The article talks about reducing "transuranic" waste (plutonium, et. al.) It did say that this would greatly reduce the demand for space at Yucca Mountain (but also says that Yucca Mountain won't open until 2020 - and that the amount of waste produced by this country will fill it by 2010.)
What about other kinds of waste? Is Yucca Mountain only for spent fuel? What about decommissioned reactors, worn out parts, etc. that have been exposed to the nuclear reaction? What happens to that stuff?
Finally, it talks about these fusion-fission hybrids being "about room sized", and serving up to 15 LWRs each - and that the US has about 100 LWRs. Does that mean transporting spent nuclear fuel across the country in some form that can be "unpacked" at the fusion-fission site for consumption? People are already freaked out about transporting spent nuclear fuel in heavily armored containers - is the fuel already embedded in some stable substrate by the time it's currently moved?
Finally, can existing spent fuel be used in these hybrid reactors, or has it already been post-processed to make that impossible?
If the alarmists are correct (and I doubt they are, but I don't know enough about the physics here to form a confident opinion), then what happens? This is more of a thought-experiment than anything else.
Will a black hole suddenly swallow the world so quickly that we'd have no warning? (Would that be the best of all possible bad outcomes?) This would imply that they generated such a large black hole that it grew within a matter of seconds (or perhaps minutes) into some world-swallowing gobbler - or that it generated a black hole that went undetected and fell into the earth until it grew into a world swallowing gobbler.
Would it be possible to generate a black hole that (somehow) gained enough velocity or momentum (from asymmetric gobbling of the earth) to escape from the earth? I.e.: if a black hole swallows stuff on only one "side" (whatever that means for a singularity), would there be sufficient asymmetrical release to eject it from the earth? What happens if it ends up in low-earth orbit? Does that wreck GPS and earth monitoring satellites?
What if a black hole simply orbits inside the earth for a while - would it heat the core as it destroys the matter of the core? How much destruction of matter (E=MC^2) would be necessary to cause significant enough heating to cause an increase in volcanism? How does conservation of momentum apply here? Does the thing orbit closer and closer to the center of the earth as it gobbles more and more of the earth?
Mostly, I wonder if there'll be enough time to panic and really make people's lives terribly awful, or if we'll all just disappear without much warning at all.
Ok, I searched for "use cases" in the GCC Plugin Wiki and I saw a few. The most interesting applications seemed to be the Edoc++ and Mozilla ones, and I saw mention of something called MELT but wasn't sufficiently curious to pursue it at 1:30am local time.
It seems like these would require different APIs. Indeed, most Plugin needs would seem to require different APIs, or one huge complicated Plugin API.
Mozilla wants some call-back hooks and a way to add passes to the compiler. Edoc++ want to explore the call-tree, especially for C++ exceptions. And as I said, I wasn't curious enough about MELT.
I don't see an API here. I see very different needs.
A skilled assembly language programmer can significantly reduce the byte size of the program over C, which was very important in the days when boot ROM sizes were small (8K or less.)
C is more maintainable and portable.
Knowing and choosing appropriate algorithms is more likely to gain you speed than coding in assembler, although I won't deny that if you need every last bit of speed from your CPU, you'll end up coding in assembler. However, if you need that much speed, you're really coding against the exact hardware too - I/O controllers, graphics, memory system, even CPU model.
Any company writing most of their BIOS in C is doing it for legacy reasons - changing the code base over from assembly to C isn't worth the effort, especially if the existing code base is reliable and well tested.
While the idea of GCC having plugins has a great "cool" factor, I don't understand what problem they're trying to solve.
As best as I can tell, people who are not GCC developers want to be able to take advantage of all the effort that has gone into GCC to make new and nifty things - but the interfaces in GCC (primarily the IR/intermediate representations) are poorly documented and change frequently from version to version.
Plugins are an attempt to replace create a new API to solve problems tangental to another API - where the problems are a lack of documentation and instability of the API. As development of the GCC continues, new features and methods are going to quickly reveal problems with the plugin API - either the existing APIs will not be able to take advantage of the new features, or they will need t change, or they'll even be removed. And, of course, the interaction between the APIs and the compilation process will need to be documented too in order for them to be useful. And lastly, if the idea of requiring plugins to be GPL'd is to strongly encourage them to be placed in the GCC repository, then that increases the maintenance effort on the GCC developers to keep the donated plugins up to date - or make the unpleasant decision to discard them.
