I see that the Nuclear fanbois have been moderating this discussion very effectively - as I browse at -1.
Fukushima is a serious nuclear disaster. It's a very situation that we should all be concerned about. But this should not lead to any pause in our appetite for nuclear energy.
What Fukushima proves are the issues with Nuclear power exist at a human level. These failure are what have led to Chernobyl and Fukushima. They also prove that the Nuclear industry is unable or unwilling to learn from their past mistakes. Any serious nuclear advocate would point to these issues as a major cause for concern.
What people often fail to appreciate is that even coal fired powerstations release quite large amounts of radioactive material in to atmosphere.
First, the material coming out of coal smokestacks are unenriched. Second, they should also be collected and have zero bearing on the nuclear industry the plethora and enormous quantity of Nuclear industry effluents.
It is, and always has been, a ridiculous comparison.
So far, there has not been a single confirmed death due to Fukushima accident. In comparison, there were 20 deaths in the US just mining for coal in 2013. This is not to mention all the deaths being caused by cancers and other health problems being caused by breathing polluted air.
You do not appear to understand how radioisotope analogues function in the metabolism. The irony of you mentioning cancer re-inforces this apparent misconception.
Any injested radioisotope will take a minimum of 6 years to gestate into cancer, meaning any rise in cancer in Japan will manifest in approximately 2017 from anyone who *immediately* injested radioisotopes. Bioaccumulation into the food chain will add a random amount of time to this date.
Additionally, fatalities will not be as common as failed pregnancies, will you count those?
If we're ever going to get on top of this climate change challenge, nuclear must be leading the charge. Nuclear is a safe, non-polluting technology.
Rubbish. The Nuclear enrichment process is the highest producer of atmospheric CFC114 effluent. There is also over 700,000 tons of u235 and many other effluents. To call it safe and non-polluting is a falacy based in ignorance of the facts.
Modern designs are fail-safe in every sense of the word. The newer designs can even cope with a loss of external power (like Fukushima experienced) yet still stay safe.
Which ones?
Really, we should be looking to retire every coal fired plant as a matter of urgency, if only to reduce the amount of radioactive contamination of the atmosphere!!
This can only acheive a reduction of unenriched effluents. You won't find disagreement with me about the coal industries impact, however, it's replacement should be driver my solar thermal and wind, which scale better.
This is the 21st century. The technology is mature, sensible and safe.
But ultimately pointless as it's the human issues that have repeatedly proven to cause ongoing serious accidents that ultimately threaten the survival of the human race in the long term. Additionally Nuclear power is the imposition of a tax on future generations to maintain our standard of living energetically. Any responsible Nuclear advocacy would acknowledge this and the risks in an honest manner.
Nonsense, the concentration in the pacific is negligible and not a danger. you have no understanding of units of meaure of radioactive contamination. You read alarmist nonsense without sense of proportion or scale.
Except that you are talking about radioactive contamination, instead of radioisotope contamination, so it does call into question your capacity to asses the comment at all.
nonsense, the leaking isotopes will decay in decades not centuries.
pu-239, a component of reactor four's fuel mix has a 25,000 year half life and is a fatal dose to a human in the microgram range - at least according to Oppenheimer.
Fukushimi diachi is a local problem, never mind hysteria over non-events like the detected level of one extra xenon atom per cubic meter in the USA, that's nothing. less than nothing.
No, it's a Pacific wide problem and atmospheric effluents are a serious problem for the US food producers. Bioaccumulation has no regard for your ignorance of the facts.
Chernobyl was just bad engineering meets bad management, other plants in the world can't do what that one did.
The only difference is Fukushima adds criminal negligence.
And Fukushima diachi is causing widespread damage, slowly, like Chernobyl did.
Instead of pumping in (then polluting) seawater, why not just let the thing meltdown? It would essentially bury the fuel. After it drops down a 1000' or so, fill the hole in with cement. I wouldn't be too worried about volcanic eruptions, radiation is what keeps the earth core nice and soft.
