The main reason for developing fusion is that deuterium is virtually unlimited, unlike fossil and fission fuels.
There is about 0.5 ppm (5E-7 fraction) of hydrogen in the atmosphere, and 200 ppm of that 0.5 ppm is deuterium, so there is 100 ppt (1E-10 fraction) of deuterium in the atmosphere.
There is 1.7 ppm (1.7E-6 fraction) of methane in the atmosphere. In principle we could just extract that and burn it as fuel. It's a potent greenhouse gas in its own right, so the CO2 produced by burning it might actually contribute less greenhouse effect than does the methane being extracted, so the overall cycle could be greenhouse neutral to negative.
There is so much atmosphere (total mass 5.1E18 kg) that there is a lot of both methane and deuterium in it: 9 trillion kg of methane, and 510 million kg of deuterium. Extracting either one, though, would be extremely difficult to do without using more energy than the resulting product would yield. And in the case of deuterium, you still have to isotopically separate the deuterium from the regular hydrogen after extracting the hydrogen.
There is also lots of deuterium in the oceans, of course.
A "European" scientist can be from Portugal or the most remote parts of Siberia.
If Siberia has been moved from Asia to Europe, I must have missed it. Siberia is bounded on the west by the Urals, and the Urals mark the boundary between Europe and Asia. It's a pretty arbitrary boundary, but it is well accepted.
Hopefully not, but the issue is whether the process used to develop them may have broken the terms of the EULA. All the usual caveats apply of course - the EULA may or may not be legally enforceable without a user's signature on paper; elementary reverse engineering by observing the output of the reference player given various inputs may or may not be legally prohibitable; etc, etc.
But it's difficult to see how you could make a player and still adhere to all the terms of the EULA.
I have one carefully considered word to describe my reaction to the referenced apologia: UNCONVINCING. I recognize that it's not a piece of cake, but it's not rocket science either.
Depending on the version of the C compiler you use, different kernel data structures will contain different alignment of structures.
Maybe if this were the dark ages and we did not have compiler packing pragmas to handle exactly this situation, then it would be a problem. Anyone with a modicum of experience knows how this problem is customarily turned into a non-problem.
Depending on what kernel build options you select, a wide range of different things can be assumed by the kernel: - different structures can contain different fields
The way to handle this is via embedding versioning/option information in the structures. This is not rocket science.
Some functions may not be implemented at all, (i.e. some locks compile away to nothing for non-SMP builds.)
A non-problem using the same techniques above mentioned.
Parameter passing of variables from function to function can be done in different ways (the CONFIG_REGPARM option controls this.)
No rationale being offered, you're going to have to cut me some slack if I say this sounds like a gratuitous obstruction.
etc. etc.
Pretty much all the offered rationales are excuses for not designing properly up front. I don't mean designing perfectly; that's impossible; but designing with a view to accomodating future changes in a way that preserves compatibility with carefully written modules.
Bottom line: the linux kernel design is an extremely impressive piece of work; a magnificent gift to the community, but it does have major conceptual flaws in that no one ever bit the bullet in terms of maintaining module compatibility across versions; particularly important if you have any interest in supporting binary-only modules in any real sense. If it's a religious decision that we don't want to support binary-only modules because they are inherently evil, then fine; there's no point in arguing religion; but if it's that we don't want to support binary-only modules because it's too hard and we don't want to exercise the discipline necessary to support them effectively, that's another thing entirely.
Its hard to see how a computer savy group can live without computer shops around
It's called UPS, Fedex, and the Post Office. Jeeze. The 20th century has come and gone. You don't need brick and mortar for this.
without the modern amenities
You don't enumerate these, so it's hard to tell how spoiled you might be. I'll just state the obvious. Most folks who don't live herded like sheep in giant noisy neon cities do not feel put upon because they don't have 10 overblown boutique shopping centers with "amusement arcades" and "stadium seating movie theaters" within a quick fuel-wasting SUV's ride.
and most importantly without coffee
Reality check. It's called instant coffee, and it's in every grocery store. Toss a spoonful in a cup, add boiling water, and guess what you have on the spot? What? You're WAY beyond stooping to that? You can waste money on the gourmet stuff, that's available in the same place. You don't need to take a gigantic container of the stuff with you every single place you go all day, never 5 minutes without it.
