If someone were to remake DF with just rudimentary graphics and GUI (along the lines of dungeons of dredmore) it would be a smash hit. Add multiplayer capability (trading & invading other players' fortresses) and they would have a multimillion dollar MMO opportunity.
I would if I got some sort of pre-order discount. I mean it's unlikely that the 5 could be a downgrade or worse than the 4. So if you were planning on upgrading why not?
There never was! There are new efficiency standards, which both GE and Osram Sylvania say they can meet with new incandescents. The whole thing started as a talking point for a Republican primary, and took off when the punditry caught a whiff of it and smelled red meat.
It may not be a ban de jure but it is a ban de facto.
Playing with semantics is what politicians do to fool the ignorant into being ruled. See The Prince, 1984, etc.
Do you live in Japan directly downwind of Fukushima? Otherwise, you are lying, simple as that. Either that, or using your detector for 6 years continuously has brought it out of calibration.
The dose rates in Tokyo, directly downwind of Fukushima, at the peak of the radiation release, was 0.30 uSv/hr. The detected radiation on the west coast of the united states was about one part in a million above background. This is not an amount that is detectable using common geiger counters.
I happen to be one of those people who owns a Geiger counter. After the incident in Japan, I set it on my desk so I could watch it. A few days after, I noticed that it was registering 3 times the usual background levels (@800 ft elevation). This lasted about a week until it went back to normal.
Now I know background is slight and 3 times background is really nothing to worry about for an individual, but at this point I'd like to point out that I was on the *other side of the planet* from Japan. While I know the/. crowd enjoys the smug hand waving and proclamation of radiation not being a big deal (myself included), I don't think anyone is qualified to really say the GLOBAL impact that these raised rates could have.
I try to err on the side of caution with worldwide issues. I urge everyone here to do the same.
Shens. Two problems with your post.
a) Geiger counters are not sensitive enough to detect small variations in background. You need lab-grade [a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_counter"]PCA's[/a].
b) There have been numerous large solar eruptions recently which is far more likely to have impacted background counts.
While YOU may not be qualified to make statements other than lies to further your political agenda, I am in fact qualified to say that he global impact of Fukushima is 100 to 1000 times less than any of the individual 400+ atmospheric nuclear tests conducted in the 50's and 60's.
The best thing about going back and playing old DOS games like MOO and MoM in DOSBox with a modern computer is that you can now get for free very high quality midi soundfonts that sound better than the commercial studio level equipment back in the day. My favorite is the 240 MB SGM-v2.01. It sounds way better than even a real roland sound canvas, which I always wish I had back in the day.
It's light. Handle's adjustable for easy carrying, good for righties and lefties. Breaks down into four parts, undetectable by x-ray, ideal for quick, discreet interventions. A word on firepower. Titanium recharger, three thousand round clip with bursts of three to three hundred, and with the Replay button - another Zorg invention - it's even easier.
Ideally, the satellite needs no maneuvering, nor targeting, the only thing it needs to do is house the round, then drop it when ground control tells it to.
Someone needs a lesson in Newtonian physics. Being in orbit is not like Wylie E. Coyote where you can just magically stop where you are and fall straight down. You have to precisely slow down using rockets, just enough so that your orbit shifts you into the atmosphere so that the drag can decelerate you down the rest of the way right where you want to end up.
To be honest it means we cannot tax corporations. Every dollar a corporation pays in taxes comes from its customers, that means we pay those dollars.
Also, to be honest, it means we cannot tax individuals. Every dollar an individual pays in taxes comes from his paycheck, that means the corporations pay those dollars.
That's one way of putting it. Another way would be to say that no matter how you try, corporations don't pay any taxes because they aren't people. People work for income, have stocks, and buy goods. Any tax on a corporation falls on PEOPLE eventually, whether it is stockholders, employees, or customers.
The reality of the world is that it doesn't matter how the government collects its taxes - every dollar the government spends is productivity removed from the economy one way or another.
What nutty group on the left is controlling the conversation? Seriously. Who?
