I understood that the plant was relatively new, and the designer is just building a prototype now.
The nice thing about this is that current plants can only use a small percentage of uranium to generate power. The rest is waste. This plant uses it all. There was talk about these things being much safer, since if it overheats or cools off, the pressure of the steam changes and the reaction stops.
Additionally, this new plant can't generate weapons grade plutonium like current plants can.
Unlikely that even a thousand such plants could raise the temperature of the depths even 1 degree.
Considering that earth is 2/3rds water, and water at the same level tends to even out in temperature, we would have to heat the entire level a whole degree to affect it.
This plant design draws cold water up rather than dumping warm water down, as I understand it. (dumping warm water is currently common with nuclear plants, btw, with few ill affects.) The cold water is heated by the surrounding warm water and then evaporated. The cold salt water is then purified and is the end product. Warm water isn't the waste product.
The most that would happen even if the end of the pipe released heat is that the immediate area would warm up a few degrees, but it would dissipate very quickly within a short distance.
Of course, I'm not an expert in that field, but I'm sure an expert would agree with me on this.
There was a slashdot article a while back that discussed a nuclear reactor that employed steam which could use the radioactive waste that current nuclear plants generated.
I would like to see one of these things implemented soon too. Eliminates most of the current nuclear waste and cuts down on risk of meltdown. All new plants should be using this technology. Use them to generate hydrogen (as an energy store) during off-peak times, and the hydrogen could be used to generate electricity during peak hours. This way, the plants could run at fixed output all the time.
Later, when the country finally moves to a hydrogen base, the plants could sell the hydrogen directly.
They have been implementing actively stupid policies.
First, they outlawed accessing email from yahoo and other web email services. Rationale? They couldn't enforce virus scanning on those systems. Why is this stupid? Because the same email virus scanners that our exchange server uses is also on every machine, so that the same scan gets performed on our exchange email OR our web email. (Policy states that if we don't keep up on the latest scanner patch, we will get fired.) Since I never run javascript and I've been paranoid about viruses before anyone else there, I'm ticked. Even worse, for the first 6 months there, they hadn't given me email on their system, so I had to use web email (before they implemented this policy.) I had signed up for various developer forums using my yahoo address. Various developer emails have been sent to me at that address that I can't access from work anymore.
Recently, I discovered that they decided that people don't need to be able to change their own network passwords. If we need to change it, we have to talk to the help desk. The help desk has total domain control of the network. We don't, although we're the ones who actually set up the web and sql servers, did various maintainence on them, and are the ones that the help desk come to when they can't figure out how to clear the cache on their machines. (I exaggerate on that last bit, but not too much.)
Why did they decide to not allow password changing? Rationale, according to the network admin (the little hitler) is that users can't remember their passwords if they change them. Rationale according to the cio is that management needs to know everyone's passwords in case anything happens. When I tried to explain that the domain admin can login to any machine regardless, and even change our password, it was waved away. I was asked if it's really all that inconvient to have the help desk change it. Even more annoying, the help desk doesn't know our passwords. They simply let us change them on their machines. All I can figure is that I'm either being lied to, or management has no clue what they are doing. Not a morale boost.
Someone still has to code that into the system, and then someone else still has to enter the wholesale price correctly.
Even if the wholesale price doesn't change regularly, so that the per unit wholesale price is reasonably static, it still requires that someone enter the wholesale price initially.
There would then have to be checks that test that the wholesale price was entered correctly. Anytime you have data entry, you have potential for error.
Even one check requires that someone write the lookup code. This requires a project manager to actually think it important enough to include it as a task. If it crosses application systems, which I guarantee you it does, (the sales system has to access the purchasing system, and each system is a different department with different management, even if all systems are on the same hardware), then you have to deal with politics and have meetings and discussions to get people to agree on how it will be done.
This all costs time & money. Some department will have to be charged for it. No one wants to pay for it, so it doesn't get done.
