Does he not even recognize that ideas and discoveries by women were almost unanimously dismissed and women even prohibited from participating in scientific fields or hell, any academic field until recently?
Without trying to defend this guy who, apparently, chose a quite bad place to talk about all this, I don't think that his point is denying what you are saying. I guess that his ideas were meant to be applied to present-day science, where I guess that you can find things on the lines of a few articles back (all the boards of big companies forced to have 1 woman).
Assuming what would have occurred if certain event didn't happen (no slavery, no Hitler, no wars, no famine, etc.) is, in the best scenario, a blind guess; and, under relatively complex conditions (generations-ago societies), ridiculously naive (way too many parameters to even dare to guess what any change might have provoked; a change that would have never occurred anyway). What is certainly important is understanding why obsolete ideas from generations ago could ever condition nowadays' behaviours, via ridiculous impositions or provoking a fanaticism-prone environment where some people consider censorship a valid tool to suppress opposing views (or worse: punctual words/isolated ideas not fully complying with whatever set of absolute truths).
Sorry, I wrote my previous reply without having read your post properly (even though I quoted it), almost as an immediate reaction wrongly assuming your position. Note that I wasn't defending this or any other kind of discrimination-based action; just highlighted the fact that, under these specific conditions, it doesn't seem to matter too much. But I do think that any kind of discrimination or generic-understanding-based decision is likely to provoke negative effects for everyone (e.g., incompetent people being selected).
The difference is that sons have been brought up from a young age to take on these hereditary roles, whereas daughters typically have not. If you want to change this then you have to do it while the daughters are still young so they can have years preparing, otherwise they will be less well prepared than the sons.
And your solution is arbitrarily forcing random people with random suitability to be preferred (by implicitly supporting the kind of generic-prejudice-based ideas against which you are precisely fighting)? Or, by using a more descriptive example, you consider that a competition is rigged because some participants took performance-enhancement substances and your solution is arbitrarily deciding who wins the race? How can you see this as a solution? I see creating new problems with the excuse of compensating old ones. The only sensible solutions I see are: complaining about the abusers (or taking advantage of a judicial/legal system which is very protective with the individual rights, mainly when generic prejudices come into picture), abusing yourself/over-training (if they play dirty by marginalising women, I am sure that women could also play dirty on other fronts) or accepting the reality. Any other option seems completely unreasonable, unfair and, under the most probable conditions, the origin of further problems which might even backfire and make women situation even worse (e.g., one of the comments above referring to the unfairness for women really getting there on their own merits).
Reaching certain positions and mainly in big companies is usually a result of multiple factors which might be easily defined as quite arbitrary. It doesn't seem that a new arbitrary element can hurt much. Picking daughters rather than sons (half kidding, half serious)? Why not? Practically speaking, I don't see any difference. On the other hand, the ideas underlying these actions are kind of worrying (or better: sad), mainly because of not accepting their arbitrary essence and even expecting to be seen as some kind of fair/logical/sensible attitude.
I respect everyone's position on any front for as long as they are happy and don't damage anyone else. I wouldn't find any problem with people defending ideas on these lines in cases like this where there doesn't seem to be any real damage (a bit more of arbitrariness in an intrinsically-arbitrary sub-world). I could even accept actions of this sort to negatively affect me; in the sense of knowing that dealing with arbitrariness or unfairness is part of the far-from-perfect (AKA stupid) world in which we live. I might even accept someone I love/respect (daughter, wife, etc.) to be benefited from something like this, but only for as long as they are fully accepting the reality and are completely honest. I will certainly never respect a person benefiting from arbitrariness/unfairness in any way and trying to show it differently.
Ideally, I prefer to deal with absolute fairness, but I also understand that being 100% fair is very difficult. I even understand that, when being in a relatively advantageous position (and I consider that this is my case, for various reasons like having very clear ideas on many fronts), you see things differently. But a somehow unfair situation without honesty and (self-)awareness is completely unacceptable for me. So, did you get that job because you are woman? Congrats! You played your cards and got what you wanted! Now you can even prove that that decision, although intrinsically arbitrary, wasn't bad by doing an excellent job. But never dare to say me that you did deserve that, because you would be either lying or in-denial. A third alternative could be a woman seriously thinking that she isn't able to compete with others (to get a job like this in a country like the USA) without some extra help; and, in that case, I would just feel pity for her.
