I'd love to argue with you... but I can't. Have a very pleasant and conformist day, citizen.
Such a gathering would be illegal anyway and I would have to report you lest I would be liable for similar penalties. You also have a pleasant day citizen!
When I went to renew my passport a few years ago [Australian], they had additional requirements "neutral expression, no smiling" and they were explicit about the fact that this was to improve facial recognition DB matching.
Soon this will be the rule for walking around the street, great news for botox fans. No smiling, look straight ahead, head down, eyes down and enjoy your freedom.
I thought that inherited debt was something that was used in medieval times and in some third world countries to effectively create slavery.
That's the point. While you are busy attending to the debt left to you by the previous generation, you aren't concerned with matters of democracy to lobby against things like this.
The same way our generation was left a carbon legacy all I see is the selfish thinking of the baby boomer generation wanting cheap electricity until they die and forcing the costs onto the X, Y generation and those that come after that. These costs will be realized by these generations in terms of infrastructure to handle all of the problems that have been offset to be dealt with "sometime in the future".
This "Not in My Generation" thinking has to end. In these years now we have the energy and expertise to create technological solutions however the entrenched status quo has the same capacity to mold opinions into complacency as it does for solving these problems permanently. Molding opinions though, is much cheaper.
Nuclear and carbon capture in their current forms are only stopgap measure to a more permanent solutions. Carbon capture looks like a dead technology that will only serve to delay facing the issue of carbons a means to just keep using coal.
Nuclear looks more promising, but requires a more serious attitude to deal with the sobering danger the impact of its failures present. Infrastructure to deal with spent fuel containment, reactor decommissioning, reactor design, enrichment and, especially, infrastructure to move the existing fuel all have to be dealt with if we are to have any realistic energy return from Nuclear. These problems become more intense as the energetic costs to produce uranium continue to rise due to the transitions from processing soft ores (like sandstone) to hard ores (like granite) as a source material for extracting uranium. The energetic costs of seawater production is also very high with current technology. And before you say breeder reactors or thorium reactors, they still require the above infrastructure. Whilst a thorium fuel cycle, from my understanding, will trade Plutonium 239 for Thallium 238 as a spent fuel product, so we have 2 problems instead of one.
Creating an alternative energy production infrastructure based on Solar, Wind, Wave and geothermal, independent of existing infrastructure, is a smart choice as it also allows us time to create a new technological base that produces less externalities. Doing so would also allow a more planned approach to Nuclear power that improves the development of that technological infrastructure base as it is proven that solar thermal can do base load and that wind scale quite well.
What this means is that OUR generation deals with the transition of the technological bases in a more controlled manner while the costs of doing so can be handled for lower cost. It will never be perfect and mistakes will be made however, if we don't learn from the past mistakes and invest in high externality power infrastructure (like coal and nuclear in its current form) while we have a functioning infrastructure then we will be leaving a greater set of problems for humanity to deal with in the future.
None of this though, is a concern that the current establishment cares about.
If you fix every problem before it gets serious and avert the other 90%, your bosses will think they have a highly reliable IT infrastructure. They will then cast their eyes about for cost savings - and the biggest target will be the most highly paid admins - the most senior ones - YOU!!!.
A big part of that effectiveness is being able to identify trends, classes and root causes of issues. The amount of symptomatic issues is a measurement for the impact the issue causes and the metric by which to demonstrate why the pay is justified.
Allowing a organisation to feel the impact of their management decisions also demonstrates to them why your expertise and, judgement should be taken seriously - especially when you alert them which issues matter. Management may not like you for the level of natural power you have over an organisation however they will respect you.
If you're really an effective administrator you should have your work finished well inside 30 hours and/or 4 working days.
The reason there are more fat people in IT isn't because we want to be. It is because the GOOD IT people get fat because they know that the best IT people never need to leave their seats. If you have to leave your seat to do something as an admin, you are doing something wrong and not using the technology that is available to you to be able to fix everything but physical hardware failure or installation from your seat.
