Tehran has a better claim on 1st-world status that does Detroit.
Despite their current Government, Iranians live freer and are better connected to Europe and the US than are the people in "democratic ally" states like Uzbekistan!
Sure they do!
Can you please post a second link with pictures from last year's riots where Iranian citizens were raped and beaten by their country's special police?
Then post a third link showing the life of a shepherd outside of urban Tehran. Maybe we'll see some camels and face coverings there.
I believe this to be an ethical issue that really needs to be thought through before folks go off tinkering with genes. As the article calls out, do we know what the impact to an ecosystem where a species like this is released? What about natural predation? In a broader sense, what is the real value in cloning something that was selectively removed from the environment? Hell we cannot even keep from releasing invasive species to control other species without completely screwing it up. This process does nothing more than allow a scientist to study an animal that doesn't exist by bringing it into existence.
The process does a lot more than that! It shows that we have the potential to actually bring extinct wild animals back into existence for ANY reason. Perfecting that capability is tremendously exciting from a scientific and evolutionary standpoint.
Obviously there are ethical implications. Like with other capabilities (moon landing, nuclear weapons, fracking), they will be debated as the technology is actively developed. Is that the "right" approach? Well, that's an ethical issue unto itself.
Are you really worried about the accidental release of a wooly mammoth into the wild? If so, it's probably be pretty easy to find.
Because 18-30 year olds aren't doing anything else on Fridays? Seriously.
Go figure. I like Whitney and hated Community from the first show! Maybe my tastes changed after I finished grad school.
I'll tell you one thing that hasn't changed though: my VCR still let's me watch my shows whenever I want, just like it did in 1976. For free! Without software updates!
Crazy old school stuff, huh. It's like using a pen!
Note also, that the CEO good ol' boys club, which prefers a bad CEO to a new one, still hasn't let Carly take the reins of anything important since HP....
I can't believe that you are pulling the sexism card on this! How many chances do you think a person should get to be a CEO of a $120B+ business after the company rejects them?!
Re:Only "troubled" if you're not Lockheed Martin
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The F-35 Story
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the problem is that govt workers, and their unions, can't face the fact that their employers cannot afford these type of benefits any longer. you can cry about waste and corruption but the fact is governments/are/ going bankrupt.
this is happening in our city govt as well... fire and police pensions are killing the city. so, instead of agreeing to reduce benefits and keep their jobs, the jobs are getting outsourced (or cut) completely.
i mean really, sorry folks, but we're in a recession. the rest of us are having a hard time of it and tightening our belts... why do govt workers think they untouchable?
Because they have a fucking contract with the US government! Unless the state or Fed is bankrupt, they don't get to just reneg on contracts. Just like private citizens are unable to.
How would you like it if the US government appropriated your 401K retirement money because "the rest of us are having a hard time?" Or what if the bank just up and took your house just before you finished paying your mortgage off, because they needed the income?
States should cut spending or layoff people if they need to save money. You don't shaft retirees who have spent their life working for you and now cannot get another job due to age.
I'd like to remind you that many students in high school can barely handle Algebra III/Precalculus (whatever you call it). If you're proposing making Calculus a graduation requirement for high school or something moronic like that, you're going to do a lot of damage. I'm a college freshman right now, so I actually do remember my senior year of high school very well.
That's kind of the point though, eh? Those student need to put down their cell phones and study longer and harder. ANYONE can understand how to integrate, if they put the time in. But it is easier to watch TV and twitter your life away.
I remember my senior year of high school very well too. I took BC calculus. There were 20 other kids in my class.
'Stingray's do not intercept communication. That's why they get around the wiretapping warrant requirements. They are designed to spoof the carrier's tower in order to ascertain only the location of a mobile device. So I don't see wiretapping as the issue.
It's not communication with a person, but they are obtaining an identifying form of data. It's equivalent to accessing a service provider's network to find a computer's location and user's identity. Do you need a warrant for that? (That was a rhetorical question.)
Let me ask you this another way: Do you think the police would allow any citizen to track the location of law enforcement officials using this technology? If the answer is no, then this technology probably requires a warrant.
Why should we ever trust anything the utilities say about nuclear safety ever again? They don't have the moral integrity to handle the responsibility of running a safe nuclear fission industry.
