"The studios and broadcasters are actively blocking Google TV from even using Hulu or NBC.com"
Yes. So what you're left with is
"And, unless you ignore the fact that Amazone video and Netflix among many others are available on Google TV, Google TV offers at least as much"
Sure, which means it's competing head to head with devices that are
1) less expensive 2) have more content (last I checked, iTunes has more than Amazon, at least here in Canuckia) 3) easier to use 4) doesn't need a frigging keyboard
So the question isn't "what can the GoogleTV do/not do" so much as "why would I want one when there's all these alternatives?" As you said, they all do the same thing, right?
"Compared to the various proprietary solutions out there, this "UbuTV" box would be far more extensible"
Why?
The people that provide the content don't give a crap about platforms. The providers are perfectly able, and proven capable, of blocking platforms they don't like. If they decide to "googlize" this mythical product of yours, the platform is dead. Period.
So why would an Ubuntu box be more successful than Google? Or Apple?
2006 Honda Civic Hybrid, 90% highway. Consistant 4.3 l/100 km in the summer, and 5.2 in the winter (doing a little better this year, 5.0). That's 54.7 and 45.2 US mpg. That's slightly better highway than the sticker.
Just as important, it is widely accepted that hybrids have much lower maintenance loads than conventional cars. This is not surprising when you consider that a well-driven hybrid can eliminate the vast majority of mechanical breaking, and lowers low-RPM engine loads.
"Has a reactor ever failed because of old age? Fukushima certainly didn't. "
Fukushima absolutely *did* fail due to age. The primary pressure relief system failed, primarily due to age. It took several hours before pressure relief started.
Beyond that, many reactors have suffered failures due to neutron hardening of the plumbing, particularly in the primary cooling loops. Re-piping is a common occurrence, and has added operational costs well beyond predictions. It has been the cause for massive cost overruns here in Ontario, for instance.
Why bother? The ballon is likely travelling at about that speed, or greater, so why not just wait? I find it hard to believe that those 11 miles offer any flexibility in positioning that another couple of thousand feet of altitude wouldn't get you, and adding the intermediary seems likely to reduce the maximum altitude by an amount that would offset any gliding advantage.
> But given what is produced for the cost, including the occasional meltdown or whatever, it's pretty impressive
Actually that's the main failure. Even if you discount the billions in development funds that were spent through the weapons side of things (the accounting is easier here in Canada) the actual price of the power it generates is much higher than hydro (and there's lots of that left, contrary to claims otherwise), much higher than coal, somewhat higher than natural case, only slightly cheaper (or slightly more, depending on the accounting) than wind and somewhat cheaper than PV.
The problem is that the cost of nuclear is unpredictable. It is generally higher now than it was when it was first introduced, which is why all those plants were abandoned in the 70s. Newer designs aim to address this, but their success in doing so remains to be proven. When the US plants come online, if they ever do, then I'll have a metric I'll trust. After all, AECL claims that their two CANDU6's cost $4 a watt in China, but when one looks at the $8.25 bid for Darlington B you'll see they are relying on artificial exchange rates to make that number.
Moreover, there's a serious fuel issue to consider. Uranium is basically a proxy for oil now. Don't believe me? Look it up. If oil goes up again, so will the price of nuclear. So, do you believe the price of oil will be going up in the future?
In the meantime the price of other sources has plummeted. Gas looks like it will remain flat for at least 50 years. Wind power has dropped from 15 to 6.5 cents/kWh in the last 15 years. It's likely bottoming out now, but that's still around what nuclear costs. PV has dropped from about $1 a kWh to something around 15 cents in the last 5 years, and it is just about 100% certain to hit 10 cents in 2012, if it hasn't already.
So, you're king for a day. You need to build a power network. You have your choices of many technologies. Do you choose one with a 12 to 15 year lead time that has a history of going up in price and has serious fuel concerns? Or do you bet on one that keeps going down in price and will almost certainly be producing watts cheaper than the other technology before that one even starts construction?
