Alright. I misunderstood what you were talking about. Though I would like to note that (super or turbo)charging a gas engine is reasonably straightforward, and does help a lot. Natural aspiration only goes so far.
I have a (stock) supercharger on my '96 Oldsmobile (I know), and it makes a big horsepower difference - an extra 50hp or so. What you're saying is absolutely correct, but is more about the relative improvements between the two. You can push a diesel engine much further than a petrol engine because of exhaust characteristics, displacement, and their nature (high compression), but there's also different reasons to do it. Even very ordinary diesels are turbocharged because they don't work very well at high RPM otherwise. Petrol runs fine at high RPM to begin with, so you add extra charge to increase efficiency or power - not to make up for valleys in the power curve toward the top like a diesel.
So both you and the OP are absolutely right. Diesels do need a turbo to run well in a road car, which tends to do highway driving. And yes they do need an extra part. But the cost differences are mostly due to economics of scale of a diesel road-car sized engine, which there aren't many of in the US.
What the hell are you talking about? Turbocharging only involves the exhaust and the air intake. A turbine in the exhaust stream is linked to a compressor for the air intake. There's no "process", it's a part. And maybe some tuning
The only reason it's so popular on diesels is because they're not much use without one. A turbo flattens out the curve so they work OK at high RPM
[citation needed]. Steam may not carry "bad" games, but they sure promote a ton of unknown (that is, not yet popular) games.
Steam is particularly fantastic with indie games. Just look at the Potato Sack - a large bundle of highly-discounted games that *everybody* (ok, hundreds of thousands) bought because it was tied in to the Portal 2 launch.
GTA Vice City on PC uses the frame rate for timing and that came out in 2003. If you turn off frame limiting, some really strange things break, like cars that won't reverse, or unwinnable races. Really frustrating because it otherwise works fine, and I wasn't sure it wasn't my fault.
That's not the point. The point is that data that is privately held and selectively distributed is just as much the property of the distributor as a car that is loaned out. I absolutely agree with you that research should be public, but "it would be better off free!" is not a justification for taking away that ownership by force. If you believe in fairness, the person who takes that control away should be punished in the same fashion as the person who steals my bank account information off of my computer, or my car from my driveway. They have stripped the value from the goods that I have been in possession of.
And that's all my point was. Not that privatized research is a good thing, or anything like that. I do happen to think that JSTOR is the wrong target - they don't charge for profit or fun, but to pay the licensing costs. This chucklehead who's been sued could've gone straight to the journals themselves and scraped the articles, and JSTOR wouldn't be involved.
Data is owned. You're making the classic mistake of thinking about the law in engineering/mathematical terms - don't worry, we (us nerds) do this all the time, so you're in good company. The mathematical argument of "if I set a random number generator I could come up with the AACS encryption key/Britney Spears song/child porn" doesn't hold much water in a court.
The analogy of data-as-property is much closer to how (most) data exists, and is used. A digital photo is closely analogous to a film photo, except that it's easier to distribute (and free and perfect to do so). This does change some aspects of the law, but you still won't get any sympathy by claiming "I could've arrived at that upskirt photo (with my EXIF data) by accident!"
Because you didn't. And that's the real point - sure, data in a mathematical sense is a number, but you arrived at it by either an act of creation or input; you drew a cartoon in Paint, or you scanned a drawn image. So the fact that it's digital - while it matters for some important things, like copying (a copy of a tape, or a photocopy of a book, has a built-in "lifetime" - it can't be perfectly duplicated ad infinitum) - the fact that it's digital doesn't matter when it comes to questions of ownership.
What it comes down to is, the data on my computer is my data, and I expect the law to come to my aid if you steal it. Even if you didn't destroy my copy, the value in it being only in my possession has been taken away irrevocably, so the word theft applies.