Well first of all you would have a plutonium fire which would more than likely render the entire northern hemisphere un-inhabitable as it melted into the earth at, IIRC, 1500-3000C. Once it hit the water table it would produce a mighty explosion which would draw in the other 6000 fuel rods stored on the site. If you a)had enough concrete and b) could get lose enough to dump the concrete the melting core would turn the concrete into powder.
There is a distinct lack of video, and for a website to really pop these days it should begin playing any streaming content the instant you load a page
I can't think of a better example of what I DON'T want slashdot to ever do.
If you are looking for an improvement that will draw subscribers, then why don't you fix up the search functionality of the site?
Maybe it's just me however I never seem to be able to get it to work right and I have never once been able to find a post let alone a thread I was looking for. So instead of messing with the presentation layer all the time can you please sort out the back end of the site if you really want to evolve it.
There are several indexes to use for search, Article, thread, year, subject, moderation, friend or foe and more. In other words "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" but feel free to improve it in a meaningful way
Slashdot is pretty important to me and it's ABSOLUTELY the comments from the community that are the most interesting, insightful, funny.
It must be tough for Dice to try and figure out geeks and nerds who have highly attuned bullshit sensors. On the upside for Dice though they have the most tech savvy users, so it should be easy for them.
If you are sincere Dice, then please realise that the Slashdot community know how a site should interact without being pushy. It's Slashdotters who are pushy, that's why it's called "The Slashdot Effect" and why sites get Slashdotted. This alone is evidence of a community, not an audience.
The Beta tries too hard.
The pushy thing about the Beta interface is that it yells "HEY IM FRESH IM INTERESTING LOOK AT ME LOOOOOOK", it's trying too hard. It's not up to Slashdot to be pushy, or even try too hard. It's should be a low key, low bandwidth interaction.
Get the backend right, improve functionality so that it's worth subscribing to.
I currently browse Slashdot with the old-old no-JavaScript UI. It's just what I want. Fix the bug where the same comments show up on page after page - that would be great!
yes
I read all threads expanded, -1 shown, threaded but otherwise in time order. In other words: the raw body of comments, but threaded.
yes
I don't want any help viewing comments, no AJAX or Web 2.0 stuff, just a (threaded) mass of posts to read, with raw links to reply (so it's easy to reply on a new tab).
The more you tighten your grip, the more the Slashdot community will fall through your fingers.
(BTW, we are a community and not "a audience".)
By definition, you are an audience. Even the banner for slashdot states that it is news for nerds. So, not only are you an audience, you are a targeted audience. A community is a group that holds common values. If you want to propose that slashdot viewers are a community, what are the common values that bind all of the viewers?
I'd say it's because of 'News for Nerds' chosen by Nerds and then commented on by Nerds in a relatively information dense way. Once in a while if you mine the comments then you can learn something interesting and useful. If there isn't anything worth reading you may have a decent opportunity to *write* something meaningful. Like bitcoin mining it becomes more difficult as time progresses and you have to put more energy into it.
I don't know what slashdot values mean to anyone else, however I know what they mean to me;
Information density: I can read it and I don't have to scroll around it too much
Minimalistic Design: I turn off ads, it's white, text is clean, few distractions - that makes it great for someone who has to context switch between tasks often
Selective: Slashdot is about who is not here as much as who is, pseudonimity levels the feild so that intelligence and stupidity is revealed evenly, moderation make trolls, plebs and morons mute on a Net that has been savaged by mediocrity. It's that 'apparent' mediocrity of the site that drives lazy minds away.
Inaccessible: Ok, I mean Elite as in leet or 133t. Yep, it's not facefuck or 4gaychan or other try hard bullshitters. Most news will concentrate on what Snowden or Assange or Mitnick did and maybe why they did. The Slashdot community reveals what, how, why, where and when usually before most News organisations realise it *is* a story. Many memes start their life here.
