huge win most of the time -- especially if he moves on to another job. The issue I think probably has more to do with ease of authoring than his choice of markup language.
Questions like, "Why does it say, '<section> does not match </para>?' I'm not a computer person; I just want it to work," certainly come to mind. And you know what? The luddite is right in this case.
I don't want to fiddle with typesetting at all; and I want it to be minimal--in particular, I don't want to have to markup paragraphs
What you are asking for is what every user wants: "I need something that has all the features I want, but none of the features I don't want." It must be powerful -- but don't have anything unnecessary. Those things are in conflict.
On the contrary, they are not necessarily. What he's asking for is a complete lack of presentation (eg. a section header rather than 18pt bold on its own line), specifically no need to input <para> tags instead of just skipping a line between text, and a syntax that anyone -- geek or no -- can use with an absolute minimum of training.
It's quite possible and a project I've been working on for a while now. Think Wiki without the bold, italics, and underline; Just the semantic structure.
It sounds like you are just sick of fiddling around with some of the more complex ones. You may also be the kind of person who winces when they think of the HTML produced by various office products. If my guess is correct, I suggest that you either: Acknowledge that nothing is perfect and simply open MS Word or OpenOffice and force yourself to accept them, or deal with the overcomplexity of the products you mentioned. I suppose a third possibility is to roll your own front-end for one of them.
He may be sick of the more complex ones I believe for good reason. Work with folks who don't close their tags, don't grok why exactly it matters whether they close their tags, constantly ask which tags to use, and regularly misuse the tags that are available. You would get sick of them too.
Normal people wince at the HTML produced by office products. They miss the point of semantic markup by design.
He never said that the solution had to be perfect. He was simply asking for something better/good enough. Using MS Word or OpenOffice for the most part is a step back from DocBook XML. (Yes, I know OO does DocBook in theory, but that's like saying that MS Word does HTML output; Technically it's true but in practice you never want to do it.)
As far as rolling your own, I suggest using Wiki as a starting point, pruning the presentation aspects, and refactoring the result. If not perfect, it would be a 90% solution in most cases IMHO.
COROLLARY: Small-medium sites should use LAMP and rely on redundant hardware to handle failover.
How is this a corolary? If you had said, "strong typing in the language and a full security model are detrimental to small/medium projects," it would have been a corolary. As it stands, it's a non-sequitor. In addition, assuming that Java is a poor choice does not automatically make LAMP a good choice let alone better.
COROLLARY: Cross-platforms GUIs should use Python, Qt, wxWindows, Tcl/Tk, etc.
Personally I hate applets. As for limited cross-platform usage of Flash, I beg to differ. It handles MS Windows, Mac, Linux... The toolkits you mentioned are (a) not all installed in most systems and (b) not web-based which is what you were comparing applets to.
COROLLARY: Prefer Perl or PHP if the database is supported.
Okay, you really lost me on this one. You just said that JDBC did a great job of database abstraction. And your conclusion: don't use it?
COROLLARY: NEVER use Java to create or manipulate graphics from the command line. No JDK, EVER, has managed to do this despite five years of pleading from the professional programmers. Without a GUI Java goes belly-up on the first "new java.awt.Frame()". (And for you 1.4+ folks who think HeadlessException was a fine solution, it wasn't.)
Like Batik for server-side SVG to raster (PNG/JPEG) conversion? Yeah. Totally useless. What was I thinking?
And, as apparently thousands of Slashdotters are unaware, every other JDK except Kaffe+GNU is an independently licensed derivative of Sun's JDK.
Ummm... GCJ?
Please also note that if Sun halted all development on Java, it would (a) alienate every customer they've had for the last eight to ten years and (b) create a genuine interest in funding an alternative (think: IBM funding and assisting gcj/kaffe/gnu classpath).
Won't happen? What about EJB? Certified licensees only. Wups! Who are those JBoss folks? LGPLed EJB-compatible project? Well we won't certify it. Hey! People are using it in droves anyway! Ummm... Okay... Maybe we'll look into certifying it. (This of course mattered very little as people were apparently using it with or without Sun's endorsement.)