A pretty standard privacy policy. I think you may be misreading the content of that section... the portions:
You agree that Google may transfer and disclose to third parties personally identifiable information about you for the purpose of approving and enabling your use of the Services, including to third parties that reside in jurisdictions with less restrictive data laws than your own.
and
Google may share non-personally-identifiable information about you, including Web site URLs, site-specific statistics, and similar information collected by Google, with advertisers, business partners, sponsors, and other third parties.
are two separate components. Personal info will be sent, by Google on your behalf, to third parties - this sounds like application developers. That clause could be interpreted differently, but lots of places have a clause like "in order for us to do what you want, you need to allow us to do it" (see any youtube-esque site where you give them a license to distribute it, because otherwise they can't host it for you) and this sounds like that. The non-personally-identifiable info is what's sold to advertisers, and Google's never pretended any differently.
I trust Google vastly more than Facebook. I'm still not sure what, exactly, Facebook does with my data. Google on the other hand, tells me up front that they're going to datamine my information to use for advertising.
I'd much rather see ads for things I stand a chance of being interested in, than tampon ads for example. Additionally, Google hasn't had a major privacy issue (Buzz foolishness excluded) in 10 YEARS. Mark Zuckerberg was applying to Harvard 10 years ago, and Facebook has been much less than stellar with regards to personal information privacy.
So Google has a much better track record. This is, I think, difficult to dispute - but I'd be happy to read your argument.
I pay the $10/mo for one DVD at a time, and streaming. There's a ton of stuff on DVD that doesn't get streamed, and I'm happy to wait for it. I use streaming all the time, but Netflix for me is as much about the DVDs.
Fine if they want to emphasize streaming, but I'm neither going to pay $8/mo for just DVDs, nor $8/mo for just streaming.
Congratulations, you bought a terrible toilet. My low-flow toilet has less chokepoints, since they can't just throw water at the problem, and it hasn't clogged once.
Now we each have an anecdote in support of our side. What now?
You're raving, and clearly have a rage-on for Google. I only bother to respond at all in case anyone takes you seriously.
Are there websites which require you to use to Chrome to access them? Yes.
What websites require Chrome? They are in a process of requiring standards-compliant browsers, including dropping IE6, but that's a very far cry from requiring a specific browser. And in any case, they aren't even blocking IE6 - just not supporting it, so parts of the page might not work perfectly. But that's IE6's problem.
Yes. It's called bundling Flash and adopting some esoteric video codec.
Flash is a *plugin*. You know who else bundles Flash? Windows and OSX. Google, as a matter of fact, barely uses Flash for anything, preferring standard HTML.
They don't turn you away, but they spam Chrome links all the damn time, talking about a "better, faster web."
I use Firefox. I've never seen a Chrome link unless I use Internet Explorer. I've seen "use a modern browser like IE8" links using Firefox before, but I didn't get my panties in a twist over it.
[Google hasn't used undocumented APIs to improve Chrome] because WebKit is open source. Google is not an open source company as they are often portrayed. Their search engine is a closed source and proprietary as Windows, and they've withheld Android source from non-priveleged[sic] partners.
What the hell are you talking about? Google's search engine is their biggest asset, and a trade secret. Most Google employees don't even have full access to the code. And the Honeycomb thing was so that people wouldn't try and stick it on phones and ruin the user experience - something that there's ample evidence would be attempted. They're in the process of merging the two branches, after which point it'll be released. I don't even particularly like Android, but I think that's a reasonable stance to take.
Is Chrome so deeply embedded in the OS (on purpose) that you can't uninstall it completely without using a third party hack? > Hello? Chrome OS.
Chrome OS is a Linux distribution that boots into a browser. For all intents and purposes, it is the OS. It doesn't make sense to talk about removing it.
This. A thousand times this. I have a real address that goes to personal acquaintances and is not visible publicly. Any address at my domain is valid; I have apple@, radioshack@, facebook@, slashdot1@ and so on. Anything goes, I can use it in person at stores that want email addresses and so on. Checking the 'to' header, or the 'x-original-to' header (on sketchy emails that aren't correctly addressed) makes it easy to see who gave out my email, or which forum's been hacked. Most recently, it was the US Speedskating team's website - I donated to them last year with speedskating@ and have been getting spam there.
