The supreme court in Sweden is supposed to hear important test cases and cases where there is presently ambiguity in law. As encouraging copyright infringement has never before been tested in court, refusing to hear this case just shows how little spine our justice system has.
There's no laser with a perfect optics. There will be light spilling off to the sides. Lighting up a laser at night is light standing around smoking a cigarette. It will give away your position.
I guess what they could do is have the laser only turn on when the trigger is pulled. That way it won't add any visibility that the flame doesn't already give.
Typical 2-stage fusion bombs which require an initial fission explosion are inherently clean anyway - the final fusion reaction burns off all of the nasty residual fission byproducts.
Not heard such nonsense in a long time. It burns away the actinides, yes, but it does so through fission, which means you get a heck of a lot of fission products, many of which are intensely radioactive and will leave the are severely contaminated a long time. In addition, the strong neutron burst from a fusion weapon will activate any material it strikes, causing fallout if detonated near ground, and creating Carbon-14 if detonated in the atmosphere.
There simply is no such thing as a "clean" nuclear weapon. Even if you could set of a deuterium device without using fission you would still produce a lot of radioactive isotopes from the neutrons.
1: Even a small tactical nuke emits quite a bit of radioactive fallout, and we don't want that in the atmosphere.
2: The political implications would be devastating. At the moment there is the unwritten rule that nukes are for deterrence and a last resort. If you start using them for pre-emptive strikes you will basically reignite the whole "surprise attack" fears of the cold war which had a number of close calls where the superpowers almost annihilated one another.
So if US cops "demands" Iran hand over the details of their nuclear scientist's e-mail traffic it is just going to happen?
I call bullshit. The only reason they'd be able to acquire such data would be if the host country agreed to let it happen. That would be a problem with the host country's lack of privacy protection for their own citizens, and has little to do with the patriot act itself.
>To put it in perspective, a Volt battery has roughly 16 KWh of energy stored.
THE FLAMMABILITY OF BATTERIES HAS FUCK ALL TO DO WITH THEIR CAPACITY!
Yes, I use caps, but this irks me so much. When a battery burns the energy doesn't come from the energy stored when charging it. It comes from reactions between the air's oxygen and the electrolyte ( and / or the electrode materials ). There is no direct correlation between the two. The reason people make the flawed assumption is most likely that Li-ion batteries is presently the most energy dense batteries there are, and it so happens that the cobalt based electrode in them is somewhat unstable. This instability is not directly related to the battery energy density. It just happens by coincidence that this material is both good at letting lithium ions diffuse through it, while it also burns quite well. It is perfectly possible that some alternative extremely stable material will be found with even better properties, producing a battery that is both more stable and more energy dense.
Another way to see it is that activation energy ( how easily something catches fire ) is not related to how much energy will be produced when it burns. That cast-iron frying pan in your cupboard would release VAST quantities of energy if you could react all the iron with the oxygen in the air, but it takes quite high temperatures to get such a reaction going. Hydrogen is very flammable, but it has a lower energy density than gasoline, even when liquid.
I don't actually know of any atheist country except maybe some communist dictatorships.
Most countries with a high number of atheists ( such as Sweden ) are best described as secular. The difference between a secular government and an atheist one, is that the secular one doesn't comment on whether there is a god or not. Secular governments are built on the principle that it is not for the state to promote religious beliefs ( or lack thereof ).
Hitler was not atheist in the slightest, he made many references to Jesus in his speeches. He also got to power in part thanks to support from right wing social conservatives and Christian fundies. In his speech to justify giving him emergency powers he calledon the neeed to protect germany from socialism and atheism.
You are right about Stalin being an atheist, but it wasn't atheism that motivated his actions. He just generally "eliminated" anybody who had power he could not control. The church was just one of many examples.
It exists because it is a very efficient and convenient way to quickly share large amounts of data. Several companies make use of it, including Blizzard Entertainment.
Please don't promote the idea that it is only used for exchanging media without permission of the copyright holder.
It's good that you pointed out that you live in Sweden ( I do too ) , because I suspect most people on slashdot sort of assumes that everybody is talking about the US situation. Now, I am FAIRLY sure that as far as gender disparity and institutional sexism goes, Sweden and the US are not exactly comparable. Heck, our constitution explicitly permits "positive" discrimination when it comes to gender ( while it is illegal for other types of discrimination ).
here in Sweden, it's less hostile for women in the military than in many tech/science fields(And computer/physics/math sciences are the worst)
It differs dramatically from institution to institution. I work in Lund's synchrotron lab and am doing a masters in nuclear physics at Lund university. I find the physics department here quite relaxed about gender issues. In a course we had on reactor technology we were a majority of women. Also, I'm transsexual and transitioned while working and studying here. Nobody seems to give a damn.