Have not noticed how far to the kooky right the "center" of contemporary political discourse has come? Even a recent Pew Research poll (click: "politics and elections," then "support for compromise") showed that 70% of "solid liberals" (supposedly the leftmost group) wanted to compromise with those they disagreed with, while 79% of "staunch conservatives" (the rightmost group) wanted to "stick to their positions." You can see the political ratchet right there.
Conservatives compromising with liberals means giving them everything they demand, and in return they promise not to call you a racist/sexist/bigot//homophobe. Liberals compromising with conservatives means they only get 75% of their demands. Just look at the budget debate. Conservatives' compromise is to return to 2008 spending levels, for which the liberals scream they want to murder the poor. The liberal's "compromise" is to only increase spending by $25 trillion over the next 10 years, instead of $27 trillion.
Oh, and to answer your question, that would be Media Matters, the self-proclaimed media watch dog funded by George Soros.
If an extended warranty made sense, they wouldn't sell it to you.
Wouldn't that apply for health insurance and auto insurance as well? I hope to god I never need to make a $200,000 claim for an accident, but it sure as hell makes me feel better to know that I can if I need to.
Compare the profit margin of electronics insurance to health insurance.
Extended warantees are absurdly profitable, which is why they are pushed so heavily. Probably over 50%. Maybe over 90%.
Health insurance companies generally have less than 1% profit margin. The difference is they deal in large volumes and a guaranteed customer base.
the US managed to always find a way to kill a lot of civilians (by accident they claim)
Yes, of course, the US kills civilians as a matter of policy.
If this is the bullshit that gets modded up, why do any of us sane people even bother?
By definition they are terrorist fighters, not uniformed soldiers, so any terrorist we kill is technically a civilian. Of course it is Al Queda and other islamic terrorist groups that as a matter of policy is to specifically kill civilians, and use civilians as human shields. Liberalism is standing on your head and telling the world they are upside-down.
Sure, a reactor might melt down if you tried to run it at 100% power for a few days with no circulating water to condense the feedwater. But that's why nuclear reactors are made so you can turn them off. When shut down, the backup and tertiary water sources are sufficient to keep the reactors safe.
This misconception has been going around quite a bit, so let me correct again.
Reactors were not designed to only last 40 years. 40 years is just the number the license period the original Atomic Energy Commission decided on based on the reactors being designed to last [i]at least[/i] 40 years, and to be re-evaluated periodically thereafter. This was because there was no prior knowledge or experience in this type of engineering. 40 and 60 year old reactors are not clunkers waiting to fall apart, they are just as safe (actually safer, due to upgrades) as the day they were built.
I realize this was not a chemical reaction, however, I still can't figure out that reaction was stopped at the time of earthquake according to various sources. Graphite rods were inserted into the core to stop the reaction.
So where is this heat coming from. Is the fission on going, wouldn't that mean the reaction wasn't stopped, it is still on going!
Can someone explain this to me?
When a Uranium atom splits by fission, it leaves behind two unstable isotopes. These isotopes soon undergo radioactive decay themselves. These decays produce a significant amount of heat, which can't be "turned off" because it is natural radioactive decay (as opposed to the original induced fission, which can be stopped by absorbing the neutrons which cause fission). The fuel rods are not merely hot and simply need to be cooled off - they are still generating their own internal heat due to these natural decays. The only way to get rid of these decaying isotopes is to wait for them to decay naturally, which is an exponential process.
Some of the isotopes have a short half life, which causes them to generate a lot of heat, but this large heat load decays away quickly and is gone after a couple days. A majority of the isotopes have half-lives in the years to decades range, which means they produce a moderate amount of heat for several years, which is why spent fuel needs to be stored underwater. Once the fuel is about 10 years out, enough isotopes have decayed that it can remain at safe temperature just by radiative cooling, and so can be stored in dry storage containers.
Works for lightbulbs. Dispite the popular ramblings of the internet, neither the EU nor US have actually banned incandescent bulbs - they just set efficiency standards high enough that no incandescent can achieve them.