But people are, as usual, the weak link. I get the very occasional spam in my "real" inbox because somebody's gotten a virus, or had a weak Hotmail password or something. Thankfully not much so far, but that could change. I'm not quite sure how to deal with this, and am open to suggestions... but you're exactly right, no address is safe when the people who have it can't keep it.
Walking into an open shop is not trespassing, because there's an expectation that it's public. If it's locked, the intention is clear. A private dwelling with an open door is still widely considered private despite the door. Open WiFi is - I argue - the same thing as an open shop, as evidenced by how the average nontechnical person views it. An average person would never think it was OK to walk into a random house, but many people use open WiFi if it's available with only a vague - if any - idea that it's bad. The perception is what's important - the "reasonable person" test (IANAL) would be that an open wireless router is intended to be used. As you said, "thankfully the law doesn't work that way". Wireless, especially open wireless, is not generally considered private - and this is what matters.
Yes, I actually just found that particular portion of Part 15. I must admit there is more of a case here than I'd given credit for. But I argue that the lack of encryption, combined with the ease of encryption, should be seen as deliberate rather than an omission, making the conversation not private.
It's open for unregulated usage, but there are HAM bands available in there. See, for example, the "hinternet": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinternet . My license actually allows me to set up my G router with 1.5kW of power (up from the 90mW or so stock), though I wouldn't do that because I'd rather not show up on the screens of laptops in a 150 mile radius - aside from the fact that it wouldn't work because they couldn't talk back.
Also, it'd probably be bad for the chips - though Part 15 says it's not my problem ("must accept any harmful interference received'), it would be considered a "dick move".
Except for the operations of law enforcement officers conducted under lawful authority, no person shall use, either directly or indirectly, a device operated pursuant to the provisions of this part for the purpose of overhearing or recording the private conversations of others unless such use is authorized by all of the parties engaging in the conversation.
I must say I was unaware of that particular portion of the regulation. Google is using a Part 15 device (their WiFi card)... The question is, is unencrypted data a "private conversation"? I think the answer is a clear "no" but there's more of a case than I'd been giving it credit for...
Radio broadcasts have, to my knowledge, *never* been considered private information. Anybody who wants to keep it private must encrypt it, with some extremely specific exceptions (you can't sell a scanner that can access unencrypted cellphone frequencies, for example).
So here's what I can't figure out. Let's say I use a small FRS (unlicensed) handheld radio to communicate with my friends on a hiking trail. There is absolutely no expectation of privacy, either on my part or by the government. And there shouldn't be. This isn't an analogy - it's *exactly the same thing*, but WiFi has a computer hooked up at each end. Given a few hours, I could actually access the Internet over a FRS radio (AX.25 and a few TNCs), and as established anybody could sniff my traffic.
Again, THIS IS NOT AN ANALOGY! WiFi is a short-range radio BROADCAST, just like any other radio broadcast. Unless you go to specific lengths to prevent others accessing it, there is an implicit expectation of public access, in the fact that you went to lengths to make it publicly available. Even WEP, though ineffective, should be sufficient to make the point that your signal was not intended to be public. But if you have an open network, and your router is broadcasting the SSID, you are inviting anybody who can hear you to connect. And without encryption, you're broadcasting all your data in the clear to anyone who can hear, and IMHO your failure to even nominally protect it is a tacit understanding that anybody can receive it.
Billboards aren't private. AM radio broadcasts aren't private. Unencrypted WiFi isn't private. You haven't even indicated that you didn't want others to hear, DESPITE there being easy and available ways of doing so.