This is why my office chair is a toilet. Actually my entire desk is in a toilet cubicle with the rest of the IT Team 'just in case of emergencies'. Curiously though the sound of urination is no different from the sound of people pissing on things to make their territory but they can't because we are already pissing on everything.
It's sometimes very odd when someone urgently bursts in during one of our meetings, but they usually leaved feeling relieved.
Can someone explain to me why a reactor can overheat and meltdown like in Japan... but not have the energy to spin the turbines to power cooling?
Yes. The first factor is the residual thermal heat in the reactor, it is 150 tons of uranium, so it's a large thermal mass before having properties that cause the heat in the first place, i.e. neutrons bouncing around.
Obviously the heat is removed with the water cooling, however the water also serves to *moderate* the reaction by slowing the neutrons. There has to be enough water to cover the fuel rods otherwise more heat is generated. There probably was enough energy to spin the turbines and may have been a way to control the reactor assuming it was operational.
I don't know if there is facilities to do that however, after the earthquake and SCRAM the reactors condition was unknown.
How can it get so hot that it boils the water way even under ridiculous pressures... but that heat can't be used to power turbines?
Well the pressure in a Mk I reactor only has to get to 70psi to expose the basis design issues and typically operates at lower pressures than that.. As the water level was not known in the reactor the operators didn't know that the water level was low. Consequently there was nothing to moderate the reaction and instead of cooling, it was getting hotter.
Am I to believe that reactors actually generate more power when shutdown than when powered up?
Yes, when they malfunction, as was the case in Fukushima.
I just can't fathom why a plant can SCRAM and then overheat... but be unable to cool itself.
Because there wasn't enough water to moderate the reaction, let alone cool it. Don't forget the natural state is for it to produce heat.
Someones design is WAY fucked up me thinks. Its generating too much steam... USE IT...
By that stage each reactor was fully exposed to the basis design issue and was hot enough (thermal and radioactive) to start producing hydrogen from the water. This is the beginning of a plutonium fire, so at that stage, assuming you still had containment a lot of water is required to bring things under control. If TEPCO had better contingency planning, followed the manufacturers instructions for operating the plant, and the backup generators were available this whole situation could have been avoided.
The official report of The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission reveals the collusion that took place with the regulator so improvements would not be put in place.
I'm not going to read it, because I'm lazy; did they discuss the fact that was an absolute shit place to put the plant in the first place, and that they knew this fact when GE chose the site, and the US government forced them to put it where GE said, or that the Mark I was unsafe by design due to the spent fuel rod storage?
No. A riverbed was a seriously braindead place to put Fukushima.
The Mk I had several basis design issues, however these issues were made fatal by Tepco's criminal negligence. The two dasis design issues were: Gate pair seals in the spent fuel containment pool and reactor vessel exceed 70psi internal pressure. Both had a consequence of producing hydrogen and both were exposed because TEPCO did not maintain power to S class facilities (that contain radio isotopes) in accordance with the siesmic design guidlines.
Maybe on a scale of "eternity", fire doesn't render places "permanently" uninhabitable.
But, then, neither does radiation.
The relatively short half life of Strontium 90 is 600 years, some radioisotopes are more than that some are less. To the perspective of anyone alive today, it's the same as eternity.
Most of the reactors that have had safety issues are reactors that were built decades ago, based on even older designs.
Many of the so called "improved" designs are only improved for economic reasons. Choices, such as less concrete for the containment, actually *reduce* the safety of the reactors because they are too expensive to build otherwise.
We have the knowledge, NOW, to build completely contained devices that safely generate power over the lifetime of the device.
We have the knowledge, NOW, to build reactors that quite simply are INCAPABLE of replicating the accidents that led to contamination at TMI and Chernobyl.
What we don't have is a properly prepared geological spent fuel containment facility. Accidents like Fukushima show how important this step is if you want to reduce the inherrant risk of the entire industry.
