"Why don't the labels simply buy (or create) radio stations for themselves?"
Because a radio station that is out-and-out owned by a record label loses believability as a venue for "popular" music. It gets harder to believe thaty they really are playing "the songs you want to hear."
Not that that line was ever all that believable to begin with... God bless Sirius.
No, it's "You can say what you want, just get out of my face." The First Amendment doesn't say anyting about either getting a free soapbox or being able to force people to listen to you.
Getting solar to work on these spacecraft with the intent of using the spin-offs here on earth is overkille, and expensive overkill at that. Even if you develop solar cells efficient enough to make a household self-sufficient as you suggest (which still makes me nervous about all the batteries you'll need lying about), there are fewer watts per square meter to work with the further out from the sun you are. You'll get to the point where the solar cells and the associated batteries are the most expensive components of the mission, ultimately getting in the way of the goal of the mission itself.
Solar works well for Mars and closer, but once you get to Jupiter and beyond it just isn't a realistic option. Imagine giving Cassini two solar arrays, each 9 meters by 32 meters. JPL has, and and they've got diagrams.
And I personlly believe nuclear power sources are more environmentally friendly than all the batteries you'll need to get you through those long, dark winter nights.
Yeah, and after burning every bush around that pond (which would take for-fucking-EVAR!!1!1!! when you consider where the red candle is) you might think to try the whistle. That would seem counter-productive, though, since all that would do is whisk you away to another part of the map...
"Also, dungeon 8 was kinda obvious since it was in the middle of the road."
A road in the middle of nowhere that doesn't go anywhere interesting. You might have stumbled across it if you got lost on your way to the the second labrynth, but...
(And I could be mean and ask about the location of the eighth labrynth in the second quest...)
"Though I shouldn't talk. I couldn't find dungeon 2 without a map."
That one they actually put in the instruction manual towards the back (past the walkthrough of the first labrynth).
Yeah, back before I got Beyond Good & Evil for my GCN. I'm still pissed about that!
I loved that game right on up 'til the point where I lost my partner to a glitch and got stuck in the dungeon I was in (I need him to open the door to get out). I didn't know I needed to make multiple, iterative saves in a game. Where can I get a DAT drive for my GCN?
And beyond the fustration of having to start the game all over again (which I haven't done yet because of it) there's the fustration of knowing I can't do a damned thing about it. Ubisoft says they don't do returns, only the retailers do that. The stores only care about the condition of the media, not the crap code that's on it, so nothing can happen on that front.
That game kicked so much ass, too. That'll be the last time I spend any money on anything with the word "Ubisoft" on it.
"This guy is taking a big, big role on all future Zelda projects, and he's spooked by games that require jumping?!?"
Zelda is supposed to be about exploring and adventuring, not falling off a ledge for the umpteen-millionth time because you didn't time your jumps juuuust right. That's why God gave us Castlevania 64.
"Thought Zelda 1 was too hard?!"
OK, bright boy, answer me this: Without 20 years of hindsight, without Nintendo Power, without the Official Nintendo Player's Guide, without The Legend of Zelda: Tips & Tactics, without friends who already knew, without calling up a Nintendo game counselor, without even breaking the seal on the partial map that came with the game...
How the heck are you supposed to find the 7th and 8th labrynths?
"...testers approached a T intersection: to the right were laser tripwires and gun turrets; to the left was a locked door; and directly in front was a (usable) window. He said every single one of them, without fail, went to the right."
Do you have any idea how many games I've played where "going to the right" really was the only option to the player, how many game publishers I've had to deal with that believe that a game has to do nothing more than be time-consuming to be any fun? How many times have you come to a difficult spot in a game, told yourself "There's got to be an easier way to do this," looked around, and found no easier way?
If the publishers want gamers to use more subtle solutions they should put those subtleties into their games more consistently. In the example given, I wouldn't be surprised if the window wasn't used because it was the only time such a simple solution was put into the game at all, a gesture for the programmer to say "Ooh, look! I'm clever!" before going back to giving us nothing but hack-and-slash.
Yeah, let's all modfity our registries according to some post we saw on Slashdot! Maybe it'll remap yor Caps Lock key, or maybe it will set your IE homepage to goatse.cx...
No, the high divorce rates are from people trying to suit themselves to the relationship instead of the other way around. They're too busy saying "you're not acting like a spouse is supposed to!" and not enough time asking themselves what having a spouse is supposed to mean for them.
