With the proper inexpensive tracking tools, police could track down cell phones that have been stolen. This would lead them to people who probably have committed more than one crime as well.
With the proper inexpensive tracking tools police could track down.... well, anybody.
Well, jklovanc is getting hammered by the mods, but he has a point. We really aren't ready for space until you can actually do that sort of thing without a three week simulator run.
This is EXACTLY why we need to keep going round and round in LEO until it's really, really boring and second nature*. If we plan on getting past the moon, we have to develop technologies and procedures that allow us to fix things promptly.
* This is not to imply that the ONLY thing we should be doing is the ISS. We should be funding lots of other space related programs.
Fukushima is not like Three Mile Island. It was due to a magnitude 9 earthquake and the subsequent tsunami, not a lack of attention to detail. Seriously, why are you neglecting the most important detail of Fukushima?
Fukashima was due to TEPCO cheaping out and not reinforcing the sea wall WHEN IT'S OWN GEOLOGISTS SUGGESTED THEY DO SO GIVEN THE HISTORY OF FAULT LINES AND TSUNAMI PATTERNS IN THE AREA. And made worse by a string of stupid errors whose underlying theme was 'don't shut the systems down, we can fix them, if you really shut down fast we won't be able to restart easily'.
Yes, had TEPCO done the right things (upgrade the sea wall, resite the generators) it would likely stand as a testament to nuclear power's ability to weather whatever nature throws at them. Instead....
Much of the tsunami damage is being repaired (lives, not so much).
Fukashimi, the ex nuclear plant, will be hassling people for hundreds of years. And the actual morbidity associated with the radiation release will conveniently never be known since they dumped the really bad stuff overboard. Fukashima could have largely been prevented if TEPCO had listened to it's own geologists. And spent a few million extra yen. As John Kenneth Gailbraith as said, 'if all else fails, immortality can always be achieved by spectacular error'.
Cheap? Not a chance. Yeah, you can make it safe and you can make it reliable, but you can't make it safe and reliable AND cheap. That's the big problem with commercial nuclear power now - the plants are too expensive for companies to invest in them. Too much up front money, too long a lead time.
And that doesn't even include the real decommissioning costs.
Nope. This is a perfect geek subject. If for no other reason than the conversation here trends towards rationality and detail (I like Firethorn's analysis above). Just because it's not Linux / Apple / Microsoft / Google doesn't mean it's not relevant an interesting.
What I find fascinating is the non American's take on all this. It's just a whole different world out there - maybe not better or worse, just different. That's interesting and important (stuff that matters). Americans tend to be rather parochial.
Besides, you don't have to read the gun threads. I read perhaps 30% of the threads here. Really, do we need another Google-bash (however we do need some more Oracle bashing)?
In twenty years I could have dozens of easily produced, finely made, reliable and accurate weapons built on my little CNC machine and lathe. Yep, it takes a bit of skill (but not much, my brother in law whose previous mechanical skills were limited to getting the grill started up in the spring is making target barrels now).
Fine by me. You pretty much have that anyway. All you need to do is tighten up the federal database ("all" you need to do, yes, it's not trivial) and expand hunter safety courses to handguns.
That and come up with some meaningful way to get people to lock up firearms around kids. Although I could argue if you want to get your progeny killed, fine, that's your business. Don't use seat belts or bicycle helmets and don't lock up your guns. Darwin wins, eventually.
It really hasn't been in the radar of the 'gun debate' but hunter safety courses - which are mandatory in every state that I've ever hunted in - have been credited with a significant drop in fire arms related accidents. Whether that data is true is open to analysis but if the hunter safety course I went through eons ago was at all typical, there were people there who barely understood the difference between the front and back end of the rifle. Just the simple concept of muzzle control has probably saved a couple of people in that group (don't point the muzzle at anything you're not planning on shooting).
Of course, the redneck in me wants to say that 'gun control is using both hands', but I'm cranked on caffeine at the moment....
