Can you cite any reliable sources for the stock of *economically recoverable* uranium, and how long that stock could meet *all human energy needs* including ground transportation?
Additionally, safety concerns have to do with the fact that nuclear power plant operators have a pretty poor track record of a) disposing of waste properly, and b) telling the truth about what they've done.
Classic scaremongering. Both points you make are a) full of shit, and b) outright lies. So, I'll dispense with those first.
If you remember the movie Erin Brockovich; where California electric companies were using open air evaporating ponds to dispose of toxic Chromium metals. Yes that did happen, no it was not a nuclear plant, and yes, it received a lot of press coverage.
The movie Civil Action, where companies were sued for dumping toxic chemicals onto the ground, into streams and rivers. Yes, those things did happen. In every year from the founding fathers up to the 1970's there were a LOT of companies disposing of waste improperly, and precisely NONE of it was nuclear waste. NONE OF IT.
Nuclear reactors are not easy to build. It takes scores of engineers to do it, people who know how nasty the waste byproducts and radiological components can be. You can't just build a reactor in your back yard. Since the inception of the technology, EVERY SINGLE MOLECULE OF WASTE HAS BEEN ACCOUNTED FOR! People are incorrectly attributing the irresponsibility of power companies and heavy industry in the past over to the Nuclear industry because of the fears instilled in us every single day of our lives from the sources I point out in my previous post.
So, your points a & b are horseshit, horseshit, horseshit. And if you don't know what that is, thats the stuff that comes from a horse.
Now, as to "economically recoverable"... what a buzzword. Nuclar Reprocessing plants can recover 95% of spent fuel to put back into production. A Stanford study shows that if were were ONLY to harvest the URANIUM found naturally in SEAWATER, it would power reactors for 7 million years. The same study also states that we have enough fuel available to power ALL the worlds energy needs for the next 5 Billion years.
Nuclear Energy is non-renewable? Excuse me? That is like stating that solar energy or wind power is non-renewable. They are ALL in infinite supply and are non-expendable (we cannot use them all up.)
Coal fired power plants, which burn a non-renewable and expendable resource, release tons of "greenhouse gases" into the atmosphere. With Nuclear power, we know precisely where every single molecule of waste material goes, which is into a barrel, encased in ceramic, and stored away in a facility designed to last 5x longer than the radiological half-life of the waste material stored there.
The fear of nuclear energy has its rational sources. First is the environmental movement that fought against atmospheric testing of nuclear warheads during the cold war era. I applaud those efforts. What also happened is during this same period is we were taught what to do in case of a nuclear attack from Russia, which by every measure would have been horrific. Add in a 3 Mile Island and a Chernobyl and you've got an entire generation of Americans that has transferred the horror and fear of Nuclear weapons over to everything Nuclear. Fact is that 3 Mile Island, while it did release radon gas is not a catastrophe that even approaches the generational fear that it inspires and Chernobyl is a classic Soviet-Era f**k-up-cover-up situation. Its funny that nothing is ever said of the 100+ nuclear reactors currently in use in America, or that ALL of France is currently powered by Nuclear Power. With hundreds upon hundreds of plants in use throughout the globe running for all these years, all with nary an incident to report... What are we so afraid of?
Charging a battery takes electricity. Electricity that is generated from anything other than nuclear, wind, or solar power is a net negative on the 'greenhouse gases' scale. Of all those energy sources, the only one viable for long term is nuclear. Sorry, but it is a fact.
A renewable resource is one that can be replaced, like a tree. The lumber that is used to build houses, the wood that is used to make paper is all generated from (ghasp!) a renewable resource. What drives me nuts is that these multinational corporations that produce lumber and paper harvest it ALL from their OWN TREE FARMS. They own millions of acres of land where they methodically grow their trees on a rotational basis where they harvest the same spot every 20 years. Oh, and your Christmas tree; it is grown on a tree farm as well. To say that paper production or wood production depletes our natural resources is the same thing as saying that eating french fries depletes our national supply of potatoes.
I'm an expert (of sorts) in document printing, specifically with optical document security and printing of security papers. A small printing company I work with consumes 28 tons of paper every single day. They know exactly where the wood pulp comes from. You don't make paper from just any old wood pulp (although you could). The trees are bred and grown specifically for use in making paper. But some folks out there want you to believe that they are forever seeking a new rainforest to chop down to consume their insatiable desire for more wood pulp.
Uh, sorry folks, trees, yeah, trees are a renewable resource.
Respectfully, no. She quite literally demanded that the RAM be turned over as part of the discovery request. I've been having the same cognitive dissonance myself where I tried interpreting her order or reframing it until I could make sense of it... and theres the rub: As a Judge, you are required to speak with clarity, to issue orders such that there are no questions, no ambiguity (ever heard the term sober as a judge?). This is because every decision you are making in your courtroom, you are establishing case law, you are setting a precedent that future jurists will refer back to in order to support their requests for defendants to... turn over their RAM?
Uh, your honor, your ignorance is showing...
She had better correct her ruling or an appellate court will be forced to overturn her decision in order to avoid setting such a disastrous precedent.
While industry experts lamented the judges decision in this case, this newest revelation, that computer RAM should be turned over as part of discovery, proves that she has no concept of the issues she is addressing in her court. This provides fertile grounds for appeals as she is obviously dealing with issues she cannot even comprehend.
The fact that she has ordered the defendant to CREATE evidence (log files), in order to turn it over to the plaintiff as part of their discovery request is absurd.
Further exacerbating the situation is that tech support for the systems has been outsourced to India.
"Yeees sir, I understand that you are loosing ahlteetude but I neeed for you to reboot the computer as we have seen this work for our other customers..."
Alrighty there Genius, I never claimed to be an expert on the hydrological events that have taken place in New Orleans since the beginning of recorded history. I frankly don't care how many times NOLA has flooded as the result of storm surge from the back door or the front. All I was doing is relating a personal experience.