Also its results are a somehow-restricted version of what you find in google.com. That is not my experience. You will NOT see the "sponsored" results from Google, but that is kinda the whole point
I see appreciable differences between the shown results like different order or missing items. Not sure if in any case or only under specific conditions. Perhaps it is even provoked by my specific conditions (automatic country selection having some differences). I am happy with what I get anyway.
I have also been using it for a while and works pretty well. The not-so-good issue is that you are still depending on Google, although only indirectly. Also its results are a somehow-restricted version of what you find in google.com. On the other hand and after having tried quite a few options, there seems to be no real alternative. Perhaps bing.com might eventually get there, but if you are trying to avoid monopolies this wouldn't be a too sensible change.
I find this lack of true alternatives kind of weird, mainly for a so attractive market and when there seems to be lots of money available to spend in long-term projects. It seems even weirder that the few existing alternatives have a low-to-no technical focus; they are either copying existing approaches or directly showing external results. One of the reasons of the original success of Google was precisely caring a lot about technical aspects. Now, it seems that companies are focusing much more on immediately monetising than on having a good enough product. Good for Google, bad for everyone else.
Internet company funding is lot less risky than funding basic research.
No doubt about that. My point was that there is so much money (precisely mostly due to the huge returns of low risk investments in sectors like software) and so little knowledge/effort to get there in some places that assuming negligence seems a safe bet. Why expecting competence in contexts where truly losing is virtually impossible and the access is almost blindly granted to certain people, rarely on their own merits/because of objectively being the best?
When did the investors stop looking for payback or out within a numerable number of quarters?
Just take a look at the big number of articles in Slashdot about companies which lose everything after having raised lots of money and whose business models don't even make too much sense. Or see the relevant number of "internet giants" which accumulate losses for years, but keep getting funding over and over. No idea about the reason for all this. Huge amounts of money which will keep increasing regardless of anything else, including being horribly managed? I am just a (kind of) poor guy who will never have access to so much money or lack of accountability (no interest in getting there either).
No problem, then! All the hard work has already been done! You have a barely functional preliminary version roughly based on an abstract theoretical approach and all the long-term thinking ("we have just to scale it up"). The only missing detail now is estimating how long it will most likely take. I am personally a big fan of the within-the-next-5-years technique. (This is part of the speech which I am expecting to give in my hopefully-never-happening MBA graduation ceremony). LOL
This is a bit better. Let's take a look at your link...
challenges of repository siting (a problem that applies equally to direct disposal of spent fuel), the environmental risks of the aqueous and organic waste streams, and because of its high cost compared to the once-through fuel cycle
but all are agreed that under current (2005) economic conditions the reprocessing-recycle option is the more costly
If reprocessing is undertaken only to reduce the radioactivity level of spent fuel it should be taken into account that spent nuclear fuel becomes less radioactive over time. After 40 years its radioactivity drops by 99.9%,[46] though it still takes over a thousand years for the level of radioactivity to approach that of natural uranium.
On 25 October 2011 a commission of the Japanese Atomic Energy Commission revealed during a meeting calculations about the costs of recycling nuclear fuel for power generation. These costs could be twice the costs of direct geological disposal of spent fuel
And now let's see the distribution of these plants: China (1), France (3), UK (2), India (4), Pakistan (2) and Russia (1). By taking a quick look at these numbers (+ the ones of already decommissioned plants whose total is higher), the situation seems pretty descriptive even before analysing the generated power. They have been running since quite long time ago (starting in 1944!!), are available in only a few countries (most of them "cost concerned") and represent a very tiny fraction of the total number of nuclear plants. Even though the really relevant figures would be the ones comparing the actual power generated from reused vs. natural fuel, which are likely to be even much more negative for your interests.
