I have heard coal emits 100x more radiation than nuclear (in normal operation), but that radiation is still is mostly harmless (it certainly doesn't emit less than an uncontained nuclear meltdown, though). Waste coal releases mostly non-fissile Uranium and Thorium, both of which have an extremely long half life and are beta and alpha emitters, respectively. It also will release some radon since that is a byproduct of Uranium and Thorium decay chains, and I'd be a bit more wary of that, but not as much as natural gas, which directly puts radon in your house. Still, I am not a fan of conventional nuclear or coal and would like to see LFTR nuclear replace both.
More than just that - pregnant women have to worry about the nutrition and avoid harmful substances for at least 9 months, if not more (for nursing), and then they have to go through a painful and possibly damaging to both themself and the child birthing process. If I were female I'd much rather have sex for fun and bypass the whole birthing process.
Interesting... I know granite contains radioactive thorium, but had never heard of radon (which is a gas). Guess there are some. Radon gas is much more likely to come from soil or along with natural gas. Fracking tends to bring it up, as well.
Incorrect - at best, nuclear reactors burn 5% of the Uranium used, and that is best case scenario - average is more.5%. Only fast breeder reactors burn near 100% of their fuel and only a few exist and they are all considered experimental. They also require on-site fuel reprocessing, which brings up proliferation concerns (whether warranted or not).
The US is now obsessed with building a LMFBR (liquid metal fast breeder reactor) which converts U238 (aka nuclear waste) to fissionable plutonium through a chain of reactions, but it is extremely complex and not all of the engineering issues have been solved, or at least not in the US. Russia has had one running and generating power since 1986 (BN-600) and several smaller test reactors that I don't think are still in use. Russia is building two more larger test reactors at Beloyarsk (BN I assume means Beloyarsk Nuclear). Personally, I'm not terribly thrilled by fast breeders, which seems like a complex, dangerous solution to a problem we solved with the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment and then abandoned thanks to tricky Dick's agenda, but we get what we get.
That was going to be my point, as well - the US and Russia did above ground nuclear bomb testing for years. I believe India's initial testing was above ground as well.
which is why fiberglass insulation with an R value of about 3.2 per inch (for walls) is used, and they blow a shitload more into ceilings (blown is about 2.2) - I just had 2 feet blown into my attic last year (the paper insulation had settled to be only 11 inches and the recommended amount for new construction is 30 - required is 22 I think).
In the US these days our newer construction houses are so airtight that mold in the walls from any water that penetrates them has become a serious problem. Some builders even recommend running HEPA filters year round because of it (they don't have a choice - building code requires the airtight building methods).
You have a nice thing called "the Atlantic Ocean" that provides a nice cooling effect, just like the Pacific Ocean makes Washington State reasonably pleasant in the summer. I have something called "the plains effect" that causes air temperatures to absolutely bake the plains in summer. A few days of 100-102F (38-39C) with a high dew point (humid) and you'd want AC too.
The FSF has always granted an exception for compiling non-GPL3 software, but they don't like it. Others (like me) have feared they may pull such licensing sometime in the future, so having an alternative is a good thing - we shouldn't put too much power in the control of one relatively radical group.
It isn't necessarily an issue with the GPL (aside from 3 being invasive, which I personally have an issue with and so do the lawyers I work with) - I have a problem with Stallman's (aka RMS) model, which says charge for hardware and give the software with source away for free.
I worked for a CAD software company (we were bought by a huge multinational conglomerate, so I technically still work for them, but I moved around and rarely touch CAD these days). In our former incarnation, we sold exactly no hardware and were bundled with exactly zero hardware, but ran on pretty much every platform imaginable (9 at one point, but much fewer now, since our customers are mostly moving to Linux or Windows). Giving away our software (not to mention the source code) would be a really bad business model, but to appease those in RMS's dream world, we'd need to find hardware partners and give it away for free with the hardware and be paid by the hardware vendor - but since we have to give away source, we'd more than likely use an in-house developed proprietary language to make porting as difficult as possible. This, in fact, is a BAD and not very open business model - if we'd been bought by our current owner, we'd almost certainly be proprietary software for their hardware and not run on platforms like Linux or even Windows. This happens in the console world all the time - when Microsoft bought Bungie, they basically shafted what Bungie was known for - mac games (and took a year to release Halo on Windows/Mac to keep it XBox exclusive as long as possible to the ire of Steve Jobs - later releases became XBox exclusive). If you think that is a good thing, great for you - I don't. Incidentally, the part of the company I work for has an open data model as well - that makes it easy for customers to switch, but we are doing our jobs well because few actually do.
