No. gold has value because we make things from it. It's a metal with unique properties, not just beauty. Semiconductors depend on gold....
You know, I'm glad you pointed that out! A lot of people poo-poo my theory about the Incas and their semiconductor fabrication plants built in ziggurats but I KNEW I was right!
Why do ads from all over the world have to now be approved by the usa??
The USA has a hard time understanding that there are other places in the World with their own sets of rules! It's a similar issue with online gambling - If there's a non-USA gambling website how can it be the website's problem if some bozo in the US-of-A visits the website and gambles! It's illegal for the gambler in the USA to gamble online, it is NOT illegal to offer online gambling! So it shouldn't be up to the website to prevent them (assuming it's not illegal where the website is hosted).
Please tell me that it adds rather than replaces....
I saw something about it on the TV yesterday (was it?)... they're replacing the old tech with new (internet based) tech, then people will be able (asked? encouraged? now that I don't know!) to add more stuff. Specifically, I think they want people to go to where the various photos were taken and take new ones of what it looks like now... that sort of thing.
Also, the intial inaccurate picture of events seems consistent with a top secret mission on the other side of the globe being reported through various games of Telephone and levels of ass-covering.
Er... hang on! Didn't I see Obama watching it live from Washington?
In killing OBL America has moved further away from the moral high ground that it once prided itself on.
... and yet still thinks it has the moral high ground! Sadly, the US just came out of the heads and has her skirt tucked into her knickers. Meanwhile, when the US looks down it just sees the crackin' pair of knockers and still thinks she looks hot!
Maybe I got it all wrong, but in amongst all the info exposed, didn't US forces kill a couple of Reuters reporters? Didn't they lie about it? Didn't they say there wasn't any film of the incident when approached (FOI request) for the footage? Didn't that footage then miraculously appear? Ditto for a number of 'friendly fire' incidents?
Accidents happen, and when you're at war they can be bad, but you don't lie and cover it up or it's far more difficult to work out what happened to try and stop it happening again! It's like a four year old saying "it wasn't me", then wikileaks pointing out the chocolate all around your mouth!
Now the US (and others!) are trying to make Wikileaks out to be the bad guy - continuing the analogy, the US is saying "yer, but Wikileaks smells of wee!".
You can send a bunch of cheap(er) unmanned rockets with fuel as the payload and store it in orbit, then you can send a more expensive (reliable) manned craft with the crew. Money and risk reduced.
Better yet, if we're looking at Mars - why not send a bunch of comms- and GPS-style satellites and get them in orbit so when we get there we've got good location and comms stuff all sorted. Send a copy of the ISS there too, but this time as the base to drop people to the surface and drop off place for supply vessels from Earth (food, fuel, etc).
Corn was cheap... until they decided to inefficiently convert it to ethanol.... I still don't understand why burning 6+ gallons of ethanol is so much better for the climate than 1 gallon of gas....
I think I can help here. The problem, as many see it, is that burning fossil fuels (the gas, or petrol/diesel/coal/'gas') is releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere. If you grow corn (or whatever) you are taking CO2 out of the atmosphere as it grows, then converting it (which won't be free) to something to burn (w00t: ethanol) and burning puts that CO2 back into the atmosphere - do you see yet? OK, I'll explain. Because the CO2 was extracted from the atmosphere by 'growing' before being put back by 'burning' there is no net increase in atmospheric CO2 (other than the cost of conversion). Burning fossil fuels, on the other hand, is dumping vast reserves of CO2 back into the atmosphere that were sequestered millennia ago, before the trouble started.
"There is no consistency, and that alone can give rise to errors"
If you think we're inconsistent, take a look at the bloody Brits.
They use cm and meters for length, except on the roads, where they still use miles (and MPH).
They use grams and kg for weights, except for people, where they use stone.
It's a bloody mess.
I've heard kids talking about their weight in kg - much like the US we have a population that like(d) imperial weights and measures. The rest of Europe didn't have to convert at all! Over time (another couple of generations) and I'd be surprised if distance signs didn't swap to km, though there's something nice about being a 'bit' different - do we really want to live in a homogeneous World where nowhere is any different. Oddly, with the arrival of Starbucks and Macdonalds, etc, even our towns and villages are suffering the same fate. All the same shops and cafes in every village. So the US exports its homogeneous life to the World but refuses to accept the the imported homogeneous metric system!
Why do most the Europeans I know still talk about pints, drams and hectares (which isn't officially SI)?
By "most Europeans" do you mean British? I can think why anyone in continental Europe would ever order anything in pints? Britain has (had?) the same problem the US has, in that we have older generations who still think in imperial measures and the older ones often struggle, and even when the don't struggle they often prefer the old weights and measures, but that's just familiarity. If you teach kids metric and offer the older folks a helping hand then in a generation or so you can (at least mostly!) switch.
