update: more radiation than they hoped in unit 1, 700 ms/hr on the first floor. It won't be easy to work in there unless they can bring that down somehow.
Diablo Canyon Unit 2 is shut down for refueling and maintenance. Since it was shut down about a month ago and they didn't decide to start refueling then, I suspect there is more to this. They're likely giving it some extra attention. They recently had a motor with the rotor slipping on the shaft. I wondered if they could have had a control system issue (PLC?) instead of mis-calibrated micro-switches and shaft tolerance issues as given for the reason the backup cooling was down for 18 months. Any modifications or even rebooting of a critical control system are potentially dangerous, so those things are best not done with a plant running. It's probably not totally risk free even when shut down since cooling is still essential, but no-doubt they have extra people that know exactly what to watch for and have prepared. It's important that all plants be completely on top of any software vulnerabilities as well as normal issues. There may be a few hot-headed people in some other places about now.
Some huge military helicopters were seen headed the general direction of Diablo Canyon late last week.. The same type were seen when boric acid was picked up for use in Japan. Foreign news sources had also mentioned Japan dealing with France and South Korea as sources of boric acid. They must be going through quite a bit of it and will until they can recycle coolant. Hopefully the 20 mule-team people or whoever are keeping adequate supplies available...
Hmmm... I bet radioactive coolant with boric acid in it would work great for getting rid of termites... or would they mutate? Someone should make more 50's style movies. Mutants from the sea raising sunken fishing boats...
Chernobyl had grapite rods which added to the problems since they burned.
The Fukushima reactors have boron control rods.
Hopefully there won't be additional fuel damage. There apparently was some in unit 1 a week ago. Although they reported things as stable, they interruptted cooling for an hour or two to set up more permanent power connections. Later the temperature at the bottom of the reactor went from 110C to 143C. They increased the rate of adding water some. I think they're in a hurry to get better cooling with actual recycling, finned radiators, filtering, and good control of the boron levels going. They got air filtering going recently and made the building safe to enter. Last I heard they were about to remove some contaminated material and start checking the original circulating pump. It's good to see them finally making some progress. For a while it seemed like they were hopelessly kept away by the highly contominated water all over. Hopefully they'll get whatever cleans/processes that working well before they run out of space to put the water. Starting to recycle would really help that mess. It sounded like much of the water being pumped out was from turbine areas or tunnels nearby. Without actually sealing up the leak, whatever water does come out will tend to build up more and more contamination. I believe they concluded that that mess is all coming from the unit 2 suppression tank. In the drawing it looks like a tire around the bottom (old GE Mark I design). But it's huge. A during-construction photo I saw with someone standing nearby made that suppression pool look maybe 30 feet tall. They'd have to pump in an awful lot of concrete or something to seal that leak...don't know if that;d work while wet and many tons of water and hour going through.
Perhaps it has something to do with more fuel clumped more closely, like in a pile at the bottom of containment.
I believe it was unit 1 that had temperatures shoot up after a magnitude 7 aftershock. Given that the cooling situation hadn't changed, is there anything else but fuel shifting that would account for that?
Fuel that's piled up on the bottom may also get less of the inhibiting effects from either the boron control rods, or boron in solution.
Some believe that has has been some level of criticality in the unit 4 fuel pond based on the nature of the radiation coming off of that. Between some fuel damage from previous loss of coolant, possible use of coolant without boric acid for a time, and the world-wide industry practice of re-racking, it isn't surprising to have an issue with that. Re-racking is the practice of placing fuel assemblies at a closer spacing than original safety standards called for in or to be able to store more spent fuel.
Unit 3 has mixed oxide (MOX) fuel which includes plutonium. Since it gives off more neutrons when hit by them, it is harder to control. Reactors may need additional control rods and more boric acid in the coolant during normal operation to stay in control, and more yet when shut down. Unit 3 is potentially more troublesome to control if too much damaged fuel piles up on the the bottom. The environmental damage is also more apt to be longer term. As plutonium breaks down, the material produced actually gives off more radiation..
Excuse me for interrupting, but I think the "too much brain" threads are just down the hall:)
It seems like most of the people have been kept pretty well out of the way of very high-dose radiation and short term effects. But there will be some with long term effects, developing breast or thyroid conditions, appearing in 10 or 20 years or more. Those hit will mostly be among those that are children now, females especially, that drank milk with Iodine 131 in it. The U.S. has had these things happen as a result of above-ground testing in Nevada long ago. It looks like the U.S. is now showing some impact from Chernobyl.
See the curves on pages 18 and 46 of report (listed as 25 and 53 of pdf) to follow increases in Breast and Thyroid cancer in the California central valley. Studies for other regions look much the same. Most other cancers except for melanoma are declining.
