You mentioned "disposable".... well, if you have that much "disposable" income, maybe, but most of us really don't. The reason things are "disposable" isn't some desire of society to chew though things in a hurry, but because products are no longer made well enough to last beyond the immediate present... because particularly for the import market, this poor longevity is a great deal more profitable. The Chinese in particular have learned to sell us dumb Americans ten shitty tools that break immediately for $1 each, instead of one *good* tool that lasts a lifetime for $5. In fact increasingly we no longer even have the *option* of the good tool, at any price.
You mention tires, and that's a pet peeve of mine... used to be tires would last until the tread was worn down to nothing, which for a light driver might take 20 years, and for an occasional-use vehicle might take even longer. But the carcass would still be in good shape and in no danger of coming apart. NOW, the same nominal grade of tire is dry-rotting on the sidewalls within 5 or 6 years, to the point of being unsafe -- even if it still has nearly 100% of its tread left. Which means a typical waste level of 50 to 80 percent, through no fault of the purchaser/user (who has little choice, despite that prices have more than doubled in the past five years).
Since we have thorium coming out our ears and not enough to do with it... and it takes 20+ years to build a nuclear plant of any stripe... why not a different approach:
Is there a good technical reason why we couldn't have mini-reactors instead, one in every basement, and too small to be more than a hazard to that house if breached...?? That way we wouldn't need the ginormous obsolete-before-you-finish-building-it reactors, nor the ginormous transmission lines.
I've always been a little baffled by the open-carry vs concealed-carry thing. If you can carry openly (as the 2nd Amendment says we can), what possible difference could it make if you carry concealed? (Except for not scaring the wusses, but that's a different argument.) As to the argument of "then you could sneak it into X" -- if open carry is allowed, then what value is there in sneaking your gun into X, where numerous people would be openly carrying? And if you're carrying openly, then put on your jacket, that could magically convert it into concealed carry...??!
How do you ensure that any plate subjected to automated scanning won't be stored forever? The only way to ensure that is to never allow it in the first place. If a real live officer can't make and store the observation with paper and pencil, it shouldn't be made or stored in the first place.
Used to be that if some kid got too offensive, the other kids would eventually smack him upside the head and the jerk would learn better. NOW, the kids who tried to teach the jerk some manners (albeit in the rather direct way of kids) would be the ones in trouble. The natural social enforcement mechanism has been removed in favor of only allowing "Mommy make him stop!"
In my later years I've developed a taste for industrial, especially aggrotech. I've sometimes considered how this would horrify my long-ago music teachers.
The flipside is that someone has to also be willing to educate, not just denigrate. You seem a lot more interested in pointing out how much smarter you are than everyone else, than you are in helping others learn what you feel they're ignorant of.
'Course, it could be that you're the one who doesn't really know what you're talking about; how are we to judge?
I can tell you that when I was in school lo those many years ago, the single best motivator was how well we'd done compared to classmates; in other words, peer pressure based on expectations of one another. If you were used to getting A's, it was embarrassing to be seen getting a B. And that was motivating for the next time. So yes, it did us good to know how we fared compared to our classmates. Everyone wanted to be comparable to the better students, not to the worst ones. Oh, and there was no bogus "protection of self-esteem" or "avoid hurting someone's feelings" crap either. If you did poorly, you were *supposed* to feel bad about it, so you'd work harder next time!
Then why don't you consider posting an educational explanation rather than just telling the rest of us how ignorant we are? Light a candle rather than cursing the darkness.
Some AV researcher recently published a stat that astonished me (and I wish I could find the cite offhand, but anyway) -- turns out only 0.7% of Windows machines suffer an infection (I'm not a malware alarmist, and I still would have thought it higher than that). It's still a big deal because 0.7% of Windows' marketshare is still millions of computers.
I have a 120GB external USB that came from the factory formatted FAT32 as One Big Disk. This is begging for trouble (FAT32 has a wraparound bug that hits at 32gb and causes data loss) but I didn't notice the durn thing was FAT32 til I'd put... oh dear, 32GB of data on it.