IMO, the parent is far more likely to have a successful marriage than the dozens of uber-moderated posts I've seen so far that have repeated the conventional wisdom of "relationships are all about sacrifices!" What's the point? Sacrifice for its own sake?
A good relationship doesn't make you change, it makes you want to change. In a good relationship, you don't have to stop playing games, but you end up wanting to play them less. Once you start talking about doing things "for the good of the relationship," it's over; the relationship is supposed to suit the couple, not the other way around, and if either of you fall into that trap both of you will only end up with a lot of pain and resentment.
I'm sure we all know at least one person that has been through marriage more than twice. Their problem isn't their since of independence or their unwillingness to change themselves, their problem is their focus on marriage as an end unto itself. "Oh, this isn't how marriage is supposed to be like! Time to move on!"
And, by the same token, I'm sure we all know that one divorced couple that actually get along far better after the divorce than when they were married. They may even still live with each other, and people that didn't know them personally might think they were still married. What's their secret? Wittingly or not, when they found themselves stuck with having to choose between the other person and "marriage," they opted to scrap the ideal and hang on to the other person. And that's what marriage is really supposed to be about.
Whether you like it or not, the parent poster has a far healthier attitude about relationships than the person who submitted the article. The parent isn't going to try to force themselves to change for the other person and end up resenting them for it.
Anybody who wants to "protect the sanctity of marriage" has already failed, no matter what their motivation.
Thereby robbing us of our last shred of masculinity. If you take away our video arcades and our comic books stores, what do we have left? I mean, come on! Don't you women mock us enough as it is? Is it not enough to break our wills and rob us of anything vaguely resembling dignity by simply having two X chromosones? Has it gotten so boring for you that you now feel the need to make our lives miserable by beating us at our own games? Are you not intimidating enough as it is?
Once upon a time we had our sacntuaries! We could stride confidently (or the closest to a "stride" as we geeks could muster) into a gaming store and know that there wouldn't be anybody within ten kilometers that would make us feel like stuttering morons! It didn't matter that we were still stuttering morons without you around to remind us, becuase we could still stutter moronicly about each other about the evils of Pudding Workshop or discussing our favorite kinds of dice! Heck, it was about the only situation where we could make you as scared of us as we are of you; in small numbers we're amusing oddities, fun to torment and watch squirm, but when we collect together in a basement somewhere we were downright creepy!
But now we have women like you, by far the worst example of the species! You know it's all a front and you enjoy exposing us! I've seen your kind! You go to conventions and get a kick out of the way how, no matter how crowded the place is, there is never anybody within ten feet of you! Heck, how much longer will it be before you and a few of your friends use your natural anti-geek fields to herd us all into a corner and having those conventions all to yourselves?
We geeks have tried to let you have what you want with the hopes that you'll at least leave us with something we could call our own! We've sacrified so much in the interest of trying to coexist peacefully with you (just so long as you do your existing way over there somewhere)! Well, it's time for us to band together, take the stand we were never able to take in gym class and finally say No more!
You've taken my internet! You've taken my anime! You've robbed me of almost every reason I ever had to continue living! You've probably even stolen my soul somewhere along the line! By God, woman, you are not going to take my video games!
Of course, I hope by my saying this to you I haven't... well... you know... ruined my chances with... well... um... I hope I haven't come off too...
I've been awake for 40+ hours and haven't touched on A/V since first semester calculus.
At any rate, k/x is still a hyperbola with the x axis as an asymptope and quickly reaches a point where even an obnoxiously large increase in x still only nets a negligible decrease in k/x. It's a losing man's game beyond once x > k and you're better off manipulating k (i. e. play with the shape, which is what I said before).
"You can make it as save as possible but judging from human history Chernobyl won't remain the only catastrophe and if something goes really wrong in a fission reactor it goes *really* wrong."
The problem at Chernobyl had almost nothing to do with nuclear energy and had everything to do with the lethally Byzantine bureocracy of the Soviet Union, to which I really don't think there's any possibility of a modern equivalent. It was a reactor design that wouldn't have even gotten on the drawing board, let alone built, except in a system where Party membership counted more than technical skill and a job-producing construction project was more important than what was being built. Chernobyl was a poorly-designed, poorly-built reactor core powering a poorly-designed, pooly-built steam plant that simply wasn't designed to handle the steam pressures possible in a crisis situation (and I'm not talking "not designed safe enough," I'm talking "never bothered to consider safety"). I wouldn't want to live near an LNG-burning steam plant built and operated by these guys, nevermind a fission-based steam plant.
"The problem with fission reactors is that you have much extremly dangerous material around and hope that nothing goes wrong."
