However: the only thing that has been shown to conclusively disrupt DNA is ionizing radiation such as that of radioactive materials or ultraviolet light.
I wake up cold all the time. When I was out to sea, I used to get up and walk to the engine compartment for some coffee. The nukes had it wired to the vital bus. Your tax dollars at work:) Anyhow, you have to go through a tunnel past the reactor to get to the engine compartment.
Are you trying to say there's a REASON for that sign warning "12 hours / day maximum exposure"?
That wall in the tunnel sure was toasty warm though <twitch>:)
knots is a naval unit measured by a number of knots on a rope that's trailing the ship in a given time period.
Where did you hear that?
A knot is a nautical mile per hour. A nautical mile is one minute of latitude (1/60th of a degree of the Earth's circumference -- 6076 feet, versus 5280 feet for an English mile).
Interestingly enough, I can tell you that caffeine is indicated in cases of exposure to Otto-fuel.
For those not familiar, this is the fuel used to power torpedoes. When it combusts it produces its own oxygen, making it useful for underwater weapons. It is also very volatile, and exposure to the liquid or vapor is hazardous. You will get *the nastiest* headache you've ever had in your life. People have compared it to a migrane, in fact.
The recommended course of action is to get the person into fresh air, and to drink a cup of strong coffee. The symptoms usually clear up very quickly thereafter.
They were devastating mainly to merchant vessels, and that was before merchants started travelling in convoys.
only if the US manages to beat the encryption wil they have a chance to really rule the seas, and that's assuming that the EU subs don't just have roving orders (ie no contact for their mission duration). Thing is, the US hasn't had to really fight subs since ww2....in the cold war they might have practiced, but because it was a cold war the damage subs can do never crops up.
You'd be surprised at the level of sophistication in U.S. submarines that was directly a result of the Cold War. Prop design was vastly improved. Sub interiors were shock mounted. Driveshafts were mounted with hydraulic cushioning. Hulls were specially coated. Steam engines were designed to circulate without pumps. All to reduce noise. U.S. subs, especially missile subs are really quiet. No one else even comes close. The Ohio class is actually a hole in the water at low to moderate speeds (noise output is lower than ocean background noise).
At the same time, our sonar was improving in parallel. The detection range and granularity is pretty amazing. Remember the Kursk sinking not long ago? The U.S. was indirectly accused of colliding with the Russian sub. Our sonar guys knew exactly what happened but ironically, U.S. officials couldn't defend our actions because that would give away how good our sonar really is.
These improvements are all a result of our constant wargames with the Soviet Union / Russia. Torpedo technology also improved quite a bit. When the Alfas came onto the scene, they were fast enough to outrun the standard U.S. torpedoes. This caused a scramble in U.S. R&D to get the ADCAPs into production use.
Don't think for a minute that the U.S. is too rusty to fight with submarines. The actual firing of weapons is only a tiny part of the battle.
Actually we never annexed Guantanamo Bay from Cuba. The U.S. Naval base there was obtained (and paid for) through a lease agreement with Cuba in 1903, and updated to perpetual lease status in a treaty in 1934. It can only be nullified if both countries agree, or if the U.S. vacates the area.
These days, it is a source of great irritation to Castro's government that Cuba ever signed such an agreement with the U.S. That's why our Marines down there are always at a high state of readiness.
First of all, Plutonium-240, 241, and 242 are produced in very minute quantities and are not much of a factor in waste storage.
Plutonium-239 has the half-life of 24000 years that you were referring to. However, Pu-239 is the most common fissionable isotope, used for reactor fuel and weapons. It would *never* be shipped to a waste storage site. It is simply too valuable.
Plutonium-238 is the common "waste" isotope, and it only has a half-life of 87 years. Even at 10x that duration, it is far less than the 230000 years that you are using as FUD.
The other poster responded to you well, and I'll second it. As someone who had the opportunity to fly on an Osprey, I can say that the utility it provides is *very* useful to the military, especially the Marine Corps.
Has its deployment been delayed? Sure. Have there been mistakes both from the engineering side and political side? Of course. Is it the only aircraft to ever deal with these issues? Hell no. If you want to look at a scandal, try the A-12 project. If you want to look at crashes of test flights, consider the B-2.