Slashdot Mirror
As much as Barbie annoyed me, I was never the target audience. I was the target audience for GI Joe. I would watch the TV show every day after school. I had at least fifty dolls... err... action figures and a dozen vehicles. I even had a bunch of the comic books. Solve all problems with a gun. Guns guns guns. Shoot the bad guy.
Personally I think Pokemon was a step up, but they're all fluff. That's fine. So are most movies. Fluff can be fun. And that's the point of the toys: to have fun. Sure someone's profiting from child-targeted marketing, but I sure had fun with my GI Joe dudes.
For most of late teens and early twenties, I was a pacifist. Go figure hunh? Today, I believe violence should be mostly avoided but not in all circumstances. Too much study in history to believe that aggression hasn't caused more problems than it solved. Also too much study of history to believe that voilence solves nothing. Case in point: Winston Churchill vs. Neville Chamberlain.
But my point is, don't blame Barbie. It's a children's toy just like GI Joe. Kids believe a lot of things. Young children go for the old Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, and Tooth Fairy gigs for years. Older children go for the toys marketed to them on TV. Almost all of us grow out of it and are not unduly scarred by the experiences.
You're right. It's a scarcity of materials and land area issue more than a power issue. Well...the power issue is lessened greatly. You still have weather, cleanliness of cells, and degredation issues. But you're right, the overall power output was a major fubar.
I stand corrected.
Fair enough. But let's be completely fair. We've had over a hundred years to refine coal power production. Nuclear power has come into its own much faster than coal. You say that nuclear is an expensive way to boil water. Fine. Light water reactors can only get 3-6% of the actinide-based material to fission. Light water reactors require a great deal in complexity to maintain safety. Please not that I have never questioned nor contradicted those statements. I have never promoted the use of light water reactors. (Check my previous posts.) I have been talking about IFR nuclear reactors. Their designs are simpler, they rely on passive safety features, they use less fuel, they are never refueld in their estimated 70 year lifespan, and 10-20% of the nuclear fuel actually fissions to produce power in between cycles (multiple cycles per plant operating life).
And fuel, once converted for use in an IFR (not difficult) is extremely difficult to repurpose for weapons use. How difficult? It would not be possible to divert fuel from this reactor to make bombs, as several of the transuranics spontaniously fission rapidly enough that any assembly would simply melt before it could be completed.
How much? Have accidents like this ever happened from coal mines?
I don't mean to belittle it. Far from it. But I must point out that it is beside the point from the type of nuclear I am discussing. IFR reactors can use spent fuel from older light water reactors and the transuranics formerly used in nuclear warheads. Although I can't speak to the British Isles, the U.S. has large stockpiles of uranium already mined. You do not necessarily have to mine new ore for it.
Assuming you did have to mine new ore, you must only mine 1/100 of the uranium as coal to get the same amount of power. Less mining should equate to fewer accidents. Yes, I know coal is more common than uranium. Perhaps I am being far too U.S.-centric, but North America has more than enough uranium so as to not be a strong issue of scarcity.
Oh yeah, I forgot. Thorium, a much more common element, can be used in breeder reactors.
France also got their asses kicked by the oil embargos of the 1970s. Let's not forget the loss of fossil fuels for that was the primary impetus for the expansion of nuclear power in France. France is not as fossil fuel rich as many other countries.
If weapons work was their primary motivator, why did it start its crash program on building nuclear reactors when they did? Why not earlier? Why not later? Seems a bit arbitrary to me. Did they use their power program as a facilitator to weapons? Sure, I do not dispute that. I do however dispute that this was their primary motivator. Their primary motivator in my opinion was keeping the lights on and reduce foreign fuel dependence.
