According to Wikipedia:A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. So, it seems you call yourself journalist.
On the other hand a spammer pretty much fits the same definition.
There are lots of journalists that specialize and only report on a certain type of news. There are journalists that specialize on the automotive industry or politics or finance or technology.
The tech industry is hurting so there's negative stories about tech companies, apple is one of the only tech companies doing well so there's a bunch of positive stories about apple. If it was 15 years ago the situation would be flipped and we'd here people complaining about conspiracies AGAINST apple.
Not that there aren't paid shills but I think in this case it's unlikely that bonch is one. He's posted plenty of stories that aren't just pro-Apple/anti-Apple's competition. Sure he has a focus but that's probably just journalistic specialization. Now if he started seriously spinning Apple's failures in a positive light or the competition's successes in a negative light then you'd have some meat for your theories.
@pla: +1 because you are a 1%-er. ( intended as a wake up; I can't afford the 1% moniker, maybe I'm in the top 10)
First off - "@pla"? You just replied to him, of course it's at him. This isn't Twitter or whatever, the @name construct is nearly meaningless on Slashdot.
Secondly - someone who has a regular job, does some work on the side, and has a little cash to buy some stocks is suddenly a "1%" thingamabob? Has the country fallen so far that people think these activities are only for the ultra-elite? I'd call those activities somewhere between the "25%-er" to "50%-er".
And yes, for most people doing their individual taxes should be mind-numbingly simple. It's extremely basic grade-school math. You total up some numbers, look up stuff in some tables, do some more additions and subtractions and done. The wording can be a little tricky but anyone with a 8th grade reading level should be able to puzzle it out. If the majority can't do these activities then they pay the "ignorant slob" tax and go to a preparer. Honestly I think it's more about lazy and less about ability.
Where it gets complicated is when you start doing heaving investing, trading, contracting, running multiple complex businesses, or using tons of odd deductions. That's where a college-level finance education is really helpful to figure everything out, maybe even a team of dedicated professionals, hey now were getting into the "1%-er" range!
The article also says "Rovio is on track to generate $1 million in revenue per month by the end of the year" and "In a few months, the 5 million downloads could prove more valuable than 5 million sales."
No where in the article does it say (other than the misleading title) that the free version has actually made more money than the pay versions. Right now it's all speculation. It could be that the people playing Angry Birds for free will move on to something else or it could be that more people will buy the app. We just don't know at this time.
It's a pretty badly written article with a misleading title. I wouldn't treat it as an authoritative source on the value of programming on iOS vs Android.
Oversampling (i.e. 192kHz) allows much more room to develop a good anti-aliasing filter.
*whoosh*
As the whole point of the article goes right over your head! You do not need any anti-aliasing. If you sample at 40 kHz with a decent equipment and a good 20 kHz low-pass filter then you can completely and faithfully recover a signal of less than 20 kHz by applying the Whittaker-Shannon interpolation formula.
Now we generally sample at 44.1 kHz in order to have some oversampling to take care of non-ideal filters and such. This is 10% oversampling and it's far more than you need with modern equipment and algorithms. By doing all this properly you will get the exact waveform back. There will be no aliasing to anti-alias.
Perfect! A well-known, proven, and respected news agency. A properly-written journalistic article. They obviously did some research and contacted related parties for quotes and information. That's not some rumor-flinging blog post, that's journalism.
Of course there isn't any mention of the man being beaten. I wonder if that was just a rumor after all? Now maybe it's all part of a conspiracy or something and the guy really was beaten. However, I can't make a judgement because I don't have any facts one way or the other and I don't make judgements without at least the ghost of a factual basis.
Otherwise I might as well just believe everything I read in print, right? The government is infinitely wise and kind because some blog said so? I should give my money to a preacher because there's a nice web site with kind words? I should attack my neighbor because this leaflet says he's not one of us?
Beating/killing reporters that are making successful companies or politicians look bad is the standard operating procedure in China. It doesn't just happen sometimes, it happens all the time. If you are arguing that it doesn't happen, or is just random, isolated incidents, it shows that you are completely ignorant of how bad the situation is in China.
I'm not arguing that. Nothing that I wrote even remotely implies that I am arguing that.