Just because you don't use the word "ban", doesn't mean it's not really a ban.
LK
Yes it does. If you break a proper government ban (e.g. smoking in pubs in the UK), you are criminally liable.
If I carry on using old incandescent lightbulbs, the consequences are exactly zero in terms of the law.
Oh really? So what would happen if GE just said "we don't care about your energy efficiency requirements and are going to continue cranking out 100 W bulbs"?
It should perhaps be noted that I'm a former reactor plan operator. I have a clue.
Really? Then tell me how you would power the station's loads with no switchyard, station service transformers, or switchgear room, which were all washed away/flooded by the tsunami?
You are exactly right. The Fukushima plant actually had steam-powered water pumps that could have kept the core cool during operation. But the reactor was automatically (or procedurally?) SCRAM'd at the first sign of the earthquake, which means that the reactor wasn't putting out close to enough steam to power the pumps.
That's not exactly correct, the problem was they ran out of battery power to operate the valves for the steam pumps after ~8 hours. And they had no way of recharging the batteries due to tsunami/flooding damage to all of their electrical systems.
If nuclear power plants are used to power cities, why can't they power their own cooling? Seems like keeping the darn thing running would be safer than watching it sit there unpowered and on the verge of blowing up. (Don't get me wrong; I'm sure there's a good reason. I'm just curious.)
Because the tsunami washed away the switchyard and transformers, and flooded the entire electrical switchgear system.
The reactors do have a steam-driven pump to continue to cool itself with their own decay heat, but they ran out of battery power to operate its valves after 8 hours. What they needed was a second steam-driven pump to power a generator in the reactor building.
Natural circulation will continue to cool PWR's in an emergency situation, unless/until a steam bubble forms. This still depends on power to the feedwater pumps though, once the steam generators run dry, you've got TMI.
The GE ESBWR is designed to operate at full power on natural circulation, and if shut down will continue to cool itself normally. Even if it loses feedwater circulation, it has huge accumulator tanks which are able to provide cooling water for several days without any operator intervention required.
Slashdot Mirror
If someone were to remake DF with just rudimentary graphics and GUI (along the lines of dungeons of dredmore) it would be a smash hit. Add multiplayer capability (trading & invading other players' fortresses) and they would have a multimillion dollar MMO opportunity.
I would if I got some sort of pre-order discount. I mean it's unlikely that the 5 could be a downgrade or worse than the 4. So if you were planning on upgrading why not?
Somalia is anarchy, not libertarian. Libertarianism requires the rule of law to enforce contracts.
Yet another one of those annoying liberal memes that gets repeated all the time even though it is so blatantly wrong.
There never was! There are new efficiency standards, which both GE and Osram Sylvania say they can meet with new incandescents. The whole thing started as a talking point for a Republican primary, and took off when the punditry caught a whiff of it and smelled red meat.
It may not be a ban de jure but it is a ban de facto.
Playing with semantics is what politicians do to fool the ignorant into being ruled. See The Prince, 1984, etc.
That's pretty cute! The welfare dinosaur disguised itself as a rich person to avoid being cut by the democrats!
2) If these contracts are known for being so bad, why do people continue to sign them?
Because while they may get ripped off on the record contract, they still get fame and recognition which allows them to make money on concert gigs.
Do you live in Japan directly downwind of Fukushima? Otherwise, you are lying, simple as that. Either that, or using your detector for 6 years continuously has brought it out of calibration.
The dose rates in Tokyo, directly downwind of Fukushima, at the peak of the radiation release, was 0.30 uSv/hr. The detected radiation on the west coast of the united states was about one part in a million above background. This is not an amount that is detectable using common geiger counters.
Shens. Two problems with your post.
a) Geiger counters are not sensitive enough to detect small variations in background. You need lab-grade [a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_counter"]PCA's[/a].
b) There have been numerous large solar eruptions recently which is far more likely to have impacted background counts.