It was my brother-in-law who stated that the water came up through the slab. When I first visited him in his new home back in 2002-ish and found that the "basement" (which is really the first floor as it is all above ground) had hospital style floor tiles and a very antiseptic feel to it. I asked what he planned to do with the space and he simply stated that people in New Orleans do not live in the first floor as it floods too often, his real estate agent stated that it all had been gutted in 1995 and basically the place would flood every 10 years. hmmm, 1995 to 2005. Sounds pretty good to me.
No true New Orleans house is slab-on-grade. Damn! He'll be devastated to find out that the modest little mansion he lived in that was built in the early 20th century was not, in fact, a true New Orleans estate! And if it didn't flood his home in the Garden District then whose house was it that I donned a gas mask to help gut the first floor?
He's sold the house and is now teaching elsewhere. Kinda sad though as now I no longer have a reason to go out to NOLA.
Yeah, forget the pool tablets and stick with the mini-blinds.:)
Actually, we were thinking about each of the times they evacuated for Hurricane threats (prior to Katrina, of course) As we donned our gas masks, tore down the walls and sprayed the exposed beams with bleach, we thought if each time they went to leave from the threat of a hurricane, what if they dropped pool tablets on the ground or put them on a paper plates throughout the ground floor. This way, if it did flood they just had to deal with water damage and not mold. If there was no flood then they could come back and pick up and put away the tablets and click 'resume' on their lives...
My brother-in-law was a professor at Tulane University. His home was in the garden district that wasn't hit as hard. Nevertheless, his house was flooded and it filled with mold. We went down over Thanksgiving week and I have to tell you it was a very unique experience camping outdoors in a major city that was essentially a ghost town. We did have a proper thanksgiving dinner of Turkey hot dogs and Stove Top Stuffing...:)
Based upon our collective experience, had my Brother-in-law chose to stay, this is my advice to you.
If you're planning on owning a home in New Orleans, you need to PLAN on having to gut & clean the first floor once every 10 years after it floods. It is much like living in Southern Florida where you just plan on getting a new roof after each hurricane season..:)
Don't bother trying to build a flood wall. We found out the hard way that the water doesn't come in through the walls and windows, it percolates up through the concrete slab itself! So, first thing, if you have a cement 'basement' or first floor, seal up the slab with an epoxy paint, then carpet it or put in linoleum. Paint the exposed 2x4's with a good mold resistant primer, then hang the cement wallboard used for bathrooms on the lower 4' of the walls. The upper 4' you can use mildew resistant wallboard or regular sheet rock. Do not use regular sheetrock mud for taping, use the slow cure mud that is sold as a powder and you add water and it dries (cures) in 60 minutes. Last, go purchase a bucket of 1" swimming pool chlorine tablets and drop them inside the walls ever other stud. This way, if the water rises up, the water in the walls will chlorinate itself and when the water recedes you are guaranteed not to have mold in 'them thar walls'.
Take LOTS of pictures of each step of the process. The reason houses are being sold as gutted is that this is the only way that the new buyer can be sure that there is no mold and the house is clean. You will boost your resale value through the roof if you show how much attention you paid toward preventing future water damage issues.
Alternately, you can skip all this and simply put up mini-blinds for walls and you can just raise them up whenever it floods and airing the place out will be a breeze.
This is the most poorly worded article and headline I have ever read. Nina Reiser boinked a psycho killer by the name of Sean Sturgeon who has confessed to 8 murders. Nina broke it off with him in January 2006, she disappeared in September. Hans Reiser has been charged with her disappearance.
So, unless some miscreant goes out and breaks something, yes, it is fixed.
Hackers of the world: It ain't broke, so please don't be taking it apart to find out why. Please! The fact that you can't watch movies you paid for on the equipment you own is a design feature. Please don't meddle with it, it will only make more work for us.
{We have just raised the bar and thrown down the gauntlet, so: On your mark, get set, GO!}
There are propane powered refrigerators that heat a mixture of primarily Ammonia. After the boiler it goes to a condenser where the liquid is held under pressure. The evaporator drops the pressure, and with pressure drop the temp drops as well providing ice cold temps so you can have a propane powered fridge or freezer.
I bought it to do high-end video processing, virtualization, and I got a good deal on all of it (except for the processor and memory) which I bought from NewEgg. The 850watt Cooler Master Power Supply pulled so much juice that the computer wouldn't even post until I used the big thick power cable that came with the power supply.
Every few years I build up an awesome machine, just for fun.
I must say, it is very nice memory. I've got it running in my new Quad Core Intel Extreme Core 2 Duo processor with the NVidia 680i motherboard and dual 8800 GTX running in SLI mode.
It has 2 74gb Western Digital Raptor 10,000 RPM drives striped for the boot volume and OS load, and Four 750gb Seagate SATA II drives running Raid 5.
I just wanted to build up the most awesome gaming computer possible that will never see anything more complicated than solitaire.
I bought Four gigs of ram to put in it, I now have an extra fan kit that I don't know what to do with.
You're supporting my point with the link to pirated DVD's. The manufacture of pirated DVD's and the theft of intellectual property is pumping billions of dollars into the Chinese economy each year. They're not about to cut off their cash flow.
So, yes, when it came to "shutting down" DVD pirates, they made a few walk the plank just for show... then business as usual.
There is nothing but shame that can come to China if they let cyber crime run rampant within China as well as against other externally connected networks. China is just going through the 2nd stage of the script kiddie phase where people have been connected long enough to really know how to do some damage (which is right where Russia was 5 years ago).
Of course, Russia has level "3 hackers" and they post the most serious threat. Chinese will follow the same path as America has in that the Script Kiddies will grow up and get jobs in the IT field. The Russians didn't have that option, when they grew out of the Script Kiddie phase, they couldn't just go out and get a job in IT, there is no IT in Russia. So they set to work writing all the nasty stuff that floating around today.