The Osprey got more press because it is a more "open" project, since it lacks the stealth characteristics of the B-2 which are mostly classified. Furthermore, the major crash that was reported happened to be with an Osprey that was carrying not just the pilot, but 19 Marines.
But look at the chopper the Osprey will replace. Crashes happen all the time, not just to newly designed aircraft. As the CH-46 ages, it will become more and more accident prone.
Also consider that 3 Marine officers were found to have falsified maintenance reports on Ospreys that were under their command. Failure to maintain any plane could cause problems.
So, frankly, for you to call the Osprey a "fatally flawed" plane, is plain FUD. Aircraft crash - that's a fact of life. The goal of engineers is to build them to a standard that minimizes accidents due to mechanical failure. Designs can be improved and corrected if there are problems (although the history of Osprey crashes suggests other factors were responsible).
Before the B-2 was in production use, the naysayers were claiming the same type of thing as you are about the Osprey. Yet now we have a functional aircraft which proved itself to be very capable in many bombing runs. Keeping the old planes is not an option indefinitely: you must stay ahead of the technology curve to maintain an effective military.
The key to reducing pollution is reclaiming braking energy. Standard automobiles use friction to slow down a moving vehicle, transforming its kinetic energy into heat (which is wasted).
Check out AFS Trinity - a company working on high rpm flywheel battery systems. They are working towards a system where the flywheel itself will be able to absorb a vehicle's kinetic energy to slow it down. This in effect recharges your battery every time you brake.
They will probably start out with hybrid gas-electric vehicles, and eventually move to all electric. Very cool stuff.
I worked at Microsoft on the Visual C++ team for a couple years. When Netscape finally threw in the towel and made its browser free, we were specifically instructed not to look at, touch, or go anywhere near Mozilla's code or website.
This was a fairly big deal for me and I wasn't even on the Internet Explorer team. Imagine the grilling those guys got.
Other companies may covertly use GPL'd code, but Microsoft is very, very anal about avoiding it. They understand that they are a target; they are always under the spotlight and cannot afford the PR disaster that would happen if they were caught using GPL'd code in a non-compliant fashion.
They may implement something from scratch, or find an alternative, but it certainly won't be done by the same people involved in an audit of GPL code.
There's a really good article I dug up recently. It discusses how we are attacking environmental issues the wrong way by trying to get people to do the right thing for the greater good.
Instead, it states that we should be taking advantage of human nature which is a me-first sort of attitude. By providing a reward / punishment system which encourages environmentally sound actions, we can hopefully start to clean up this planet.
A citizen carrying a semi-automatic handgun saved my girlfriend's life when a man assaulted and attempted to kidnap her as she left work a few years back. Do a little research on the concealed carry law in Florida and you'll find that it has dramatically helped to reduce the rate of violent crime in the years it has been active.
Why a legal gun owner would make you feel unsafe is beyond me. While I don't dispute the primary use of assault rifles, I DO have confidence in the ability of legal, registered owners to use them properly. Most gun-related crimes are committed by people who illegally possess such weapons.
I agree we should have laws that prohibit screening job applicants' genes. But why is this stuff even an issue? Your medical status is private unless you're in the military, or taking a job-related drug test.
I don't understand why the person in that story lost her job. Why were the results of that genetic test presented to her employer in the first place? If she just flat out told them, then it's stupidity on her part.
Well, this is not entirely true. Not all nuclear waste can be recycled. Certain isotopes particularily transuranics can be recycled, as I mentioned with fast breeder reactors, and breeder-burners. The IFR is (or I should say was - since Congress cut funding) an example of this.
Unfortunately, one of the major drawbacks of breeders is that they tend to be good sources of plutonium for weapons. This is one of the reasons their funding and development has been so stunted.
The issues of heat generation and conventional pollution are indeed problems, but they have nothing to do with my original point.
My point was that fusion-based power generation produces waste that is much easier to deal with than fission, and it has much less long-term risk. I'll add onto that: fusion also uses very little material that would be useful to terrorists - the major exception being tritium.
SEAL
Don't forget that "weapons grade" is not required for terrorists. A small amount of plutonium dispersed over a city with a conventional explosion would do an enormous amount of damage.
