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User: SharpFang

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  1. Re:can it be used as a disinfectant on Cleaning Up Japan's Radioactive Mess With Blue Goo · · Score: 1

    Yes, it could. For $160/gal, normal disinfectants are considerably cheaper and since they actually kill bacteria, the problem of disposal is not nearly as bad.

  2. Re:Price? on Cleaning Up Japan's Radioactive Mess With Blue Goo · · Score: 1

    The plant is on the coast, on a narrow strip of flat land next to mountains. Most of the terrain in the mountains is uninhabited. The strip of land in the exclusion zone is roughly triangular, 10km at one end, narrowing near to nothing at the other, so count about 30km^2 as the affected inhabited area.

  3. Re:Incredibly expensive... on Cleaning Up Japan's Radioactive Mess With Blue Goo · · Score: 2

    The article might have oversimplified things but the truth is radionuclides tend to happen in macroscopic clusters - kind of "dust particles". Single pieces of material sometimes almost a milimeter size (more frequently a few microns) often several centimeters apart, They may be ash, may be post-explosion dust, solid particles in smoke and so on that were heavily irradiated and settled away from the plant - and they account for great most of radiation sources in contaminated area.

  4. Re:Moon Shoes on NASA Sting Busts Woman Selling Purported Moon Rock · · Score: 1

    either that or guilty of "receiving stolen goods".

  5. Re:You mean that cell phone store? on RadioShack Trying To Return To Its DIY Roots · · Score: 2

    By the time you need your second replacement the iron is usually a decade old. The first replacement comes pretty fast though, after you ruined the first tip before learning proper care for it.

  6. Re:Capitalist Poland on Poland's Prime Minister Goes For Open Government · · Score: 1

    Vibrant job market is a pipe dream for which there is no recipe. Many tried and failed.

    The contract law is okay as it is, it's that the law system that is hard to access for "joe average", and no institutions that watch over upholding the law by default - it's always the person who is being screwed over that has to fight the legal battle, and receives no help or favors - the same fees apply to a milionaire factory owner and to a broke employee who got screwed over, except it's a negligible drop for the employer and a roadblock for the employee.

    There -are- institutions that are intended to watch over this. The problem is their inspectors are corrupt and their competences limited. This all could be remedied by restructuring them with efficient internal control, more power for the inspectors, ability to work undercover, protection to witnesses and so on. This would be quite doable through law that regulates operation of such institutions... ...but nobody's gonna do it because businessmen fund the politicians and it's in the businessmen best interest to keep these organizations powerless. The essential law is good, but there are serious holes in its enforcement - employees can't complain 'cause "law is on your side, go sue the crooks" and the crooks are happy because they can deal with anyone who sues them. Only a strongly "people's" party could challenge the system. But there's none at the time and it doesn't seem like any could happen in foreseeable future.

  7. Re:Bullshit on Poland's Prime Minister Goes For Open Government · · Score: 1

    The 24-hour courts definitely don't provide the arrested with all their due rights.
    The "equality of genders" regulations quite frequently put women at unfair advantage, giving them extra privledges.
    There is a law that was intended to prevent people from misappropriation of real estate - if given real estate was purchased shortly before its value increased significantly, it can be taken away from you for its original value. No proof of ill intent needed. Honest people lost whole newly built houses, receiving only what they paid for the plot of land, because of this law, as their land appeared to be near planned shopping centers. This is in clear violation of property rights but is an anti-corruption piece.
    A person arrested has the right to be informed in a way understandable to them about the reason of arrest. Now which of our "special forces" follows this?
    Last but not least, NFZ medication funding practices deprive some people of the right to life by denying medication to curable conditions.

  8. Re:Capitalist Poland on Poland's Prime Minister Goes For Open Government · · Score: 1

    It'sless about money and more about employee's rights. The pretty talk about free market of jobs is conveniently omitting bosses who are liars and thieves.
    Free market is all about the "customer" (employee) staying well informed about the qualities of "goods" (job conditions) at various providers. Not so in the job market.

    There were sites where the employees could describe the real situation at their workplaces. They were all shut down by litigation by employers whose business was hurt by truth about false promises that attract talented, dedicated employees and leave them disgruntled and disillusioned a year later, when their expertise and talent provided the boss with wealth, and them - only with faltering health.

    You might try to litigate but if you are redundant, you can't afford the lawyers (and you earned your boss enough cash for the best lawyers to defend his side). And if given job market is narrow, your boss will let other bosses know that you dare to sue your employer - and you won't find a job in your specialization.

    So no, it's not about "raising minimum salaries" or "giving more time off work". It's about protecting the letter of the contract between the employer and the employee, aiding the employee in asserting their rights, keeping dishonest employers from hiding their dishonesty, preventing dishonest abuse of position of power to deprive employees of their rights ("use your overdue holidays now and you're fired") and so on.