After some online research, I haven't been able to find any reference undoubtedly confirming your statement in the sense of your intention (i.e., defending that regularly reusing uranium is perfectly feasible for more or less typical nuclear plant operations). There are certainly quite a few references to uranium (or plutonium) recycling (and France does look like being very active on this front), but not indicating the absolute superiority (being the future, lots of work being done on this front or similar) of this approach and/or its suitability for normal or big-scale nuclear power generation. This process seems to have quite a few problems like generation of additional dangerous products, requiring certain kind of inputs (e.g., enriched-more-than-usual uranium) and special conditions (e.g., having to deal with too hot fuel). You can find what looks like a quite good overall summary here. Long-term storage of nuclear waste is likely to be a big concern for France and their high recycling activity might be mostly meant to somehow minimise the impact of this. I couldn't find any reference to waste-recycling having a relevant impact on France's (or any other country's) nuclear power generation though.
In summary and as per my current understanding of this specific aspect of nuclear power, it seems that most of the recycling efforts are either R&D-ish or performed under very specific conditions to somehow improve certain issues (not being a serious fuel alternative for normal operation). There seems to also be another set of sources/interests defending these ideas on more or less abstract lines (like your "France has been recovering uranium for decades"), whose actual knowledge or real interest in the proper, long-term understanding of what all this implies seems very low. Nuclear, financial, misguided-eco lobbies? The kind of people who says things like "all our energy problems will be solved once we get nuclear fusion working". I am more than happy to update my impressions and my (a bit rusty) knowledge on this matter, but this doesn't seem possible via absolute statements with no validation. Please, feel free to share actually-relevant information and to prove me wrong.
We are so exceptional that there aren't even generic labels defining us. It seems like a good thing: a ridiculous prejudice less to give a shit about!:)
Fission reactors are little more than putting hot rocks in a jar and running water over it, and using that to power a steam turbine.
Let the 21st century researchers at least do fusion, or better yet something actually advanced.
Let's forget for one second about what accomplishing fusion implies, how far away we are from having a working version and if it is even possible to get there ever. And let's focus just on answering one question: how are you planning to convert nuclear power into actually-usable one (e.g., electricity)?
Do you know what nuclear (fission or fusion) power really means, right? Basically, it means efficiently generating heat for long periods; pretty much what oil or gas accomplish by different means. You are basically feeding in a small amount of energy (to separate particles or merge them by provoking a set of chain reactions autonomously multiplying your original effort) to get a bigger one in a form which you can use for other purposes (heat). So, my question again: how are you planning to convert that heat from fusion into something really useful for us? You don't want to use the old heat-mechanical-electrical (water-steam-turbine-electricity). What do you propose, then? An app, a cool-looking attitude or just an empty promise? LOL.
Apparently, you are seem to be wrongly assuming that CANDU reactors ("...allowing it to use some alternative fuels; for example, "recovered uranium"...") are necessarily related to reusing uranium. Also according to Wikipedia, "Reuse of reprocessed uranium has not been common because of low prices in the uranium market of recent decades, and because it contains undesirable isotopes of uranium.". Apparently, the whole point of this project was precisely to improve on this front and the fact that they weren't able to deliver (in general but mainly on the reusing-uranium front) seems to confirm the aforementioned problems of this approach.
eh, it's technically possible (and a done deal) to use spent fuel or even depleted uranium
I didn't refer to that aspect at all, just to the evident lies like "75 times more efficient" (than a quite mature technology on which lots of work has been done?!). In fact, I cannot think of a single scenario in any technological field with over 20 years where a 75-times improvement is possible right away. And in case of being possible at all (and logically by assuming that it doesn't provoke other problems), it would imply a beyond-justifiable incompetence in that specific field.
In any case and without wanting to start a discussion here about those specific approaches, when your conclusions have an eminently-theoretical basis, even if formed by extrapolating results from empirical tests under restricted conditions, you should make an extra effort to ensure that your estimates are realistic (no single theory can account for all what really happens at the practical level). Otherwise, it wouldn't really matter to me whether you were extremely incompetent or intentionally dishonest: your conclusions wouldn't make any sense. Pretty much like seriously expecting a function to deliver reliable results under clearly overfitted conditions. Something like "I have two data points, 1-2 and 2-4, and my conclusion is that y=2x will perfectly explain a behaviour potentially applicable to thousands of cases". Ridiculous! The sensible interpretation is that you don't have enough information to know what is going on.
in a paper on its site dated November 2016, the company downgraded “75 times” to “more than twice.” In addition, it now specifies that the design “does not reduce existing stockpiles of spent nuclear fuel” or use them as its fuel source.