I saw something like this at a client years ago. The mainframe had something like 4 cpu's, and they needed more. Problem was, all the software on the mainframe was licensed for up to 4 cpu's. Get one more cpu, and someone would have to pay for the next level of licenses for everything. The policy required that whichever department paid for the new cpu would have to pay for the licenses too.
Needless to say, they never upgraded. The limped along for years trying to get away without buying more processors. They could have had several of the profitable departments agreeing to divide of the costs, but no one did.
I'm not suggesting that the company must honor them either, especially for those that ordered dozens of units. (disclaimer, I own amazon stock, although through only my investment club.)
I do think, however, that some stores will honor these mistakes anyway. After all, it was their mistake. Additionally, this could potentially be abused by stores trying a electronic form of bait & switch or fraud. This is why a law exists for brick & mortars that rquire them to honor posted prices.
I don't listen to much music, and I don't use p2p much either.
Last night, though, I finally found a song that I had heard once or twice and had no idea who it was.
It turned out to be "Somewhere over the rainbow" by A New Found Glory. I never knew who they were before. I also found that they did the theme for "Neverending Story".
Now that I know who they are, I'm gonna pick up some of their cd's. Although, I'll probably see if I can find them at the used cd place first.
The product cost too much, wasn't easily upgradable, and required a service contract (built into the price) to get the guide even if you didn't want the guide.
Offer me a freakin' digital recorder without a guide, don't push me to buy a service, and don't charge me an arm and a leg, and I'd jump at it.
That's the problem with tivo too. You don't *have* to get the service, but it keeps prompting you to. Even more annoying, you have to buy the service for EACH UNIT. If you have two or more units in your house, they can't share one guide. Yes, you get a discount on service for additional units, but you're already paying for it on the first unit. In fact, I think the discount only applies if you get the dish units anyway.
True, each unit requires a phone call. But the units could be networked to share the one guide. Since tivo stopped offering toll free calls for the guide, it's even worse.
I don't want to have to keep buying blades after I've bought the razor, to steal a phrase. That's why I bought an electric razor.
Anyways, not to go off topic, what I meant to say is that if this trend continues, we can expect to see more troubles for the average American. That's never a good thing and not because they are Americans, but because they have the same rights than anyone else to make a decent life.
I don't really know that that is true. Anytime anyone develops better technology, it generally helps the global economy regardless of the source.
Sure, they might make it and sell it here, and they might improve their tech industry in industry from this, but that doesn't hurt us.
Chances are that our US tech industries will be challenged by this and forced to compete. This is always a good thing. Just like monolopies stifle competition, and breaking up monopolies actually improve the industry and increase jobs, other countries entering the industry will increase jobs here in the US as well as in those countries.
I fully expect this to light a fire under the current tech companies such as Philips (dutch), Sony (Japanese),.... wait, what tech companies here make anything to do with tvs, vcrs, or dvrs anyway?
is desk real estate. Flat panel oled is gonna be great, (I hope).
I've never been able to find a decent desk or table that would take my 20" crt and my keyboard, and still give me space to work comfortably.
With an OLED monitor, I could potentially hang it on the wall behind the desk. Worst case, it could sit at the back of the desk and I wouldn't have to lean back to avoid trashing my eyes like I do now.
Sure, I could by a flat panel now. But all the ones I've seen are 15" and still cost way too much. The OLED displays are supposed to be far cheaper to produce, and this one is 20".
Regardless of whether it's theft or not, this really wouldn't be an issue if the RIAA hadn't made it a problem.
Aside from the fact that the RIAA itself made it well known that people *can* get songs for free on napster, kazaa, etc, and thus made it more popular, there are a number of valid arguments that this piracy actually promotes the sales of the cds.
If the RIAA had simply ignored it, and concentrated on releasing more music instead of less, their profits would be up quite a bit. Aside from the goodwill generated rather than the current badwill, most people don't *want* to have to download and burn it to cd. It's too much trouble. Many people trade mp3s just to see what the music was like, but prefer a legally purchased cd.
It's hard to do that, though, when the cd costs $20, and the RIAA gives people every reason to hate them.
I've only got anecdotal evidence, but I haven't seen any H1B people who had much skill. Many *thought* they did though.