You're naive if you think that you can trust any for-profit utility in any industry. The gas, coal, and even solar power utilities will all poison you (albeit more slowly than nuclear utilities) if their upstream and downstream emissions aren't kept in check by the government.
Your need for electricity isn't going away, so you might as well pick your favorite poison and enjoy it.
Geeks interested in safe practical thorium power really need to read the history of molten salt reactors here. I hope India and China have the sense to invest in this path. The LFTR is the long term theoretical evolution of the molten salt reactor path. My only problem with the whole LFTR hype is it's pushing for massive research instead of building reactors we know how to build now. We should get back in the game now, first building a new MSR taking into account what we learned in the 60's and new advances since then, and then build a few commercial plants.
To be specific about some of the hype I don't like, check out the claimed advantages of LFTRs. Some of the advantages that LFTR theoretically inherit from MSR I wont dispute, including inherent safety, small size, and low operational cost, as MSR research proved that already in the 60's. However, I take issue with "load following" which means ramping the reactor up and down to follow the load. That's what all our other generators are good for, but to get your investment out of a nuclear reactor, you want to take advantage of it's low fuel cost and run it at 100% capacity almost all the time. This also greatly simplifies the engineering involved, and given the economics, there's simply no way our early LFTRs will be designed for load following. Then they claim minimal end-of-life expense. Cleaning up the MSR plant turned out to be massively more expensive than anyone would have guessed, though with knowledge gained from that experience, we should be able to do a better job next time. Then, they assume that the first LFTRs will use a new turbine design, rather than standard steam turbines. That might be where we eventually get, but build the first plants using cheaply available and well understood technology! This sort of hype looks more like fishing for DARPA grants than solving the energy crisis.
Your post was interesting. But defining your acronyms (LFTR, MSR) as you first introduce them would make it even more accessible.
I love the way stupid ways companies try to discourage product copying. Like the way they insist, no matter the type of product, that knockoffs are a safety hazard.
If you believe these idiots everything from blue jeans to DVDs will kill you unless it comes from the right factory and has a little hologram on the label.
Not to mention that tons of illicit product out there is perfectly authentic; it's just not licensed. Just because a license gets pulled doesn't always mean the owners stop churning out the product, and even while the place is licensed there's often some after-hours manufacturing to make extra money on the black market.
At some point we'll have to accept that intellectual property isn't a natural law; some people and some entire nations won't follow it simply because they don't believe in it, and America won't regain its economic prowess via all of this endless arm twisting, extortion, and bribery aimed at exporting our intellectual property law.
We won't get away with basing our entire economy on licensing payments, Hollywood fantasies, and financial products. The sooner people just accept that the sooner we can start fixing shit.
Right.
Because there is nothing wrong with Chinese counterfeit bolts made of low-grade steel but marked as high strength, right? You'd want those holding your seat and seat belt to your car frame, right?
And you wouldn't sue the car company if the bolts failed in an accident.
If you want to buy some fake jeans or a fancy D&G bag on the black market, it'll probably be fine. But the knockoffs can a safety hazard for any product that is actually regulated for safety. Maybe your fake Chinese kid's toy is made out of cheaper hazardous materials. Or maybe it's flammable.
For only $7.99 a month, you get unlimited movies & TV episodes instantly over the Internet to your TV or computer. There are no commercials, and you can pause, rewind, fast forward or rewatch as often as you like. It's really that easy!
Can I get DVDs by mail from Netflix?
Yes. During sign up, you can add unlimited DVDs (1 DVD out-at-a-time plan) for only $7.99 more a month. With DVDs by mail, you'll get an even broader selection of movies & TV episodes. You can exchange each DVD as often as you want with no due dates or late fees — ever! You can add access to Blu-ray discs to your account at any time for an additional $2 a month.
The revised Netflix website is atrocious. It appears to have been designed by idiots for idiots. You can't find prices. For a while, you could not report a bad DVD because the website would log you out when you clicked on "account help." You can't browse movies as textual lists, but have to look at their stupid graphics... that are gigantic and load/scroll slowly. As a long-time subscriber, it drives me nuts. As a geek, it pisses me off to see a new implementation that is LESS usable than the prior one.
As a stockholder, they also have been driving me nuts lately. Hastings has been making some boneheaded PR moves. Hopefully there is some unexplained drama going on behind the scenes that explains things, because it really does seem like he is intentionally driving the company into the ground.
