and every time they are feeling tetchy they have this tendency to turn off the gas (literally)
Not for paying customers. The problem is that those nonpaying customers tend to steal gas because they need it regardless of whether they can pay for it or not. That's why Gasprom is so hot about the Baltic sea pipeline.
So? Then please name an ERP software made by Apple. Or maybe an SQL server? A geographic information system then? A CRM solution maybe?
And, since you are so sure that there is no difference between a business user and a home user, please explain to me why a home user would need some CRM software.
Maybe you should reread the documents, then. The only system disabled for the sake of experiment was the emergency core cooling system and it had neither anything to do with the accident nor could it have prevented the explosion. The system is only used to shutdown the reactor during an accident condition when the heat cannot be removed from the reactor in a normal way. In the Chernobyl case the conventional reactor cooling was working fine, the reactor SCRAM which caused the explosion was also not an emergency shutdown but a planned one. And even if the ECCS was enabled and could have detected the temperature spike after the SCRAM, there were only 6 seconds between the SCRAM and the explosion, which is not nearly enough time for the cold water to reach the core.
Close but no cigar. While you describe the technical reasons, you ignore the human reasons and just assume that the manager and his crew were suicidal. They weren't.
The manager used to work at VVER type reactors before he started at the Chernobyl powerplant. He studied the manual of RBMK and according to manual the reactor was similar to operate. There was nothing about positive void coefficient or xenon poisoning in the manual. Minimal safe thermal power also wasn't specified. And of course there was nothing about SCRAM possibly could cause a runaway reaction - such a condition may not exist in any reactor built according to some safety standards.
So while the manager chose to run the experiment on a different thermal power rating, he did it in the knowledge that the procedure was still safe according to the reactor manual.
But let's go a couple of years back before the accident. Anatoliy Aleksandrov - three times Hero of Socialist Labour (a degree of distinction similar to Hero of the Soviet Union), 9 times awardee of the Lenin Order, director of the Kurchatov Institute, was the project manager on the RBMK project. Nikolay Dollezhal - two times Hero of Socialist Labour, 6 times awardee of the Lenin Orden, director of the Research and Design Institute for Power Engineering was the chief engineer of the project. Both of them were among the highest decorated soviet scientists, both of them designed pretty much every soviet nuclear reactor and a good part of soviet nuclear armament. Both of them were getting older and set in their ways.
They were warned that their RBMK design was faulty in many ways. They ignored the warnings. The near-accidents at the Leningrad and Ignalina power plant were classified and the proposed solutions of making the RBMK design safer so the accidents wouldn't happen were also classified.
Then came the Chernobyl disaster. Both scientists blamed the reactor crew and the political bureau sided with them - they couldn't blame such high decorated scientists and had to find a scapegoat. But silently the reactor user manual was updated and so were the reactor control rods. Also, Dollezhal was forced to retire (Aleksandrov was over 80 in 1986 so he was retired already).
Shortly before his death Aleksandrov more or less admitted his guilt, Dollezhal though insisted that the RBMK design was inherently safe until he died.
"In May 2006 construction delays of about one year were announced, following quality control problems across the construction."
"At the end of June 2007 it was reported that Säteilyturvakeskus, the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority, had found a number of safety-related design and manufacturing 'deficiencies'.[16] In August 2007 a further construction delay of up to a year was reported associated with construction problems in reinforcing the reactor building to withstand an airplane crash, and the timely supply of adequate documentation to the Finnish authorities."
"May 2009: Professor Stephen Thomas has reported that after 18 months of construction and after a series of quality control problems, the project is "more than 20 percent over budget and EDF is struggling to keep it on schedule"."
"In April 2008 the French nuclear safety agency (Autorité de sûreté nucléaire, ASN) reported that a quarter of the welds inspected in the secondary containment steel liner are not in accordance with norms, and that cracks have been found in the concrete base."
I am not against nuclear power, but it does seem that even in the 21. century proper construction of a nuclear reactor is not as easy as some Slashdotters believe.
That is pretty short. AM-1 was online for 48 years and was shutdown only because of the high cost of keeping the world's first civil nuclear powerplant safe. Modern reactors have got a lifetime of 60 years or more.
Stop perpetuating that myth. Chernobyl was all about a star scientist developing an inherently unsafe design and successfully suppressing all critics even as they come up with some simple and easy to implement solutions to increase the safety.
On a reactor designed according to even the soviet safety standards of those days the experiment would have been safe to begin with. Unfortunately RBMK wasn't.
