lolll...is compartmentalized capitalism focused on advancing the interests of the state. The PRC has this trick: You can make yourselves wealthy, but if you attempt to make yourself wealthy at the expense of the state as they do in the U.S. and E.U., then you're fitted with some of that uniquely Chinese jewelry:
A bullet behind the ear.
It would seem that exploitation knows nothing about language, the state or economic systems.
You never said that there are no NASA plans to replace the shuttle human flight capability, just no plans in general. My assertion is that there are plans to replace the shuttle's human spaceflight capability, whether or not they are intiiated or funded by NASA is completely irrelevant. And if we are being quite frank with each other, replacing the NASA operated shuttle program with privately funded LEO taxis that compete for NASA contracts is probably a lot better for the space industry in general. Keeping human spaceflight capability in the hands of NASA creates a government run monopoly that is kept in the stranglehold of whimsical politicians. Getting human spaceflight capabilites out of the pockets of Congress is, in my opinion, the only way human spaceflight is going to be allowed to be sustained long enough to do anything interesting. But that is really a matter of opinion.
I don't disagree with you here, but it's irrelevant.
If your lamentations were over the lack of a NASA program, rather than the lack of a replacement program in general, you should have been more specific. Don't get pissy at me due to your own ambiguity. If your lamentations are over the lack of a viable shuttle alternatives in general, then I stand by my assertion that you are deeply mistaken.
N.A.S.A, another victim of the Iraq war. Such a pity to witness it's demise.
I don't think that lacks ambiguity.
And for the record, the shuttle never could have gotten us to the Moon, Mars, or asteroids. It couldn't go beyond LEO. The current plan to replace the defunt Orion program is titled the MPCV (Multi-Purpose Crewed Vehicle), and it is being actively developed. Both Constellation and DIRECT did little more than add one more rocket booster architecture to an already healthy line of United States developed and operated booster families (EELV, Orbital, SpaceX, the list goes on). So what, exactly, are you lamenting and why? We will get to the Moon. We will get to Mars. We just aren't going to take some pork-ridden politician's wet dream to get there.
I'm aware of the shuttles limitations. Constellation and DIRECT had trade-offs but in general, something is better than nothing considering the industrial size of the programs lost and yes you may as well have painted a party political flag on each program.
What I am lamenting is this is the end of NASA as we know it. It may change into something else but that remains to be seen.
I am lamenting the loss of a massive engineering program that was pretty much the last opportunity of getting the the experiences of engineers who actually worked in the space race to pass their experience on to a new generation, but the funding for it was spent in Iraq. Sure some will go into private industry, most will retire but they won't get to work together in the same way so the systemic expertise is lost. The shuttle was NASA's swan song, for all it's flaws.
Over the NASA generation that oversaw the 'management' of the STS service, corporate culture crept in and NASA's focus shifted from an engineering first mindset. Progressively they converted a knowledge of failure to a memory of success. This is the assessment of the CAIB report, which I read, that illustrates that the culture that NASA got to the moon with was on life support. If any of that culture survives it might be in the form that monitors and regulates Human launches of private vehicles with a minimum level of safety. The end of the shuttle program means NASA budget can be shrunk even more aggressively.
The reason why I think this is because the U.S is in so much financial difficulty right now it hard to see how NASA will be funded to the levels where it will be able to produce it's own launch capacity, I hope I'm wrong, but the scenarios surrounding NASA suggest NASA will become a much smaller organisation.
I think from reading your post we pretty much share the same
The really shitty thing is that Oracle Enterprise Linux is essentially a fork of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, in the same sense that CentOS is. Oracle has already been distributing a version of Linux that gives back nothing to the company that does most of the hard work to make it enterprise-ready. Now it's adding new components to Oracle Enterprise Linux in such a way as to tell the rest of the community it can't have them anymore. If Red Hat wants to fork K-Splice, that's possible under the license, but again Red Hat will have to do all of the work, and Oracle will contribute nothing.
Pity the nice guys with the funky logo didn't buy the assholes with a boring logo
Well I don't know what reality you are living in, but here in the real world we have this little bird that was just tested on orbit last Spring. It's scheduled for another couple of test flights later this year. I hear that the development of its emergency abort system (something the shuttle didn't have) is being developed expediantly. Once that item is checked off, we should be able to put people back into orbit in no time.
But don't let my factually backed optimism rain on your pity party.
So are these NASA plans or SpaceX plans? Oh hang on look at what it says in the article you provided:
Initiated internally by SpaceX in 2005, the Dragon spacecraft
So it's not actually a NASA program which is good because it can't be canceled by the government, oh wait the program is only funded to 2015. Your comment has no bearing on the fact that NASA programs such as Orion, constellation, the still born DIRECT etc, plans to return to the moon and so on are all canceled.
But don't let my pragmatic assessment of the facts and reality interrupt you from your wanking.
This is a sad day because I see no realistic plans to replace the shuttle's capability of putting a human in space, even if it's only LEO. It looks like pretty much everything to replace it has been canceled.
N.A.S.A, another victim of the Iraq war. Such a pity to witness it's demise.
We don't really need diversity in computers we should just learn to run Microsoft on everything from watches to mainframes because windows is the best operating systems ever. If it wasn't for Microsoft there would be no innovation anywhere so basically we should have a formal Microsoft tax and just pay Microsoft to own everything.
It's a good thing that Microsoft use their patent portfolio to stop anyone else in the industry from trying to make anything new because Microsoft would do it better anyway so why even try. Case in point, Google, they should just give up on android and give that market to Microsoft because android is owned by microsoft anyway.
All those dumb nerd who write that crappy open source software (that never works properly on anything) should be donating their time to Microsoft anyway, actually they should be paying Microsoft to be volunteers to write more software for windows. It's been proven in the past with IE6, the most successful and best web browser ever just how innovative Microsoft can be. Apple and Linux should just give up because everything Microsoft everywhere for everyone for ever will be good for all of us.
I like to keep all my code documented and use tools and ticket systems to remember where I am at with a project, I don't want to remember that stuff, so I suppose this is anagolous to what the internet does.