My personal opinion is that the company has been sacrificing the quality of their product in lieu of artificially increasing their stock price for a year or so and they finally ran out of hot air. Time will tell though.
Fukushima had multiple hardware failures, correctable design problems, and crappy management. The failure was not just due to a low seawall.
1. Reactor 1's cooling system likely failed due to the quake, not the failure of the backup diesels. This opinion is based on analysis of the remaining sensors, that indicated the reactor was having problems even while the battery-powered cooling was still running. The existing plumbing and wiring had been embrittled from 4 decades of operation in a quake zone and proximity to, well, a nuclear reactor.
2. Design flaw and hardware failure: locating the backup diesel generators in a basement under the reactors, such that they were guaranteed to flood if water entered the area.
3. Design flaw: locating the spent fuel pools directly above the reactors in the same buildings, such that if the reactor had a little problem (hydrogen explosion, or moderated prompt criticality), said fuel would get blown sky-high, which it did in the reactor 3 explosion.
4. Design flaw: no externally located terminals for "connect portable generators HERE", and no rationalization of Japan's two different electrical standards (it's a fucking nuclear power plant that will blow up if not cooled, so support both standards, guys).
5. Management failure: All reactors should have been flooded with seawater immediately after the quake, as soon as the situation on the ground at the site became clear. This might have averted the hydrogen explosion by keeping the reactors cool enough to not oxidize the zirconium fuel-rod cladding. Local personnel correctly identified the situation, remote management denied permission to flood the reactors with seawater (because that basically ends the reactor's productive life). Eventually a local guy did so anyways.
It sounds like there was only one major flaw.. they didn't spend enough money constructing and maintaining their safety systems.
But I am sure they enjoyed profiting from skimping on maintenance in the years before the earthquake!
If that's true though, then there should be no talk about permits. If "Bigfoot's" activities actually constitute harassment or if there is a legitimate public safety issue, then the Park should be flat out saying "no you can't do that".
By making it a "you don't have a permit" issue, it really smacks of the park rangers don't like it, but it hasn't actually crossed the line.
I mean, are they saying you CAN harass/endanger people as long as you do get a permit?
Pretty much. It's called getting a permit for a public demonstration.
The patent system was put in place to promote innovation. It's a shame that large companies are able to use it to stifle innovation through patent purchasing and subsequent bullying.
MS has evolved into a mafia-like organization. They don't innovate anymore, they just make everyone pay them a "protection" tax. (I'd say the same about Apple, but they still innovate in addition to bullying.)
There are two purposes I can see for a permit system:
1. It provides a framework to limit activities in the park, and 2. it can provide a source of funding for the park.
I think in the case of the former, there are some activities one does not want done: such as building a structure. Other activities such as littering does not require the use of a permit, as normal laws quash that.
In the case of the latter, it is entirely possible to just have an entrance fee for the park – if that is legal.
Ultimately, I don't see a need for either need, as unsuitable excess will either happen rarely or can be punished/prevented through normal laws.
Based on the text of the story, it seems to me that the park staff have no reason other than they don't like it. Which is not a valid reason in this context.
Maybe the park doesn't want a big monster running around scaring the public?
What if I dress up as a grizzly bear and try to scare the shit out of you during a nice family picnic? What if you shoot me to defend yourself and I sue the park service?
People go to state and federal parks to get away from civilization and to enjoy nature, not to get harassed by wanna-be actors.
Visible light does not cause cancer. UV, XRay, and Gamma (all higher frequency than visible) do cause cancer.
Even if we knew nothing about the fact that we are exposed to so much radio and microwave radiation on a daily basis, does it not make sense that electromagnetic radiation below visible light should also not cause cancer (that is, for it to not be an ionizing radiation)?
I mean, who cares if your brain dissipates some radio energy to heat in the brain? Has a small temperature in a localized part of the body caused cancer in the past? Unless the heat dissipated raises the temperature of the brain over 104, I do not see much concern.
Your stated logic really does not make since, given a portion of the UV spectrum is non-ionizing yet still has been shown to indirectly contribute to DNA defects, elevating cancer risk. Furthermore, you can't really just postulate that all lower frequency EM radiation is safe given that given that lower-wavelengths of EM do interact with your body. Microwaves and infrared are lower frequency than visible light, but still can instantaneously burn you and long term microwave exposure can cause cataracts.