I'm arguing that blogs and rumors are not substitutes for proper reporting practices. Yes, the environment might be hostile towards proper reporting practices but that doesn't change the concept that we can't properly judge issues and stories in the absence of verifiable information.
So perhaps the more dire issue is to fix the system that prevents the investigation and reporting of the facts, THEN go after the issues that the facts highlight. And no, I don't have a good grasp on how to do that other than for the people in the nation to strongly demand it and, if necessary, lay down their lives for it. Just as we did in the USA a couple of hundred years ago and other people in other nations have done throughout history.
It's a blog that's very light on any verifiable facts and instead uses unattributed reports:
Some publications reported that, in the days prior to his suicide, Sun had been detained and beaten by a senior official
So you linked to a blog about a blog that uses treats terms like this as facts with nearly no direct reporting or attribution:
"News media in China"
"Some publications reported"
"some reports quoted"
"Some English-language blogs"
I suppose that I have too high of standards for this day-and-age of blog rumormongering...
Maybe this incident occurred, maybe it didn't. Maybe Foxconn is evil, maybe it isn't. Maybe Apple is responsible, maybe it isn't. We'll get any meaningful answers if all we have are rumors and unsubstantiated aspersions!
Do you really think it costs that much to run a software repository?
Do you really think that the app store is a simple software repository? Apple writes and maintains the software to interface with the apps, runs the billing system and pays the credit card fees, vets apps and handles legal issues, buys bandwidth and server space, performs advertising, etc.
This is all done on a much larger and more involved scale than the usual "set it and forget it" software repository. Obviously Apple does make some profit from the app store but there's no doubt that they have significant expenditures in running the thing. Is 30% too much? Not when you compare it to how much other distribution channels take off the top. I'm sure if there is more competition then you'll see that 30% get shaved but right now 30% is pretty darn nice for what you get.
For big apps apple will need to have a lower cut and a much better way for site licenses and multi unit pricing systems / let app makes set a lower price per unit for say packs of 25, 50, 100 and so on.
For all we know they do! The 30% app store cut is just what we see publicly. This doesn't prohibit Apple and software manufacturers from cutting private deals that use a different percentage. It also doesn't prohibit Apple from selling codes in bulk to companies for certain apps.
I'm not saying that this is currently being done, just that there's nothing preventing this sort of thing and it could be happening right now without public knowledge of it.
Don't forget that Apple got their OS for free too (most of it, anyhow).. since its primarily based on BSD, which they use and then of course contribute little back to the open source community, unlike Google who makes significant contributions to many open source projects
What the do indicate is the excessive level of profit is cranked into the iphone/ipad line. By my estimate they could cut the price in half and still make a profit.
Apple struggles to keep up with demand as it is and they continually expand their production capabilities. Rest assured that there are bean counters in Apple that do the price/demand/production calculation and come up with the best fit.
As far as a high price contributing to a "cool factor" there is no doubt that it contributes to the allure for some people. However, there are also a lot of people who buy on the "cheap trumps quality" factor. In the end it's the balance between price and features that wins out overall. There's no doubt that Apple is doing just fine there, their sales speak to that.
Type II diabetes and metabolic syndrome are so easy to prevent by not eating the wrong kinds of foods
Which is what this article is all about, the demands that your body makes upon you when there is a metabolic/digestive disorder.
Yes, you could eat less or eat better. The problem is that some, perhaps many, people get the wrong kind of signals from their metabolic and digestive systems. These confused signals create cravings very similar to a drug addiction. You WANT to eat less and better but the cravings derail you.
Some people are able to get on top of this and get their metabolic/digestive system back on track, some people are not as lucky. If there were a way to restore some of the balance by changing your gut culture then that would HELP people to break the destructive cycles.
Very few people choose to be overweight and sick. Some people just need a bit more assistance in avoiding/correcting it than others.
...nuclear's problems. Like the waste, the pollution from making the fuel, the huge costs, the uninsurable risks (that the public pays for). All for an expensive, dirty, dangerous industry.
The fact is that we have much better solutions. Solar and wind...
Surely you know that the production of photovoltaic solar cells produces quite a bit of highly toxic waste? There's also the fact that both wind and solar have extreme problems providing baseline power and really are only good for supplemental power.