Here's a calculator that estimates the added risk Americans born before 1972 face from the testing in Nevada (does not include other more recent sources) Try being a woman born in 1956 drinking lots of milk and living in South Dakota.
These links relate to the relatively brief Iodine 131 exposure that has already happened. The effects of the longer life isotopes are harder to see but will be with us for a very very long time, The alpha emitters from thing like CS 137 aren't even picked up by the common crowdsourced equipment, but are a problem when inside the body.
Hmmm, they're telling fishermen in Japan it is safe to fish 30 km out, but the exposure in an hour goes slightly beyond the normal limit for a whole year. That seems a bit much.
What has been happening with your friends that were also EE majors? What did those interviewing before graduation seem to want in new hires? As an EE Major, you'd probably have better luck demoing some sort of hardware you've designed and built. Showing software design skills in related firmware or other systems that interface with the hardware would be a strong plus. With a great deal of the hardware business being offshore, you may find that hardware-oriented companies may have more positions for new hires in sales or support. Although those positions aren't what most engineers had in mind for work, the positions are best filled with technically competent people. An emphasis on sales and marketing isn't too surprising when that drives revenue for a particular business.
Developers may be expected to have a number of proficiencies under their belts. Engineers have a number of skills, but as a lot are more versatile and often deal with more uncharted territory than developers. It's more about what you can figure out than what you already know, supplemented with research and analysis along the way. You should always be learning. Your aptitude and education should have your thinking processes polished to where you can use insights and your basic skills of the sciences to tackle new things without fear.
Surviving while looking for work, working on your own projects, getting more education etc. can be stressful. Learn to be very efficient with resources. Try to avoid renting money. Live within your means. Cook your own healthy meals, skip cable tv and the $100 phone plans. It helps if you can stay with family, relatives, friends, or a (hopefully employed) girlfriend/boyfriend. (postpone making babies) Sunshine and physical activity (even walking can work) will help keep your mood/hormones/alertness/motivation up. Part time work, doing websites, video production, graphic design, photography, whatever you can may help you to get by. Things are more complicated if you want//need to relocate for better work opportunities. Network with friends. Maybe someone is working on something you can help with. If you have insights into problems/needs in the world around you and think you can improve or develop something consider a startup or approaching a business who you see you can help. The idea is to make yourself valuable to them. Can you fix/enhance their software? Can you make their net presence more effective? Can you save them money spent on energy or telecommunications? Can you take their existing product to a new market? Besides working on some projects of your own, spend some time researching the industries you're considering. Be someone that is able to see the forest through the trees and help people solve problems. Make yourself valuable to them.
If you've ever looked around at something going on and thought "I could do better than that", you've spotted a potential opportunity. Those will likely offer you more than ads in the paper do... Trust your gut feelings more than what others say. Think positive, you'll get through this. You're not alone in facing such things.
If the hardware can pump out the data fast enough for a tolerable refresh rate, it might be worthwhile to make a fancier version of this VGA interface that could deliver better color depth. Take multiple clock cycles to load portions of data for each RGB pixel into something like two-stage latches, with the outputs of those driving the resistors that act as a D/A converter. 6 bits per RGB component would probably be tolerable. If one settled for 5, each 16 bits transferred would include one extra for constructing a combined V & H sync signal. The latches would be two stage to display the last full RGB pixel until the next is valid.
It seems like they were reasonably clever with the software, but didn't go very far with the hardware.
The have been some commercial products that were serious hacks over the years, like video interfaces driven through a SCSI port. Plenty is still done with Firewire.
Most of the bugs are not nearly so obscure as what you're suggesting, although some are discovered by people quite far away. A video with Bruce Dang of MS speaking at the 27th Chaos Communication Congress is revealing. He spoke on behind the scenes thinking and fairly early/rapid analysis done in looking at Stuxnet and seeing what/how it exploited in Windows in multiple ways with 100% reliability.. (The talk does not cover the far more serious aspects of Stuxnet, the PLC- targeting payload or the implications of that which has been studied by others) The actual talk starts about 11 minutes in. It is probably best to download it with the Download Helper FF extension and play the h.264 in VLC to allow easily repeating portions. The actual talk runs about an hour, he talks pretty fast and the audio has some echo and a resonance making it some work to follow. Some patience is required, but some will find it worthwhile being very informative, revealing some interesting perspectives, and having some funny moments too. (At about 40 minutes, he discusses a point where he was a bit stumped and tired, and took a break to watch porn.)
