Right, hence my final statement about point A getting to stand still. I mostly wanted to write about a goatee twin. A post above mine actually said everything that needed to be said.
Just to demonstrate to anyone reading who wants clarification: We will now place our fictional, non-goatee wearing observer on a spacecraft of extraordinary design. It can move at 1 kilometer per hour under the speed of light (and no warp drive to boot!). While moving at this fantastic speed our observer shines a flashlight to see what will happen. To the observer in the spaceship, the beam moves the speed of light. To the external observer, the ship is moving damn fast and the flashlight beam goes the speed of light. The slack just gets picked up in that the observer moving at relativistic speeds experiences time much differently than the external observer, who has decided they want nothing to do with my spaceship that goes nearly the speed of light with no one at the controls.
I'd say Nuclear fission is a pretty good one. As has been pointed out above, there are a number of reasons the dwindling supply of natural U235 is not much of a concern with proper management. While it is true that only a few years worth of readibly fissile material that can be naturally mined are left in the earth, breeder reactors give us an extremely expanded time frame. Especially when alternative reactors, such as Pebble Bed reactors, which can use Thorium as a fuel instead of Uranium or plutonium come into play.
So my concern with this is, do we stop all of our nuclear activity now and lock (or at least greatly increase the difficulty) ourselves out of fission derived power when the natural supplies decay away?
I am not nearly as excited about the development of new electric motors as I would be if they announced the development of revolutionary new batteries to power them...
We're not really talking about a loss of efficiency in these things. The current stockpiles are based on high efficiency cores. We just don't make the "big hunk of uranium" bombs anymore. I would suggest a fascinating site for anyone looking for some good education. http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/index.html (Be sure to check out the Castle Bravo test.)
The cores on these things break down rather fast, and they aren't sure-fire to work correctly (or even behave themselves) after sitting on a shelf for decades. If we are going to keep them around, fine, but let's make sure we know what the things will do. Otherwise, get rid of them. There is no better way to cut yourself than working with a dull knife.
I would expect that ceasing to feed it fuel would go a long way to stopping it. Barring that, once all the free form hydrogen in the atmosphere was consumed I would expect that things would stop then (a little sarcasm).
Myself, I enjoyed reading the new Anandtech article that went up today. The new AMD CPU's are put through their paces, and are compared against the best Intel has to offer. For some good top end (or dual core, as it has become the same thing) comparisons, this is a good place to start.
On that page they compare a 130nm single core Athlon to a 90nm dual core. Even under a full load, the 90nm dual core uses less power than the single core 130nm chip.
The other ones you will see use a thin slice of metal seperated by a very narrow air pocket and a thin mylar film. They behave quite differently from the Target tags. If my memory is right, we tried one of the Target tags with the other system and it didn't pick it up at all.
Interesting... As far as I can tell, it's the Checkpoint detectors that are responsible. The security tags used for that are the really flat tags, where if you peel one back its a square spiral of metal, probably about an inch square?
I'd be interested to know what brand those were, and how old. I have myself seen some of the older units at Target get set off by Cell Phones, but they ran on a different technology than the ones where I worked. Nothing set those off except tags, ever.
Where I used to work (we stopped EVERYONE who set off the alarm) the number one reason people set off the alarm upon entering was a new wallet. There was always a tag buried really deep in the folds of the thing, left active by some apathetic cashier at another store. Shoes were a close second. We also had some people come in wearing either stolen or woefully neglected clothing, with the hard-tags still attached.
Then we had the professional thieves who always had an excuse why they set it off upon entering: "Steel plate in my head (old guy)" or "It's my cell phone" or "I just got new filings". Funny, that stereo sized bulge in your pants doesn't look like a cellphone sir, perhaps you shouldn't be in such a hurry to leave?
The best thing we did was train the cashiers to stop everyone. The cashiers learned real fast, when they had to stop their customers, that it is MUCH better to do a proper job of deactivating. And the store gets the reputation around town that it isn't worth hitting , so the shoplifters just headed to Wal-Mart.
For the purpose of archiving Audio CD's, many hobbyists have been making losslessly compressed backups and using the space saved over the original CD for extra error correction information, usually with PAR2 or somesuch.
Barring the 9th circuit and all of Great Britian as I understand it, there is another problem with retaliation in self-defense here.
Application of force. If someone attacks me in my home with real or apparant intent to kill, I respond in full. If I somehow manage to subdue said scumbag without killing them, after they are incapacitated I am no longer able to justify their death at my hands as self defense. In other words, if I tie up a murderer in my apartment and wait for the police, I cannot claim self-defense for then shooting him out of boredom.
In other words, the response is usually considered self-defense only if it is comparable to the attack. Try to take it offline, well, were you knocked off-line in the attack? Keep in mind, I most definitely am not a lawyer.
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Thank you, I'm glad you liked it.
Right, hence my final statement about point A getting to stand still. I mostly wanted to write about a goatee twin. A post above mine actually said everything that needed to be said.
Just to demonstrate to anyone reading who wants clarification: We will now place our fictional, non-goatee wearing observer on a spacecraft of extraordinary design. It can move at 1 kilometer per hour under the speed of light (and no warp drive to boot!). While moving at this fantastic speed our observer shines a flashlight to see what will happen. To the observer in the spaceship, the beam moves the speed of light. To the external observer, the ship is moving damn fast and the flashlight beam goes the speed of light. The slack just gets picked up in that the observer moving at relativistic speeds experiences time much differently than the external observer, who has decided they want nothing to do with my spaceship that goes nearly the speed of light with no one at the controls.