Nuclear does produce waste but it's a highly concentrated waste that can actually be refined and reused. There are also several modern reactor designs that mitigate most of the risk and produce much cleaner waste. The myth of "renewable" energy production has been a black hole that we've poured research and subsidy dollars into, dollars that could have gone toward revamping electrical transmission infrastructure, nuclear generation research, and building the latest and safest reactor designs.
I'm all for solar, wind, etc. where it can supplement baseline electrical generation or provide power in out-of-the way locations but we can't rely on it for all of our energy needs.
The climate record itself via ice cores and tree rings goes far further back than just 50 years.
Of course it does. The problem is then accurately correlating that data to a temperature model. There's still considerable debate about how to go about matching the ice core and tree ring to the climate of the time period. Even a small error in these calculations can result in data that's off significantly.
There is no fucking "other side" to this debate. Climate change IS NOW HAPPENING. There is no longer any reason to dispute this subject because the signs are obvious. I grew up in Colorado in the 1970's and 1980's. When I go back there now, it is totally fucking unambiguous to me that on a global scale the temperature is rising. Look up from your feet at some previously snow-capped mountains -- it's not that damn hard.
Putting up a wall like this will only serve to shut down all discussion. If you even had a chance to convince people that your side is correct you lost that chance once you effectively said that anyone who disagrees with you is a moron.
That being said there are actually very few people who would say that there's no climate change. The debate is not about if there's climate change or not, the debate is:
How much of the change is man-made
Does the climate change cause more harm than good
What can be done to reduce or eliminate the harmful side effects of climate change
Now, within those parameters perhaps curbing the production of greenhouse gasses is a good idea but it can't just be assumed. Even if it's found that cutting down on greenhouse gasses is a good solution how should we go about it? Those are the debatable issues.
So take a deep breath, calm down, and have a rational discussion. The rest of us will give you a moment to start over with a clean slate.
What I want to know is why the secondary coolant pumps were housed in tin sheds instead of say a concrete bunker like the primary reactor buildings?
The generators that run the pumps require venting to operate and even if they had piping for the venting it would still be difficult and costly to build a watertight seal around them. We're not talking about a couple of kilowatt generators here, these are fairly bulky installations.
What you do instead is place them behind walls or on top of high points that would place them out of reach of a anticipated reasonable high-water mark. This is a risk vs reward assessment that should take into account the serious risks involved in the case of a possible nuclear accident.
In this case they chose a level of risk that didn't pay off. Should they have increased the height of the wall, costing them more but reducing the risk? Probably but then again we don't have all the information that went into the decision.
In fact, fuel is just about the perfect candidate for a mass driver where energy can be stored up and then released in a burst into a linear induction motor or similar technology.
To add to this, the energy doesn't have to be a massive amount used up in a quick burst. You can perform some of the acceleration over a period of time on a circular racetrack and then launch it once it has a good deal of its final energy. Obviously this will require a good deal of engineering to get right but there's already been a lot of work done on this topic.
This is an old idea that should have been implemented long ago. Fuel tanks can survive much higher g-forces and can be built and launched relatively cheaply compared to satellites and personnel.
In fact, fuel is just about the perfect candidate for a mass driver where energy can be stored up and then released in a burst into a linear induction motor or similar technology. This means that much less expensive and less polluting energy sources can be used in the launch as opposed to most rocket fuels. It's also inherently safer since you don't have a 5000 degree F flame that you need to feed and control.
Once the fuel tanks are exhausted they can be converted into modules for space stations or spacecraft, probably much more efficient than building them to survive a re-entry to get re-used. Why waste all the energy it took to get them up there and the energy it would take to send up a pre-built module when you can design the tanks for re-use?
Yeah, there's a lot of complexity that I'm doing some hand-waving around but it's still a great concept that should be developed further.
I really appreciate the calm, collected, and clear responses in the face of what is clearly a very contentious topic for many people. It's also great to get some insight into the internals of a popular project.
Keep up the good work, Growl is a very interesting project and it is definitely driving UI development. Having an open-source project like this available for browsing and contributing to the source code does a great deal for programmers both established and new.
when I click on a running app in the doc that has no open windows, the program doesn't do anything. It should, at that point, actually respond; open a new project, give me a file-open dialog box, anything but sit there looking pretty.