So, not knowing what problems that Plugins are trying to solve, I wonder if solving this another way wouldn't be a good idea - such as resigning the IR format to encourage easier and better documentation or something like that. The GCC was initially created a long time ago before more contemporary methods of keeping code and documentation in sync were developed. Using modern methods would pretty much require a complete, almost clean-room rewrite of GCC which would nullify the benefit of taking advantage of all of the skill and knowledge embedded in the GCC.
So, can someone tell me what Plugins are trying to do?
Right now, if my wallet gets wet (rain, fall in the lake, etc.), it's a nuisance but it'll dry. The cell phone is hosed.
It also ties my finances to the cell phone provider.
I have (or had) a wide choice of credit cards, different plans, different banks/credit unions/etc. I don't have the same kind of choice of phone providers.
I don't like this. It's indentured service to a phone company. Banks are bad enough.
And the whole issue of transactions getting hacked, etc. I much prefer physical contact between something I have and the payment device.
This is a BAD idea, but I fear that I won't be able to avoid it if I keep a cell phone.
Ann Arbor Public Schools (Michigan, USA) opened a new High School (grades 9-12, ages 15-19) this past September. Because it's intended to be the 3rd full high school and because of redistricting issues and whatever, it's currently only populated by the 9th graders.
He sent a cable, not an e-mail.
Teletype, or the modern equivalent.
Alternate communication channel. Probably better understood (because it's older and technologically simpler.) Perhaps even more secure because it's a private network.
I am sure that Detroit is investigating this new technology even as as we blather here.
I would have expected something this gauche to come from Detroit first.
Now I think that it's an attempt by Lexus to get Detroit to do it (b adly, but could there be any other way?) followed quickly by Lexus abandoning this appalling idea.
I've been a victim of lost DTE outage tickets too ( http://www-personal.umich.edu/~rsc/Stories/36hours.html ), but I'd caution you to think about the real risk (probability of an outage * probable duration * cost of an outage) vs. the cost of implementing a permanent generator solution. Don't forget that in order to be effective, the generator (and fuel supply) will have to be maintained too.
Getting off the grid might appeal to a certain survivalist sense of independence, but it doesn't make a lot of sense in SE Michigan which is relatively well covered by the grid (as compared to the UP.)
Think about alternatives to a generator too. Draining the pipes and packing off to a motel might make a lot more sense.
Around the time of the DTE outage I endured, DTE customers had been suffering a large number of outages due to a lack of line maintenance (tree trimming, etc.) DTE suffered a lot with the PSC (Public Service Commission) and the State Legislature for that. The PSC has been neutered by the Republicans, but I suspect that the State Legislature will be looking into DTE over the next few months.
So, what advantage does the server of the legal notice get from this? What is to prevent him from creating a false identity in order to advance the legal process towards confiscating the property?
What is to prevent someone from filing a false claim against someone, using a falsely created set of identities to serve notice to?
They screwed up IDE compatibility. "\" should get a "-1" instead of a "+1".
I also think that the difference between one and two characters for a token object token is largely irrelevant.
What does "typeability" mean? Proximity to the center of the keyboard and "shift"-iness?
Mostly, I think it looks UGLY.
On my Intel Mac (10.5.3 (9D34)), "demonstration" script works as reported when I have Remote Management DISABLED. When I enable Remote Management, the behavior I report above occurs again -- I turned on "Remote Management" with ONLY my ID allowed, and with only OBSERVE in 'options' -- just observe, none of the sub-features of observe.
I am sorely tempted to do the "chmod u-s" trick (to turn of the setuid-root), but I'm concerned about the side-effects it might have managing the system.
execution error: ARDAgent got an error: "whoami" doesnâ(TM)t understand the do shell script message. (-1708)
This is on MacOSX 10.5.3 (9D34) Darwin 9.3.0, Power PC . I have "Remote Login" and "Remote Management" enabled. "Screen Sharing" is under the control of Remote Management.
Haven't tried it on my Intel Mac, or my iMac G5/Tiger . (The iMac stays at Tiger for BitPim and a bunch of games for the kids.)