Jeeze louise. We WALKED to school, ya whippersnapper. EVERY day. Even if the snow was up to our chests...
You're right; some of my information was mistaken. I'm reasonably sure each of my points applies to some European country; perhaps not the same country for all points.
I appreciate the FAQ. One point in particular struck me as hilarious in an ironic or sick way: if you are blind, you only need to pay half as much for your TV!
You're right; some of my information was mistaken.
Whether you see £116, or whatever the exact current figure is, as excessive is of course an individual thing. I'm not sure what TV's cost in the UK; certainly there's a huge VAT added; but in the US, that represents paying for a new modest TV every year or two - without getting the new TV.
And there's this thing called DVR/PVR which means no one who doesn't want to ever has to watch another ad.
I agree, government sponsored programming has pluses and minuses, just like commercially sponsored programming. One notable thing it tends _not_ to have, though, is a range of viewpoints.
I do have an idea for a news motto which to me sounds far more admirable than the one you quote: "The news. Unwarped. Unfiltered. Unbiased. If you want views, that's another department."
I mean, look at it. Advert free television, companies that try to do things the customer wants...
An annual excise tax on every TV and every radio you own. In the UK, the annual "licence" fee (i.e., excise tax) for each color TV is over 100 pounds sterling. They take this seriously. Roving vans are used to detect RFI and catch non compliers.
This is a dumb idea worthy of modern self indulgent society. Keep It Simple, Stupid, is the best way. Old epitaphs can be very succinct and witty. Here is a famous one from Tombstone:
Here lies Lester Moore.
Four slugs
From a forty-four.
No Les
No More.
Here is another great one:
Here lies a man named Zeke.
Second fastest draw in Cripple Creek.
In the end, most people go shopping based on the sticker price.
Oh sure. That's why most of the vehicles on the road are Kia Spectras. That's why not many people buy SUVs, whose capabilities they never or practically never need or use.
Dude, I'm afraid your installation didn't work out very well (it happens). Nobody else is seeing this "delay". What is your hardware? Are you sure you haven't enabled some unsatisfactory visual "effects"? Do you maybe have a battery operated wireless mouse? I do, and if you haven't touched it in a while, yes, it takes a split second to wake up and respond.
I am interested in how you are going to like the package system a few upgrades down the line. I personally prefer the leanness and high-quality documentation of the BSDs, but Debian's package system is so good and contains so many packages that it's hard to beat.
I understand debian sid has 15,420 packages (somewhat dated info). The FreeBSD port system currently contains 13,307 ports. I'd say there isn't a clear advantage on this score. They're both great.
This is sort of off topic, but are USB2 drives more solid under FreeBSD than they are under Linux?
I find that if I really pound on a USB2 drive under linux, it will fail. It will run pretty well, but if you copy a lot of data to it all at once, it will die. The same drive plugged into the same computer in exactly the same way works fine under windows.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I found that Firewire drives didn't work reliably on linux either (but perfect on Windows, same machines). I thought maybe I was going crazy. This is with multiple machines, multiple distros, both 2.4 and 2.6 kernels, up to the very latest I could find.
If you search really hard you will find that this failure has been seen for years. There is no evidence that anyone is doing anything about it. It is really depressing.
Data to assist in answering your question: in exasperation I installed the very latest FreeBSD a couple of weeks ago and it had the same Firewire flaws.
Maybe I'm just an insensitive clod, but I think that starving people is just more interested in some other things (as, for example, eating) that in which OS put in its PC.
Well, I am sure that starving people do have immediate concerns, but I believe that some of the starving people are doing their best to find ways for them to break out of their prison of starvation. And one of these ways would be to find advantageous uses for technology, and instrumental in this could be saving several months' worth of income by using a free (as in beer) OS.
It was expected that 1 in each 100 flights would be unsuccessful and end in total failure (like Columbia) however 2 in 113 have ended in failure. I'm not sure what statistical distribution this was modelled on, but surely the number of failures are significantly larger than initially postulated.
Er, well actually, surely not. Actually it's eerily on track. One of the first 100 flights failed - bingo. Then 13% of the way into the second 100 flights, one more failure. Bingo.
