Sorta. Had Hitler not decided to invade Russia, he likely would have "won" the war. However, and not to attribute strategic thinking on the part of Hitler, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out, even after wining the war, they would *eventually* have to deal with Russia, or more accurately would have to deal with Russia deciding to deal with them. Perhaps they thought in the grand scheme of things, Japan and Russia would weaken each other to the point where eventually they could make a move on the whole lot.
Given the NAZI ideology and whole racial pureness thing, it sure makes strange bedfellows with the Japanese... The Italians I can see with the fixation of all things on the Roman empire... Anyway even had they "won" the political climate I don't think would be as simple as eating strudel and oktoberfest. Not to mention likely decades of unrest and rebellion etc...
This. It is intentional and obvious. The business model is to make people dependent on cloud services, then monetize the crap out of that service. I think someone long ago saw the continuous profit potential of enabling a locked in dependent service, and that the selling of phones and such are just the icing on the cake at that point.
Memory has been miniaturized and dirt cheap for ages, there is really only one reason to do this.
This. Whenever I see articles like this I always wonder who the heck writes these things. What you stated is one of the most basic fundamental problems with observation and detection in an astronomical sense. Entire civilizations could rise and fall in the intervening time between when something is emitted, and we happen to maybe detect it because the medium is so slow relative to the mind boggling scales being dealt with.
If we assume for an instant that we're the poster child for civilization growth and evolution (as we have zero observations of anything to the contrary of us being late bloomers and there being plenty of super advanced ancient civilizations out there), and draw a sphere around what we've managed to emit in the short time we've been around, then do likewise around every conceivable planet that might be even remotely like ours (i.e. approximate size, rocky, in the goldilocks zone), I think we would very quickly see how fruitless that sort of thinking is, in that no one is going to be detecting or observing anything until we come up with some more exotic way that bends out current knowledge of physics and speed limitations.
On top of all of that, it isn't like the universe is a static thing standing still, entire chunks (pardon the technical term) are either moving further or closer away (though from my limited knowledge of an assumed expanding universe, mostly further), making the distances and limitations involved even more difficult. It would be like me concentrating really hard and listening and looking towards China, except it is many magnitudes even further away, not seeing or hearing anything and thus formulating the conclusion that there is no Chinese civilization because I haven't been able to see or hear anyone. Silly.
Just like Gravity is a fact, and generally speaking "what goes up, must come down" is a fact. However once you get into some of the finer details it may be a bit more complicated than that and more theoretical. It is a big topic.
Evolution is a fact (but also a big topic), but again, once you get into some really specific areas it is more of a theory. However I'm pretty confident whatever overview evolution is given in grade school should be considered fact, not theory. Once the little buggers go to higher education, and start looking at the limits of our understanding of evolution, then they can call it theory. However in order to do that they need a basic understanding of the known facts...
This is more about what is the most suitable medium of communication for a sufficiently advanced civilization. Is it radio? Probably not, if galactic communication does exist, it certainly won't be radio it is way too slow. Even light, is way too slow. Until we figure out some sort of communication medium that transcends these limitations there isn't much point to looking, Heck other worlds could be sending us stuff all the time, we could simply just not know enough to receive any of it.
A somewhat modern analogy:
Back in the mid 1990's I worked as a co-op student in a university IT department. What I did most days was access the "internet" or "World Wide Web" and interact and communicate with others via usenet newsgroups and typically argue with other people with similar access around the world. At the time, insofar as the internet was concerned unless you were a government or a university you didn't have access to it. Most people didn't know it existed. I could tell a few people around me about conversations I had but for the most part that was as far as the communication ever got.
So I guess what I am saying is that the Earth today doesn't know what the "Internet" is, has no access to it, and given distances, is a person standing in a vast plain just listening really hard and hoping for the best. It doesn't mean that others do not have access to that technology, nor that those communications are not taking place. Fast forward to today, just about everyone has the internet, and usenet is archaic, everyone is aware of this type of communication, and in fact now have advanced usage.
Anyway until we discover whatever exotic physics allows for said reasonable communication, there isn't much point straining our ears in the conventional sense.