I think I saw the original "Andromeda Strain" before I read "Mutant 59 - The Plastic Eaters", (http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/d/gerry-davis/mutant-59.htm) but that was ages ago. Pre internet. Perhaps even pre- "vi".
Hey, it was the Nixon era. Dystopias were prevalent in Science Fiction, or at least that part selected by my local public library.
How long before someone posts a "Kick Me" sign on it's back?
My only question is "How long before the local kids decide it's boring to torment the thing?"
What bothered me was this articles emphasis on the issue of dropped packets.
It sounded to me like a re-hash of the early arguments against connectionless, datagram oriented networks (IP) by advocates of connection, virtual circuit oriented networks (X.25, primarily phone companies.)
If you're dropping packets and you're charging for packets, that means that you have to come up with a rebate scheme for rebating the dropped packets (and counting the dropped packets too.) The article seems to have been written by a WSJ bean counter who thinks that if you can count it it must be worth charging for.
What frequency does the Russia use for electrical generation? Translating between 50hz and 60hz must be terribly inefficient. If they hope to sell electricity to the US, would they build seperate generating and transmission facilities?
I recall reading a number of years ago that much of the oil produced in Alaska actually goes to other Pacific Rim countries.
Do these people have a plan for what to do in case this goes all wrong?
Such as if they do block up the mouth of the volcano, and then it explodes (catastrophically) out somewhere else nearby?
... or it slowly ooozes out all over?
If these people doing the chain-ball thing are the same people as the original drilling company, then I doubt they have thought about how it could go wrong and how to respond.
Most of the replies I've seen here seem to disparage the idea. On the other hand, I think it's a great idea. I think we all wish we'd have thought of it ourselves first;-)
The application for this kind of thing where the electrical grid isn't pervasive, and where telephone systems have skipped past wired-lines and straight to cell-phones is obvious. Interestingly (to me), that includes recreational cycling and day-trips to parks & beaches here in the USofA. After all, if all I need to do to keep a cell-phone charged is to bolt a turbine like this to my bike, or stick it on top of my picnic-cooler, then it makes a cell-phone more attactive to me. (I'm a bit of a neo-luddite, I suppose, as I don't have one.)
Certainly,any new PCs built with Longhorn in mind will have a (barely) adequete graphics system.
I can even see the anti-Micro$oft penguinistas seeing this as a way to build more barriers to Linux (i.e.: details for the writing drivers for the GPUs will be scarce, etc.)
However, my disagreement with KalvinB's arguments has to do with "just run Win/98 or Win 3.11" position. That's like saying that if you don't like the complexity of modern cars, just get a Ford Model-T. This just isn't practical.
What I fear is that as MS hops operating systems and discontinues support for older systems, people who have an adequetely functioning system will find themselves without support from 3rd parties for anti-virus, anti-virus, and other anti-malware addons that they NEED in order to be able to do the e-mail and web-surfing that they want to do.
Although that's not precisely on-topic for Longhorn's increased hardware requirements, it is on topic for MS's penchant for creeping featuritis and it's effect on most people.
Although the article clearly comes from
the Globe and Mail, when I tried to find the article on that site, I was prompted for registration, etc.
Unfortunately, the article isn't available under their free registration process, and I'm too cheap to pay for an online paper when there's so much available for free.
Moreover, the web-posting of this article is clearly in violation of the Terms of the Globe and Mail site.
As we trust copyright laws to preserve the freedom of open-source software and the like, so should we respect copyright when the copyright holder doesn't wish to be so open. I think this story should be closed and removed.
I can't really compete with the people who've gone to extremes with cell-phones and SMS, or been on the ops of towers or deep under ground. And there's no point in mentioning the restroom. Anyone who has a wireless laptop and an access point at home will surely have done that.
What I haven't heard mentioned is the back yard,
in a adirondack chair or at the picnic table. (I haven't propped the laptop on the kids climbing cube, although I suppose I could have.) I have been just a few feet away from a sandbox tho.
(Unfortunately, the wild raspberries didn't show up in the garden until after the sandbox lost it's appeal to the kids.)
Since my access point wasn't working right yesterday, I had to run a wire from the basement out to the picnic table. I suppose I could go sit in among the raspberries, sandbox (and laundry line) this evening, but the weather forcast has boomers in it, and the skies are pretty grey right now.