I currently sit near one hindu who is very intelligent, and doesn't require hand-holding. He's not an h1b though. But he spends less time providing actual solutions than overly complicating systems.
Sure, as long as they want to pay the programmers to develop those checks. But they probably didn't want to budget for it.
Even if they do code that in, it would have to account for marketing costs, administration costs, and all other costs before they could accurately reflect the minimum they could sell it for.
Then, of course, they would have to deal with the various types of wholesale costs. The product might not have a fixed cost. They might pay less for the item if they sell more. I don't know if they have that kind of deal, but car dealers do. The more cars they sell, the less they pay for each. So the wholesale price would change depending on how many have been sold.
Or, they might get a group lot of them in, and only pay for the lot. Another lot they get in might have a different wholesale price. They could average the price, but that gets hard to do when they get in new lots at different prices regularly.
This part of the thread was specific to the music industry rather than software or books.
mp3's aren't all that great a quality of sound either. There are bands that have found that the "piracy" of the internet was a great way to advertise their sound too. In fact, a whole school of thought exists that believe that the RIAA would have made LESS money if p2p didn't exist.
After all, they actually cut down on the total number of different new releases quite a bit, yet the sales only dropped somewhat. Prices of album's are still high at $20 when a dvd is only $15.
Other forms of IP, such as books and software aren't that much different though. I personally don't like reading books on my computer. I prefer to relax on the couch with a good book. Last year, I could download "Witches of Karres" for free, but I wanted a book to hold in my hands to read it. I finally found it used. Finding it online made me remember that I wanted it.
Software, on the other hand, copy protection has been found for years to not work. In fact, piracy quite possibly has helped advertise software. Where would microsoft be today if they had been pricks about people using the office windows cd to install windows at home? During college 17 years ago, we pirated games all the time. I couldn't afford to buy many, and really couldn't afford to spend money on a game to see how I liked it. Interestingly, after college, when I had money, I bought all kinds of games even though the copy protection wasn't any better. I had no reason to pirate anymore, and the games had me hooked.
Sure, some piracy will always go on. But trying to stop piracy of a product will actually help kill that product rather than increase revenue long term. Copyprotection only ticks off honest purchasers, and pirates break the copy protection anyway.
Then I suspect that the musicians never see any of the license fees, considering how much artists are hit to promote their music on stations.
I know it's not just dj's that get paid for promoting music, either. The recording industry has been complaining also about the money they are required to pay to promote music. How does that fit in with these license fees?
I know there are license fees paid by clubs, bars, and stores that play music, but I suspect that any license fees paid by radio stations is a drop in the bucket of what they get back in fees from the music industry.
They were using a screenscraper as an interface to replicate our information. Some of our clients were logging into their system, posting data to their website, and the website was basically using a screenscraper to make our systems match.
The problem was that it wasn't authorized, and we'd never heard of them, yet they claimed they were fully compatible with us to our clients. It was also impacting our systems adversely. Potentially, their systems may have accidentally created massive duplicate data too.
We put a stop to it, but we did it by tech means. I hope the robot writer went nuts trying to get around the bits I implemented. heheheheheh.
Your link to impeach bush makes me wonder how credible your arguments really are.
I opened the link, and it seems that these geniuses want to impeach bush because of the probability of war with Iraq. If one took that seriously, then a serious argument could be made that we would have to impeach Bush if he DIDN'T consider war with Iraq.
Actually, the article described the r&d problems as being effective ways of storing hydrogen, and creating a market of consumers to buy it and a market of stations to sell it.
I don't remember anything in the article about spending guvment money on better ways to generate it. The article did state that there are a few ways to generate it, finding more wasn't the thrust.
Slashdot Mirror
I understood that the plant was relatively new, and the designer is just building a prototype now.
The nice thing about this is that current plants can only use a small percentage of uranium to generate power. The rest is waste. This plant uses it all. There was talk about these things being much safer, since if it overheats or cools off, the pressure of the steam changes and the reaction stops.