I like to think I use this offset capacity for reasoning and problem solving. Sadly I think many people use it for nothing. Ultimately I see this being augmented right into the brain with some sort of mind interface. I think that technology is part of our collective evolution of the brain and this illustrates it.
I suspect that our brains are evolving faster than we realise towards being problem solvers as opposed to reciters of facts and, hopefully, more reasoned.
Yucca mountain is not a suitable site because it is made of pumice and geologically active evidenced by recent aftershocks of 5.6 within ten miles of a repository that is supposed to be geologically stable for at least 500000 years. The DOE's own 1982 Nuclear Waste policy Act reported that Yucca Mountain's geology is inappropriate to contain nuclear waste, and long term corrosion data on C22 (the material to contain the Pu-239 and mitigate the ingress of water - yet another Yucca problem) is just not available.
We need something made of granite. The only human made structure with the potential to last 10000 years is Mt Rushmore, so it has to be an engineering project of that scale, because the logistical problems of transferring the 70000 odd tons of Pu239 to the spent fuel containment facility are so involved that you want to get it right the first time and only do it once.
Even doing that will probably take 30 years to complete, but there is more to it than that.
I was a big fan of the Integral Fast Reactor as a potential solution and in a way I still am. But the reality is 3rd and 4th generation reactors are a pipe dream because our material science is not advanced enough yet to produce a reactor design that will last the thousands of years it will take to use that fuel. If you are going to build reactors then do it properly and build a Terra-watt scale nuclear reactor facility the belly of a massive granite mountain with an attached waste facility and chomp up all your remaining plutonium or end all commercial nuclear activity altogether.
Why? Because Nuclear power is energy intensive *after* the energy has been produced simply because said technology (material sciences) are not adequate to produce a Nuclear reactor that has a life span that matches the geological time frames of the fuel. This exposes the facility to all the energetic costs associated with de-commissioning reactor sites every 4 decades or so. A reactor design that lasts at least 1000 years and is a closed loop, i.e. the plutonium goes in and nothing comes out (except electricity and possibly hydrogen) and avoids all the energetic costs associated with mining, enrichment and de-commissioning/demolition of the reactor. That would be possible with a reactor situated inside the same granite facility where it could be disposed of in-situ to decay in the belly of a granite mountain.
As long we are producing plutonium and there is no where for it to go we will have a Nuclear Weapons threat and this is the price we pay for opening that pandora's box. I don't hide the fact that I don't like the constant failure of the Nuclear Industry. But I'm also being realistic. I realise that the only way out of this mess is a well thought out and designed project because we have no other choice due to the nature of the materials. It entails redesigning the entire industry, and it's a long term solution. A well designed and secured facility resistant to attacks even from orbit because that's the type of 21st century threats it would have to face.
But it has to be done properly, and I don't think private industry is capable of delivering such a project. If we really think about it it will be a massive undertaking that will present many challenges that must be overcome if we are sincere about producing a well engineered safe Nuclear industry and sincere about a platform for disarmament.
Some who have read my criticisms of the Nuclear Industry may be surprised to find that I actually support the development of a reactor that addresses the issue of 70,000 tons of Pu-239 (and much more U-238) currently stored in reactor sites around America, simply because it's irresponsible for our generation to foist these issue onto later generations.
One of the core reasons I support the development of such a reactor because it is capable of utilising weapons grade plutonium as fuel creating an impetus for di
You can almost certainly overvolt an electric motor, unless it's already at it's peak RPM rating. Especially true with brushless.
I would bet the motors used in HDDs would run fine for years even at 36V, assuming they are 12V. Thus tripling the RPM rating. Just avoid stopping & starting the platters often (highest peak of power used). Question is can platters do it. HDDs are meant to work for years upon years, so they should be working at rather low end of their potential capability, in terms of wear & tear plus heat. Heat is the killer for electric motors.
I guess, at it's simplest just increase the motor voltage might actually work. Unless the controller electronics are relying on being at exactly correct RPM rating.
Could be even rather simply to test, regularly PSU supplies upto 12.35V, change this to car battery charger which will give you 13.6V or thereabouts, see what happens:)
Motor replacement is not viable option, unless you got a lab to work in.
Replacing with 15k RPM hardware -> why not just use the 15k RPM drive then?;) (well platter size...)
Your forgetting that the heads are separated from the platter by the turbulence in the air from the surface of the spinning disk. Changing the speed of the spinning disk changes the distance the head is from the platter thus increasing the read error rate. I suspect you could do it but you would have to be accessing some of the diagnostic mode of the drive where reads could be performed at reduced current.
You might be able to increase the platter speed and the electronics will probably support the increased read rate, but will the data read from the drive look like one big square wave.
I've had to work with a few Assholes in my time, bosses and collegues. Some of the people in my last contract were particularly obnoxious. I recommend the following books;
The No Asshole Rule A brilliant book that quite clearly sets out how to handle assholes, how to recognise when you are being an asshole and what to do about it
The Bully at Work If you are being bullied at work, get this book now. I can't tell you how much it helped me survive mobbing and abuse from some particularly fucked up people. I took the advice and it really helped.
Coping with Toxic Managers, Subordinates and other difficult people Long term this is a excellent book to help you recognise and identify different types of controlling behavior and what behaviour characteristics you can use to plug into their, fuck political correctness, character flaws to manipulate them to get what you want.
The overall theme in all the books is that bullying, particularly a problem in the U.S because of a lack of bullying laws, can cause long term mental damage. Recently slashdot had a story about how physical pain and emotional pain used the same pathways in the brain. These books mention this and how to start to undo the damage.
For you mental health it's important to burn bridges in a targeted and intelligent way for your own mental health so you can move on. I did this by writing a letter to the board, highlighting the financial damage the bullying caused in terms of staff turnover and training, customer dis-satisfaction and increased contractor rates. That way I wasn't churning over in my head that I shudd, cudda, wudda, done this or that. By using the proper channels professionally (whilst having a new gig lined up) I ensured I could move on and inflict the maximum amount of discomfort on the bullies as possible.
