Sure: a TBC won't do diddley to a digital signal in digital form: however: once it is in a form you can route to a monitor, you use a TBC to clean out the flags and macrovision and all the other crap they use to cripple people from making copies.
So the signal route would be:
digital receiver -> monitor -> output -> TBC -> digital recorder.
Yeah - there will be a little loss, but you'll still get a pretty damn good copy. So, no, I was not being flamebait, nor was I off topic. I was just trying to point out that there are ways around all that crap.
If I'm going to flame someone for something, you'll know... and I NEVER post anything as an AC, unlike some AC's here, because I believe what I post is true. When I'm wrong, I appreciate being corrected - it's a little thing called "learning".
Once again - this "flag" will be a problem for the Common Ordinary copy maker, but all it takes is a nice little Time Base Corrector to strip the digital crap out to clean up the signal, and then route that signal into your recorder of choice. Done.
"How Can You Be In Two Places At Once, When You're Not Anywhere At All???"
bump bump bump...
Why... IT"S A TROPICAL PARADISE!
RS
Re:eeeeevil? Yes. And NOT Funny.
on
Inside Wal-Mart IT
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Here's the article linked above. It is NOT a funny article. It is insightful and informative.
How Wal-Mart is Remaking our World
By Jim Hightower.
Posted April 26, 2002.
From union busting to Chinese sweatshops, there are a thousand reasons to worry about Wal-Mart.
Bullying people from your town to China
Corporations rule. No other institution comes close to matching the power that the 500 biggest corporations have amassed over us. The clout of all 535 members of Congress is nothing compared to the individual and collective power of these predatory behemoths that now roam the globe, working their will over all competing interests.
The aloof and pampered executives who run today's autocratic and secretive corporate states have effectively become our sovereigns. From who gets health care to who pays taxes, from what's on the news to what's in our food, they have usurped the people's democratic authority and now make these broad social decisions in private, based solely on the interests of their corporations. Their attitude was forged back in 1882, when the villainous old robber baron William Henry Vanderbilt spat out: "The public be damned! I'm working for my stockholders."
The media and politicians won't discuss this, for obvious reasons, but we must if we're actually to be a self-governing people. That's why the Lowdown is launching this occasional series of corporate profiles. And why not start with the biggest and one of the worst actors?
The beast from Bentonville
Wal-Mart is now the world's biggest corporation, having passed ExxonMobil for the top slot. It hauls off a stunning $220 billion a year from We the People (more in revenues than the entire GDP of Israel and Ireland combined).
Wal-Mart cultivates an aw-shucks, we're-just-folks-from-Arkansas image of neighborly small-town shopkeepers trying to sell stuff cheaply to you and yours. Behind its soft homespun ads, however, is what one union leader calls "this devouring beast" of a corporation that ruthlessly stomps on workers, neighborhoods, competitors, and suppliers.
Despite its claim that it slashes profits to the bone in order to deliver "Always Low Prices," Wal-Mart banks about $7 billion a year in profits, ranking it among the most profitable entities on the planet.
Of the 10 richest people in the world, five are Waltons--the ruling family of the Wal-Mart empire. S. Robson Walton is ranked by London's "Rich List 2001" as the wealthiest human on the planet, having sacked up more than $65 billion (£45.3 billion) in personal wealth and topping Bill Gates as No. 1.
Wal-Mart and the Waltons got to the top the old-fashioned way--by roughing people up. The corporate ethos emanating from the Bentonville headquarters dictates two guiding principles for all managers: extract the very last penny possible from human toil, and squeeze the last dime from every supplier.
With more than one million employees (three times more than General Motors), this far-flung retailer is the country's largest private employer, and it intends to remake the image of the American workplace in its image--which is not pretty.
Yes, there is the happy-faced "greeter" who welcomes shoppers into every store, and employees (or "associates," as the company grandiosely calls them) gather just before opening each morning for a pep rally, where they are all required to join in the Wal-Mart cheer: "Gimme a 'W!'" shouts the cheerleader; "W!" the dutiful employees respond. "Gimme an A!'" And so on.
Behind this manufactured cheerfulness, however, is the fact that the average employee makes only $15,000 a year for full-time work. Most are denied even this poverty income, for they're held to part-time work. While the company brags that 70% of its workers are full-time, at Wal-Mart "full time" is 28 hours a week, meaning they gross less than $11,000 a year.
Health-care benefits? Only if you've been there two years; then the plan
This will fail on Prior Art. Companies have been charging by the head (seat licenses) for umpteen jillion years. If this DOES go through, then I honestly don't see how the simplest business activity can't be patented.
If it goes through, my next patent:
1. make something
2. Sell it
3. PROFIT!
4. Send royalty check for profit making business practice to me, Ralph Icebag, a brown shoed square in the dead of night, right here in the city of West Gommorah.
"The cube farm is all a twitter right now, as Mt. St. Helens is spewing out a steam plume, and you can see if from our building.
[insert nutty mad scientist voice]
HAHAHAHA!!! TWITTER WHILE YOU CAN, MONKEYBOY!!!