Brazil is only 2-3 years behind Russia in their development of online criminals. They've been having people graduate to level 3 now for the past 2 years.
This subject is worthy of a book, however, I'll try to convey some level 5 thoughts and hopefully it'll make sense:
The Chinese government will reign in the criminal elements. They can't afford them damaging their economy. There is too much business to be done in order to keep their economy afloat that if we threatened to cut their internet access, they would go out and put the criminals in prison for life.
China has bred themselves into a crisis. With their 1 child per couple law that has been in effect for decades, they now have 1 child that is supporting 2 parents who supports 4 granparents as they all move into retirement age. This is a monumental economic problem and is the reason why their economic policy is evolving at a rate that far outpaces the political evolution. External influences are what are changing the Chinese government, causing them to adopt rule sets and make changes that would never come internally.
Example: SARS...
People started flying out of China with this illness (SARS). Communist China denied the problem even existed. The World Health Organization stepped in and grounded all flights departing from specific regions of China, causing a panic in the Business world supporting the Chinese economy. This forced China to recognize the problem and adopt new information sharing rules whereby we now know about the Asian Bird Fru YEARS before it becomes a global pandemic (if it ever does). This is an external change that never would have come internally from their own country.
China monitors their internet very closely, they know who the criminals are. They will be shut down soon because to let them continue would 1) be an embarassment to China, and 2) could have disasterous economic consequences.
As a simple reference: The United States currently consumes 40 Quadrillion BTU's of energy per year from all sources. China consumes 7 QBTU and needs to get to 14 QBTU within the next 10 years in order to keep their economy from collapsing. They have a lot of work to do and they're not going to let malware authors derail their country. If they get derailed, they're going to be headed in the same direction as the Soviet Union. China will do anything to prevent that from happening, including invading their neighbors. China is a nation of pride, there is no way they're going to let their nation fail.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, the citizens didn't much care because at least the Vodka was still cheap!
In a related story, experts have also discovered that the telephone, fax machine, photocopiers, scanners, cameras, and silly putty also pose a grave risk to national security.
There is no dispute that the air quality of Los Angeles, Toronto, Mexico City, {insert city name here} is not where we'd all like it to be. What I'm saying about the problem "being solved" is that we know what the cause is, we know what the solution is. Knowing the solution to the problem and actually implementing the solution are two different things. And there's the rub.
The local politics dictate how much change is made or enforced on local industry and/or transportation and how much the politicians are willing to sacrifice the local economy for the sake of {air/water/soil} quality. No doubt the local politicians have implemented the easy solutions, fostered adoption through grants and tax rebates, and the remaining issues will be dealt with over time as industries move overseas and light rail systems come online, etc.
Being that we know the answer to these problems, politicians are not going to be willing to fund new studies on old problems with known solutions. We arrived at the solution back in the 70's, 80's, 90's and we've been working towards those solutions ever since.
The Environmental Industry has therefore been forced to come up with greater, more fantastic, more ridiculous claims in order to justify the spending of more research dollars. Its either that or they're out of a job. They've discovered that there is a LOT of money that can be made by SCARING PEOPLE, and the reality is neither scary enough or sexy enough to garner peoples attention and money.
So they just make stuff up and shout down opponents as being on "Big Oil's" payroll. They alter complex computer models until they support their wild claims... Who cares if the computer model has no basis in scientific fact or reality, they have a product to sell, a point to make, and research grants to write!
Greenpeace and the initial environmental movement was a truly noble cause. I am very happy to see the progress that has been made to clean up the pollution of streams and rivers, reduction of smog and sulfur emissions from factories and power plants, reduced tailpipe emissions, etc.
But now that we've 'solved' these problems, the Environmental Movement has become the Environmental Industry that is making more and more shrill claims that have little to no basis in either science or reality. They have to if the new employees of the Environmental Industry want to keep their jobs. The most absurd is that CO2 is causing global warming where all the evidence and hard proof shows that the rise of CO2 levels in the atmosphere is a lagging indicator of global climate change... a lagging indicator by 800 years. Yet they still claim that the link between atmospheric CO2 levels and global warming are directly connected - and leave their audience to conclude that the rise of CO2 caused the rise in temperature, when in fact the exact opposite is the case. Rising global temperatures will cause a gradual increase in CO2.
Look at it this way: to burn a carbon atom, you must combine 1 carbon atom with 2 oxygen atoms to make the CO2 molecule. If CO2 was in fact rising at the dangerous rate that some claim, we would actually be running out of oxygen. We should be screaming to save the oxygen! The thing is that the entire carbon myth is simply that, a myth.
When you overlap the global climate changes with the solar activity and sun spots, it is an absolutely perfect match. The trends overlap each other and fit together perfectly. Yet, somehow people REFUSE to believe that Global Warming is actually caused by, of all things, THE SUN!
Holy crap! The SUN is actually responsible for Global Warming? STOP THE PRESSES!!!
Cantor Fitzgerald is a bond trading firm, one of the few firms who can trade U.S. Government securities with the Federal Reserve Bank. They lost 658 souls on the 9/11 attacks, more than any other single company (their offices being above the impact site of One World Trade Center).
In the early 1990's, it became apparent that their traditional way of doing business was going away. The future lay in electronic trading, not in suits talking on phones. The problem was their entire culture was built up around the brokers working the phones. They soon realized that changing the entire culture of how they did business would be nearly impossible.
They realized that failure to change meant that newer startups would be soon coming online to take advantage of electronic trading, and that they would be doomed to a slow death of attrition as the competition cannibalized the marketplace.