First of all, there is more than one way to create a fusion reaction. Some methods do output radioactive isotopes.
HOWEVER, the key point here is that fusion works with small elements with relatively small half-lives. Fission, on the other hand, works with large elements (uranium or plutonium), which, for the most part have long half-lives.
Now there are ways to deal with this - for example, breeder-burner reactors can use fission to break up long-lived isotopes into ones with shorter half-lives. But as far as I know, right now these reactors are only being used for research, and not power production.
That leaves you with a big problem when your fuel rods are spent. What are you going to do with some of this stuff. I looked up some plutonium isotopes for your convenience:
Plutonium 238 - 87 years
239 (fissionable) - 24,110 years
240 - 6537 years
241 - 14.4 years
242 - 376,000 years
Remember, those are half-lives, not time to completely disappear.
And beyond that, they don't always decay into non-emitters. Pu-241 decays into Americium-241 which is a huge gamma emitter.
CANDU reactors fission U-235, but U-238 makes up the majority of naturally occuring uranium. It has a half life of 4.51 x 10^9 years. Good luck disposing of that. The U-235 fission creates other radioactive isotopes (notably iodine) which have contaminated large areas in the past: e.g. Hanford, WA.
Currently, our only plan for these long-lived isotopes is to bury them. We don't even have a very safe facility to do that right now. The U.S. has huge amounts of radioactive waste lying around in various sites like Hanford. When nuclear submarines get decommissioned, the reactor section of the hull is basically just cut out and sent off to one of these sites. Great solution. Meanwhile, how do you protect the water supply many years down the road when those containers begin to deteriorate?
Fusion, even with the deuterium-tritium reactions is way WAY easier to deal with from a cleanup standpoint. You are using far smaller amounts of fuel with shorter half-lives. Tritium has a half-life of about 10 years. The greatest risks are in magnetically controlling plasma, and in keeping radioactive gases contained. Fusion isn't a free lunch but for the long-term, it is a much better solution than fission.
I think all the service academies have loosened up quite a bit since I was in. But even then, I visited Colorado a couple times and IMO, the only thing tougher there is the altitude. At USNA, our PT was pretty serious, esp in certain situations. For example - some of our Marines were getting a small group of us ready for Airborne school down in Ft. Benning. Lemme tell you they did NOT want us looking bad in front of the Army.
As far as simple insults, I wasn't going to say anything, but "Chair Force" was our common term around campus:)
You know, I usually don't feed the trolls, but your argument just made me laugh. In order to give you a balanced opinion, let's look at a place that concentrates heavily on both phys ed and engineering.
Visit for a couple days at the U.S. Naval Academy and talk with some of the midshipmen. Ask them what's harder - getting through the physical demands of plebe year, or getting through the remaining 3 years with a EE degree. I guarantee you that they'll choose EE by a wide margin.
This type of thing IS happening in the US, but only on the level of local governments. For example, in Tacoma, WA, the city got fed up waiting for TCI / AT&T / whatever they are these days to get their act together. The city went ahead and wired its own cable network. Result? Excellent broadband service, without the moronic @home hassles, and only 20 bucks a month. In fact, because of this, AT&T had to reduce their rates in this area or face losing a crapload of customers.
Contrast that with, say Redmond, where there is DSL, but no cable available. No competition. The price is -at least- 40 a month, and that's for bare bones service.
The downside, is that wiring an entire city is a pretty massive undertaking if you aren't building on existing infrastructure. For one the size of Tacoma, it is feasible with a couple years of work. For one like, say, Los Angeles, it would be a nightmare. And to expand such a proposition to the national level -- well, it ain't gonna happen.
Don't forget, the cost of wiring isn't just the cables and power. You have to deal with buildings (high-rises are probably even worse). You have to tear up roads and do things that may affect traffic. And while you're at it, make sure you don't affect any other service. Very costly.
Frankly, if you want broadband NOW, you should just move to a new residence. If you're looking for the better long term solution, then who knows - maybe they'll do something like Tacoma did. If you live in a small-medium sized town with a lot of tech professionals, you might be able to get some petitions and influence the local govt. A long shot, of course, but an interesting prospect.