You can probably find it via search. I remember Detroit ranked #2 on a Huffington Post list of most crime ridden places in America. Relatively close up Hwy 75 to Flint Michigan was #1 (I went to Troy as part of a job, which is in between the two up Hwy 75), and St Louis Missouri was #3. I think #4 was Memphis, not sure of #5.
Personally, I don't give a rip which one gets in. I tend to agree more with Obama on social policy, but I actually find him way too far right in supporting expensive drug war that has shown little results (money much better spent in the classroom, IMO) and way too far left in his efforts to dismantle the nuclear deterrent without other governments also buying in.
It has come to the point where we no longer vote for a person, we vote for a platform. Contrary to what the big parties say, there are no wasted votes; a vote for a third party is a vote in protest of the platforms, and this is really the only protest we independent/centrists have left, as there is no national centrist party (as the Whigs once were until Lincoln formed the liberal Republican party and the Whigs disbanded over a split on slavery). Since I count myself as fiscally conservative, socially liberal and neither party has put forward a plan that, in the real world, provides a very much necessary budget surplus (Paul Ryan's plan that Romney backs requires pipe dream economics, Obama's track record speaks for itself), I have serious reservations about both major parties. While my beliefs are largely Libertarian, many things the Libertarian platform sits on are too much, too fast. You can't just cut Social Security by more than half (down to 47%) as Gary Johnson has proposed) - it may be an ultimate goal to not have to abandon the programs entirely someday, but it has to be a gradual change so that future retirees can plan for it accordingly. This is largely my problem with most third parties - they propose radical changes, not gradual changes.
I also don't like the fact that neither party really goes after the federal reserve or the FDA or the NRC or other government organizations that are essentially bought off by industry lobby groups that have no competing lobby groups. For instance, the NRC is lobbied by the NEI, which is essentially funded for and exists as a propaganda wing of large utilities and vastly outfunds any anti-nuclear (i.e. Greenpeace) or nuclear choice (non-existent, but, say backing LFTR) organizations. The FDA is in the pocket of the pharmaceutical lobby (PhRMA and Biotech Industry Organization) and has spent more than any other organization on influencing government.
Not that most users would know what that really means, anyway. As a developer who has dealt far too long with programmer-speak, I know it means stuff like in a call, receiving a call, etc, but my wife would think it meant it needed to know she was in Kansas when in Kansas.
Sadly, I've avoided many apps for just that reason. I've rejected hundreds of apps because they want access to stuff they don't need. A game that needs full phone access? Nuh uh, no way.
Not bad - that's 20 million more than they've invested in molten salt reactors since the mid 1970s when they shut the MSRE down after a successful 6 year run (generating power for over 5 of the 6 years, and that mainly because they shut it off over the weekends). The funny thing is, the reason they chose the IFR as number 1 is because of its fast refueling cycle and fast doubling time (breeding), but what they found out is they couldn't make it both safe and economical (only 2 of the three requirements could be met), so the investment has largely been wasted so far. See here
So how do you solve the additional and sometimes dangerous levels of radon that get forced to the surface in this process (or so I've heard)? I've seen the anti-fracking movie and heard industry rebuttals, but they didn't really cover radon. I personally don't have an objective opinion, as I tend to take any documentary with a slice of pie (as opposed to a grain of sand), as they usually are about as objective as a union member defending unions.
I've read hydro also slows the earth rotation. I know no more than that - perhaps snopes does.
The problem is eco-nuts don't understand how radiation works - I got a kick out of telling one of the idiots that her sunburn is a radiation burn and she denied it. Most don't know that coal emits scads of radiation, natural gas emits radon, granite contains thorium (a weak alpha emitter), potassium, which you need to live is a beta emitter... the list goes on. The fact is, radiation is inversely proportional to half life - thorium decays very slowly (thousands of years) and isn't very dangerous. Something like radon decays in 84 days I believe, and is moderately dangerous. The unstable form of Protactinium you get from certain nuclear reactions that has a half life of several seconds (again, going from memory, I believe it was seconds) is horribly dangerous.
And you missed most including this will lose a ton of power in transmission. And volcano power IS nuclear power - the earth is powered by a molten thorium reaction.