You would still do better, much better, on a number of fronts, by tightening up DRIVING LICENSE qualifications.
Go with the data. Cars are much, much more dangerous than guns. By (slowly) ending the driving culture you would save on lives, power, pollution, space, what's left of my hearing and perhaps my sanity.
There's quite a few typos in this interview. Did the editors READ it, or did they just cut-n-paste into the "post" form? Can anyone advise what differentiates Slashdot from an amateur's blog?
But do you really need to use the textbooks for that sort of info - seems like precisely the stuff you could find on the Internet.
I've kept exactly one textbook from many years of buying the stupid things - my intro Chemistry course book written by David Brooks at Texas A&M. For some reason it's been the best refresher for that subject that I've come across - quite possibly because I learned it from the book.,
But I guess the point I'm making is that textbooks these days, even for special, obtuse bits of knowledge, are less likely to be useful these days. If you really think it's that good, you can buy it at the end of the course.
Sounds like a perfectly sensible model. I must be missing something.....
Slashdot Mirror
If you don't think that criminals are terrorists, then you must be a communist. Or at least a socialist.
How does it feel, comrade?
With the proper inexpensive tracking tools, police could track down cell phones that have been stolen. This would lead them to people who probably have committed more than one crime as well.
With the proper inexpensive tracking tools police could track down .... well, anybody.
Careful what you ask for.
Well, jklovanc is getting hammered by the mods, but he has a point. We really aren't ready for space until you can actually do that sort of thing without a three week simulator run.
This is EXACTLY why we need to keep going round and round in LEO until it's really, really boring and second nature*. If we plan on getting past the moon, we have to develop technologies and procedures that allow us to fix things promptly.
* This is not to imply that the ONLY thing we should be doing is the ISS. We should be funding lots of other space related programs.
No, Palin was a calculated choice to get horny males above the age of 30 to look at political programming rather than 4Chan. It almost worked.
The fact that she brought along a big swath of the batshit crazies was icing on the cake.
I really didn't mean all those things I said about young people.
You can hang out on my lawn.
Nuclear power really screwed itself.
Exactly this. Short term economic gain trumps long term conservative engineering everywhere but the Navy nuclear program.
Guess who's still running correctly....
Fukushima is not like Three Mile Island. It was due to a magnitude 9 earthquake and the subsequent tsunami, not a lack of attention to detail. Seriously, why are you neglecting the most important detail of Fukushima?
Fukashima was due to TEPCO cheaping out and not reinforcing the sea wall WHEN IT'S OWN GEOLOGISTS SUGGESTED THEY DO SO GIVEN THE HISTORY OF FAULT LINES AND TSUNAMI PATTERNS IN THE AREA. And made worse by a string of stupid errors whose underlying theme was 'don't shut the systems down, we can fix them, if you really shut down fast we won't be able to restart easily'.
Yes, had TEPCO done the right things (upgrade the sea wall, resite the generators) it would likely stand as a testament to nuclear power's ability to weather whatever nature throws at them. Instead ....
Much of the tsunami damage is being repaired (lives, not so much).
Fukashimi, the ex nuclear plant, will be hassling people for hundreds of years. And the actual morbidity associated with the radiation release will conveniently never be known since they dumped the really bad stuff overboard. Fukashima could have largely been prevented if TEPCO had listened to it's own geologists. And spent a few million extra yen. As John Kenneth Gailbraith as said, 'if all else fails, immortality can always be achieved by spectacular error'.
Where is Godzilla when we need him?
Cheap? Not a chance. Yeah, you can make it safe and you can make it reliable, but you can't make it safe and reliable AND cheap. That's the big problem with commercial nuclear power now - the plants are too expensive for companies to invest in them. Too much up front money, too long a lead time.
And that doesn't even include the real decommissioning costs.
No, this is geological super speed up. All of human civilization (the Anthropocene) is likely to be just a small smudge on the geological time line.