Only one situation is worse than bullying and, unfortunately, I've encountered that to, the Occupational Phsycopath. For this I recommend Working with Monsters. These people are fucked up and *will* scar you, it's what they do. Glib with polymorphic personalities they do so many things they need a whole book to handle them. They cripple workplaces and destroy careers, I was lucky to get away, five years later I'm still dealing with the damage and anger.
Basically these Assholes, and seriously what word describes them better, are so commonplace they are like a disease. I got so sick of them this is what I had to do to build the skills required to handle them. Technology folk who have high levels of empathy, task focused, logical and analytical usually have low levels of Emotional Intelligence and personal interaction skills. What I learned is that this makes us easy target for these fuckers because they can read us like a book.
Good thing about being Intelligent is you can adapt to new scenarios. So as the final whammy I added the Alan Pease book, Body Language so I could turn the tables around. I studied the body language book and then simply went into a public place and observed people. As I practised I got better at recognising the various "assholic" behaviors so I could disarm them (or manipulate them).
I'd also advise you read the books in secret, lest you will make yourself a target for assholes.
I think of nuclear power as a battery. We're going to have to pay everything back in energy to transmute the waste.
Energetically, I cannot see transmutation (of transuranics) ever happening outside of a 'burner' reactor. Most of the Nuclear fanbois tout this type of reactor, the Integral Fast Reactor, as the answer to all our nuclear woes and the design is sound. Achieving a transmutation rate of almost 20% of the plutonium fuel it's an ideal platform for global nuclear disarmament and produces spent fuel products (fissile ash) that last 600 years instead of 25,000 years (pu-239). Obviously the fissile ash is highly radioactive.
The problem is that material technology simply is not advanced enough to implement this technology leaving it with the same issue every nuclear reactor has. The capital investment is written off over forty years and is pretty much junk at the end of it. What this does is expose the facility to the energetic costs of decommissioning the reactor and facility. Peer reviewed science costs this, energetically, at roughly a third (iirc) of the reactor facilities total output over it's lifetime.
Clearly this is not an issue that is going to go away and the only logical conclusion of a reasoned mind is to implement a viable energy solution such as wind, solar, geothermal etc for at least the next 5 decades. What seems to be beyond most nuclear fanbois is any seriously engineered Nuclear program would be the type of project that would restructure the entire nature of a nations economy and take between 30 and 100 years to complete. It's possible but I'm too tired to go into the how right now.
So, it really only has specialized applications. Add to that the safety issues and it is pretty clear that it only has application in life-or-death situations such as in the submarine service.
I don't disagree with you in the here and now but I think that the devil really is in the detail. We are leaving behind a legacy of plutonium that by conservative estimates will last 10 times longer than our entire civilisation has existed. This is the enormity of our responsibility, now, to future generations that remains a largely unrealised aspect of the nuclear industry. To get an understanding of the scope of this issue have a look at this National Geographic article. We are manipulating elements that are toxic into geological time frames, yet our engineering is framed in terms of capital investment. If there is an insistence on Nuclear power our engineering must be framed in terms of geological time frames.
The irony of this debate is that while it is so polarised the structural issue that needs to be addressed whether you are for or against nuclear power is the same, construction of geologically stable spent fuel containment facilities *in granite*. Granite being the only element that science has shown to be able to contain ground water contamination from radioisotopes. Fukushima has shown us that the spent fuel containment issue has to be solved 10 years ago to mitigate the scale of these accidents. Anyone for nuclear power will inevitably realise that there is no future of Nuclear power without such a facility and those against Nuclear power need to be pragmatic about what has to happen to mitigate the scale of a disaster and reduce the amount of transuranic sites. Any discussion about future nuclear reactors is only appropriate after such an infrastructure project.
Unfortunately, I think there is some inevitability in another nuclear accident, San Onofre scares me in the immediate future. America is so close and I fear none of these necessary lessons will be learned until this happens, heralding the post-fission age when it will be so much more difficult to accomplish energetically. This will be the price for our wisdom and the penalty for our arrogance.
in its place: on submarines defending our country. It makes no sense on a commercial scale since accidents are inevitable, it is too expensive, and there is no place to put the waste or even a safe means of transporting it at the required volume. The Thresher was an acceptable loss given the mission but no commercial accident is acceptable.
I don't really understand why this is modded a troll. The resulting sub rating program (as I understand it) has meant a focus on the engineering of Nuclear Submarines and the constant time based re-rating of the US submarine fleet has meant that the Navy hasn't lost another sub. Systemically, if the Thresher had no impact many more lives could have been lost.
Nuclear Submarine reactors are (of course) much smaller than commercial reactors but are maintained to much higher standards than commercial reactors AND they are operated in hostile extreme environments. In contrast commercial reactors are operated in a stable benign environments yet we see the abject and repeated failure to operate them safely despite known failure modes and processes to mitigate them.
Even if you have the polar opposite view of mdsolar how can anyone argue with the operational reality of Nuclear Power. It's the Faustian bargain and a cavalier attitude towards it has the most dire consequences, as the operators of Fukushima are now discovering. As a result the "reality" that many nuclear supporters built their beliefs on is now collapsing along with the resounding cries that "it wasn't that bad", which illustrate that the biological consequences are not understood by those who make that claim.
Instead of accepting the facts and science readily available and lobbying for the kinds of improvements that *might* make the nuclear industry viable many nuclear supporters just criticise those with opposing worldviews, belittle their point of view, ignore facts, marginalise reasoning, censor information (as we see here) and become plain old abusive.
Rest assured that these "supporters" have not only ensured the eventual demise of Nuclear power they have practically guaranteed the next Nuclear accident and passed a unacceptable radiological liability for the next generations to pay for as much as a carbon liability was passed onto our generation.
Nuclear power in it's current form has deep structural issues from the artificial handling of liability in the Price Anderson act, the shifting of taxpayers and rate payers money to the oil industry in the guise of the 2005 Energy act with the disassembly of P.U.C.H.A, the lack of net energy return backed up by peer reviewed science, the lack of geologically stable spent fuel containment, the list goes on and on and on.