The 1.8GHz WinXP-SP3 system refuses to have anything to do with it. Shows directories but won't see files, making the drive appear kaput. (This machine also has USB quirks, such as you can only use certain ports at the same time, or it refuses to see one or another of 'em.)
The crappy old K6-2 450MHz WinXP-SP1 system sees the drive just fine, so I used it to get all the files off it. The big difference is that this PC is slow as dirt... I was gonna toss out this piece of crap, but occurs to me that if this worked once, it might work again....
Back about 1997 I was given an 800mb HD that had stiction problems. Being reluctant to give up on it and a cheap bastard to boot, I used the accelerating taps method...
BTW, put that notice on your front gate, and police (and more important, pseudo-police like regulatory thugs) will not pass it without an invitation or a warrant.
In comparing local (SoCal) police vs the CA state Highway Patrol, I've noticed a very distinct difference in attitude. The police are looking for a bust, and you're ALL perps, we just haven't caught all of you at it yet. The CHP actually behave like they want to serve and protect, and their body language is very different in the field (they're standing with you, not against you as do the cops). I'd guess there's a very sharp cultural difference in the training academies as well as in the local offices.
Anyone else notice diffs among various branches of law enforcement in their state or locality?
I'm reminded that recently I was nearly T-boned at an intersection, by a cop car that ran a stop sign for no reason whatever. I'd stopped out of habit since there used to be a stop sign there, or I'da been crunched. Recently saw another one turn on his lights and siren so he could run a red light, apparently didn't want to sit there for the 3 minutes that light takes to cycle, but wasn't in any hurry after making the turn, just tooled on up the street, so he wasn't on a call and had no excuse.
Does anyone think We The People could get away with the same behaviour?? So why do we permit it in our... ahem, overlords. All is explained.
Not everywhere... in Bozeman MT, a neighbour was harassed by a cop, finally had enough and ran the cop off with a shotgun. That was the last he ever heard from the cops. Same area, I got a cop fired for harassment and being out of his jurisdiction while on duty, and all I did was file a complaint (possibly the more convincing in that it was 2am, midwinter, and I didn't bother to change outta my PJs first:)
But yeah, most places the police are evidently a law unto themselves.:(
So you don't install the reactor itself in untrustworthy countries. You install it somewhere else, build power transmission lines into the untrustworthy country, and sell them power. Which is probably more cost-effective, or at least does a much better job of cost-spreading over time, for a small country that can't afford to lay out a few billion for a new reactor anyway.
What would concern me about modern reactors and new construction is the poor quality of certain building materials, even tho they are nominally up to spec.
Frex, something as simple and basic as welded-wire concrete bracing... used to be this stuff (American-made) was so durable it could also be used as livestock fence (which takes a helluva beating on a daily basis). NOW, I'm seeing welds popping on brand new rolls (Chinese-made) of what is supposedly the same strength, plus the wire rapidly gets brittle and breaks at any stress point, and it rusts to nothing very rapidly too. I wonder what happens when concrete poured over this bracing winds up with more flex than the engineer intended, because the bracing wire degrades so very quickly (rather than degrading not at all, as used to be the case).
Similar observations have been made about the poor quality/durability of other materials that are intended to be load-bearing, such as the concrete itself.
My sister, who is an architect (partner in a big firm) says "Exactly, and this crap is what they're building new bridges and skyscrapers with, too."
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You mentioned "disposable".... well, if you have that much "disposable" income, maybe, but most of us really don't. The reason things are "disposable" isn't some desire of society to chew though things in a hurry, but because products are no longer made well enough to last beyond the immediate present... because particularly for the import market, this poor longevity is a great deal more profitable. The Chinese in particular have learned to sell us dumb Americans ten shitty tools that break immediately for $1 each, instead of one *good* tool that lasts a lifetime for $5. In fact increasingly we no longer even have the *option* of the good tool, at any price.