There is no plagiarism issue here, only a question of attribution in one or two paragraphs. Nobody in the world is more of a stickler on this than me,as anybody can see by reading any of my columns...hardly a one doesn't have quotes and attributions.
Oh... just like that Hellmouth book you were going to put in print without crediting the posters. Cry me a river, Katz. I don't have a problem with your posts on/. but it would reflect much better if you'd admit your mistakes and put the issue behind you. Don't dig for sympathy just because people spotted an error and called you on it.
You are posting in a forum for computer geeks. These are people who, in general, have a meticulous attention to detail. I might classify the complaints as nitpicking, but vicious they are not.
At least in the U.S. - phone calls are offered a remarkable amount of protection compared to email. Even if you are at work, your employer would have to jump through a bunch of legal hoops to wiretap your phone without consent.
Of course, you'll notice more than a few companies nowadays (esp on their support lines) - saying something like "To ensure the highest quality service, this call may be monitored". If you continue with the call at that point, you are consenting to eavesdropping.
With email (apparently), privacy protections go out the window. And while I agree that you should be using company resources for company business, it seems like we should try to come up with a common standard for eavesdropping on communications of any kind.
There are many programmers making lots of money writing free software.
That is really misguided, at best. Fundamentally, if you make something free, you'll have a tough time making money off it. The problem with software as opposed to other things (say, vehicles) is that with software, the blueprints ARE the parts. So by getting the source, you have no need to buy anything.
Sure some software developers make money from open source. But they usually get money because the company they work for has them salaried.
COMPANIES, on the other hand, make little to no money from free software. They may sell support contracts (not very good business - check Redhat's recent stock price...). Or they can use the free software as a loss leader to other payware products. Microsoft wrote the book on this one. Cygnus was doing this to a degree as well.
Don't let Stallman's little world delude you into thinking that EVERYONE will get along with our nice free software world. It's not going to happen. I have no problem writing free software when I want to. I also have no problem working for my company which sells proprietary software. There is room for both.
As long as consumers find value in the proprietary software I write, they should buy it. If they find more value in alternative free software, then more power to them.
Licenses don't become deprecated. Well, except in Stallman's mind. He wants to discourage people from using the LGPL because of his rigid, unflexible stance on free software.
Others, have less of a problem with companies using their free software. They find the LGPL useful (look at Ogg Vorbis, for example). By using the LGPL, he is encouraging companies to use it by linking to his library. This helps EVERYONE out because it reduces our dependency on mp3, and thus, Fraunhofer's licensing fees. And since Vorbis is LGPL'd, companies who start using it will contribute back to the project if they extend the library. This is a GOOD thing and will make it a better codec.
Stallman needs to get off his high horse once in awhile and realize that a little cooperation can be more beneficial than butting heads all the time.
actual tests showed that the best LISP compilers produced faster, tighter code than the best C compilers.
What actual tests? Cite your sources. Also I'd like to see a comparison of programmer productivity in LISP, Java, C, and C++, if available. The simple fact is that LISP is not intuitive to most programmers (and that can be said of most functional languages). Most companies don't even touch them. Most of the functional language use I've personally seen has been by academians and researchers.
In fact, careful benchmarking shows that with the best current JITs, Java performs as well as the best C compilers at most tasks, and better at some.
Another completely unsupported statement. What benchmarks? What tasks? Just off the top of my head, I can think of several easy examples where this is false. Take anything with bit-fiddling... say, a UUEncoder. I guarantee you that the Java version will be slower (even with a JIT), and use more memory.
The OS argument I agree with, although I will say that C is good for writing small code, which is arguably an advantage here. However, I believe many daemons are written in C that don't need to be... and this could improve security.
C is a language which is extremely good for creating hard to trace bugs - memory leaks, data corruption and so on - and extremely poor for programmer productivity.
Once again - bzzzt. It is a language which gives you extreme control over what you want your program to do. If you are experienced, you learn how to write good code. Someone inexperienced using Java can write incredibly bad code also. The learning curve isn't as steep, and the punishment not as severe (i.e. you don't crash), but that's all. But it's not a substitute for programming experience.
I write C++ for a living, on a fairly experienced team at a game company. In the past year I've only had to track down one memory leak, and I can't recall any mysterious "data corruption". The advantages of C++ completely outweigh the disadvantages for what I'm doing. Even setting aside performance concerns.