Statistical risk estimation is necessarily such an inexact science that it is amazing how the record almost exactly matches the estimation.
Control of hardware makes a Mac as stable as it is.
Bingo. Ding ding ding. It's amazing how many people don't get what a liability it is for Windows to have to support the whole stinking morrass of crap that is the PC hardware jungle.
One of the reasons that Win2k does not have as many blue screens as 98 or NT4 is that 3rd party drivers are not f@cking up everything as much, since they must pass tougher tests to be certified.
(Actually, it's way more reliable than 9x garbage, but certainly not moreso than NT4; in fact, a bit less so. I know. I adopted NT the day 3.1 came out and never looked back except to chuckle over the problems those clueless ones who went with 9x constantly had.)
Possibly one of the reasons, but far from the overriding reason. The overriding reason is that the 9x architecture was pure crap. The NT architecture was, right from the beginning, night and day better. In fact, if you could strip the Windows UI garbage-code away from the VMS-like core and replace it with quality UI code, and stuck on a decent command shell and set of command line tools, it would have been the uncontested winner over all others.
NT 3.51 was the solidest NT codebase because it fixed the bugs in 3.1 but the layer of Explorer crap was not yet caked onto it. NT4 was almost as solid, and 2000 almost as solid as that, and XP almost as solid as 2000. Gee, Windows 2007 or whatever the Hell they are going to call it might even be barely acceptable if it doesn't continue the slide too much farther.
It's not that the drivers are better because Microsoft said "make them better or else we will be sad", it's that the underlying core is immeasurably better. And the UI is coded a little bit better than in 9x, but not much.
As for the drivers, it seems when I do an install, hardly any of those that are third party supplied have passed WHQL. And when is the last time you or anyone you know clicked "Cancel" when you get the warning "This driver has not passed WHQL and is not safe - are you sure you want to proceed anyway?"
(This is going to come off harsh because I am exasperated not with you but with what seems to be a complete society wide cavein to thuggery)
Not defending it? And then you defend the indefensible? These Amazon patent turds are frivolous on the face of it. Any patent examining process with one tenth the common sense God gave a moth would make short work of rejecting this crap With Prejudice!
Prior art is not the only thing that rules out a patent. It also has to be NON OBVIOUS. Duh! We'll use some cookies and crap so the buyer only has to click once. Yippee. Oh, and if it looks like a duplicate order, we'll remind them they've already ordered it. Wow.
1. Submit patent -> gets rejected. 2. Change a word and resubmit -> gets rejected and submitter faces a small fine. 3. Change another word and resubmit -> gets rejected and submitter faces a multiplying fine. 4,5,6,7...on the scheme of 3. etc.
I would go even further. In court they have the concept of frivolous lawsuits. If you bring a suit which is found to be frivolous, you will face a contempt of court penalty. We need the same concept in patents (assuming that we are going to allow patenting software or algorithms at all, which should itself be a slam bang no) - contempt of patent office. This way, step 1 in your plan would already cost the offender dearly.
Sometimes I really feel like our "rights" and "freedoms" are being sold to the corporations...
No, actually our rights and freedoms are not being sold to the corporations - they're being stolen - with the connivance of the knaves we elect to "govern" us.
You can use more than one SCSI host adapter (they're not really controllers), you know. But then your PCI bus is going to be the bottleneck. Heck, even a 64 bit 66 MHz PCI bus can only move 533 MBps.
Actually, though, drives are constantly seeking; real world transfers are always bursty; so it's never as bad as the raw drive numbers indicate.
Slashdot Mirror
The main reason for developing fusion is that deuterium is virtually unlimited, unlike fossil and fission fuels.
There is about 0.5 ppm (5E-7 fraction) of hydrogen in the atmosphere, and 200 ppm of that 0.5 ppm is deuterium, so there is 100 ppt (1E-10 fraction) of deuterium in the atmosphere.
There is 1.7 ppm (1.7E-6 fraction) of methane in the atmosphere. In principle we could just extract that and burn it as fuel. It's a potent greenhouse gas in its own right, so the CO2 produced by burning it might actually contribute less greenhouse effect than does the methane being extracted, so the overall cycle could be greenhouse neutral to negative.