I am a huge proponent of LFTR based nuclear reactors, but I think the thorium energy alliance is advertising them the wrong way - not only are they vastly safer, but they can burn our nuclear waste in the short term, then switch to thorium when that is expired and while the thorium mining industry is established. When Al Franken asked Peter Lions of the NRC "what are your thoughts about thorium," Peter Lions said essentially the entire industry is built around uranium. This is exactly why it is important to advertise the hybrid capability - it can in fact burn uranium, and in fact needs seed enriched uranium.
But the main goal should be establishing a thorium mining industry, creating a huge boon for America, as one of the byproducts of thorium mining is heavy rare earth elements, and China corners the market here, with 97% of it. They force jobs out of the US by forcing companies to build factories in China to use these rare earths. Thorium mining and LFTR reactors mean jobs for Americans, safer, longer fueled reactors, energy independence, far less waste and much of it useful in other industries, and since the LFTR burns the dangerous elements, the waste remaining is safe in 200-300 years.
That was a massive earthquake and tsunami. I doubt a hurricane will do much to a nuclear power plant that was built to withstand hurricanes (and I believe all coastal ones NEED to be).
That said, if they'd just built molten salt reactors like the chief nuclear scientist at Oak Ridge (Alvin Weinberg) suggested to Nixon only to get canned by him, we wouldn't be in this predicament because they don't melt down. Really it was all about jobs in California and nuclear weapons (LWRs are better for making bombs), but our needs our different now than they were in the 1970s.
This issue is far more complicated than that. NBC has to pay the publisher tax to ASCAP and BMI. This is typically paid for by venue and for broadcast yearly. In addition, the bands playing need a reciprocal license in their contract to play the songs, as the recording studio almost always owns the music itself that only covers live performances. Rebroadcasting the music requires acquiring a separate license from the studio. Rebroadcasting any lyrically sung songs requires acquiring a separate license from the publisher.
It is very convoluted. From my experience, I wrote a song, got it published and the venues I would have played at paid ASCAP and ASCAP gave me a small stipend for songwriting. I also got a songwriting cut for that song on the album recording, even though I didn't play on it. I had left the band due to a dispute with the singer who had missed 3 gigs because he was too drunk and stoned to show up on time.
The first time I used Netscape (beta) was on a 640x480 256 color display, but admittedly that was better than my first time using Mosiac (on a 320x240 with 16 shades of gray) or WorldWideWeb on NeXT, which I believe was a 320x240 4000 color machine (incidentally, I saw Mosiac before WorldWideWeb even though the latter was out first). 320x240 is where space is at a premium, and I massively preferred Gopher to it at the time. My first html experience pre-dated any graphical browsers, and I'm fairly sure it was custom built and not lynx (pretty simple really - arrows or tab to move between links and all text based, and it had no menus - it was meant to run on Solaris boxes). I said that technology was going nowhere... - I definitely bet on the wrong horse in that race.
My workstation would grind to a halt with such puny specs, and yes, I need huge, power sucking GPUs to get my work done (much of it openCL). I think my current power supply is 1500 watt. It is a couple of years old, however (running dual quadro cards, can't remember the model), and when I replaced my GeForce 260 at home with a 560 GTX, the power reqs went down from 700 to 450, so my work computer may be hitting an architecture and die size power consumption issue, as well. Still, it is horribly taxed by some of the stuff I need to run, and I will be happy for a refresh early next year.
They're talking about the power draw ceiling though, not the minimum draw, which is the maximum power the device will draw. The first article doesn't mention this, but it says memory bus is restricted to 384 bit, which is what the AMD Tenerife is shown to be at. Basically, they want the computer form of a restrictor plate (the GPU can go faster, but regulation keeps it to a certain maximum). As for minimum draw, most GPUs don't really draw much power for general use, but they draw more than a low end graphics card would, so for laptops a dual GPU setup is more energy efficient.
I'd rather have real words that aren't in common usage than ignorant mistake words that have come into common usage. My pet peeve is "baited breath"... drives me nuts every time I see it. Why the f**k would you bait your breath? Sadly, some dictionaries are even acknowledging it as a valid word (correct word is bated breath, where bated is the short form of abated, which means stopped).