Any pragmatic supporter of Nuclear Power would realise that a strong solar, wind and geothermal sector is a good thing for Nuclear power. Why? Because Nuclear power is simply not sustainable in it's current form. The Nuclear Industry needs between 30-50 years of infrastructure development before it is viable and it's deep structural issues are resolved.
I started off by supporting Nuclear Power and I wanted to learn more. The more I learned the less I could support nuclear power, that facts and science simply do not support a net energy return with nuclear power in it's current form and no-where is the propaganda and censorship more clearly illustrated than here where a terse but reasonable comment is modded down simply because it doesn't subscribe to the popular notion that all things Nuclear are good.
The Faustian bargain has been made and now the Nuclear industry is falling apart from within. It may be brilliant, with outstanding engineering but it's failings and consequences are so profound that the question has to be asked, is it actually worth it anymore?
How we handle it now is how future generations will judge us.
But I feel it's appropriate to say hahahahahahaha.
If there was a lesson to be learned I feel it was probably lost amongst all the inevitable finger pointing and 'covering of ass' and other machinations. But don't worry, the appropriate tech staff not involved in the decision were reprimanded for not picking up the slack left but the involuntary departure of the security team.
Rest assured, no management was harmed in the production of this stupidity.
Folks, this is why we need to find a way to pay for true investigative journalism. This sort of thing is NOT going to be uncovered by crowdsourced reports or bloggers with (other, non-journalist) day jobs and bills to pay. Wikileaks relys on insiders having a motive for revealing information; there are merits to that method but it doesn't cover all cases.
Those of you complaining about how journalism is crap, this is an example of non-crap journalism.
I don't know a great way of funding journalism like this. The Associated Press is funded by member newspapers who use their stories in the local papers. No one is paying for the local papers because of Google News and the like, so if those papers go under, AP's funding is probably in some jeopardy over the next 5-10 years. I would be fine with paying the AP directly somehow, but I still don't see a means of making that work.
Well I've been posting *exactly* this type of non-crap data here on slashdot for well over half a decade and I'm rarely even modded up as informative. The data is available if you have the will to find it. For an example, not mentioned in the article, if you download the publicly available EPA data and dig through it you will find that the Nuclear Industry is the biggest emitter of CFC114 in the US.
The key word is investigative anyone can do it by using the net (see how old skool I am) for what it was originally intended for, researching. The prevalence of many of the new uses of the net in a parasitic form have not meant that many sources of data are no longer available. It just means that you have to work for it instead of being a spoon fed infant.
Posts like this are my own research often from the most unexpected sources, read it if you want to understand what a BDI is, how it contributed to the Fukushima disaster and what reactor is (in my researched opinion) the most at risk right_now(tm) in the U.S. It's not *that* hard to join the dots. As time progresses you find you accumulate documents that are now no longer available online. That's when you realise the value of long term curiosity and learning. If you have a reasoned discourse with me I learn stuff too. I started off by supporting Nuclear power and wanted to learn more but as I learned more I realised there were serious structural issues to resolve for it to be viable. If you are open to information you can learn about reality and maybe get a glimpse of truth.
I'm not taking anything away from Investigative reporters, but it's a matter of will. Anyone can do anything with suitable determination.
No, I don't mind you on my lawn, it's really quite roomy.
It does but none are especially alarming. The difference between Fort Calhoun and Fukushima is there was plenty of time to cool the reactor down prior to the flooding. The plant does have issues (as I've posted data above) but even if the flood waters continue to rise it just means the reactor is still cooling in a controlled state. Fukushima scrammed while it was operating at capacity which means it was hot thermally and radiologically.
The issue at hand here is damage to the reactor itself from the floodwater which means it would take longer to bring it back online.
I've been reading your discourse with some interest. Considering our last discussion khallow I'm unsurprised at some of the claims you make.
The evidence in your posting khallow is that you are not in possession of the facts, brushing aside evidence presented to you and continuing with your vexatious style of debate. I invite you to present any facts to back up any of the claims you have made.
It's cheap until you ignore dismantling, cleanup costs, and insurance for if something goes wrong (think 100's of billions of dollars).
Most of this is just failures of society to rationally deal with risk and liability, not some intrinsic feature of nuclear power. Radioactive waste is treated far more stringently than similarly hazardous non-radioactive waste (or radioactive waste that manages to be classified as non-radioactive).
The way government deals with the risk and liability of the Nuclear Industry is via the Price-Anderson act, that's hardly rational. Take that away and the Nuclear Industry ceases to exist because it can no longer be insured. This is a true measure of it's financial viability. The Nuclear Industry is the *only* industry that requires a piece of legislation to mitigate it's risk. Obviously the analysis is the risk cannot be mitigated otherwise the legislation would have been repealed years ago and investors would be jumping at the chance to throw their money at Nuclear power. What that illustrates is the intrinsic *fragility* if the Nuclear Industry.
To put it into perspective, Actuaries and Risk Assessors are professionals in the insurance industry and their assessment of the Nuclear Industry is that they won't insure it without the Price-Anderson Act, this is hardly 'failures of society to rationally deal with risk and liability'. They're not anti-Nuclear power, they're just paid to asses the risks, professionally. The P-A act remains a legal construct that is in place to support the existence of the nuclear industry. Consequently investors are only interested in investing in Nuclear power because the government guarantees the returns, not because the nuclear industry is capable of delivering them.
You level an accusation of not taking responsibility, why don't you? If you truly believe all the problems with the Nuclear Industry are issues of societies rationality then lobby *against* the P-A act and expose insurers to the full liability of a nuclear accident such as Fukushima. It's something we can all agree on. If you are right, the nuclear industry will continue, if I'm right the nuclear industry will collapse overnight. I'll even write the letter for you to send off to the congresscritters.
As for treatment of Nuclear waste it's an investment that guarantees no return and still isn't done despite, as Fukushima demonstrates, being desperately required. The P-A act is one reason why Wall street doesn't believe that Nuclear Power is viable, that's why there is such a heavy investment in wind power where 'Return on Investment' is an intrinsic feature.