Many applications do just what you're asking. Click on the Finder and if there aren't any open windows it will pop one open with your default directory. Click on Mail and if you don't have a mail browser window open then it will open one.
It's an application-defined behavior and most of Apple's applications do something when they don't have an open window and their dock icon is clicked. Some 3rd party applications don't follow this UI principle and, yes, it's a shame when they don't.
The other issue with this behavior is that it is not easy to tell at a glance to tell what programs are running.
It is? All you have to do is glance over at the dock, everything that's running has a dot next to its icon. If that's not clear enough for you then you can always just clear out the non-running apps in your dock and only let the running apps show. Now EVERY app in the dock is a running app.
If we're talking about applications with open windows (which is what would show up in the Windows' Taskbar) then just use Apple's Mission Control. Every running application will have its own group of windows, grouped with the icon for the application. It's quick and easy to see what's running and pick a window.
Also remember that under Mac OS a running program that doesn't have any open windows doesn't need to use that many resources. It will stay in memory and possibly do some processing but if its resources are needed they can be reclaimed by the system and the application will be put in a suspended state, its memory will be paged out to disk, its running threads will be suspended or given a lower run priority, etc. Thus you can keep a lot of applications running in the background without windows and not worry that they'll slow you down much.
Music plays while Safari has the screen and is browsing websites.
Not to mention the file system and underlying OS operations, notification services, location services, and so on. There's a lot of things that run in the background under iOS and more cores is just going to help them run more smoothly.
So your theory is that we need 4 cores to run many lightweight apps at the same time. That doesn't make much sense.
My "theory" is that there are a lot of apps that can benefit from having additional cores to run threads on. It doesn't matter if it is the front app doing parallel processing or "background" apps that have registered tasks to be run. Additional cores will get used on iOS devices and they provide additional flexibility to the software.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe it's about time they pay their fare share, too.
Yeah, Apple! Next time we take a cab together you better chip in!
According to Wikipedia:A journalist collects and distributes news and other information.
So, it seems you call yourself journalist.
On the other hand a spammer pretty much fits the same definition.
There are lots of journalists that specialize and only report on a certain type of news. There are journalists that specialize on the automotive industry or politics or finance or technology.
The tech industry is hurting so there's negative stories about tech companies, apple is one of the only tech companies doing well so there's a bunch of positive stories about apple. If it was 15 years ago the situation would be flipped and we'd here people complaining about conspiracies AGAINST apple.
Not that there aren't paid shills but I think in this case it's unlikely that bonch is one. He's posted plenty of stories that aren't just pro-Apple/anti-Apple's competition. Sure he has a focus but that's probably just journalistic specialization. Now if he started seriously spinning Apple's failures in a positive light or the competition's successes in a negative light then you'd have some meat for your theories.
@pla: +1 because you are a 1%-er. ( intended as a wake up; I can't afford the 1% moniker, maybe I'm in the top 10)
First off - "@pla"? You just replied to him, of course it's at him. This isn't Twitter or whatever, the @name construct is nearly meaningless on Slashdot.
Secondly - someone who has a regular job, does some work on the side, and has a little cash to buy some stocks is suddenly a "1%" thingamabob? Has the country fallen so far that people think these activities are only for the ultra-elite? I'd call those activities somewhere between the "25%-er" to "50%-er".
And yes, for most people doing their individual taxes should be mind-numbingly simple. It's extremely basic grade-school math. You total up some numbers, look up stuff in some tables, do some more additions and subtractions and done. The wording can be a little tricky but anyone with a 8th grade reading level should be able to puzzle it out. If the majority can't do these activities then they pay the "ignorant slob" tax and go to a preparer. Honestly I think it's more about lazy and less about ability.
Where it gets complicated is when you start doing heaving investing, trading, contracting, running multiple complex businesses, or using tons of odd deductions. That's where a college-level finance education is really helpful to figure everything out, maybe even a team of dedicated professionals, hey now were getting into the "1%-er" range!
Lobbies also create the millions of loopholes that get rich "special interests" the discounts they want.
Don't kid yourself, the poor "special interests" also get the discounts they want. It's the people in the middle that get screwed.
The article also says "Rovio is on track to generate $1 million in revenue per month by the end of the year" and "In a few months, the 5 million downloads could prove more valuable than 5 million sales."