That said, many things are cultural and a British Pub simply wouldn't be the same without Pints (which are now however-many litres officially!). FWIW, I still think of my weight in Stones, but then I'm old too!
My favorite sign was on a local highway segment. It said "Metric Signs Next 100 Miles." I swear to God.
Off topic, but I heard a good one yesterday... In 1998 Our Glorious Leader, Tony Bliar said, on arriving for peace talks in Northern Ireland: "This is no time for sound-bites, but I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders."
I also question the assertion that the British don't use imperial units. All the cars on Top Gear seem to drive around in mph. They even occasionally make a joke of it when they are in a situation where they are forced to use metric and are generally derisive of it.
First off, let's not confuse the opinions of Top Gear with those of rational thought. Top Gear jumped the shark a season or two ago and should no longer be used as a *ahem* yardstick by which to judge Britain.
We are, in general, a metric country but there are a few odds and sods left behind to befuddle the unwary. We do indeed measure our (driving) distance in miles, and the efficiency of our cars in Miles per Gallon, but we buy our fuel by the Litre. We do drink in Pints (because half a Litre is too little and a Litre is too large). Unlike the rest of Europe (Continental Europe, if you like) we have many of the older generation(s) who grew up with imperial measures, even 'Old Money' (before decimalisation) and they still constantly gripe about having to use metric this and that.
Odd that America, the New World, should gripe like an old timer about the new fangled countin'...
I almost never see the score on/. thanks to the new system, but +2 is a bit much indeed. I confused mass and weight, so my comment deserves at most 0 points.
The way I look at it is: Weight is how hard it'd be to move on Earth and Mass is how hard it'd be to move in zero-G.
push the pro-nuke folks buttons so effectively (well, they do practice a lot don't they!) that many can't help pushing back as hard, but I agree. What we need is some group with no axe to grind to give us some good old fashioned facts!
if this is a 'planned failure mode', i doubt there exist idiots bigger than the engineers who designed the fukushima plant.
Er... OK. So just to be clear, you're suggesting that people who design and build nuclear power stations shouldn't have/implement plans for a melt down?
To be fair, the 9.0 was 150 miles away at the epicenter. Fukushima was no more hit by a 9.0 than Tokyo was.
Erm... yes, OK. Point taken. [red face] So does anyone have the figures for the severity of the quake once it reached Fukushima?
Elsewhere in the myriad of discussions on this subject I've seen people saying how safe the military reactors (aircraft carriers, subs, etc) are and others explaining that the military zeal for 'procedure' combined with the fact that the 'staff' can't easily get away if it goes all Pete Tong and ends in Britneys and I wonder about having the reactors sited at/on(/under?) the various military outposts and staffed by the forces. This might help with the NIMBYs too...
But even so, the reactors (by all accounts) coped A-OK with the quake. [Disclaimer: 'all accounts' pretty much exclusively coming from the people who own and run the reactors!]. That the tsunami swamped the generators is pretty damn stoopid though!
Apparently earthquake and tsunami's were part of the planned failure modes of the reactors as well. We've all seen how well things have gone so far.
Well, to be fair the reactors were built to withstand an 8.5 (or so) earthquake and it was hit by a 9.0... I've also seen footage of a 10 metre high 'tsunami' wall being breached by a 10 metre tsunami because (and you might want to sit down for this one) Japan sunk about a metre. That sort of thing can seriously play havoc with your disaster plans!
Now, sure, in hindsight they could have built to withstand a bigger earthquake and someone could have decided 10 metres wasn't enough (actually, I don't know how high the tsunami defences were here?)... but actually, given the size of the quake and resulting tsunami I reckon the designers/builders did a pretty good job.
I also seem to recall there were calls to replace them with newer designs which were stopped... was it the green lobby? The new/er/est designs have a far safer failure mode, and maybe they'd have taken the opportunity to beef up the designs to withstand bigger 'quakes?
All that said, if the company running the plant has been stupid then they certainly need to pay the price, and hopefully the next gen to be built will all learn massive amounts from these failures.
If I accused you of it, then so would you be! Over here in the EU we still (mostly!) like to think of people as innocent until proven guilty.
Re:And just as important.
on
Happy Pi Day
·
· Score: 1
I'd also like to wish everybody (and also remind them) a happy steak and BJ day. It's exactly one month after V-day which we all know is for the women. This holiday evens out the universe.
It is NOT a piston driven engine, so who cares about a grounded jet engine.
Well, the jet and rocket bits aren't but the piston driven engine bit is. It would seem you excelled yourself by not only NRTFA, but not reading the F/. summary too! Congratulations.
Slashdot Mirror
The Great Pyramid is a wonder of the world, but it sure as hell isn't a wanderer of the world.
It's just "stunned".
HELLO PYRAMID!
No. gold has value because we make things from it. It's a metal with unique properties, not just beauty. Semiconductors depend on gold. ...