So, something like "I have a cure for the worst disease ever [...] I meant a cure for a disease [...] Actually, it is just a placebo".
I don't know what I find more unbelievably ridiculous: people getting tons of money from simple words with no kind of validation (not even making too much sense) and losing all of it; or their apparent lack of awareness of what written whatever implies, mainly nowadays and with internet! How can anyone say so big lies in a so public fashion without expecting any kind of consequence! IMHO, lying at all is a bad policy but, under these circumstances, it is almost a crime!! Even by assuming that they could get away with it, what about their self-respect? Thinking about others' reaction when realising about the truth? I cannot imagine how could I ever trust even a tiny bit what a person able to do such a thing says. I cannot even picture myself having the before and after conversation with someone like that. "I see that all what you said were lies and you undeservedly got lots of money which you lose. OK. Let's have a cup of coffee and not talk about all this anymore!".
In-memory compilation is part of the runtime, no compiler needed.
It is logical to expect all the compilation to be performed by a compiler, regardless of it being included in the main runtime. But even though, you seem to assume that the.NET runtime (+ PowerShell) is installed by default everywhere, when this is only the case with Windows. For other OSs, there will have to be a specific installation and the resulting environment is likely to have lots of limitations with respect to the Windows one.
Powershell and.net are now cross platform and have been for a while.
In which part of my post have I said otherwise? My point wasn't about where you can use them, but what is their advantage with respect to other alternatives. And as per my impression, their only advantage is being able to easily access anything in Windows. They work on other OSs (although their compatibility isn't immediate, some software has to be installed; not a requirement in Windows as far as.NET/PowerShell are installed by default), but what would be the point of using them there?
Both PowerShell and C# (or any other.NET language) are Microsoft environments allowing to have a relatively easy access to any part of Windows. On the other hand, they seem to have a notable disadvantage with respect to other (compiled) languages to perform actions of this sort: you can get the source code either right away or after a quite straightforward decompilation process.
Even though I am not related to all the virus/vulnerability/invasion/damaging world at all (I just build, grow and share:)), it seems that relying on.NET/PowerShell isn't the most efficient/practical proceeding but the easiest one.
This attitude of expecting absolute, immediate solutions for complex problems is one of the reasons why lots of things go wrong, not just with software/hardware but in general. Currently, there are a myriad of available alternatives to account for each single step of the process which are either far from optimal or being systematically misused.
Anyone interested in doing things properly at each single level (efficiency, security, scalability, etc.) has tons of available resources to do it under quite favourable conditions. But no matter how many resources you will have at your disposal, complex things will always require a relevant effort and doing things properly will always be more difficult than taking the easier path. If you focus on immediate goals and let irrelevant-from-the-technical-perspective concerns to affect important decisions, you would get a bad product and lots problems. And it will be your fault, your incompetence, your lack of understanding, your wrong decisions.
I am all for improving and further easing increasingly-complex tasks, but nothing of this should ever be seen as a magical solution. There is no magical solution anywhere. The ones knowing and working harder and caring about doing things properly (and being allowed to make relevant decisions on those fronts! This apparently-evident clarification doesn't seem too clear for quite a few people in the IT world) will get excellent results, everyone else will be, in the best scenario, conditioned by the circumstances, by pure chance.
But we might be reaching an inflection point (for many reasons like accumulation of negative consequences or hardware not improving so much so quickly anymore) where things done badly will stop being compensated by advantageous conditions and problems will start showing up (e.g., slow performance on powerful computers). These last years might have been the spoiled, ignorant stage of software development. The most logical long-term evolution seems those short-term-concerned attitudes to disappear. Doing things properly, knowledgeably and by eminently focusing on the long term will always succeed in the long run.
Electric has problems with freight going up hills. Can’t put out enough power through the lines.
This seems a problems for all the types of trains. Perhaps in some places and under certain conditions, you might be right but I don't see how that could be an absolute limitation for the electrical alternatives. Bear in mind that there have been lots of innovations on the electric side and, for example, most of (all?) the high-speed trains are powered by electricity. Care to share some references supporting your statement?
OK. Thanks for the generic support. Just to be clear, I didn't feel bothered or tried to bother you at all. I really didn't get your intention. Sorry about that.
Slashdot Mirror
Does he not even recognize that ideas and discoveries by women were almost unanimously dismissed and women even prohibited from participating in scientific fields or hell, any academic field until recently?