The fact that cell phone radiation is both nonionizing and that power exposure levels are low implies that any harmful effects will likely be very subtle and take some time to tease out of data. First you need to understand if the wavelengths interact with the body AT ALL. If so, you need to understand what the effect of that long term interaction is, if it can directly cause cancer or indirectly increase cancer risk, and if any negative effects can be magnified by other environmental or genetic factors. It could take decades to resolve, especially when you consider that most people's "long-term" exposure is just starting given that widespread cell phone use has only been around since the mid 1990's (20+ years) and many people live for 80+ years.
So don't be so absolute. Remember that smoking definitely did not cause cancer for a long time too. Until it did.
So you wish horror on an entire state because of the actions of a few legislators?
Congratulations! You'd make an excellent religious extremist!
The problem is that the legislators were presumably elected by the people of the state and, thus, are acting with their interests in mind. Or so the whole democracy thing goes...
"As if its latest BlackBerry service outage--the worst in company history--and the mass exodus of BlackBerry users to iOS and Android weren't bad enough, RIM is now facing a potential trademark lawsuit over the name of its next generation BlackBerry OS: BBX. The BBX announcement was the most significant news to come from RIM's BlackBerry Developer Conference this week, and now it looks like RIM may have change the upcoming platform's name to something else. RIM just can't seem to do anything right these days."
Who cares what they call their OS? I don't base my OS selection on name, but rather on performance.
This article is the tech-equivalent of critiquing the merits of what outfit Kim Kardashian wore out last weekend.
Build a station, send it out one years distance, however far away that is.
Let's leave aside the fact that, like so many others in this forum, you're glossing over all of the technological difficulties. You propose to send out a station and what? Leave it there? Command it to "stay"?
You fail at orbital mechanics.
The point of advanced propulsion technology is that you could actually develop the capability to get it to stay, once you got it sufficiently far from a star's gravity and had the energy to maintain its location, plus or minus 1% of its distance from earth.
Because of the amount of voting stock he owns. Remember that he was there from the absolute beginning in 1976. The only way he's leaving is by having a heart attack whilst throwing a chair or voluntarily retiring.
-- BMO
Come on, he should be fired or sidelined. He's a liability to the company and even Bil Gates hates him. He has a big mouth, is scary looking, and comes across as stupid and overconfident. I seriously doubt that he has a clue how Windows works, much less Android. He probably don't like Android because he is still looking for the start button.
There is absolutely no way that man should be in charge of a tech company and in my opinion he ruined Microsoft. What was the last good product they had? Windows XP... and that was just because Ballmer didn't have enough time to screw it up since he took over after it was mostly developed.
I hold him responsibly for Microsoft's complete lack of innovation since 2000.
No it does not... $1.60 buys me a loaf of bread today, and will tomorrow (give or take a cent)
Most currencies are fairly stable (with a few notable exceptions)... if not there would be huge inflation/deflation, and their isn't
The stockmarket trades currencies against each other and their exchange rates change more rapidly (but not as rapidly as you suggest), simply because they have different inflation rates, and because of currency speculation...
The price fluctuations still exist for food items, they just have a longer timescale (on the order of months). Your bank savings account is static, but many other money storage schemes are not. Most people who have more than a few thousand dollars invest their savings in CDs, bonds, or the stock market so that their money does not lose value relative to inflation. Most retirement accounts (401K and even pensions) are directly or indirectly tied to the stock market performance and their value can vary quite significantly over a short time if they are not well diversified. (The GGP's bitcoin money loss was due to poor diversification of your money in a volatile fund.) So when a country's economy fluctuates, you can expect both the prices of items and the amount of money available to most individuals to also vary.
None of this is a new concept to someone who has been maintaining their finances and planning their retirement for a few decades. I assume that you have not had the pleasure of dealing with such tasks yet based on your overly simplistic example on the price of bread. Think of it as something to look forward to.
Slashdot Mirror
...because that ruins his credibility.
Also, will someone always be around to give his little robot the cat brush?
My dog would destroy that thing if it tried to pet her when no one was home.
US sets up another propaganda/disinfo channel.
Iranians are much more aware of America and life in the US than vice versa. Americans imagine some weird, gulf-state with face covering and camels.
Not this:
http://tehranlive.org/
Tehran has a better claim on 1st-world status that does Detroit.
Despite their current Government, Iranians live freer and are better connected to Europe and the US than are the people in "democratic ally" states like Uzbekistan!