I was wondering if someone else would've noticed that. I suppose a phase shift from solid to gaseous form could've occurred at lower pressure, causing the channels to form. But any article citing "liquid C02" should be viewed dubiously, at best.
Slashdot Mirror
However: the only thing that has been shown to conclusively disrupt DNA is ionizing radiation such as that of radioactive materials or ultraviolet light.
:) Anyhow, you have to go through a tunnel past the reactor to get to the engine compartment.
:)
I wake up cold all the time. When I was out to sea, I used to get up and walk to the engine compartment for some coffee. The nukes had it wired to the vital bus. Your tax dollars at work
Are you trying to say there's a REASON for that sign warning "12 hours / day maximum exposure"?
That wall in the tunnel sure was toasty warm though <twitch>
knots is a naval unit measured by a number of knots on a rope that's trailing the ship in a given time period.
Where did you hear that?
A knot is a nautical mile per hour. A nautical mile is one minute of latitude (1/60th of a degree of the Earth's circumference -- 6076 feet, versus 5280 feet for an English mile).
Interestingly enough, I can tell you that caffeine is indicated in cases of exposure to Otto-fuel.
For those not familiar, this is the fuel used to power torpedoes. When it combusts it produces its own oxygen, making it useful for underwater weapons. It is also very volatile, and exposure to the liquid or vapor is hazardous. You will get *the nastiest* headache you've ever had in your life. People have compared it to a migrane, in fact.
The recommended course of action is to get the person into fresh air, and to drink a cup of strong coffee. The symptoms usually clear up very quickly thereafter.
WW2 showed that a few subs can be devastating..
They were devastating mainly to merchant vessels, and that was before merchants started travelling in convoys.
only if the US manages to beat the encryption wil they have a chance to really rule the seas, and that's assuming that the EU subs don't just have roving orders (ie no contact for their mission duration). Thing is, the US hasn't had to really fight subs since ww2....in the cold war they might have practiced, but because it was a cold war the damage subs can do never crops up.
You'd be surprised at the level of sophistication in U.S. submarines that was directly a result of the Cold War. Prop design was vastly improved. Sub interiors were shock mounted. Driveshafts were mounted with hydraulic cushioning. Hulls were specially coated. Steam engines were designed to circulate without pumps. All to reduce noise. U.S. subs, especially missile subs are really quiet. No one else even comes close. The Ohio class is actually a hole in the water at low to moderate speeds (noise output is lower than ocean background noise).
At the same time, our sonar was improving in parallel. The detection range and granularity is pretty amazing. Remember the Kursk sinking not long ago? The U.S. was indirectly accused of colliding with the Russian sub. Our sonar guys knew exactly what happened but ironically, U.S. officials couldn't defend our actions because that would give away how good our sonar really is.
These improvements are all a result of our constant wargames with the Soviet Union / Russia. Torpedo technology also improved quite a bit. When the Alfas came onto the scene, they were fast enough to outrun the standard U.S. torpedoes. This caused a scramble in U.S. R&D to get the ADCAPs into production use.
Don't think for a minute that the U.S. is too rusty to fight with submarines. The actual firing of weapons is only a tiny part of the battle.
Actually we never annexed Guantanamo Bay from Cuba. The U.S. Naval base there was obtained (and paid for) through a lease agreement with Cuba in 1903, and updated to perpetual lease status in a treaty in 1934. It can only be nullified if both countries agree, or if the U.S. vacates the area.
H ISCHP3.HTM
These days, it is a source of great irritation to Castro's government that Cuba ever signed such an agreement with the U.S. That's why our Marines down there are always at a high state of readiness.
http://www.nsgtmo.navy.mil/gazette/History_64-82/
Table of Plutonium Isotopes
First of all, Plutonium-240, 241, and 242 are produced in very minute quantities and are not much of a factor in waste storage.
Plutonium-239 has the half-life of 24000 years that you were referring to. However, Pu-239 is the most common fissionable isotope, used for reactor fuel and weapons. It would *never* be shipped to a waste storage site. It is simply too valuable.