I have heard coal emits 100x more radiation than nuclear (in normal operation), but that radiation is still is mostly harmless (it certainly doesn't emit less than an uncontained nuclear meltdown, though). Waste coal releases mostly non-fissile Uranium and Thorium, both of which have an extremely long half life and are beta and alpha emitters, respectively. It also will release some radon since that is a byproduct of Uranium and Thorium decay chains, and I'd be a bit more wary of that, but not as much as natural gas, which directly puts radon in your house. Still, I am not a fan of conventional nuclear or coal and would like to see LFTR nuclear replace both.
More than just that - pregnant women have to worry about the nutrition and avoid harmful substances for at least 9 months, if not more (for nursing), and then they have to go through a painful and possibly damaging to both themself and the child birthing process. If I were female I'd much rather have sex for fun and bypass the whole birthing process.
Interesting... I know granite contains radioactive thorium, but had never heard of radon (which is a gas). Guess there are some. Radon gas is much more likely to come from soil or along with natural gas. Fracking tends to bring it up, as well.
Incorrect - at best, nuclear reactors burn 5% of the Uranium used, and that is best case scenario - average is more .5%. Only fast breeder reactors burn near 100% of their fuel and only a few exist and they are all considered experimental. They also require on-site fuel reprocessing, which brings up proliferation concerns (whether warranted or not).
The US is now obsessed with building a LMFBR (liquid metal fast breeder reactor) which converts U238 (aka nuclear waste) to fissionable plutonium through a chain of reactions, but it is extremely complex and not all of the engineering issues have been solved, or at least not in the US. Russia has had one running and generating power since 1986 (BN-600) and several smaller test reactors that I don't think are still in use. Russia is building two more larger test reactors at Beloyarsk (BN I assume means Beloyarsk Nuclear). Personally, I'm not terribly thrilled by fast breeders, which seems like a complex, dangerous solution to a problem we solved with the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment and then abandoned thanks to tricky Dick's agenda, but we get what we get.
That was going to be my point, as well - the US and Russia did above ground nuclear bomb testing for years. I believe India's initial testing was above ground as well.
which is why fiberglass insulation with an R value of about 3.2 per inch (for walls) is used, and they blow a shitload more into ceilings (blown is about 2.2) - I just had 2 feet blown into my attic last year (the paper insulation had settled to be only 11 inches and the recommended amount for new construction is 30 - required is 22 I think).
In the US these days our newer construction houses are so airtight that mold in the walls from any water that penetrates them has become a serious problem. Some builders even recommend running HEPA filters year round because of it (they don't have a choice - building code requires the airtight building methods).
You have a nice thing called "the Atlantic Ocean" that provides a nice cooling effect, just like the Pacific Ocean makes Washington State reasonably pleasant in the summer. I have something called "the plains effect" that causes air temperatures to absolutely bake the plains in summer. A few days of 100-102F (38-39C) with a high dew point (humid) and you'd want AC too.
The FSF has always granted an exception for compiling non-GPL3 software, but they don't like it. Others (like me) have feared they may pull such licensing sometime in the future, so having an alternative is a good thing - we shouldn't put too much power in the control of one relatively radical group.
It isn't necessarily an issue with the GPL (aside from 3 being invasive, which I personally have an issue with and so do the lawyers I work with) - I have a problem with Stallman's (aka RMS) model, which says charge for hardware and give the software with source away for free.
I worked for a CAD software company (we were bought by a huge multinational conglomerate, so I technically still work for them, but I moved around and rarely touch CAD these days). In our former incarnation, we sold exactly no hardware and were bundled with exactly zero hardware, but ran on pretty much every platform imaginable (9 at one point, but much fewer now, since our customers are mostly moving to Linux or Windows). Giving away our software (not to mention the source code) would be a really bad business model, but to appease those in RMS's dream world, we'd need to find hardware partners and give it away for free with the hardware and be paid by the hardware vendor - but since we have to give away source, we'd more than likely use an in-house developed proprietary language to make porting as difficult as possible. This, in fact, is a BAD and not very open business model - if we'd been bought by our current owner, we'd almost certainly be proprietary software for their hardware and not run on platforms like Linux or even Windows. This happens in the console world all the time - when Microsoft bought Bungie, they basically shafted what Bungie was known for - mac games (and took a year to release Halo on Windows/Mac to keep it XBox exclusive as long as possible to the ire of Steve Jobs - later releases became XBox exclusive). If you think that is a good thing, great for you - I don't. Incidentally, the part of the company I work for has an open data model as well - that makes it easy for customers to switch, but we are doing our jobs well because few actually do.