You mention tires, and that's a pet peeve of mine... used to be tires would last until the tread was worn down to nothing, which for a light driver might take 20 years, and for an occasional-use vehicle might take even longer. But the carcass would still be in good shape and in no danger of coming apart. NOW, the same nominal grade of tire is dry-rotting on the sidewalls within 5 or 6 years, to the point of being unsafe -- even if it still has nearly 100% of its tread left. Which means a typical waste level of 50 to 80 percent, through no fault of the purchaser/user (who has little choice, despite that prices have more than doubled in the past five years).
Since we have thorium coming out our ears and not enough to do with it... and it takes 20+ years to build a nuclear plant of any stripe... why not a different approach:
Is there a good technical reason why we couldn't have mini-reactors instead, one in every basement, and too small to be more than a hazard to that house if breached...?? That way we wouldn't need the ginormous obsolete-before-you-finish-building-it reactors, nor the ginormous transmission lines.
I've always been a little baffled by the open-carry vs concealed-carry thing. If you can carry openly (as the 2nd Amendment says we can), what possible difference could it make if you carry concealed? (Except for not scaring the wusses, but that's a different argument.) As to the argument of "then you could sneak it into X" -- if open carry is allowed, then what value is there in sneaking your gun into X, where numerous people would be openly carrying? And if you're carrying openly, then put on your jacket, that could magically convert it into concealed carry...??!
I guess you've never lived where street punks make zipguns out of scraps of water pipe.
How do you ensure that any plate subjected to automated scanning won't be stored forever? The only way to ensure that is to never allow it in the first place. If a real live officer can't make and store the observation with paper and pencil, it shouldn't be made or stored in the first place.
Used to be that if some kid got too offensive, the other kids would eventually smack him upside the head and the jerk would learn better. NOW, the kids who tried to teach the jerk some manners (albeit in the rather direct way of kids) would be the ones in trouble. The natural social enforcement mechanism has been removed in favor of only allowing "Mommy make him stop!"
In my later years I've developed a taste for industrial, especially aggrotech. I've sometimes considered how this would horrify my long-ago music teachers.
At last, someone who might agree with me that the best-played-loud classical (Wagner, Beethoven, etc) is the direct ancestor of punk rock!
The flipside is that someone has to also be willing to educate, not just denigrate. You seem a lot more interested in pointing out how much smarter you are than everyone else, than you are in helping others learn what you feel they're ignorant of.
'Course, it could be that you're the one who doesn't really know what you're talking about; how are we to judge?
I can tell you that when I was in school lo those many years ago, the single best motivator was how well we'd done compared to classmates; in other words, peer pressure based on expectations of one another. If you were used to getting A's, it was embarrassing to be seen getting a B. And that was motivating for the next time. So yes, it did us good to know how we fared compared to our classmates. Everyone wanted to be comparable to the better students, not to the worst ones. Oh, and there was no bogus "protection of self-esteem" or "avoid hurting someone's feelings" crap either. If you did poorly, you were *supposed* to feel bad about it, so you'd work harder next time!
Now get off my lawn!
Then why don't you consider posting an educational explanation rather than just telling the rest of us how ignorant we are? Light a candle rather than cursing the darkness.
Some AV researcher recently published a stat that astonished me (and I wish I could find the cite offhand, but anyway) -- turns out only 0.7% of Windows machines suffer an infection (I'm not a malware alarmist, and I still would have thought it higher than that). It's still a big deal because 0.7% of Windows' marketshare is still millions of computers.
Maybe not, but there still has to be some sort of surface that it rotates against, yes?
And not all bearings are balls. I have a collection of rod bearings that came out of cars.
As to bearing failure... that's what I see most with Seagates. First the drive gets really hot, then it makes horrible noises, then it quits.
See above where I used a painfully slow K6-2 for the same purpose.
On a similar note..
I have a 120GB external USB that came from the factory formatted FAT32 as One Big Disk. This is begging for trouble (FAT32 has a wraparound bug that hits at 32gb and causes data loss) but I didn't notice the durn thing was FAT32 til I'd put ... oh dear, 32GB of data on it.