You mean like liquified natural gas, liquified propane and coal? Uranium does't get hauled around the country by the ton and doesn't flatten small towns when exposed to a stray spark.
Iran and North Korea both have some sort of commercial nuclear capability, and may or may not even be working on weapons. Coincidentally, both countries have also surfferend horrendous railroad explosions in the past few months, each of which have killed hundreds (perhaps thousands in the case of DPRK). Guess what was on the trains. Hint: it wans't radioactive.
But what about the great grand-mother of nuclear accidents? Sure, the people who wrote it have an agenda, but these facts are still pretty damned interesting:
The accident destroyed the Chernobyl-4 reactor and killed 30 people, including 28 from radiation exposure. A further 209 on site were treated for acute radiation poisoning and among these, 134 cases were confirmed (all of whom recovered). Nobody off-site suffered from acute radiation effects. However, large areas of Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and beyond were contaminated in varying degrees.
...
Several organisations have reported on the impacts of the Chernobyl accident, but all have had problems assessing the significance of their observations because of the lack of reliable public health information before 1986. In 1989 the World Health Organisation (WHO) first raised concerns that local medical scientists had incorrectly attributed various biological and health effects to radiation exposure.
An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) study involving more than 200 experts from 22 countries published in 1991 was more substantial. In the absence of pre-1986 data it compared a control population with those exposed to radiation. Significant health disorders were evident in both control and exposed groups, but, at that stage, none was radiation related.
Subsequent studies in the Ukraine, Russia and Belarus were based on national registers of over 1 million people possibly affected by radiation. These confirmed a rising incidence of thyroid cancer among exposed children. Late in 1995, the World Health Organisation linked nearly 7
"Everything that guy has to say is about nuclear weapons. Well, guess what. WE ALREADY HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS. There, accept it. Get over it. There is no danger of additional reactors turning the US, or China, or India, or Western Europe into nuclear armed powers. NONE, because they already are."
If anything, more reactors would give us the excuse to harvest our existing weapons for their fissionable material. If SALT continues between the US and Russia, at most an existing nuclear power would have reason to having a few hundred around (to maintain a head start in any future potential nuclear arms races, such as between the US and the PRC), not the 1000s we still see here today.
Of course, Orion drives IMNSHO would be even better, but considering the views of people like this blogger...
"Nuclear killed far fewer people per kWh of energy."
Yes, but it's not photogenic. Too spread out over too long a period of time. Scarey pictures always trump numbers.
" Japan and South Korea both have reactors, and neither has nuclear weapons."
In contrast, their neighbor to the north is in exactly the opposite position. And what are they doing with them? "We'll nuke you if you don't build us a nuclear power plant!"
"have lots of melt downs in highly populated areas"
Metldowns seem to get far more news than refinery explosions and the like. Every so often Something Bad happens involving a particularly volatile form of a fossil fuel (liquified propane, liquified natural gas, coal dust, etc.) and some small town gets wiped off the map, but the thought that something might happen with DPRK's nuclear program is still talked about while the fact that something did happen in Ryongchon a few months back seems to have slipped out of the media's attention.
"Yeah, those 300,00 dead in the nuclear attacks on Japan certainly look horrible compared to the millions of air pollution deaths."
They're also damned convenient from a statistical point of view. Those 300,000 had the courtesy to all die at once in one place, as opposed to all spread out over the course of years. Kinda like the radioactive elements that fossil fuel consumption dumps into the atmosphere (at least with a fission plant everybody knows damn well where the uranium went, and it ain't "up the stack").
"A fission reactor is critical (the normal state of operation)"
I am neither a physicst nor a nuclear engineer, but something about that statement just doesn't look right. I'm pretty sure that being at the critical point is just a nudge away from "an earth-shattering kaboom."
IIRC, the goal of a nuclear reactor is to produce heat and not necesarily neutrons (glorifed steam plants, etc. etc.). The trick is to have enough free neutrons to generate a high enough reaction rate to produce the desired heat, and keeping those neutrons in the core instead of escaping into the inhibitors is more a matter of efficiency (more heat per free neutron) than in keeping the reaction going.
The radioactive elements in a nuclear fuel are going to emit neutrons no matter what you do (they're radioactive, after all). All a fission reactor does is try to help the process along.
"Since neutrons are lost through the surface and produced inside the core you want the ratio of volume to surface to be large. That means a huge reactor core."