I've been at odds with RMS over this for years...
You can probably find it via search. I remember Detroit ranked #2 on a Huffington Post list of most crime ridden places in America. Relatively close up Hwy 75 to Flint Michigan was #1 (I went to Troy as part of a job, which is in between the two up Hwy 75), and St Louis Missouri was #3. I think #4 was Memphis, not sure of #5.
Personally, I don't give a rip which one gets in. I tend to agree more with Obama on social policy, but I actually find him way too far right in supporting expensive drug war that has shown little results (money much better spent in the classroom, IMO) and way too far left in his efforts to dismantle the nuclear deterrent without other governments also buying in.
It has come to the point where we no longer vote for a person, we vote for a platform. Contrary to what the big parties say, there are no wasted votes; a vote for a third party is a vote in protest of the platforms, and this is really the only protest we independent/centrists have left, as there is no national centrist party (as the Whigs once were until Lincoln formed the liberal Republican party and the Whigs disbanded over a split on slavery). Since I count myself as fiscally conservative, socially liberal and neither party has put forward a plan that, in the real world, provides a very much necessary budget surplus (Paul Ryan's plan that Romney backs requires pipe dream economics, Obama's track record speaks for itself), I have serious reservations about both major parties. While my beliefs are largely Libertarian, many things the Libertarian platform sits on are too much, too fast. You can't just cut Social Security by more than half (down to 47%) as Gary Johnson has proposed) - it may be an ultimate goal to not have to abandon the programs entirely someday, but it has to be a gradual change so that future retirees can plan for it accordingly. This is largely my problem with most third parties - they propose radical changes, not gradual changes.
I also don't like the fact that neither party really goes after the federal reserve or the FDA or the NRC or other government organizations that are essentially bought off by industry lobby groups that have no competing lobby groups. For instance, the NRC is lobbied by the NEI, which is essentially funded for and exists as a propaganda wing of large utilities and vastly outfunds any anti-nuclear (i.e. Greenpeace) or nuclear choice (non-existent, but, say backing LFTR) organizations. The FDA is in the pocket of the pharmaceutical lobby (PhRMA and Biotech Industry Organization) and has spent more than any other organization on influencing government.
Not that most users would know what that really means, anyway. As a developer who has dealt far too long with programmer-speak, I know it means stuff like in a call, receiving a call, etc, but my wife would think it meant it needed to know she was in Kansas when in Kansas.
Sadly, I've avoided many apps for just that reason. I've rejected hundreds of apps because they want access to stuff they don't need. A game that needs full phone access? Nuh uh, no way.
Not bad - that's 20 million more than they've invested in molten salt reactors since the mid 1970s when they shut the MSRE down after a successful 6 year run (generating power for over 5 of the 6 years, and that mainly because they shut it off over the weekends). The funny thing is, the reason they chose the IFR as number 1 is because of its fast refueling cycle and fast doubling time (breeding), but what they found out is they couldn't make it both safe and economical (only 2 of the three requirements could be met), so the investment has largely been wasted so far. See here
Sodium Hydroxide is fun stuff - we used to make soap out of the stuff at grandma's house, but we called it lye.
So how do you solve the additional and sometimes dangerous levels of radon that get forced to the surface in this process (or so I've heard)? I've seen the anti-fracking movie and heard industry rebuttals, but they didn't really cover radon. I personally don't have an objective opinion, as I tend to take any documentary with a slice of pie (as opposed to a grain of sand), as they usually are about as objective as a union member defending unions.
I've read hydro also slows the earth rotation. I know no more than that - perhaps snopes does.
The problem is eco-nuts don't understand how radiation works - I got a kick out of telling one of the idiots that her sunburn is a radiation burn and she denied it. Most don't know that coal emits scads of radiation, natural gas emits radon, granite contains thorium (a weak alpha emitter), potassium, which you need to live is a beta emitter... the list goes on. The fact is, radiation is inversely proportional to half life - thorium decays very slowly (thousands of years) and isn't very dangerous. Something like radon decays in 84 days I believe, and is moderately dangerous. The unstable form of Protactinium you get from certain nuclear reactions that has a half life of several seconds (again, going from memory, I believe it was seconds) is horribly dangerous.