For soon, you will be made DEAD by the evil Evil EVIL PYROCLASTIC FLOW that will DO MY BIDDING and slaughter all of you chortling little fools in your pathetic little weepy office buildings!
JUSTICE WILL BE MINE!!!! MINE!!! MINE I TELL YOU!!!
Interactive storytelling, as pointed out earlier, can be done with children and a parent who actually bothers to talk to them. I've done itwith my daughter plenty oftimes.
But in terms beyond that, it will either be the game industry's beeyotch, or the fertile ground for some pointless PhD project. What this kind of thing does is it transgresses basic performance issues of human to media rituals. there's nothing wrong with that in this pomo a-go-go world, but in terms of How People Actually Operate, the bardic tradition (which is largely cross cultural) is a long and revered activity in human activity, and this requires a StoryTELLER and a an Audience, who is swept into a world of imagination by the eloquence and power of the storyteller.
Interactivity is pointless in that case, and will remain so.
Long ago, we sat before gently flickering lights and told each other stories. Now we sit in front of a rapidly flickering light and expect the light to tell us a story. It's still the flickering light and the story told that matters...
email each mp3 file to yourself as a separate email. In the subject line label it artist / title / XX song title.
This way, where ever you go, your tunage is on tap. It might takea while to DL, but so what! I know if my house was ravaged by some Tornado or Hurricane, and all my CDs were blown to flinders or washed out to sea, I would definitely appreciate the back up...
RS
Re:I think Marx would shit a brick if he could see
on
What The Bubble Got Right
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
Oh brother, what a maroon.
People often want it both ways. They don't want to adapt to a new economy, but they want all of the benefits. You have three choices, and these have existed for most of human history. You can lead, you can follow or you can be dominated. America leads, India follows, others are simply dominated because they refuse to follow the leaders' example and try to grow, and cannot lead on their own, thus another country steps in and economically dominates them. It doesn't mean it's right, but it's a fact of life.
Nothing like being the excuse maker for American Corporate Imperialism, eh? Who the fuck are you? Karl Rove? Or Hermann Goering reincarnated?
Some extremists of course say making the fuel so highly radioactive itself isn't enough to stop proliferation despite the obvious extreme difficulty anyone would have in moving that stuff around. For reasonable people though this is enough to render proliferation impossible for all but the most advanced countries, and those countries are close enough to having the whole ball of wax that they'll likely solve the problem the old fashioned way.
I stand by my opinion - breeders aren't a great idea, nad we need to look in a greatly diversified energy production system in the future.
I read Smil, and he's very good, and I do recommend his book, even though I disagree with his assessments. Rather than dice it up here, there is a great review of his book on amazon HERE
Scroll down to Prof. David Doty's review. I agree with his assessment of Smil's book.
1) Nobody has ever successfully managed to create a weapon from reactor grade plutonium.
A completely specious and unproveable assertion. One, it's damn near impossible to prove a negative, and two: then how DID India get plutonium? The hard way by sitting there and carefully irradiating Uranium in a lab, or, did they simply pull the Plutonium generated in their experimental FTBR? Hmmmm? Also: the other countries that have Breeders already have nuclear weapons, except for Japan.
NEXT!
Commercial reactors (that don't get shutdown every month or two) create reactor grade, not weapons grade plutonium. This is useless for weapons.
Basically, the truth is this. Breeders don't make anything of significant value as a weapon.
Patently false as the above link notes.
The claim that they do has been repeated so many times by the ignorant anti-nukes that everyone accepts it as reality now.
I don't see the DOE as a bunch of ignorant anti-nukes.
In any case, nobody proposes allowing Pakistan to build breeder reactors.
But therein lies the rub. EVERYONE uses energy, therefore any permanent energy slution needs to be universal. Everyone wants more energy, especially as people continue to breed like viruses. The energy has to come from somewhere.Carbon based energy sources are not good, and most alternative sources are inadequte to the task. Fission nukes come in two varieties, one of which (breeders) is politically inadvisible. The other fission system relies on a finite resource of Uranium. Permanent solutions require universality and permanence, and fission reactors provide neither.
Reactors constructed in the US pose zero proliferation risk, or weren't you aware that the US is already a nuclear power?
No such thing as zero proliferation. 150 years ago, Prussia was an important and powerful military state. Now, it's eastern Poland... the USA is just another country. We are not special, and eventually we too will crumble and disappear. If we crumble and disappear with thousands of tons of Plutonium sitting around, life could get messy.
Also, I am NOT anti-nuke - not by any stretch. Note: we need nuclear power, and will need it for some time to come. It's just that it's not a panacea. I see it as part of a temporary bridge to a more permanent solution, such as lunar He3 mining for fusion (power for 25,000 years at present consumption rates) and more localised and cleaner alternative system for local needs (wind, solar, geothermal, etc) and a reduction in population, which would drive down need for power.
"the answer, without going into a lot of phyics is that between proven sources and the regenerative capacity of so-called breeder reactors, we could could go [at present power consumption levels] for centuries."