There is so much atmosphere (total mass 5.1E18 kg) that there is a lot of both methane and deuterium
in it: 9 trillion kg of methane, and 510 million kg of deuterium. Extracting either one, though, would be extremely difficult to do without using more energy than the resulting product would yield. And in the case of deuterium, you still have to isotopically separate the deuterium from the regular hydrogen after extracting the hydrogen.
There is also lots of deuterium in the oceans, of course.
Check my math.
Atmospheric composition
Natural occurrence of deuterium
Total mass of atmosphere
A "European" scientist can be from Portugal or the most remote parts of Siberia.
If Siberia has been moved from Asia to Europe, I must have missed it. Siberia is bounded on the west by the Urals, and the Urals mark the boundary between Europe and Asia. It's a pretty arbitrary boundary, but it is well accepted.
So the open source players are illegal?
Hopefully not, but the issue is whether the process used to develop them may have broken the terms of the EULA. All the usual caveats apply of course - the EULA may or may not be legally enforceable without a user's signature on paper; elementary reverse engineering by observing the output of the reference player given various inputs may or may not be legally prohibitable; etc, etc.
But it's difficult to see how you could make a player and still adhere to all the terms of the EULA.
Maybe you mean the internal kernel API - which affects to modules, NVIDIA & friends etc. That API is unstable on purpose, as explained here: Apologia for constant gratuitous compatibility breaking changes
I have one carefully considered word to describe my reaction to the referenced apologia: UNCONVINCING. I recognize that it's not a piece of cake, but it's not rocket science either.
Depending on the version of the C compiler you use, different kernel data structures will contain different alignment of structures.
Maybe if this were the dark ages and we did not have compiler packing pragmas to handle exactly this situation, then it would be a problem. Anyone with a modicum of experience knows how this problem is customarily turned into a non-problem.
Depending on what kernel build options you select, a wide range of different things can be assumed by the kernel:
- different structures can contain different fields
The way to handle this is via embedding versioning/option information in the structures. This is not rocket science.
Some functions may not be implemented at all, (i.e. some locks compile away to nothing for non-SMP builds.)
A non-problem using the same techniques above mentioned.
Parameter passing of variables from function to function can be done in different ways (the CONFIG_REGPARM option controls this.)
No rationale being offered, you're going to have to cut me some slack if I say this sounds like a gratuitous obstruction.
etc. etc.
Pretty much all the offered rationales are excuses for not designing properly up front. I don't mean designing perfectly; that's impossible; but designing with a view to accomodating future changes in a way that preserves compatibility with carefully written modules.
Bottom line: the linux kernel design is an extremely impressive piece of work; a magnificent gift to the community, but it does have major conceptual flaws in that no one ever bit the bullet in terms of maintaining module compatibility across versions; particularly important if you have any interest in supporting binary-only modules in any real sense. If it's a religious decision that we don't want to support binary-only modules because they are inherently evil, then fine; there's no point in arguing religion; but if it's that we don't want to support binary-only modules because it's too hard and we don't want to exercise the discipline necessary to support them effectively, that's another thing entirely.
Its hard to see how a computer savy group can live without computer shops around
...
It's called UPS, Fedex, and the Post Office. Jeeze. The 20th century has come and gone. You don't need brick and mortar for this.
without the modern amenities
You don't enumerate these, so it's hard to tell how spoiled you might be. I'll just state the obvious. Most folks who don't live herded like sheep in giant noisy neon cities do not feel put upon because they don't have 10 overblown boutique shopping centers with "amusement arcades" and "stadium seating movie theaters" within a quick fuel-wasting SUV's ride.
and most importantly without coffee
Reality check. It's called instant coffee, and it's in every grocery store. Toss a spoonful in a cup, add boiling water, and guess what you have on the spot? What? You're WAY beyond stooping to that? You can waste money on the gourmet stuff, that's available in the same place. You don't need to take a gigantic container of the stuff with you every single place you go all day, never 5 minutes without it.
Jeeze louise. We WALKED to school, ya whippersnapper. EVERY day. Even if the snow was up to our chests
You're right; some of my information was mistaken. I'm reasonably sure each of my points applies to some European country; perhaps not the same country for all points.