No where in the article does it say (other than the misleading title) that the free version has actually made more money than the pay versions. Right now it's all speculation. It could be that the people playing Angry Birds for free will move on to something else or it could be that more people will buy the app. We just don't know at this time.
It's a pretty badly written article with a misleading title. I wouldn't treat it as an authoritative source on the value of programming on iOS vs Android.
Oversampling (i.e. 192kHz) allows much more room to develop a good anti-aliasing filter.
*whoosh*
As the whole point of the article goes right over your head! You do not need any anti-aliasing. If you sample at 40 kHz with a decent equipment and a good 20 kHz low-pass filter then you can completely and faithfully recover a signal of less than 20 kHz by applying the Whittaker-Shannon interpolation formula.
Now we generally sample at 44.1 kHz in order to have some oversampling to take care of non-ideal filters and such. This is 10% oversampling and it's far more than you need with modern equipment and algorithms. By doing all this properly you will get the exact waveform back. There will be no aliasing to anti-alias.
Fine, take a look at this article from Reuters with lots of direct attributions.
Perfect! A well-known, proven, and respected news agency. A properly-written journalistic article. They obviously did some research and contacted related parties for quotes and information. That's not some rumor-flinging blog post, that's journalism.
Of course there isn't any mention of the man being beaten. I wonder if that was just a rumor after all? Now maybe it's all part of a conspiracy or something and the guy really was beaten. However, I can't make a judgement because I don't have any facts one way or the other and I don't make judgements without at least the ghost of a factual basis.
Otherwise I might as well just believe everything I read in print, right? The government is infinitely wise and kind because some blog said so? I should give my money to a preacher because there's a nice web site with kind words? I should attack my neighbor because this leaflet says he's not one of us?
Beating/killing reporters that are making successful companies or politicians look bad is the standard operating procedure in China. It doesn't just happen sometimes, it happens all the time. If you are arguing that it doesn't happen, or is just random, isolated incidents, it shows that you are completely ignorant of how bad the situation is in China.
I'm not arguing that. Nothing that I wrote even remotely implies that I am arguing that.
I'm arguing that blogs and rumors are not substitutes for proper reporting practices. Yes, the environment might be hostile towards proper reporting practices but that doesn't change the concept that we can't properly judge issues and stories in the absence of verifiable information.
So perhaps the more dire issue is to fix the system that prevents the investigation and reporting of the facts, THEN go after the issues that the facts highlight. And no, I don't have a good grasp on how to do that other than for the people in the nation to strongly demand it and, if necessary, lay down their lives for it. Just as we did in the USA a couple of hundred years ago and other people in other nations have done throughout history.
Bribing an activist with an iPhone 4, or beating up a worker to control the news, is hardly what I'd call "do[ing] better".
Did you bother to click through to the actual "article"?
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/07/21/reports-of-suicide-in-china-linked-to-missing-iphone/
It's a blog that's very light on any verifiable facts and instead uses unattributed reports:
Some publications reported that, in the days prior to his suicide, Sun had been detained and beaten by a senior official
So you linked to a blog about a blog that uses treats terms like this as facts with nearly no direct reporting or attribution:
I suppose that I have too high of standards for this day-and-age of blog rumormongering...
Maybe this incident occurred, maybe it didn't. Maybe Foxconn is evil, maybe it isn't. Maybe Apple is responsible, maybe it isn't. We'll get any meaningful answers if all we have are rumors and unsubstantiated aspersions!
Do you really think it costs that much to run a software repository?
Do you really think that the app store is a simple software repository? Apple writes and maintains the software to interface with the apps, runs the billing system and pays the credit card fees, vets apps and handles legal issues, buys bandwidth and server space, performs advertising, etc.
This is all done on a much larger and more involved scale than the usual "set it and forget it" software repository. Obviously Apple does make some profit from the app store but there's no doubt that they have significant expenditures in running the thing. Is 30% too much? Not when you compare it to how much other distribution channels take off the top. I'm sure if there is more competition then you'll see that 30% get shaved but right now 30% is pretty darn nice for what you get.
For big apps apple will need to have a lower cut and a much better way for site licenses and multi unit pricing systems / let app makes set a lower price per unit for say packs of 25, 50, 100 and so on.