As for Fukushima. Fukushima is the story of a freak Tsunami that was mutated by the anti-nuke community into a "nuclear failure".
The official report of The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission reveals that this issue was "Wholey man made" and "avoidable". The installation could have survived had they not had a beleif system that Nuclear power was safe, therefore reducing effort to improve safety in basic ways, like raising the seawall or locating backup generators appropriately.
Basically, if you consider yourself environmentally conscious, you cannot be anti-nuke.
If you understood the actual environmental impact of Nuclear power you don't have to be "environmentally conscious" to have excellent motivation to oppose Nuiclear power.
Because the only other viable options for baseline power are natural gas, coal and oil.
I think you mean "Baseload" and Solar thermal does "Baseload". What you're missing though is that "Baseload" is a function of the grid, not just any single source.
And anyone telling you that we can rely, solely, on wind, wave, solar and geothermal is LYING TO YOU. The people telling you these lies? Shills for the NG, coal and oil industry!
I think we are going to need all of these sources in the coming years. Wind is a great replacement for nuclear because it scales much better. The era of coal is over and we cannot place a radioisotope legacy on future generations the way a carbon legacy was put on our generation.
Disclaimer: I have no connection with the coal or oil industry.
The official report of The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission reveals the collusion that took place with the regulator so improvements would not be put in place. This happened because the beleif system in the safety of Nuclear Power affected all of the safety proposals put forward within and by TEPCO. In other words a 'systemic' issue where the belief that a reactor is safe to be run to capacity, as opposed to a safety culture that certifies it to do so, is the main issue.
A good example of this safety culture is in the Columbia Accident Investigation Board's report. Their interactions with the US Nuclear Sub Fleet revealed that a sub has to consistantly re-certified to operate a certain depth. If it does not get recertified it may not operate at that depth.
As the issue at Fukushima was controlling the residual thermal energy in the reactor as it cooled, perhaps this is a safety culture that could be applied to individual Nuclear reactors at power plant installations where the operating procedures recognises the issues and only certified the reactor to a certain percentage of its production until the problems had been resolved.
Any recertification the following year with new lessons learned proscribes risk aversity proportional to the impact, the onus being on the owner to prove that the reactor is safe to operate to that capacity.
The goal is to prevent an accident because there is less thermal heat in the reactor to deal with and explosions, such as those seen at Chernobyl and Fukushima, don't happen. The best outcome being an operator may have been able to continue using a reactor because they chose to be risk averse appropriately to avoid any possibility of the type of thermal issues that lead to explosions.
I know that such a proposal would not be popular with the pro or anti nuclear people, however there are another group that recognises that these plants are getting old and simply can't be run forever so if you want the benefit of the power you have to figure how how to do that safely.
The joke falls flat because every single professional driver with a dispatcher (from taxis to police to heavy trucks) has conversations while driving, often involving reaching for a map. It comes down to the driver.
I see too many books that are fantasy in the science fiction section. Perhaps its too hard to make good science fiction however, I think I'm more interested in Greg Bear's 'The Forge of God' and 'Anvil of Stars' being made into a movie than this.
In that story everything Human is destroyed, and I don't think you can get more darker than the destruction and revenge of Human beings.
As much as I love forwarded X11 apps, its rarely efficient over moderate to slow links. I can't justify using over 1Mbit of uplink traffic just to use my editor over the wire when even a VNC session is more efficient.
FYI, I've often run vncserver on a remote machine, forwarded 5900 over my SSH session and then viewed it locally to launch X11 apps. This has the advantage of not killing the apps if the link goes down. It saddens me a lot that X11 isn't as powerful or useful in these scenarios as VNC.
I've noted on these links that when I use vim over the wire (so to speak) that the noise is so bad that it actually inserts characters into the session, which I thought that TCP/IP would make impossible however, sometimes, it still happens. When it happens I scp the files I need, edit locally and then scp them back.