I appreciate the FAQ. One point in particular struck me as hilarious in an ironic or sick way: if you are blind, you only need to pay half as much for your TV!
You're right; some of my information was mistaken.
Whether you see £116, or whatever the exact current figure is, as excessive is of course an individual thing. I'm not sure what TV's cost in the UK; certainly there's a huge VAT added; but in the US, that represents paying for a new modest TV every year or two - without getting the new TV.
And there's this thing called DVR/PVR which means no one who doesn't want to ever has to watch another ad.
I agree, government sponsored programming has pluses and minuses, just like commercially sponsored programming. One notable thing it tends _not_ to have, though, is a range of viewpoints.
I do have an idea for a news motto which to me sounds far more admirable than the one you quote: "The news. Unwarped. Unfiltered. Unbiased. If you want views, that's another department."
I mean, look at it. Advert free television, companies that try to do things the customer wants ...
An annual excise tax on every TV and every radio you own. In the UK, the annual "licence" fee (i.e., excise tax) for each color TV is over 100 pounds sterling. They take this seriously. Roving vans are used to detect RFI and catch non compliers.
This is a dumb idea worthy of modern self indulgent society. Keep It Simple, Stupid, is the best way. Old epitaphs can be very succinct and witty. Here is a famous one from Tombstone:
Here lies Lester Moore.
Four slugs
From a forty-four.
No Les
No More.
Here is another great one:
Here lies a man named Zeke.
Second fastest draw in Cripple Creek.
In the end, most people go shopping based on the sticker price.
Oh sure. That's why most of the vehicles on the road are Kia Spectras. That's why not many people buy SUVs, whose capabilities they never or practically never need or use.
Dude, I'm afraid your installation didn't work out very well (it happens). Nobody else is seeing this "delay". What is your hardware? Are you sure you haven't enabled some unsatisfactory visual "effects"? Do you maybe have a battery operated wireless mouse? I do, and if you haven't touched it in a while, yes, it takes a split second to wake up and respond.
I am interested in how you are going to like the package system a few upgrades down the line. I personally prefer the leanness and high-quality documentation of the BSDs, but Debian's package system is so good and contains so many packages that it's hard to beat.
I understand debian sid has 15,420 packages (somewhat dated info). The FreeBSD port system currently contains 13,307 ports. I'd say there isn't a clear advantage on this score. They're both great.
This is sort of off topic, but are USB2 drives more solid under FreeBSD than they are under Linux?
I find that if I really pound on a USB2 drive under linux, it will fail. It will run pretty well, but if you copy a lot of data to it all at once, it will die. The same drive plugged into the same computer in exactly the same way works fine under windows.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I found that Firewire drives didn't work reliably on linux either (but perfect on Windows, same machines). I thought maybe I was going crazy. This is with multiple machines, multiple distros, both 2.4 and 2.6 kernels, up to the very latest I could find.
If you search really hard you will find that this failure has been seen for years. There is no evidence that anyone is doing anything about it. It is really depressing.
Data to assist in answering your question: in exasperation I installed the very latest FreeBSD a couple of weeks ago and it had the same Firewire flaws.
Maybe I'm just an insensitive clod, but I think that starving people is just more interested in some other things (as, for example, eating) that in which OS put in its PC.
Well, I am sure that starving people do have immediate concerns, but I believe that some of the starving people are doing their best to find ways for them to break out of their prison of starvation. And one of these ways would be to find advantageous uses for technology, and instrumental in this could be saving several months' worth of income by using a free (as in beer) OS.
It was expected that 1 in each 100 flights would be unsuccessful and end in total failure (like Columbia) however 2 in 113 have ended in failure. I'm not sure what statistical distribution this was modelled on, but surely the number of failures are significantly larger than initially postulated.
Er, well actually, surely not. Actually it's eerily on track. One of the first 100 flights failed - bingo. Then 13% of the way into the second 100 flights, one more failure. Bingo.
Statistical risk estimation is necessarily such an inexact science that it is amazing how the record almost exactly matches the estimation.
[The shuttle should] sit on TOP of the Rocket ... [so] should the rocket explode ... the astronauts [would then] have a chance to survive.
