I went to other way for the exactly same reason: I switched to Opera because it was considerably faster on my not quite retired machine: 266MHz, 64MB, Win95-System.
The latest 7.23 version of Opera is quite stable - even with a Win95 system!
For this simple lesson in effective economy you should get extra karma points! This is excactly the way how region code work in my little country. As a consumer you can buy any code you want (as long as you get it...) and on most cheaper player you can switch codes almost like the chanel on your TV. However, it is illigal for shops to sell other than code 2.
By the way: In China (Kunming to be precise) they sold the English version of 'Finding Nemo' end of Aug 03 in every regular DVD shop for half a dollar!
Thanks for this really insightful eyeopener. I just trashed about 15 reports about 'privatisation in the supply sector' which claim something else. But since they mostly made by tax subsidised non-profit research organisation they must be corrupted by the governement and their only try to justify their research grants.
Not quite sure whether my English is so bad or whether you just read the word 'governement' and started with your rant! Let me repeat it bluntly: Completely free electricity market = MONOPOLY OF ONE COMPANY! Completely free electricity market = NO COMPETITION! In this sector this just does not work that simple. Same thing for water supply or wastewater removal. It is a very tricky thing to guarantee a competitive market and there are many examples where the free market just failed miserably. You can have a completely free paperclip market, because a) it does not really matter if there is a paperclip shortage of 48 hours and b) you do not need expensive paperclip-pipes to every consumer. For electricity you need to have sophisticated rules that regulates and separates the producer from the seller and both needs to be integrated into a transportation scheme. Or would you let your competition use your power line to supply electricity to one of your customers if you would not be forced to do so?
Bottom line: A completely free market is a myth! Only strict controlled regulations (paid by the taxpayer) guarantee competition. The question is: What kind of regulation are best for the market...
It's just not that easy to get a fierce competition if the distribution of energy to the customer is de facto a natural monopoly. The more customer you can deliver energy to the more cost efficient you will be. One single big company delivering will be the most cost effective solution and in this case these guys can determine the price at will. So a completely free market does not work for electricity. You need a very sophisticated split-up of the market -- controlled and guarateed by the governement -- that makes competition possible. A somehow good example is the telecom business. A example that it is not that easy is California.
About a year ago I was dumb enough to open a hotmail account. Answered all the questions, chose a login and password, logged out and logged back in immediately. There were already 42 Spam e-mail waiting for me! Two days later I had something over 200 e-mails (Spam, Spam, Spam....)! There need some seriouse improvements on hotmail if they want to use that as a main e-mail client!
Yep, couldn't agree more. Lately I submitted a review paper and the reviewer commented 'that there was nothing new in the paper and that everything could be found in the literature'!
Because 0.1 ng is a very tiny amount! Bits of DNA is hanging around everywhere and is relatively stable. So it is very difficult to keep a Lab DNA free. The duplication of DNA in the PCR is quite specific for the targeted area of the DNA, however there is always a certain affinity for other junk DNA. You want to make sure that you have enough of your DNA sample so that they win the duplication race in the PCR. Otherwise you will duplicate a lot of junk and it is difficult to get clear results in the following tests.
From the CNN-article: "There are about 166 million residential phone numbers in the United States, the FTC said [...]" So every employee is personally taking care of 80 phone lines! Hey, by now Joe should know that I am not interested....
The natural biodegradation of BTEX is a common one. As you already mentioned in your last parent, in most cases oxygen (alternative nitrate or iron-ore) is missing for the fast and complete breakdown of these organic compound. PCE and TCE actually act as a kind of oxygen (= electron acceptor). If oxygen is not available the bugs dump electrons from the organic stuff on the chloride and gain energy. This works fine for PCE, TCE and DCE, but doesn't work for vinyl chloride (redox potential). For the degradation of vinyl chloride you need oxygen and then it will be degraded like any other organic compound. So it is fairly complicated to get rid of PCE and I am really amazed that they ended up dumping this toxic stuff into the ground in order to clean up a not very toxic black water spill. But hey, this is America - anything is possible.