Huh? Generally speaking, maximizing volume and minimizing surface area is more a matter of shape and is independent of scale. A cube has a 6:1 area-to-volume ratio no matter what size it is. There are other engineering factors that affect the size of a reactor core (you want your fuel to be packed desnely enough to react but not so dense that it can't be controlled), but I don't see how this is one of them.
"Even in a run-away scenario"
Run-away scenarioes are a symptom of poor engineering. If they can happen then the problem is with how you built it, not with the underlying physics. See Cherynobyl.
The general radar imagery area of that site is here. You can get static imagery or loops of individual radar stations at different ranges, and they also offer composites of the contiguous 48, etc. I find the nice thing about the composites is that they also show you the range of each radar station, so you know where the coverage gaps are. The images are rairly raw: there's no attempt to clean up ground clutter or smooth out the pixels (like you typically see in commercially-produced stuff like your local news).
For hard-core radar data like what you seem to be asking about, a good place to start seems to be here
My personal fav, though, has got to be the satellite imagery. I'm easily amused and I like watching the terminator move across the visible light loops.
Let's replace a few words and see if your argument still holds water.
And if those criminals didn't have access to heroin, there'd be no problem. You don't think that heroin magically appeared in the criminals' christmas stockings, did you? They didn't - it was once legal heroin. Take away the legal heroin, and the illegal heroin disappears too.
Making contraband illegal in all instances doesn't make it go away.
"Train your police to be as effective, if not moreso, than an armed civilian, and you've got no excuse."
If they are more effective than an armed civillian, why shouldn't the civillians then be allowed to have guns?
"Don't be fooled into thinking person+gun=crime fighter. Unless that person has suitable training (which, the last time i checked, doesn't come included with the gun)"
Perhaps, but it does come with the concealed-carry permit.
"they are more of a threat to themselves and their loved ones than to criminals."
Which means it's their problem, not mine.
"Being alive doesn't qualify you as someone deemed worthy of owning a device whos purpose is SOLELY to kill a person."
You focus on the fact that guns are intended to kill people but never seem to consider that there are times when people should have their lives threatened if not taken away outright. After all, why should even the police have guns?
There are things more important than human life, especially when you start looking at the lives of specific people.
"Look at crime statistics in the US, and compare them to other countries. I'm not just talking michael-moore-esque statistics, but entire crime statistics. You'll see the US is way up there. Guns are the problem."
OK, first you want me to look at real statistics, and then you want me to misuse those real statistics by assuming they show causality?
Secondly, you seem to be forgetting (much like my national government) that the US is a union of 50 republics that still have some measure of autonomy, especially when it comes to laws and law enforcement. National laws and national law enforcement only gets involved in very specific circumstances, which means that local crime problems are just that: local. By looking at national statistics and crying for a national policy (on anything, really), what you're effectivley doing is saying that a person living in east Los Angeles and a person in rural Louisiana are living in exactly the same circumstances and have exactly the same problems (and live under exactly the same state laws). That's like saying someone living in rual Scotland and somone in a Warsaw ghetto are in exactly the same circumstances, and at least there you're more likely to pick two people that both speak English.
"Inept, dumb police are more of a problem, as if they did their jobs correctly, no non-cop would need a gun."
If they "did their jobs correctly" by your definition, why do the police need their guns?
And how exactly are they supposed to do their jobs "better" when it comes to something like contraband? A concealed weapon is by definition concealed, and the only real way to keep that from happening is to not let anybody conceal anything. So what's your problem with Echelon?
"Guns don't help anyone. Certainly not if they're being used by some guy off the street."
If nothing else it means that guy off the street is less likely to be successfully mugged. Whether or not it ends well for the intended victim, it will make the intended mugger think a little more before trying it.
"People get attracted to the power they think they have from guns. They get the whole rambo mentality going on."
Are you talking about people you know who have a legally-owned handgun, or are you just going by what you see on American TV shows? Most of the people I know (friends and family) have at least one legally
"heres another situation for ya. cop pulls up some dodgy look guy and finds a gun on him. in your fantastic country, the cop can do nothing,"
No, the cop then restrains the guy, takes away the gun, and then proceeds to see if the guy had a permit to have that concealed weapon. If the guy did have the permit, the first words out of his mouth as the cop approached him should have been "I'm wearing a gun." People who don't surprise police officers live longer.
"its his right to carry a gun even if he looks like a dodgy fucker whos gonna mug your grandma the moment the cop lets him go."
Yes, because we all know that people that look different from you should have no rights.
"now wouldnt it make more sense if you actually gave the police the power to start dissolving the problem?"