When it comes to proprietary lock-in, Microsoft doesn't look bad at all - Windows Mobile is a pretty open system where you've got root access, can install applications from anywhere and even have got third party development tools in addition to the Microsoft's ones. And you can even get large parts of the kernel sources.
Actually, there is a perfectly valid German (which is west Europe) word with 5 consonants in row. It is not difficult to pronounce, either. All Germans know that word but most of them aren't aware of the fact that the word has got 5 consonants in row.
The word is "Arztpraxis" (rztpr in the middle of the word) and means "doctor's practice".
Sure. I was a Windows Mobile developer for a while. True, developing directly on the PDA is not that comfortable, but it is a perfectly valid temporary solution. It is better to have this possibility for emergency causes than not to have this possibility at all.
Don't confuse the best and brightest with the greediest. Best and brightest are there because they actually like what they do. Only the greedy ones are there for money only.
Sorry, but this is bullshit. I've got data for 2005 only, but according to it there were 176000 cell phone towers in the USA back then, and about 95000 in Germany. So USA had not even twice the amount of cell phone towers being 27 times larger and having 3.5 times the population.
And that is a problem with any number used as an ID. Same shit happens with the American SSN.
Germany has done it right for once: The number of the personal ID card is just a serial number and the date of birth and by itself meaningless. Only the ID card itself can be used as identification so to steal someone's identity the card itself has to be stolen (and it has got a colour photo and the signature on it) AND the thief has to be able to access the victim's mailbox (because his address is on the back side of the ID card).
Insightful my fat arse. No, you cannot remove your appendix using a toothpick sticked into your left eye because your hand won't fit through the eye socket. But you can very well develop directly on a PDA which can be quite comfortable with a full keyboard and a large screen some of them have.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep, same here. Even hotels are seldom air conditioned.
The pipeline is still cheaper than paying contractual penalties when Ukraine again decides to steal gas from the land pipeline.
Not for paying customers. The problem is that those nonpaying customers tend to steal gas because they need it regardless of whether they can pay for it or not. That's why Gasprom is so hot about the Baltic sea pipeline.
So?
Then please name an ERP software made by Apple.
Or maybe an SQL server? A geographic information system then? A CRM solution maybe?
And, since you are so sure that there is no difference between a business user and a home user, please explain to me why a home user would need some CRM software.
Maybe you should reread the documents, then.
The only system disabled for the sake of experiment was the emergency core cooling system and it had neither anything to do with the accident nor could it have prevented the explosion.
The system is only used to shutdown the reactor during an accident condition when the heat cannot be removed from the reactor in a normal way.
In the Chernobyl case the conventional reactor cooling was working fine, the reactor SCRAM which caused the explosion was also not an emergency shutdown but a planned one. And even if the ECCS was enabled and could have detected the temperature spike after the SCRAM, there were only 6 seconds between the SCRAM and the explosion, which is not nearly enough time for the cold water to reach the core.
Close but no cigar. While you describe the technical reasons, you ignore the human reasons and just assume that the manager and his crew were suicidal. They weren't.
The manager used to work at VVER type reactors before he started at the Chernobyl powerplant. He studied the manual of RBMK and according to manual the reactor was similar to operate. There was nothing about positive void coefficient or xenon poisoning in the manual. Minimal safe thermal power also wasn't specified. And of course there was nothing about SCRAM possibly could cause a runaway reaction - such a condition may not exist in any reactor built according to some safety standards.
So while the manager chose to run the experiment on a different thermal power rating, he did it in the knowledge that the procedure was still safe according to the reactor manual.
But let's go a couple of years back before the accident.
Anatoliy Aleksandrov - three times Hero of Socialist Labour (a degree of distinction similar to Hero of the Soviet Union), 9 times awardee of the Lenin Order, director of the Kurchatov Institute, was the project manager on the RBMK project. Nikolay Dollezhal - two times Hero of Socialist Labour, 6 times awardee of the Lenin Orden, director of the Research and Design Institute for Power Engineering was the chief engineer of the project. Both of them were among the highest decorated soviet scientists, both of them designed pretty much every soviet nuclear reactor and a good part of soviet nuclear armament. Both of them were getting older and set in their ways.
They were warned that their RBMK design was faulty in many ways. They ignored the warnings. The near-accidents at the Leningrad and Ignalina power plant were classified and the proposed solutions of making the RBMK design safer so the accidents wouldn't happen were also classified.