I for one can't wait until our first alien communication amounts to: Beatlejuice1234: Hey Earth you suck! Your space is the worst! Ha Ha !111!111!;p
The most recent surge which has been the bane of motorists are electric bikes. With the study, are these lumped into the same group? So far as the laws go, they are, even if the physical resemblance is many times not there. From my impression, most of these new e-bikes require no licencing, training, any most probably have little or no regard for anything. Compounded on that, is that they are becoming known more and more as DUI-Bikes. Meaning those people that have lost their driving licence are perfectly legal to drive e-bikes, and many do continue their DUI ways while doing so... I know my city is full of them, and their abuse and lack of any kind of rules is showing.
In conjunction with the fact that there are more cyclists, hence more cyclist accidents, is likely the concentration, which would be in urban centres, with ever increasing traffic and congestion probably hasn't helped matters any either.
It is more less an urban activity, so a much larger percentage of those "new" cyclists will all be competing for turf within a small urban environment.
I would say most written fiction (particularly of the science kind) tends to be a bit over the top, and is about as subtle as a kick in the nuts. Take Heinlein for example. He is one of the greatest science fiction writers, he also had a lot of political commentary in his stories, however much of it left me rolling my eyes... Though he did get his point across, even if he sometimes wielded a hammer to do so. As for other fiction, Ann Rynd wasn't exactly all that subtle about what politics she was writing about either...
At least with ST you could say it was at least progressive. A lot of the old writers had same baggage with them usually sexism, but other junk as well, typically due to the time in which they grew up and lived. I like a lot of old fiction, and some of the stuff that is in it off the cuff and causal make me cringe sometimes. One of H.P. Lovecraft's novels had a character that had a favorite pet cat named "Nigger Cat" that spoke at great length about, I shit you not. Presumably the cat was black. In any case the book in question was probably written sometime in the 1920's, it was a different time back then...
As it pertains to this story... some of the largest oil companies in the world happen to be nationalized, in that they are wholly owned or the largest shareholder is a nation... I was thinking Denmark, but it might be Norway... as is China. I know this because I questioned the great idea to sell Canadian tarsands land to oil companies that for all intents and purposes represent another country, which amounts to literally selling your natural resources directly to another nation...
Think about the video game implications! All that 3D data! It was everyone's dream to play your FPS in your little home town... imagine a whole virtual world. World organized virtual battles... The Chinese are invading Canada, quick get online and do your part citizen!:)
The summary pretty much answers it's own question:
"...their grazing helps get rid of fallen plant matter, which is prevented from decomposing by the cold temperatures."
It very will could be that "Climate Change" has caused slightly warmer temperatures, which has hastened the decomposition of the food they depend on. With less food, the animals become weaker and more susceptible to sickness. Similarly and possibly in conjunction with, the bacteria in question may become more prevalent in slightly warmer temperatures.
All of this is speculation, but both could probably be determined with a bit of study.
So first off it really depends on what you are doing. Generally speaking, I doubt much math is really required for *most* programming. Sure certain specialized fields will require it, but most do not. I got a CS degree, and the "maths" that were required, however most of them were a waste of time. Perhaps if I worked in the scientific or gaming world, I might have more use for them.
I think the math "requirement" in universities is a bit of a anarchism from when there were very few programmers and much of what they did was either fundamental CS stuff, or working in academia using something like FORTRAN to solve for some mathematical or scientific problem that would be more difficult to do without use of computers and looping basically.
Now that "programming" is used more ubiquitously the math component is more of a specialized field.
Ugh. One of my pet peeves. I also do a lot of SQL.
People always look at me like I am some kind of moron when I say S-Q-L rather then "sequel", however I hold that they are the one bastardizing language, not I!
Besides not being treated like a peon, I'd say lack of upper management support is the issue.
I think in many cases, they are all about looking like they are actually accomplishing something when they are not, pushing BS until they can hop to their next position, leaving it for the next guy, and generally not really giving a shit about the actual future of the organization.
Instances of how you create "strategies", push whatever shiny technology that you can use buzz words in your next resume, reorg, transform, blah blah blah...