While YOU may not be qualified to make statements other than lies to further your political agenda, I am in fact qualified to say that he global impact of Fukushima is 100 to 1000 times less than any of the individual 400+ atmospheric nuclear tests conducted in the 50's and 60's.
Thats why I only drink water and liquor
Well of course! You wouldn't want the commies to steal your precious bodily fluids after all.
The best thing about going back and playing old DOS games like MOO and MoM in DOSBox with a modern computer is that you can now get for free very high quality midi soundfonts that sound better than the commercial studio level equipment back in the day. My favorite is the 240 MB SGM-v2.01. It sounds way better than even a real roland sound canvas, which I always wish I had back in the day.
It's light. Handle's adjustable for easy carrying, good for righties and lefties. Breaks down into four parts, undetectable by x-ray, ideal for quick, discreet interventions. A word on firepower. Titanium recharger, three thousand round clip with bursts of three to three hundred, and with the Replay button - another Zorg invention - it's even easier.
Someone needs a lesson in Newtonian physics. Being in orbit is not like Wylie E. Coyote where you can just magically stop where you are and fall straight down. You have to precisely slow down using rockets, just enough so that your orbit shifts you into the atmosphere so that the drag can decelerate you down the rest of the way right where you want to end up.
To be honest it means we cannot tax corporations. Every dollar a corporation pays in taxes comes from its customers, that means we pay those dollars.
Also, to be honest, it means we cannot tax individuals. Every dollar an individual pays in taxes comes from his paycheck, that means the corporations pay those dollars.
That's one way of putting it. Another way would be to say that no matter how you try, corporations don't pay any taxes because they aren't people. People work for income, have stocks, and buy goods. Any tax on a corporation falls on PEOPLE eventually, whether it is stockholders, employees, or customers.
The reality of the world is that it doesn't matter how the government collects its taxes - every dollar the government spends is productivity removed from the economy one way or another.
What nutty group on the left is controlling the conversation? Seriously. Who?
Have not noticed how far to the kooky right the "center" of contemporary political discourse has come? Even a recent Pew Research poll (click: "politics and elections," then "support for compromise") showed that 70% of "solid liberals" (supposedly the leftmost group) wanted to compromise with those they disagreed with, while 79% of "staunch conservatives" (the rightmost group) wanted to "stick to their positions." You can see the political ratchet right there.
Conservatives compromising with liberals means giving them everything they demand, and in return they promise not to call you a racist/sexist/bigot//homophobe. Liberals compromising with conservatives means they only get 75% of their demands. Just look at the budget debate. Conservatives' compromise is to return to 2008 spending levels, for which the liberals scream they want to murder the poor. The liberal's "compromise" is to only increase spending by $25 trillion over the next 10 years, instead of $27 trillion.
Oh, and to answer your question, that would be Media Matters, the self-proclaimed media watch dog funded by George Soros.
If an extended warranty made sense, they wouldn't sell it to you.
Wouldn't that apply for health insurance and auto insurance as well? I hope to god I never need to make a $200,000 claim for an accident, but it sure as hell makes me feel better to know that I can if I need to.
Compare the profit margin of electronics insurance to health insurance.
Extended warantees are absurdly profitable, which is why they are pushed so heavily. Probably over 50%. Maybe over 90%.
Health insurance companies generally have less than 1% profit margin. The difference is they deal in large volumes and a guaranteed customer base.
the US managed to always find a way to kill a lot of civilians (by accident they claim)
Yes, of course, the US kills civilians as a matter of policy.
If this is the bullshit that gets modded up, why do any of us sane people even bother?
By definition they are terrorist fighters, not uniformed soldiers, so any terrorist we kill is technically a civilian. Of course it is Al Queda and other islamic terrorist groups that as a matter of policy is to specifically kill civilians, and use civilians as human shields. Liberalism is standing on your head and telling the world they are upside-down.
Sure, a reactor might melt down if you tried to run it at 100% power for a few days with no circulating water to condense the feedwater. But that's why nuclear reactors are made so you can turn them off. When shut down, the backup and tertiary water sources are sufficient to keep the reactors safe.
