I thought Durban managed an agreement that China and India *will* now be included.
Durban managed an agreement that China, India, the USA will be included in a new agreement, which agreement will be negotiated in the next three years and not come into effect until 2020.
Note that this new agreement (the one to be negotiated by 2015) hasn't actually been agreed to by China, India, or the USA.
Note that the terms of the new agreement haven't been negotiated, so it's impossible to say whether binding agreements are going to be included.
And, note finally, that China (at least) has said that they won't accept binding limitations on carbon emissions before 2030 at least.
But unless it had a track record, I'd be wary of risking my life on the assumption that fuel could be extracted.
You don't have to risk your life on the assumption that fuel could be extracted. Send the fuel refinery ahead on an unmanned mission, wait for it to refine the fuel, then send the manned mission.
Note that you don't really need water to do this, though it helps. If you have some H2 (by far the smallest fraction of your propellant), you can turn CO2 into O2 and CH4, which are more storable than H2/O2, have a decent Isp (370 range, as I recall), and have a decent density (small tanks are light tanks).
With water on Mars, you can skip the "ship a few tons of H2 to Mars" part, and still use CH4/O2, and net an oxygen molecule for every CH4/O2 pair you put into your fuel storage tanks. Everyone wins....
Well, if your idea of "catastrophe" is becoming critical and levelling a city block
Let us at least try to use the proper terminology.
In the context of fission, "critical" means, more or less, "producing as many neutrons as we consume".
In other words, when a nuclear reactor is producing power, it is "critical". "Critical" does NOT imply "levelling a city block" (well, the nuclear plant a few miles away doesn't level a city block regularly, though it is critical basically all the time)....
Any constituent can see their representative on demand, provided the representative isn't busy in the House at that time, so everyone has (in theory) equal access and equal lobbying power.
Theoretically, you can do that here.
Of course, the fact that your Representative's office might be 5000 Km away might make that harder than one might initially suspect.
Plus the fact that if you're not a donor, he knows he can safely ignore you....
This bill at least allows (even if it doesn't go so far as to require) that a free be charged to whomever makes the Copyright complaint, to pay for the investigation.
If the fee is set high enough, a lot of the shotgunning we see from the RIAA/MPAA types might be cut back significantly.
On the other hand, if it's set too high, small Copyright holders might find themselves unable to defend their own Copyrights....
The problem in USA of-course is that a small number of the very rich (maybe 0.01%) found ways to subvert the law that applies to the government and they found a way to give themselves all sorts of privileges nobody should have.
Useful hint: If there's a multi-trillion dollar pie to divide up, spending a few billion to get a piece of it is a no-brainer.
Which is pretty much what's been happening in the USA for a long time now. All it takes is a look at how much it costs to be President (>$1 billion, in Obama's case) (Or Senator or Representative), and you can pretty much predict who's going to own that particular politician....
Most vehicles from the 80s and earlier had much shorter lifespans. In the 60s a vehicle was basically used up after 60,000 miles and required an engine, transmission, and suspension rebuild regardless of how good of care you took of it.
I'm trying to remember how long I drove my first car (made in 1973). Had to have been at least 12 years, since I replaced it with an '85 model. Which lasted until someone ran a stolen pickup truck into it in my front yard (cops were chasing him through the neighborhood, he pointed the truck and bailed out, left the truck heading down the road - it went off the road finally in my yard, hit my car, crushed it between the pickup and my other car).
As far as I know, my little brother still has that '85 leBaron somewhere - still worked after both doors had been replaced and the frame straightened a bit.
All that aside, I agree with this completely: My experience with modern or properly restored vehicles is that their life is more determined by the quality of maintenance given than by the build quality.
Which applied equally well back in the old days. My grandfather rebuilt cars, and drove them till they disintegrated like the One Hoss Shay...
Advancing the useful arts and sciences is not synonymous with advancing the material welfare of corporations or individuals, despite what Ayn Rand claims.
Did you know that Ayn Rand disapproves of corporations as a concept? Somehow, I suspect not.
If you've ever read Atlas Shrugged, one of the things you might remember is that many of the villains of the story were...corporations. The kind of corporations that uses those government-granted immunities to their advantage, instead of coming up with better ways of doing things.
My bad phrasing. I realized as I hit Submit that the "other" in that sentence would be misleading.
Nonetheless we don't block Iranian websites. Or anything else.
Functionally, companies in the United States block Al-Jazeera.
Umm, no. If there were enough demand for Al-Jazeera, there would be someone showing it.