What I have described here, briefly, is what you need to understand in depth, if you are to truly understand the treatment of finances, risk and liability for the Nuclear industry.
Nor is it necessarily rational. I base my observation on such things as reporting thresholds versus levels required for a lethal dose (eg, LD50, 50% chance of dying from a dose).
Then present your findings, show what radionuclides you have found leaked into the environment.
LD50 only accounts for the toxicity of the material, but it doesn't take into account that the material is also an emitter of radiation. So pu-239, that's plutonium, is a lethal dose in a single microgram in the body, regardless of weight, as an alpha emitter regardless of the (extreme) toxicity of the element itself.
I've been following your discussion, check my reply if you are interested.
I am making sure that cold-hearted propellerheads like you, who think the ocasional meltdown must be accepted for cost reasons, don't get to run your toys.
He isn't rmstar, he's just a fanboi whose belief system he bases his arrogance on is crashing down around him. What has yet to be revealed to khallow is that the peer reviewed science shows that there is no Net Energy Return with the Nuclear industry, it's entirely pointless and grows more so every day.
Slashdot Mirror
lolll...is compartmentalized capitalism focused on advancing the interests of the state. The PRC has this trick: You can make yourselves wealthy, but if you attempt to make yourself wealthy at the expense of the state as they do in the U.S. and E.U., then you're fitted with some of that uniquely Chinese jewelry: A bullet behind the ear.
It would seem that exploitation knows nothing about language, the state or economic systems.
if you want to see capitalism in action look at China,.
Now there is a sentence I never thought I'd see.
That is all.
All the CRTs that were ever made in the western world are now landfill
I doubt that a large proportion of those resources are being shredded up for re-use to make new flat screens.
I don't disagree with you here, but it's irrelevant.
N.A.S.A, another victim of the Iraq war. Such a pity to witness it's demise.
I don't think that lacks ambiguity.
I'm aware of the shuttles limitations. Constellation and DIRECT had trade-offs but in general, something is better than nothing considering the industrial size of the programs lost and yes you may as well have painted a party political flag on each program. What I am lamenting is this is the end of NASA as we know it. It may change into something else but that remains to be seen.
I am lamenting the loss of a massive engineering program that was pretty much the last opportunity of getting the the experiences of engineers who actually worked in the space race to pass their experience on to a new generation, but the funding for it was spent in Iraq. Sure some will go into private industry, most will retire but they won't get to work together in the same way so the systemic expertise is lost. The shuttle was NASA's swan song, for all it's flaws.
Over the NASA generation that oversaw the 'management' of the STS service, corporate culture crept in and NASA's focus shifted from an engineering first mindset. Progressively they converted a knowledge of failure to a memory of success. This is the assessment of the CAIB report, which I read, that illustrates that the culture that NASA got to the moon with was on life support. If any of that culture survives it might be in the form that monitors and regulates Human launches of private vehicles with a minimum level of safety. The end of the shuttle program means NASA budget can be shrunk even more aggressively.
The reason why I think this is because the U.S is in so much financial difficulty right now it hard to see how NASA will be funded to the levels where it will be able to produce it's own launch capacity, I hope I'm wrong, but the scenarios surrounding NASA suggest NASA will become a much smaller organisation.
I think from reading your post we pretty much share the same
RedHat, please fork ksplice today.
The really shitty thing is that Oracle Enterprise Linux is essentially a fork of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, in the same sense that CentOS is. Oracle has already been distributing a version of Linux that gives back nothing to the company that does most of the hard work to make it enterprise-ready. Now it's adding new components to Oracle Enterprise Linux in such a way as to tell the rest of the community it can't have them anymore. If Red Hat wants to fork K-Splice, that's possible under the license, but again Red Hat will have to do all of the work, and Oracle will contribute nothing.
Pity the nice guys with the funky logo didn't buy the assholes with a boring logo
Well I don't know what reality you are living in, but here in the real world we have this little bird that was just tested on orbit last Spring. It's scheduled for another couple of test flights later this year. I hear that the development of its emergency abort system (something the shuttle didn't have) is being developed expediantly. Once that item is checked off, we should be able to put people back into orbit in no time. But don't let my factually backed optimism rain on your pity party.
So are these NASA plans or SpaceX plans? Oh hang on look at what it says in the article you provided:
So it's not actually a NASA program which is good because it can't be canceled by the government, oh wait the program is only funded to 2015. Your comment has no bearing on the fact that NASA programs such as Orion, constellation, the still born DIRECT etc, plans to return to the moon and so on are all canceled.
But don't let my pragmatic assessment of the facts and reality interrupt you from your wanking.
This is a sad day because I see no realistic plans to replace the shuttle's capability of putting a human in space, even if it's only LEO. It looks like pretty much everything to replace it has been canceled.
N.A.S.A, another victim of the Iraq war. Such a pity to witness it's demise.
We don't really need diversity in computers we should just learn to run Microsoft on everything from watches to mainframes because windows is the best operating systems ever. If it wasn't for Microsoft there would be no innovation anywhere so basically we should have a formal Microsoft tax and just pay Microsoft to own everything.
It's a good thing that Microsoft use their patent portfolio to stop anyone else in the industry from trying to make anything new because Microsoft would do it better anyway so why even try. Case in point, Google, they should just give up on android and give that market to Microsoft because android is owned by microsoft anyway.
All those dumb nerd who write that crappy open source software (that never works properly on anything) should be donating their time to Microsoft anyway, actually they should be paying Microsoft to be volunteers to write more software for windows. It's been proven in the past with IE6, the most successful and best web browser ever just how innovative Microsoft can be. Apple and Linux should just give up because everything Microsoft everywhere for everyone for ever will be good for all of us.
It's a world I look forward to every day.
I like to keep all my code documented and use tools and ticket systems to remember where I am at with a project, I don't want to remember that stuff, so I suppose this is anagolous to what the internet does.
I like to think I use this offset capacity for reasoning and problem solving. Sadly I think many people use it for nothing. Ultimately I see this being augmented right into the brain with some sort of mind interface. I think that technology is part of our collective evolution of the brain and this illustrates it.