For all we know they do! The 30% app store cut is just what we see publicly. This doesn't prohibit Apple and software manufacturers from cutting private deals that use a different percentage. It also doesn't prohibit Apple from selling codes in bulk to companies for certain apps.
I'm not saying that this is currently being done, just that there's nothing preventing this sort of thing and it could be happening right now without public knowledge of it.
Don't forget that Apple got their OS for free too (most of it, anyhow).. since its primarily based on BSD, which they use and then of course contribute little back to the open source community, unlike Google who makes significant contributions to many open source projects
Oh really?
It looks like Apple contributes quite a few open source projects.
What the do indicate is the excessive level of profit is cranked into the iphone/ipad line.
By my estimate they could cut the price in half and still make a profit.
Apple struggles to keep up with demand as it is and they continually expand their production capabilities. Rest assured that there are bean counters in Apple that do the price/demand/production calculation and come up with the best fit.
As far as a high price contributing to a "cool factor" there is no doubt that it contributes to the allure for some people. However, there are also a lot of people who buy on the "cheap trumps quality" factor. In the end it's the balance between price and features that wins out overall. There's no doubt that Apple is doing just fine there, their sales speak to that.
Type II diabetes and metabolic syndrome are so easy to prevent by not eating the wrong kinds of foods
Which is what this article is all about, the demands that your body makes upon you when there is a metabolic/digestive disorder.
Yes, you could eat less or eat better. The problem is that some, perhaps many, people get the wrong kind of signals from their metabolic and digestive systems. These confused signals create cravings very similar to a drug addiction. You WANT to eat less and better but the cravings derail you.
Some people are able to get on top of this and get their metabolic/digestive system back on track, some people are not as lucky. If there were a way to restore some of the balance by changing your gut culture then that would HELP people to break the destructive cycles.
Very few people choose to be overweight and sick. Some people just need a bit more assistance in avoiding/correcting it than others.
Wouldn't that be cool, Kindle and Nook on one device?
Yes, it would! Why won't someone make a device like that? Oh wait, there is one!
Nook for iPad
Kindle for iPad
...nuclear's problems. Like the waste, the pollution from making the fuel, the huge costs, the uninsurable risks (that the public pays for). All for an expensive, dirty, dangerous industry.
The fact is that we have much better solutions. Solar and wind...
Surely you know that the production of photovoltaic solar cells produces quite a bit of highly toxic waste? There's also the fact that both wind and solar have extreme problems providing baseline power and really are only good for supplemental power.
Nuclear does produce waste but it's a highly concentrated waste that can actually be refined and reused. There are also several modern reactor designs that mitigate most of the risk and produce much cleaner waste. The myth of "renewable" energy production has been a black hole that we've poured research and subsidy dollars into, dollars that could have gone toward revamping electrical transmission infrastructure, nuclear generation research, and building the latest and safest reactor designs.
I'm all for solar, wind, etc. where it can supplement baseline electrical generation or provide power in out-of-the way locations but we can't rely on it for all of our energy needs.
The climate record itself via ice cores and tree rings goes far further back than just 50 years.
Of course it does. The problem is then accurately correlating that data to a temperature model. There's still considerable debate about how to go about matching the ice core and tree ring to the climate of the time period. Even a small error in these calculations can result in data that's off significantly.
There is no fucking "other side" to this debate. Climate change IS NOW HAPPENING. There is no longer any reason to dispute this subject because the signs are obvious. I grew up in Colorado in the 1970's and 1980's. When I go back there now, it is totally fucking unambiguous to me that on a global scale the temperature is rising. Look up from your feet at some previously snow-capped mountains -- it's not that damn hard.
Putting up a wall like this will only serve to shut down all discussion. If you even had a chance to convince people that your side is correct you lost that chance once you effectively said that anyone who disagrees with you is a moron.
That being said there are actually very few people who would say that there's no climate change. The debate is not about if there's climate change or not, the debate is:
Now, within those parameters perhaps curbing the production of greenhouse gasses is a good idea but it can't just be assumed. Even if it's found that cutting down on greenhouse gasses is a good solution how should we go about it? Those are the debatable issues.
So take a deep breath, calm down, and have a rational discussion. The rest of us will give you a moment to start over with a clean slate.