You know, I'm glad you pointed that out! A lot of people poo-poo my theory about the Incas and their semiconductor fabrication plants built in ziggurats but I KNEW I was right!
Why do ads from all over the world have to now be approved by the usa??
The USA has a hard time understanding that there are other places in the World with their own sets of rules! It's a similar issue with online gambling - If there's a non-USA gambling website how can it be the website's problem if some bozo in the US-of-A visits the website and gambles! It's illegal for the gambler in the USA to gamble online, it is NOT illegal to offer online gambling! So it shouldn't be up to the website to prevent them (assuming it's not illegal where the website is hosted).
Please tell me that it adds rather than replaces. ...
I saw something about it on the TV yesterday (was it?) ... they're replacing the old tech with new (internet based) tech, then people will be able (asked? encouraged? now that I don't know!) to add more stuff. Specifically, I think they want people to go to where the various photos were taken and take new ones of what it looks like now ... that sort of thing.
Also, the intial inaccurate picture of events seems consistent with a top secret mission on the other side of the globe being reported through various games of Telephone and levels of ass-covering.
Er ... hang on! Didn't I see Obama watching it live from Washington?
In killing OBL America has moved further away from the moral high ground that it once prided itself on.
What about them?
Maybe I got it all wrong, but in amongst all the info exposed, didn't US forces kill a couple of Reuters reporters? Didn't they lie about it? Didn't they say there wasn't any film of the incident when approached (FOI request) for the footage? Didn't that footage then miraculously appear? Ditto for a number of 'friendly fire' incidents?
Accidents happen, and when you're at war they can be bad, but you don't lie and cover it up or it's far more difficult to work out what happened to try and stop it happening again! It's like a four year old saying "it wasn't me", then wikileaks pointing out the chocolate all around your mouth!
Now the US (and others!) are trying to make Wikileaks out to be the bad guy - continuing the analogy, the US is saying "yer, but Wikileaks smells of wee!".
Better yet, if we're looking at Mars - why not send a bunch of comms- and GPS-style satellites and get them in orbit so when we get there we've got good location and comms stuff all sorted. Send a copy of the ISS there too, but this time as the base to drop people to the surface and drop off place for supply vessels from Earth (food, fuel, etc).
Corn was cheap ... until they decided to inefficiently convert it to ethanol. ... I still don't understand why burning 6+ gallons of ethanol is so much better for the climate than 1 gallon of gas. ...
I think I can help here. The problem, as many see it, is that burning fossil fuels (the gas, or petrol/diesel/coal/'gas') is releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere. If you grow corn (or whatever) you are taking CO2 out of the atmosphere as it grows, then converting it (which won't be free) to something to burn (w00t: ethanol) and burning puts that CO2 back into the atmosphere - do you see yet? OK, I'll explain. Because the CO2 was extracted from the atmosphere by 'growing' before being put back by 'burning' there is no net increase in atmospheric CO2 (other than the cost of conversion). Burning fossil fuels, on the other hand, is dumping vast reserves of CO2 back into the atmosphere that were sequestered millennia ago, before the trouble started.
Hope that helps
You apparently underestimate the number of Americans who routinely "knock out the fat" with their George Foreman grills.
Well I've learnt something today ... I thought to "knock out the fat" was a euphemism for something else entirely.
Quoting Fahrenheit is more precise in most cases, though.
Fixed that for ya ... [shakes head]
"There is no consistency, and that alone can give rise to errors"
If you think we're inconsistent, take a look at the bloody Brits.
They use cm and meters for length, except on the roads, where they still use miles (and MPH).
They use grams and kg for weights, except for people, where they use stone.
It's a bloody mess.
I've heard kids talking about their weight in kg - much like the US we have a population that like(d) imperial weights and measures. The rest of Europe didn't have to convert at all! Over time (another couple of generations) and I'd be surprised if distance signs didn't swap to km, though there's something nice about being a 'bit' different - do we really want to live in a homogeneous World where nowhere is any different. Oddly, with the arrival of Starbucks and Macdonalds, etc, even our towns and villages are suffering the same fate. All the same shops and cafes in every village. So the US exports its homogeneous life to the World but refuses to accept the the imported homogeneous metric system!
Why do most the Europeans I know still talk about pints, drams and hectares (which isn't officially SI)?
By "most Europeans" do you mean British? I can think why anyone in continental Europe would ever order anything in pints? Britain has (had?) the same problem the US has, in that we have older generations who still think in imperial measures and the older ones often struggle, and even when the don't struggle they often prefer the old weights and measures, but that's just familiarity. If you teach kids metric and offer the older folks a helping hand then in a generation or so you can (at least mostly!) switch.
That said, many things are cultural and a British Pub simply wouldn't be the same without Pints (which are now however-many litres officially!). FWIW, I still think of my weight in Stones, but then I'm old too!