Where I work, there are pretty much three types of systems we support. 1) The most numerous by far are large legacy systems built in the 1990's when IT actually had a budget that despite our best efforts are slowly falling apart, mostly because business requirements keep changing, and they have struggled to keep up. 2) The second most numerous are the system built in the last 5-10 years where we didn't have the proper money or resources, many of which were supposed to be temporary "interim" solutions to be replaced by proper systems at a later date. They never were, and never are. Every time I hear the word "interim solution" in a meeting I cringe and just want to leave the room. All these systems take up a lot of resources to just keep them running as they are prone to either breaking, or were only half implemented in the first place so many things that should be automated either were not, or only partially so. 3) The last group are some larger core systems, that typically are funded all by themselves, and have a dedicated group that only works on it. These trundle forward more less in good shape, however there are only a few of them, and it is largely a factor of the amount of money at their disposal that they are.
We've been trying to replace the legacy systems for as long as I have been working here, and I have been involved in countless exercises of modernization and renewal, only to have the plug pulled at the last minute due to lack of funding support. Upper management expects to somehow replace multiple systems that cost multiple millions of 1990's dollars for nothing somehow and to do it within your maintenance and support funds which is laughable. My last director's big strategy was to kill one of my major projects which would have replaced a system for a fraction of what the original cost (still about a million bucks or so), which would have also set the stage for further savings due to technological efficiency for replacing other systems, in favor of trying to combine ALL of our legacy systems into one "Mega" system. The idea being that because of all the shared components and technology, you would save money that way. I tried to explain to anyone that would listen that you are simply trading multiplicity for increased complexity, and that while you might save in the reduction of one, you are going to increase the cost of the other... In other words, rather than building 30 different systems that each cost about a million bucks to replace, you are going to build a large 30 million dollar system... To think that somehow you are magically going to build the same for less is ridiculous. I even point out two other similar organizations that more less did the exact same thing, and as expected spent way more than they thought, and didn't get any of the savings producing 30-50 million dollar mega systems. Regardless, everyone jumped on that bandwagon, literally spend about half of that 30 million, creation another system that falls into category 2, that functionally didn't replace ANY of the systems it was created to replace in the first place. Now we are simply stuck supporting *another* system. That director has since moved on to another high paying job elsewhere, we are stuck no further ahead than we were, and in fact we are worse now, as the legacy systems keep getting older, we get more bs interim systems to support, and now this half finished Frankenstein of a mega system that does functionally very little...
That's what my ISP does, and I am pretty sure most/all do up here in Canada. Not sure if it is a legislative thing, or just a competitive thing. You get X amount of cap (depending on your package and how much you pay), and if you go over, you pay some exorbitant amount per GB, however it is capped I believe at 50$ or something like that (might be slightly more now). Presumably if you keep doing it, they probably have written in the 8000 page EULA that you agree to a larger more expensive package or something.
I think most of the fear associated with nuclear has to do with the nature of radiation in that you can't really sense it killing you without some sort of detector. It is like magic to most people, so they fear something they can't see, hear, smell, or understand really. A good analogy might be natural gas. Also used for power, and it just happens in its natural form, invisible and odorless. However in that case, we're able to artificially add a smell to it, so as to make it safer to work with. Not really possible with radiation...
Also Hollywood hasn't helped with the imagery of massive fireballs incinerating everyone in a titanic explosion. When the reality is the most impressive and dangerous part would be a big rising cloud of steam from vaporized water table during a full unconstrained meltdown, then nothing really (unless you're more less standing right next to it) except the possibility of cancer in 20 years, maybe. That would make for some pretty boring and depressing movies however...
Yeah I was kinda of excited until I saw the price... Also while the power savings are considerable, it is still pretty high for an ITX build.
That said, it is a nice technology showcase. I've been an ATI/AMD fan for awhile, they are still top of the game, at least in GPU anyway. The good thing is, my last build wasn't all that long ago (and it was my first ITX build), so I don't *need* to do another anytime soon. That said, buy the time I do, these babies, or more likely their technological grandbabies will be available, and will likely be smaller, cheaper, and use less power by then anyway!
