Well, I'm from liberal about-to-legalize-gay-marriage (wo0t!) New York and I think it's a ridiculous waste of money too. 2 Billion dollars for a 500 megawatt generating plant? Please. This is some kind of sick joke.
The 500 MW is obviously peak power output, meaning that average power is going to be 200 MW, TOPS. 2 BILLION dollars for a 150 MW generating station. That's beyond pathetic. A natural gas fired station that provided that kind of power output could be built for 5% of that kind of money. The argument for this being a good investment into the technology is even more absurd. It's just a solar thermal plant using hot oil/molten salt. We've been doing this stone-age level crap since the early 70's.
In the same program, there seem to be a $2Bn grant to Areva and another 8.3 billion one to Georgia power (you'll have to scroll a bit to get to the table - the article is actually critical of the loan guarantee). And a few hundred million here and there to others. The grant to Abengoa seems to be 1.4 billion, and the other one seems to be $400 million (so, it's about 200 million short of the 2 billion claimed in TFS).
Apparently, Abenoga achieving a 30% higher energy efficiency by changing the design; that's definitely worth a few million right there. The other plant costs $400 million, and it uses 'conventional' solar technology that's been around for decades.
Do I really need to explain what kind of advancements the nuclear fusion community could do with 2 billion dollars? We're right on the edge (like, this year) of demonstrating fusion ignition in the laboratory at the National Ignition Facility, a lab that houses the most powerful laser in the world and the largest, most complicated optical system ever constructed, at a cost barely more than 50% of this useless, make-work, feelgood project. $2 billion could go a long way toward building a gigawatt level power plant demonstration reactor after NIF achieves ignition, instead of wasting it on this nonsense that produces laughably insignificant amounts of energy.
Unfortunately for that argument, fusion always seems 10 years off; right now, I'd rather invest the same money in solar or wind, in hopes of improving efficiency to build plants that we can use in the next two-three years rather than wait for fusion, which is just around the corner. No, really. We haven't achieved energy production yet, but we'll do so if you invest in us exclusively! Just wait and watch!
And until then, continue using coal and natural gas. Oh, and nuclear fission, of course. Except that fission plants are expensive too, and take about 10 years to complete, anyway. Forget investing in anything else!
Thanks, I think I'd rather have an expensive solar plant, as opposed to a non-existent fission plant!
Some comments here claim Qt is not dying because Nokia made some announcement and the Qt blog is hyperactive.
But look at the facts: -the IRC channel they used: #qt-labs, has almost no activity since February
Looks like there's quite a bit of activity from just the last week
-the brand new Qt Developer Network has been deserted by the trolls
It'd be great if things were deserted by the trolls, I guess... Anyway, it doesn't seem deserted by the users
-the blog posts on Qt labs are just about future project, never anything concrete for the current library
Of the five posts on the front page, two are about merges of experimental features (the QML scenegraph and Lighthouse), two about conferences and summits, and one's about the release of QtWebkit 2.1.1. Not current enough for you?
-the plans for Qt 5 announced recently are ridiculous, no troll was involved in those
I'm not even going to reply to that one!
-the development on qt.gitorious.org stalled since February
If there is not quickly a fork of Qt, we will discover in 2 years that Qt is outdated and there is no longer any professional GUI library for Linux.
The difficulty is keeping them (and the corporation(s) running the plant) honest during operation, so that risk is minimized when something does happen. Things like proper inspections, regulations, enforcement of regulations, retiring plants when they reach their planned age, instead of prolonging their use for profit,...
Small stuff really, but places where government and corporations alike are quite capable of trying to take a short-cut.
This is Switzerland! You know, the country of 7.8 million people? With a population density of 188 people / sq. km? In the mountains?
Hardly the place you'd expect to worry about having to support billions...
Let them find a local solution that works for them. Those of us in other places have other options. One radioactive size doesn't necessarily fit all, you know...
That happens about three times a minute, under VS2008. 2010 is better, but then, it's limited to native c++ (which is all fine, except that the PHB decided to do a crapload of work in C++/CLI over the years)...
For really good autocomplete, take a look at Qt Creator and KDevelop 4.x.
Know what? If we could use wind/solar/whatever during the day, and leave coal/oil/nuclear for just the night (and cloudy/windless days), that would still be a good 50% (give or take) reduction in dependence...
Wait... What? Terrorism or no, that would be a breathtakingly stupid move on their part; outside of bad movies, I can't imagine any design where someone would be able to hack an entertainment system and make the plane do a loop-the-loop... Have any reference to this?
Thanks, that's a very nice, balanced review... You've saved us all the trouble of writing one ourselves... Somebody please mod parent up?
My feeling is that it will go a long way in making programmable interfaces using touch screens and other (whatever they may be) graphical-input-only devices.
This is just the beginning, I suspect that this particular path may turn out to be better than people fear...
How many people do you think actually have an inborn ability to program?