Sadly, there's also the risk of West Nile virus, as an alternative to lightning bolts and drenching rain.
Slashdot Mirror
The article talks about reducing "transuranic" waste (plutonium, et. al.) It did say that this would greatly reduce the demand for space at Yucca Mountain (but also says that Yucca Mountain won't open until 2020 - and that the amount of waste produced by this country will fill it by 2010.)
What about other kinds of waste? Is Yucca Mountain only for spent fuel? What about decommissioned reactors, worn out parts, etc. that have been exposed to the nuclear reaction? What happens to that stuff?
Finally, it talks about these fusion-fission hybrids being "about room sized", and serving up to 15 LWRs each - and that the US has about 100 LWRs. Does that mean transporting spent nuclear fuel across the country in some form that can be "unpacked" at the fusion-fission site for consumption? People are already freaked out about transporting spent nuclear fuel in heavily armored containers - is the fuel already embedded in some stable substrate by the time it's currently moved?
Finally, can existing spent fuel be used in these hybrid reactors, or has it already been post-processed to make that impossible?
If the alarmists are correct (and I doubt they are, but I don't know enough about the physics here to form a confident opinion), then what happens? This is more of a thought-experiment than anything else.
Will a black hole suddenly swallow the world so quickly that we'd have no warning? (Would that be the best of all possible bad outcomes?) This would imply that they generated such a large black hole that it grew within a matter of seconds (or perhaps minutes) into some world-swallowing gobbler - or that it generated a black hole that went undetected and fell into the earth until it grew into a world swallowing gobbler.
Would it be possible to generate a black hole that (somehow) gained enough velocity or momentum (from asymmetric gobbling of the earth) to escape from the earth? I.e.: if a black hole swallows stuff on only one "side" (whatever that means for a singularity), would there be sufficient asymmetrical release to eject it from the earth? What happens if it ends up in low-earth orbit? Does that wreck GPS and earth monitoring satellites?
What if a black hole simply orbits inside the earth for a while - would it heat the core as it destroys the matter of the core? How much destruction of matter (E=MC^2) would be necessary to cause significant enough heating to cause an increase in volcanism? How does conservation of momentum apply here? Does the thing orbit closer and closer to the center of the earth as it gobbles more and more of the earth?
Mostly, I wonder if there'll be enough time to panic and really make people's lives terribly awful, or if we'll all just disappear without much warning at all.
Ok, I searched for "use cases" in the GCC Plugin Wiki and I saw a few. The most interesting applications seemed to be the Edoc++ and Mozilla ones, and I saw mention of something called MELT but wasn't sufficiently curious to pursue it at 1:30am local time.
It seems like these would require different APIs. Indeed, most Plugin needs would seem to require different APIs, or one huge complicated Plugin API.
Mozilla wants some call-back hooks and a way to add passes to the compiler. Edoc++ want to explore the call-tree, especially for C++ exceptions. And as I said, I wasn't curious enough about MELT.
I don't see an API here. I see very different needs.
A skilled assembly language programmer can significantly reduce the byte size of the program over C, which was very important in the days when boot ROM sizes were small (8K or less.)
C is more maintainable and portable.
Knowing and choosing appropriate algorithms is more likely to gain you speed than coding in assembler, although I won't deny that if you need every last bit of speed from your CPU, you'll end up coding in assembler. However, if you need that much speed, you're really coding against the exact hardware too - I/O controllers, graphics, memory system, even CPU model.
Any company writing most of their BIOS in C is doing it for legacy reasons - changing the code base over from assembly to C isn't worth the effort, especially if the existing code base is reliable and well tested.
Rats. I should have replied here. I've got a similar question - what problems are Plugins trying to solve?
While the idea of GCC having plugins has a great "cool" factor, I don't understand what problem they're trying to solve.
As best as I can tell, people who are not GCC developers want to be able to take advantage of all the effort that has gone into GCC to make new and nifty things - but the interfaces in GCC (primarily the IR/intermediate representations) are poorly documented and change frequently from version to version.