Slashdot was what I started reading (lurking) in 1998 and was pretty much my idea of what the Net should produce using this Web presentation layer. Like myself a lot of users here are actually professional geeks and nerds who have found a respectable balance between work and personal interest with/. and get very nervous when the interface gets tweeks or fucked with. I don't think there is a single IT shop in the world that has/. blacklisted and inaccessible.
I've accepted some of the changes as ok compromises or even neccessary but some of them, even in previous revisions, some changes turned me off. I have been trying the new beta and giving it a chance and I'll probably continue to do so because I value/. enough to give it a chance at least in a way that is more constructive that a single line post that says;
Fuck beta.
However I'm only doing so because I was under the impression that the classic view would continue to be available and not forced upon me. Now I see the rumbling that the classic view will not be available, I hope that is not the case. Let me put it this way, Slashdot had reached it's maturity a few revisions ago and it actually takes more energy to read now. After using the beta I'm not certain I can maintain that amount.
Hey Dice: Why can't you leave the classic view available at least then you won't drive away folk that have been here for a while. The more you change it the less I want to subscribe, every time I go to subscribe you make me less want to by changing it. If you want to derive more revenue why don't you 'Ask Slashdot', Slashdot?
I will probably participate in the boycott and it will be the longest period in time that I have gone by without reading/. since 1998. But I see dangerously similar parralells to jumping the shark or the Imperial phase of a band.
The problem with fracking is it's still in the beta development. The frakers don't understand who the stakeholders are in their projects and what happens when you turn the ground beneath your feet into mash potato.
The ground that's always been there since the beginning feels the same, it looks the same but for some unexplainable reason it no longer has the same substance. Then suddenly something happens and everything collapses into a hole, panic ensues it goes on for some time and then it has changed forever.
The cries go out "We didn't know" - "We should have listened" but it's too late and the world is changed forever.
I can tell you have never heard on Xenon poisoning... Late in the nuclear fuel cycle it becomes increasingly hard to keep the reactor in a state where it can be throttled without risking being unable to restart it. On more than one occasion, a nuclear powered ship has had to call for a tow after an unplanned power change (say a minor reactor incident that causes it to automatically shut down) rendered the reactor unstartable due to Xenon poisoning. Which is why we build nuclear powered ships with multiple reactors these days.
Operators initiated the problems at Chernobyl by Xenon poisoning the reactors and then removing the control rods. While they were scratching their heads wondering what had happened to the power output the reactor started developing hot spots...
You might not be familiar with water, but things dumped in the water (especially particulate matter like silt) rarely stays where you dump it.
No, that's not right. Tidal movements in that part of the world are 7-10 METRES, which means a humungous amount of water is moving in those areas - which is why the coral lives there in the first place.
It's pretty amazing to walk on the sea bed that you were swimming over the day before.
Apart from printing tissue, 3D printing may also threaten intellectual property rights. 'IP will be ignored and it will be impossible or impractical to enforce. Everything will change when you can make anything.' said John Hornick, an IP attorney.
No. Stop. Quit turning natural ideas into assets to be bought, sold, lobbied-for, and speculated.
Thanks for that. I will keep you advice about the firewire in mind.
We are at 16 tracks now so USB bandwidth will probably be a restriction that forces us to use Firewire. We've been using 2*delta1010 and doing the timing via the digital ports of the cards. I was thinking of shelling out for firewire RME however my only concern is the wordclock that synchronizes the samples.
There was a bit of a learning curve, but I'm finding that once I got the hang of using Jack, there was no turning back.
Absolutely, Jack a great audio platform, very tunable. I've been using it as the basis for recording...
using Ardour (http://ardour.org/features.html) for multi-track audio recordings (LV2, VST and LADSPA plugins are all supported)
for a few years and found it to be an effective platform for producing music. We mostly record live so it pushes the hardware a bit.