Which will save power. The gfx card, as it happens, is rather good at doing window translation and compositing in hardware, seeing as that's what we use it for. A properly-designed gfx card (in a low-power state) and compositing WM should blow the pants off of a CPU solution. I don't know if this is the case (it depends on how far back an unloaded GFX card will throttle) but I wouldn't be super surprised
Well you can change the power load, actually. You can do it by pumping water in faster or slower, or by fiddling with the fuel rods to produce more or less power. It depends on the reactor type (PWR and BWR respectively). France, in fact, does just this because they have more nuke capacity than baseload. The term is "load-following capability". The French PWRs can go from 30 to 100% capacity in about half an hour. We even do some of this in the US, apparently, around Chicago - which also has plenty of nuke power, too much to run overnight.
If that is what he's talking about, he's right. I couldn't quite tell. But electricity is strictly more useful than heat, at least in the general case, so it's not quite a fair comparison.
Aside from the fact that you *do* waste an enormous amount of heat up the chimney, there is still something to be said about centralizing energy transformation. But you're right, I will continue using natural gas heating.
Noone has dies due to radiation exposure at Fukushima.
He was exposed to 0.17 millisieverts of radiation today, Tokyo Electric said. The Japanese government's maximum level of exposure for male workers at the plant is 250 millisieverts for the duration of the effort to bring it under control. The worker fell ill 50 minutes after starting work at 6am on Saturday and brought to the plant's medical room unconscious.
Sounds like the poor guy had a heart attack. 0.17mSv is nothing, it's less than half of one mammogram. People (like firefighters) die in the line of duty from stress and exertion all the time.
The Backburner has an airblast now, it's just particularly expensive in terms of fuel. So nobody uses it if you think you'll be airblasting a lot. And the Axtinguisher the GP referred to is only good on burning enemies. If you're in the water, you'd much rather have the regular axe.
Slashdot Mirror
Alright. I misunderstood what you were talking about. Though I would like to note that (super or turbo)charging a gas engine is reasonably straightforward, and does help a lot. Natural aspiration only goes so far.
I have a (stock) supercharger on my '96 Oldsmobile (I know), and it makes a big horsepower difference - an extra 50hp or so. What you're saying is absolutely correct, but is more about the relative improvements between the two. You can push a diesel engine much further than a petrol engine because of exhaust characteristics, displacement, and their nature (high compression), but there's also different reasons to do it. Even very ordinary diesels are turbocharged because they don't work very well at high RPM otherwise. Petrol runs fine at high RPM to begin with, so you add extra charge to increase efficiency or power - not to make up for valleys in the power curve toward the top like a diesel.
So both you and the OP are absolutely right. Diesels do need a turbo to run well in a road car, which tends to do highway driving. And yes they do need an extra part. But the cost differences are mostly due to economics of scale of a diesel road-car sized engine, which there aren't many of in the US.
What the hell are you talking about? Turbocharging only involves the exhaust and the air intake. A turbine in the exhaust stream is linked to a compressor for the air intake. There's no "process", it's a part. And maybe some tuning
The only reason it's so popular on diesels is because they're not much use without one. A turbo flattens out the curve so they work OK at high RPM
[citation needed]. Steam may not carry "bad" games, but they sure promote a ton of unknown (that is, not yet popular) games.
Steam is particularly fantastic with indie games. Just look at the Potato Sack - a large bundle of highly-discounted games that *everybody* (ok, hundreds of thousands) bought because it was tied in to the Portal 2 launch.
GTA Vice City on PC uses the frame rate for timing and that came out in 2003. If you turn off frame limiting, some really strange things break, like cars that won't reverse, or unwinnable races. Really frustrating because it otherwise works fine, and I wasn't sure it wasn't my fault.
That's not the point. The point is that data that is privately held and selectively distributed is just as much the property of the distributor as a car that is loaned out. I absolutely agree with you that research should be public, but "it would be better off free!" is not a justification for taking away that ownership by force. If you believe in fairness, the person who takes that control away should be punished in the same fashion as the person who steals my bank account information off of my computer, or my car from my driveway. They have stripped the value from the goods that I have been in possession of.