This is true, however: as you noted in the title: POLITICS is the problem. And it's not the kind of politics of Republicrats vs Demoblicans - it's the politics of CRAZY insane and desperately poor nations getting their mitts on fissile material for ugly bomb making. Breeder reactors make plutonium, and the last thing I want to do is let people like North Korea, Sudan, Chechnya, Congo, Burma, etc. get any of it.
Proliferation of breeder reactors will permit theft and sale of Pu - even if the reactor isn't in the troubled country. All it has to do is be in a Ally's land and that ally may not be on the up and up. Example: Pakistan.
I agree - in the Best OF Worlds, we should be able to do breeders, but due to political realities, we can't and shouldn't bother "going down that road".
I think a much more fruitful direction would be to
1. make present fission plants safer and more efficient,
2. increase research and development of other sources of power (geothermal used to crack water for hydrogen - I trust Iceland a lot more than Saudi Arabia...) such as geothermal, hydrogen, tidal, wind and solar.
3. improve efficiency of consumption, so as to reduce load
4. Reduce the population. A lot.
point 4 is probably the most important and oddly, the most obvious, but will be the most difficult policy to implement, and would tend to obviate a lot of the power problems.
No newphobia, you're just not paying attention to basic physics. Law of conservation of Energy and Mass.
Take a one cubic mile mass of solid granite. 5280 x 5280 x 5280 (cubic mile) x 170 lbs (one cubic foot of granite) and you get:
25,023,651,840,000 pounds, or
12,511,825,920 tons
this is an object MUCH SMALLER than the asteroid in question. In fact, I would say it is 1/4 the size of the obect in question, but I doubt the asteroid Toutanis is made completely of granite. It's probably part rock, iron, and ice like most of these things, and so it's mass (my pure out of my ass guess) is probably only 2 - 3 times that a 1 cubic mile of granite. so let's be generous to the ice-side and say 2.5 times. that would be:
31,279,564,800 TONS.
THIRTY ONE BILLION TONS.
OK....
And it's what?: 2.7 miles x 1.3 miles (roughly). Which means it is probably tumbling through space and is (obviously) not spherical. so you blow it up in the middle and you get TWO big chunks of say 15 billion tons each and a billion or so tons of gravel and million ton objects.
So, what say we put THAT in a trajectory through space in such a way that it directly impact over your head. Better yet: I'll even give you some room: I'll put you 500 miles away.
And THIS is what would happen, and this is assuming it's made out of average loose crap and I averaged it to a 2 mile object:
Your Inputs:
Distance from Impact: 805.00 km = 499.90 miles
Projectile Diameter: 3218.68 m = 10557.27 ft = 2.00 miles
Projectile Density: 1500 kg/m3
Impact Velocity: 20.00 km/s = 12.42 miles/s
Impact Angle: 90 degrees
Target Density: 2500 kg/m3
Target Type: Sedimentary Rock
Energy:
Energy before atmospheric entry: 5.24 x 1021 Joules = 1.25 x 106 MegaTons TNT. The average interval between impacts of this size somewhere on Earth during the last 4 billion years is 5.4 x 10^6years
Atmospheric Entry:
The projectile begins to breakup at an altitude of 75100 meters = 246000 ft.
The projectile reaches the ground in a broken condition. The mass of projectile strikes the surface at velocity 19.9 km/s = 12.4 miles/s. The impact energy is 5.19 x 1021 Joules = 1.24 x 106MegaTons.
The broken projectile fragments strike the ground in an ellipse of dimension 3.32 km by 3.32 km
Transient Crater Diameter: 25.2 km = 15.6 miles. Transient Crater Depth: 8.89 km = 5.52 miles
Final Crater Diameter: 38.5 km = 23.9 miles. Final Crater Depth: 0.888 km = 0.551 miles
The crater formed is a complex crater.
The volume of the target melted or vaporized is 46.2 km3 = 11.1 miles. Roughly half the melt remains in the crater , where its average thickness is 93 meters = 305 feet
Seismic Effects:
The major seismic shaking will arrive at approximately 161 seconds.Richter Scale Magnitude: 8.7.Mercalli Scale Intensity at a distance of 805 km:
III. Felt quite noticeably by persons indoors, especially on upper floors of buildings. Many people do not recognize it as an earthquake. Standing motor cars may rock slightly. Vibrations similar to the passing of a truck.
IV. Felt indoors by many, outdoors by few during the day. At night, some awakened. Dishes, windows, doors disturbed; walls make cracking sound. Sensation like heavy truck striking building. Standing motor cars rocked noticeably.
Ejecta:
The ejecta will arrive approximately 436 seconds after the impact. At your position the ejecta arrives in scattered fragments
Average Ejecta Thickness: 7.99 mm = 0.315 inches
Mean Fragment Diameter: 1.01 mm = 0.0396 inches
Air Blast:
The air blast will arrive at approximately 2440 seconds.
Peak Overpressure: 13600 Pa = 0.136 bars = 1.93 psi
Max wind velocity: 30.3 m/s = 67.9 mph
Sound Intensity: 83 dB (
Let's try a simple mental experiment. Imagine two guns. One is loaded with a standard lead bullet. The other is loaded with lead dust, with exactly the same mass as that of the bullet. Or let's even make it twice the same mass. Which of the guns you'd rather have firing at you?