Without trying to defend this guy who, apparently, chose a quite bad place to talk about all this, I don't think that his point is denying what you are saying. I guess that his ideas were meant to be applied to present-day science, where I guess that you can find things on the lines of a few articles back (all the boards of big companies forced to have 1 woman).
Assuming what would have occurred if certain event didn't happen (no slavery, no Hitler, no wars, no famine, etc.) is, in the best scenario, a blind guess; and, under relatively complex conditions (generations-ago societies), ridiculously naive (way too many parameters to even dare to guess what any change might have provoked; a change that would have never occurred anyway). What is certainly important is understanding why obsolete ideas from generations ago could ever condition nowadays' behaviours, via ridiculous impositions or provoking a fanaticism-prone environment where some people consider censorship a valid tool to suppress opposing views (or worse: punctual words/isolated ideas not fully complying with whatever set of absolute truths).
Sorry, I wrote my previous reply without having read your post properly (even though I quoted it), almost as an immediate reaction wrongly assuming your position. Note that I wasn't defending this or any other kind of discrimination-based action; just highlighted the fact that, under these specific conditions, it doesn't seem to matter too much. But I do think that any kind of discrimination or generic-understanding-based decision is likely to provoke negative effects for everyone (e.g., incompetent people being selected).
The difference is that sons have been brought up from a young age to take on these hereditary roles, whereas daughters typically have not. If you want to change this then you have to do it while the daughters are still young so they can have years preparing, otherwise they will be less well prepared than the sons.
And your solution is arbitrarily forcing random people with random suitability to be preferred (by implicitly supporting the kind of generic-prejudice-based ideas against which you are precisely fighting)? Or, by using a more descriptive example, you consider that a competition is rigged because some participants took performance-enhancement substances and your solution is arbitrarily deciding who wins the race? How can you see this as a solution? I see creating new problems with the excuse of compensating old ones. The only sensible solutions I see are: complaining about the abusers (or taking advantage of a judicial/legal system which is very protective with the individual rights, mainly when generic prejudices come into picture), abusing yourself/over-training (if they play dirty by marginalising women, I am sure that women could also play dirty on other fronts) or accepting the reality. Any other option seems completely unreasonable, unfair and, under the most probable conditions, the origin of further problems which might even backfire and make women situation even worse (e.g., one of the comments above referring to the unfairness for women really getting there on their own merits).
Reaching certain positions and mainly in big companies is usually a result of multiple factors which might be easily defined as quite arbitrary. It doesn't seem that a new arbitrary element can hurt much. Picking daughters rather than sons (half kidding, half serious)? Why not? Practically speaking, I don't see any difference. On the other hand, the ideas underlying these actions are kind of worrying (or better: sad), mainly because of not accepting their arbitrary essence and even expecting to be seen as some kind of fair/logical/sensible attitude.
I respect everyone's position on any front for as long as they are happy and don't damage anyone else. I wouldn't find any problem with people defending ideas on these lines in cases like this where there doesn't seem to be any real damage (a bit more of arbitrariness in an intrinsically-arbitrary sub-world). I could even accept actions of this sort to negatively affect me; in the sense of knowing that dealing with arbitrariness or unfairness is part of the far-from-perfect (AKA stupid) world in which we live. I might even accept someone I love/respect (daughter, wife, etc.) to be benefited from something like this, but only for as long as they are fully accepting the reality and are completely honest. I will certainly never respect a person benefiting from arbitrariness/unfairness in any way and trying to show it differently.
Ideally, I prefer to deal with absolute fairness, but I also understand that being 100% fair is very difficult. I even understand that, when being in a relatively advantageous position (and I consider that this is my case, for various reasons like having very clear ideas on many fronts), you see things differently. But a somehow unfair situation without honesty and (self-)awareness is completely unacceptable for me. So, did you get that job because you are woman? Congrats! You played your cards and got what you wanted! Now you can even prove that that decision, although intrinsically arbitrary, wasn't bad by doing an excellent job. But never dare to say me that you did deserve that, because you would be either lying or in-denial. A third alternative could be a woman seriously thinking that she isn't able to compete with others (to get a job like this in a country like the USA) without some extra help; and, in that case, I would just feel pity for her.