Personally, I'd rather have my own gun and in the process lighten their work load.
Slashdot Mirror
You're single, aren't you?
Welcome our new canine over...
No, wait, I just can't wrap my head around that one. Come back to me when they figure out what side of the door they want to be on.
"Why don't the labels simply buy (or create) radio stations for themselves?"
Because a radio station that is out-and-out owned by a record label loses believability as a venue for "popular" music. It gets harder to believe thaty they really are playing "the songs you want to hear."
Not that that line was ever all that believable to begin with... God bless Sirius.
No, it's "You can say what you want, just get out of my face." The First Amendment doesn't say anyting about either getting a free soapbox or being able to force people to listen to you.
Getting solar to work on these spacecraft with the intent of using the spin-offs here on earth is overkille, and expensive overkill at that. Even if you develop solar cells efficient enough to make a household self-sufficient as you suggest (which still makes me nervous about all the batteries you'll need lying about), there are fewer watts per square meter to work with the further out from the sun you are. You'll get to the point where the solar cells and the associated batteries are the most expensive components of the mission, ultimately getting in the way of the goal of the mission itself.
Solar works well for Mars and closer, but once you get to Jupiter and beyond it just isn't a realistic option. Imagine giving Cassini two solar arrays, each 9 meters by 32 meters. JPL has, and and they've got diagrams.
And I personlly believe nuclear power sources are more environmentally friendly than all the batteries you'll need to get you through those long, dark winter nights.
"There's a secret where fairies don't live"
Yeah, and after burning every bush around that pond (which would take for-fucking-EVAR!!1!1!! when you consider where the red candle is) you might think to try the whistle. That would seem counter-productive, though, since all that would do is whisk you away to another part of the map...
"Also, dungeon 8 was kinda obvious since it was in the middle of the road."
A road in the middle of nowhere that doesn't go anywhere interesting. You might have stumbled across it if you got lost on your way to the the second labrynth, but...
(And I could be mean and ask about the location of the eighth labrynth in the second quest...)
"Though I shouldn't talk. I couldn't find dungeon 2 without a map."
That one they actually put in the instruction manual towards the back (past the walkthrough of the first labrynth).
"Or better yet, maybe my Blackberry will have to meet a certain 'accidental' demise,"
Take they Mystery Men approach to accidental demises: "It fell down an elevator shaft... onto some bullets..."
Yeah, but they're not half as stupid as the idiots who elect... oh.
Yeah, back before I got Beyond Good & Evil for my GCN. I'm still pissed about that!
I loved that game right on up 'til the point where I lost my partner to a glitch and got stuck in the dungeon I was in (I need him to open the door to get out). I didn't know I needed to make multiple, iterative saves in a game. Where can I get a DAT drive for my GCN?
And beyond the fustration of having to start the game all over again (which I haven't done yet because of it) there's the fustration of knowing I can't do a damned thing about it. Ubisoft says they don't do returns, only the retailers do that. The stores only care about the condition of the media, not the crap code that's on it, so nothing can happen on that front.
That game kicked so much ass, too. That'll be the last time I spend any money on anything with the word "Ubisoft" on it.
Is this before or after we make slavery reparations for slave-built infrastructure that didn't survive the Sherman campaign?
"Of course, homosexuality isn't something to be "cured", but it was the 50's... not the most tolerant time."
Not that this forgives the act, but ten years prior not too far from his home he would have been shipped off to a concentration camp.
"This guy is taking a big, big role on all future Zelda projects, and he's spooked by games that require jumping?!?"
Zelda is supposed to be about exploring and adventuring, not falling off a ledge for the umpteen-millionth time because you didn't time your jumps juuuust right. That's why God gave us Castlevania 64.
"Thought Zelda 1 was too hard?!"
OK, bright boy, answer me this: Without 20 years of hindsight, without Nintendo Power, without the Official Nintendo Player's Guide, without The Legend of Zelda: Tips & Tactics, without friends who already knew, without calling up a Nintendo game counselor, without even breaking the seal on the partial map that came with the game...
How the heck are you supposed to find the 7th and 8th labrynths?
OK, we have somebody here who:
- Thinks drastically different from everybody else about something and
- Isn't afraid to voice his opinion
And you want him gone? Hell, those two reasons are probably why he's has high in Nintendo as he is, which is as it should be!"Maybe they are hacking it to make the game fun? "
Sorry, we're talking about the Pokemon Mini here, not the Ngage.
(Which one do you folks think has sold more?)