Another poster already handled this. At the same time, the Soviet Union also failed to tell citizens what had happened right away. They took no preventative measures (iodine tables to greatly reduce the chance of thyroid cancer). Chernobyl was a disaster for far more reasons than the explosion.
Thanks for the sentiment. But if you have specific, verifiable reasons for choosing a course of action, it's by definition not knee-jerk. :-)
If someone came up with substanitive and verifiable reasons why IFR would be an unreasonable hazard, that the data surrounding IFRs was basically fraudulant, etc., I would change my tune and go back to the anti-nuclear camp -- where I was before learning more about the history of nuclear in the U.S.
On the contrary, the Bush administration have been proponents of nuclear power -- especially Cheney. Republican presidents in the U.S. have historically been more favorable to nuclear power generation than democrats. Clinton and Carter were quite anti-nuclear as far as their policies were concerned.
This doesn't make me a Republican nor does it make me a fan of Bush/Cheney; I didn't vote for them last time and I certainly won't be voting for them this time. For all I know, they came to the conclusion of nuclear for reasons that would make my stomach turn. Maybe I actually agree with their reasons. Whatever. Just because I have a loathing of those individuals and general ideological differences with their party doesn't make them automatically wrong on every issue.
From The Energy Information Awareness division of the U.S. Department of Energy: "France's commitment to the use of nuclear power has allowed the country to keep a lid on its carbon emissions, since nuclear power emits no carbon or other greenhouse gases. Since 1980, when France emitted approximately 136 million metric tons of carbon, the country has cut its energy-related carbon emissions by just over 20%, to 108 million metric tons in 2001. By contrast, carbon emissions by the United States over that same time period have grown by almost 22%, from 1.29 billion metric tons of carbon in 1980 to 1.57 billion metric tons in 2001."
That sounds more correct to me sice automobiles are a (the?) major contributor to air pollution in most industrialized nations.
"France's move towards nuclear energy and away from fossil fuels such as coal is clearly evident in its reduced level of carbon intensity. In 2001, France's carbon intensity was 0.06 metric tons of carbon per thousand 1995$--exactly half the country's carbon intensity level in 1980. France's level of carbon intensity in 2001 compares favorably with its neighbors in western Europe, as the UK (0.12 metric tons of carbon per thousand 1995$), Spain (0.11), and Italy (0.10), and Germany (0.08) all posted higher levels of carbon intensity than France in 2001."
No CO2 emissions. No 10% more sunshine/10% less rain.
Solar?
Americans used 3,720 billion kWh (kilowatt hours) in 2001 according to the Energy Information Administration [doe.gov], a branch of the U.S. Department of Energy [doe.gov]. Yes, that's billion with a 'b'.
From the Wikipedia: "Sunlight provides about 1.36 kilowatts per square meter, and most solar cells are between 8 and 12 percent efficient." There are 9,158,918 square kilometers in the U.S. Each square kilometer is equal to one million square meters (remember 1km = 1,000m; so a square of 1km by 1km is 1,000m by 1,000m).
A kilowatt hour (kWh) is 1 kilowatt of output sustained over one hour.
So, 9,158,918 (number of square kilometers in the U.S.) times 1,000,000 (square meters in a square kilometer) times 0.68 (number of kilowatts with 50% efficiency) to get kilowatt hours. Multiply that by 8 (average number of hours in the day with usable sunlight) times 365 (days in a year).
18,185,947,580,800 kWh. That's more than 3,720,000,000,000 kWh by a factor of five, right? Solved!
Oh...ummm... This assumes that all of the cells are at that 50% laboratory record-setting level as opposed to the ones in use today. If we go off the 8%-12& mark, we're already at the bare minimum for energy requirements with no margin for error.
And this assumes that all of the panels are kept clean; Remember, less power if there's dust and grime on the solar cells.
And this assumes that it's never cloudy/rainy/snowy.
And this assumes that U.S. never increases their power usage from 2001 levels. (Note, I'm not getting into a discussion of the value of energy conservation. It's immaterial here. If you can get all ~300 million Americans to halt the growth of their usage let alone lower it, I will kiss the ground you walk upon.)