And that is why the nuclear renaissance is dead.
Seriously, given the lead times and CAPEX on these projects, waiting a year to see what happens is absolutely a fantastic idea. And everything points to the results one year from now being very unfavourable for nuclear.
SUPO was also filled with highly corrosive fluids which dramatically limited the lifetime of the reactor designs and made their long-term feasibility and safety highly questionable. Newer designs are somewhat better due to the use of nitric acid, but this by no means eliminated the problem. In every other measure, notably in terms of power density and related economic figures-of-merit, solution reactors will never be competitive.
> Nuclear power would be great if humans didn't have irrational fear about things there don't bother to understand
No, nuclear power would still suck financially in any event.
Look to the market. See any big lineups in the US for new plants? There's a list of what, four? Are you going to blame this on things people don't understand? Do you really believe you personally know more than the entire power industry?
> It is easy to criticize the event in the aftermath of three meltdowns and say that the design was flawed
Actually, people were saying the design was flawed even before it was built. And they were saying that the flaw was precisely the problem that actually occurred.
> You would have needed to build a 15m (45 ft) seawall to protect the plant
Which assumes that the only way to trigger the flaw would be a tsunami.
If one asks the correct question, "what events might cause the backup generators to fail to provide power in the event of a reactor shutdown" then there are suddenly hundreds of quite credible issues and thousands of less credible ones.
For instance, what if the file tanks corrode and start leaking all their fuel between the time of the scheduled maintenance and the shutdown event? Or what if the fuel becomes contaminated without obvious signs of issues? Or what if the SCADA system running the switchboard fails due to a software problem? Or there is a steam explosion which drops a portion of the containment building on the cables? Or what if a terrorist organization attacks the backup generators instead of the reactors, an event that would demand reactor shutdown anyway?
In this *particular case* the tsunami was the trigger for the generators failing through fuel starvation, but that's certainly not the only possible way to cut off emergency backup power. When you consider all of *those* possibilities, then the design doesn't look very good at all.
Right down the road from me is the Pickering nuclear plant. They concluded that this very problem could occur there. The result was a contract for $100 million to add more capacity in redundant packages. It actually ended up costing more than $250 million. While that is certainly preferable to a meltdown, it hardly inspires confidence in any design of this era -- CANDU was marketed as being essentially impossible to meltdown.
But to the point: HC died when it was sent over to Claris, and then sent back. When products get seconded like this it's almost always a kiss of death. Very few survive the process even once. Twice?
Kevin tried to bring HC back to life pretty much single-handed, but it was not to be. When he left the jig was up, although I argue that was true long before. Its constant re-purposing did not bode well, and by the time I saw it in 1996 it was only nostalgia that I felt.
Re:But don't hinder the average user from becoming
on
Why Was Hypercard Killed?
·
· Score: 5, Informative
> But that doesn't mean Apple has to actively hinder the average user from becoming us.
They don't.
HC was dead long before Jobs returned. It hadn't seen a major release in years, and the lead develop was the only guy left on the team. I don't even think he was there when they bought OpenStep, let alone when Jobs took the helm.
The only people saying otherwise are the haters here on/. and in an article by someone who admits to not really knowing. This is simply an example of people seeing what they want to see. This is why conspiracy theories are so prevalent.
As someone who was directly involved with HC2.0 and to some degree HC3.0, I can say with zero hesitation that HC did not die, it committed suicide.
That suicide was due to all of the classic and well known problems in the industry, including but not limited to, monumental feature creep, empire building, left-hand-right-hand, second-system effect and the general craziness that was endemic to Apple before Jobs returned.
HC3 was supposed to be HC2 further improved with real color support. In its last incarnation before disappearing it was a QuickTime module for embedding interactivity into movies. That is all the explanation anyone needs.