Sure they do!
Can you please post a second link with pictures from last year's riots where Iranian citizens were raped and beaten by their country's special police?
Then post a third link showing the life of a shepherd outside of urban Tehran. Maybe we'll see some camels and face coverings there.
Wired Mag had their article about this back in September.
I believe this to be an ethical issue that really needs to be thought through before folks go off tinkering with genes. As the article calls out, do we know what the impact to an ecosystem where a species like this is released? What about natural predation? In a broader sense, what is the real value in cloning something that was selectively removed from the environment? Hell we cannot even keep from releasing invasive species to control other species without completely screwing it up. This process does nothing more than allow a scientist to study an animal that doesn't exist by bringing it into existence.
The process does a lot more than that! It shows that we have the potential to actually bring extinct wild animals back into existence for ANY reason. Perfecting that capability is tremendously exciting from a scientific and evolutionary standpoint.
Obviously there are ethical implications. Like with other capabilities (moon landing, nuclear weapons, fracking), they will be debated as the technology is actively developed. Is that the "right" approach? Well, that's an ethical issue unto itself.
Are you really worried about the accidental release of a wooly mammoth into the wild? If so, it's probably be pretty easy to find.
Because 18-30 year olds aren't doing anything else on Fridays? Seriously.
Go figure. I like Whitney and hated Community from the first show! Maybe my tastes changed after I finished grad school.
I'll tell you one thing that hasn't changed though: my VCR still let's me watch my shows whenever I want, just like it did in 1976. For free! Without software updates!
Crazy old school stuff, huh. It's like using a pen!
Note also, that the CEO good ol' boys club, which prefers a bad CEO to a new one, still hasn't let Carly take the reins of anything important since HP....
I can't believe that you are pulling the sexism card on this! How many chances do you think a person should get to be a CEO of a $120B+ business after the company rejects them?!
the problem is that govt workers, and their unions, can't face the fact that their employers cannot afford these type of benefits any longer. you can cry about waste and corruption but the fact is governments /are/ going bankrupt.
this is happening in our city govt as well ... fire and police pensions are killing the city. so, instead of agreeing to reduce benefits and keep their jobs, the jobs are getting outsourced (or cut) completely.
i mean really, sorry folks, but we're in a recession. the rest of us are having a hard time of it and tightening our belts ... why do govt workers think they untouchable?
Because they have a fucking contract with the US government! Unless the state or Fed is bankrupt, they don't get to just reneg on contracts. Just like private citizens are unable to.
How would you like it if the US government appropriated your 401K retirement money because "the rest of us are having a hard time?" Or what if the bank just up and took your house just before you finished paying your mortgage off, because they needed the income?
States should cut spending or layoff people if they need to save money. You don't shaft retirees who have spent their life working for you and now cannot get another job due to age.
I'd like to remind you that many students in high school can barely handle Algebra III/Precalculus (whatever you call it). If you're proposing making Calculus a graduation requirement for high school or something moronic like that, you're going to do a lot of damage. I'm a college freshman right now, so I actually do remember my senior year of high school very well.
That's kind of the point though, eh? Those student need to put down their cell phones and study longer and harder. ANYONE can understand how to integrate, if they put the time in. But it is easier to watch TV and twitter your life away.
I remember my senior year of high school very well too. I took BC calculus. There were 20 other kids in my class.
Really well said. Mod parent up!
'Stingray's do not intercept communication. That's why they get around the wiretapping warrant requirements. They are designed to spoof the carrier's tower in order to ascertain only the location of a mobile device. So I don't see wiretapping as the issue.
It's not communication with a person, but they are obtaining an identifying form of data. It's equivalent to accessing a service provider's network to find a computer's location and user's identity. Do you need a warrant for that? (That was a rhetorical question.)
Let me ask you this another way: Do you think the police would allow any citizen to track the location of law enforcement officials using this technology? If the answer is no, then this technology probably requires a warrant.
Why should we ever trust anything the utilities say about nuclear safety ever again? They don't have the moral integrity to handle the responsibility of running a safe nuclear fission industry.
You're naive if you think that you can trust any for-profit utility in any industry. The gas, coal, and even solar power utilities will all poison you (albeit more slowly than nuclear utilities) if their upstream and downstream emissions aren't kept in check by the government.