Sometimes the mind can be a real jerk. Fear, stress, and anxiety can manifest some pretty bad physical symptoms. Which while illusory, can have a real physical impact on health.
I was recently told a story by my father just the other week about a person he knew that was involved. Apparently he worked in a lab with a bunch of other people, using some pretty dangerous material. In particular a gas, if escaped in enough quantity, could have some serious health impacts and even death. They had a leak, and the monitor showed concentrations far in excess of what was safe. All the staff started exhibiting the symptoms that were expected. These were well educated, professionals. However as it turned out, there had been no leak, and in fact the monitor was busted. However all the staff knew in detail about the material, what to expect, etc... The stress and anxiety experienced produced the expected results. Once the issue was determined, all symptoms vanished, and probably some people were embarrassed.
So humor these people, put tape over the blinky lights, or otherwise hide the physical locations of routers, and likely the people freaking out about them will feel better...
Social Engineering. Stupidity. Lack of training. There are plenty of ways of making a system secure technically, but even if you do all that, it's the squishy parts that can throw a wrench into the gears. Lock everything down? Too much any it is impossible to do anything useful, and people will find was around it that open you up to risk. Heck look at Snowden and the CIA or Bradly with the Army... Give someone access who has believes they have sufficient cause, and no matter what you do, you can't protect against it. Who watches the watchers so to speak. Heck if your sysadmin was in there trying to fix some data issue, suddenly finds is wife's name in there... well he might have a change of heart about the kind of work he is doing and decide to do something rather rash...
Sounds like they did pretty good. Some googling tells me a shilling was worth 1/20th of a pound. Using an inflation calculator it gives the worth to be 4.58 pounds in 2015. A currency converter tells me that equals 7.19 US dollars. So they just made a premium of 5.81 dollars! Well done!
Slashdot Mirror
Sorta. Had Hitler not decided to invade Russia, he likely would have "won" the war. However, and not to attribute strategic thinking on the part of Hitler, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out, even after wining the war, they would *eventually* have to deal with Russia, or more accurately would have to deal with Russia deciding to deal with them. Perhaps they thought in the grand scheme of things, Japan and Russia would weaken each other to the point where eventually they could make a move on the whole lot.
Given the NAZI ideology and whole racial pureness thing, it sure makes strange bedfellows with the Japanese... The Italians I can see with the fixation of all things on the Roman empire... Anyway even had they "won" the political climate I don't think would be as simple as eating strudel and oktoberfest. Not to mention likely decades of unrest and rebellion etc...
This. It is intentional and obvious. The business model is to make people dependent on cloud services, then monetize the crap out of that service. I think someone long ago saw the continuous profit potential of enabling a locked in dependent service, and that the selling of phones and such are just the icing on the cake at that point.
Memory has been miniaturized and dirt cheap for ages, there is really only one reason to do this.
This. Whenever I see articles like this I always wonder who the heck writes these things. What you stated is one of the most basic fundamental problems with observation and detection in an astronomical sense. Entire civilizations could rise and fall in the intervening time between when something is emitted, and we happen to maybe detect it because the medium is so slow relative to the mind boggling scales being dealt with.
If we assume for an instant that we're the poster child for civilization growth and evolution (as we have zero observations of anything to the contrary of us being late bloomers and there being plenty of super advanced ancient civilizations out there), and draw a sphere around what we've managed to emit in the short time we've been around, then do likewise around every conceivable planet that might be even remotely like ours (i.e. approximate size, rocky, in the goldilocks zone), I think we would very quickly see how fruitless that sort of thinking is, in that no one is going to be detecting or observing anything until we come up with some more exotic way that bends out current knowledge of physics and speed limitations.
On top of all of that, it isn't like the universe is a static thing standing still, entire chunks (pardon the technical term) are either moving further or closer away (though from my limited knowledge of an assumed expanding universe, mostly further), making the distances and limitations involved even more difficult. It would be like me concentrating really hard and listening and looking towards China, except it is many magnitudes even further away, not seeing or hearing anything and thus formulating the conclusion that there is no Chinese civilization because I haven't been able to see or hear anyone. Silly.
Step 1: Get Donald Trump elected as President
Step 2: ???