"...testers approached a T intersection: to the right were laser tripwires and gun turrets; to the left was a locked door; and directly in front was a (usable) window. He said every single one of them, without fail, went to the right."
Do you have any idea how many games I've played where "going to the right" really was the only option to the player, how many game publishers I've had to deal with that believe that a game has to do nothing more than be time-consuming to be any fun? How many times have you come to a difficult spot in a game, told yourself "There's got to be an easier way to do this," looked around, and found no easier way?
If the publishers want gamers to use more subtle solutions they should put those subtleties into their games more consistently. In the example given, I wouldn't be surprised if the window wasn't used because it was the only time such a simple solution was put into the game at all, a gesture for the programmer to say "Ooh, look! I'm clever!" before going back to giving us nothing but hack-and-slash.
Yeah, let's all modfity our registries according to some post we saw on Slashdot! Maybe it'll remap yor Caps Lock key, or maybe it will set your IE homepage to goatse.cx...
No, the high divorce rates are from people trying to suit themselves to the relationship instead of the other way around. They're too busy saying "you're not acting like a spouse is supposed to!" and not enough time asking themselves what having a spouse is supposed to mean for them.
IMO, the parent is far more likely to have a successful marriage than the dozens of uber-moderated posts I've seen so far that have repeated the conventional wisdom of "relationships are all about sacrifices!" What's the point? Sacrifice for its own sake?
A good relationship doesn't make you change, it makes you want to change. In a good relationship, you don't have to stop playing games, but you end up wanting to play them less. Once you start talking about doing things "for the good of the relationship," it's over; the relationship is supposed to suit the couple, not the other way around, and if either of you fall into that trap both of you will only end up with a lot of pain and resentment.
I'm sure we all know at least one person that has been through marriage more than twice. Their problem isn't their since of independence or their unwillingness to change themselves, their problem is their focus on marriage as an end unto itself. "Oh, this isn't how marriage is supposed to be like! Time to move on!"
And, by the same token, I'm sure we all know that one divorced couple that actually get along far better after the divorce than when they were married. They may even still live with each other, and people that didn't know them personally might think they were still married. What's their secret? Wittingly or not, when they found themselves stuck with having to choose between the other person and "marriage," they opted to scrap the ideal and hang on to the other person. And that's what marriage is really supposed to be about.
Whether you like it or not, the parent poster has a far healthier attitude about relationships than the person who submitted the article. The parent isn't going to try to force themselves to change for the other person and end up resenting them for it.
Anybody who wants to "protect the sanctity of marriage" has already failed, no matter what their motivation.
"Some of us play the same games boys do."
Thereby robbing us of our last shred of masculinity. If you take away our video arcades and our comic books stores, what do we have left? I mean, come on! Don't you women mock us enough as it is? Is it not enough to break our wills and rob us of anything vaguely resembling dignity by simply having two X chromosones? Has it gotten so boring for you that you now feel the need to make our lives miserable by beating us at our own games? Are you not intimidating enough as it is?
Once upon a time we had our sacntuaries! We could stride confidently (or the closest to a "stride" as we geeks could muster) into a gaming store and know that there wouldn't be anybody within ten kilometers that would make us feel like stuttering morons! It didn't matter that we were still stuttering morons without you around to remind us, becuase we could still stutter moronicly about each other about the evils of Pudding Workshop or discussing our favorite kinds of dice! Heck, it was about the only situation where we could make you as scared of us as we are of you; in small numbers we're amusing oddities, fun to torment and watch squirm, but when we collect together in a basement somewhere we were downright creepy!
But now we have women like you, by far the worst example of the species! You know it's all a front and you enjoy exposing us! I've seen your kind! You go to conventions and get a kick out of the way how, no matter how crowded the place is, there is never anybody within ten feet of you! Heck, how much longer will it be before you and a few of your friends use your natural anti-geek fields to herd us all into a corner and having those conventions all to yourselves?
We geeks have tried to let you have what you want with the hopes that you'll at least leave us with something we could call our own! We've sacrified so much in the interest of trying to coexist peacefully with you (just so long as you do your existing way over there somewhere)! Well, it's time for us to band together, take the stand we were never able to take in gym class and finally say No more!
You've taken my internet! You've taken my anime! You've robbed me of almost every reason I ever had to continue living! You've probably even stolen my soul somewhere along the line! By God, woman, you are not going to take my video games!
Of course, I hope by my saying this to you I haven't... well... you know... ruined my chances with... well... um... I hope I haven't come off too...
Soul-stealer!