Your need for electricity isn't going away, so you might as well pick your favorite poison and enjoy it.
Geeks interested in safe practical thorium power really need to read the history of molten salt reactors here. I hope India and China have the sense to invest in this path. The LFTR is the long term theoretical evolution of the molten salt reactor path. My only problem with the whole LFTR hype is it's pushing for massive research instead of building reactors we know how to build now. We should get back in the game now, first building a new MSR taking into account what we learned in the 60's and new advances since then, and then build a few commercial plants.
To be specific about some of the hype I don't like, check out the claimed advantages of LFTRs. Some of the advantages that LFTR theoretically inherit from MSR I wont dispute, including inherent safety, small size, and low operational cost, as MSR research proved that already in the 60's. However, I take issue with "load following" which means ramping the reactor up and down to follow the load. That's what all our other generators are good for, but to get your investment out of a nuclear reactor, you want to take advantage of it's low fuel cost and run it at 100% capacity almost all the time. This also greatly simplifies the engineering involved, and given the economics, there's simply no way our early LFTRs will be designed for load following. Then they claim minimal end-of-life expense. Cleaning up the MSR plant turned out to be massively more expensive than anyone would have guessed, though with knowledge gained from that experience, we should be able to do a better job next time. Then, they assume that the first LFTRs will use a new turbine design, rather than standard steam turbines. That might be where we eventually get, but build the first plants using cheaply available and well understood technology! This sort of hype looks more like fishing for DARPA grants than solving the energy crisis.
Your post was interesting. But defining your acronyms (LFTR, MSR) as you first introduce them would make it even more accessible.
I love the way stupid ways companies try to discourage product copying. Like the way they insist, no matter the type of product, that knockoffs are a safety hazard.
If you believe these idiots everything from blue jeans to DVDs will kill you unless it comes from the right factory and has a little hologram on the label.
Not to mention that tons of illicit product out there is perfectly authentic; it's just not licensed. Just because a license gets pulled doesn't always mean the owners stop churning out the product, and even while the place is licensed there's often some after-hours manufacturing to make extra money on the black market.
At some point we'll have to accept that intellectual property isn't a natural law; some people and some entire nations won't follow it simply because they don't believe in it, and America won't regain its economic prowess via all of this endless arm twisting, extortion, and bribery aimed at exporting our intellectual property law.
We won't get away with basing our entire economy on licensing payments, Hollywood fantasies, and financial products. The sooner people just accept that the sooner we can start fixing shit.
Right.
Because there is nothing wrong with Chinese counterfeit bolts made of low-grade steel but marked as high strength, right? You'd want those holding your seat and seat belt to your car frame, right?
And you wouldn't sue the car company if the bolts failed in an accident.
If you want to buy some fake jeans or a fancy D&G bag on the black market, it'll probably be fine. But the knockoffs can a safety hazard for any product that is actually regulated for safety. Maybe your fake Chinese kid's toy is made out of cheaper hazardous materials. Or maybe it's flammable.
They do have a list of their prices for other plans, it on their pricing page.
Can you post a link to their pricing page? I can't find it.
ON their how it works page, they have two FAQs that give some pricing, but not pricing for multiple DVD's at a time:
http://www.netflix.com/HowItWorks
How much does it cost?
For only $7.99 a month, you get unlimited movies & TV episodes instantly over the Internet to your TV or computer. There are no commercials, and you can pause, rewind, fast forward or rewatch as often as you like. It's really that easy!
Can I get DVDs by mail from Netflix?
Yes. During sign up, you can add unlimited DVDs (1 DVD out-at-a-time plan) for only $7.99 more a month. With DVDs by mail, you'll get an even broader selection of movies & TV episodes. You can exchange each DVD as often as you want with no due dates or late fees — ever! You can add access to Blu-ray discs to your account at any time for an additional $2 a month.
The revised Netflix website is atrocious. It appears to have been designed by idiots for idiots. You can't find prices. For a while, you could not report a bad DVD because the website would log you out when you clicked on "account help." You can't browse movies as textual lists, but have to look at their stupid graphics... that are gigantic and load/scroll slowly. As a long-time subscriber, it drives me nuts. As a geek, it pisses me off to see a new implementation that is LESS usable than the prior one.
As a stockholder, they also have been driving me nuts lately. Hastings has been making some boneheaded PR moves. Hopefully there is some unexplained drama going on behind the scenes that explains things, because it really does seem like he is intentionally driving the company into the ground.