I suspect that our brains are evolving faster than we realise towards being problem solvers as opposed to reciters of facts and, hopefully, more reasoned.
Rule 34
This is the true cost of the Iraq War. Such a shame.
Yucca mountain is not a suitable site because it is made of pumice and geologically active evidenced by recent aftershocks of 5.6 within ten miles of a repository that is supposed to be geologically stable for at least 500000 years. The DOE's own 1982 Nuclear Waste policy Act reported that Yucca Mountain's geology is inappropriate to contain nuclear waste, and long term corrosion data on C22 (the material to contain the Pu-239 and mitigate the ingress of water - yet another Yucca problem) is just not available.
We need something made of granite. The only human made structure with the potential to last 10000 years is Mt Rushmore, so it has to be an engineering project of that scale, because the logistical problems of transferring the 70000 odd tons of Pu239 to the spent fuel containment facility are so involved that you want to get it right the first time and only do it once.
Even doing that will probably take 30 years to complete, but there is more to it than that.
I was a big fan of the Integral Fast Reactor as a potential solution and in a way I still am. But the reality is 3rd and 4th generation reactors are a pipe dream because our material science is not advanced enough yet to produce a reactor design that will last the thousands of years it will take to use that fuel. If you are going to build reactors then do it properly and build a Terra-watt scale nuclear reactor facility the belly of a massive granite mountain with an attached waste facility and chomp up all your remaining plutonium or end all commercial nuclear activity altogether.
Why? Because Nuclear power is energy intensive *after* the energy has been produced simply because said technology (material sciences) are not adequate to produce a Nuclear reactor that has a life span that matches the geological time frames of the fuel. This exposes the facility to all the energetic costs associated with de-commissioning reactor sites every 4 decades or so. A reactor design that lasts at least 1000 years and is a closed loop, i.e. the plutonium goes in and nothing comes out (except electricity and possibly hydrogen) and avoids all the energetic costs associated with mining, enrichment and de-commissioning/demolition of the reactor. That would be possible with a reactor situated inside the same granite facility where it could be disposed of in-situ to decay in the belly of a granite mountain.
As long we are producing plutonium and there is no where for it to go we will have a Nuclear Weapons threat and this is the price we pay for opening that pandora's box. I don't hide the fact that I don't like the constant failure of the Nuclear Industry. But I'm also being realistic. I realise that the only way out of this mess is a well thought out and designed project because we have no other choice due to the nature of the materials. It entails redesigning the entire industry, and it's a long term solution. A well designed and secured facility resistant to attacks even from orbit because that's the type of 21st century threats it would have to face.
But it has to be done properly, and I don't think private industry is capable of delivering such a project. If we really think about it it will be a massive undertaking that will present many challenges that must be overcome if we are sincere about producing a well engineered safe Nuclear industry and sincere about a platform for disarmament.
Some who have read my criticisms of the Nuclear Industry may be surprised to find that I actually support the development of a reactor that addresses the issue of 70,000 tons of Pu-239 (and much more U-238) currently stored in reactor sites around America, simply because it's irresponsible for our generation to foist these issue onto later generations.
One of the core reasons I support the development of such a reactor because it is capable of utilising weapons grade plutonium as fuel creating an impetus for di
Baidu Bing, Baidu boom!
You can almost certainly overvolt an electric motor, unless it's already at it's peak RPM rating. Especially true with brushless.
I would bet the motors used in HDDs would run fine for years even at 36V, assuming they are 12V. Thus tripling the RPM rating. Just avoid stopping & starting the platters often (highest peak of power used). Question is can platters do it. HDDs are meant to work for years upon years, so they should be working at rather low end of their potential capability, in terms of wear & tear plus heat. Heat is the killer for electric motors.
I guess, at it's simplest just increase the motor voltage might actually work. Unless the controller electronics are relying on being at exactly correct RPM rating.
Could be even rather simply to test, regularly PSU supplies upto 12.35V, change this to car battery charger which will give you 13.6V or thereabouts, see what happens :)
Motor replacement is not viable option, unless you got a lab to work in.
Replacing with 15k RPM hardware -> why not just use the 15k RPM drive then? ;) (well platter size ...)
Your forgetting that the heads are separated from the platter by the turbulence in the air from the surface of the spinning disk. Changing the speed of the spinning disk changes the distance the head is from the platter thus increasing the read error rate. I suspect you could do it but you would have to be accessing some of the diagnostic mode of the drive where reads could be performed at reduced current.
You might be able to increase the platter speed and the electronics will probably support the increased read rate, but will the data read from the drive look like one big square wave.
Increase platter speed, reduce read current.
I've had to work with a few Assholes in my time, bosses and collegues. Some of the people in my last contract were particularly obnoxious. I recommend the following books;
The No Asshole Rule A brilliant book that quite clearly sets out how to handle assholes, how to recognise when you are being an asshole and what to do about it
The Bully at Work If you are being bullied at work, get this book now. I can't tell you how much it helped me survive mobbing and abuse from some particularly fucked up people. I took the advice and it really helped.
Coping with Toxic Managers, Subordinates and other difficult people Long term this is a excellent book to help you recognise and identify different types of controlling behavior and what behaviour characteristics you can use to plug into their, fuck political correctness, character flaws to manipulate them to get what you want.
The overall theme in all the books is that bullying, particularly a problem in the U.S because of a lack of bullying laws, can cause long term mental damage. Recently slashdot had a story about how physical pain and emotional pain used the same pathways in the brain. These books mention this and how to start to undo the damage.
For you mental health it's important to burn bridges in a targeted and intelligent way for your own mental health so you can move on. I did this by writing a letter to the board, highlighting the financial damage the bullying caused in terms of staff turnover and training, customer dis-satisfaction and increased contractor rates. That way I wasn't churning over in my head that I shudd, cudda, wudda, done this or that. By using the proper channels professionally (whilst having a new gig lined up) I ensured I could move on and inflict the maximum amount of discomfort on the bullies as possible.