Additionally, this new plant can't generate weapons grade plutonium like current plants can.
Also, if magic existed, and could be shown to work, it would be a form of technology, and natural.
Not being sarcastic, btw.
When I said distance, I should have specified that I meant a very short distance, such as several feet.
Unlikely that even a thousand such plants could raise the temperature of the depths even 1 degree.
Considering that earth is 2/3rds water, and water at the same level tends to even out in temperature, we would have to heat the entire level a whole degree to affect it.
This plant design draws cold water up rather than dumping warm water down, as I understand it. (dumping warm water is currently common with nuclear plants, btw, with few ill affects.) The cold water is heated by the surrounding warm water and then evaporated. The cold salt water is then purified and is the end product. Warm water isn't the waste product.
The most that would happen even if the end of the pipe released heat is that the immediate area would warm up a few degrees, but it would dissipate very quickly within a short distance.
Of course, I'm not an expert in that field, but I'm sure an expert would agree with me on this.
There was a slashdot article a while back that discussed a nuclear reactor that employed steam which could use the radioactive waste that current nuclear plants generated.
I would like to see one of these things implemented soon too. Eliminates most of the current nuclear waste and cuts down on risk of meltdown. All new plants should be using this technology. Use them to generate hydrogen (as an energy store) during off-peak times, and the hydrogen could be used to generate electricity during peak hours. This way, the plants could run at fixed output all the time.
Later, when the country finally moves to a hydrogen base, the plants could sell the hydrogen directly.
I think Al Gore wrote it before he invented the internet.
My current client seems to not understand this.
They have been implementing actively stupid policies.
First, they outlawed accessing email from yahoo and other web email services. Rationale? They couldn't enforce virus scanning on those systems. Why is this stupid? Because the same email virus scanners that our exchange server uses is also on every machine, so that the same scan gets performed on our exchange email OR our web email. (Policy states that if we don't keep up on the latest scanner patch, we will get fired.) Since I never run javascript and I've been paranoid about viruses before anyone else there, I'm ticked. Even worse, for the first 6 months there, they hadn't given me email on their system, so I had to use web email (before they implemented this policy.) I had signed up for various developer forums using my yahoo address. Various developer emails have been sent to me at that address that I can't access from work anymore.
Recently, I discovered that they decided that people don't need to be able to change their own network passwords. If we need to change it, we have to talk to the help desk. The help desk has total domain control of the network. We don't, although we're the ones who actually set up the web and sql servers, did various maintainence on them, and are the ones that the help desk come to when they can't figure out how to clear the cache on their machines. (I exaggerate on that last bit, but not too much.)
Why did they decide to not allow password changing? Rationale, according to the network admin (the little hitler) is that users can't remember their passwords if they change them. Rationale according to the cio is that management needs to know everyone's passwords in case anything happens. When I tried to explain that the domain admin can login to any machine regardless, and even change our password, it was waved away. I was asked if it's really all that inconvient to have the help desk change it. Even more annoying, the help desk doesn't know our passwords. They simply let us change them on their machines. All I can figure is that I'm either being lied to, or management has no clue what they are doing. Not a morale boost.
Someone still has to code that into the system, and then someone else still has to enter the wholesale price correctly.
Even if the wholesale price doesn't change regularly, so that the per unit wholesale price is reasonably static, it still requires that someone enter the wholesale price initially.
There would then have to be checks that test that the wholesale price was entered correctly. Anytime you have data entry, you have potential for error.
Even one check requires that someone write the lookup code. This requires a project manager to actually think it important enough to include it as a task. If it crosses application systems, which I guarantee you it does, (the sales system has to access the purchasing system, and each system is a different department with different management, even if all systems are on the same hardware), then you have to deal with politics and have meetings and discussions to get people to agree on how it will be done.
This all costs time & money. Some department will have to be charged for it. No one wants to pay for it, so it doesn't get done.
I saw something like this at a client years ago. The mainframe had something like 4 cpu's, and they needed more. Problem was, all the software on the mainframe was licensed for up to 4 cpu's. Get one more cpu, and someone would have to pay for the next level of licenses for everything. The policy required that whichever department paid for the new cpu would have to pay for the licenses too.