Plutonium-238 is the common "waste" isotope, and it only has a half-life of 87 years. Even at 10x that duration, it is far less than the 230000 years that you are using as FUD.
- SEAL
Has its deployment been delayed? Sure. Have there been mistakes both from the engineering side and political side? Of course. Is it the only aircraft to ever deal with these issues? Hell no. If you want to look at a scandal, try the A-12 project. If you want to look at crashes of test flights, consider the B-2.
The Osprey got more press because it is a more "open" project, since it lacks the stealth characteristics of the B-2 which are mostly classified. Furthermore, the major crash that was reported happened to be with an Osprey that was carrying not just the pilot, but 19 Marines.
But look at the chopper the Osprey will replace. Crashes happen all the time, not just to newly designed aircraft. As the CH-46 ages, it will become more and more accident prone.
Also consider that 3 Marine officers were found to have falsified maintenance reports on Ospreys that were under their command. Failure to maintain any plane could cause problems.
So, frankly, for you to call the Osprey a "fatally flawed" plane, is plain FUD. Aircraft crash - that's a fact of life. The goal of engineers is to build them to a standard that minimizes accidents due to mechanical failure. Designs can be improved and corrected if there are problems (although the history of Osprey crashes suggests other factors were responsible).
Before the B-2 was in production use, the naysayers were claiming the same type of thing as you are about the Osprey. Yet now we have a functional aircraft which proved itself to be very capable in many bombing runs. Keeping the old planes is not an option indefinitely: you must stay ahead of the technology curve to maintain an effective military.
SEAL
Check out AFS Trinity - a company working on high rpm flywheel battery systems. They are working towards a system where the flywheel itself will be able to absorb a vehicle's kinetic energy to slow it down. This in effect recharges your battery every time you brake.
They will probably start out with hybrid gas-electric vehicles, and eventually move to all electric. Very cool stuff.
This was a fairly big deal for me and I wasn't even on the Internet Explorer team. Imagine the grilling those guys got.
Other companies may covertly use GPL'd code, but Microsoft is very, very anal about avoiding it. They understand that they are a target; they are always under the spotlight and cannot afford the PR disaster that would happen if they were caught using GPL'd code in a non-compliant fashion.
They may implement something from scratch, or find an alternative, but it certainly won't be done by the same people involved in an audit of GPL code.
Best regards,
SEAL
Instead, it states that we should be taking advantage of human nature which is a me-first sort of attitude. By providing a reward / punishment system which encourages environmentally sound actions, we can hopefully start to clean up this planet.
- SEAL
A citizen carrying a semi-automatic handgun saved my girlfriend's life when a man assaulted and attempted to kidnap her as she left work a few years back. Do a little research on the concealed carry law in Florida and you'll find that it has dramatically helped to reduce the rate of violent crime in the years it has been active.
Why a legal gun owner would make you feel unsafe is beyond me. While I don't dispute the primary use of assault rifles, I DO have confidence in the ability of legal, registered owners to use them properly. Most gun-related crimes are committed by people who illegally possess such weapons.
SEAL
I agree we should have laws that prohibit screening job applicants' genes. But why is this stuff even an issue? Your medical status is private unless you're in the military, or taking a job-related drug test.
I don't understand why the person in that story lost her job. Why were the results of that genetic test presented to her employer in the first place? If she just flat out told them, then it's stupidity on her part.
- SEAL
Well, this is not entirely true. Not all nuclear waste can be recycled. Certain isotopes particularily transuranics can be recycled, as I mentioned with fast breeder reactors, and breeder-burners. The IFR is (or I should say was - since Congress cut funding) an example of this. Unfortunately, one of the major drawbacks of breeders is that they tend to be good sources of plutonium for weapons. This is one of the reasons their funding and development has been so stunted. The issues of heat generation and conventional pollution are indeed problems, but they have nothing to do with my original point. My point was that fusion-based power generation produces waste that is much easier to deal with than fission, and it has much less long-term risk. I'll add onto that: fusion also uses very little material that would be useful to terrorists - the major exception being tritium. SEAL
Don't forget that "weapons grade" is not required for terrorists. A small amount of plutonium dispersed over a city with a conventional explosion would do an enormous amount of damage.