You're still wrong, because of the masses, velocities and time involved, and I've discussed that elsewhere.
Your simple mental experiment is rong as it is simple minded. Now, to scale your experiment, take the bullet travelling directly down at your head, but instead of going through 100 miles of air (and most of that is in the last 10 miles) the bullet is coming at you at bullet speed, 2000 mph, instead of 25,000 mph, and it's only going through 600 feet of air instead of 100 miles, and most of it is very thin except for the last few feet which are normal pressure. So, you have a few ounces of lead in a bullet going right at your head at 2000mph or a few ounces of lead powder or buckshot heading at your head at 2000 mph. Which would you rather deal with? Especially considering that neither the bullet or grit has much atmosphere to contend with until the very last? See?
I posted this before, I'll post it again - it seems no one is listening.
If you blow up an asteroid of some arbitrary tonnage, say, a nice round billion tons, the planet is STILL fucked. Why?
Simple, and I repeat, a billion tons of gravel is still a billion tons of rock. Sure: there is more surface area and greater heating, BUT - all you have done is taken a catastrophic impact event of a billion tons of rock hitting several quintillion tons of rock (earth) into a billion tons of rock hitting a few million tons of air. At 25,000 mph, the kinetic energy of a billion tons of gravel will get converted directly into heat. So instead of a giant pinpoint nuke going off, it would turn a larger area of the planet into something like a broiler set on HIGH, and this heat event would last quite a long time, as anything that can burn will burn (explosively). Net effect: we all die.
Also: hitting it with a nuke ASSUMES it will *ALL* be reduced to gravel, and this isn't necessarily true. Many asteroids aren't that well put together, and there is a greater chance that by setting off a nuke on an asteroid, instead of a billion ton rock hitting in one spot, you could as easily end up with, say, four 200 million ton rocks all plowing into roughly the same little patch on earth AND 200 million tons of sand, gravel, frozen gasses, and other crap to turn the place into the solar system's biggest hibachi.
I can assure you what I speak is true - IANAAP (I am not an astrophysicist) but I have friends who are, and they all tell me the exact same thing:
blowing it up only works in (bad) hollywood movies.
You can't live outside the law of the conservation of mass and energy. A billion (or more) tons of rock is still a billion tons of rock, and when it's travelling at 25,000 miles per hour, it'll blow through 100 miles of atmosphere in about (but not a lot more) than a quarter of a second. BOOM. Game Over.
So, to re-iterate for the jillionth time:
BLOWING UP AN ASTEROID REALLY DOESN'T WORK. PERIOD. REALLY.
painting it white, with enough lead time would indeed work. Blowing it up, would not.
Why?
Because a billion tons of gravel travelling at 25,000 miles per hour is just as deadly as a billion ton chunk of rock travelling at 25,000 miles per hour. It's not the rock itself that's the problem. It's the kinetic energy from the object's mass that's the problem. Gravel - rock - it's all the same at 25,000 miles per hour...
The only way a nuke really would work would be if it were small enough to nudge it off course, wihich would mean getting a BIG lead time on it. and that assumes that the asteroid is solid. It seems a lot of them aren't all thet well put together and a nuke would only turn the bullet/asteroid into a shotgun blast, per my previous description.
Ben, the two of us need look no more
We both found what we were looking for
With a friend to call my own
I'll never be alone
And you, my friend, will see
You've got a friend in me
(you've got a friend in me)
Ben, you're always running here and there
Finding dead bodies everywhere
If you ever look behind
And don't like what you find
Keep going and follow my distant calls
Under these broken walls
(under these broken walls)
I used to scream "HELP!!!" and "ME"
Now it's "us", now it's "we"
I used to scream "HELP!!!" and "ME"
Now it's "us", now it's "we"
Ben, most people would turn you away
I can't hear a word they say
They only see you as some trouble
Searching all this rubble
I'm sure they'd think again
If they had a friend like Ben
sun is in a death spiral and they're geting increasingly desperate. They've re-arranged the deck chairs so often that they think they have a new boat, but they don't and so the flunkies on one side of the ship are taking on water to help balance the other side - it's a mess.
I don't want them to disappear - they make great gear - but I know so many ex-Sun people and they all have the same grim view: stick a fork in it.
is pretty freakin' nasty, though - I don't think the technology would have helped either side's case - it just made the case go by faster.
I think that if there was a situation where the evidence required more tactile understanding I think this system will do the case a disservice. But this particular case - man - those people were first class assholes. I'm not for the death penalty - I would prefer to hand out a sentence of life imprisonment with Bubba The Butt Bandit. Torture is so much more amusing. But I know that's a big point of contention - Suffice to say, I think these asshats are going to get something similar to what they deserve, and the technology had no bearing on the distribution of justice.
It seems they were guilty Guilty GUILTY of really bad things.
I completely agree. There seems to be a number of rather reactionary slashdotters who are perfectly happy to bury a perfectly good post as "Flamebait" or "Troll" because it doesn't fit their perspective.