Maybe the game could use a few modern twists and get people prepared for things they haven't given enough thought to. Got some radio-iodine in the milk? The half-life is short. Why not process it into powdered milk and store it until there's no longer a problem? Could farmers or the department of agriculture use cloud seeding to cause pollution to be dumped in a lower impact area like over the ocean? Could some keep hay in reserve to feed the cows with in case the pasture areas get contaminated for a little while? If farmers got more behind product testing, wouldn't they be less likely to have competitors cheating with melamine?
If animals are fed diets that promote higher acidity and nastier strains of pathogens, crowding promotes spread of pathogens, and heavy use of antibiotics has made resistant pathogens more common, shouldn't the "good" farmers be pushing for more transparency leading to public outcry that helps push desirable reforms?
Does the pubic have an accurate picture of potential dangers? Can a game help make life better?
Should farmers have plans to evacuate their cows under bad conditions? Should information have been withheld to keep them and others more calm? Could they have been keep calm while being fully informed?
Somewhere, I think I've still got a very strange tube made by RCA of roughly WWII vintage. It looks like an electron gun chopped of one of those round 7" electro-static deflection television sets made just after the war. 7JP4, 7GP4 or similar (or P1 as seen in old green-screen scopes, sonar, radar etc.). But instead of the electron gun glass flaring out to the screen size, it just had glass over the end with an anode connector hooked to a plate inside. The plate was a target with a number of characters on it. Raster scanning the proper area of the plate basically produced a video bitmap. It certainly had to have quite a bit of electronics (and some high voltages) to get it to function, quite a contrast from just having bitmaps in a ROM chip. I think that a similar tube was used by television stations to generate the black and white test pattern with the lines, circles and the Indian.
It sort of reminded me of flying-spot scanners, which had similar electronics (except for using magnetic deflection). An image or graphic slide would be exposed to the focused spot of light as scanned on a small c.r.t., and the output signal came from a photo-tube or photo-cell of some type. Some t.v. repair equipment produced test patterns that way. I suppose it was more practical than using a camera tube, and one less prone to burn-in.
I wonder if the people that made the old tube-type fax machines had to pay for that patent too. Those used a photo-tube as a sensor, and focused a really bright light on thermal paper to burn the output. It was essentially a low scan rate video signal (and saturated with no grey scale, making the data more digital than analog). I believe the signal was carried at 75 or 110 baud using a tone shifting between two frequencies (f.s.k.).
It really seems like it is all derived from the early work in television. R.C.A. was an early player.
If they were forced to sign it, then it was signed under duress and it's not enforceable.:)
Since you've found the loophole, the anti-suicide provisions don't apply to you. We're pleased to inform you that you've been transferred to the energy services division which will be happy to schedule your suicide. We think you have a bright future in biofuel.
Make some modified casks to use old spent fuel heat to provide backup power for instrumentation. None of this few hours of runtime nonsense. If the instrumentation and control systems are kept working, better on-plant and near-zone decisions can be made, and backup pump systems powered by small turbines tapping reactor heat or whatever can at least be turned on.
Monitoring and control system power must NEVER go down. Counting on batteries or generators, even if they work, is too short term of technology to rely on when all hell has broken loose. Counting on those was a major design blunder. At full load, the internal fuel tanks in the generator trucks are only enough for a few hours. A backup that doesn't last long enough to cover the worst case repair time for primary systems isn't much of a backup.
I guess it'll be a little while before we'll see an app I'd wondered about. I thought it would be useful to be able to take snapshots of things like news reports (streamed on the web, El Gato Eye-TV domestic or satellite t.v., YouTube etc.) and do OCR on them, AND get an English translation of it. With the events so far this year, support for Japanese and Arabic languages would have been a good start.
The link you provided does make it apparent that these pumps can also be used to produce electricity if the pump is placed between a heat source and a heat sink.
Too bad these aren't being used more as part of processes cooling troublesome spent fuel, producing some electricity at the same time. Wouldn't it be great if these could enable an ultra-reliable alternative to backup generators? The article doesn't say if the material is hardy against ionizing radiation.
Having had a job offer from a small company many many years ago where perks included free components and use of tooling and lab equipment for my own projects, I have no doubt that there must have been some other companies doing the same thing too. After all, it makes perfect sense to attract people that find joy in creating. They're the sort that as long as they've got enough to live on, are really more dedicated to what they're doing than to just collecting a check. You don't hire the best and brightest artists by treating people like hourly laborers.
The tale of the guy that developed the Graphing Calculator at Apple more than a decade ago makes for a good read. It's not quite the same thing, but does reflect people of the same mindset.
Well maybe, just maybe, someone will come up with some interesting questions. Not the what's sex like in zero G variety, but something really out of the box.