History is vast.
Yes, and it was classified. The mind boggles. What other deep secrets are they hiding? A good recipe for Pud Thai?
Don't expect miracles - a quick peek shows a crappy-quality B&W PDF, (despite the file size). A pretty epub it's not.
So, it's just like an Amazon Kindle book?
Nope. This is a perfect geek subject. If for no other reason than the conversation here trends towards rationality and detail (I like Firethorn's analysis above). Just because it's not Linux / Apple / Microsoft / Google doesn't mean it's not relevant an interesting.
What I find fascinating is the non American's take on all this. It's just a whole different world out there - maybe not better or worse, just different. That's interesting and important (stuff that matters). Americans tend to be rather parochial.
Besides, you don't have to read the gun threads. I read perhaps 30% of the threads here. Really, do we need another Google-bash (however we do need some more Oracle bashing)?
Now, get off our target range.
In twenty years I could have dozens of easily produced, finely made, reliable and accurate weapons built on my little CNC machine and lathe. Yep, it takes a bit of skill (but not much, my brother in law whose previous mechanical skills were limited to getting the grill started up in the spring is making target barrels now).
I win!
Fine by me. You pretty much have that anyway. All you need to do is tighten up the federal database ("all" you need to do, yes, it's not trivial) and expand hunter safety courses to handguns.
That and come up with some meaningful way to get people to lock up firearms around kids. Although I could argue if you want to get your progeny killed, fine, that's your business. Don't use seat belts or bicycle helmets and don't lock up your guns. Darwin wins, eventually.
It really hasn't been in the radar of the 'gun debate' but hunter safety courses - which are mandatory in every state that I've ever hunted in - have been credited with a significant drop in fire arms related accidents. Whether that data is true is open to analysis but if the hunter safety course I went through eons ago was at all typical, there were people there who barely understood the difference between the front and back end of the rifle. Just the simple concept of muzzle control has probably saved a couple of people in that group (don't point the muzzle at anything you're not planning on shooting).
Of course, the redneck in me wants to say that 'gun control is using both hands', but I'm cranked on caffeine at the moment ....
You would still do better, much better, on a number of fronts, by tightening up DRIVING LICENSE qualifications.
Go with the data. Cars are much, much more dangerous than guns. By (slowly) ending the driving culture you would save on lives, power, pollution, space, what's left of my hearing and perhaps my sanity.
Now, get off my road!
Think Howard Stearns meets "Six Feet Under".
And then mix a little "Lost" in with "Jersey Shore" and ferment.
With that attitude, I suspect the end of your journey would be about 5 minutes after the first airlock test.
Sure you might never make it back
No, you aren't going to make it back. One way. The End. Full Stop.
Of course, nobody's going in the first place so you're still stuck with the rest of us.
They're trying.
Progress! We're back in the 1990's.
Cool beans.
There's quite a few typos in this interview. Did the editors READ it, or did they just cut-n-paste into the "post" form? Can anyone advise what differentiates Slashdot from an amateur's blog?
Most blogs can handle unicode. Slashdot can't.
Maybe Hunter S. Thompson minus quality pharmaceuticals.
It should really be read as clear and convincing evidence that 'bath salts' are bad for you.
But do you really need to use the textbooks for that sort of info - seems like precisely the stuff you could find on the Internet.
I've kept exactly one textbook from many years of buying the stupid things - my intro Chemistry course book written by David Brooks at Texas A&M. For some reason it's been the best refresher for that subject that I've come across - quite possibly because I learned it from the book.,
But I guess the point I'm making is that textbooks these days, even for special, obtuse bits of knowledge, are less likely to be useful these days. If you really think it's that good, you can buy it at the end of the course.
Sounds like a perfectly sensible model. I must be missing something.....
But I'll bet they've got a bunch of idiots standing around enormous, complex displays muttering nonsensical 'hacker' terms.
At least that part of the movie was real, right?