Step 3: PROFIT!!!
Depends on what exactly is being said.
Just like Gravity is a fact, and generally speaking "what goes up, must come down" is a fact. However once you get into some of the finer details it may be a bit more complicated than that and more theoretical. It is a big topic.
Evolution is a fact (but also a big topic), but again, once you get into some really specific areas it is more of a theory. However I'm pretty confident whatever overview evolution is given in grade school should be considered fact, not theory. Once the little buggers go to higher education, and start looking at the limits of our understanding of evolution, then they can call it theory. However in order to do that they need a basic understanding of the known facts...
For 30,000$ it better have force projection allowing me to at least force choke someone...
This is more about what is the most suitable medium of communication for a sufficiently advanced civilization. Is it radio? Probably not, if galactic communication does exist, it certainly won't be radio it is way too slow. Even light, is way too slow. Until we figure out some sort of communication medium that transcends these limitations there isn't much point to looking, Heck other worlds could be sending us stuff all the time, we could simply just not know enough to receive any of it.
A somewhat modern analogy:
Back in the mid 1990's I worked as a co-op student in a university IT department. What I did most days was access the "internet" or "World Wide Web" and interact and communicate with others via usenet newsgroups and typically argue with other people with similar access around the world. At the time, insofar as the internet was concerned unless you were a government or a university you didn't have access to it. Most people didn't know it existed. I could tell a few people around me about conversations I had but for the most part that was as far as the communication ever got.
So I guess what I am saying is that the Earth today doesn't know what the "Internet" is, has no access to it, and given distances, is a person standing in a vast plain just listening really hard and hoping for the best. It doesn't mean that others do not have access to that technology, nor that those communications are not taking place. Fast forward to today, just about everyone has the internet, and usenet is archaic, everyone is aware of this type of communication, and in fact now have advanced usage.
Anyway until we discover whatever exotic physics allows for said reasonable communication, there isn't much point straining our ears in the conventional sense.
I for one can't wait until our first alien communication amounts to: ;p
Beatlejuice1234: Hey Earth you suck! Your space is the worst! Ha Ha !111!111!
The most recent surge which has been the bane of motorists are electric bikes. With the study, are these lumped into the same group? So far as the laws go, they are, even if the physical resemblance is many times not there. From my impression, most of these new e-bikes require no licencing, training, any most probably have little or no regard for anything. Compounded on that, is that they are becoming known more and more as DUI-Bikes. Meaning those people that have lost their driving licence are perfectly legal to drive e-bikes, and many do continue their DUI ways while doing so... I know my city is full of them, and their abuse and lack of any kind of rules is showing.
In conjunction with the fact that there are more cyclists, hence more cyclist accidents, is likely the concentration, which would be in urban centres, with ever increasing traffic and congestion probably hasn't helped matters any either.
It is more less an urban activity, so a much larger percentage of those "new" cyclists will all be competing for turf within a small urban environment.
I would say most written fiction (particularly of the science kind) tends to be a bit over the top, and is about as subtle as a kick in the nuts. Take Heinlein for example. He is one of the greatest science fiction writers, he also had a lot of political commentary in his stories, however much of it left me rolling my eyes... Though he did get his point across, even if he sometimes wielded a hammer to do so. As for other fiction, Ann Rynd wasn't exactly all that subtle about what politics she was writing about either...
At least with ST you could say it was at least progressive. A lot of the old writers had same baggage with them usually sexism, but other junk as well, typically due to the time in which they grew up and lived. I like a lot of old fiction, and some of the stuff that is in it off the cuff and causal make me cringe sometimes. One of H.P. Lovecraft's novels had a character that had a favorite pet cat named "Nigger Cat" that spoke at great length about, I shit you not. Presumably the cat was black. In any case the book in question was probably written sometime in the 1920's, it was a different time back then...
As it pertains to this story... some of the largest oil companies in the world happen to be nationalized, in that they are wholly owned or the largest shareholder is a nation... I was thinking Denmark, but it might be Norway... as is China. I know this because I questioned the great idea to sell Canadian tarsands land to oil companies that for all intents and purposes represent another country, which amounts to literally selling your natural resources directly to another nation...