(putting on thinking cap)
Does the space station have any instruments that can "see" radiation in the air on Earth? Could the space station being used to launch/release material for cloud-seeding following a nuclear accident? One of the impacts of releases that can affect a significant number (but still tiny percentage) of people long afterwards is from Iodine 131 carried by the wind, and brought down in light rainfall to pasture where it it taken in by cows then humans through milk. Those with smaller thyroids and those with consuming larger amounts of milk, and women in particular are most affected (namely the unborn through about age 15). Most of what affected Sweden from Chernobyl came down in a single day. Thyroid and breast issues 10 - 25 years out are the most common consequences.
So could cloud seeding by done by something sent down from orbit, or planes, to cause much of the Iodine to be brought down as rain into the ocean, before reaching vulnerable land areas. (It's nothing to panic over, but some U.S. cities have seen rainfall with levels far above what would be allowed in drinking water. Perhaps any small long-term effect could have been reduced. Of course feeding cows hay instead of letting them graze for a short period might have been something to consider also )
I'd hope Google would sue them for copyright violation, changing their webpage in transit,...
It's very much like a kid sitting on the curb slapping a bumper-sticker on every car at a particular stop sign. Vandalism for profit sums it up pretty well.
If M$ can do this, they are actually going to end up saving you a ton of money.
Of course you could use something far cheaper cheaper, maybe something that uses 1/50th the power like Apple TV. There are many other choices. But it sounds like a hot idea.
Wait, no shit, a streaming TV service would be an interesting move because it would allow users to stream TV? Never would have thought of that myself.
Sure, and instead of it being from some low power mobile device, or something like the Apple TV which uses about 2.5 Watts, you can use about 150 Watts with a Xbox 360. Anyone want a new power plant in the neighborhood??
In particular, if the zero-threshold proportional model was correct, the quality factor would be unity for all types of radiation.
Nonsense. we're talking about risk scaling proportionally with everything else held constant (exposure of a given type etc.). That's not saying that all types of radiation are equal. Of course different types of radiation, and different energy levels within a type make a difference, as do the regions of the body being exposed, and molecular properties affect how the body absorbs different things. That last item is why the thyroid is so sensitive to radio-iodine. Materials don't disperse in the same way either. Particles of something that doesn't become a vapor, like cesium, may become farther apart at a distance, but each particle is still just as potent. So while fewer people would inhale particles, they're still a risk to those who do. Emitting alpha radiation even paper can stop what a particle on the ground radiates, but throw it in the air with a dust blower and inhale it and it is still a risk.
There's nothing wrong with using a conservative risk model either. Obvious the EU does better than the U.S. at that. BP can use chemicals in the ocean here that wouldn't be allowed in the U.K. We've had additives in plastic food and water containers used in the U.S. that were banned in the E.U. They went with materials just every so slightly more expensive. So the U.S. got people with messed up hormones and who knows what else as a result. It's been causing smaller penises. I guess no one would care about that? NHK has reported falling male fertility in Japan. I wonder if they used the same thing. But it's okay... if the background level on contaminants in our environment is high enough, industry can always blame problems on something else.... like "It wasn't our bottles, it was the hormones in the milk or meat". No... no...it wasn't us.... it was the heavy metals in the fish..... No no it wasn't us.... it was the cell phones on people belts
Letting industry promise jobs to the regulators that should be keeping us safe, or to broadcasters that report on them, IS A REALLY BAD IDEA. We have standards for federal judges, why not regulators?
Slashdot Mirror
update:
more radiation than they hoped in unit 1, 700 ms/hr on the first floor. It won't be easy to work in there unless they can bring that down somehow.
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/08_18.html
the unit 4 fuel pond is less damaged than expected, so some good news.
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/08_18.html
Diablo Canyon Unit 2 is shut down for refueling and maintenance. Since it was shut down about a month ago and they didn't decide to start refueling then, I suspect there is more to this. They're likely giving it some extra attention. They recently had a motor with the rotor slipping on the shaft. I wondered if they could have had a control system issue (PLC?) instead of mis-calibrated micro-switches and shaft tolerance issues as given for the reason the backup cooling was down for 18 months. Any modifications or even rebooting of a critical control system are potentially dangerous, so those things are best not done with a plant running. It's probably not totally risk free even when shut down since cooling is still essential, but no-doubt they have extra people that know exactly what to watch for and have prepared. It's important that all plants be completely on top of any software vulnerabilities as well as normal issues. There may be a few hot-headed people in some other places about now.
Some huge military helicopters were seen headed the general direction of Diablo Canyon late last week.. The same type were seen when boric acid was picked up for use in Japan. Foreign news sources had also mentioned Japan dealing with France and South Korea as sources of boric acid.