"Obviously you are unfamiliar with DMCA takedown abuses here in the United States."
I am more than familiar with them. They still place the onus on the rights holder, not the ISP. Ask your ISP which they would prefer.
"I guess people no longer run servers out of their homes."
I'm sure they do. And if you wish to support other users on such a server, and those users commit copyright violations, you'll now have multiple options on how you would like to deal with this problem, compared to the singular option you have today, disconnection.
The ruling is not quite as broad as I would have liked, since it only pertains to filtering 'which applies indiscriminately to all its customers; exclusively at its expense; and for an unlimited period."
That seems like a perfectly adequate compromise position.
This ruling places the onus for detection back on the rights holder, where it belongs. They are tasked with identifying violations and informing the ISP.
Then, if this holds up, the ISP places filters for a time less than infinite on that account. This does not limit that account to any other non-infringing use, nor does it limit any of the ISP's other customers.
Quite frankly, this sounds like the most logical solution to the "problem" I've seen to date. It's certainly much better than disconnection from the internet, and frankly I suspect this is much easier to implement as well.
Slashdot Mirror
"The studios and broadcasters are actively blocking Google TV from even using Hulu or NBC.com"
Yes. So what you're left with is
"And, unless you ignore the fact that Amazone video and Netflix among many others are available on Google TV, Google TV offers at least as much"
Sure, which means it's competing head to head with devices that are
1) less expensive
2) have more content (last I checked, iTunes has more than Amazon, at least here in Canuckia)
3) easier to use
4) doesn't need a frigging keyboard
So the question isn't "what can the GoogleTV do/not do" so much as "why would I want one when there's all these alternatives?" As you said, they all do the same thing, right?
"Compared to the various proprietary solutions out there, this "UbuTV" box would be far more extensible"
Why?
The people that provide the content don't give a crap about platforms. The providers are perfectly able, and proven capable, of blocking platforms they don't like. If they decide to "googlize" this mythical product of yours, the platform is dead. Period.
So why would an Ubuntu box be more successful than Google? Or Apple?
Wow, way to kill any interest in a product. That was the most fragmented and confusing demo I've seen in ages.
> both consistently get mileage in the mid 40s
2006 Honda Civic Hybrid, 90% highway. Consistant 4.3 l/100 km in the summer, and 5.2 in the winter (doing a little better this year, 5.0). That's 54.7 and 45.2 US mpg. That's slightly better highway than the sticker.
Just as important, it is widely accepted that hybrids have much lower maintenance loads than conventional cars. This is not surprising when you consider that a well-driven hybrid can eliminate the vast majority of mechanical breaking, and lowers low-RPM engine loads.
"Has a reactor ever failed because of old age? Fukushima certainly didn't. "
Fukushima absolutely *did* fail due to age. The primary pressure relief system failed, primarily due to age. It took several hours before pressure relief started.
Beyond that, many reactors have suffered failures due to neutron hardening of the plumbing, particularly in the primary cooling loops. Re-piping is a common occurrence, and has added operational costs well beyond predictions. It has been the cause for massive cost overruns here in Ontario, for instance.
"which can travel another 11 miles or so"
Why bother? The ballon is likely travelling at about that speed, or greater, so why not just wait? I find it hard to believe that those 11 miles offer any flexibility in positioning that another couple of thousand feet of altitude wouldn't get you, and adding the intermediary seems likely to reduce the maximum altitude by an amount that would offset any gliding advantage.
"It would take a complete idiot to think that solar energy by itself could replace "conventional" power generation"
It would take a complete idiot to imply it should.
> But given what is produced for the cost, including the occasional meltdown or whatever, it's pretty impressive
Actually that's the main failure. Even if you discount the billions in development funds that were spent through the weapons side of things (the accounting is easier here in Canada) the actual price of the power it generates is much higher than hydro (and there's lots of that left, contrary to claims otherwise), much higher than coal, somewhat higher than natural case, only slightly cheaper (or slightly more, depending on the accounting) than wind and somewhat cheaper than PV.