    The law concerning employee protection in Poland is quite good. I'd say vastly superior to the US law. The problem is enforcing it is a real challenge and there are no strong institutions that would take the employee's side in case the law is broken.

  9. Re:Capitalist Poland on Poland's Prime Minister Goes For Open Government · · Score: 1

    We need a real leftist party.
    Not SLD which is "liberals painting themselves red".
    Not PiS which while leftist in economy, is ultra-right in other issues.
    A real party that will fight for the rights of the working man.

  10. Re:Bullshit on Poland's Prime Minister Goes For Open Government · · Score: 1

    It's not about changing the text of the constitution, it's about introducing laws that conflict with it. The designated role of the president as protector of the constitution, is all but nonexistent - if given bill serves the political agenda of the current president, it will pass. The bill passes into the law and it takes years to overturn it.

    No, the polish constitution is not easy to change. But it's "just a piece of paper" that is easily ignored.

  11. Re:So provide an equivalent service... on Finnish Record Labels Want To Block Pirate Bay · · Score: 1

    A full DVD of the last "The Yes Men" stunt?
    In one comfortably available piece?

    Youtube? no. Myspace? hell no. MegaUpload - in 50 pieces with delay between downloads, so no. Wordpress? Unlikely. Download.cnet? hell no. Other trackers? The people shamed by the movie will send (baseless, invalid) DMCA and the trackers will comply without a fight.

    BTW, did you RTFS? The last sentence of it?

  12. Re:the "another story" on Windows 1.0: the Power of DOS, Plus Tiled Windows · · Score: 2

    probably emulation of modern CPU too different from old XT/AT.
    They did away with some of the oldest "features".

    BTW, Dosbox would likely be better suited.

  13. So provide an equivalent service... on Finnish Record Labels Want To Block Pirate Bay · · Score: 1

    I'd like then the record labels to provide a free search and tracker for Linux images, free games, public domain music and ebooks, alternative cinema and investigative journalism movies, and other legal material provided normally by the Pirate Bay.

    The development of a legal online free culture is impossible in Finland if corrupt organizations like IFPI are allowed to shut down their operators.

  14. Re:YES!!! This is why the android bugs me so much! on Experts Say Gestural Interfaces Are a Step Backwards In Usability · · Score: 1

    For in-app options:
    - long-press some screen icon
    - tap a small icon next to the screen gadget
    - press the physical menu button
    - long-press the physical menu button
    - press the trackball
    - long-press the trackball
    - slide up the tab by the bottn
    - slide down the menu bar from top
    - press menu on the qwerty keyboard
    - swipe left
    - go to desktop, open all apps tab and select the separate menu app.

    It's not about the few things that are consistent, it's about things that are entirely inconsistent. I'm not making up the list above. I've faced all of these at some point. Especially annoying if there are 2 options screens with different functions, one available through an icon, and the other through long-press of the trackball.

  15. Re:YES!!! This is why the android bugs me so much! on Experts Say Gestural Interfaces Are a Step Backwards In Usability · · Score: 1

    The problems start to crop up when you are multitasking between a few apps and you definitely do not want some of them reloaded. Android unloading works in a completely unpredictable way, so if I want to paste 3 different texts from 3 different apps into a forum post I'm making in the browser, I prefer the browser stay on the forum post page and not unload halfway through my writing. So I'd better unload the app I just finished using before switching to the next one if I want the browser to stay in memory.

  16. Re:It has been a generation since 1994. on Experts Say Gestural Interfaces Are a Step Backwards In Usability · · Score: 1

    It's not getting your head around a new way of doing a new thing. It's getting it around a dozen new inconsistent ways of doing the same thing on different devices (or even different OS versions on the same device) and switching as you go.

    You may be 3-lingual, but I assure you if you meet 3 people speaking the 3 languages you know and try to converse with all of them you WILL mess up. I have enough headaches working with cygwin at work, with mark-middleclick vs ^C-^V (esp. that ^C does something completely different in rxvt). Now with a dozen of touchscreen interfaces try to work with an Android phone and an iPad plus some proprietary ebook reader plus a netbook with multitouch touchpad plus maybe that Microsoft table thing. Each of them will have mostly similar set of basic functionalities but each of them will use different gestures to use them. And you have to remember which is which.

  17. Re:Summary on Experts Say Gestural Interfaces Are a Step Backwards In Usability · · Score: 1

    Especially people in Ubuntu disagree. They really try all different changes to the UI, some of them seem to be there just for the sake of "making it different than the standard" and they fight tooth and nail against users who want to bring standard behavior back.
    I wonder if the changes are backed by any kind of usability studies, or do they make them as they go along, because some of them are so retarded really no sane user or programmer would suggest them.