Only one situation is worse than bullying and, unfortunately, I've encountered that to, the Occupational Phsycopath. For this I recommend Working with Monsters. These people are fucked up and *will* scar you, it's what they do. Glib with polymorphic personalities they do so many things they need a whole book to handle them. They cripple workplaces and destroy careers, I was lucky to get away, five years later I'm still dealing with the damage and anger.
Basically these Assholes, and seriously what word describes them better, are so commonplace they are like a disease. I got so sick of them this is what I had to do to build the skills required to handle them. Technology folk who have high levels of empathy, task focused, logical and analytical usually have low levels of Emotional Intelligence and personal interaction skills. What I learned is that this makes us easy target for these fuckers because they can read us like a book.
Good thing about being Intelligent is you can adapt to new scenarios. So as the final whammy I added the Alan Pease book, Body Language so I could turn the tables around. I studied the body language book and then simply went into a public place and observed people. As I practised I got better at recognising the various "assholic" behaviors so I could disarm them (or manipulate them).
I'd also advise you read the books in secret, lest you will make yourself a target for assholes.
I think of nuclear power as a battery. We're going to have to pay everything back in energy to transmute the waste.
Energetically, I cannot see transmutation (of transuranics) ever happening outside of a 'burner' reactor. Most of the Nuclear fanbois tout this type of reactor, the Integral Fast Reactor, as the answer to all our nuclear woes and the design is sound. Achieving a transmutation rate of almost 20% of the plutonium fuel it's an ideal platform for global nuclear disarmament and produces spent fuel products (fissile ash) that last 600 years instead of 25,000 years (pu-239). Obviously the fissile ash is highly radioactive.
The problem is that material technology simply is not advanced enough to implement this technology leaving it with the same issue every nuclear reactor has. The capital investment is written off over forty years and is pretty much junk at the end of it. What this does is expose the facility to the energetic costs of decommissioning the reactor and facility. Peer reviewed science costs this, energetically, at roughly a third (iirc) of the reactor facilities total output over it's lifetime.
Clearly this is not an issue that is going to go away and the only logical conclusion of a reasoned mind is to implement a viable energy solution such as wind, solar, geothermal etc for at least the next 5 decades. What seems to be beyond most nuclear fanbois is any seriously engineered Nuclear program would be the type of project that would restructure the entire nature of a nations economy and take between 30 and 100 years to complete. It's possible but I'm too tired to go into the how right now.
So, it really only has specialized applications. Add to that the safety issues and it is pretty clear that it only has application in life-or-death situations such as in the submarine service.
I don't disagree with you in the here and now but I think that the devil really is in the detail. We are leaving behind a legacy of plutonium that by conservative estimates will last 10 times longer than our entire civilisation has existed. This is the enormity of our responsibility, now, to future generations that remains a largely unrealised aspect of the nuclear industry. To get an understanding of the scope of this issue have a look at this National Geographic article. We are manipulating elements that are toxic into geological time frames, yet our engineering is framed in terms of capital investment. If there is an insistence on Nuclear power our engineering must be framed in terms of geological time frames.
The irony of this debate is that while it is so polarised the structural issue that needs to be addressed whether you are for or against nuclear power is the same, construction of geologically stable spent fuel containment facilities *in granite*. Granite being the only element that science has shown to be able to contain ground water contamination from radioisotopes. Fukushima has shown us that the spent fuel containment issue has to be solved 10 years ago to mitigate the scale of these accidents. Anyone for nuclear power will inevitably realise that there is no future of Nuclear power without such a facility and those against Nuclear power need to be pragmatic about what has to happen to mitigate the scale of a disaster and reduce the amount of transuranic sites. Any discussion about future nuclear reactors is only appropriate after such an infrastructure project.
Unfortunately, I think there is some inevitability in another nuclear accident, San Onofre scares me in the immediate future. America is so close and I fear none of these necessary lessons will be learned until this happens, heralding the post-fission age when it will be so much more difficult to accomplish energetically. This will be the price for our wisdom and the penalty for our arrogance.
in its place: on submarines defending our country. It makes no sense on a commercial scale since accidents are inevitable, it is too expensive, and there is no place to put the waste or even a safe means of transporting it at the required volume. The Thresher was an acceptable loss given the mission but no commercial accident is acceptable.
I don't really understand why this is modded a troll. The resulting sub rating program (as I understand it) has meant a focus on the engineering of Nuclear Submarines and the constant time based re-rating of the US submarine fleet has meant that the Navy hasn't lost another sub. Systemically, if the Thresher had no impact many more lives could have been lost.
Nuclear Submarine reactors are (of course) much smaller than commercial reactors but are maintained to much higher standards than commercial reactors AND they are operated in hostile extreme environments. In contrast commercial reactors are operated in a stable benign environments yet we see the abject and repeated failure to operate them safely despite known failure modes and processes to mitigate them.
Even if you have the polar opposite view of mdsolar how can anyone argue with the operational reality of Nuclear Power. It's the Faustian bargain and a cavalier attitude towards it has the most dire consequences, as the operators of Fukushima are now discovering. As a result the "reality" that many nuclear supporters built their beliefs on is now collapsing along with the resounding cries that "it wasn't that bad", which illustrate that the biological consequences are not understood by those who make that claim.
Instead of accepting the facts and science readily available and lobbying for the kinds of improvements that *might* make the nuclear industry viable many nuclear supporters just criticise those with opposing worldviews, belittle their point of view, ignore facts, marginalise reasoning, censor information (as we see here) and become plain old abusive.
Rest assured that these "supporters" have not only ensured the eventual demise of Nuclear power they have practically guaranteed the next Nuclear accident and passed a unacceptable radiological liability for the next generations to pay for as much as a carbon liability was passed onto our generation.
Nuclear power in it's current form has deep structural issues from the artificial handling of liability in the Price Anderson act, the shifting of taxpayers and rate payers money to the oil industry in the guise of the 2005 Energy act with the disassembly of P.U.C.H.A, the lack of net energy return backed up by peer reviewed science, the lack of geologically stable spent fuel containment, the list goes on and on and on.