Almighty dollar, remember? We're the Evil Americans who worship the dollar, and we're not going to lose a few of them because we refrained from showing a channel that's anti-American...
I challenge you to actually watch their CNN-like feed on your local cable station.
Would be hard for me, I don't do cable. Easier to go to their website. Which, oddly enough, is the first hit when I google al-jazeera. I see that the Egyptian Army has decided it doesn't like this whole Democracy thing....
Seeing "Persian" instead of "Farsi" struck me as odd, but I suppose I'm the odd one.
Nah, you're probably right - I should have used "Farsi".
If the Iranian government tried to set up a web site for US citizens to read propaganda from, how long do you think it would stay up?
Basically, forever.
Or do you really think we block al-Jazeera? Or any other Iranian site? Just checked, by the by, and the Iranian government's Ministry of Foreign Affairs website is available online from where I'm sitting (though I don't read Persian, much less speak it, so I have to depend on Google Translate).
Sometimes I wonder how much further ahead humanity would be if we built everything with the need to have it last decades before becoming nonfunctional,
Whyever would we want this?
Most electronics become obsolete before they fail as is. Even my cellphone is still doing fine after six years (by modern standards, it would barely qualify as a telegraph...;) )
A decent car lasts 10-20 years (I have three. The newest was made 10 years ago now).
Conusmer appliances? I've replaced a microwave once in my 30 years of marriage.
The things you want to last a long time generally last longer than you want them to, the rest of the stuff noone cares about...
After Greenpeace alerted authorities that its activists were behind the incursion, police and security teams held their fire and allowed the activists to continue scaling a containment building that houses the reactor to put a banner on top, Brandet said.
(unless they agree to take only public funds which hasn't really been done since Carter vs Reagan)
Just remember, just one Presidential candidate since the invention of the Federal matching funds for campaigning has refused that funding and the spending caps that go along with it...
I'm slightly curious whether he'll manage to raise enough money that he's willing to do it again....
Early days of television introduced viewers to drama playhouse productions, singing by people who actually had crafted their talent for decades rather than learned to moan into a microphone at the age of sixteen, presented thoughtful roundtable discussions etc. In short, all the sort of stuff that catered to what was believed to be a cultured public with high expectations.
I take it you weren't actually around for the early days of television?
It is wishful thinking to believe that TV has changed much over the years - bad sitcoms are as old as TV (though I must admit to a fondness for Lucille Ball over much of what's on right now), one-sided roundtable discussions were all the rage, Bob Denver was playing idiots all the way back into the 50's, etc, etc, etc.
If we'd wanted "culture", we'd have it on TV. But we don't, so it isn't.
What we want is mostly light entertainment (which we generally get). Expecting TV to be more is a fantasy, since putting on hundreds of channels of culture will just get hundreds of channels ignored in favour of NCIS (go Abby!) or the Simpsons (which I, alas, have never watched, never having seen the appeal of a badly drawn primetime cartoon - Bugs Bunny I'll take, Bart Simpson I have no used for).....
So now when the real terrorists break in, they just have to phone to warn the police that Greenpeace is breaking in?
That is likely to work.
Assuming the real terrorists can come across sounding like an upper-class 20-something, anyways.
If I'd been in charge, I'd have had them taken down, then reported that I'd received a call from Greenpeace two minutes later...but that's just me.
Note that realistically, being able to get to the outside of the building is meaningless from a security standpoint - they'd need a couple dozen tons of explosives to do anything meaningful to the plant from there. And getting INSIDE the building (which they were unable to do) wouldn't improve the situation much - reduce the amount of explosives required to a couple tons.
Note that even Greenpeace has given up saying the reactors might blow up - article I read this AM on this had them talking about the threat of chemical explosions in the reactor building, not the dangers of the reactors doing something untoward.
It should also be noted that the French actually process their nuclear wastes, rather than storing them on-site (as I understand it, it's all stored in a basement in Paris - a small one). As a result, the main cause of the problems at Fukushima don't really apply to French nuke plants.
That's the whole point. Security was so lax nothing like that happened.
Umm, no. Greenpeace called the French authorities and told them that they'd sent men sneaking into nuclear power plants, and the French authorities then stood down their snipers and allowed the Greenpeace guys to finish climbing the building and deploy their banner before arresting them.
So, the phone call saved the lives of the Greenpeace protesters, which hardly shows that security of the plants was lax....
Greenpeace call the French authorities and told them that they'd sent guys sneaking into the nuke plants.
The French authorities then told their snipers to stand down, and allowed the Greenpeace guys to finish their climb and deploy their banner before the French arrested them.