Also its results are a somehow-restricted version of what you find in google.com.
That is not my experience. You will NOT see the "sponsored" results from Google, but that is kinda the whole point
I see appreciable differences between the shown results like different order or missing items. Not sure if in any case or only under specific conditions. Perhaps it is even provoked by my specific conditions (automatic country selection having some differences). I am happy with what I get anyway.
I have been using https://startpage.com/ for many years.
I have also been using it for a while and works pretty well. The not-so-good issue is that you are still depending on Google, although only indirectly. Also its results are a somehow-restricted version of what you find in google.com. On the other hand and after having tried quite a few options, there seems to be no real alternative. Perhaps bing.com might eventually get there, but if you are trying to avoid monopolies this wouldn't be a too sensible change.
I find this lack of true alternatives kind of weird, mainly for a so attractive market and when there seems to be lots of money available to spend in long-term projects. It seems even weirder that the few existing alternatives have a low-to-no technical focus; they are either copying existing approaches or directly showing external results. One of the reasons of the original success of Google was precisely caring a lot about technical aspects. Now, it seems that companies are focusing much more on immediately monetising than on having a good enough product. Good for Google, bad for everyone else.
Internet company funding is lot less risky than funding basic research.
No doubt about that. My point was that there is so much money (precisely mostly due to the huge returns of low risk investments in sectors like software) and so little knowledge/effort to get there in some places that assuming negligence seems a safe bet. Why expecting competence in contexts where truly losing is virtually impossible and the access is almost blindly granted to certain people, rarely on their own merits/because of objectively being the best?
When did the investors stop looking for payback or out within a numerable number of quarters?
Just take a look at the big number of articles in Slashdot about companies which lose everything after having raised lots of money and whose business models don't even make too much sense. Or see the relevant number of "internet giants" which accumulate losses for years, but keep getting funding over and over. No idea about the reason for all this. Huge amounts of money which will keep increasing regardless of anything else, including being horribly managed? I am just a (kind of) poor guy who will never have access to so much money or lack of accountability (no interest in getting there either).
No problem, then! All the hard work has already been done! You have a barely functional preliminary version roughly based on an abstract theoretical approach and all the long-term thinking ("we have just to scale it up"). The only missing detail now is estimating how long it will most likely take. I am personally a big fan of the within-the-next-5-years technique. (This is part of the speech which I am expecting to give in my hopefully-never-happening MBA graduation ceremony). LOL
challenges of repository siting (a problem that applies equally to direct disposal of spent fuel), the environmental risks of the aqueous and organic waste streams, and because of its high cost compared to the once-through fuel cycle
but all are agreed that under current (2005) economic conditions the reprocessing-recycle option is the more costly
If reprocessing is undertaken only to reduce the radioactivity level of spent fuel it should be taken into account that spent nuclear fuel becomes less radioactive over time. After 40 years its radioactivity drops by 99.9%,[46] though it still takes over a thousand years for the level of radioactivity to approach that of natural uranium.
On 25 October 2011 a commission of the Japanese Atomic Energy Commission revealed during a meeting calculations about the costs of recycling nuclear fuel for power generation. These costs could be twice the costs of direct geological disposal of spent fuel
And now let's see the distribution of these plants: China (1), France (3), UK (2), India (4), Pakistan (2) and Russia (1). By taking a quick look at these numbers (+ the ones of already decommissioned plants whose total is higher), the situation seems pretty descriptive even before analysing the generated power. They have been running since quite long time ago (starting in 1944!!), are available in only a few countries (most of them "cost concerned") and represent a very tiny fraction of the total number of nuclear plants. Even though the really relevant figures would be the ones comparing the actual power generated from reused vs. natural fuel, which are likely to be even much more negative for your interests.
France has been recovering uranium for decades.
After some online research, I haven't been able to find any reference undoubtedly confirming your statement in the sense of your intention (i.e., defending that regularly reusing uranium is perfectly feasible for more or less typical nuclear plant operations). There are certainly quite a few references to uranium (or plutonium) recycling (and France does look like being very active on this front), but not indicating the absolute superiority (being the future, lots of work being done on this front or similar) of this approach and/or its suitability for normal or big-scale nuclear power generation. This process seems to have quite a few problems like generation of additional dangerous products, requiring certain kind of inputs (e.g., enriched-more-than-usual uranium) and special conditions (e.g., having to deal with too hot fuel). You can find what looks like a quite good overall summary here. Long-term storage of nuclear waste is likely to be a big concern for France and their high recycling activity might be mostly meant to somehow minimise the impact of this. I couldn't find any reference to waste-recycling having a relevant impact on France's (or any other country's) nuclear power generation though.