Any pragmatic supporter of Nuclear Power would realise that a strong solar, wind and geothermal sector is a good thing for Nuclear power. Why? Because Nuclear power is simply not sustainable in it's current form. The Nuclear Industry needs between 30-50 years of infrastructure development before it is viable and it's deep structural issues are resolved.
I started off by supporting Nuclear Power and I wanted to learn more. The more I learned the less I could support nuclear power, that facts and science simply do not support a net energy return with nuclear power in it's current form and no-where is the propaganda and censorship more clearly illustrated than here where a terse but reasonable comment is modded down simply because it doesn't subscribe to the popular notion that all things Nuclear are good.
The Faustian bargain has been made and now the Nuclear industry is falling apart from within. It may be brilliant, with outstanding engineering but it's failings and consequences are so profound that the question has to be asked, is it actually worth it anymore? How we handle it now is how future generations will judge us.
But I feel it's appropriate to say hahahahahahaha.
If there was a lesson to be learned I feel it was probably lost amongst all the inevitable finger pointing and 'covering of ass' and other machinations. But don't worry, the appropriate tech staff not involved in the decision were reprimanded for not picking up the slack left but the involuntary departure of the security team.
Rest assured, no management was harmed in the production of this stupidity.
Folks, this is why we need to find a way to pay for true investigative journalism. This sort of thing is NOT going to be uncovered by crowdsourced reports or bloggers with (other, non-journalist) day jobs and bills to pay. Wikileaks relys on insiders having a motive for revealing information; there are merits to that method but it doesn't cover all cases.
Those of you complaining about how journalism is crap, this is an example of non-crap journalism.
I don't know a great way of funding journalism like this. The Associated Press is funded by member newspapers who use their stories in the local papers. No one is paying for the local papers because of Google News and the like, so if those papers go under, AP's funding is probably in some jeopardy over the next 5-10 years. I would be fine with paying the AP directly somehow, but I still don't see a means of making that work.
Well I've been posting *exactly* this type of non-crap data here on slashdot for well over half a decade and I'm rarely even modded up as informative. The data is available if you have the will to find it. For an example, not mentioned in the article, if you download the publicly available EPA data and dig through it you will find that the Nuclear Industry is the biggest emitter of CFC114 in the US.
The key word is investigative anyone can do it by using the net (see how old skool I am) for what it was originally intended for, researching. The prevalence of many of the new uses of the net in a parasitic form have not meant that many sources of data are no longer available. It just means that you have to work for it instead of being a spoon fed infant.
Posts like this are my own research often from the most unexpected sources, read it if you want to understand what a BDI is, how it contributed to the Fukushima disaster and what reactor is (in my researched opinion) the most at risk right_now(tm) in the U.S. It's not *that* hard to join the dots. As time progresses you find you accumulate documents that are now no longer available online. That's when you realise the value of long term curiosity and learning. If you have a reasoned discourse with me I learn stuff too. I started off by supporting Nuclear power and wanted to learn more but as I learned more I realised there were serious structural issues to resolve for it to be viable. If you are open to information you can learn about reality and maybe get a glimpse of truth.
I'm not taking anything away from Investigative reporters, but it's a matter of will. Anyone can do anything with suitable determination.
No, I don't mind you on my lawn, it's really quite roomy.
The issue at hand here is damage to the reactor itself from the floodwater which means it would take longer to bring it back online.
http://public-blog.nrc-gateway.gov/2011/06/17/rumors-and-the-rising-river/
Here is some more supporting information from the Union of Concerned scientists.
List of reactors by percent of decade on NRC watch list, Fort Calhoun Reactor data
Profits > Safety Safety > Freedom Ergo... Profits > Freedom Clearly this is what the founders intended
It's no longer Capitalism, it's Corpratism. Now bow down and worship your master.
The way government deals with the risk and liability of the Nuclear Industry is via the Price-Anderson act, that's hardly rational. Take that away and the Nuclear Industry ceases to exist because it can no longer be insured. This is a true measure of it's financial viability. The Nuclear Industry is the *only* industry that requires a piece of legislation to mitigate it's risk. Obviously the analysis is the risk cannot be mitigated otherwise the legislation would have been repealed years ago and investors would be jumping at the chance to throw their money at Nuclear power. What that illustrates is the intrinsic *fragility* if the Nuclear Industry.
To put it into perspective, Actuaries and Risk Assessors are professionals in the insurance industry and their assessment of the Nuclear Industry is that they won't insure it without the Price-Anderson Act, this is hardly 'failures of society to rationally deal with risk and liability'. They're not anti-Nuclear power, they're just paid to asses the risks, professionally. The P-A act remains a legal construct that is in place to support the existence of the nuclear industry. Consequently investors are only interested in investing in Nuclear power because the government guarantees the returns, not because the nuclear industry is capable of delivering them.
You level an accusation of not taking responsibility, why don't you? If you truly believe all the problems with the Nuclear Industry are issues of societies rationality then lobby *against* the P-A act and expose insurers to the full liability of a nuclear accident such as Fukushima. It's something we can all agree on. If you are right, the nuclear industry will continue, if I'm right the nuclear industry will collapse overnight. I'll even write the letter for you to send off to the congresscritters.
As for treatment of Nuclear waste it's an investment that guarantees no return and still isn't done despite, as Fukushima demonstrates, being desperately required. The P-A act is one reason why Wall street doesn't believe that Nuclear Power is viable, that's why there is such a heavy investment in wind power where 'Return on Investment' is an intrinsic feature.
What I have described here, briefly, is what you need to understand in depth, if you are to truly understand the treatment of finances, risk and liability for the Nuclear industry.
Then present your findings, show what radionuclides you have found leaked into the environment.
LD50 only accounts for the toxicity of the material, but it doesn't take into account that the material is also an emitter of radiation. So pu-239, that's plutonium, is a lethal dose in a single microgram in the body, regardless of weight, as an alpha emitter regardless of the (extreme) toxicity of the element itself.
What your obser
He isn't rmstar, he's just a fanboi whose belief system he bases his arrogance on is crashing down around him. What has yet to be revealed to khallow is that the peer reviewed science shows that there is no Net Energy Return with the Nuclear industry, it's entirely pointless and grows more so every day.