And this assumes that materials are sufficiently abundant and practical to build all of those panels.
And leaving things out in the sun for extended periods of time tends to do bad things to most items: sun-bleached hair, ruined paintings, less efficient solar cells, etc. Solar cells drop in efficiency by 2%-5% every year of their operating life; Best case scenario, your solar cell is working at 90% after five years; 80% after twelve years. (Remember, that's 90% of 12%.)
And, most important, this assumes that all the land area in the continental U.S. including Alaska is covered in solar panels! This means no food grown, no basking in the sunlight, an epidemic of Rickets Disease, etc.
Solar is only good for supplementary power generation: lowering the drain on the grid.
It's not about nuclear being warm and fuzzy. It's not about going with the solution with no risks. No technology available to us today can provide even close to all of the power used with 100% safety. Large scale energy is not and will never be 100% safe. However the use of fossil fuels is worse. Fossil fuels emit too many pollutants that get into our air and water.
It's time to bite the bullet and go for the IFRs. Why it is called an "Integral" Fast Reactor? Once the initial fuel is loaded no fuel goes in and no waste comes out for the entire 70 year life cycle. This will greatly reduce the current 90,000 nuclear shipments a year on trains and trucks. At the end of the 70 years, the nuclear "ash" of the IFR needs to be stored for only 300 years as opposed to 30,000. The actinides are used and recycled over and over until they are depleted. Current nuclear waste and the material for nuclear warheads can be reused as fuel for an IFR instead of being dumped in Yucca Mountain. The purity of that fuel once used in an IFR cannot again be easily transformed into weapons-grade material. It is as hard as converting the original uranium ore. If IFRs are implemented, uranium need not be mined for 500 years; Existing stock piles of uranium ore, nuclear waste, and obsolete weapons will be more than adequ
Except that the uranium and thorium are dispersed throughout all of the ash, not in "lumps ... lying in the street."
From the article: "Coal ash is composed primarily of oxides of silicon, aluminum, iron, calcium, magnesium, titanium, sodium, potassium, arsenic, mercury, and sulfur plus small quantities of uranium and thorium. Fly ash is primarily composed of non-combustible silicon compounds (glass) melted during combustion. Tiny glass spheres form the bulk of the fly ash."
If anything is tin foil, it was my tone, not the content of the article. I do apologize for the tone of my previous comment. I am not saying that you will die (immediately) from hanging out in front of coal plants, but you are indeed exposed to higher levels of radiation outside of a coal plant than a nuclear plant.
Take a Geiger counter. See for yourself. The radiation levels are indeed higher than the surrounding environment. Are those levels high enough to harm an individual? Probably not. But the levels outside of a nuclear plant definitely won't. This was the point I was trying to make.
The Niagra Falls plant is not microhydro. Different discussion.
But I guess you're right. We should set up hydroelectric at every major waterfall. Where were they in Idaho again? I've forgotten exactly.
"Coal ash is composed primarily of oxides of silicon, aluminum, iron, calcium, magnesium, titanium, sodium, potassium, arsenic, mercury, and sulfur plus small quantities of uranium and thorium. Fly ash is primarily composed of non-combustible silicon compounds (glass) melted during combustion. Tiny glass spheres form the bulk of the fly ash.
"Since the 1960s particulate precipitators have been used by U.S. coal-fired power plants to retain significant amounts of fly ash rather than letting it escape to the atmosphere. When functioning properly, these precipitators are approximately 99.5% efficient. Utilities also collect furnace ash, cinders, and slag, which are kept in cinder piles or deposited in ash ponds on coal-plant sites along with the captured fly ash.