So, they were saved from being put in boxes for return to next-of-kin by a timely phone call by Greenpeace types who were NOT willing to risk their own asses to pull this stunt.
Slashdot Mirror
Durban managed an agreement that China, India, the USA will be included in a new agreement, which agreement will be negotiated in the next three years and not come into effect until 2020.
Note that this new agreement (the one to be negotiated by 2015) hasn't actually been agreed to by China, India, or the USA.
Note that the terms of the new agreement haven't been negotiated, so it's impossible to say whether binding agreements are going to be included.
And, note finally, that China (at least) has said that they won't accept binding limitations on carbon emissions before 2030 at least.
You don't have to risk your life on the assumption that fuel could be extracted. Send the fuel refinery ahead on an unmanned mission, wait for it to refine the fuel, then send the manned mission.
Note that you don't really need water to do this, though it helps. If you have some H2 (by far the smallest fraction of your propellant), you can turn CO2 into O2 and CH4, which are more storable than H2/O2, have a decent Isp (370 range, as I recall), and have a decent density (small tanks are light tanks).
With water on Mars, you can skip the "ship a few tons of H2 to Mars" part, and still use CH4/O2, and net an oxygen molecule for every CH4/O2 pair you put into your fuel storage tanks. Everyone wins....
Let us at least try to use the proper terminology.
In the context of fission, "critical" means, more or less, "producing as many neutrons as we consume".
In other words, when a nuclear reactor is producing power, it is "critical". "Critical" does NOT imply "levelling a city block" (well, the nuclear plant a few miles away doesn't level a city block regularly, though it is critical basically all the time)....
Theoretically, you can do that here.
Of course, the fact that your Representative's office might be 5000 Km away might make that harder than one might initially suspect.
Plus the fact that if you're not a donor, he knows he can safely ignore you....
This bill at least allows (even if it doesn't go so far as to require) that a free be charged to whomever makes the Copyright complaint, to pay for the investigation.
If the fee is set high enough, a lot of the shotgunning we see from the RIAA/MPAA types might be cut back significantly.
On the other hand, if it's set too high, small Copyright holders might find themselves unable to defend their own Copyrights....
Hm, this bill seems, on the face of it, to require foreign websites to obey US law or be shutdown/blocked/whatever they can get away with.
Check the fine print on "infringing websites", and what they can do to not be infringing....
Not sure how that defends consumer freedoms.
Useful hint: If there's a multi-trillion dollar pie to divide up, spending a few billion to get a piece of it is a no-brainer.
Which is pretty much what's been happening in the USA for a long time now. All it takes is a look at how much it costs to be President (>$1 billion, in Obama's case) (Or Senator or Representative), and you can pretty much predict who's going to own that particular politician....
Yes, they can.
But they won't.
Say "sorry, I mean. They might put you in Gitmo for a year, but they won't say sorry afterwards.
Went to BBC, looked at the picture of the drone from Iran.
Googled rq 170, looked at more pictures.
They don't match.
Admittedly, it's possible that the pictures I looked at were two different model numbers in the same general design.
But those bumps to either side of the air-intake look enough different to make me think I'm looking at two different things.
Plus the wing dihedral, though that could be the difference between a stationary RQ-170 and one running down a runway on the way to takeoff.
I'm trying to remember how long I drove my first car (made in 1973). Had to have been at least 12 years, since I replaced it with an '85 model. Which lasted until someone ran a stolen pickup truck into it in my front yard (cops were chasing him through the neighborhood, he pointed the truck and bailed out, left the truck heading down the road - it went off the road finally in my yard, hit my car, crushed it between the pickup and my other car).
As far as I know, my little brother still has that '85 leBaron somewhere - still worked after both doors had been replaced and the frame straightened a bit.
All that aside, I agree with this completely: My experience with modern or properly restored vehicles is that their life is more determined by the quality of maintenance given than by the build quality.
Which applied equally well back in the old days. My grandfather rebuilt cars, and drove them till they disintegrated like the One Hoss Shay...
Did you know that Ayn Rand disapproves of corporations as a concept? Somehow, I suspect not.
If you've ever read Atlas Shrugged, one of the things you might remember is that many of the villains of the story were...corporations. The kind of corporations that uses those government-granted immunities to their advantage, instead of coming up with better ways of doing things.
My bad phrasing. I realized as I hit Submit that the "other" in that sentence would be misleading.
Nonetheless we don't block Iranian websites. Or anything else.
Umm, no. If there were enough demand for Al-Jazeera, there would be someone showing it.