My personal opinion is that the company has been sacrificing the quality of their product in lieu of artificially increasing their stock price for a year or so and they finally ran out of hot air. Time will tell though.
Fukushima had multiple hardware failures, correctable design problems, and crappy management. The failure was not just due to a low seawall.
1. Reactor 1's cooling system likely failed due to the quake, not the failure of the backup diesels. This opinion is based on analysis of the remaining sensors, that indicated the reactor was having problems even while the battery-powered cooling was still running. The existing plumbing and wiring had been embrittled from 4 decades of operation in a quake zone and proximity to, well, a nuclear reactor.
2. Design flaw and hardware failure: locating the backup diesel generators in a basement under the reactors, such that they were guaranteed to flood if water entered the area.
3. Design flaw: locating the spent fuel pools directly above the reactors in the same buildings, such that if the reactor had a little problem (hydrogen explosion, or moderated prompt criticality), said fuel would get blown sky-high, which it did in the reactor 3 explosion.
4. Design flaw: no externally located terminals for "connect portable generators HERE", and no rationalization of Japan's two different electrical standards (it's a fucking nuclear power plant that will blow up if not cooled, so support both standards, guys).
5. Management failure: All reactors should have been flooded with seawater immediately after the quake, as soon as the situation on the ground at the site became clear. This might have averted the hydrogen explosion by keeping the reactors cool enough to not oxidize the zirconium fuel-rod cladding. Local personnel correctly identified the situation, remote management denied permission to flood the reactors with seawater (because that basically ends the reactor's productive life). Eventually a local guy did so anyways.
It sounds like there was only one major flaw.. they didn't spend enough money constructing and maintaining their safety systems.
But I am sure they enjoyed profiting from skimping on maintenance in the years before the earthquake!
If that's true though, then there should be no talk about permits. If "Bigfoot's" activities actually constitute harassment or if there is a legitimate public safety issue, then the Park should be flat out saying "no you can't do that".
By making it a "you don't have a permit" issue, it really smacks of the park rangers don't like it, but it hasn't actually crossed the line.
I mean, are they saying you CAN harass/endanger people as long as you do get a permit?
Pretty much. It's called getting a permit for a public demonstration.
The patent system was put in place to promote innovation. It's a shame that large companies are able to use it to stifle innovation through patent purchasing and subsequent bullying.
MS has evolved into a mafia-like organization. They don't innovate anymore, they just make everyone pay them a "protection" tax. (I'd say the same about Apple, but they still innovate in addition to bullying.)
There are two purposes I can see for a permit system:
1. It provides a framework to limit activities in the park, and
2. it can provide a source of funding for the park.
I think in the case of the former, there are some activities one does not want done: such as building a structure. Other activities such as littering does not require the use of a permit, as normal laws quash that.
In the case of the latter, it is entirely possible to just have an entrance fee for the park – if that is legal.
Ultimately, I don't see a need for either need, as unsuitable excess will either happen rarely or can be punished/prevented through normal laws.
Based on the text of the story, it seems to me that the park staff have no reason other than they don't like it. Which is not a valid reason in this context.
Maybe the park doesn't want a big monster running around scaring the public?
What if I dress up as a grizzly bear and try to scare the shit out of you during a nice family picnic? What if you shoot me to defend yourself and I sue the park service?
People go to state and federal parks to get away from civilization and to enjoy nature, not to get harassed by wanna-be actors.
E=hf.
Visible light does not cause cancer. UV, XRay, and Gamma (all higher frequency than visible) do cause cancer.
Even if we knew nothing about the fact that we are exposed to so much radio and microwave radiation on a daily basis, does it not make sense that electromagnetic radiation below visible light should also not cause cancer (that is, for it to not be an ionizing radiation)?
I mean, who cares if your brain dissipates some radio energy to heat in the brain? Has a small temperature in a localized part of the body caused cancer in the past? Unless the heat dissipated raises the temperature of the brain over 104, I do not see much concern.
Your stated logic really does not make since, given a portion of the UV spectrum is non-ionizing yet still has been shown to indirectly contribute to DNA defects, elevating cancer risk. Furthermore, you can't really just postulate that all lower frequency EM radiation is safe given that given that lower-wavelengths of EM do interact with your body. Microwaves and infrared are lower frequency than visible light, but still can instantaneously burn you and long term microwave exposure can cause cataracts.