"Trace quantities of uranium in coal range from less than 1 part per million (ppm) in some samples to around 10 ppm in others. Generally, the amount of thorium contained in coal is about 2.5 times greater than the amount of uranium. For a large number of coal samples, according to Environmental Protection Agency figures released in 1984, average values of uranium and thorium content have been determined to be 1.3 ppm and 3.2 ppm, respectively. Using these values along with reported consumption and projected consumption of coal by utilities provides a means of calculating the amounts of potentially recoverable breedable and fissionable elements (see sidebar). The concentration of fissionable uranium-235 (the current fuel for nuclear power plants) has been established to be 0.71% of uranium content."
Source: Alex Gabbard for Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Oh, but I forgot. Anyone who doesn't speak well of coal is a nuclear industry shill.
From the coal beds themselves. Uranium and thorium are naturally occuring materials.
"The NRC allows 10 mrems per year to persons living next to the property line of a nuclear plant, but its guidelines recommend a maximum of 5 mrems per year, and in point of fact, it starts investigating when this guideline limit is even approached.
"In comparison, a person receives an internal dose of about 20 mrems per year from his/her own blood (mainly due to potassium 40, contained in many protein foods), 35 mrems from building materials, 35 from cosmic rays, 25 from food, 11 from the ground, 5 from the air, 103 from X-rays diagnostics, etc."
Source: Nuclear Power and the Environment, International AEC, Vienna and The US Environmental Protection Agency
So am I to understand that France is losing money hand over fist because they are a nuclear-heavy country with 76% of all electricity there coming from nuclear? Why does Germany have so many nuclear reactors if they are so expensive? Are they cooking the books as well? Are you also factoring the more than $1 billion paid each year to sufferers of Black Lung?
http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/ colmain.html
You were aware that coal ash is highly toxic as well as radioactive, weren't you? With direct exposure to nuclear waste, you could die from radiation sickness (needing something like >10,000 rems to do that) or get cancer somewhere down the road. With direct exposure to coal ash, you could get poisoned by toxins, die from cancer somewhere down the road from that exposure, or die from cancer from the outputs of that power plant in the groundwater or air. Did you know that radioactivity in and around coal plants is higher by two orders of magnitude than those found outside a nuclear power plant? Did you know that the NRC rules for radioactivity outside a power plant are lower than the ambient radioactivity found in nature? Did you know that Grand Central Station in NYC would be automatically disqualified as a site for a nuclear power plant simply because the amount of radioactivity in its granite construction exceeds NRC maximum levels?
... the American taxpayer also pays $1 billion, not total, but year after year, to Black Lung victims -- not to cure or eliminate it, but just to compensate its victims."
... has very few enterprises that make money. But one of the them is uranium enrichment, for which the fuel manufacturers pay through their noses, and another is Price-Anderson insurance, the premia for which are paid by utilities, partly to private insurance pools, partly to the US government. The private insurances pay first, and they have so far paid $400,000 for 26 minor claims; Uncle Sam hasn't paid anything yet (and probably never will), but sits on a fund of $8 million of as yet unused premia. And, of course, the utilities pay taxes -- local, state, and federal -- with the stockholders paying a second round of taxes from their dividends. You call that a subsidy?"
"Yes, the American taxpayer has paid $1 billion [as of 1980] to research nuclear safety
"... the US government
- The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear by Dr. Petr Beckman. © 1980
The only reason nuclear could be more expensive (though still cheaper per kilowatt than solar) is because of the much expanded regulations on the nuclear industry that do not exist in the other industries.
A hairline crack was found in the plumbing of stand-by equipment in a nuclear power plant some years back. This was found by visual inspection. There was no leakage -- even taking into account that this was not radioactive water in the pipes. So what was the NRC's decision? Take down this plant and every nuclear plant in the country with the same design -- I believe something like 22 of them at the time. And what did they find? The one hairline crack: the one originally found by regular visual inspection. If ANY industry were held to the same safety standards as nuclear, they would be bankrupt. As it stands, nuclear is still competitive. If such ornerous (ridiculous) safety checks were not in place, it would be substantially more reliable and cost effective than any alternative.