On the other hand, from what I have heard the law department here in town can be pretty bad.
The problem is that that "grain of truth" is often universal, and applies to people outside the groups. Many Jews are greedy and influential in the media? Well guess what, the same applies to people of all faiths.
You will frequently find that the stereotypes that "have a grain of truth" are often similar to stereotypes other people are exposed to. What you hear people in the US say about Mexicans, you frequently hear in Europe as well, except that over here it is not Mexicans that are the target.
are the second most intelligent creatures on the planet.
Depends a lot on how you measure intelligence. Chimpanzees and other apes give most animals decent competition. Some of them have been taught to read, count and occasionally even invent new words for things people have not taught them.
Also, animals in general tend to be more intelligent than people think. Most people get surprised when the learn that it's quite possible to train goldfish to perform tricks.
No, that's nationalism. Fascism as the merger of state and corporate power comes directly from the mouth of Benito Mussolini.
It's a necessary, but not sufficient, condition. Fascism also implies a lack of democracy, and are almost by definition always one-party states. You could imagine a democratic and transparent government where corporations were run by government. Many socialists envision such a state. The difference from fascism is that fascists usually reject democracy, though they may not always be open about it.
I reason this because the simplest and most obvious design change to Nuclear reactors would be to build them underground which would mean any nuclear accident would be automatically contained and the entire facility sealed off and, if necessary, flooded with water.
Not quite. After shut-down the core continues to produce heat at 6% of nominal output. This heat must be transported away, or you will get a meltdown. If you build teh reactor underground, this gets much harder. Building underground also does not really help prevent contamination much, because the pressure inside the containment building can get quite high, meaning you want to vent it ( European reactor operators have filters that can catch most of the radioactive aerosols released during an accident, in order to relieve pressure while only emitting minor amounts of radioactivity ).
Another issue with building underground is that it increases costs, which is money that could otherwise be spent on more effective safety measures, such as catalytic hydrogen scrubbers, redundant cooling systems, larger containment volume, etc...
Based on your concern over excessive land use I can only assume you're strictly vegan, or at least don't consume any animal products from grain-fed livestock?
Because you do realize that if you want to reduce the land needed to produce your food, then the by far most effective way to do so would be to drastically cut your consumption of meat (including fish), dairy products and eggs. It is true that under some very specific conditions free-grazing animals can have a low environmental impact, comparable to some vegetable crops, but it most certainly is not true for the way most of meat is presently produced. When considering present agricultural practices in the US, switching to a vegan diet would reduce the land area required to feed you by up to a factor of 10, depending mostly on how much meat / veg you're eating at the moment.
Also, if you want to increase crop yields without environmental impact, then using a greenhouse with a controlled environment and optimised irrigation will do much better than drenching the field in pesticides. It will likely be more expensive as well, but that's not what we're talking about.
You don't understand how patents work ( or at least not how they are intended to work).
The idea is pretty much the following:
Apple makes a fuel cell for laptops that runs on fuel A, using technology X. Now other companies can either license the patent from them, in which case they benefit for having invented it, or they can try to create a different type of fuel cell which doesn't infringe the patent. So say they go for the second option, creating a fuel cell running on fuel B using technology Y. Now, at least in theory, society has two types of fuel cells, and can use 2 types of fuels.
There's a lot of reasons why this may not work out in practice of course, and hence the patent system is supposed to have limitations such as obviousness and prior art, in order to stop abusive patents. Unfortunately the patent office and courts have proven unable to enforce that.
At least some models are also used for fun and games. They even feature in the Olympics, along with archery, spear throwing and fencing.
Of course, it could be argued that the more peaceful uses of them could be made to have lighter, softer and slower bullets that are less likely to kill people.
Slashdot Mirror
Using civilian passenger planes with passengers in it as a kamikaze vehicle violates the Geneva conventions for sure.
The supreme court in Sweden is supposed to hear important test cases and cases where there is presently ambiguity in law. As encouraging copyright infringement has never before been tested in court, refusing to hear this case just shows how little spine our justice system has.
There's no laser with a perfect optics. There will be light spilling off to the sides. Lighting up a laser at night is light standing around smoking a cigarette. It will give away your position.