What I want to know is why the secondary coolant pumps were housed in tin sheds instead of say a concrete bunker like the primary reactor buildings?
The generators that run the pumps require venting to operate and even if they had piping for the venting it would still be difficult and costly to build a watertight seal around them. We're not talking about a couple of kilowatt generators here, these are fairly bulky installations.
What you do instead is place them behind walls or on top of high points that would place them out of reach of a anticipated reasonable high-water mark. This is a risk vs reward assessment that should take into account the serious risks involved in the case of a possible nuclear accident.
In this case they chose a level of risk that didn't pay off. Should they have increased the height of the wall, costing them more but reducing the risk? Probably but then again we don't have all the information that went into the decision.
In fact, fuel is just about the perfect candidate for a mass driver where energy can be stored up and then released in a burst into a linear induction motor or similar technology.
To add to this, the energy doesn't have to be a massive amount used up in a quick burst. You can perform some of the acceleration over a period of time on a circular racetrack and then launch it once it has a good deal of its final energy. Obviously this will require a good deal of engineering to get right but there's already been a lot of work done on this topic.
This is an old idea that should have been implemented long ago. Fuel tanks can survive much higher g-forces and can be built and launched relatively cheaply compared to satellites and personnel.
In fact, fuel is just about the perfect candidate for a mass driver where energy can be stored up and then released in a burst into a linear induction motor or similar technology. This means that much less expensive and less polluting energy sources can be used in the launch as opposed to most rocket fuels. It's also inherently safer since you don't have a 5000 degree F flame that you need to feed and control.
Once the fuel tanks are exhausted they can be converted into modules for space stations or spacecraft, probably much more efficient than building them to survive a re-entry to get re-used. Why waste all the energy it took to get them up there and the energy it would take to send up a pre-built module when you can design the tanks for re-use?
Yeah, there's a lot of complexity that I'm doing some hand-waving around but it's still a great concept that should be developed further.
I really appreciate the calm, collected, and clear responses in the face of what is clearly a very contentious topic for many people. It's also great to get some insight into the internals of a popular project.
Keep up the good work, Growl is a very interesting project and it is definitely driving UI development. Having an open-source project like this available for browsing and contributing to the source code does a great deal for programmers both established and new.
when I click on a running app in the doc that has no open windows, the program doesn't do anything. It should, at that point, actually respond; open a new project, give me a file-open dialog box, anything but sit there looking pretty.
Many applications do just what you're asking. Click on the Finder and if there aren't any open windows it will pop one open with your default directory. Click on Mail and if you don't have a mail browser window open then it will open one.
It's an application-defined behavior and most of Apple's applications do something when they don't have an open window and their dock icon is clicked. Some 3rd party applications don't follow this UI principle and, yes, it's a shame when they don't.
The other issue with this behavior is that it is not easy to tell at a glance to tell what programs are running.
It is? All you have to do is glance over at the dock, everything that's running has a dot next to its icon. If that's not clear enough for you then you can always just clear out the non-running apps in your dock and only let the running apps show. Now EVERY app in the dock is a running app.
If we're talking about applications with open windows (which is what would show up in the Windows' Taskbar) then just use Apple's Mission Control. Every running application will have its own group of windows, grouped with the icon for the application. It's quick and easy to see what's running and pick a window.
Also remember that under Mac OS a running program that doesn't have any open windows doesn't need to use that many resources. It will stay in memory and possibly do some processing but if its resources are needed they can be reclaimed by the system and the application will be put in a suspended state, its memory will be paged out to disk, its running threads will be suspended or given a lower run priority, etc. Thus you can keep a lot of applications running in the background without windows and not worry that they'll slow you down much.
Music plays while Safari has the screen and is browsing websites.
Not to mention the file system and underlying OS operations, notification services, location services, and so on. There's a lot of things that run in the background under iOS and more cores is just going to help them run more smoothly.
So your theory is that we need 4 cores to run many lightweight apps at the same time. That doesn't make much sense.
My "theory" is that there are a lot of apps that can benefit from having additional cores to run threads on. It doesn't matter if it is the front app doing parallel processing or "background" apps that have registered tasks to be run. Additional cores will get used on iOS devices and they provide additional flexibility to the software.