MuseScore (http://musescore.org/) for scoring, Timidity/Qsyth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TiMidity%2B%2B) for MIDI tone generation.
Great tip, thank you. Out of interest which sound cards do you use and have you ever used Word Clock with them?
Ubuntu Studio.
You are right, I only find kernel tuning a bit more annoying to get right in Ubuntu Studio however this has some really great programs installed and I've had similar experiences to those you described.
Slashdot Mirror
The Gen 4 reactor designs address this problem like the OP said. The state of the art for reactor design is always improving.
That doesn't solve FUkushima - even if it was true, which it isn't.
What Fukushima proves are the issues with Nuclear power exist at a human level. These failure are what have led to Chernobyl and Fukushima. They also prove that the Nuclear industry is unable or unwilling to learn from their past mistakes. Any serious nuclear advocate would point to these issues as a major cause for concern.
First, the material coming out of coal smokestacks are unenriched. Second, they should also be collected and have zero bearing on the nuclear industry the plethora and enormous quantity of Nuclear industry effluents.
It is, and always has been, a ridiculous comparison.
You do not appear to understand how radioisotope analogues function in the metabolism. The irony of you mentioning cancer re-inforces this apparent misconception.
Any injested radioisotope will take a minimum of 6 years to gestate into cancer, meaning any rise in cancer in Japan will manifest in approximately 2017 from anyone who *immediately* injested radioisotopes. Bioaccumulation into the food chain will add a random amount of time to this date.
Additionally, fatalities will not be as common as failed pregnancies, will you count those?
Rubbish. The Nuclear enrichment process is the highest producer of atmospheric CFC114 effluent. There is also over 700,000 tons of u235 and many other effluents. To call it safe and non-polluting is a falacy based in ignorance of the facts.
Which ones?
This can only acheive a reduction of unenriched effluents. You won't find disagreement with me about the coal industries impact, however, it's replacement should be driver my solar thermal and wind, which scale better.
But ultimately pointless as it's the human issues that have repeatedly proven to cause ongoing serious accidents that ultimately threaten the survival of the human race in the long term. Additionally Nuclear power is the imposition of a tax on future generations to maintain our standard of living energetically. Any responsible Nuclear advocacy would acknowledge this and the risks in an honest manner.
Nonsense, the concentration in the pacific is negligible and not a danger. you have no understanding of units of meaure of radioactive contamination. You read alarmist nonsense without sense of proportion or scale.
Except that you are talking about radioactive contamination, instead of radioisotope contamination, so it does call into question your capacity to asses the comment at all.
nonsense, the leaking isotopes will decay in decades not centuries.
pu-239, a component of reactor four's fuel mix has a 25,000 year half life and is a fatal dose to a human in the microgram range - at least according to Oppenheimer.
Fukushimi diachi is a local problem, never mind hysteria over non-events like the detected level of one extra xenon atom per cubic meter in the USA, that's nothing. less than nothing.
No, it's a Pacific wide problem and atmospheric effluents are a serious problem for the US food producers. Bioaccumulation has no regard for your ignorance of the facts.
Chernobyl was just bad engineering meets bad management, other plants in the world can't do what that one did.
The only difference is Fukushima adds criminal negligence.
And Fukushima diachi is causing widespread damage, slowly, like Chernobyl did.
FTFY
Just curious,
Instead of pumping in (then polluting) seawater, why not just let the thing meltdown? It would essentially bury the fuel. After it drops down a 1000' or so, fill the hole in with cement. I wouldn't be too worried about volcanic eruptions, radiation is what keeps the earth core nice and soft.
Well first of all you would have a plutonium fire which would more than likely render the entire northern hemisphere un-inhabitable as it melted into the earth at, IIRC, 1500-3000C. Once it hit the water table it would produce a mighty explosion which would draw in the other 6000 fuel rods stored on the site. If you a)had enough concrete and b) could get lose enough to dump the concrete the melting core would turn the concrete into powder.