Rather than waiting to be cannibalized by some unknown competitor, they decided to create their own competition, to create their own cannibalizing agent. Thus was the birth of eSpeed which went public in 1999. As the broker/dealer market declined, the eSpeed market took up the slack and eventually consumed the old guard completely.
The transition was so successful that before 9/11, Cantor handled about one-quarter of the daily transactions in the multi-trillion dollar treasury security market. The fourth quarter of 2001, after losing 2/3 their workforce, Cantor Fitzgerald posted a 25% profit.
Today, thousands of traders at hundreds of global financial institutions conduct transactions worth over $45 trillion annually in eSpeed's multiple buyer/multiple seller markets.
%-%-%
Traditional media is scrambling to remain relevant on the Net because the 1:1 communication provided by the internet has completely decimated their existing business model. They are used to owning the information gathering and distribution networks.
I have now completely abandoned the print media because I know that the reporting I will read is going to be one-sided, heavily slanted, while at the same time professing complete objectivity. How many print newspapers have had to shut down the online feedback on their editorial pages because the blowback was so overwhelming that they couldn't tolerate it?
Digg is nothing but a groupthink mob rules mentality with no decent way to hold an actual conversation, which is fine because the one thing the groupthink mob mentality abhors is open discussion, so Digg is a perfect match for them. The positive result is that the level of discourse on Slashdot forums have risen significantly now that the Diggers have gone.
I say that the future for The Economist would look a lot like Slashdot's discussions, where experts from around the world can opine on the news of the day.
A single nerve cell is precisely that, a single cell. These single cells, called Axons, can be as long as 3 feet (1m) long (from the base of the spine to the toes). In the blue whale, a single nerve cell can be 60' long.
I mention this only to point out that the neurotransmitters are electro-chemical reactions. Each end of the cell has either the chemical transmitters or receptors. This is why if you sever a nerve, it stops transmitting, period. You have just severed a single cell into two cells. If you join the two halves together, it isn't going to reestablish the connection; there is no v.32bis in the neurotransmitter realm (uh, we got a noisy connection here, slow down the xmit rate until we get a clean signal)...
If nerves simply used electricity, rejoining two severed ends would reestablish the connection. It isn't that simple. If it were transmitted by sound, then you'd be dealing with echo cancellation and crosstalk between nerve endings and we'd be able to pick up nerve activity via acoustic methods as opposed to the current electrical connections. Some physicist must have gotten a pounding headache and assumed that "teh sounderwaves in my head are echoing out of controller, argh!"... Our brain wave meters don't use microphones, dipshit, we call them electrodes for a reason.
The whole focus of research in the genetics field on regenerating damaged nerves is to put stem cells in the damaged area and hope for 1 of 2 positive outcomes; either the severed nerve endings grow a new synapse (akin to soldering new socket/plug to each end of the severed nerve), or simply regrow and heal the severed nerve to permit the passage of the electro-chemical messenger.
We know about neurotransmitters and their precursor chemicals, we have prescription drugs that stimulate or retard neural function (anti-depressants, Parkinson's drugs, anti-psychosis drugs). This is a well established area of neuro-science and it has been proven.
The mere speculation of sound being the transmitter because they cannot detect heat is akin to stating the earth is flat because I can't see the curve. Thats a pretty big jump there even for Mr. Evil Knievel...
...if they're just using the accounts to pump the stock then wouldn't they still leave a trail back to themselves since they would have needed to own the stock in one of their own accounts in the first place? FiniteElementalist does an excellent job answering the question; I'll just recap in my own words: The criminals/spammers/phishers purchase up the penny stocks using legit accounts starting at the time of the Pump/Dump email. They watch the price rise, then sell off their shares.
HappyEngineer's continues:
The authorities would just need to look at the owners of these stocks who owned the stock before the hype and then see who sold during the hype. One time would be a coincidence, but if they were found doing that more than once then it'd be awfully suspicious. The third key component is disguising their activities, which is mixed in with the thousands of other "day traders" throughout the US and all over the world. Not only this, but one person buying up a penny stock is usually not enough to create enough market momentum to bring the price up over the standard 5% fluctuation one sees in standard boiler room operations. They need the participation of greedy traders to hide their trades and also pump the price.
The SEC investigates only to find out that the criminals exist well outside their jurisdiction. They can't just issue fines, which is why they're resorting to more drastic measures to stop these brokerage account pirates.
Think about it: The SEC is resorting to the potential undermining of our free market system to stop this pump/dump activity which has been going on for decades. Such a drastic move can only be justified if they are trying to counter a threat that poses an even greater threat to our economy.
The first commenter, AC asked for sources: I do have one news article that talks about a small fry the SEC took down. However, Most of the sources I speak of are either first hand information that has become evidence in ongoing investigations where I am not at liberty to divulge the details. I can only speak in generalizations. I know this starts to sound conspiratorial ("I could tell you but then I'd have to kill you") but I really don't care if anyone believes me or not, I have nothing to sell here.
The empirical evidence alone supports my claims, which is why I don't mind divulging this information. Why else would the Russian spammers be involved in pump-n-dump schemes? Why else do you think there has been a major market shift away from spammers marketing hard-on pills over to marketing stocks? They're simply following the money.
As for that article:
Monday, 8 January 2007 SEC Freezes Assets of Alleged Stock Pump-and-Dump Hacker
Sophos, a IT security firm, has warned online stock traders to take care over their brokerage accounts following allegations that a man manipulated stock prices by hacking into other peoples' accounts.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has convinced a court to freeze the assets of Grand Logistic, a Belize corporation located in Talinn, Estonia, and its owner Russian-born Evgeny Gashichev. Gashichev is accused of making USD 353,609 by manipulating stock prices in at least 21 companies by breaking into online brokerage accounts. His error was using a US friendly nation to host the brokerage account. That is the only reason anyone heard of this crime because he got busted.
Slashdot Mirror
Classic scaremongering. Both points you make are a) full of shit, and b) outright lies. So, I'll dispense with those first.