Then came the Chernobyl disaster. Both scientists blamed the reactor crew and the political bureau sided with them - they couldn't blame such high decorated scientists and had to find a scapegoat. But silently the reactor user manual was updated and so were the reactor control rods. Also, Dollezhal was forced to retire (Aleksandrov was over 80 in 1986 so he was retired already).
Shortly before his death Aleksandrov more or less admitted his guilt, Dollezhal though insisted that the RBMK design was inherently safe until he died.
Things are not as easy as they seem.
"In May 2006 construction delays of about one year were announced, following quality control problems across the construction."
"At the end of June 2007 it was reported that Säteilyturvakeskus, the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority, had found a number of safety-related design and manufacturing 'deficiencies'.[16] In August 2007 a further construction delay of up to a year was reported associated with construction problems in reinforcing the reactor building to withstand an airplane crash, and the timely supply of adequate documentation to the Finnish authorities."
"May 2009: Professor Stephen Thomas has reported that after 18 months of construction and after a series of quality control problems, the project is "more than 20 percent over budget and EDF is struggling to keep it on schedule"."
"In April 2008 the French nuclear safety agency (Autorité de sûreté nucléaire, ASN) reported that a quarter of the welds inspected in the secondary containment steel liner are not in accordance with norms, and that cracks have been found in the concrete base."
I am not against nuclear power, but it does seem that even in the 21. century proper construction of a nuclear reactor is not as easy as some Slashdotters believe.
Yeah, that's what they thought, too.
That is pretty short. AM-1 was online for 48 years and was shutdown only because of the high cost of keeping the world's first civil nuclear powerplant safe. Modern reactors have got a lifetime of 60 years or more.
Stop perpetuating that myth.
Chernobyl was all about a star scientist developing an inherently unsafe design and successfully suppressing all critics even as they come up with some simple and easy to implement solutions to increase the safety.
On a reactor designed according to even the soviet safety standards of those days the experiment would have been safe to begin with. Unfortunately RBMK wasn't.
When it comes to proprietary lock-in, Microsoft doesn't look bad at all - Windows Mobile is a pretty open system where you've got root access, can install applications from anywhere and even have got third party development tools in addition to the Microsoft's ones. And you can even get large parts of the kernel sources.
Oh, an AMR might come in handy when some rogue comet passes Earth and all sorts of lorries suddenly go crazy.
As I already mentioned, there are rifles that large. Antitank rifles of WW2, or antimateriel rifles, as they are called nowadays.
Bullshit. The Americans are just scared of someone walking around.
Yes, but that thing has got the size of a WW2 antitank rifle. It dwarfs everything IzhMash has ever produced short of their aircraft cannon.
Actually, there is a perfectly valid German (which is west Europe) word with 5 consonants in row. It is not difficult to pronounce, either. All Germans know that word but most of them aren't aware of the fact that the word has got 5 consonants in row.
The word is "Arztpraxis" (rztpr in the middle of the word) and means "doctor's practice".
Sure. I was a Windows Mobile developer for a while. True, developing directly on the PDA is not that comfortable, but it is a perfectly valid temporary solution. It is better to have this possibility for emergency causes than not to have this possibility at all.
Don't confuse the best and brightest with the greediest.
Best and brightest are there because they actually like what they do. Only the greedy ones are there for money only.
Sorry, but this is bullshit. I've got data for 2005 only, but according to it there were 176000 cell phone towers in the USA back then, and about 95000 in Germany. So USA had not even twice the amount of cell phone towers being 27 times larger and having 3.5 times the population.
And that is a problem with any number used as an ID. Same shit happens with the American SSN.
Germany has done it right for once: The number of the personal ID card is just a serial number and the date of birth and by itself meaningless. Only the ID card itself can be used as identification so to steal someone's identity the card itself has to be stolen (and it has got a colour photo and the signature on it) AND the thief has to be able to access the victim's mailbox (because his address is on the back side of the ID card).
Insightful my fat arse. No, you cannot remove your appendix using a toothpick sticked into your left eye because your hand won't fit through the eye socket. But you can very well develop directly on a PDA which can be quite comfortable with a full keyboard and a large screen some of them have.
There are other browsers for Windows Mobile, like Opera, Iris, Skyfire or Netfront.
Firefox mobile is coming soon.
You can develop directly on your windows mobile pda.
You can also develop for windows mobile pda under linux.
Now that's stranger than fiction.
Well, intelligent missiles would make *all* military aircraft except AWACS and recon UAV obsolete.