Having said that do you compress the ssh session that you -X? or is it the latency of the gui response that you are talking about?
Good, so you agree with me then, that pouring money into trying to update vim is pointless, and just polishing a turd.
No. What it will mean is that of a whole lot of people who don't use IDEs because it doesn't allow them to use vim properly (yes I have tried the vim plugins to IDEs), will be able to access the benefits of an IDE without feeling like they have been suddenly lobotomized by it.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd love to argue with you... but I can't. Have a very pleasant and conformist day, citizen.
Such a gathering would be illegal anyway and I would have to report you lest I would be liable for similar penalties. You also have a pleasant day citizen!
When I was a boy...
More people wearing head coverings like in Star Wars.
Personally I'm thinking of exercising my rights, as a western white male, to dress as a muslim woman and don a Burqa.
When I went to renew my passport a few years ago [Australian], they had additional requirements "neutral expression, no smiling" and they were explicit about the fact that this was to improve facial recognition DB matching.
Soon this will be the rule for walking around the street, great news for botox fans. No smiling, look straight ahead, head down, eyes down and enjoy your freedom.
Have a nice day!
and we are one step closer to a 1984 'Big Brother is watching' world....
Or a jump...
I bought a SAMSUNG UN32F6300AFXZA smart HDTV as a computer monitor.
If you don't like what the product does, just don't buy them.
But they seem to recognize inheritance of debt.
I thought that inherited debt was something that was used in medieval times and in some third world countries to effectively create slavery.
That's the point. While you are busy attending to the debt left to you by the previous generation, you aren't concerned with matters of democracy to lobby against things like this.
Do you put the zombies in front of the square alluminum plate?
The same way our generation was left a carbon legacy all I see is the selfish thinking of the baby boomer generation wanting cheap electricity until they die and forcing the costs onto the X, Y generation and those that come after that. These costs will be realized by these generations in terms of infrastructure to handle all of the problems that have been offset to be dealt with "sometime in the future".
This "Not in My Generation" thinking has to end. In these years now we have the energy and expertise to create technological solutions however the entrenched status quo has the same capacity to mold opinions into complacency as it does for solving these problems permanently. Molding opinions though, is much cheaper.
Nuclear and carbon capture in their current forms are only stopgap measure to a more permanent solutions. Carbon capture looks like a dead technology that will only serve to delay facing the issue of carbons a means to just keep using coal.
Nuclear looks more promising, but requires a more serious attitude to deal with the sobering danger the impact of its failures present. Infrastructure to deal with spent fuel containment, reactor decommissioning, reactor design, enrichment and, especially, infrastructure to move the existing fuel all have to be dealt with if we are to have any realistic energy return from Nuclear. These problems become more intense as the energetic costs to produce uranium continue to rise due to the transitions from processing soft ores (like sandstone) to hard ores (like granite) as a source material for extracting uranium. The energetic costs of seawater production is also very high with current technology. And before you say breeder reactors or thorium reactors, they still require the above infrastructure. Whilst a thorium fuel cycle, from my understanding, will trade Plutonium 239 for Thallium 238 as a spent fuel product, so we have 2 problems instead of one.
Creating an alternative energy production infrastructure based on Solar, Wind, Wave and geothermal, independent of existing infrastructure, is a smart choice as it also allows us time to create a new technological base that produces less externalities. Doing so would also allow a more planned approach to Nuclear power that improves the development of that technological infrastructure base as it is proven that solar thermal can do base load and that wind scale quite well.
What this means is that OUR generation deals with the transition of the technological bases in a more controlled manner while the costs of doing so can be handled for lower cost. It will never be perfect and mistakes will be made however, if we don't learn from the past mistakes and invest in high externality power infrastructure (like coal and nuclear in its current form) while we have a functioning infrastructure then we will be leaving a greater set of problems for humanity to deal with in the future.
None of this though, is a concern that the current establishment cares about.