If you remember the movie Erin Brockovich; where California electric companies were using open air evaporating ponds to dispose of toxic Chromium metals. Yes that did happen, no it was not a nuclear plant, and yes, it received a lot of press coverage.
The movie Civil Action, where companies were sued for dumping toxic chemicals onto the ground, into streams and rivers. Yes, those things did happen. In every year from the founding fathers up to the 1970's there were a LOT of companies disposing of waste improperly, and precisely NONE of it was nuclear waste. NONE OF IT.
Nuclear reactors are not easy to build. It takes scores of engineers to do it, people who know how nasty the waste byproducts and radiological components can be. You can't just build a reactor in your back yard. Since the inception of the technology, EVERY SINGLE MOLECULE OF WASTE HAS BEEN ACCOUNTED FOR! People are incorrectly attributing the irresponsibility of power companies and heavy industry in the past over to the Nuclear industry because of the fears instilled in us every single day of our lives from the sources I point out in my previous post.
So, your points a & b are horseshit, horseshit, horseshit. And if you don't know what that is, thats the stuff that comes from a horse.
Now, as to "economically recoverable"... what a buzzword. Nuclar Reprocessing plants can recover 95% of spent fuel to put back into production. A Stanford study shows that if were were ONLY to harvest the URANIUM found naturally in SEAWATER, it would power reactors for 7 million years. The same study also states that we have enough fuel available to power ALL the worlds energy needs for the next 5 Billion years.
I was waiting for someone to make this point...
Uranium fuel, the size of a softball, will power a nuclear reactor for 20 years...
At this rate, we currently have enough uranium to power reactors until the projected end of our solar system.
Any questions?
Nuclear Energy is non-renewable? Excuse me? That is like stating that solar energy or wind power is non-renewable. They are ALL in infinite supply and are non-expendable (we cannot use them all up.)
Coal fired power plants, which burn a non-renewable and expendable resource, release tons of "greenhouse gases" into the atmosphere. With Nuclear power, we know precisely where every single molecule of waste material goes, which is into a barrel, encased in ceramic, and stored away in a facility designed to last 5x longer than the radiological half-life of the waste material stored there.
The fear of nuclear energy has its rational sources. First is the environmental movement that fought against atmospheric testing of nuclear warheads during the cold war era. I applaud those efforts. What also happened is during this same period is we were taught what to do in case of a nuclear attack from Russia, which by every measure would have been horrific. Add in a 3 Mile Island and a Chernobyl and you've got an entire generation of Americans that has transferred the horror and fear of Nuclear weapons over to everything Nuclear. Fact is that 3 Mile Island, while it did release radon gas is not a catastrophe that even approaches the generational fear that it inspires and Chernobyl is a classic Soviet-Era f**k-up-cover-up situation. Its funny that nothing is ever said of the 100+ nuclear reactors currently in use in America, or that ALL of France is currently powered by Nuclear Power. With hundreds upon hundreds of plants in use throughout the globe running for all these years, all with nary an incident to report... What are we so afraid of?
Charging a battery takes electricity. Electricity that is generated from anything other than nuclear, wind, or solar power is a net negative on the 'greenhouse gases' scale. Of all those energy sources, the only one viable for long term is nuclear. Sorry, but it is a fact.
A renewable resource is one that can be replaced, like a tree. The lumber that is used to build houses, the wood that is used to make paper is all generated from (ghasp!) a renewable resource. What drives me nuts is that these multinational corporations that produce lumber and paper harvest it ALL from their OWN TREE FARMS. They own millions of acres of land where they methodically grow their trees on a rotational basis where they harvest the same spot every 20 years. Oh, and your Christmas tree; it is grown on a tree farm as well. To say that paper production or wood production depletes our natural resources is the same thing as saying that eating french fries depletes our national supply of potatoes.
I'm an expert (of sorts) in document printing, specifically with optical document security and printing of security papers. A small printing company I work with consumes 28 tons of paper every single day. They know exactly where the wood pulp comes from. You don't make paper from just any old wood pulp (although you could). The trees are bred and grown specifically for use in making paper. But some folks out there want you to believe that they are forever seeking a new rainforest to chop down to consume their insatiable desire for more wood pulp.
Uh, sorry folks, trees, yeah, trees are a renewable resource.
Respectfully, no. She quite literally demanded that the RAM be turned over as part of the discovery request. I've been having the same cognitive dissonance myself where I tried interpreting her order or reframing it until I could make sense of it... and theres the rub: As a Judge, you are required to speak with clarity, to issue orders such that there are no questions, no ambiguity (ever heard the term sober as a judge?). This is because every decision you are making in your courtroom, you are establishing case law, you are setting a precedent that future jurists will refer back to in order to support their requests for defendants to... turn over their RAM?
Uh, your honor, your ignorance is showing...
She had better correct her ruling or an appellate court will be forced to overturn her decision in order to avoid setting such a disastrous precedent.
While industry experts lamented the judges decision in this case, this newest revelation, that computer RAM should be turned over as part of discovery, proves that she has no concept of the issues she is addressing in her court. This provides fertile grounds for appeals as she is obviously dealing with issues she cannot even comprehend.
The fact that she has ordered the defendant to CREATE evidence (log files), in order to turn it over to the plaintiff as part of their discovery request is absurd.
Further exacerbating the situation is that tech support for the systems has been outsourced to India.
"Yeees sir, I understand that you are loosing ahlteetude but I neeed for you to reboot the computer as we have seen this work for our other customers..."