And it happens from both directions - I've seen some perfectly rational discussion by some clearly right wing people get buried as Flamebait or Troll for no apparent reason. However, that said, I've noticed that the people who get the shortest end of the stick are Greens and Leftists, especially when they go poking holes in Republican and Libertarian balloons.
The political spectrum on slashdot runs the gamut, but it has several nodes that are crueler in their moderation than others when criticised, mostly being Libertarian Capitalists and Neocon Republicans. Sometimes a Green gets a feather up his butt about a post, and I'll see something oddly moderated.
What I have also noticed is that if someone posts "under their name", i.e., not as an Anonymous Coward, and it still has a positive number value but the condition is "Troll" or "Flamebait" it often indicates that the post is neither a Troll or Flamebait, but is simply the victim of some overzealous moderator with an ax to grind. And I don't see how metamoderation fixes that.
I'll probably get moderated by some thinskinned overzealous moderator as Flamebait or Troll, but I hope not. I think this is a very important discussion that needs to be had.
Slashdot Mirror
If Bush gets re-elected, expect more of this....
RS
So the signal route would be:
digital receiver -> monitor -> output -> TBC -> digital recorder.
Yeah - there will be a little loss, but you'll still get a pretty damn good copy. So, no, I was not being flamebait, nor was I off topic. I was just trying to point out that there are ways around all that crap.
If I'm going to flame someone for something, you'll know... and I NEVER post anything as an AC, unlike some AC's here, because I believe what I post is true. When I'm wrong, I appreciate being corrected - it's a little thing called "learning".
RS
at least top ten....
Once again - this "flag" will be a problem for the Common Ordinary copy maker, but all it takes is a nice little Time Base Corrector to strip the digital crap out to clean up the signal, and then route that signal into your recorder of choice. Done.
RS
bump bump bump...
Why... IT"S A TROPICAL PARADISE!
RS
How Wal-Mart is Remaking our World
By Jim Hightower.
Posted April 26, 2002.
From union busting to Chinese sweatshops, there are a thousand reasons to worry about Wal-Mart.
Bullying people from your town to China
Corporations rule. No other institution comes close to matching the power that the 500 biggest corporations have amassed over us. The clout of all 535 members of Congress is nothing compared to the individual and collective power of these predatory behemoths that now roam the globe, working their will over all competing interests.
The aloof and pampered executives who run today's autocratic and secretive corporate states have effectively become our sovereigns. From who gets health care to who pays taxes, from what's on the news to what's in our food, they have usurped the people's democratic authority and now make these broad social decisions in private, based solely on the interests of their corporations. Their attitude was forged back in 1882, when the villainous old robber baron William Henry Vanderbilt spat out: "The public be damned! I'm working for my stockholders."
The media and politicians won't discuss this, for obvious reasons, but we must if we're actually to be a self-governing people. That's why the Lowdown is launching this occasional series of corporate profiles. And why not start with the biggest and one of the worst actors?
The beast from Bentonville
Wal-Mart is now the world's biggest corporation, having passed ExxonMobil for the top slot. It hauls off a stunning $220 billion a year from We the People (more in revenues than the entire GDP of Israel and Ireland combined).
Wal-Mart cultivates an aw-shucks, we're-just-folks-from-Arkansas image of neighborly small-town shopkeepers trying to sell stuff cheaply to you and yours. Behind its soft homespun ads, however, is what one union leader calls "this devouring beast" of a corporation that ruthlessly stomps on workers, neighborhoods, competitors, and suppliers.
Despite its claim that it slashes profits to the bone in order to deliver "Always Low Prices," Wal-Mart banks about $7 billion a year in profits, ranking it among the most profitable entities on the planet.
Of the 10 richest people in the world, five are Waltons--the ruling family of the Wal-Mart empire. S. Robson Walton is ranked by London's "Rich List 2001" as the wealthiest human on the planet, having sacked up more than $65 billion (£45.3 billion) in personal wealth and topping Bill Gates as No. 1.
Wal-Mart and the Waltons got to the top the old-fashioned way--by roughing people up. The corporate ethos emanating from the Bentonville headquarters dictates two guiding principles for all managers: extract the very last penny possible from human toil, and squeeze the last dime from every supplier.
With more than one million employees (three times more than General Motors), this far-flung retailer is the country's largest private employer, and it intends to remake the image of the American workplace in its image--which is not pretty.
Yes, there is the happy-faced "greeter" who welcomes shoppers into every store, and employees (or "associates," as the company grandiosely calls them) gather just before opening each morning for a pep rally, where they are all required to join in the Wal-Mart cheer: "Gimme a 'W!'" shouts the cheerleader; "W!" the dutiful employees respond. "Gimme an A!'" And so on.
Behind this manufactured cheerfulness, however, is the fact that the average employee makes only $15,000 a year for full-time work. Most are denied even this poverty income, for they're held to part-time work. While the company brags that 70% of its workers are full-time, at Wal-Mart "full time" is 28 hours a week, meaning they gross less than $11,000 a year.
Health-care benefits? Only if you've been there two years; then the plan
If it goes through, my next patent:
1. make something
2. Sell it
3. PROFIT!
4. Send royalty check for profit making business practice to me, Ralph Icebag, a brown shoed square in the dead of night, right here in the city of West Gommorah.