First of all, there is more than one way to create a fusion reaction. Some methods do output radioactive isotopes.
HOWEVER, the key point here is that fusion works with small elements with relatively small half-lives. Fission, on the other hand, works with large elements (uranium or plutonium), which, for the most part have long half-lives.
Now there are ways to deal with this - for example, breeder-burner reactors can use fission to break up long-lived isotopes into ones with shorter half-lives. But as far as I know, right now these reactors are only being used for research, and not power production.
That leaves you with a big problem when your fuel rods are spent. What are you going to do with some of this stuff. I looked up some plutonium isotopes for your convenience:
Plutonium 238 - 87 years
239 (fissionable) - 24,110 years
240 - 6537 years
241 - 14.4 years
242 - 376,000 years
Remember, those are half-lives, not time to completely disappear.
And beyond that, they don't always decay into non-emitters. Pu-241 decays into Americium-241 which is a huge gamma emitter.
CANDU reactors fission U-235, but U-238 makes up the majority of naturally occuring uranium. It has a half life of 4.51 x 10^9 years. Good luck disposing of that. The U-235 fission creates other radioactive isotopes (notably iodine) which have contaminated large areas in the past: e.g. Hanford, WA.
Currently, our only plan for these long-lived isotopes is to bury them. We don't even have a very safe facility to do that right now. The U.S. has huge amounts of radioactive waste lying around in various sites like Hanford. When nuclear submarines get decommissioned, the reactor section of the hull is basically just cut out and sent off to one of these sites. Great solution. Meanwhile, how do you protect the water supply many years down the road when those containers begin to deteriorate?
Fusion, even with the deuterium-tritium reactions is way WAY easier to deal with from a cleanup standpoint. You are using far smaller amounts of fuel with shorter half-lives. Tritium has a half-life of about 10 years. The greatest risks are in magnetically controlling plasma, and in keeping radioactive gases contained. Fusion isn't a free lunch but for the long-term, it is a much better solution than fission.
Best regards,
SEAL
I think all the service academies have loosened up quite a bit since I was in. But even then, I visited Colorado a couple times and IMO, the only thing tougher there is the altitude. At USNA, our PT was pretty serious, esp in certain situations. For example - some of our Marines were getting a small group of us ready for Airborne school down in Ft. Benning. Lemme tell you they did NOT want us looking bad in front of the Army.
:)
As far as simple insults, I wasn't going to say anything, but "Chair Force" was our common term around campus
Visit for a couple days at the U.S. Naval Academy and talk with some of the midshipmen. Ask them what's harder - getting through the physical demands of plebe year, or getting through the remaining 3 years with a EE degree. I guarantee you that they'll choose EE by a wide margin.
Cheers,
SEAL
P.S. Wonder if anyone remembers "Rocket" Reed :)
This type of thing IS happening in the US, but only on the level of local governments. For example, in Tacoma, WA, the city got fed up waiting for TCI / AT&T / whatever they are these days to get their act together. The city went ahead and wired its own cable network. Result? Excellent broadband service, without the moronic @home hassles, and only 20 bucks a month. In fact, because of this, AT&T had to reduce their rates in this area or face losing a crapload of customers.
Contrast that with, say Redmond, where there is DSL, but no cable available. No competition. The price is -at least- 40 a month, and that's for bare bones service.
The downside, is that wiring an entire city is a pretty massive undertaking if you aren't building on existing infrastructure. For one the size of Tacoma, it is feasible with a couple years of work. For one like, say, Los Angeles, it would be a nightmare. And to expand such a proposition to the national level -- well, it ain't gonna happen.
Don't forget, the cost of wiring isn't just the cables and power. You have to deal with buildings (high-rises are probably even worse). You have to tear up roads and do things that may affect traffic. And while you're at it, make sure you don't affect any other service. Very costly.
Frankly, if you want broadband NOW, you should just move to a new residence. If you're looking for the better long term solution, then who knows - maybe they'll do something like Tacoma did. If you live in a small-medium sized town with a lot of tech professionals, you might be able to get some petitions and influence the local govt. A long shot, of course, but an interesting prospect.