They must be going through quite a bit of it and will until they can recycle coolant. Hopefully the 20 mule-team people or whoever are keeping adequate supplies available...
Hmmm... I bet radioactive coolant with boric acid in it would work great for getting rid of termites... or would they mutate? Someone should make more 50's style movies. Mutants from the sea raising sunken fishing boats...
Chernobyl had grapite rods which added to the problems since they burned.
The Fukushima reactors have boron control rods.
Hopefully there won't be additional fuel damage. There apparently was some in unit 1 a week ago. Although they reported things as stable, they interruptted cooling for an hour or two to set up more permanent power connections. Later the temperature at the bottom of the reactor went from 110C to 143C. They increased the rate of adding water some. I think they're in a hurry to get better cooling with actual recycling, finned radiators, filtering, and good control of the boron levels going. They got air filtering going recently and made the building safe to enter. Last I heard they were about to remove some contaminated material and start checking the original circulating pump. It's good to see them finally making some progress. For a while it seemed like they were hopelessly kept away by the highly contominated water all over. Hopefully they'll get whatever cleans/processes that working well before they run out of space to put the water. Starting to recycle would really help that mess. It sounded like much of the water being pumped out was from turbine areas or tunnels nearby. Without actually sealing up the leak, whatever water does come out will tend to build up more and more contamination.
I believe they concluded that that mess is all coming from the unit 2 suppression tank. In the drawing it looks like a tire around the bottom (old GE Mark I design). But it's huge. A during-construction photo I saw with someone standing nearby made that suppression pool look maybe 30 feet tall. They'd have to pump in an awful lot of concrete or something to seal that leak...don't know if that;d work while wet and many tons of water and hour going through.
Perhaps it has something to do with more fuel clumped more closely, like in a pile at the bottom of containment.
I believe it was unit 1 that had temperatures shoot up after a magnitude 7 aftershock. Given that the cooling situation hadn't changed, is there anything else but fuel shifting that would account for that?
Fuel that's piled up on the bottom may also get less of the inhibiting effects from either the boron control rods, or boron in solution.
Some believe that has has been some level of criticality in the unit 4 fuel pond based on the nature of the radiation coming off of that. Between some fuel damage from previous loss of coolant, possible use of coolant without boric acid for a time, and the world-wide industry practice of re-racking, it isn't surprising to have an issue with that. Re-racking is the practice of placing fuel assemblies at a closer spacing than original safety standards called for in or to be able to store more spent fuel.
Unit 3 has mixed oxide (MOX) fuel which includes plutonium. Since it gives off more neutrons when hit by them, it is harder to control. Reactors may need additional control rods and more boric acid in the coolant during normal operation to stay in control, and more yet when shut down. Unit 3 is potentially more troublesome to control if too much damaged fuel piles up on the the bottom. The environmental damage is also more apt to be longer term. As plutonium breaks down, the material produced actually gives off more radiation..
This blog has a fairly in depth look at MOX fuel
http://abundanthope.net/pages/Environment_Science_69/MOX-Fuel---Insanity-Part-1.shtml
Excuse me for interrupting, but I think the "too much brain" threads are just down the hall :)
It seems like most of the people have been kept pretty well out of the way of very high-dose radiation and short term effects. But there will be some with long term effects, developing breast or thyroid conditions, appearing in 10 or 20 years or more. Those hit will mostly be among those that are children now, females especially, that drank milk with Iodine 131 in it. The U.S. has had these things happen as a result of above-ground testing in Nevada long ago. It looks like the U.S. is now showing some impact from Chernobyl.
See the curves on pages 18 and 46 of report (listed as 25 and 53 of pdf) to follow increases in Breast and Thyroid cancer in the California central valley. Studies for other regions look much the same. Most other cancers except for melanoma are declining.
http://www.ccrcal.org/PDF/Regional_Registries/Reg2AnnualReport.pdf
A good paper on Chernobyl (pdf)
http://www.strahlentelex.de/Yablokov%20Chernobyl%20book.pdf
Here's a calculator that estimates the added risk Americans born before 1972 face from the testing in Nevada (does not include other more recent sources)
Try being a woman born in 1956 drinking lots of milk and living in South Dakota.
https://ntsi131.nci.nih.gov/default.asp
These links relate to the relatively brief Iodine 131 exposure that has already happened. The effects of the longer life isotopes are harder to see but will be with us for a very very long time, The alpha emitters from thing like CS 137 aren't even picked up by the common crowdsourced equipment, but are a problem when inside the body.
Hmmm, they're telling fishermen in Japan it is safe to fish 30 km out, but the exposure in an hour goes slightly beyond the normal limit for a whole year.