My favorite sign was on a local highway segment. It said "Metric Signs Next 100 Miles." I swear to God.
Off topic, but I heard a good one yesterday ... In 1998 Our Glorious Leader, Tony Bliar said, on arriving for peace talks in Northern Ireland: "This is no time for sound-bites, but I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders."
Deluded Buffoon!
I also question the assertion that the British don't use imperial units. All the cars on Top Gear seem to drive around in mph. They even occasionally make a joke of it when they are in a situation where they are forced to use metric and are generally derisive of it.
First off, let's not confuse the opinions of Top Gear with those of rational thought. Top Gear jumped the shark a season or two ago and should no longer be used as a *ahem* yardstick by which to judge Britain.
We are, in general, a metric country but there are a few odds and sods left behind to befuddle the unwary. We do indeed measure our (driving) distance in miles, and the efficiency of our cars in Miles per Gallon, but we buy our fuel by the Litre. We do drink in Pints (because half a Litre is too little and a Litre is too large). Unlike the rest of Europe (Continental Europe, if you like) we have many of the older generation(s) who grew up with imperial measures, even 'Old Money' (before decimalisation) and they still constantly gripe about having to use metric this and that.
Odd that America, the New World, should gripe like an old timer about the new fangled countin' ...
I almost never see the score on /. thanks to the new system, but +2 is a bit much indeed. I confused mass and weight, so my comment deserves at most 0 points.
The way I look at it is: Weight is how hard it'd be to move on Earth and Mass is how hard it'd be to move in zero-G.
Your kilometreage may vary.
How long has it been since going naked was natural for humans?
I tend to be naked at least a couple of times a day, but then us Europeans stopped being sewn into our winter longjohns years ago!
Like most jobs, the first few days will be the hardest ...
"nukes are bad, mmmkay?" Greenpeace types
push the pro-nuke folks buttons so effectively (well, they do practice a lot don't they!) that many can't help pushing back as hard, but I agree. What we need is some group with no axe to grind to give us some good old fashioned facts!
if this is a 'planned failure mode', i doubt there exist idiots bigger than the engineers who designed the fukushima plant.
Er ... OK. So just to be clear, you're suggesting that people who design and build nuclear power stations shouldn't have/implement plans for a melt down?
To be fair, the 9.0 was 150 miles away at the epicenter. Fukushima was no more hit by a 9.0 than Tokyo was.
Erm ... yes, OK. Point taken. [red face] So does anyone have the figures for the severity of the quake once it reached Fukushima?
Elsewhere in the myriad of discussions on this subject I've seen people saying how safe the military reactors (aircraft carriers, subs, etc) are and others explaining that the military zeal for 'procedure' combined with the fact that the 'staff' can't easily get away if it goes all Pete Tong and ends in Britneys and I wonder about having the reactors sited at/on(/under?) the various military outposts and staffed by the forces. This might help with the NIMBYs too ...
But even so, the reactors (by all accounts) coped A-OK with the quake. [Disclaimer: 'all accounts' pretty much exclusively coming from the people who own and run the reactors!]. That the tsunami swamped the generators is pretty damn stoopid though!
Apparently earthquake and tsunami's were part of the planned failure modes of the reactors as well. We've all seen how well things have gone so far.
Well, to be fair the reactors were built to withstand an 8.5 (or so) earthquake and it was hit by a 9.0 ... I've also seen footage of a 10 metre high 'tsunami' wall being breached by a 10 metre tsunami because (and you might want to sit down for this one) Japan sunk about a metre. That sort of thing can seriously play havoc with your disaster plans!
Now, sure, in hindsight they could have built to withstand a bigger earthquake and someone could have decided 10 metres wasn't enough (actually, I don't know how high the tsunami defences were here?) ... but actually, given the size of the quake and resulting tsunami I reckon the designers/builders did a pretty good job.
I also seem to recall there were calls to replace them with newer designs which were stopped ... was it the green lobby? The new/er/est designs have a far safer failure mode, and maybe they'd have taken the opportunity to beef up the designs to withstand bigger 'quakes?
All that said, if the company running the plant has been stupid then they certainly need to pay the price, and hopefully the next gen to be built will all learn massive amounts from these failures.
Actually he is allegedly a rapist
If I accused you of it, then so would you be! Over here in the EU we still (mostly!) like to think of people as innocent until proven guilty.
I'd also like to wish everybody (and also remind them) a happy steak and BJ day. It's exactly one month after V-day which we all know is for the women. This holiday evens out the universe.
I'm guessing the BJ Day is for men then ...
It is NOT a piston driven engine, so who cares about a grounded jet engine.
Well, the jet and rocket bits aren't but the piston driven engine bit is. It would seem you excelled yourself by not only NRTFA, but not reading the F /. summary too! Congratulations.