I've been awake for 40+ hours and haven't touched on A/V since first semester calculus.
At any rate, k/x is still a hyperbola with the x axis as an asymptope and quickly reaches a point where even an obnoxiously large increase in x still only nets a negligible decrease in k/x. It's a losing man's game beyond once x > k and you're better off manipulating k (i. e. play with the shape, which is what I said before).
"You can make it as save as possible but judging from human history Chernobyl won't remain the only catastrophe and if something goes really wrong in a fission reactor it goes *really* wrong."
The problem at Chernobyl had almost nothing to do with nuclear energy and had everything to do with the lethally Byzantine bureocracy of the Soviet Union, to which I really don't think there's any possibility of a modern equivalent. It was a reactor design that wouldn't have even gotten on the drawing board, let alone built, except in a system where Party membership counted more than technical skill and a job-producing construction project was more important than what was being built. Chernobyl was a poorly-designed, poorly-built reactor core powering a poorly-designed, pooly-built steam plant that simply wasn't designed to handle the steam pressures possible in a crisis situation (and I'm not talking "not designed safe enough," I'm talking "never bothered to consider safety"). I wouldn't want to live near an LNG-burning steam plant built and operated by these guys, nevermind a fission-based steam plant.
"The problem with fission reactors is that you have much extremly dangerous material around and hope that nothing goes wrong."
You mean like liquified natural gas, liquified propane and coal? Uranium does't get hauled around the country by the ton and doesn't flatten small towns when exposed to a stray spark.
Iran and North Korea both have some sort of commercial nuclear capability, and may or may not even be working on weapons. Coincidentally, both countries have also surfferend horrendous railroad explosions in the past few months, each of which have killed hundreds (perhaps thousands in the case of DPRK). Guess what was on the trains. Hint: it wans't radioactive.
But what about the great grand-mother of nuclear accidents? Sure, the people who wrote it have an agenda, but these facts are still pretty damned interesting:
"Everything that guy has to say is about nuclear weapons. Well, guess what. WE ALREADY HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS. There, accept it. Get over it. There is no danger of additional reactors turning the US, or China, or India, or Western Europe into nuclear armed powers. NONE, because they already are."
If anything, more reactors would give us the excuse to harvest our existing weapons for their fissionable material. If SALT continues between the US and Russia, at most an existing nuclear power would have reason to having a few hundred around (to maintain a head start in any future potential nuclear arms races, such as between the US and the PRC), not the 1000s we still see here today.
Of course, Orion drives IMNSHO would be even better, but considering the views of people like this blogger...
"Nuclear killed far fewer people per kWh of energy."
Yes, but it's not photogenic. Too spread out over too long a period of time. Scarey pictures always trump numbers.
" Japan and South Korea both have reactors, and neither has nuclear weapons."
In contrast, their neighbor to the north is in exactly the opposite position. And what are they doing with them? "We'll nuke you if you don't build us a nuclear power plant!"
"have lots of melt downs in highly populated areas"
Metldowns seem to get far more news than refinery explosions and the like. Every so often Something Bad happens involving a particularly volatile form of a fossil fuel (liquified propane, liquified natural gas, coal dust, etc.) and some small town gets wiped off the map, but the thought that something might happen with DPRK's nuclear program is still talked about while the fact that something did happen in Ryongchon a few months back seems to have slipped out of the media's attention.
"Yeah, those 300,00 dead in the nuclear attacks on Japan certainly look horrible compared to the millions of air pollution deaths."
They're also damned convenient from a statistical point of view. Those 300,000 had the courtesy to all die at once in one place, as opposed to all spread out over the course of years. Kinda like the radioactive elements that fossil fuel consumption dumps into the atmosphere (at least with a fission plant everybody knows damn well where the uranium went, and it ain't "up the stack").
"A fission reactor is critical (the normal state of operation)"
I am neither a physicst nor a nuclear engineer, but something about that statement just doesn't look right. I'm pretty sure that being at the critical point is just a nudge away from "an earth-shattering kaboom."
IIRC, the goal of a nuclear reactor is to produce heat and not necesarily neutrons (glorifed steam plants, etc. etc.). The trick is to have enough free neutrons to generate a high enough reaction rate to produce the desired heat, and keeping those neutrons in the core instead of escaping into the inhibitors is more a matter of efficiency (more heat per free neutron) than in keeping the reaction going.
The radioactive elements in a nuclear fuel are going to emit neutrons no matter what you do (they're radioactive, after all). All a fission reactor does is try to help the process along.