Well, that and the fact that rabid Greens have lobbied successfully against breeder reactors in the U.S. which could make nuclear power generation even more profitable than it is today. IFR reactors could process the "waste" waiting to be stuck into Yucca Mountain AND repurpose nuclear warheads for power generation -- a proper end in my opinion to a large portion of our current nuclear stockpile.
But no. Nuclear is BAD.
Or did you have delusions that solar power would save the day or that coal is better than nuclear?
Please do not misunderstand. I welcome increased usage of solar, wind, and to some extend tidal, but these are not enough to supply 3,720 billion kilowatt hours of po
Uh hunh... Please read my comment from another thread. Solar doesn't scale. It runs up against the 1st Law of Themodynamics. A calculator is not the same as serving all of our country's energy needs.
Thanks for the correction. In truth, I was spending some time on that comment (that very few will probably ever read). In the editing/revision process, that ended up as an unwanted artifact from an earlier draft.
Danger Will Robinson! How do we get the huge solar arrays into space? Rockets: those huge cylinders that dump enormous amounts of pollutants into the atmosphere at every launch. Then add the cost of launching these satellites. Then calculate the number of solar collectors that must be launched. Then calculate the amount per square meter of solar energy that can be collected using the state of the art. I personally don't have all of those numbers. I would love to see them if you would be willing to post them.
Note: this is making the assumption that we won't use nuclear. Nuclear: cleaner than sending up a bunch of rockets. Cheaper than sending up a bunch of rockets. More power than you will get from a solar array. So why aren't you advocating nuclear? We could take those coal plants offline within ten or twenty years. For every 100 coal plants (at least), we could replace it with a nuclear plant which is cleaner than just one of those coal plants. And power demands are met in spades. So what's the problem? The waste? Did you read my previous comment? So let's review: hypothetically build a massive amount of solar panels, load them onto rockets, beam the energy back via microwaves, etc. OR build nuclear plants for which we lready have plans, have already implemented a prototype, have examples running in Europe, and can prove -- not a hypothetical number -- but prove that electricity output will be at least the levels we have previously seen.
Personally, I'd prefer just sticking to plans for making solar panels for homes more efficient and affordable here on Earth.
As far as asteroids and construction in space, asteroids would be useful for manufacturing space vehicles in space so that one would not have to overcome Earth's gravity nor pollute our environment. This may not solve our domestic energy problems (I'm waiting on the numbers for those solar panels in orbit). Another problem with asteroids is that we would have to have a sizeable asteroid come reasonably close to the Earth so that we could rendezvous. Then we'd have to stop its movement or make that further movement more accessible to us in the future. And then we have to sep up mining facilities on it.
That depends on what your definition of "too far beyond" is. So far, we as a species have only ever even orbited an asteroid exactly once let alone landed on it, altered its movement, surveyed it, established facilities, mined materials even in the smallest scale in space, etc. And this presupposes that our first dozen attempts will be even close to profitable.
You are of course correct. And while I have come across as quite strident in my views, I am actually an advocate for solar, wind, and to a limited extend tidal. Our energy shouldn't come from just one source.
I am however utterly convinced that coal, oil, and natural gas should not be energy sources we fall back upon. (Note: 51% of today's power generation is from coal.)
My only other comment on this is that switching infrastructures -- such as widespread adoption of home solar panels -- will not be a quick endevour even if the political will were there. People are stubborn. Americans many times doubly so. Most people have always received power from their local power company. Switching the mental paradigm will probably take longer than switching the technology.
I find it odd that the first page says "Myth: Solar living means sacrificing conveniences," while later on it says, "A PV system provides the required electricity. This type of design is not the norm by far--it's just a little too expensive
up front for most people--and it might require the owners to put on a sweater indoors a few times a year." Turning up the heat when you're cold is a convenience. Having to put sweaters on, however simple and beneficial a solution it may be, is NOT a convenience. Hint: If you are forced to seek an alternative, it is not as convenient.