And that's all my point was. Not that privatized research is a good thing, or anything like that. I do happen to think that JSTOR is the wrong target - they don't charge for profit or fun, but to pay the licensing costs. This chucklehead who's been sued could've gone straight to the journals themselves and scraped the articles, and JSTOR wouldn't be involved.
Data is owned. You're making the classic mistake of thinking about the law in engineering/mathematical terms - don't worry, we (us nerds) do this all the time, so you're in good company. The mathematical argument of "if I set a random number generator I could come up with the AACS encryption key/Britney Spears song/child porn" doesn't hold much water in a court.
The analogy of data-as-property is much closer to how (most) data exists, and is used. A digital photo is closely analogous to a film photo, except that it's easier to distribute (and free and perfect to do so). This does change some aspects of the law, but you still won't get any sympathy by claiming "I could've arrived at that upskirt photo (with my EXIF data) by accident!"
Because you didn't. And that's the real point - sure, data in a mathematical sense is a number, but you arrived at it by either an act of creation or input; you drew a cartoon in Paint, or you scanned a drawn image. So the fact that it's digital - while it matters for some important things, like copying (a copy of a tape, or a photocopy of a book, has a built-in "lifetime" - it can't be perfectly duplicated ad infinitum) - the fact that it's digital doesn't matter when it comes to questions of ownership.
What it comes down to is, the data on my computer is my data, and I expect the law to come to my aid if you steal it. Even if you didn't destroy my copy, the value in it being only in my possession has been taken away irrevocably, so the word theft applies.
I agree with the GP.
Wrong. The glass is aluminosilicate ("gorilla glass") and more flexible and lighter than plastic of the same specs.
A pretty standard privacy policy. I think you may be misreading the content of that section... the portions:
You agree that Google may transfer and disclose to third parties personally identifiable information about you for the purpose of approving and enabling your use of the Services, including to third parties that reside in jurisdictions with less restrictive data laws than your own.
and
Google may share non-personally-identifiable information about you, including Web site URLs, site-specific statistics, and similar information collected by Google, with advertisers, business partners, sponsors, and other third parties.
are two separate components. Personal info will be sent, by Google on your behalf, to third parties - this sounds like application developers. That clause could be interpreted differently, but lots of places have a clause like "in order for us to do what you want, you need to allow us to do it" (see any youtube-esque site where you give them a license to distribute it, because otherwise they can't host it for you) and this sounds like that. The non-personally-identifiable info is what's sold to advertisers, and Google's never pretended any differently.
I trust Google vastly more than Facebook. I'm still not sure what, exactly, Facebook does with my data. Google on the other hand, tells me up front that they're going to datamine my information to use for advertising.
I'd much rather see ads for things I stand a chance of being interested in, than tampon ads for example. Additionally, Google hasn't had a major privacy issue (Buzz foolishness excluded) in 10 YEARS. Mark Zuckerberg was applying to Harvard 10 years ago, and Facebook has been much less than stellar with regards to personal information privacy.
So Google has a much better track record. This is, I think, difficult to dispute - but I'd be happy to read your argument.
I pay the $10/mo for one DVD at a time, and streaming. There's a ton of stuff on DVD that doesn't get streamed, and I'm happy to wait for it. I use streaming all the time, but Netflix for me is as much about the DVDs.
Fine if they want to emphasize streaming, but I'm neither going to pay $8/mo for just DVDs, nor $8/mo for just streaming.
Congratulations, you bought a terrible toilet. My low-flow toilet has less chokepoints, since they can't just throw water at the problem, and it hasn't clogged once.
Now we each have an anecdote in support of our side. What now?
At the moment, they can't see it. People don't know what circles you've placed them in.
I think he's complaining that people who are describing you are describing you.
You're raving, and clearly have a rage-on for Google. I only bother to respond at all in case anyone takes you seriously.
Are there websites which require you to use to Chrome to access them? Yes.