So it's probably not a worthwhile option ;)
And you don't even have modpoints? You brave soul.
Actually, I have 2 less mod points than I had before reading your comment
Oh, no they haven't - they're still here but have been modded down to -1. What level are you browsing at?
Thanks - you were right I was browsing at 0.
Posts about the slashcott have been deleted.
There is a distinct lack of video, and for a website to really pop these days it should begin playing any streaming content the instant you load a page
I can't think of a better example of what I DON'T want slashdot to ever do.
"really pop" - WTF, are you fucking serious?
If you are looking for an improvement that will draw subscribers, then why don't you fix up the search functionality of the site?
Maybe it's just me however I never seem to be able to get it to work right and I have never once been able to find a post let alone a thread I was looking for. So instead of messing with the presentation layer all the time can you please sort out the back end of the site if you really want to evolve it.
There are several indexes to use for search, Article, thread, year, subject, moderation, friend or foe and more. In other words "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" but feel free to improve it in a meaningful way
Slashdot is pretty important to me and it's ABSOLUTELY the comments from the community that are the most interesting, insightful, funny. It must be tough for Dice to try and figure out geeks and nerds who have highly attuned bullshit sensors. On the upside for Dice though they have the most tech savvy users, so it should be easy for them.
If you are sincere Dice, then please realise that the Slashdot community know how a site should interact without being pushy. It's Slashdotters who are pushy, that's why it's called "The Slashdot Effect" and why sites get Slashdotted. This alone is evidence of a community, not an audience.
The Beta tries too hard.
The pushy thing about the Beta interface is that it yells "HEY IM FRESH IM INTERESTING LOOK AT ME LOOOOOOK", it's trying too hard. It's not up to Slashdot to be pushy, or even try too hard. It's should be a low key, low bandwidth interaction.
Get the backend right, improve functionality so that it's worth subscribing to.
Another attempt at constructive feedback:
I currently browse Slashdot with the old-old no-JavaScript UI. It's just what I want. Fix the bug where the same comments show up on page after page - that would be great!
yes
I read all threads expanded, -1 shown, threaded but otherwise in time order. In other words: the raw body of comments, but threaded.
yes
I don't want any help viewing comments, no AJAX or Web 2.0 stuff, just a (threaded) mass of posts to read, with raw links to reply (so it's easy to reply on a new tab).
yes
The more you tighten your grip, the more the Slashdot community will fall through your fingers.
(BTW, we are a community and not "a audience".)
By definition, you are an audience. Even the banner for slashdot states that it is news for nerds. So, not only are you an audience, you are a targeted audience. A community is a group that holds common values. If you want to propose that slashdot viewers are a community, what are the common values that bind all of the viewers?
I'd say it's because of 'News for Nerds' chosen by Nerds and then commented on by Nerds in a relatively information dense way. Once in a while if you mine the comments then you can learn something interesting and useful. If there isn't anything worth reading you may have a decent opportunity to *write* something meaningful. Like bitcoin mining it becomes more difficult as time progresses and you have to put more energy into it.
I don't know what slashdot values mean to anyone else, however I know what they mean to me;
Slashdot was what I started reading (lurking) in 1998 and was pretty much my idea of what the Net should produce using this Web presentation layer. Like myself a lot of users here are actually professional geeks and nerds who have found a respectable balance between work and personal interest with /. and get very nervous when the interface gets tweeks or fucked with. I don't think there is a single IT shop in the world that has /. blacklisted and inaccessible.
I've accepted some of the changes as ok compromises or even neccessary but some of them, even in previous revisions, some changes turned me off. I have been trying the new beta and giving it a chance and I'll probably continue to do so because I value /. enough to give it a chance at least in a way that is more constructive that a single line post that says;
Fuck beta.