Think about the video game implications! All that 3D data! It was everyone's dream to play your FPS in your little home town... imagine a whole virtual world. World organized virtual battles... The Chinese are invading Canada, quick get online and do your part citizen! :)
3 Trillion / 15 Billion = 200 years
So unless my math is wrong, according to those numbers we will run out of trees on Earth in 200 years? Somehow I find that hard to believe.
The summary pretty much answers it's own question:
"...their grazing helps get rid of fallen plant matter, which is prevented from decomposing by the cold temperatures."
It very will could be that "Climate Change" has caused slightly warmer temperatures, which has hastened the decomposition of the food they depend on. With less food, the animals become weaker and more susceptible to sickness. Similarly and possibly in conjunction with, the bacteria in question may become more prevalent in slightly warmer temperatures.
All of this is speculation, but both could probably be determined with a bit of study.
So first off it really depends on what you are doing. Generally speaking, I doubt much math is really required for *most* programming. Sure certain specialized fields will require it, but most do not. I got a CS degree, and the "maths" that were required, however most of them were a waste of time. Perhaps if I worked in the scientific or gaming world, I might have more use for them.
I think the math "requirement" in universities is a bit of a anarchism from when there were very few programmers and much of what they did was either fundamental CS stuff, or working in academia using something like FORTRAN to solve for some mathematical or scientific problem that would be more difficult to do without use of computers and looping basically.
Now that "programming" is used more ubiquitously the math component is more of a specialized field.
Ugh. One of my pet peeves. I also do a lot of SQL.
People always look at me like I am some kind of moron when I say S-Q-L rather then "sequel", however I hold that they are the one bastardizing language, not I!
Besides not being treated like a peon, I'd say lack of upper management support is the issue.
I think in many cases, they are all about looking like they are actually accomplishing something when they are not, pushing BS until they can hop to their next position, leaving it for the next guy, and generally not really giving a shit about the actual future of the organization.
Instances of how you create "strategies", push whatever shiny technology that you can use buzz words in your next resume, reorg, transform, blah blah blah...
Where I work, there are pretty much three types of systems we support. 1) The most numerous by far are large legacy systems built in the 1990's when IT actually had a budget that despite our best efforts are slowly falling apart, mostly because business requirements keep changing, and they have struggled to keep up. 2) The second most numerous are the system built in the last 5-10 years where we didn't have the proper money or resources, many of which were supposed to be temporary "interim" solutions to be replaced by proper systems at a later date. They never were, and never are. Every time I hear the word "interim solution" in a meeting I cringe and just want to leave the room. All these systems take up a lot of resources to just keep them running as they are prone to either breaking, or were only half implemented in the first place so many things that should be automated either were not, or only partially so. 3) The last group are some larger core systems, that typically are funded all by themselves, and have a dedicated group that only works on it. These trundle forward more less in good shape, however there are only a few of them, and it is largely a factor of the amount of money at their disposal that they are.
We've been trying to replace the legacy systems for as long as I have been working here, and I have been involved in countless exercises of modernization and renewal, only to have the plug pulled at the last minute due to lack of funding support. Upper management expects to somehow replace multiple systems that cost multiple millions of 1990's dollars for nothing somehow and to do it within your maintenance and support funds which is laughable. My last director's big strategy was to kill one of my major projects which would have replaced a system for a fraction of what the original cost (still about a million bucks or so), which would have also set the stage for further savings due to technological efficiency for replacing other systems, in favor of trying to combine ALL of our legacy systems into one "Mega" system. The idea being that because of all the shared components and technology, you would save money that way. I tried to explain to anyone that would listen that you are simply trading multiplicity for increased complexity, and that while you might save in the reduction of one, you are going to increase the cost of the other... In other words, rather than building 30 different systems that each cost about a million bucks to replace, you are going to build a large 30 million dollar system... To think that somehow you are magically going to build the same for less is ridiculous. I even point out two other similar organizations that more less did the exact same thing, and as expected spent way more than they thought, and didn't get any of the savings producing 30-50 million dollar mega systems. Regardless, everyone jumped on that bandwagon, literally spend about half of that 30 million, creation another system that falls into category 2, that functionally didn't replace ANY of the systems it was created to replace in the first place. Now we are simply stuck supporting *another* system. That director has since moved on to another high paying job elsewhere, we are stuck no further ahead than we were, and in fact we are worse now, as the legacy systems keep getting older, we get more bs interim systems to support, and now this half finished Frankenstein of a mega system that does functionally very little...