That seems a bit much.
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/09_03.html
What has been happening with your friends that were also EE majors? What did those interviewing before graduation seem to want in new hires? As an EE Major, you'd probably have better luck demoing some sort of hardware you've designed and built. Showing software design skills in related firmware or other systems that interface with the hardware would be a strong plus. With a great deal of the hardware business being offshore, you may find that hardware-oriented companies may have more positions for new hires in sales or support. Although those positions aren't what most engineers had in mind for work, the positions are best filled with technically competent people. An emphasis on sales and marketing isn't too surprising when that drives revenue for a particular business.
Developers may be expected to have a number of proficiencies under their belts. Engineers have a number of skills, but as a lot are more versatile and often deal with more uncharted territory than developers. It's more about what you can figure out than what you already know, supplemented with research and analysis along the way. You should always be learning. Your aptitude and education should have your thinking processes polished to where you can use insights and your basic skills of the sciences to tackle new things without fear.
Surviving while looking for work, working on your own projects, getting more education etc. can be stressful. Learn to be very efficient with resources. Try to avoid renting money. Live within your means. Cook your own healthy meals, skip cable tv and the $100 phone plans. It helps if you can stay with family, relatives, friends, or a (hopefully employed) girlfriend/boyfriend. (postpone making babies) Sunshine and physical activity (even walking can work) will help keep your mood/hormones/alertness/motivation up. Part time work, doing websites, video production, graphic design, photography, whatever you can may help you to get by. Things are more complicated if you want//need to relocate for better work opportunities. Network with friends. Maybe someone is working on something you can help with. If you have insights into problems/needs in the world around you and think you can improve or develop something consider a startup or approaching a business who you see you can help. The idea is to make yourself valuable to them. Can you fix/enhance their software? Can you make their net presence more effective? Can you save them money spent on energy or telecommunications? Can you take their existing product to a new market? Besides working on some projects of your own, spend some time researching the industries you're considering. Be someone that is able to see the forest through the trees and help people solve problems. Make yourself valuable to them.
If you've ever looked around at something going on and thought "I could do better than that", you've spotted a potential opportunity. Those will likely offer you more than ads in the paper do... Trust your gut feelings more than what others say. Think positive, you'll get through this. You're not alone in facing such things.
If the hardware can pump out the data fast enough for a tolerable refresh rate, it might be worthwhile to make a fancier version of this VGA interface that could deliver better color depth. Take multiple clock cycles to load portions of data for each RGB pixel into something like two-stage latches, with the outputs of those driving the resistors that act as a D/A converter. 6 bits per RGB component would probably be tolerable. If one settled for 5, each 16 bits transferred would include one extra for constructing a combined V & H sync signal. The latches would be two stage to display the last full RGB pixel until the next is valid.
It seems like they were reasonably clever with the software, but didn't go very far with the hardware.
The have been some commercial products that were serious hacks over the years, like video interfaces driven through a SCSI port. Plenty is still done with Firewire.
http://www.broadcast-media.eu/2008/05/motu-v4hd-firewire-video-interface-for-mac-and-pc/
Most of the bugs are not nearly so obscure as what you're suggesting, although some are discovered by people quite far away. A video with Bruce Dang of MS speaking at the 27th Chaos Communication Congress is revealing. He spoke on behind the scenes thinking and fairly early/rapid analysis done in looking at Stuxnet and seeing what/how it exploited in Windows in multiple ways with 100% reliability.. (The talk does not cover the far more serious aspects of Stuxnet, the PLC- targeting payload or the implications of that which has been studied by others)
The actual talk starts about 11 minutes in. It is probably best to download it with the Download Helper FF extension and play the h.264 in VLC to allow easily repeating portions. The actual talk runs about an hour, he talks pretty fast and the audio has some echo and a resonance making it some work to follow. Some patience is required, but some will find it worthwhile being very informative, revealing some interesting perspectives, and having some funny moments too. (At about 40 minutes, he discusses a point where he was a bit stumped and tired, and took a break to watch porn.)
27C3 - Adventures in analyzing Stuxnet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCqCrtu_n84&feature=related
...I think straight execution after the accident of all management...
Is that any way to treat former government employees?
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110419p2a00m0na012000c.html
Maybe the game could use a few modern twists and get people prepared for things they haven't given enough thought to. Got some radio-iodine in the milk? The half-life is short. Why not process it into powdered milk and store it until there's no longer a problem? Could farmers or the department of agriculture use cloud seeding to cause pollution to be dumped in a lower impact area like over the ocean? Could some keep hay in reserve to feed the cows with in case the pasture areas get contaminated for a little while? If farmers got more behind product testing, wouldn't they be less likely to have competitors cheating with melamine?