Bah.
RS
[insert nutty mad scientist voice]
HAHAHAHA!!! TWITTER WHILE YOU CAN, MONKEYBOY!!!
For soon, you will be made DEAD by the evil Evil EVIL PYROCLASTIC FLOW that will DO MY BIDDING and slaughter all of you chortling little fools in your pathetic little weepy office buildings!
JUSTICE WILL BE MINE!!!! MINE!!! MINE I TELL YOU!!!
[/nutty voice]
RS
But in terms beyond that, it will either be the game industry's beeyotch, or the fertile ground for some pointless PhD project. What this kind of thing does is it transgresses basic performance issues of human to media rituals. there's nothing wrong with that in this pomo a-go-go world, but in terms of How People Actually Operate, the bardic tradition (which is largely cross cultural) is a long and revered activity in human activity, and this requires a StoryTELLER and a an Audience, who is swept into a world of imagination by the eloquence and power of the storyteller.
Interactivity is pointless in that case, and will remain so.
Long ago, we sat before gently flickering lights and told each other stories. Now we sit in front of a rapidly flickering light and expect the light to tell us a story. It's still the flickering light and the story told that matters...
RS
WTF are you smokin?
RS
This way, where ever you go, your tunage is on tap. It might takea while to DL, but so what! I know if my house was ravaged by some Tornado or Hurricane, and all my CDs were blown to flinders or washed out to sea, I would definitely appreciate the back up...
RS
People often want it both ways. They don't want to adapt to a new economy, but they want all of the benefits. You have three choices, and these have existed for most of human history. You can lead, you can follow or you can be dominated. America leads, India follows, others are simply dominated because they refuse to follow the leaders' example and try to grow, and cannot lead on their own, thus another country steps in and economically dominates them. It doesn't mean it's right, but it's a fact of life.
Nothing like being the excuse maker for American Corporate Imperialism, eh? Who the fuck are you? Karl Rove? Or Hermann Goering reincarnated?
RS
After 9/11, this argument has no merit.
RS
I read Smil, and he's very good, and I do recommend his book, even though I disagree with his assessments. Rather than dice it up here, there is a great review of his book on amazon HERE
Scroll down to Prof. David Doty's review. I agree with his assessment of Smil's book.
RS
1) Nobody has ever successfully managed to create a weapon from reactor grade plutonium.
A completely specious and unproveable assertion. One, it's damn near impossible to prove a negative, and two: then how DID India get plutonium? The hard way by sitting there and carefully irradiating Uranium in a lab, or, did they simply pull the Plutonium generated in their experimental FTBR? Hmmmm? Also: the other countries that have Breeders already have nuclear weapons, except for Japan.
NEXT!
Commercial reactors (that don't get shutdown every month or two) create reactor grade, not weapons grade plutonium. This is useless for weapons.
Bullshit. Proof is HERE
NEXT!
2) Dirty bombs.
I didn't say ANYTHING about dirty bombs.
NEXT!
Basically, the truth is this. Breeders don't make anything of significant value as a weapon.
Patently false as the above link notes.
The claim that they do has been repeated so many times by the ignorant anti-nukes that everyone accepts it as reality now.
I don't see the DOE as a bunch of ignorant anti-nukes.
In any case, nobody proposes allowing Pakistan to build breeder reactors.
But therein lies the rub. EVERYONE uses energy, therefore any permanent energy slution needs to be universal. Everyone wants more energy, especially as people continue to breed like viruses. The energy has to come from somewhere.Carbon based energy sources are not good, and most alternative sources are inadequte to the task. Fission nukes come in two varieties, one of which (breeders) is politically inadvisible. The other fission system relies on a finite resource of Uranium. Permanent solutions require universality and permanence, and fission reactors provide neither.
Reactors constructed in the US pose zero proliferation risk, or weren't you aware that the US is already a nuclear power?
No such thing as zero proliferation. 150 years ago, Prussia was an important and powerful military state. Now, it's eastern Poland... the USA is just another country. We are not special, and eventually we too will crumble and disappear. If we crumble and disappear with thousands of tons of Plutonium sitting around, life could get messy.
Also, I am NOT anti-nuke - not by any stretch. Note: we need nuclear power, and will need it for some time to come. It's just that it's not a panacea. I see it as part of a temporary bridge to a more permanent solution, such as lunar He3 mining for fusion (power for 25,000 years at present consumption rates) and more localised and cleaner alternative system for local needs (wind, solar, geothermal, etc) and a reduction in population, which would drive down need for power.
Read the whole thing and think before you post.
RS
"the answer, without going into a lot of phyics is that between proven sources and the regenerative capacity of so-called breeder reactors, we could could go [at present power consumption levels] for centuries."
This is true, however: as you noted in the title: POLITICS is the problem. And it's not the kind of politics of Republicrats vs Demoblicans - it's the politics of CRAZY insane and desperately poor nations getting their mitts on fissile material for ugly bomb making. Breeder reactors make plutonium, and the last thing I want to do is let people like North Korea, Sudan, Chechnya, Congo, Burma, etc. get any of it.