We will call you Point A. We will call another world with your evil goatee-wearing twin Point B.
Point A is moving at the speed of light. Point B is moving at the speed of light in directly the opposite direction.
The laser you fired to destroy your nemesis will never do its job, because it will never catch him.
Note that this does not require Point A to be moving. The other jerk running away really fast is enough to cause this.
What language? Perhaps we can help.
You are describing Sierra's old classic, Quest for Glory 3. That was my favorite part of the game, well, that and throwing rocks.
I made a post farther up that address some of these, specifically the aging issue for natural fissile material.
7 &cid=13095189
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=15618
There are concerns, but they are no where near as lopsided as the parent suggests.
I'd say Nuclear fission is a pretty good one. As has been pointed out above, there are a number of reasons the dwindling supply of natural U235 is not much of a concern with proper management. While it is true that only a few years worth of readibly fissile material that can be naturally mined are left in the earth, breeder reactors give us an extremely expanded time frame. Especially when alternative reactors, such as Pebble Bed reactors, which can use Thorium as a fuel instead of Uranium or plutonium come into play.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf62.htm
So my concern with this is, do we stop all of our nuclear activity now and lock (or at least greatly increase the difficulty) ourselves out of fission derived power when the natural supplies decay away?
In case you aren't a reader, here is the link:
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=145
I am not nearly as excited about the development of new electric motors as I would be if they announced the development of revolutionary new batteries to power them...
We're not really talking about a loss of efficiency in these things. The current stockpiles are based on high efficiency cores. We just don't make the "big hunk of uranium" bombs anymore. I would suggest a fascinating site for anyone looking for some good education. http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/index.html (Be sure to check out the Castle Bravo test.)
The cores on these things break down rather fast, and they aren't sure-fire to work correctly (or even behave themselves) after sitting on a shelf for decades. If we are going to keep them around, fine, but let's make sure we know what the things will do. Otherwise, get rid of them. There is no better way to cut yourself than working with a dull knife.
I would expect that ceasing to feed it fuel would go a long way to stopping it. Barring that, once all the free form hydrogen in the atmosphere was consumed I would expect that things would stop then (a little sarcasm).
I believe the material in smoke detectors is usually Americium. Some links:
http://www.uic.com.au/nip35.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americium
Rather than type it all out again, the Wikipedia article does it very nicely. Check out the section on the policy debate in the U.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_cell
Myself, I enjoyed reading the new Anandtech article that went up today. The new AMD CPU's are put through their paces, and are compared against the best Intel has to offer. For some good top end (or dual core, as it has become the same thing) comparisons, this is a good place to start.
? i=2410
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx
Over at Anandtech, they have a similar article up.
? i=2410&p=2
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx
On that page they compare a 130nm single core Athlon to a 90nm dual core. Even under a full load, the 90nm dual core uses less power than the single core 130nm chip.
The other ones you will see use a thin slice of metal seperated by a very narrow air pocket and a thin mylar film. They behave quite differently from the Target tags. If my memory is right, we tried one of the Target tags with the other system and it didn't pick it up at all.
Interesting... As far as I can tell, it's the Checkpoint detectors that are responsible. The security tags used for that are the really flat tags, where if you peel one back its a square spiral of metal, probably about an inch square?
I'd be interested to know what brand those were, and how old. I have myself seen some of the older units at Target get set off by Cell Phones, but they ran on a different technology than the ones where I worked. Nothing set those off except tags, ever.
Where I used to work (we stopped EVERYONE who set off the alarm) the number one reason people set off the alarm upon entering was a new wallet. There was always a tag buried really deep in the folds of the thing, left active by some apathetic cashier at another store. Shoes were a close second. We also had some people come in wearing either stolen or woefully neglected clothing, with the hard-tags still attached.
Then we had the professional thieves who always had an excuse why they set it off upon entering: "Steel plate in my head (old guy)" or "It's my cell phone" or "I just got new filings". Funny, that stereo sized bulge in your pants doesn't look like a cellphone sir, perhaps you shouldn't be in such a hurry to leave?
The best thing we did was train the cashiers to stop everyone. The cashiers learned real fast, when they had to stop their customers, that it is MUCH better to do a proper job of deactivating. And the store gets the reputation around town that it isn't worth hitting , so the shoplifters just headed to Wal-Mart.
For the purpose of archiving Audio CD's, many hobbyists have been making losslessly compressed backups and using the space saved over the original CD for extra error correction information, usually with PAR2 or somesuch.
http://parchive.sourceforge.net/
Barring the 9th circuit and all of Great Britian as I understand it, there is another problem with retaliation in self-defense here.
Application of force. If someone attacks me in my home with real or apparant intent to kill, I respond in full. If I somehow manage to subdue said scumbag without killing them, after they are incapacitated I am no longer able to justify their death at my hands as self defense. In other words, if I tie up a murderer in my apartment and wait for the police, I cannot claim self-defense for then shooting him out of boredom.
In other words, the response is usually considered self-defense only if it is comparable to the attack. Try to take it offline, well, were you knocked off-line in the attack? Keep in mind, I most definitely am not a lawyer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_defense
I read a very interesting paper on this tactic/subject not too long ago. Rather than rehash the whole work, here is a link:
http://blanu.net/curious_yellow.html
http://www.mushkin.com/ is your best friend in the whole world, maybe. I know they're mine. I'm so lonely...
Yup, my bad. Still not used to this linking business on Slashdot. Bit of a bad habit, depending on forums to autolink HTML for you.
It's not really a "they", more like "some people". So the question really is, who?