It was my brother-in-law who stated that the water came up through the slab. When I first visited him in his new home back in 2002-ish and found that the "basement" (which is really the first floor as it is all above ground) had hospital style floor tiles and a very antiseptic feel to it. I asked what he planned to do with the space and he simply stated that people in New Orleans do not live in the first floor as it floods too often, his real estate agent stated that it all had been gutted in 1995 and basically the place would flood every 10 years. hmmm, 1995 to 2005. Sounds pretty good to me. No true New Orleans house is slab-on-grade. Damn! He'll be devastated to find out that the modest little mansion he lived in that was built in the early 20th century was not, in fact, a true New Orleans estate! And if it didn't flood his home in the Garden District then whose house was it that I donned a gas mask to help gut the first floor?
He's sold the house and is now teaching elsewhere. Kinda sad though as now I no longer have a reason to go out to NOLA.
Yeah, forget the pool tablets and stick with the mini-blinds. :)
Actually, we were thinking about each of the times they evacuated for Hurricane threats (prior to Katrina, of course) As we donned our gas masks, tore down the walls and sprayed the exposed beams with bleach, we thought if each time they went to leave from the threat of a hurricane, what if they dropped pool tablets on the ground or put them on a paper plates throughout the ground floor. This way, if it did flood they just had to deal with water damage and not mold. If there was no flood then they could come back and pick up and put away the tablets and click 'resume' on their lives...
My brother-in-law was a professor at Tulane University. His home was in the garden district that wasn't hit as hard. Nevertheless, his house was flooded and it filled with mold. We went down over Thanksgiving week and I have to tell you it was a very unique experience camping outdoors in a major city that was essentially a ghost town. We did have a proper thanksgiving dinner of Turkey hot dogs and Stove Top Stuffing... :)
:)
Based upon our collective experience, had my Brother-in-law chose to stay, this is my advice to you.
If you're planning on owning a home in New Orleans, you need to PLAN on having to gut & clean the first floor once every 10 years after it floods. It is much like living in Southern Florida where you just plan on getting a new roof after each hurricane season..
Don't bother trying to build a flood wall. We found out the hard way that the water doesn't come in through the walls and windows, it percolates up through the concrete slab itself! So, first thing, if you have a cement 'basement' or first floor, seal up the slab with an epoxy paint, then carpet it or put in linoleum. Paint the exposed 2x4's with a good mold resistant primer, then hang the cement wallboard used for bathrooms on the lower 4' of the walls. The upper 4' you can use mildew resistant wallboard or regular sheet rock. Do not use regular sheetrock mud for taping, use the slow cure mud that is sold as a powder and you add water and it dries (cures) in 60 minutes. Last, go purchase a bucket of 1" swimming pool chlorine tablets and drop them inside the walls ever other stud. This way, if the water rises up, the water in the walls will chlorinate itself and when the water recedes you are guaranteed not to have mold in 'them thar walls'.
Take LOTS of pictures of each step of the process. The reason houses are being sold as gutted is that this is the only way that the new buyer can be sure that there is no mold and the house is clean. You will boost your resale value through the roof if you show how much attention you paid toward preventing future water damage issues.
Alternately, you can skip all this and simply put up mini-blinds for walls and you can just raise them up whenever it floods and airing the place out will be a breeze.
This is the most poorly worded article and headline I have ever read. Nina Reiser boinked a psycho killer by the name of Sean Sturgeon who has confessed to 8 murders. Nina broke it off with him in January 2006, she disappeared in September. Hans Reiser has been charged with her disappearance.
We have fixed the problem this time.
No, seriously, we did... Really.
So, unless some miscreant goes out and breaks something, yes, it is fixed.
Hackers of the world: It ain't broke, so please don't be taking it apart to find out why. Please! The fact that you can't watch movies you paid for on the equipment you own is a design feature. Please don't meddle with it, it will only make more work for us.
{We have just raised the bar and thrown down the gauntlet, so: On your mark, get set, GO!}
There are propane powered refrigerators that heat a mixture of primarily Ammonia. After the boiler it goes to a condenser where the liquid is held under pressure. The evaporator drops the pressure, and with pressure drop the temp drops as well providing ice cold temps so you can have a propane powered fridge or freezer.
http://www.propanerefrigerators.com/how.html
I bought it to do high-end video processing, virtualization, and I got a good deal on all of it (except for the processor and memory) which I bought from NewEgg. The 850watt Cooler Master Power Supply pulled so much juice that the computer wouldn't even post until I used the big thick power cable that came with the power supply.
Every few years I build up an awesome machine, just for fun.
I must say, it is very nice memory. I've got it running in my new Quad Core Intel Extreme Core 2 Duo processor with the NVidia 680i motherboard and dual 8800 GTX running in SLI mode.
It has 2 74gb Western Digital Raptor 10,000 RPM drives striped for the boot volume and OS load, and Four 750gb Seagate SATA II drives running Raid 5.
I just wanted to build up the most awesome gaming computer possible that will never see anything more complicated than solitaire.
I bought Four gigs of ram to put in it, I now have an extra fan kit that I don't know what to do with.
You're supporting my point with the link to pirated DVD's. The manufacture of pirated DVD's and the theft of intellectual property is pumping billions of dollars into the Chinese economy each year. They're not about to cut off their cash flow.
So, yes, when it came to "shutting down" DVD pirates, they made a few walk the plank just for show... then business as usual.
There is nothing but shame that can come to China if they let cyber crime run rampant within China as well as against other externally connected networks. China is just going through the 2nd stage of the script kiddie phase where people have been connected long enough to really know how to do some damage (which is right where Russia was 5 years ago).
Of course, Russia has level "3 hackers" and they post the most serious threat. Chinese will follow the same path as America has in that the Script Kiddies will grow up and get jobs in the IT field. The Russians didn't have that option, when they grew out of the Script Kiddie phase, they couldn't just go out and get a job in IT, there is no IT in Russia. So they set to work writing all the nasty stuff that floating around today.
Brazil is only 2-3 years behind Russia in their development of online criminals. They've been having people graduate to level 3 now for the past 2 years.