Proliferation of breeder reactors will permit theft and sale of Pu - even if the reactor isn't in the troubled country. All it has to do is be in a Ally's land and that ally may not be on the up and up. Example: Pakistan.
I agree - in the Best OF Worlds, we should be able to do breeders, but due to political realities, we can't and shouldn't bother "going down that road".
I think a much more fruitful direction would be to
1. make present fission plants safer and more efficient,
2. increase research and development of other sources of power (geothermal used to crack water for hydrogen - I trust Iceland a lot more than Saudi Arabia...) such as geothermal, hydrogen, tidal, wind and solar.
3. improve efficiency of consumption, so as to reduce load
4. Reduce the population. A lot.
point 4 is probably the most important and oddly, the most obvious, but will be the most difficult policy to implement, and would tend to obviate a lot of the power problems.
cheers,
RS
Take a one cubic mile mass of solid granite. 5280 x 5280 x 5280 (cubic mile) x 170 lbs (one cubic foot of granite) and you get:
25,023,651,840,000 pounds, or
12,511,825,920 tons
this is an object MUCH SMALLER than the asteroid in question. In fact, I would say it is 1/4 the size of the obect in question, but I doubt the asteroid Toutanis is made completely of granite. It's probably part rock, iron, and ice like most of these things, and so it's mass (my pure out of my ass guess) is probably only 2 - 3 times that a 1 cubic mile of granite. so let's be generous to the ice-side and say 2.5 times. that would be:
31,279,564,800 TONS.
THIRTY ONE BILLION TONS.
OK....
And it's what?: 2.7 miles x 1.3 miles (roughly). Which means it is probably tumbling through space and is (obviously) not spherical. so you blow it up in the middle and you get TWO big chunks of say 15 billion tons each and a billion or so tons of gravel and million ton objects.
So, what say we put THAT in a trajectory through space in such a way that it directly impact over your head. Better yet: I'll even give you some room: I'll put you 500 miles away.
And THIS is what would happen, and this is assuming it's made out of average loose crap and I averaged it to a 2 mile object:
(per this site: asteroid impact effects calculator
Your Inputs:
Distance from Impact: 805.00 km = 499.90 miles
Projectile Diameter: 3218.68 m = 10557.27 ft = 2.00 miles
Projectile Density: 1500 kg/m3
Impact Velocity: 20.00 km/s = 12.42 miles/s
Impact Angle: 90 degrees
Target Density: 2500 kg/m3
Target Type: Sedimentary Rock
Energy: Energy before atmospheric entry: 5.24 x 1021
Joules = 1.25 x 106 MegaTons TNT. The average interval between impacts of this size somewhere on Earth during the last 4 billion years is 5.4 x 10^6years
Atmospheric Entry:
The projectile begins to breakup at an altitude of 75100 meters = 246000 ft. The projectile reaches the ground in a broken condition. The mass of projectile strikes the surface at velocity 19.9 km/s = 12.4 miles/s. The impact energy is 5.19 x 1021 Joules = 1.24 x 106MegaTons. The broken projectile fragments strike the ground in an ellipse of dimension 3.32 km by 3.32 km
Transient Crater Diameter: 25.2 km = 15.6 miles. Transient Crater Depth: 8.89 km = 5.52 miles
Final Crater Diameter: 38.5 km = 23.9 miles. Final Crater Depth: 0.888 km = 0.551 miles
The crater formed is a complex crater.
The volume of the target melted or vaporized is 46.2 km3 = 11.1 miles. Roughly half the melt remains in the crater , where its average thickness is 93 meters = 305 feet
Seismic Effects: The major seismic shaking will arrive at approximately 161 seconds.Richter Scale Magnitude: 8.7.Mercalli Scale Intensity at a distance of 805 km:
III. Felt quite noticeably by persons indoors, especially on upper floors of buildings. Many people do not recognize it as an earthquake. Standing motor cars may rock slightly. Vibrations similar to the passing of a truck.
IV. Felt indoors by many, outdoors by few during the day. At night, some awakened. Dishes, windows, doors disturbed; walls make cracking sound. Sensation like heavy truck striking building. Standing motor cars rocked noticeably.
Ejecta:
The ejecta will arrive approximately 436 seconds after the impact. At your position the ejecta arrives in scattered fragments
Average Ejecta Thickness: 7.99 mm = 0.315 inches
Mean Fragment Diameter: 1.01 mm = 0.0396 inches
Air Blast:
The air blast will arrive at approximately 2440 seconds.
Peak Overpressure: 13600 Pa = 0.136 bars = 1.93 psi
Max wind velocity: 30.3 m/s = 67.9 mph
Sound Intensity: 83 dB (
RS
You're still wrong, because of the masses, velocities and time involved, and I've discussed that elsewhere.