Needless to say, they never upgraded. The limped along for years trying to get away without buying more processors. They could have had several of the profitable departments agreeing to divide of the costs, but no one did.
I'm not suggesting that the company must honor them either, especially for those that ordered dozens of units. (disclaimer, I own amazon stock, although through only my investment club.)
I do think, however, that some stores will honor these mistakes anyway. After all, it was their mistake. Additionally, this could potentially be abused by stores trying a electronic form of bait & switch or fraud. This is why a law exists for brick & mortars that rquire them to honor posted prices.
I don't listen to much music, and I don't use p2p much either.
Last night, though, I finally found a song that I had heard once or twice and had no idea who it was.
It turned out to be "Somewhere over the rainbow" by A New Found Glory. I never knew who they were before. I also found that they did the theme for "Neverending Story".
Now that I know who they are, I'm gonna pick up some of their cd's. Although, I'll probably see if I can find them at the used cd place first.
They didn't really target the audience right.
The product cost too much, wasn't easily upgradable, and required a service contract (built into the price) to get the guide even if you didn't want the guide.
Offer me a freakin' digital recorder without a guide, don't push me to buy a service, and don't charge me an arm and a leg, and I'd jump at it.
That's the problem with tivo too. You don't *have* to get the service, but it keeps prompting you to. Even more annoying, you have to buy the service for EACH UNIT. If you have two or more units in your house, they can't share one guide. Yes, you get a discount on service for additional units, but you're already paying for it on the first unit. In fact, I think the discount only applies if you get the dish units anyway.
True, each unit requires a phone call. But the units could be networked to share the one guide. Since tivo stopped offering toll free calls for the guide, it's even worse.
I don't want to have to keep buying blades after I've bought the razor, to steal a phrase. That's why I bought an electric razor.
I don't really know that that is true. Anytime anyone develops better technology, it generally helps the global economy regardless of the source.
Sure, they might make it and sell it here, and they might improve their tech industry in industry from this, but that doesn't hurt us.
Chances are that our US tech industries will be challenged by this and forced to compete. This is always a good thing. Just like monolopies stifle competition, and breaking up monopolies actually improve the industry and increase jobs, other countries entering the industry will increase jobs here in the US as well as in those countries.
I fully expect this to light a fire under the current tech companies such as Philips (dutch), Sony (Japanese),
is desk real estate. Flat panel oled is gonna be great, (I hope).
I've never been able to find a decent desk or table that would take my 20" crt and my keyboard, and still give me space to work comfortably.
With an OLED monitor, I could potentially hang it on the wall behind the desk. Worst case, it could sit at the back of the desk and I wouldn't have to lean back to avoid trashing my eyes like I do now.
Sure, I could by a flat panel now. But all the ones I've seen are 15" and still cost way too much. The OLED displays are supposed to be far cheaper to produce, and this one is 20".
Regardless of whether it's theft or not, this really wouldn't be an issue if the RIAA hadn't made it a problem.
Aside from the fact that the RIAA itself made it well known that people *can* get songs for free on napster, kazaa, etc, and thus made it more popular, there are a number of valid arguments that this piracy actually promotes the sales of the cds.
If the RIAA had simply ignored it, and concentrated on releasing more music instead of less, their profits would be up quite a bit. Aside from the goodwill generated rather than the current badwill, most people don't *want* to have to download and burn it to cd. It's too much trouble. Many people trade mp3s just to see what the music was like, but prefer a legally purchased cd.
It's hard to do that, though, when the cd costs $20, and the RIAA gives people every reason to hate them.
MORE code isn't the same thing as BETTER code.
I've only got anecdotal evidence, but I haven't seen any H1B people who had much skill. Many *thought* they did though.
I currently sit near one hindu who is very intelligent, and doesn't require hand-holding. He's not an h1b though. But he spends less time providing actual solutions than overly complicating systems.
it could be considered bait & switch, or at least fraud.