Most people have created or followed algorithms (cooking recipies, map routes,...) at one point or other. Part of the problem is abstraction, which many are not good at, but a large portion is also the jargon that we programmers pick up along the way. For example, my dad's pretty good with logic, but I can't really explain what a "class" is to him - he didn't just spend the last decade working his way up to that concept. I'm pretty good at understanding things, too, but I would suck at his field, because I don't have the history for it either (and in his case, about 30 years of it).
But that's not the point, anyway...
Like it or not, there are now going to be a zillion devices that are a pain to type on, but still powerful enough to do some level of development with. In such devices, a properly worked-out and thought out graphical programming system would be a godsend. Remember, lots of kids are going to grow up with these devices, and not a full-fledged beige-box as the primary computer in their lives, and they're going to need a programming system on it to learn on.
Basic may not be the greatest programming language, but quite a few of us wrote our first programs with
10 PRINT HELLO
20 GOTO 10
Don't knock it - if they can create a system that makes it easy for me to code while sitting in a waiting room with the iPad or Galaxy Tab, or even my phone, I for one welcome it!
What caused the problem at Fukushima was really a loss of coolant. The earthquake and tsunami merely caused the loss of coolant.
Can you really claim that it's impossible for the Canadian reactors to not have a loss of coolant? Also, in an emergency, a CANDU, which uses heavy water, can't be cooled and moderated using sea water like in Fukushima.
Let's face it; nuclear power is inherently dangerous. The question is, whether the danger outweights the benefits. Does it? I really don't know, and after this one, I'm veering more towards "no".
Slashdot Mirror
Ever heard the terms Tory (outlaw, brigand) and Whig (cattle driver)?
Very often, names of parties are given by their detractors, not their supporters. Judge them by the enemies they make...
Government != responsible government...
Well, I'm from liberal about-to-legalize-gay-marriage (wo0t!) New York and I think it's a ridiculous waste of money too. 2 Billion dollars for a 500 megawatt generating plant? Please. This is some kind of sick joke.
The 500 MW is obviously peak power output, meaning that average power is going to be 200 MW, TOPS. 2 BILLION dollars for a 150 MW generating station. That's beyond pathetic. A natural gas fired station that provided that kind of power output could be built for 5% of that kind of money. The argument for this being a good investment into the technology is even more absurd. It's just a solar thermal plant using hot oil /molten salt. We've been doing this stone-age level crap since the early 70's.
In the same program, there seem to be a $2Bn grant to Areva and another 8.3 billion one to Georgia power (you'll have to scroll a bit to get to the table - the article is actually critical of the loan guarantee). And a few hundred million here and there to others. The grant to Abengoa seems to be 1.4 billion, and the other one seems to be $400 million (so, it's about 200 million short of the 2 billion claimed in TFS).
Apparently, Abenoga achieving a 30% higher energy efficiency by changing the design; that's definitely worth a few million right there. The other plant costs $400 million, and it uses 'conventional' solar technology that's been around for decades.
Do I really need to explain what kind of advancements the nuclear fusion community could do with 2 billion dollars? We're right on the edge (like, this year) of demonstrating fusion ignition in the laboratory at the National Ignition Facility, a lab that houses the most powerful laser in the world and the largest, most complicated optical system ever constructed, at a cost barely more than 50% of this useless, make-work, feelgood project. $2 billion could go a long way toward building a gigawatt level power plant demonstration reactor after NIF achieves ignition, instead of wasting it on this nonsense that produces laughably insignificant amounts of energy.
Unfortunately for that argument, fusion always seems 10 years off; right now, I'd rather invest the same money in solar or wind, in hopes of improving efficiency to build plants that we can use in the next two-three years rather than wait for fusion, which is just around the corner. No, really. We haven't achieved energy production yet, but we'll do so if you invest in us exclusively! Just wait and watch!
And until then, continue using coal and natural gas. Oh, and nuclear fission, of course. Except that fission plants are expensive too, and take about 10 years to complete, anyway. Forget investing in anything else!
Thanks, I think I'd rather have an expensive solar plant, as opposed to a non-existent fission plant!
Reasonable c/c++ code can be as good as (or even better than) hand-tuned assembler. There's just no benefit to writing in ASM for most things.
Basically, c/c++ code should nearly transform back into the equivalent assembler-generated code for almost anything, as long as your compiler is good.
OP says that the client would install Silverlight after purchasing and that there was no big deal about plugins.
So, anything, really... Flash, Java, whatever...
Not needing to reboot, and not having to maintain two installations is major win...
Thanks for the tasty FUD!
Some comments here claim Qt is not dying because Nokia made some announcement and the Qt blog is hyperactive.
But look at the facts:
-the IRC channel they used: #qt-labs, has almost no activity since February
Looks like there's quite a bit of activity from just the last week
-the brand new Qt Developer Network has been deserted by the trolls
It'd be great if things were deserted by the trolls, I guess... Anyway, it doesn't seem deserted by the users
-the blog posts on Qt labs are just about future project, never anything concrete for the current library
Of the five posts on the front page, two are about merges of experimental features (the QML scenegraph and Lighthouse), two about conferences and summits, and one's about the release of QtWebkit 2.1.1. Not current enough for you?