This misconception has been going around quite a bit, so let me correct again.
Reactors were not designed to only last 40 years. 40 years is just the number the license period the original Atomic Energy Commission decided on based on the reactors being designed to last [i]at least[/i] 40 years, and to be re-evaluated periodically thereafter. This was because there was no prior knowledge or experience in this type of engineering. 40 and 60 year old reactors are not clunkers waiting to fall apart, they are just as safe (actually safer, due to upgrades) as the day they were built.
most insightful post of the week IMO! *thumbs up*
I realize this was not a chemical reaction, however, I still can't figure out that reaction was stopped at the time of earthquake according to various sources. Graphite rods were inserted into the core to stop the reaction.
So where is this heat coming from. Is the fission on going, wouldn't that mean the reaction wasn't stopped, it is still on going!
Can someone explain this to me?
When a Uranium atom splits by fission, it leaves behind two unstable isotopes. These isotopes soon undergo radioactive decay themselves. These decays produce a significant amount of heat, which can't be "turned off" because it is natural radioactive decay (as opposed to the original induced fission, which can be stopped by absorbing the neutrons which cause fission). The fuel rods are not merely hot and simply need to be cooled off - they are still generating their own internal heat due to these natural decays. The only way to get rid of these decaying isotopes is to wait for them to decay naturally, which is an exponential process.
Some of the isotopes have a short half life, which causes them to generate a lot of heat, but this large heat load decays away quickly and is gone after a couple days. A majority of the isotopes have half-lives in the years to decades range, which means they produce a moderate amount of heat for several years, which is why spent fuel needs to be stored underwater. Once the fuel is about 10 years out, enough isotopes have decayed that it can remain at safe temperature just by radiative cooling, and so can be stored in dry storage containers.
Works for lightbulbs. Dispite the popular ramblings of the internet, neither the EU nor US have actually banned incandescent bulbs - they just set efficiency standards high enough that no incandescent can achieve them.
Just because you don't use the word "ban", doesn't mean it's not really a ban.
LK
Yes it does. If you break a proper government ban (e.g. smoking in pubs in the UK), you are criminally liable.
If I carry on using old incandescent lightbulbs, the consequences are exactly zero in terms of the law.
Oh really? So what would happen if GE just said "we don't care about your energy efficiency requirements and are going to continue cranking out 100 W bulbs"?
Really? Then tell me how you would power the station's loads with no switchyard, station service transformers, or switchgear room, which were all washed away/flooded by the tsunami?
You are exactly right. The Fukushima plant actually had steam-powered water pumps that could have kept the core cool during operation. But the reactor was automatically (or procedurally?) SCRAM'd at the first sign of the earthquake, which means that the reactor wasn't putting out close to enough steam to power the pumps.
That's not exactly correct, the problem was they ran out of battery power to operate the valves for the steam pumps after ~8 hours. And they had no way of recharging the batteries due to tsunami/flooding damage to all of their electrical systems.
If nuclear power plants are used to power cities, why can't they power their own cooling? Seems like keeping the darn thing running would be safer than watching it sit there unpowered and on the verge of blowing up. (Don't get me wrong; I'm sure there's a good reason. I'm just curious.)
Because the tsunami washed away the switchyard and transformers, and flooded the entire electrical switchgear system.
The reactors do have a steam-driven pump to continue to cool itself with their own decay heat, but they ran out of battery power to operate its valves after 8 hours. What they needed was a second steam-driven pump to power a generator in the reactor building.
Natural circulation will continue to cool PWR's in an emergency situation, unless/until a steam bubble forms. This still depends on power to the feedwater pumps though, once the steam generators run dry, you've got TMI.
The GE ESBWR is designed to operate at full power on natural circulation, and if shut down will continue to cool itself normally. Even if it loses feedwater circulation, it has huge accumulator tanks which are able to provide cooling water for several days without any operator intervention required.