In summary and as per my current understanding of this specific aspect of nuclear power, it seems that most of the recycling efforts are either R&D-ish or performed under very specific conditions to somehow improve certain issues (not being a serious fuel alternative for normal operation). There seems to also be another set of sources/interests defending these ideas on more or less abstract lines (like your "France has been recovering uranium for decades"), whose actual knowledge or real interest in the proper, long-term understanding of what all this implies seems very low. Nuclear, financial, misguided-eco lobbies? The kind of people who says things like "all our energy problems will be solved once we get nuclear fusion working". I am more than happy to update my impressions and my (a bit rusty) knowledge on this matter, but this doesn't seem possible via absolute statements with no validation. Please, feel free to share actually-relevant information and to prove me wrong.
What could be more generic than X?
Touché.
We are so exceptional that there aren't even generic labels defining us. It seems like a good thing: a ridiculous prejudice less to give a shit about! :)
Fission reactors are little more than putting hot rocks in a jar and running water over it, and using that to power a steam turbine.
Let the 21st century researchers at least do fusion, or better yet something actually advanced.
Let's forget for one second about what accomplishing fusion implies, how far away we are from having a working version and if it is even possible to get there ever. And let's focus just on answering one question: how are you planning to convert nuclear power into actually-usable one (e.g., electricity)?
Do you know what nuclear (fission or fusion) power really means, right? Basically, it means efficiently generating heat for long periods; pretty much what oil or gas accomplish by different means. You are basically feeding in a small amount of energy (to separate particles or merge them by provoking a set of chain reactions autonomously multiplying your original effort) to get a bigger one in a form which you can use for other purposes (heat). So, my question again: how are you planning to convert that heat from fusion into something really useful for us? You don't want to use the old heat-mechanical-electrical (water-steam-turbine-electricity). What do you propose, then? An app, a cool-looking attitude or just an empty promise? LOL.
Apparently, you are seem to be wrongly assuming that CANDU reactors ("...allowing it to use some alternative fuels; for example, "recovered uranium"...") are necessarily related to reusing uranium. Also according to Wikipedia, "Reuse of reprocessed uranium has not been common because of low prices in the uranium market of recent decades, and because it contains undesirable isotopes of uranium.". Apparently, the whole point of this project was precisely to improve on this front and the fact that they weren't able to deliver (in general but mainly on the reusing-uranium front) seems to confirm the aforementioned problems of this approach.
eh, it's technically possible (and a done deal) to use spent fuel or even depleted uranium
I didn't refer to that aspect at all, just to the evident lies like "75 times more efficient" (than a quite mature technology on which lots of work has been done?!). In fact, I cannot think of a single scenario in any technological field with over 20 years where a 75-times improvement is possible right away. And in case of being possible at all (and logically by assuming that it doesn't provoke other problems), it would imply a beyond-justifiable incompetence in that specific field.
In any case and without wanting to start a discussion here about those specific approaches, when your conclusions have an eminently-theoretical basis, even if formed by extrapolating results from empirical tests under restricted conditions, you should make an extra effort to ensure that your estimates are realistic (no single theory can account for all what really happens at the practical level). Otherwise, it wouldn't really matter to me whether you were extremely incompetent or intentionally dishonest: your conclusions wouldn't make any sense. Pretty much like seriously expecting a function to deliver reliable results under clearly overfitted conditions. Something like "I have two data points, 1-2 and 2-4, and my conclusion is that y=2x will perfectly explain a behaviour potentially applicable to thousands of cases". Ridiculous! The sensible interpretation is that you don't have enough information to know what is going on.
in a paper on its site dated November 2016, the company downgraded “75 times” to “more than twice.” In addition, it now specifies that the design “does not reduce existing stockpiles of spent nuclear fuel” or use them as its fuel source.