Plugins are an attempt to replace create a new API to solve problems tangental to another API - where the problems are a lack of documentation and instability of the API. As development of the GCC continues, new features and methods are going to quickly reveal problems with the plugin API - either the existing APIs will not be able to take advantage of the new features, or they will need t change, or they'll even be removed. And, of course, the interaction between the APIs and the compilation process will need to be documented too in order for them to be useful. And lastly, if the idea of requiring plugins to be GPL'd is to strongly encourage them to be placed in the GCC repository, then that increases the maintenance effort on the GCC developers to keep the donated plugins up to date - or make the unpleasant decision to discard them.
So, not knowing what problems that Plugins are trying to solve, I wonder if solving this another way wouldn't be a good idea - such as resigning the IR format to encourage easier and better documentation or something like that. The GCC was initially created a long time ago before more contemporary methods of keeping code and documentation in sync were developed. Using modern methods would pretty much require a complete, almost clean-room rewrite of GCC which would nullify the benefit of taking advantage of all of the skill and knowledge embedded in the GCC.
So, can someone tell me what Plugins are trying to do?
So, the cell phone takes the place of the wallet?
Right now, if my wallet gets wet (rain, fall in the lake, etc.), it's a nuisance but it'll dry. The cell phone is hosed.
It also ties my finances to the cell phone provider.
I have (or had) a wide choice of credit cards, different plans, different banks/credit unions/etc. I don't have the same kind of choice of phone providers.
I don't like this. It's indentured service to a phone company. Banks are bad enough.
And the whole issue of transactions getting hacked, etc. I much prefer physical contact between something I have and the payment device.
This is a BAD idea, but I fear that I won't be able to avoid it if I keep a cell phone.
Ann Arbor Public Schools (Michigan, USA) opened a new High School (grades 9-12, ages 15-19) this past September. Because it's intended to be the 3rd full high school and because of redistricting issues and whatever, it's currently only populated by the 9th graders.
See http://skyline.a2schools.org/
Ann Arbor Public Schools has long been an Apple friendly system, but they'll use PCs when needed.
My experience as a parent here has been that Ann Arbor schools uses a mix of computer labs and computers in the classroom.
He sent a cable, not an e-mail. Teletype, or the modern equivalent. Alternate communication channel. Probably better understood (because it's older and technologically simpler.) Perhaps even more secure because it's a private network.
I am sure that Detroit is investigating this new technology even as as we blather here.
I would have expected something this gauche to come from Detroit first.
Now I think that it's an attempt by Lexus to get Detroit to do it (b adly, but could there be any other way?) followed quickly by Lexus abandoning this appalling idea.
I've been a victim of lost DTE outage tickets too ( http://www-personal.umich.edu/~rsc/Stories/36hours.html ), but I'd caution you to think about the real risk (probability of an outage * probable duration * cost of an outage) vs. the cost of implementing a permanent generator solution. Don't forget that in order to be effective, the generator (and fuel supply) will have to be maintained too.
Getting off the grid might appeal to a certain survivalist sense of independence, but it doesn't make a lot of sense in SE Michigan which is relatively well covered by the grid (as compared to the UP.) Think about alternatives to a generator too. Draining the pipes and packing off to a motel might make a lot more sense. Around the time of the DTE outage I endured, DTE customers had been suffering a large number of outages due to a lack of line maintenance (tree trimming, etc.) DTE suffered a lot with the PSC (Public Service Commission) and the State Legislature for that. The PSC has been neutered by the Republicans, but I suspect that the State Legislature will be looking into DTE over the next few months.
So, what advantage does the server of the legal notice get from this? What is to prevent him from creating a false identity in order to advance the legal process towards confiscating the property? What is to prevent someone from filing a false claim against someone, using a falsely created set of identities to serve notice to?
They screwed up IDE compatibility. "\" should get a "-1" instead of a "+1". I also think that the difference between one and two characters for a token object token is largely irrelevant. What does "typeability" mean? Proximity to the center of the keyboard and "shift"-iness? Mostly, I think it looks UGLY.
On my Intel Mac (10.5.3 (9D34)), "demonstration" script works as reported when I have Remote Management DISABLED. When I enable Remote Management, the behavior I report above occurs again -- I turned on "Remote Management" with ONLY my ID allowed, and with only OBSERVE in 'options' -- just observe, none of the sub-features of observe.
I am sorely tempted to do the "chmod u-s" trick (to turn of the setuid-root), but I'm concerned about the side-effects it might have managing the system.