The problem is that the cost of nuclear is unpredictable. It is generally higher now than it was when it was first introduced, which is why all those plants were abandoned in the 70s. Newer designs aim to address this, but their success in doing so remains to be proven. When the US plants come online, if they ever do, then I'll have a metric I'll trust. After all, AECL claims that their two CANDU6's cost $4 a watt in China, but when one looks at the $8.25 bid for Darlington B you'll see they are relying on artificial exchange rates to make that number.
Moreover, there's a serious fuel issue to consider. Uranium is basically a proxy for oil now. Don't believe me? Look it up. If oil goes up again, so will the price of nuclear. So, do you believe the price of oil will be going up in the future?
In the meantime the price of other sources has plummeted. Gas looks like it will remain flat for at least 50 years. Wind power has dropped from 15 to 6.5 cents/kWh in the last 15 years. It's likely bottoming out now, but that's still around what nuclear costs. PV has dropped from about $1 a kWh to something around 15 cents in the last 5 years, and it is just about 100% certain to hit 10 cents in 2012, if it hasn't already.
So, you're king for a day. You need to build a power network. You have your choices of many technologies. Do you choose one with a 12 to 15 year lead time that has a history of going up in price and has serious fuel concerns? Or do you bet on one that keeps going down in price and will almost certainly be producing watts cheaper than the other technology before that one even starts construction?
And that is why the nuclear renaissance is dead.
Seriously, given the lead times and CAPEX on these projects, waiting a year to see what happens is absolutely a fantastic idea. And everything points to the results one year from now being very unfavourable for nuclear.
SUPO was also filled with highly corrosive fluids which dramatically limited the lifetime of the reactor designs and made their long-term feasibility and safety highly questionable. Newer designs are somewhat better due to the use of nitric acid, but this by no means eliminated the problem. In every other measure, notably in terms of power density and related economic figures-of-merit, solution reactors will never be competitive.
> Nuclear power would be great if humans didn't have irrational fear about things there don't bother to understand
No, nuclear power would still suck financially in any event.
Look to the market. See any big lineups in the US for new plants? There's a list of what, four? Are you going to blame this on things people don't understand? Do you really believe you personally know more than the entire power industry?
> That's the first I've seen anyone characterize gravity as automation
Really? They use it in exactly this fashion all the time in industrial packing systems.
> When a radioactive element decays it does not fizzle into two new elements,
> it decays into a single, lower atomic mass element
Oh geez, did you stop for a moment and consider what you were going to post?
Spontaneous alpha decay of Americium -241 results in Neptunium -237 and Helium.
Duh.
Oh, and
"Fission in the context of engineering refers to the use of neutrons to force atoms to split"
That is absolutely not correct. What you are referring to is *induced* fission.
In either event, all of these remain "nuclear reaction"s.
> Fission in the context of engineering refers to
The original statement did not contain the word fission, it contained the phrase "nuclear reaction".
I think you will agree that radioactive decay is a "nuclear reaction".
The original post remains incorrect.
> It is easy to criticize the event in the aftermath of three meltdowns and say that the design was flawed
Actually, people were saying the design was flawed even before it was built. And they were saying that the flaw was precisely the problem that actually occurred.
> You would have needed to build a 15m (45 ft) seawall to protect the plant
Which assumes that the only way to trigger the flaw would be a tsunami.
If one asks the correct question, "what events might cause the backup generators to fail to provide power in the event of a reactor shutdown" then there are suddenly hundreds of quite credible issues and thousands of less credible ones.
For instance, what if the file tanks corrode and start leaking all their fuel between the time of the scheduled maintenance and the shutdown event? Or what if the fuel becomes contaminated without obvious signs of issues? Or what if the SCADA system running the switchboard fails due to a software problem? Or there is a steam explosion which drops a portion of the containment building on the cables? Or what if a terrorist organization attacks the backup generators instead of the reactors, an event that would demand reactor shutdown anyway?