Your simple mental experiment is rong as it is simple minded. Now, to scale your experiment, take the bullet travelling directly down at your head, but instead of going through 100 miles of air (and most of that is in the last 10 miles) the bullet is coming at you at bullet speed, 2000 mph, instead of 25,000 mph, and it's only going through 600 feet of air instead of 100 miles, and most of it is very thin except for the last few feet which are normal pressure. So, you have a few ounces of lead in a bullet going right at your head at 2000mph or a few ounces of lead powder or buckshot heading at your head at 2000 mph. Which would you rather deal with? Especially considering that neither the bullet or grit has much atmosphere to contend with until the very last? See?
You're still DEAD.
RS
If you blow up an asteroid of some arbitrary tonnage, say, a nice round billion tons, the planet is STILL fucked. Why?
Simple, and I repeat, a billion tons of gravel is still a billion tons of rock. Sure: there is more surface area and greater heating, BUT - all you have done is taken a catastrophic impact event of a billion tons of rock hitting several quintillion tons of rock (earth) into a billion tons of rock hitting a few million tons of air. At 25,000 mph, the kinetic energy of a billion tons of gravel will get converted directly into heat. So instead of a giant pinpoint nuke going off, it would turn a larger area of the planet into something like a broiler set on HIGH, and this heat event would last quite a long time, as anything that can burn will burn (explosively). Net effect: we all die.
Also: hitting it with a nuke ASSUMES it will *ALL* be reduced to gravel, and this isn't necessarily true. Many asteroids aren't that well put together, and there is a greater chance that by setting off a nuke on an asteroid, instead of a billion ton rock hitting in one spot, you could as easily end up with, say, four 200 million ton rocks all plowing into roughly the same little patch on earth AND 200 million tons of sand, gravel, frozen gasses, and other crap to turn the place into the solar system's biggest hibachi.
I can assure you what I speak is true - IANAAP (I am not an astrophysicist) but I have friends who are, and they all tell me the exact same thing:
blowing it up only works in (bad) hollywood movies.
You can't live outside the law of the conservation of mass and energy. A billion (or more) tons of rock is still a billion tons of rock, and when it's travelling at 25,000 miles per hour, it'll blow through 100 miles of atmosphere in about (but not a lot more) than a quarter of a second. BOOM. Game Over.
So, to re-iterate for the jillionth time:
BLOWING UP AN ASTEROID REALLY DOESN'T WORK. PERIOD. REALLY.
RS
Why?
Because a billion tons of gravel travelling at 25,000 miles per hour is just as deadly as a billion ton chunk of rock travelling at 25,000 miles per hour. It's not the rock itself that's the problem. It's the kinetic energy from the object's mass that's the problem. Gravel - rock - it's all the same at 25,000 miles per hour...
The only way a nuke really would work would be if it were small enough to nudge it off course, wihich would mean getting a BIG lead time on it. and that assumes that the asteroid is solid. It seems a lot of them aren't all thet well put together and a nuke would only turn the bullet/asteroid into a shotgun blast, per my previous description.
RS
We both found what we were looking for
With a friend to call my own
I'll never be alone
And you, my friend, will see
You've got a friend in me
(you've got a friend in me)
Ben, you're always running here and there
Finding dead bodies everywhere
If you ever look behind
And don't like what you find
Keep going and follow my distant calls
Under these broken walls
(under these broken walls)
I used to scream "HELP!!!" and "ME"
Now it's "us", now it's "we"
I used to scream "HELP!!!" and "ME"
Now it's "us", now it's "we"
Ben, most people would turn you away
I can't hear a word they say
They only see you as some trouble
Searching all this rubble
I'm sure they'd think again
If they had a friend like Ben
(a friend) Like Ben
(like Ben) Like Ben
I don't want them to disappear - they make great gear - but I know so many ex-Sun people and they all have the same grim view: stick a fork in it.
RS
I think that if there was a situation where the evidence required more tactile understanding I think this system will do the case a disservice. But this particular case - man - those people were first class assholes. I'm not for the death penalty - I would prefer to hand out a sentence of life imprisonment with Bubba The Butt Bandit. Torture is so much more amusing. But I know that's a big point of contention - Suffice to say, I think these asshats are going to get something similar to what they deserve, and the technology had no bearing on the distribution of justice.
It seems they were guilty Guilty GUILTY of really bad things.
RS
And it happens from both directions - I've seen some perfectly rational discussion by some clearly right wing people get buried as Flamebait or Troll for no apparent reason. However, that said, I've noticed that the people who get the shortest end of the stick are Greens and Leftists, especially when they go poking holes in Republican and Libertarian balloons.
The political spectrum on slashdot runs the gamut, but it has several nodes that are crueler in their moderation than others when criticised, mostly being Libertarian Capitalists and Neocon Republicans. Sometimes a Green gets a feather up his butt about a post, and I'll see something oddly moderated.
What I have also noticed is that if someone posts "under their name", i.e., not as an Anonymous Coward, and it still has a positive number value but the condition is "Troll" or "Flamebait" it often indicates that the post is neither a Troll or Flamebait, but is simply the victim of some overzealous moderator with an ax to grind. And I don't see how metamoderation fixes that.
I'll probably get moderated by some thinskinned overzealous moderator as Flamebait or Troll, but I hope not. I think this is a very important discussion that needs to be had.
RS
RS