  18. Re:Not gonna happen in stock Android on Cyanogenmod Puts Users in Control of Permissions · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There is still option of Google separating "obtain targetted display ads" permission from "Full network control"+"Phone location". Making the "ads" permission unblockable.

    I really am not happy that an app which does require access to my local filesystem can simultaneously send its entire content to a remote server and let the author track my location - when all I consent for is to display ads relevant to my city.

  19. Re:Geiger counters are not really useful on Testing Geiger Counters · · Score: 1

    1) The exclusion zone allows tourists on short trips. It won't be open for common use for quite a bit.
    2) There are patches of radiation. Most of the terrain is at standard background level now.
    3) The X in our case is 0.5%. Yes, in 15 days of sitting on the bare metal in the metal cage of the grabber your risk of cancer will increase by 0.25% which is below statistical error. Of course in the meantime risk of catching pneumonia is good 10%, risk of rabies from wild animals in the area - maybe 30% (not to mention risk of getting killed by rabid wolves at night or freezing to death.) In short, you'd have to go to great lengths and expose your health to enormous level of mundane risks in order to create any risk of radiation-related health problems.

  20. Re:Calibration Source? on Testing Geiger Counters · · Score: 1

    Am-241 alpha decay is accompanied by significant gamma radiation, one component of it of significant energy (60keV).

    Alpha 5485 keV 84.5
    Alpha 5443 keV 13.0
    Gamma 59.5 keV 35.9
    Gamma 26.3 keV 2.4
    Gamma 13.9 keV 42

    People love to forget about this when looking at decay schematics. Just as well as forgetting about product of a decay, which may be highly unstable - and may produce other unstable products as result, so that one decay of a long-halflife particle will produce several particles of radiation as consecutive nuclea decay until it reaches a stable or long-lived isotope quite a few "nodes" down the ladder. (not the case with Am-241 though, it decays to long-lived Np-237)

  21. Re:Geiger counters are not really useful on Testing Geiger Counters · · Score: 1

    Thanks for correction.

    On a related note.
    About the most radioactive object findable in the Chernobyl zone on the surface, available to tourists (as opposed to stuff buried deep or hidden in hard to access cellars, and other than the reactor sarcophagus itself) is a metal grabber used to extract/insert fuel rods in the reactor.

    http://wikimapia.org/#lat=51.4013409&lon=30.0474089&z=19&l=28&m=b
    http://oclab.pl/art/spinn/17_czarnobyl/czarnobyl_25_lat_pozniej_67.jpg
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5aDoVnF8B8

    The radiation level by its surface is about 200-300 microsieverts/h. Meaning you'd have to sit in it for a month to get elevated risk of cancer.

  22. Re:Calibration Source? on Testing Geiger Counters · · Score: 1

    Just buy a smoke detector with Am-241 source. Stronger and doesn't get you on all kinds of blacklists with NSA, CIA, FBI, TSA and the likes.

  23. Re:Easiest places to test geiger counters on Testing Geiger Counters · · Score: 1

    Old (esp. military grade) geiger counters came with callibration samples. This doesn't appear to be the case with modern hand-held devices though - they come pre-callibrated and you are not supposed to mess with the callibration in any way.

    One significant reason might be sensitivity. The old ones wouldn't pick background radiation or anything slightly above it. You needed a source just to confirm the device works at all. Nowadays the counters can guage the background quite accurately so you don't need extra confirmation it works.

  24. Re:DIY on Testing Geiger Counters · · Score: 2

    The basic idea is brillant. The effect, not quite so.

    Read the comments on the video and follow the links. Plastic scintillator simply does not emit enough light to be captured by a consumer-grade camera. Scientific camera, correct temperature, darkness achieved by thick black plastic - yes, it works. Best of consumer-grade night-vision cameras, 1h exposure - nothing. half-inch plywood appears "transparent" for night streetlights, but the scintillator remains dark. Sources so strong that they make alarm go off while enclosed in lead container - scintillator still not visible. This is doable but NOT with consumer-grade cameras, and as such, the whole concept of "cheap, commonly available dosimeter" falls.

  25. Re:Geiger counters are not really useful on Testing Geiger Counters · · Score: 1, Interesting

    It's smart to take the counter with you and -learn the doses-.
    The problem is radioactivity occurs in "patches". Places where water drained and dried. Plants that are strongly absorbing. Cloth in the wind, capturing dust particles.

    As for learning the doses: http://xkcd.com/radiation/ is helpful but generally, 0.1 microsievert/h is common background level, 1-10 microsieverts/h is the usual "elevarted radiation level" in deserted areas. Some of most radioactive trash in Chernobyl zone findable currently is 3 milisieverts/h. 10 milisieverts will cause detectable rise of cancer risk. Acute radiation poisoning occurs around 1 sievert.