However I'm only doing so because I was under the impression that the classic view would continue to be available and not forced upon me. Now I see the rumbling that the classic view will not be available, I hope that is not the case. Let me put it this way, Slashdot had reached it's maturity a few revisions ago and it actually takes more energy to read now. After using the beta I'm not certain I can maintain that amount.
Hey Dice: Why can't you leave the classic view available at least then you won't drive away folk that have been here for a while. The more you change it the less I want to subscribe, every time I go to subscribe you make me less want to by changing it. If you want to derive more revenue why don't you 'Ask Slashdot', Slashdot?
I will probably participate in the boycott and it will be the longest period in time that I have gone by without reading /. since 1998. But I see dangerously similar parralells to jumping the shark or the Imperial phase of a band.
The problem with fracking is it's still in the beta development. The frakers don't understand who the stakeholders are in their projects and what happens when you turn the ground beneath your feet into mash potato.
The ground that's always been there since the beginning feels the same, it looks the same but for some unexplainable reason it no longer has the same substance. Then suddenly something happens and everything collapses into a hole, panic ensues it goes on for some time and then it has changed forever.
The cries go out "We didn't know" - "We should have listened" but it's too late and the world is changed forever.
The parallels are found everywhere.
I can tell you have never heard on Xenon poisoning... Late in the nuclear fuel cycle it becomes increasingly hard to keep the reactor in a state where it can be throttled without risking being unable to restart it. On more than one occasion, a nuclear powered ship has had to call for a tow after an unplanned power change (say a minor reactor incident that causes it to automatically shut down) rendered the reactor unstartable due to Xenon poisoning. Which is why we build nuclear powered ships with multiple reactors these days.
Operators initiated the problems at Chernobyl by Xenon poisoning the reactors and then removing the control rods. While they were scratching their heads wondering what had happened to the power output the reactor started developing hot spots...
Well, information wants to be free however, when someone is selling it to me it ceases to be worth anything more than an advertisment.
It just takes micromanagement to an entirely new level. No thanks to these.
I predict they will have an incredibly high failure rate.
You've got your location wrong. The tidal range at Abbot Point is less than 4 meters.
http://www.bom.gov.au/oceanogr...
I should have specified that I mean 1000Kms north and it was from memory. I don't see that they would be much more than you say - thanks for the info.
You might not be familiar with water, but things dumped in the water (especially particulate matter like silt) rarely stays where you dump it.
No, that's not right. Tidal movements in that part of the world are 7-10 METRES, which means a humungous amount of water is moving in those areas - which is why the coral lives there in the first place.
It's pretty amazing to walk on the sea bed that you were swimming over the day before.
I make doctors commit suicide. God says...Neither ambitious piece constituted readest workings possessor requitest Ask sanctuary done consistent 'it fastings commiserate BUT hastened allaying deceived perished fluidness
The next revision of "After Egypt" should include punctuation.
No. Stop. Quit turning natural ideas into assets to be bought, sold, lobbied-for, and speculated.
When your only tool is a hammer...
Thanks for that. I will keep you advice about the firewire in mind.
We are at 16 tracks now so USB bandwidth will probably be a restriction that forces us to use Firewire. We've been using 2*delta1010 and doing the timing via the digital ports of the cards. I was thinking of shelling out for firewire RME however my only concern is the wordclock that synchronizes the samples.
Absolutely, Jack a great audio platform, very tunable. I've been using it as the basis for recording...
for a few years and found it to be an effective platform for producing music. We mostly record live so it pushes the hardware a bit.
Great tip, thank you. Out of interest which sound cards do you use and have you ever used Word Clock with them?
You are right, I only find kernel tuning a bit more annoying to get right in Ubuntu Studio however this has some really great programs installed and I've had similar experiences to those you described.
Apart from the bits that are Latin :P
Well at least someone got it, everywhere else there was the overwhelming sound of WHOOOSSSSHHHHHHHH!
It's all Greek to me.
but you'll sure as shit have to shit again.