+5, CORRECT
something falling and hitting the tail of the shuttle ... bounced off the tail. The object was silvery
Come on, just say it. It was a levitated revolving silvery disc which emitted an eery sound, right?
Control of hardware makes a Mac as stable as it is.
Bingo. Ding ding ding. It's amazing how many people don't get what a liability it is for Windows to have to support the whole stinking morrass of crap that is the PC hardware jungle.
One of the reasons that Win2k does not have as many blue screens as 98 or NT4 is that 3rd party drivers are not f@cking up everything as much, since they must pass tougher tests to be certified.
(Actually, it's way more reliable than 9x garbage, but certainly not moreso than NT4; in fact, a bit less so. I know. I adopted NT the day 3.1 came out and never looked back except to chuckle over the problems those clueless ones who went with 9x constantly had.)
Possibly one of the reasons, but far from the overriding reason. The overriding reason is that the 9x architecture was pure crap. The NT architecture was, right from the beginning, night and day better. In fact, if you could strip the Windows UI garbage-code away from the VMS-like core and replace it with quality UI code, and stuck on a decent command shell and set of command line tools, it would have been the uncontested winner over all others.
NT 3.51 was the solidest NT codebase because it fixed the bugs in 3.1 but the layer of Explorer crap was not yet caked onto it. NT4 was almost as solid, and 2000 almost as solid as that, and XP almost as solid as 2000. Gee, Windows 2007 or whatever the Hell they are going to call it might even be barely acceptable if it doesn't continue the slide too much farther.
It's not that the drivers are better because Microsoft said "make them better or else we will be sad", it's that the underlying core is immeasurably better. And the UI is coded a little bit better than in 9x, but not much.
As for the drivers, it seems when I do an install, hardly any of those that are third party supplied have passed WHQL. And when is the last time you or anyone you know clicked "Cancel" when you get the warning "This driver has not passed WHQL and is not safe - are you sure you want to proceed anyway?"
Blah blah blah merit blah blah blah prior art blah blah blah novel blah blah blah [only] seems obvious blah blah blah
(This is going to come off harsh because I am exasperated not with you but with what seems to be a complete society wide cavein to thuggery)
Not defending it? And then you defend the indefensible? These Amazon patent turds are frivolous on the face of it. Any patent examining process with one tenth the common sense God gave a moth would make short work of rejecting this crap With Prejudice!
Prior art is not the only thing that rules out a patent. It also has to be NON OBVIOUS. Duh! We'll use some cookies and crap so the buyer only has to click once. Yippee. Oh, and if it looks like a duplicate order, we'll remind them they've already ordered it. Wow.
1. Submit patent -> gets rejected.
2. Change a word and resubmit -> gets rejected and submitter faces a small fine.
3. Change another word and resubmit -> gets rejected and submitter faces a multiplying fine.
4,5,6,7...on the scheme of 3. etc.
I would go even further. In court they have the concept of frivolous lawsuits. If you bring a suit which is found to be frivolous, you will face a contempt of court penalty. We need the same concept in patents (assuming that we are going to allow patenting software or algorithms at all, which should itself be a slam bang no) - contempt of patent office. This way, step 1 in your plan would already cost the offender dearly.
Sometimes I really feel like our "rights" and "freedoms" are being sold to the corporations...
No, actually our rights and freedoms are not being sold to the corporations - they're being stolen - with the connivance of the knaves we elect to "govern" us.
You can use more than one SCSI host adapter (they're not really controllers), you know. But then your PCI bus is going to be the bottleneck. Heck, even a 64 bit 66 MHz PCI bus can only move 533 MBps.
Actually, though, drives are constantly seeking; real world transfers are always bursty; so it's never as bad as the raw drive numbers indicate.
but every click on a radio button seemed to illicit a lot of blinking and flashing
illicit - adj - not permitted, unlawful
elicit - verb - to draw forth or bring out
Two years from now ... Broadcasters have recently accepted a deadline of January 2029 for the mandatory end of analog television signal broadcasts...
Then two years after THAT:
Broadcasters tried to extend the deadline past 2038 but they couldn't set the date after 2038 - 32 bit integer overflow.