If animals are fed diets that promote higher acidity and nastier strains of pathogens, crowding promotes spread of pathogens, and heavy use of antibiotics has made resistant pathogens more common, shouldn't the "good" farmers be pushing for more transparency leading to public outcry that helps push desirable reforms?
Does the pubic have an accurate picture of potential dangers? Can a game help make life better?
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110505p2g00m0dm005000c.html
Should farmers have plans to evacuate their cows under bad conditions? Should information have been withheld to keep them and others more calm? Could they have been keep calm while being fully informed?
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110504p2a00m0na005000c.html
earlier report
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110504004563.htm
What can farmers and others do to deal with soil problems?
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110422004322.htm
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/editorial/T110412005529.htm
pdf on dealing with salt in soil
http://www.fao.org/ag/tsunami/docs/saltwater-guide.pdf
Is farming and other industry impacting farming regulated by the right people?
http://www.japantoday.com/category/politics/view/68-elite-bureaucrats-land-power-company-jobs-over-50-yrs
Somewhere, I think I've still got a very strange tube made by RCA of roughly WWII vintage. It looks like an electron gun chopped of one of those round 7" electro-static deflection television sets made just after the war. 7JP4, 7GP4 or similar (or P1 as seen in old green-screen scopes, sonar, radar etc.). But instead of the electron gun glass flaring out to the screen size, it just had glass over the end with an anode connector hooked to a plate inside.
The plate was a target with a number of characters on it. Raster scanning the proper area of the plate basically produced a video bitmap. It certainly had to have quite a bit of electronics (and some high voltages) to get it to function, quite a contrast from just having bitmaps in a ROM chip. I think that a similar tube was used by television stations to generate the black and white test pattern with the lines, circles and the Indian.
It sort of reminded me of flying-spot scanners, which had similar electronics (except for using magnetic deflection). An image or graphic slide would be exposed to the focused spot of light as scanned on a small c.r.t., and the output signal came from a photo-tube or photo-cell of some type. Some t.v. repair equipment produced test patterns that way. I suppose it was more practical than using a camera tube, and one less prone to burn-in.
I wonder if the people that made the old tube-type fax machines had to pay for that patent too. Those used a photo-tube as a sensor, and focused a really bright light on thermal paper to burn the output. It was essentially a low scan rate video signal (and saturated with no grey scale, making the data more digital than analog). I believe the signal was carried at 75 or 110 baud using a tone shifting between two frequencies (f.s.k.).
It really seems like it is all derived from the early work in television. R.C.A. was an early player.
If they were forced to sign it, then it was signed under duress and it's not enforceable. :)
Since you've found the loophole, the anti-suicide provisions don't apply to you. We're pleased to inform you that you've been transferred to the energy services division which will be happy to schedule your suicide. We think you have a bright future in biofuel.
That sounds like a horrible chemical!
Well... it could be from the Columbia river?
If modern science isn't enough fun, go old tech. What could one cook up at home in 1959???
http://www.science-project.com/_members/science-projects/1959/01/1959-01-fs.html
Make some modified casks to use old spent fuel heat to provide backup power for instrumentation. None of this few hours of runtime nonsense. If the instrumentation and control systems are kept working, better on-plant and near-zone decisions can be made, and backup pump systems powered by small turbines tapping reactor heat or whatever can at least be turned on.
Monitoring and control system power must NEVER go down. Counting on batteries or generators, even if they work, is too short term of technology to rely on when all hell has broken loose. Counting on those was a major design blunder. At full load, the internal fuel tanks in the generator trucks are only enough for a few hours. A backup that doesn't last long enough to cover the worst case repair time for primary systems isn't much of a backup.
Does that mean it couldn't be a viable candidate for some Summer of Code work then?
I guess it'll be a little while before we'll see an app I'd wondered about. I thought it would be useful to be able to take snapshots of things like news reports (streamed on the web, El Gato Eye-TV domestic or satellite t.v., YouTube etc.) and do OCR on them, AND get an English translation of it. With the events so far this year, support for Japanese and Arabic languages would have been a good start.
The link you provided does make it apparent that these pumps can also be used to produce electricity if the pump is placed between a heat source and a heat sink.
Too bad these aren't being used more as part of processes cooling troublesome spent fuel, producing some electricity at the same time. Wouldn't it be great if these could enable an ultra-reliable alternative to backup generators? The article doesn't say if the material is hardy against ionizing radiation.