So, something like "I have a cure for the worst disease ever [...] I meant a cure for a disease [...] Actually, it is just a placebo".
I don't know what I find more unbelievably ridiculous: people getting tons of money from simple words with no kind of validation (not even making too much sense) and losing all of it; or their apparent lack of awareness of what written whatever implies, mainly nowadays and with internet! How can anyone say so big lies in a so public fashion without expecting any kind of consequence! IMHO, lying at all is a bad policy but, under these circumstances, it is almost a crime!! Even by assuming that they could get away with it, what about their self-respect? Thinking about others' reaction when realising about the truth? I cannot imagine how could I ever trust even a tiny bit what a person able to do such a thing says. I cannot even picture myself having the before and after conversation with someone like that. "I see that all what you said were lies and you undeservedly got lots of money which you lose. OK. Let's have a cup of coffee and not talk about all this anymore!".
In-memory compilation is part of the runtime, no compiler needed.
It is logical to expect all the compilation to be performed by a compiler, regardless of it being included in the main runtime. But even though, you seem to assume that the .NET runtime (+ PowerShell) is installed by default everywhere, when this is only the case with Windows. For other OSs, there will have to be a specific installation and the resulting environment is likely to have lots of limitations with respect to the Windows one.
Powershell and .net are now cross platform and have been for a while.
In which part of my post have I said otherwise? My point wasn't about where you can use them, but what is their advantage with respect to other alternatives. And as per my impression, their only advantage is being able to easily access anything in Windows. They work on other OSs (although their compatibility isn't immediate, some software has to be installed; not a requirement in Windows as far as .NET/PowerShell are installed by default), but what would be the point of using them there?
Both PowerShell and C# (or any other .NET language) are Microsoft environments allowing to have a relatively easy access to any part of Windows. On the other hand, they seem to have a notable disadvantage with respect to other (compiled) languages to perform actions of this sort: you can get the source code either right away or after a quite straightforward decompilation process.
:)), it seems that relying on .NET/PowerShell isn't the most efficient/practical proceeding but the easiest one.
Even though I am not related to all the virus/vulnerability/invasion/damaging world at all (I just build, grow and share
This attitude of expecting absolute, immediate solutions for complex problems is one of the reasons why lots of things go wrong, not just with software/hardware but in general. Currently, there are a myriad of available alternatives to account for each single step of the process which are either far from optimal or being systematically misused.
Anyone interested in doing things properly at each single level (efficiency, security, scalability, etc.) has tons of available resources to do it under quite favourable conditions. But no matter how many resources you will have at your disposal, complex things will always require a relevant effort and doing things properly will always be more difficult than taking the easier path. If you focus on immediate goals and let irrelevant-from-the-technical-perspective concerns to affect important decisions, you would get a bad product and lots problems. And it will be your fault, your incompetence, your lack of understanding, your wrong decisions.
I am all for improving and further easing increasingly-complex tasks, but nothing of this should ever be seen as a magical solution. There is no magical solution anywhere. The ones knowing and working harder and caring about doing things properly (and being allowed to make relevant decisions on those fronts! This apparently-evident clarification doesn't seem too clear for quite a few people in the IT world) will get excellent results, everyone else will be, in the best scenario, conditioned by the circumstances, by pure chance.
But we might be reaching an inflection point (for many reasons like accumulation of negative consequences or hardware not improving so much so quickly anymore) where things done badly will stop being compensated by advantageous conditions and problems will start showing up (e.g., slow performance on powerful computers). These last years might have been the spoiled, ignorant stage of software development. The most logical long-term evolution seems those short-term-concerned attitudes to disappear. Doing things properly, knowledgeably and by eminently focusing on the long term will always succeed in the long run.
I see. Apparently, this is also the case in quite a few other places whose railway networks are long enough.
Electric has problems with freight going up hills. Can’t put out enough power through the lines.
This seems a problems for all the types of trains. Perhaps in some places and under certain conditions, you might be right but I don't see how that could be an absolute limitation for the electrical alternatives. Bear in mind that there have been lots of innovations on the electric side and, for example, most of (all?) the high-speed trains are powered by electricity. Care to share some references supporting your statement?
OK. Thanks for the generic support. Just to be clear, I didn't feel bothered or tried to bother you at all. I really didn't get your intention. Sorry about that.