When it's sunny, yes, you can use it in northern latitudes. What happens during the rainy season? In many northern states, the rainy season is at least half the year. Go on battery the whole time the sun isn't visible? What happens if (when!) the battery goes dead? Americans used
And let's discuss cost. The brochure you presented states that costs are so bad. Last I checked, good solar panels for the home were upwards of $30,000. If you are already paying for a new house, the extra cost of setting up solar is marginal. For folks who are just getting by (everyone with kids in college), $30,000 just isn't there. Costs from environmental damage where we don't immediately see the price tag? That's fair. Absolutely that's a fair statement to make. Then again so is saying, "What about the hidden costs of completely ripping out an established infrastructure in favor of a new one?" Isn't that fair too?
Once again, a fair statement. However how is microhydro going to handle the macro scale when you (a) can't pack them closely together and (b) cannot disrupt the normal activity of the surrounding water? Put more in to get more energy? Remember the 1st Law of Thermodynamics. As it is not created nor destroyed, if you use a sufficient amount of energy in one system, that amount is removed from another system. Environmentally sound? Reducing the energy by a significant amount would be environmentally sound? Most of the world's creatures live at or near a coastline. Carefully consider whether or not you want to mess with this substantially.
This one kills me. First of all, the term "nukes" usually refers to "nuclear weapons." The requirements for nuclear power are dramatically different from those of bombs. You might as well assert that electricity should be banned because electric chairs are made. It has no place in a power generation conversation. Second of all, there are nuclear reactors such as IFR (Integral Fast Reactor) which were designed specifically to address critics' problems with nuclear. It does not rely on coolant, computer control, or human interaction/intervention to prevent accidents; Safety is dependant upon natural phenomena and the laws of physics to operate. The working prototype for IFR conducted a series of tests where coolant was shut off and all of the usual precursors to a meltdown were put into place. No damage. No leakage. Nothing but a safe, controlled shutdown -- without human or computer interaction. This is not hypothetical. This is historical fact. In fact,
A WYSIWYG with XHTML? Show me one without presentational controls and I'll listen. If there's a "bold" button, don't bother. This isn't about me. I can write XML by hand just fine. This is for the folks who can't and have absolutely no aspirations to write raw XML. They want to write content. And good on them for that. But they will use the "bold" or "18pt arial" control if it is made available to them -- especially if "them" refers to more than a few different people.
No, the only solution is to remove the presentational controls. And no XHTML editor does this. If there were one, I see no reason why a DocBook one wouldn't exist as well. Given a choice, I would choose DocBook XML over XHTML 1.x any day of the week and on holidays.
Indeed. But not everyone cares (or even knows) about that. Even on Slashdot there are a huge number of folks who didn't see the point of the LDP moving to CSS. And this is supposedly a more tech-saavy group than the general public. Setting policy with a tool that follows that policy instead of working against it is always a good thing.
Once again, to my knowledge, no XHTML tool excludes the presentational elements. You're better off using Emacs to help with DocBook XML generation. (ick!)
Maybe particles from the Sun that have hit us have already caused mutations! Maybe without genetic mutations we all wouldn't be here!
Insightful indeed...
My most humble apologies.
I have tried LAMP. Even back in the days when the 'P' used to mean Perl instead of PHP. Linux works well. Apache is top notch. MySQL is a crap datastore by most measurements. Perl is no simpler for an absolute beginner than Java. PHP is the crap spawn of Perl. mysql_connect(...)? Crap. Now of course people are starting(!?!) to talk about database abstraction in PHP with PHP's ADO, but barely any packages use it now.
As far as shop owners, they couldn't care less what language it's written in. Most of the time they never touch code whether it's in Java, Perl, C, PHP, or Brainfuck. They upload a header graphic, input some text, and use the online tools from the storefront their ISP sold to them. PHP/MySQL is a historical accident, not a cogent choice.