In this *particular case* the tsunami was the trigger for the generators failing through fuel starvation, but that's certainly not the only possible way to cut off emergency backup power. When you consider all of *those* possibilities, then the design doesn't look very good at all.
Right down the road from me is the Pickering nuclear plant. They concluded that this very problem could occur there. The result was a contract for $100 million to add more capacity in redundant packages. It actually ended up costing more than $250 million. While that is certainly preferable to a meltdown, it hardly inspires confidence in any design of this era -- CANDU was marketed as being essentially impossible to meltdown.
A total of three news stories in rotation, one months old, another years old. Interspersed with ads. This isn't political, it's just advertising.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overland_train
"And what "brouhaha" is there about Higgs Boson? Last I checked they are still looking for its existence"
Gee, I don't know, maybe the mention of the pre-release data on *every* news show on television, radio and newspapers?
All for nothing too. A wonderful example of why there's a climate change backlash - oversell, under deliver.
> A car weighs 1000 times that of a bike
My bike is 10 kg, my car is 1000 kg. That's 100 times, you're off by an order of magnitude.
> So, what do you think is broken about TV right now?
No one combines internet TV guide info with over the air channel info. I get better OTA than cable, so this would be nice.
But they didn't reject BayCard.
But to the point: HC died when it was sent over to Claris, and then sent back. When products get seconded like this it's almost always a kiss of death. Very few survive the process even once. Twice?
Kevin tried to bring HC back to life pretty much single-handed, but it was not to be. When he left the jig was up, although I argue that was true long before. Its constant re-purposing did not bode well, and by the time I saw it in 1996 it was only nostalgia that I felt.
> But that doesn't mean Apple has to actively hinder the average user from becoming us.
They don't.
HC was dead long before Jobs returned. It hadn't seen a major release in years, and the lead develop was the only guy left on the team. I don't even think he was there when they bought OpenStep, let alone when Jobs took the helm.
The only people saying otherwise are the haters here on /. and in an article by someone who admits to not really knowing. This is simply an example of people seeing what they want to see. This is why conspiracy theories are so prevalent.
As someone who was directly involved with HC2.0 and to some degree HC3.0, I can say with zero hesitation that HC did not die, it committed suicide.
That suicide was due to all of the classic and well known problems in the industry, including but not limited to, monumental feature creep, empire building, left-hand-right-hand, second-system effect and the general craziness that was endemic to Apple before Jobs returned.
HC3 was supposed to be HC2 further improved with real color support. In its last incarnation before disappearing it was a QuickTime module for embedding interactivity into movies. That is all the explanation anyone needs.
"Obviously you are unfamiliar with DMCA takedown abuses here in the United States."
I am more than familiar with them. They still place the onus on the rights holder, not the ISP. Ask your ISP which they would prefer.
"I guess people no longer run servers out of their homes."
I'm sure they do. And if you wish to support other users on such a server, and those users commit copyright violations, you'll now have multiple options on how you would like to deal with this problem, compared to the singular option you have today, disconnection.
Is this your counterargument? It's specious.
The ruling is not quite as broad as I would have liked, since it only pertains to filtering 'which applies indiscriminately to all its customers; exclusively at its expense; and for an unlimited period."
That seems like a perfectly adequate compromise position.
This ruling places the onus for detection back on the rights holder, where it belongs. They are tasked with identifying violations and informing the ISP.
Then, if this holds up, the ISP places filters for a time less than infinite on that account. This does not limit that account to any other non-infringing use, nor does it limit any of the ISP's other customers.
Quite frankly, this sounds like the most logical solution to the "problem" I've seen to date. It's certainly much better than disconnection from the internet, and frankly I suspect this is much easier to implement as well.
Does anyone have a good counterargument?