Best regards,
SEAL
Oh... just like that Hellmouth book you were going to put in print without crediting the posters. Cry me a river, Katz. I don't have a problem with your posts on /. but it would reflect much better if you'd admit your mistakes and put the issue behind you. Don't dig for sympathy just because people spotted an error and called you on it.
You are posting in a forum for computer geeks. These are people who, in general, have a meticulous attention to detail. I might classify the complaints as nitpicking, but vicious they are not.
SEAL
At least in the U.S. - phone calls are offered a remarkable amount of protection compared to email. Even if you are at work, your employer would have to jump through a bunch of legal hoops to wiretap your phone without consent.
Of course, you'll notice more than a few companies nowadays (esp on their support lines) - saying something like "To ensure the highest quality service, this call may be monitored". If you continue with the call at that point, you are consenting to eavesdropping.
With email (apparently), privacy protections go out the window. And while I agree that you should be using company resources for company business, it seems like we should try to come up with a common standard for eavesdropping on communications of any kind.
Best regards,
SEAL
I dunno about that. I've seen a few coworkers manage to overflow the damn thing into the adjacent hallway after a healthy christening of the bowl...
That is really misguided, at best. Fundamentally, if you make something free, you'll have a tough time making money off it. The problem with software as opposed to other things (say, vehicles) is that with software, the blueprints ARE the parts. So by getting the source, you have no need to buy anything.
Sure some software developers make money from open source. But they usually get money because the company they work for has them salaried.
COMPANIES, on the other hand, make little to no money from free software. They may sell support contracts (not very good business - check Redhat's recent stock price...). Or they can use the free software as a loss leader to other payware products. Microsoft wrote the book on this one. Cygnus was doing this to a degree as well.
Don't let Stallman's little world delude you into thinking that EVERYONE will get along with our nice free software world. It's not going to happen. I have no problem writing free software when I want to. I also have no problem working for my company which sells proprietary software. There is room for both.
As long as consumers find value in the proprietary software I write, they should buy it. If they find more value in alternative free software, then more power to them.
Best regards,
SEAL
Others, have less of a problem with companies using their free software. They find the LGPL useful (look at Ogg Vorbis, for example). By using the LGPL, he is encouraging companies to use it by linking to his library. This helps EVERYONE out because it reduces our dependency on mp3, and thus, Fraunhofer's licensing fees. And since Vorbis is LGPL'd, companies who start using it will contribute back to the project if they extend the library. This is a GOOD thing and will make it a better codec.
Stallman needs to get off his high horse once in awhile and realize that a little cooperation can be more beneficial than butting heads all the time.
Best regards,
SEAL
What actual tests? Cite your sources. Also I'd like to see a comparison of programmer productivity in LISP, Java, C, and C++, if available. The simple fact is that LISP is not intuitive to most programmers (and that can be said of most functional languages). Most companies don't even touch them. Most of the functional language use I've personally seen has been by academians and researchers.
In fact, careful benchmarking shows that with the best current JITs, Java performs as well as the best C compilers at most tasks, and better at some.
Another completely unsupported statement. What benchmarks? What tasks? Just off the top of my head, I can think of several easy examples where this is false. Take anything with bit-fiddling... say, a UUEncoder. I guarantee you that the Java version will be slower (even with a JIT), and use more memory.
The OS argument I agree with, although I will say that C is good for writing small code, which is arguably an advantage here. However, I believe many daemons are written in C that don't need to be... and this could improve security.
C is a language which is extremely good for creating hard to trace bugs - memory leaks, data corruption and so on - and extremely poor for programmer productivity.
Once again - bzzzt. It is a language which gives you extreme control over what you want your program to do. If you are experienced, you learn how to write good code. Someone inexperienced using Java can write incredibly bad code also. The learning curve isn't as steep, and the punishment not as severe (i.e. you don't crash), but that's all. But it's not a substitute for programming experience.
I write C++ for a living, on a fairly experienced team at a game company. In the past year I've only had to track down one memory leak, and I can't recall any mysterious "data corruption". The advantages of C++ completely outweigh the disadvantages for what I'm doing. Even setting aside performance concerns.
I was wondering if someone else would've noticed that. I suppose a phase shift from solid to gaseous form could've occurred at lower pressure, causing the channels to form. But any article citing "liquid C02" should be viewed dubiously, at best.