The fact that cell phone radiation is both nonionizing and that power exposure levels are low implies that any harmful effects will likely be very subtle and take some time to tease out of data. First you need to understand if the wavelengths interact with the body AT ALL. If so, you need to understand what the effect of that long term interaction is, if it can directly cause cancer or indirectly increase cancer risk, and if any negative effects can be magnified by other environmental or genetic factors. It could take decades to resolve, especially when you consider that most people's "long-term" exposure is just starting given that widespread cell phone use has only been around since the mid 1990's (20+ years) and many people live for 80+ years.
So don't be so absolute. Remember that smoking definitely did not cause cancer for a long time too. Until it did.
Which country has attacked more countries. US or China?
Let's use a different set of metrics:
Which country has killed more people?
and
Which country has executed more of its own citizens?
So you wish horror on an entire state because of the actions of a few legislators?
Congratulations! You'd make an excellent religious extremist!
The problem is that the legislators were presumably elected by the people of the state and, thus, are acting with their interests in mind. Or so the whole democracy thing goes...
"As if its latest BlackBerry service outage--the worst in company history--and the mass exodus of BlackBerry users to iOS and Android weren't bad enough, RIM is now facing a potential trademark lawsuit over the name of its next generation BlackBerry OS: BBX. The BBX announcement was the most significant news to come from RIM's BlackBerry Developer Conference this week, and now it looks like RIM may have change the upcoming platform's name to something else. RIM just can't seem to do anything right these days."
Who cares what they call their OS? I don't base my OS selection on name, but rather on performance.
This article is the tech-equivalent of critiquing the merits of what outfit Kim Kardashian wore out last weekend.
Build a station, send it out one years distance, however far away that is.
Let's leave aside the fact that, like so many others in this forum, you're glossing over all of the technological difficulties. You propose to send out a station and what? Leave it there? Command it to "stay"?
You fail at orbital mechanics.
The point of advanced propulsion technology is that you could actually develop the capability to get it to stay, once you got it sufficiently far from a star's gravity and had the energy to maintain its location, plus or minus 1% of its distance from earth.
>Why haven't they fired the guy yet again?
Because of the amount of voting stock he owns. Remember that he was there from the absolute beginning in 1976. The only way he's leaving is by having a heart attack whilst throwing a chair or voluntarily retiring.
--
BMO
Come on, he should be fired or sidelined. He's a liability to the company and even Bil Gates hates him. He has a big mouth, is scary looking, and comes across as stupid and overconfident. I seriously doubt that he has a clue how Windows works, much less Android. He probably don't like Android because he is still looking for the start button.
There is absolutely no way that man should be in charge of a tech company and in my opinion he ruined Microsoft. What was the last good product they had? Windows XP... and that was just because Ballmer didn't have enough time to screw it up since he took over after it was mostly developed.
I hold him responsibly for Microsoft's complete lack of innovation since 2000.
No it does not ... $1.60 buys me a loaf of bread today, and will tomorrow (give or take a cent)
Most currencies are fairly stable (with a few notable exceptions) ... if not there would be huge inflation/deflation, and their isn't
The stockmarket trades currencies against each other and their exchange rates change more rapidly (but not as rapidly as you suggest), simply because they have different inflation rates, and because of currency speculation ...
The price fluctuations still exist for food items, they just have a longer timescale (on the order of months). Your bank savings account is static, but many other money storage schemes are not. Most people who have more than a few thousand dollars invest their savings in CDs, bonds, or the stock market so that their money does not lose value relative to inflation. Most retirement accounts (401K and even pensions) are directly or indirectly tied to the stock market performance and their value can vary quite significantly over a short time if they are not well diversified. (The GGP's bitcoin money loss was due to poor diversification of your money in a volatile fund.) So when a country's economy fluctuates, you can expect both the prices of items and the amount of money available to most individuals to also vary.
None of this is a new concept to someone who has been maintaining their finances and planning their retirement for a few decades. I assume that you have not had the pleasure of dealing with such tasks yet based on your overly simplistic example on the price of bread. Think of it as something to look forward to.
The only way you could get close to a 50% loss on the S&P is buying in October 2007 and selling in March 2009.
It's not the "only" way. Look up the performance of NFLX over the past 3 months.