And you missed most including this will lose a ton of power in transmission. And volcano power IS nuclear power - the earth is powered by a molten thorium reaction.
I am a huge proponent of LFTR based nuclear reactors, but I think the thorium energy alliance is advertising them the wrong way - not only are they vastly safer, but they can burn our nuclear waste in the short term, then switch to thorium when that is expired and while the thorium mining industry is established.
When Al Franken asked Peter Lions of the NRC "what are your thoughts about thorium," Peter Lions said essentially the entire industry is built around uranium. This is exactly why it is important to advertise the hybrid capability - it can in fact burn uranium, and in fact needs seed enriched uranium.
But the main goal should be establishing a thorium mining industry, creating a huge boon for America, as one of the byproducts of thorium mining is heavy rare earth elements, and China corners the market here, with 97% of it. They force jobs out of the US by forcing companies to build factories in China to use these rare earths. Thorium mining and LFTR reactors mean jobs for Americans, safer, longer fueled reactors, energy independence, far less waste and much of it useful in other industries, and since the LFTR burns the dangerous elements, the waste remaining is safe in 200-300 years.
That was a massive earthquake and tsunami. I doubt a hurricane will do much to a nuclear power plant that was built to withstand hurricanes (and I believe all coastal ones NEED to be).
That said, if they'd just built molten salt reactors like the chief nuclear scientist at Oak Ridge (Alvin Weinberg) suggested to Nixon only to get canned by him, we wouldn't be in this predicament because they don't melt down. Really it was all about jobs in California and nuclear weapons (LWRs are better for making bombs), but our needs our different now than they were in the 1970s.
This issue is far more complicated than that. NBC has to pay the publisher tax to ASCAP and BMI. This is typically paid for by venue and for broadcast yearly. In addition, the bands playing need a reciprocal license in their contract to play the songs, as the recording studio almost always owns the music itself that only covers live performances. Rebroadcasting the music requires acquiring a separate license from the studio. Rebroadcasting any lyrically sung songs requires acquiring a separate license from the publisher.
It is very convoluted. From my experience, I wrote a song, got it published and the venues I would have played at paid ASCAP and ASCAP gave me a small stipend for songwriting. I also got a songwriting cut for that song on the album recording, even though I didn't play on it. I had left the band due to a dispute with the singer who had missed 3 gigs because he was too drunk and stoned to show up on time.
The first time I used Netscape (beta) was on a 640x480 256 color display, but admittedly that was better than my first time using Mosiac (on a 320x240 with 16 shades of gray) or WorldWideWeb on NeXT, which I believe was a 320x240 4000 color machine (incidentally, I saw Mosiac before WorldWideWeb even though the latter was out first). 320x240 is where space is at a premium, and I massively preferred Gopher to it at the time. My first html experience pre-dated any graphical browsers, and I'm fairly sure it was custom built and not lynx (pretty simple really - arrows or tab to move between links and all text based, and it had no menus - it was meant to run on Solaris boxes). I said that technology was going nowhere... - I definitely bet on the wrong horse in that race.
That at least should get Firefox past the next couple of months, but I'm not sure what they will do after that.
My workstation would grind to a halt with such puny specs, and yes, I need huge, power sucking GPUs to get my work done (much of it openCL). I think my current power supply is 1500 watt. It is a couple of years old, however (running dual quadro cards, can't remember the model), and when I replaced my GeForce 260 at home with a 560 GTX, the power reqs went down from 700 to 450, so my work computer may be hitting an architecture and die size power consumption issue, as well. Still, it is horribly taxed by some of the stuff I need to run, and I will be happy for a refresh early next year.
They're talking about the power draw ceiling though, not the minimum draw, which is the maximum power the device will draw. The first article doesn't mention this, but it says memory bus is restricted to 384 bit, which is what the AMD Tenerife is shown to be at. Basically, they want the computer form of a restrictor plate (the GPU can go faster, but regulation keeps it to a certain maximum). As for minimum draw, most GPUs don't really draw much power for general use, but they draw more than a low end graphics card would, so for laptops a dual GPU setup is more energy efficient.
I'd rather have real words that aren't in common usage than ignorant mistake words that have come into common usage. My pet peeve is "baited breath"... drives me nuts every time I see it. Why the f**k would you bait your breath? Sadly, some dictionaries are even acknowledging it as a valid word (correct word is bated breath, where bated is the short form of abated, which means stopped).