I tried it and got:
execution error: ARDAgent got an error: "whoami" doesnâ(TM)t understand the do shell script message. (-1708)This is on MacOSX 10.5.3 (9D34) Darwin 9.3.0, Power PC . I have "Remote Login" and "Remote Management" enabled. "Screen Sharing" is under the control of Remote Management.
Haven't tried it on my Intel Mac, or my iMac G5/Tiger . (The iMac stays at Tiger for BitPim and a bunch of games for the kids.)
I think I saw the original "Andromeda Strain" before I read "Mutant 59 - The Plastic Eaters", (http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/d/gerry-davis/mutant-59.htm) but that was ages ago. Pre internet. Perhaps even pre- "vi". Hey, it was the Nixon era. Dystopias were prevalent in Science Fiction, or at least that part selected by my local public library.
How long before someone posts a "Kick Me" sign on it's back?
My only question is "How long before the local kids decide it's boring to torment the thing?"
Nobody has whispered "8-track" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereo_8) yet.
What bothered me was this articles emphasis on the issue of dropped packets.
It sounded to me like a re-hash of the early arguments against connectionless, datagram oriented networks (IP) by advocates of connection, virtual circuit oriented networks (X.25, primarily phone companies.)
If you're dropping packets and you're charging for packets, that means that you have to come up with a rebate scheme for rebating the dropped packets (and counting the dropped packets too.) The article seems to have been written by a WSJ bean counter who thinks that if you can count it it must be worth charging for.
I recall reading a number of years ago that much of the oil produced in Alaska actually goes to other Pacific Rim countries.
Do these people have a plan for what to do in case this goes all wrong?
... or it slowly ooozes out all over?
Such as if they do block up the mouth of the volcano, and then it explodes (catastrophically) out somewhere else nearby?
If these people doing the chain-ball thing are the same people as the original drilling company, then I doubt they have thought about how it could go wrong and how to respond.
The application for this kind of thing where the electrical grid isn't pervasive, and where telephone systems have skipped past wired-lines and straight to cell-phones is obvious. Interestingly (to me), that includes recreational cycling and day-trips to parks & beaches here in the USofA. After all, if all I need to do to keep a cell-phone charged is to bolt a turbine like this to my bike, or stick it on top of my picnic-cooler, then it makes a cell-phone more attactive to me. (I'm a bit of a neo-luddite, I suppose, as I don't have one.)
I can even see the anti-Micro$oft penguinistas seeing this as a way to build more barriers to Linux (i.e.: details for the writing drivers for the GPUs will be scarce, etc.)
However, my disagreement with KalvinB's arguments has to do with "just run Win/98 or Win 3.11" position. That's like saying that if you don't like the complexity of modern cars, just get a Ford Model-T. This just isn't practical.
What I fear is that as MS hops operating systems and discontinues support for older systems, people who have an adequetely functioning system will find themselves without support from 3rd parties for anti-virus, anti-virus, and other anti-malware addons that they NEED in order to be able to do the e-mail and web-surfing that they want to do.
Although that's not precisely on-topic for Longhorn's increased hardware requirements, it is on topic for MS's penchant for creeping featuritis and it's effect on most people.
Unfortunately, the article isn't available under their free registration process, and I'm too cheap to pay for an online paper when there's so much available for free.
Moreover, the web-posting of this article is clearly in violation of the Terms of the Globe and Mail site.
As we trust copyright laws to preserve the freedom of open-source software and the like, so should we respect copyright when the copyright holder doesn't wish to be so open. I think this story should be closed and removed.
What I haven't heard mentioned is the back yard, in a adirondack chair or at the picnic table. (I haven't propped the laptop on the kids climbing cube, although I suppose I could have.) I have been just a few feet away from a sandbox tho. (Unfortunately, the wild raspberries didn't show up in the garden until after the sandbox lost it's appeal to the kids.)
Since my access point wasn't working right yesterday, I had to run a wire from the basement out to the picnic table. I suppose I could go sit in among the raspberries, sandbox (and laundry line) this evening, but the weather forcast has boomers in it, and the skies are pretty grey right now.
Sadly, there's also the risk of West Nile virus, as an alternative to lightning bolts and drenching rain.