What websites require Chrome? They are in a process of requiring standards-compliant browsers, including dropping IE6, but that's a very far cry from requiring a specific browser. And in any case, they aren't even blocking IE6 - just not supporting it, so parts of the page might not work perfectly. But that's IE6's problem.
Yes. It's called bundling Flash and adopting some esoteric video codec.
Flash is a *plugin*. You know who else bundles Flash? Windows and OSX. Google, as a matter of fact, barely uses Flash for anything, preferring standard HTML.
They don't turn you away, but they spam Chrome links all the damn time, talking about a "better, faster web."
I use Firefox. I've never seen a Chrome link unless I use Internet Explorer. I've seen "use a modern browser like IE8" links using Firefox before, but I didn't get my panties in a twist over it.
[Google hasn't used undocumented APIs to improve Chrome] because WebKit is open source. Google is not an open source company as they are often portrayed. Their search engine is a closed source and proprietary as Windows, and they've withheld Android source from non-priveleged[sic] partners.
What the hell are you talking about? Google's search engine is their biggest asset, and a trade secret. Most Google employees don't even have full access to the code. And the Honeycomb thing was so that people wouldn't try and stick it on phones and ruin the user experience - something that there's ample evidence would be attempted. They're in the process of merging the two branches, after which point it'll be released. I don't even particularly like Android, but I think that's a reasonable stance to take.
Is Chrome so deeply embedded in the OS (on purpose) that you can't uninstall it completely without using a third party hack?
> Hello? Chrome OS.
Chrome OS is a Linux distribution that boots into a browser. For all intents and purposes, it is the OS. It doesn't make sense to talk about removing it.
This. A thousand times this. I have a real address that goes to personal acquaintances and is not visible publicly. Any address at my domain is valid; I have apple@, radioshack@, facebook@, slashdot1@ and so on. Anything goes, I can use it in person at stores that want email addresses and so on. Checking the 'to' header, or the 'x-original-to' header (on sketchy emails that aren't correctly addressed) makes it easy to see who gave out my email, or which forum's been hacked. Most recently, it was the US Speedskating team's website - I donated to them last year with speedskating@ and have been getting spam there.
But people are, as usual, the weak link. I get the very occasional spam in my "real" inbox because somebody's gotten a virus, or had a weak Hotmail password or something. Thankfully not much so far, but that could change. I'm not quite sure how to deal with this, and am open to suggestions... but you're exactly right, no address is safe when the people who have it can't keep it.
Walking into an open shop is not trespassing, because there's an expectation that it's public. If it's locked, the intention is clear. A private dwelling with an open door is still widely considered private despite the door. Open WiFi is - I argue - the same thing as an open shop, as evidenced by how the average nontechnical person views it. An average person would never think it was OK to walk into a random house, but many people use open WiFi if it's available with only a vague - if any - idea that it's bad. The perception is what's important - the "reasonable person" test (IANAL) would be that an open wireless router is intended to be used. As you said, "thankfully the law doesn't work that way". Wireless, especially open wireless, is not generally considered private - and this is what matters.
Yes, I actually just found that particular portion of Part 15. I must admit there is more of a case here than I'd given credit for. But I argue that the lack of encryption, combined with the ease of encryption, should be seen as deliberate rather than an omission, making the conversation not private.
It's open for unregulated usage, but there are HAM bands available in there. See, for example, the "hinternet": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinternet . My license actually allows me to set up my G router with 1.5kW of power (up from the 90mW or so stock), though I wouldn't do that because I'd rather not show up on the screens of laptops in a 150 mile radius - aside from the fact that it wouldn't work because they couldn't talk back.
Also, it'd probably be bad for the chips - though Part 15 says it's not my problem ("must accept any harmful interference received'), it would be considered a "dick move".
Interestingly enough, check this out: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/get-cfr.cgi?TYPE=TEXT&YEAR=current&TITLE=47&PART=15&SECTION=9
Except for the operations of law enforcement officers conducted under lawful authority, no person shall use, either directly or indirectly, a device operated pursuant to the provisions of this part for the purpose of overhearing or recording the private conversations of others unless such use is authorized by all of the parties engaging in the conversation.