So my meeting yesterday a *new* 5 year str
That's what my ISP does, and I am pretty sure most/all do up here in Canada. Not sure if it is a legislative thing, or just a competitive thing. You get X amount of cap (depending on your package and how much you pay), and if you go over, you pay some exorbitant amount per GB, however it is capped I believe at 50$ or something like that (might be slightly more now). Presumably if you keep doing it, they probably have written in the 8000 page EULA that you agree to a larger more expensive package or something.
I think most of the fear associated with nuclear has to do with the nature of radiation in that you can't really sense it killing you without some sort of detector. It is like magic to most people, so they fear something they can't see, hear, smell, or understand really. A good analogy might be natural gas. Also used for power, and it just happens in its natural form, invisible and odorless. However in that case, we're able to artificially add a smell to it, so as to make it safer to work with. Not really possible with radiation...
Also Hollywood hasn't helped with the imagery of massive fireballs incinerating everyone in a titanic explosion. When the reality is the most impressive and dangerous part would be a big rising cloud of steam from vaporized water table during a full unconstrained meltdown, then nothing really (unless you're more less standing right next to it) except the possibility of cancer in 20 years, maybe. That would make for some pretty boring and depressing movies however...
Yeah I was kinda of excited until I saw the price... Also while the power savings are considerable, it is still pretty high for an ITX build.
That said, it is a nice technology showcase. I've been an ATI/AMD fan for awhile, they are still top of the game, at least in GPU anyway. The good thing is, my last build wasn't all that long ago (and it was my first ITX build), so I don't *need* to do another anytime soon. That said, buy the time I do, these babies, or more likely their technological grandbabies will be available, and will likely be smaller, cheaper, and use less power by then anyway!
Sometimes the mind can be a real jerk. Fear, stress, and anxiety can manifest some pretty bad physical symptoms. Which while illusory, can have a real physical impact on health.
I was recently told a story by my father just the other week about a person he knew that was involved. Apparently he worked in a lab with a bunch of other people, using some pretty dangerous material. In particular a gas, if escaped in enough quantity, could have some serious health impacts and even death. They had a leak, and the monitor showed concentrations far in excess of what was safe. All the staff started exhibiting the symptoms that were expected. These were well educated, professionals. However as it turned out, there had been no leak, and in fact the monitor was busted. However all the staff knew in detail about the material, what to expect, etc... The stress and anxiety experienced produced the expected results. Once the issue was determined, all symptoms vanished, and probably some people were embarrassed.
So humor these people, put tape over the blinky lights, or otherwise hide the physical locations of routers, and likely the people freaking out about them will feel better...
Erm,,,, You didn't exactly post as AC you realize...
"Adequate data security stops all but the most skilled hackers."
And if the person already has access... Say a sysadmin that randomly finds his wife's name in the DB, confronts her, has his life ruined...
Social Engineering. Stupidity. Lack of training. There are plenty of ways of making a system secure technically, but even if you do all that, it's the squishy parts that can throw a wrench into the gears. Lock everything down? Too much any it is impossible to do anything useful, and people will find was around it that open you up to risk. Heck look at Snowden and the CIA or Bradly with the Army... Give someone access who has believes they have sufficient cause, and no matter what you do, you can't protect against it. Who watches the watchers so to speak. Heck if your sysadmin was in there trying to fix some data issue, suddenly finds is wife's name in there... well he might have a change of heart about the kind of work he is doing and decide to do something rather rash...
Sounds like they did pretty good. Some googling tells me a shilling was worth 1/20th of a pound. Using an inflation calculator it gives the worth to be 4.58 pounds in 2015. A currency converter tells me that equals 7.19 US dollars. So they just made a premium of 5.81 dollars! Well done!