A big part of that effectiveness is being able to identify trends, classes and root causes of issues. The amount of symptomatic issues is a measurement for the impact the issue causes and the metric by which to demonstrate why the pay is justified.
Allowing a organisation to feel the impact of their management decisions also demonstrates to them why your expertise and, judgement should be taken seriously - especially when you alert them which issues matter. Management may not like you for the level of natural power you have over an organisation however they will respect you.
Also known as "No fuckups on Fridays"
The reason there are more fat people in IT isn't because we want to be. It is because the GOOD IT people get fat because they know that the best IT people never need to leave their seats. If you have to leave your seat to do something as an admin, you are doing something wrong and not using the technology that is available to you to be able to fix everything but physical hardware failure or installation from your seat.
This is why my office chair is a toilet. Actually my entire desk is in a toilet cubicle with the rest of the IT Team 'just in case of emergencies'. Curiously though the sound of urination is no different from the sound of people pissing on things to make their territory but they can't because we are already pissing on everything.
It's sometimes very odd when someone urgently bursts in during one of our meetings, but they usually leaved feeling relieved.
Yes. The first factor is the residual thermal heat in the reactor, it is 150 tons of uranium, so it's a large thermal mass before having properties that cause the heat in the first place, i.e. neutrons bouncing around.
Obviously the heat is removed with the water cooling, however the water also serves to *moderate* the reaction by slowing the neutrons. There has to be enough water to cover the fuel rods otherwise more heat is generated. There probably was enough energy to spin the turbines and may have been a way to control the reactor assuming it was operational.
I don't know if there is facilities to do that however, after the earthquake and SCRAM the reactors condition was unknown.
Well the pressure in a Mk I reactor only has to get to 70psi to expose the basis design issues and typically operates at lower pressures than that.. As the water level was not known in the reactor the operators didn't know that the water level was low. Consequently there was nothing to moderate the reaction and instead of cooling, it was getting hotter.
Yes, when they malfunction, as was the case in Fukushima.
Because there wasn't enough water to moderate the reaction, let alone cool it. Don't forget the natural state is for it to produce heat.
By that stage each reactor was fully exposed to the basis design issue and was hot enough (thermal and radioactive) to start producing hydrogen from the water. This is the beginning of a plutonium fire, so at that stage, assuming you still had containment a lot of water is required to bring things under control. If TEPCO had better contingency planning, followed the manufacturers instructions for operating the plant, and the backup generators were available this whole situation could have been avoided.
Get 'em young, get em forever - nothing original here.
It tastes great!
The official report of The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission reveals the collusion that took place with the regulator so improvements would not be put in place.
I'm not going to read it, because I'm lazy; did they discuss the fact that was an absolute shit place to put the plant in the first place, and that they knew this fact when GE chose the site, and the US government forced them to put it where GE said, or that the Mark I was unsafe by design due to the spent fuel rod storage?
No. A riverbed was a seriously braindead place to put Fukushima.
The Mk I had several basis design issues, however these issues were made fatal by Tepco's criminal negligence. The two dasis design issues were: Gate pair seals in the spent fuel containment pool and reactor vessel exceed 70psi internal pressure. Both had a consequence of producing hydrogen and both were exposed because TEPCO did not maintain power to S class facilities (that contain radio isotopes) in accordance with the siesmic design guidlines.
The relatively short half life of Strontium 90 is 600 years, some radioisotopes are more than that some are less. To the perspective of anyone alive today, it's the same as eternity.
Many of the so called "improved" designs are only improved for economic reasons. Choices, such as less concrete for the containment, actually *reduce* the safety of the reactors because they are too expensive to build otherwise.
What we don't have is a properly prepared geological spent fuel containment facility. Accidents like Fukushima show how important this step is if you want to reduce the inherrant risk of the entire industry.
The official report of The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission reveals that this issue was "Wholey man made" and "avoidable". The installation could have survived had they not had a beleif system that Nuclear power was safe, therefore reducing effort to improve safety in basic ways, like raising the seawall or locating backup generators appropriately.