I must say I was unaware of that particular portion of the regulation. Google is using a Part 15 device (their WiFi card)... The question is, is unencrypted data a "private conversation"? I think the answer is a clear "no" but there's more of a case than I'd been giving it credit for...
Radio broadcasts have, to my knowledge, *never* been considered private information. Anybody who wants to keep it private must encrypt it, with some extremely specific exceptions (you can't sell a scanner that can access unencrypted cellphone frequencies, for example).
So here's what I can't figure out. Let's say I use a small FRS (unlicensed) handheld radio to communicate with my friends on a hiking trail. There is absolutely no expectation of privacy, either on my part or by the government. And there shouldn't be. This isn't an analogy - it's *exactly the same thing*, but WiFi has a computer hooked up at each end. Given a few hours, I could actually access the Internet over a FRS radio (AX.25 and a few TNCs), and as established anybody could sniff my traffic.
Again, THIS IS NOT AN ANALOGY! WiFi is a short-range radio BROADCAST, just like any other radio broadcast. Unless you go to specific lengths to prevent others accessing it, there is an implicit expectation of public access, in the fact that you went to lengths to make it publicly available. Even WEP, though ineffective, should be sufficient to make the point that your signal was not intended to be public. But if you have an open network, and your router is broadcasting the SSID, you are inviting anybody who can hear you to connect. And without encryption, you're broadcasting all your data in the clear to anyone who can hear, and IMHO your failure to even nominally protect it is a tacit understanding that anybody can receive it.
Billboards aren't private. AM radio broadcasts aren't private. Unencrypted WiFi isn't private. You haven't even indicated that you didn't want others to hear, DESPITE there being easy and available ways of doing so.
Which will save power. The gfx card, as it happens, is rather good at doing window translation and compositing in hardware, seeing as that's what we use it for. A properly-designed gfx card (in a low-power state) and compositing WM should blow the pants off of a CPU solution. I don't know if this is the case (it depends on how far back an unloaded GFX card will throttle) but I wouldn't be super surprised
Well you can change the power load, actually. You can do it by pumping water in faster or slower, or by fiddling with the fuel rods to produce more or less power. It depends on the reactor type (PWR and BWR respectively). France, in fact, does just this because they have more nuke capacity than baseload. The term is "load-following capability". The French PWRs can go from 30 to 100% capacity in about half an hour. We even do some of this in the US, apparently, around Chicago - which also has plenty of nuke power, too much to run overnight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load-following#Boiling_water_reactors
If that is what he's talking about, he's right. I couldn't quite tell. But electricity is strictly more useful than heat, at least in the general case, so it's not quite a fair comparison.
Aside from the fact that you *do* waste an enormous amount of heat up the chimney, there is still something to be said about centralizing energy transformation. But you're right, I will continue using natural gas heating.
Noone has dies due to radiation exposure at Fukushima.
He was exposed to 0.17 millisieverts of radiation today, Tokyo Electric said. The Japanese government's maximum level of exposure for male workers at the plant is 250 millisieverts for the duration of the effort to bring it under control. The worker fell ill 50 minutes after starting work at 6am on Saturday and brought to the plant's medical room unconscious.
Sounds like the poor guy had a heart attack. 0.17mSv is nothing, it's less than half of one mammogram. People (like firefighters) die in the line of duty from stress and exertion all the time.
Wrong. Transmission losses are approximately 7%; that is to say, 93% of the energy that goes into the grid is used.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Losses
Sell them. People trade crates for scrap all the time.
[ ... airblast is better ... ]
The Backburner has an airblast now, it's just particularly expensive in terms of fuel. So nobody uses it if you think you'll be airblasting a lot. And the Axtinguisher the GP referred to is only good on burning enemies. If you're in the water, you'd much rather have the regular axe.