Having had a job offer from a small company many many years ago where perks included free components and use of tooling and lab equipment for my own projects, I have no doubt that there must have been some other companies doing the same thing too. After all, it makes perfect sense to attract people that find joy in creating. They're the sort that as long as they've got enough to live on, are really more dedicated to what they're doing than to just collecting a check. You don't hire the best and brightest artists by treating people like hourly laborers.
The tale of the guy that developed the Graphing Calculator at Apple more than a decade ago makes for a good read. It's not quite the same thing, but does reflect people of the same mindset.
http://www.pacifict.com/Story/
Well maybe, just maybe, someone will come up with some interesting questions. Not the what's sex like in zero G variety, but something really out of the box.
(putting on thinking cap)
Does the space station have any instruments that can "see" radiation in the air on Earth?
Could the space station being used to launch/release material for cloud-seeding following a nuclear accident? One of the impacts of releases that can affect a significant number (but still tiny percentage) of people long afterwards is from Iodine 131 carried by the wind, and brought down in light rainfall to pasture where it it taken in by cows then humans through milk. Those with smaller thyroids and those with consuming larger amounts of milk, and women in particular are most affected (namely the unborn through about age 15). Most of what affected Sweden from Chernobyl came down in a single day. Thyroid and breast issues 10 - 25 years out are the most common consequences.
So could cloud seeding by done by something sent down from orbit, or planes, to cause much of the Iodine to be brought down as rain into the ocean, before reaching vulnerable land areas. (It's nothing to panic over, but some U.S. cities have seen rainfall with levels far above what would be allowed in drinking water. Perhaps any small long-term effect could have been reduced. Of course feeding cows hay instead of letting them graze for a short period might have been something to consider also )
http://www.ccrcal.org/PDF/Regional_Registries/Reg2AnnualReport.pdf
See upward slope of graphs for women P 18 and P 46
I'd hope Google would sue them for copyright violation, changing their webpage in transit,...
It's very much like a kid sitting on the curb slapping a bumper-sticker on every car at a particular stop sign. Vandalism for profit sums it up pretty well.
The Androids would most likely be upset with software patents, a stifling inhuman rights abuse.
Yep. Nice big screen on one, portability and fun stuff on the other.
And two screens should be great for people with split personalities?
Having two screens certainly opens new possibilities. Maybe AT&T can charge for tethering twice?
If M$ can do this, they are actually going to end up saving you a ton of money.
Of course you could use something far cheaper cheaper, maybe something that uses 1/50th the power like Apple TV. There are many other choices. But it sounds like a hot idea.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/19/xbox-360-power-supply-pinpointed-as-cause-of-house-fire/
Wait, no shit, a streaming TV service would be an interesting move because it would allow users to stream TV? Never would have thought of that myself.
Sure, and instead of it being from some low power mobile device, or something like the Apple TV which uses about 2.5 Watts, you can use about 150 Watts with a Xbox 360. Anyone want a new power plant in the neighborhood??
The "what could go wrong" thing could support a series.
How about brain-eating bacteria from the cooling ponds?
http://earthasylum.wordpress.com/2007/10/01/brain-eating-amoebas/
In particular, if the zero-threshold proportional model was correct, the quality factor would be unity for all types of radiation.
Nonsense. we're talking about risk scaling proportionally with everything else held constant (exposure of a given type etc.). That's not saying that all types of radiation are equal. Of course different types of radiation, and different energy levels within a type make a difference, as do the regions of the body being exposed, and molecular properties affect how the body absorbs different things. That last item is why the thyroid is so sensitive to radio-iodine.
Materials don't disperse in the same way either. Particles of something that doesn't become a vapor, like cesium, may become farther apart at a distance, but each particle is still just as potent. So while fewer people would inhale particles, they're still a risk to those who do. Emitting alpha radiation even paper can stop what a particle on the ground radiates, but throw it in the air with a dust blower and inhale it and it is still a risk.
There's nothing wrong with using a conservative risk model either. Obvious the EU does better than the U.S. at that. BP can use chemicals in the ocean here that wouldn't be allowed in the U.K. We've had additives in plastic food and water containers used in the U.S. that were banned in the E.U. They went with materials just every so slightly more expensive. So the U.S. got people with messed up hormones and who knows what else as a result. It's been causing smaller penises. I guess no one would care about that? NHK has reported falling male fertility in Japan. I wonder if they used the same thing. But it's okay... if the background level on contaminants in our environment is high enough, industry can always blame problems on something else.... like "It wasn't our bottles, it was the hormones in the milk or meat". No... no...it wasn't us.... it was the heavy metals in the fish..... No no it wasn't us.... it was the cell phones on people belts
Letting industry promise jobs to the regulators that should be keeping us safe, or to broadcasters that report on them, IS A REALLY BAD IDEA.
We have standards for federal judges, why not regulators?