"Since neutrons are lost through the surface and produced inside the core you want the ratio of volume to surface to be large. That means a huge reactor core."
Huh? Generally speaking, maximizing volume and minimizing surface area is more a matter of shape and is independent of scale. A cube has a 6:1 area-to-volume ratio no matter what size it is. There are other engineering factors that affect the size of a reactor core (you want your fuel to be packed desnely enough to react but not so dense that it can't be controlled), but I don't see how this is one of them.
"Even in a run-away scenario"
Run-away scenarioes are a symptom of poor engineering. If they can happen then the problem is with how you built it, not with the underlying physics. See Cherynobyl.
The general radar imagery area of that site is here. You can get static imagery or loops of individual radar stations at different ranges, and they also offer composites of the contiguous 48, etc. I find the nice thing about the composites is that they also show you the range of each radar station, so you know where the coverage gaps are. The images are rairly raw: there's no attempt to clean up ground clutter or smooth out the pixels (like you typically see in commercially-produced stuff like your local news).
For hard-core radar data like what you seem to be asking about, a good place to start seems to be here
My personal fav, though, has got to be the satellite imagery. I'm easily amused and I like watching the terminator move across the visible light loops.
Making contraband illegal in all instances doesn't make it go away.
"Train your police to be as effective, if not moreso, than an armed civilian, and you've got no excuse."
If they are more effective than an armed civillian, why shouldn't the civillians then be allowed to have guns?
"Don't be fooled into thinking person+gun=crime fighter. Unless that person has suitable training (which, the last time i checked, doesn't come included with the gun)"
Perhaps, but it does come with the concealed-carry permit.
"they are more of a threat to themselves and their loved ones than to criminals."
Which means it's their problem, not mine.
"Being alive doesn't qualify you as someone deemed worthy of owning a device whos purpose is SOLELY to kill a person."
You focus on the fact that guns are intended to kill people but never seem to consider that there are times when people should have their lives threatened if not taken away outright. After all, why should even the police have guns?
There are things more important than human life, especially when you start looking at the lives of specific people.
"Look at crime statistics in the US, and compare them to other countries. I'm not just talking michael-moore-esque statistics, but entire crime statistics. You'll see the US is way up there. Guns are the problem."
OK, first you want me to look at real statistics, and then you want me to misuse those real statistics by assuming they show causality?
Secondly, you seem to be forgetting (much like my national government) that the US is a union of 50 republics that still have some measure of autonomy, especially when it comes to laws and law enforcement. National laws and national law enforcement only gets involved in very specific circumstances, which means that local crime problems are just that: local. By looking at national statistics and crying for a national policy (on anything, really), what you're effectivley doing is saying that a person living in east Los Angeles and a person in rural Louisiana are living in exactly the same circumstances and have exactly the same problems (and live under exactly the same state laws). That's like saying someone living in rual Scotland and somone in a Warsaw ghetto are in exactly the same circumstances, and at least there you're more likely to pick two people that both speak English.
"Inept, dumb police are more of a problem, as if they did their jobs correctly, no non-cop would need a gun."
If they "did their jobs correctly" by your definition, why do the police need their guns?
And how exactly are they supposed to do their jobs "better" when it comes to something like contraband? A concealed weapon is by definition concealed, and the only real way to keep that from happening is to not let anybody conceal anything. So what's your problem with Echelon?
"Guns don't help anyone. Certainly not if they're being used by some guy off the street."
If nothing else it means that guy off the street is less likely to be successfully mugged. Whether or not it ends well for the intended victim, it will make the intended mugger think a little more before trying it.
"People get attracted to the power they think they have from guns. They get the whole rambo mentality going on."
Are you talking about people you know who have a legally-owned handgun, or are you just going by what you see on American TV shows? Most of the people I know (friends and family) have at least one legally
"heres another situation for ya. cop pulls up some dodgy look guy and finds a gun on him. in your fantastic country, the cop can do nothing,"
No, the cop then restrains the guy, takes away the gun, and then proceeds to see if the guy had a permit to have that concealed weapon. If the guy did have the permit, the first words out of his mouth as the cop approached him should have been "I'm wearing a gun." People who don't surprise police officers live longer.
"its his right to carry a gun even if he looks like a dodgy fucker whos gonna mug your grandma the moment the cop lets him go."
Yes, because we all know that people that look different from you should have no rights.
"now wouldnt it make more sense if you actually gave the police the power to start dissolving the problem?"
Personally, I'd rather have my own gun and in the process lighten their work load.