-the plans for Qt 5 announced recently are ridiculous, no troll was involved in those
I'm not even going to reply to that one!
-the development on qt.gitorious.org stalled since February
If there is not quickly a fork of Qt, we will discover in 2 years that Qt is outdated and there is no longer any professional GUI library for Linux.
Latest commit is dated Jun 1 2011
Now, WTF are you talking about again?
And it's not the Android Market itself - it's the movie market...
I have no intention of watching a movie on my QVGA screen, so I'm sticking with Cyanogenmod.
The Swiss, unlike the Germans are not known for emotionalism, lack of planning or economic suicide.
I'll give you the second and third, but google "Minaret ban" sometime on the first of those traits...
It makes them honest ex post facto.
The difficulty is keeping them (and the corporation(s) running the plant) honest during operation, so that risk is minimized when something does happen. Things like proper inspections, regulations, enforcement of regulations, retiring plants when they reach their planned age, instead of prolonging their use for profit,...
Small stuff really, but places where government and corporations alike are quite capable of trying to take a short-cut.
This is Switzerland! You know, the country of 7.8 million people? With a population density of 188 people / sq. km? In the mountains?
Hardly the place you'd expect to worry about having to support billions...
Let them find a local solution that works for them. Those of us in other places have other options. One radioactive size doesn't necessarily fit all, you know...
Unlocked phones sold without carrier interference.
Like the rest of the free world does it!
Every day! Take a look at what comes from the horse's mouth...
That happens about three times a minute, under VS2008. 2010 is better, but then, it's limited to native c++ (which is all fine, except that the PHB decided to do a crapload of work in C++/CLI over the years)...
For really good autocomplete, take a look at Qt Creator and KDevelop 4.x.
It's a VM, naturally.
One could conceivably write a VM for Windows 8 to emulate x86 on the ARM, but that wouldn't be native. It would be a VM.
I see this as some Intel FUD sowing about the whole ARM craze, really...
I often have people asking me why C is still getting used.
C#/Java is all you need, right? Right?
Know what? If we could use wind/solar/whatever during the day, and leave coal/oil/nuclear for just the night (and cloudy/windless days), that would still be a good 50% (give or take) reduction in dependence...
Wait... What? Terrorism or no, that would be a breathtakingly stupid move on their part; outside of bad movies, I can't imagine any design where someone would be able to hack an entertainment system and make the plane do a loop-the-loop... Have any reference to this?
[citation needed]
Thanks, that's a very nice, balanced review... You've saved us all the trouble of writing one ourselves... Somebody please mod parent up?
My feeling is that it will go a long way in making programmable interfaces using touch screens and other (whatever they may be) graphical-input-only devices.
This is just the beginning, I suspect that this particular path may turn out to be better than people fear...
I did say first program...
How many people do you think actually have an inborn ability to program?
Most people have created or followed algorithms (cooking recipies, map routes,...) at one point or other. Part of the problem is abstraction, which many are not good at, but a large portion is also the jargon that we programmers pick up along the way. For example, my dad's pretty good with logic, but I can't really explain what a "class" is to him - he didn't just spend the last decade working his way up to that concept. I'm pretty good at understanding things, too, but I would suck at his field, because I don't have the history for it either (and in his case, about 30 years of it).
But that's not the point, anyway...
Like it or not, there are now going to be a zillion devices that are a pain to type on, but still powerful enough to do some level of development with. In such devices, a properly worked-out and thought out graphical programming system would be a godsend. Remember, lots of kids are going to grow up with these devices, and not a full-fledged beige-box as the primary computer in their lives, and they're going to need a programming system on it to learn on.
Basic may not be the greatest programming language, but quite a few of us wrote our first programs with
10 PRINT HELLO
20 GOTO 10
Don't knock it - if they can create a system that makes it easy for me to code while sitting in a waiting room with the iPad or Galaxy Tab, or even my phone, I for one welcome it!
Having worked on LabVIEW for a WHOLE PROJECT (stupid client insisted on doing everything in it), I agree!
If your code looks like a hairball, it needs refactoring...
You do realise that Oracle is suing Google (mostly) over patents on the (J)VM, and not copyright over the use of the "java" namespace, right?
java.io isn't exactly covered (or even coverable) by patent...
Concentrated solar, not necessarily photovoltaics. You can get quite a bit of power out of a big mirror and some hot water...
Sane thing to do if you care about security
Close old plants and replace them with new safer ones.
Or replace them with some other form of power generation, maybe?
Can I coin the phrase "false trichotomy?"
What caused the problem at Fukushima was really a loss of coolant. The earthquake and tsunami merely caused the loss of coolant.
Can you really claim that it's impossible for the Canadian reactors to not have a loss of coolant? Also, in an emergency, a CANDU, which uses heavy water, can't be cooled and moderated using sea water like in Fukushima.
Let's face it; nuclear power is inherently dangerous. The question is, whether the danger outweights the benefits. Does it? I really don't know, and after this one, I'm veering more towards "no".