A JSP-only page is just as easy to use as PHP. No, I take that back. PHP makes mistakes harder to track down and locks you into a particular database. What? ADO? If someone doesn't know how to program, they don't know about database abstraction. They only know mysql_connect(...). If they do know about database abstraction, they also know to program in something better than PHP.
If you don't like servlet/JSP environments, why not Zope? No 'Z' in LAMP. Or were you going to try to assert some revisionist history by saying the 'P' stands for Python?
Yes. And in the real world, the client platforms are MS Windows, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, and (maybe) Linux. If the shop is rare enough to run AIX and need a client graphics engine toolkit, they also have the resources to maintain and author the items you mentioned. In the real world, no one gives a rat's ass about HP-UX client GUI development.
Don't agree? Check out the job listings. Look up "wxWindows developer needed for work on IRIX." Now look up "Flash developer needed for Mac shop." If you can find the former, you have already amazed me. If you can't find the latter, you either weren't looking or you are delusional.
Oh! You got me! I was under the impression that I wrote code like:
I know. Soooo terrible. Compare this to
<sarcasm>Wow! You're right! The Perl is so much simpler and easier to read/write/understand basic string manipulation.</sarcasm>
Perl DBI is "much faster?" What Kool-Aid are you drinking? Unless you are going through the JDBC-ODBC bridge, they are both limited by database and socket speeds, not the implementation library. Oh, I forgot. Perl has the "go faster" bit set. Ple
I had completely forgotten about the advantages of line-oriented content for source control and easy-to-use diffs.
Thank you.
Except that all (X)HTML tools include sundry items like "bold," "italic," "18pt sans-serif," and "horizontal line," and "red." These are all presentation concerns that have no place in standardized documentation. This is why he mentioned DocBook XML.
XHTML is a step in the wrong direction.
I doubt that's a good solution. At least with DocBook you can buy/look up standardized documentation. That's a huge win most of the time -- especially if he moves on to another job. The issue I think probably has more to do with ease of authoring than his choice of markup language.
Questions like, "Why does it say, '<section> does not match </para>?' I'm not a computer person; I just want it to work," certainly come to mind. And you know what? The luddite is right in this case.
It's quite possible and a project I've been working on for a while now. Think Wiki without the bold, italics, and underline; Just the semantic structure.
He may be sick of the more complex ones I believe for good reason. Work with folks who don't close their tags, don't grok why exactly it matters whether they close their tags, constantly ask which tags to use, and regularly misuse the tags that are available. You would get sick of them too.
Normal people wince at the HTML produced by office products. They miss the point of semantic markup by design.
He never said that the solution had to be perfect. He was simply asking for something better/good enough. Using MS Word or OpenOffice for the most part is a step back from DocBook XML. (Yes, I know OO does DocBook in theory, but that's like saying that MS Word does HTML output; Technically it's true but in practice you never want to do it.)
As far as rolling your own, I suggest using Wiki as a starting point, pruning the presentation aspects, and refactoring the result. If not perfect, it would be a 90% solution in most cases IMHO.
Personally I hate applets. As for limited cross-platform usage of Flash, I beg to differ. It handles MS Windows, Mac, Linux... The toolkits you mentioned are (a) not all installed in most systems and (b) not web-based which is what you were comparing applets to.
Okay, you really lost me on this one. You just said that JDBC did a great job of database abstraction. And your conclusion: don't use it?
Like Batik for server-side SVG to raster (PNG/JPEG) conversion? Yeah. Totally useless. What was I thinking?
Ummm... GCJ?
Please also note that if Sun halted all development on Java, it would (a) alienate every customer they've had for the last eight to ten years and (b) create a genuine interest in funding an alternative (think: IBM funding and assisting gcj/kaffe/gnu classpath).
Won't happen? What about EJB? Certified licensees only. Wups! Who are those JBoss folks? LGPLed EJB-compatible project? Well we won't certify it. Hey! People are using it in droves anyway! Ummm... Okay... Maybe we'll look into certifying it. (This of course mattered very little as people were apparently using it with or without Sun's endorsement.)