This subject is worthy of a book, however, I'll try to convey some level 5 thoughts and hopefully it'll make sense:
The Chinese government will reign in the criminal elements. They can't afford them damaging their economy. There is too much business to be done in order to keep their economy afloat that if we threatened to cut their internet access, they would go out and put the criminals in prison for life.
China has bred themselves into a crisis. With their 1 child per couple law that has been in effect for decades, they now have 1 child that is supporting 2 parents who supports 4 granparents as they all move into retirement age. This is a monumental economic problem and is the reason why their economic policy is evolving at a rate that far outpaces the political evolution. External influences are what are changing the Chinese government, causing them to adopt rule sets and make changes that would never come internally.
Example: SARS...
People started flying out of China with this illness (SARS). Communist China denied the problem even existed. The World Health Organization stepped in and grounded all flights departing from specific regions of China, causing a panic in the Business world supporting the Chinese economy. This forced China to recognize the problem and adopt new information sharing rules whereby we now know about the Asian Bird Fru YEARS before it becomes a global pandemic (if it ever does). This is an external change that never would have come internally from their own country.
China monitors their internet very closely, they know who the criminals are. They will be shut down soon because to let them continue would 1) be an embarassment to China, and 2) could have disasterous economic consequences.
As a simple reference: The United States currently consumes 40 Quadrillion BTU's of energy per year from all sources. China consumes 7 QBTU and needs to get to 14 QBTU within the next 10 years in order to keep their economy from collapsing. They have a lot of work to do and they're not going to let malware authors derail their country. If they get derailed, they're going to be headed in the same direction as the Soviet Union. China will do anything to prevent that from happening, including invading their neighbors. China is a nation of pride, there is no way they're going to let their nation fail.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, the citizens didn't much care because at least the Vodka was still cheap!
What a noob, if she knew anything she should have Googled: "How to commit murder" poison OR shooting ~suicide -"get caught"
In a related story, experts have also discovered that the telephone, fax machine, photocopiers, scanners, cameras, and silly putty also pose a grave risk to national security.
Thats like great and all, but when is somebody going to do something about how fat I am?
There is no dispute that the air quality of Los Angeles, Toronto, Mexico City, {insert city name here} is not where we'd all like it to be. What I'm saying about the problem "being solved" is that we know what the cause is, we know what the solution is. Knowing the solution to the problem and actually implementing the solution are two different things. And there's the rub.
The local politics dictate how much change is made or enforced on local industry and/or transportation and how much the politicians are willing to sacrifice the local economy for the sake of {air/water/soil} quality. No doubt the local politicians have implemented the easy solutions, fostered adoption through grants and tax rebates, and the remaining issues will be dealt with over time as industries move overseas and light rail systems come online, etc.
Being that we know the answer to these problems, politicians are not going to be willing to fund new studies on old problems with known solutions. We arrived at the solution back in the 70's, 80's, 90's and we've been working towards those solutions ever since.
The Environmental Industry has therefore been forced to come up with greater, more fantastic, more ridiculous claims in order to justify the spending of more research dollars. Its either that or they're out of a job. They've discovered that there is a LOT of money that can be made by SCARING PEOPLE, and the reality is neither scary enough or sexy enough to garner peoples attention and money.
So they just make stuff up and shout down opponents as being on "Big Oil's" payroll. They alter complex computer models until they support their wild claims... Who cares if the computer model has no basis in scientific fact or reality, they have a product to sell, a point to make, and research grants to write!
Greenpeace and the initial environmental movement was a truly noble cause. I am very happy to see the progress that has been made to clean up the pollution of streams and rivers, reduction of smog and sulfur emissions from factories and power plants, reduced tailpipe emissions, etc.
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But now that we've 'solved' these problems, the Environmental Movement has become the Environmental Industry that is making more and more shrill claims that have little to no basis in either science or reality. They have to if the new employees of the Environmental Industry want to keep their jobs. The most absurd is that CO2 is causing global warming where all the evidence and hard proof shows that the rise of CO2 levels in the atmosphere is a lagging indicator of global climate change... a lagging indicator by 800 years. Yet they still claim that the link between atmospheric CO2 levels and global warming are directly connected - and leave their audience to conclude that the rise of CO2 caused the rise in temperature, when in fact the exact opposite is the case. Rising global temperatures will cause a gradual increase in CO2.
Look at it this way: to burn a carbon atom, you must combine 1 carbon atom with 2 oxygen atoms to make the CO2 molecule. If CO2 was in fact rising at the dangerous rate that some claim, we would actually be running out of oxygen. We should be screaming to save the oxygen! The thing is that the entire carbon myth is simply that, a myth.
When you overlap the global climate changes with the solar activity and sun spots, it is an absolutely perfect match. The trends overlap each other and fit together perfectly. Yet, somehow people REFUSE to believe that Global Warming is actually caused by, of all things, THE SUN!
Holy crap! The SUN is actually responsible for Global Warming? STOP THE PRESSES!!!
Don't listen to me though, decide for yourself:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=900556679
Cantor Fitzgerald is a bond trading firm, one of the few firms who can trade U.S. Government securities with the Federal Reserve Bank. They lost 658 souls on the 9/11 attacks, more than any other single company (their offices being above the impact site of One World Trade Center).
In the early 1990's, it became apparent that their traditional way of doing business was going away. The future lay in electronic trading, not in suits talking on phones. The problem was their entire culture was built up around the brokers working the phones. They soon realized that changing the entire culture of how they did business would be nearly impossible.
They realized that failure to change meant that newer startups would be soon coming online to take advantage of electronic trading, and that they would be doomed to a slow death of attrition as the competition cannibalized the marketplace.
Rather than waiting to be cannibalized by some unknown competitor, they decided to create their own competition, to create their own cannibalizing agent. Thus was the birth of eSpeed which went public in 1999. As the broker/dealer market declined, the eSpeed market took up the slack and eventually consumed the old guard completely.