Good comment - As usual the newspaper article simplifies the entire story a little bit. I do not now any case where microbes actually are pumped into the ground. If you use a specific strain then you keep them in a bioreactor and pump & treat the contaminated groundwater in these facilities. Otherwise it is most likely that they just die.
The bioremediation research have to show that there actually is a bug that does the job - a proof of BIO-remediation. Hey, and if they once identified the bug they also can name it... And then they define which conditions can keep these bugs happy. Oxygen might just be the right stuff for them.
However, the bioremediation story with U is a kind of complicated, because U is not just floating around lonely, but usually is associated with a whole bunch of stuff. Typically there are also many detergents and complexing agents that keep the radioactive metals soluble. Especially NTA and EDTA (also used in washing detergents), known to be quite persistent, and as long these are present the dissolved U is stabilised. You need to show under what conditions the complexing agents can be degraded and then in addition how U can be precipitated. There's quite a bit of research going on for many years. Just check out google with the keywords "in-situ bioremediation groundwater radioactive" (Yep, I know this could be a very sophisticated link - I am new here, so let me some time to get use to the HTML tag stuff.)
In most cases the microbes are not the problem. There are hanging around everywhere and if they get enough food then they grow very fast. There many smaller oil spills that get cleaned just by natural microbes in the groundwater. The main limiting factor is in most cases oxygen. Yes, there are also microbes that can use nitrate, sulfate, iron-ores,... for degrading oil; however, most spills contain much more oil then these second nutrient they feed on.
Many remediation techniques actually don't add microbes but put oxygen, nitrate or iron (dumping your old car down a hole is not good enough!) into the ground.
You're absolutely right. The stuff doesn't disappear. However, the main threat is that the radioactive waste is transportet to the surface where it can harm wildlife or pollute drinking water. So you like to immobilise the radioactive elements so that these buggers stays deep down there. Mostly the threat is then more or less over (until it gets mobilised again, but that's an other story).
Slashdot Mirror
I went to other way for the exactly same reason: I switched to Opera because it was considerably faster on my not quite retired machine: 266MHz, 64MB, Win95-System. The latest 7.23 version of Opera is quite stable - even with a Win95 system!
Well said! Common sense seems to disappear when people try to deal with piracy (or terrorism).
"It smelled really bad," Cheddar is just not made to melt - use something decent and Li would have never changed the wavelenth!
For this simple lesson in effective economy you should get extra karma points! This is excactly the way how region code work in my little country. As a consumer you can buy any code you want (as long as you get it...) and on most cheaper player you can switch codes almost like the chanel on your TV. However, it is illigal for shops to sell other than code 2. By the way: In China (Kunming to be precise) they sold the English version of 'Finding Nemo' end of Aug 03 in every regular DVD shop for half a dollar!
Thanks for this really insightful eyeopener. I just trashed about 15 reports about 'privatisation in the supply sector' which claim something else. But since they mostly made by tax subsidised non-profit research organisation they must be corrupted by the governement and their only try to justify their research grants.
Not quite sure whether my English is so bad or whether you just read the word 'governement' and started with your rant!
Let me repeat it bluntly:
Completely free electricity market = MONOPOLY OF ONE COMPANY!
Completely free electricity market = NO COMPETITION!
In this sector this just does not work that simple. Same thing for water supply or wastewater removal. It is a very tricky thing to guarantee a competitive market and there are many examples where the free market just failed miserably. You can have a completely free paperclip market, because a) it does not really matter if there is a paperclip shortage of 48 hours and b) you do not need expensive paperclip-pipes to every consumer.
For electricity you need to have sophisticated rules that regulates and separates the producer from the seller and both needs to be integrated into a transportation scheme.
Or would you let your competition use your power line to supply electricity to one of your customers if you would not be forced to do so?
Bottom line: A completely free market is a myth! Only strict controlled regulations (paid by the taxpayer) guarantee competition. The question is: What kind of regulation are best for the market...