This happens regularly. Some stores will honor the mistake just to generate goodwill. Others don't honor it and generate some badwill.
This sort of thing is why certain sites have "Price Mistake Of The Day" as a marketing technique.
Sure, as long as they want to pay the programmers to develop those checks. But they probably didn't want to budget for it.
Even if they do code that in, it would have to account for marketing costs, administration costs, and all other costs before they could accurately reflect the minimum they could sell it for.
Then, of course, they would have to deal with the various types of wholesale costs. The product might not have a fixed cost. They might pay less for the item if they sell more. I don't know if they have that kind of deal, but car dealers do. The more cars they sell, the less they pay for each. So the wholesale price would change depending on how many have been sold.
Or, they might get a group lot of them in, and only pay for the lot. Another lot they get in might have a different wholesale price. They could average the price, but that gets hard to do when they get in new lots at different prices regularly.
This part of the thread was specific to the music industry rather than software or books.
mp3's aren't all that great a quality of sound either. There are bands that have found that the "piracy" of the internet was a great way to advertise their sound too. In fact, a whole school of thought exists that believe that the RIAA would have made LESS money if p2p didn't exist.
After all, they actually cut down on the total number of different new releases quite a bit, yet the sales only dropped somewhat. Prices of album's are still high at $20 when a dvd is only $15.
Other forms of IP, such as books and software aren't that much different though. I personally don't like reading books on my computer. I prefer to relax on the couch with a good book. Last year, I could download "Witches of Karres" for free, but I wanted a book to hold in my hands to read it. I finally found it used. Finding it online made me remember that I wanted it.
Software, on the other hand, copy protection has been found for years to not work. In fact, piracy quite possibly has helped advertise software. Where would microsoft be today if they had been pricks about people using the office windows cd to install windows at home? During college 17 years ago, we pirated games all the time. I couldn't afford to buy many, and really couldn't afford to spend money on a game to see how I liked it. Interestingly, after college, when I had money, I bought all kinds of games even though the copy protection wasn't any better. I had no reason to pirate anymore, and the games had me hooked.
Sure, some piracy will always go on. But trying to stop piracy of a product will actually help kill that product rather than increase revenue long term. Copyprotection only ticks off honest purchasers, and pirates break the copy protection anyway.
Then I suspect that the musicians never see any of the license fees, considering how much artists are hit to promote their music on stations.
I know it's not just dj's that get paid for promoting music, either. The recording industry has been complaining also about the money they are required to pay to promote music. How does that fit in with these license fees?
I know there are license fees paid by clubs, bars, and stores that play music, but I suspect that any license fees paid by radio stations is a drop in the bucket of what they get back in fees from the music industry.
They were using a screenscraper as an interface to replicate our information. Some of our clients were logging into their system, posting data to their website, and the website was basically using a screenscraper to make our systems match.
The problem was that it wasn't authorized, and we'd never heard of them, yet they claimed they were fully compatible with us to our clients. It was also impacting our systems adversely. Potentially, their systems may have accidentally created massive duplicate data too.
We put a stop to it, but we did it by tech means. I hope the robot writer went nuts trying to get around the bits I implemented. heheheheheh.
Ok. I did read the article. I had forgotten that part, as I hadn't considered generating the hydrogen a problem.
I figure economical ways of generating hydrogen will be developed when there is a market for it. That's the nice thing about capitalism.
Your link to impeach bush makes me wonder how credible your arguments really are.
I opened the link, and it seems that these geniuses want to impeach bush because of the probability of war with Iraq. If one took that seriously, then a serious argument could be made that we would have to impeach Bush if he DIDN'T consider war with Iraq.
If people should be paying for music to which they listen, why are radio stations paid to play music instead of charged?
Why are some of the most pirated songs also the biggest sellers at the stores?
Actually, the article described the r&d problems as being effective ways of storing hydrogen, and creating a market of consumers to buy it and a market of stations to sell it.
I don't remember anything in the article about spending guvment money on better ways to generate it. The article did state that there are a few ways to generate it, finding more wasn't the thrust.