Almighty dollar, remember? We're the Evil Americans who worship the dollar, and we're not going to lose a few of them because we refrained from showing a channel that's anti-American...
Would be hard for me, I don't do cable. Easier to go to their website. Which, oddly enough, is the first hit when I google al-jazeera. I see that the Egyptian Army has decided it doesn't like this whole Democracy thing....
Nah, you're probably right - I should have used "Farsi".
Basically, forever.
Or do you really think we block al-Jazeera? Or any other Iranian site? Just checked, by the by, and the Iranian government's Ministry of Foreign Affairs website is available online from where I'm sitting (though I don't read Persian, much less speak it, so I have to depend on Google Translate).
Half life of 88 years. That means it'll be giving 250W after 44 years.
About 350W after 22 years.
About 420W after 11 years.
After one year, 490W...
Every time someone seriously suggests doing anything with old fuel rods, the anti-nukes start screaming and suing.
We've reached the point where not only can't we reprocess them, we can't even take them somewhere and stack them....
Whyever would we want this?
Most electronics become obsolete before they fail as is. Even my cellphone is still doing fine after six years (by modern standards, it would barely qualify as a telegraph...;) )
A decent car lasts 10-20 years (I have three. The newest was made 10 years ago now).
Conusmer appliances? I've replaced a microwave once in my 30 years of marriage.
The things you want to last a long time generally last longer than you want them to, the rest of the stuff noone cares about...
My apologies. I seldom bother to read responses anymore, so I didn't notice this till now.
In any case:
http://news.yahoo.com/activists-invade-nuclear-plant-france-100229724.html from the first morning of this particular incident includes:
Have you ever killed an ant? If so, why?
All of the reasons you listed above apply to you killing ants, in case it's not obvious.
Just remember, just one Presidential candidate since the invention of the Federal matching funds for campaigning has refused that funding and the spending caps that go along with it...
I'm slightly curious whether he'll manage to raise enough money that he's willing to do it again....
Whatever makes you think there'll be any of that at the eEmbassy?
It should, perhaps, be noted that Star Trek was originally sold as "Wagon Train" to the stars.
And for those who might be senile enough to be unaware, yes, "Wagon Train" was a western....
I take it you weren't actually around for the early days of television?
It is wishful thinking to believe that TV has changed much over the years - bad sitcoms are as old as TV (though I must admit to a fondness for Lucille Ball over much of what's on right now), one-sided roundtable discussions were all the rage, Bob Denver was playing idiots all the way back into the 50's, etc, etc, etc.
If we'd wanted "culture", we'd have it on TV. But we don't, so it isn't.
What we want is mostly light entertainment (which we generally get). Expecting TV to be more is a fantasy, since putting on hundreds of channels of culture will just get hundreds of channels ignored in favour of NCIS (go Abby!) or the Simpsons (which I, alas, have never watched, never having seen the appeal of a badly drawn primetime cartoon - Bugs Bunny I'll take, Bart Simpson I have no used for).....
That is likely to work.
Assuming the real terrorists can come across sounding like an upper-class 20-something, anyways.
If I'd been in charge, I'd have had them taken down, then reported that I'd received a call from Greenpeace two minutes later...but that's just me.
Note that realistically, being able to get to the outside of the building is meaningless from a security standpoint - they'd need a couple dozen tons of explosives to do anything meaningful to the plant from there. And getting INSIDE the building (which they were unable to do) wouldn't improve the situation much - reduce the amount of explosives required to a couple tons.
Note that even Greenpeace has given up saying the reactors might blow up - article I read this AM on this had them talking about the threat of chemical explosions in the reactor building, not the dangers of the reactors doing something untoward.
It should also be noted that the French actually process their nuclear wastes, rather than storing them on-site (as I understand it, it's all stored in a basement in Paris - a small one). As a result, the main cause of the problems at Fukushima don't really apply to French nuke plants.
Umm, no. Greenpeace called the French authorities and told them that they'd sent men sneaking into nuclear power plants, and the French authorities then stood down their snipers and allowed the Greenpeace guys to finish climbing the building and deploy their banner before arresting them.
So, the phone call saved the lives of the Greenpeace protesters, which hardly shows that security of the plants was lax....
Greenpeace call the French authorities and told them that they'd sent guys sneaking into the nuke plants.
The French authorities then told their snipers to stand down, and allowed the Greenpeace guys to finish their climb and deploy their banner before the French arrested them.
So, they were saved from being put in boxes for return to next-of-kin by a timely phone call by Greenpeace types who were NOT willing to risk their own asses to pull this stunt.