The 1.8GHz WinXP-SP3 system refuses to have anything to do with it. Shows directories but won't see files, making the drive appear kaput. (This machine also has USB quirks, such as you can only use certain ports at the same time, or it refuses to see one or another of 'em.)
The crappy old K6-2 450MHz WinXP-SP1 system sees the drive just fine, so I used it to get all the files off it. The big difference is that this PC is slow as dirt... I was gonna toss out this piece of crap, but occurs to me that if this worked once, it might work again....
Back about 1997 I was given an 800mb HD that had stiction problems. Being reluctant to give up on it and a cheap bastard to boot, I used the accelerating taps method...
tap-tap-tap
HD: rrrrrrrrrrrrr
TAP-TAP-TAP
HD: RRRRRRRRRRR
**!!!WHAP!!!**
And the durn thing started right up and has worked fine ever since. I still use it for testing motherboards and such.
Specifically, US Code Title 18 Sections 241 and 242
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/civilrights/federal-statutes
BTW, put that notice on your front gate, and police (and more important, pseudo-police like regulatory thugs) will not pass it without an invitation or a warrant.
In comparing local (SoCal) police vs the CA state Highway Patrol, I've noticed a very distinct difference in attitude. The police are looking for a bust, and you're ALL perps, we just haven't caught all of you at it yet. The CHP actually behave like they want to serve and protect, and their body language is very different in the field (they're standing with you, not against you as do the cops). I'd guess there's a very sharp cultural difference in the training academies as well as in the local offices.
Anyone else notice diffs among various branches of law enforcement in their state or locality?
I'm not. I'm hackles-up guy, bristling at this abrogation of our Constitutional rights.
I'm reminded that recently I was nearly T-boned at an intersection, by a cop car that ran a stop sign for no reason whatever. I'd stopped out of habit since there used to be a stop sign there, or I'da been crunched. Recently saw another one turn on his lights and siren so he could run a red light, apparently didn't want to sit there for the 3 minutes that light takes to cycle, but wasn't in any hurry after making the turn, just tooled on up the street, so he wasn't on a call and had no excuse.
Does anyone think We The People could get away with the same behaviour?? So why do we permit it in our... ahem, overlords. All is explained.
Not everywhere... in Bozeman MT, a neighbour was harassed by a cop, finally had enough and ran the cop off with a shotgun. That was the last he ever heard from the cops. Same area, I got a cop fired for harassment and being out of his jurisdiction while on duty, and all I did was file a complaint (possibly the more convincing in that it was 2am, midwinter, and I didn't bother to change outta my PJs first :)
But yeah, most places the police are evidently a law unto themselves. :(
If within the limits of such department policy, the police officer can seize anything he wants for any or no reason, is he still not a thief?
So you don't install the reactor itself in untrustworthy countries. You install it somewhere else, build power transmission lines into the untrustworthy country, and sell them power. Which is probably more cost-effective, or at least does a much better job of cost-spreading over time, for a small country that can't afford to lay out a few billion for a new reactor anyway.
So let's assume the thorium-reactor part is reasonably safe. But what happens if the liquid fluoride escapes en masse??
What would concern me about modern reactors and new construction is the poor quality of certain building materials, even tho they are nominally up to spec.
Frex, something as simple and basic as welded-wire concrete bracing... used to be this stuff (American-made) was so durable it could also be used as livestock fence (which takes a helluva beating on a daily basis). NOW, I'm seeing welds popping on brand new rolls (Chinese-made) of what is supposedly the same strength, plus the wire rapidly gets brittle and breaks at any stress point, and it rusts to nothing very rapidly too. I wonder what happens when concrete poured over this bracing winds up with more flex than the engineer intended, because the bracing wire degrades so very quickly (rather than degrading not at all, as used to be the case).
Similar observations have been made about the poor quality/durability of other materials that are intended to be load-bearing, such as the concrete itself.
My sister, who is an architect (partner in a big firm) says "Exactly, and this crap is what they're building new bridges and skyscrapers with, too."