The transition was so successful that before 9/11, Cantor handled about one-quarter of the daily transactions in the multi-trillion dollar treasury security market. The fourth quarter of 2001, after losing 2/3 their workforce, Cantor Fitzgerald posted a 25% profit.
Today, thousands of traders at hundreds of global financial institutions conduct transactions worth over $45 trillion annually in eSpeed's multiple buyer/multiple seller markets.
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Traditional media is scrambling to remain relevant on the Net because the 1:1 communication provided by the internet has completely decimated their existing business model. They are used to owning the information gathering and distribution networks.
I have now completely abandoned the print media because I know that the reporting I will read is going to be one-sided, heavily slanted, while at the same time professing complete objectivity. How many print newspapers have had to shut down the online feedback on their editorial pages because the blowback was so overwhelming that they couldn't tolerate it?
Digg is nothing but a groupthink mob rules mentality with no decent way to hold an actual conversation, which is fine because the one thing the groupthink mob mentality abhors is open discussion, so Digg is a perfect match for them. The positive result is that the level of discourse on Slashdot forums have risen significantly now that the Diggers have gone.
I say that the future for The Economist would look a lot like Slashdot's discussions, where experts from around the world can opine on the news of the day.
I have more to add, but it is getting late.
A single nerve cell is precisely that, a single cell. These single cells, called Axons, can be as long as 3 feet (1m) long (from the base of the spine to the toes). In the blue whale, a single nerve cell can be 60' long.
I mention this only to point out that the neurotransmitters are electro-chemical reactions. Each end of the cell has either the chemical transmitters or receptors. This is why if you sever a nerve, it stops transmitting, period. You have just severed a single cell into two cells. If you join the two halves together, it isn't going to reestablish the connection; there is no v.32bis in the neurotransmitter realm (uh, we got a noisy connection here, slow down the xmit rate until we get a clean signal)...
If nerves simply used electricity, rejoining two severed ends would reestablish the connection. It isn't that simple. If it were transmitted by sound, then you'd be dealing with echo cancellation and crosstalk between nerve endings and we'd be able to pick up nerve activity via acoustic methods as opposed to the current electrical connections. Some physicist must have gotten a pounding headache and assumed that "teh sounderwaves in my head are echoing out of controller, argh!"... Our brain wave meters don't use microphones, dipshit, we call them electrodes for a reason.
The whole focus of research in the genetics field on regenerating damaged nerves is to put stem cells in the damaged area and hope for 1 of 2 positive outcomes; either the severed nerve endings grow a new synapse (akin to soldering new socket/plug to each end of the severed nerve), or simply regrow and heal the severed nerve to permit the passage of the electro-chemical messenger.
We know about neurotransmitters and their precursor chemicals, we have prescription drugs that stimulate or retard neural function (anti-depressants, Parkinson's drugs, anti-psychosis drugs). This is a well established area of neuro-science and it has been proven.
The mere speculation of sound being the transmitter because they cannot detect heat is akin to stating the earth is flat because I can't see the curve. Thats a pretty big jump there even for Mr. Evil Knievel...
Next thing you know, these physicists will be fighting over whether light is a particle or a wave.
...if they're just using the accounts to pump the stock then wouldn't they still leave a trail back to themselves since they would have needed to own the stock in one of their own accounts in the first place? FiniteElementalist does an excellent job answering the question; I'll just recap in my own words:The criminals/spammers/phishers purchase up the penny stocks using legit accounts starting at the time of the Pump/Dump email.
They watch the price rise, then sell off their shares.
HappyEngineer's continues: The authorities would just need to look at the owners of these stocks who owned the stock before the hype and then see who sold during the hype. One time would be a coincidence, but if they were found doing that more than once then it'd be awfully suspicious. The third key component is disguising their activities, which is mixed in with the thousands of other "day traders" throughout the US and all over the world. Not only this, but one person buying up a penny stock is usually not enough to create enough market momentum to bring the price up over the standard 5% fluctuation one sees in standard boiler room operations. They need the participation of greedy traders to hide their trades and also pump the price.
The SEC investigates only to find out that the criminals exist well outside their jurisdiction. They can't just issue fines, which is why they're resorting to more drastic measures to stop these brokerage account pirates.
Think about it: The SEC is resorting to the potential undermining of our free market system to stop this pump/dump activity which has been going on for decades. Such a drastic move can only be justified if they are trying to counter a threat that poses an even greater threat to our economy.
The first commenter, AC asked for sources:
I do have one news article that talks about a small fry the SEC took down. However, Most of the sources I speak of are either first hand information that has become evidence in ongoing investigations where I am not at liberty to divulge the details. I can only speak in generalizations. I know this starts to sound conspiratorial ("I could tell you but then I'd have to kill you") but I really don't care if anyone believes me or not, I have nothing to sell here.
The empirical evidence alone supports my claims, which is why I don't mind divulging this information. Why else would the Russian spammers be involved in pump-n-dump schemes? Why else do you think there has been a major market shift away from spammers marketing hard-on pills over to marketing stocks? They're simply following the money.
As for that article: Monday, 8 January 2007
SEC Freezes Assets of Alleged Stock Pump-and-Dump Hacker
Sophos, a IT security firm, has warned online stock traders to take care over their brokerage accounts following allegations that a man manipulated stock prices by hacking into other peoples' accounts.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has convinced a court to freeze the assets of Grand Logistic, a Belize corporation located in Talinn, Estonia, and its owner Russian-born Evgeny Gashichev. Gashichev is accused of making USD 353,609 by manipulating stock prices in at least 21 companies by breaking into online brokerage accounts. His error was using a US friendly nation to host the brokerage account. That is the only reason anyone heard of this crime because he got busted.