If you understood the actual environmental impact of Nuclear power you don't have to be "environmentally conscious" to have excellent motivation to oppose Nuiclear power.
I think you mean "Baseload" and Solar thermal does "Baseload". What you're missing though is that "Baseload" is a function of the grid, not just any single source.
I think we are going to need all of these sources in the coming years. Wind is a great replacement for nuclear because it scales much better. The era of coal is over and we cannot place a radioisotope legacy on future generations the way a carbon legacy was put on our generation.
Disclaimer: I have no connection with the coal or oil industry.
Just a minor correction here, I meant "put forward within and for TEPCO".
The official report of The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission reveals the collusion that took place with the regulator so improvements would not be put in place. This happened because the beleif system in the safety of Nuclear Power affected all of the safety proposals put forward within and by TEPCO. In other words a 'systemic' issue where the belief that a reactor is safe to be run to capacity, as opposed to a safety culture that certifies it to do so, is the main issue.
A good example of this safety culture is in the Columbia Accident Investigation Board's report. Their interactions with the US Nuclear Sub Fleet revealed that a sub has to consistantly re-certified to operate a certain depth. If it does not get recertified it may not operate at that depth.
As the issue at Fukushima was controlling the residual thermal energy in the reactor as it cooled, perhaps this is a safety culture that could be applied to individual Nuclear reactors at power plant installations where the operating procedures recognises the issues and only certified the reactor to a certain percentage of its production until the problems had been resolved.
Any recertification the following year with new lessons learned proscribes risk aversity proportional to the impact, the onus being on the owner to prove that the reactor is safe to operate to that capacity.
The goal is to prevent an accident because there is less thermal heat in the reactor to deal with and explosions, such as those seen at Chernobyl and Fukushima, don't happen. The best outcome being an operator may have been able to continue using a reactor because they chose to be risk averse appropriately to avoid any possibility of the type of thermal issues that lead to explosions.
I know that such a proposal would not be popular with the pro or anti nuclear people, however there are another group that recognises that these plants are getting old and simply can't be run forever so if you want the benefit of the power you have to figure how how to do that safely.
Management still doesn't understand why you pay for talent.
It never rains but it pours.
The joke falls flat because every single professional driver with a dispatcher (from taxis to police to heavy trucks) has conversations while driving, often involving reaching for a map. It comes down to the driver.
Comments don't flatten jokes, highly strung slashdotters do.
It's the driver who's dangerous, not the phone.
Phones don't kill people, conversations do.
Can I get a cluster of beowulf jokes?
No, however now you can imagine that there will be a cluster of beowulf movies.
In that story everything Human is destroyed, and I don't think you can get more darker than the destruction and revenge of Human beings.
As much as I love forwarded X11 apps, its rarely efficient over moderate to slow links. I can't justify using over 1Mbit of uplink traffic just to use my editor over the wire when even a VNC session is more efficient.
FYI, I've often run vncserver on a remote machine, forwarded 5900 over my SSH session and then viewed it locally to launch X11 apps. This has the advantage of not killing the apps if the link goes down. It saddens me a lot that X11 isn't as powerful or useful in these scenarios as VNC.
I've noted on these links that when I use vim over the wire (so to speak) that the noise is so bad that it actually inserts characters into the session, which I thought that TCP/IP would make impossible however, sometimes, it still happens. When it happens I scp the files I need, edit locally and then scp them back.
Having said that do you compress the ssh session that you -X? or is it the latency of the gui response that you are talking about?
Good, so you agree with me then, that pouring money into trying to update vim is pointless, and just polishing a turd.
No. What it will mean is that of a whole lot of people who don't use IDEs because it doesn't allow them to use vim properly (yes I have tried the vim plugins to IDEs), will be able to access the benefits of an IDE without feeling like they have been suddenly lobotomized by it.