It's just not that easy to get a fierce competition if the distribution of energy to the customer is de facto a natural monopoly. The more customer you can deliver energy to the more cost efficient you will be. One single big company delivering will be the most cost effective solution and in this case these guys can determine the price at will. So a completely free market does not work for electricity. You need a very sophisticated split-up of the market -- controlled and guarateed by the governement -- that makes competition possible. A somehow good example is the telecom business. A example that it is not that easy is California.
About a year ago I was dumb enough to open a hotmail account. Answered all the questions, chose a login and password, logged out and logged back in immediately. There were already 42 Spam e-mail waiting for me! Two days later I had something over 200 e-mails (Spam, Spam, Spam....)! There need some seriouse improvements on hotmail if they want to use that as a main e-mail client!
Yep, couldn't agree more. Lately I submitted a review paper and the reviewer commented 'that there was nothing new in the paper and that everything could be found in the literature'!
Because 0.1 ng is a very tiny amount! Bits of DNA is hanging around everywhere and is relatively stable. So it is very difficult to keep a Lab DNA free. The duplication of DNA in the PCR is quite specific for the targeted area of the DNA, however there is always a certain affinity for other junk DNA. You want to make sure that you have enough of your DNA sample so that they win the duplication race in the PCR. Otherwise you will duplicate a lot of junk and it is difficult to get clear results in the following tests.
From the CNN-article: "There are about 166 million residential phone numbers in the United States, the FTC said [...]"
So every employee is personally taking care of 80 phone lines! Hey, by now Joe should know that I am not interested....
The natural biodegradation of BTEX is a common one. As you already mentioned in your last parent, in most cases oxygen (alternative nitrate or iron-ore) is missing for the fast and complete breakdown of these organic compound. PCE and TCE actually act as a kind of oxygen (= electron acceptor). If oxygen is not available the bugs dump electrons from the organic stuff on the chloride and gain energy. This works fine for PCE, TCE and DCE, but doesn't work for vinyl chloride (redox potential). For the degradation of vinyl chloride you need oxygen and then it will be degraded like any other organic compound. So it is fairly complicated to get rid of PCE and I am really amazed that they ended up dumping this toxic stuff into the ground in order to clean up a not very toxic black water spill. But hey, this is America - anything is possible.
Good comment - As usual the newspaper article simplifies the entire story a little bit. I do not now any case where microbes actually are pumped into the ground. If you use a specific strain then you keep them in a bioreactor and pump & treat the contaminated groundwater in these facilities. Otherwise it is most likely that they just die.
The bioremediation research have to show that there actually is a bug that does the job - a proof of BIO-remediation. Hey, and if they once identified the bug they also can name it... And then they define which conditions can keep these bugs happy. Oxygen might just be the right stuff for them.
However, the bioremediation story with U is a kind of complicated, because U is not just floating around lonely, but usually is associated with a whole bunch of stuff. Typically there are also many detergents and complexing agents that keep the radioactive metals soluble. Especially NTA and EDTA (also used in washing detergents), known to be quite persistent, and as long these are present the dissolved U is stabilised. You need to show under what conditions the complexing agents can be degraded and then in addition how U can be precipitated. There's quite a bit of research going on for many years. Just check out google with the keywords "in-situ bioremediation groundwater radioactive"
(Yep, I know this could be a very sophisticated link - I am new here, so let me some time to get use to the HTML tag stuff.)
In most cases the microbes are not the problem. There are hanging around everywhere and if they get enough food then they grow very fast. There many smaller oil spills that get cleaned just by natural microbes in the groundwater. The main limiting factor is in most cases oxygen. Yes, there are also microbes that can use nitrate, sulfate, iron-ores, ... for degrading oil; however, most spills contain much more oil then these second nutrient they feed on.
Many remediation techniques actually don't add microbes but put oxygen, nitrate or iron (dumping your old car down a hole is not good enough!) into the ground.
You're absolutely right. The stuff doesn't disappear. However, the main threat is that the radioactive waste is transportet to the surface where it can harm wildlife or pollute drinking water. So you like to immobilise the radioactive elements so that these buggers stays deep down there. Mostly the threat is then more or less over (until it gets mobilised again, but that's an other story).