I guess what they could do is have the laser only turn on when the trigger is pulled. That way it won't add any visibility that the flame doesn't already give.
Not heard such nonsense in a long time. It burns away the actinides, yes, but it does so through fission, which means you get a heck of a lot of fission products, many of which are intensely radioactive and will leave the are severely contaminated a long time. In addition, the strong neutron burst from a fusion weapon will activate any material it strikes, causing fallout if detonated near ground, and creating Carbon-14 if detonated in the atmosphere.
There simply is no such thing as a "clean" nuclear weapon. Even if you could set of a deuterium device without using fission you would still produce a lot of radioactive isotopes from the neutrons.
Two reasons.
1: Even a small tactical nuke emits quite a bit of radioactive fallout, and we don't want that in the atmosphere.
2: The political implications would be devastating. At the moment there is the unwritten rule that nukes are for deterrence and a last resort. If you start using them for pre-emptive strikes you will basically reignite the whole "surprise attack" fears of the cold war which had a number of close calls where the superpowers almost annihilated one another.
So if US cops "demands" Iran hand over the details of their nuclear scientist's e-mail traffic it is just going to happen?
I call bullshit. The only reason they'd be able to acquire such data would be if the host country agreed to let it happen. That would be a problem with the host country's lack of privacy protection for their own citizens, and has little to do with the patriot act itself.
http://xkcd.com/378/
The problem was defining money as speech, and concluding that bribing politicians is a first amendment right.
>To put it in perspective, a Volt battery has roughly 16 KWh of energy stored.
THE FLAMMABILITY OF BATTERIES HAS FUCK ALL TO DO WITH THEIR CAPACITY!
Yes, I use caps, but this irks me so much. When a battery burns the energy doesn't come from the energy stored when charging it. It comes from reactions between the air's oxygen and the electrolyte ( and / or the electrode materials ). There is no direct correlation between the two. The reason people make the flawed assumption is most likely that Li-ion batteries is presently the most energy dense batteries there are, and it so happens that the cobalt based electrode in them is somewhat unstable. This instability is not directly related to the battery energy density. It just happens by coincidence that this material is both good at letting lithium ions diffuse through it, while it also burns quite well. It is perfectly possible that some alternative extremely stable material will be found with even better properties, producing a battery that is both more stable and more energy dense.
Another way to see it is that activation energy ( how easily something catches fire ) is not related to how much energy will be produced when it burns. That cast-iron frying pan in your cupboard would release VAST quantities of energy if you could react all the iron with the oxygen in the air, but it takes quite high temperatures to get such a reaction going. Hydrogen is very flammable, but it has a lower energy density than gasoline, even when liquid.
I don't actually know of any atheist country except maybe some communist dictatorships.
Most countries with a high number of atheists ( such as Sweden ) are best described as secular. The difference between a secular government and an atheist one, is that the secular one doesn't comment on whether there is a god or not. Secular governments are built on the principle that it is not for the state to promote religious beliefs ( or lack thereof ).
Hitler was not atheist in the slightest, he made many references to Jesus in his speeches. He also got to power in part thanks to support from right wing social conservatives and Christian fundies. In his speech to justify giving him emergency powers he calledon the neeed to protect germany from socialism and atheism.
You are right about Stalin being an atheist, but it wasn't atheism that motivated his actions. He just generally "eliminated" anybody who had power he could not control. The church was just one of many examples.
It exists because it is a very efficient and convenient way to quickly share large amounts of data. Several companies make use of it, including Blizzard Entertainment.
Please don't promote the idea that it is only used for exchanging media without permission of the copyright holder.
The dead plants and animals would start to rot, with bacteria consuming the oxygen.
It's good that you pointed out that you live in Sweden ( I do too ) , because I suspect most people on slashdot sort of assumes that everybody is talking about the US situation. Now, I am FAIRLY sure that as far as gender disparity and institutional sexism goes, Sweden and the US are not exactly comparable. Heck, our constitution explicitly permits "positive" discrimination when it comes to gender ( while it is illegal for other types of discrimination ).
It differs dramatically from institution to institution. I work in Lund's synchrotron lab and am doing a masters in nuclear physics at Lund university. I find the physics department here quite relaxed about gender issues. In a course we had on reactor technology we were a majority of women. Also, I'm transsexual and transitioned while working and studying here. Nobody seems to give a damn.
On the other hand, from what I have heard the law department here in town can be pretty bad.
That's ok, it's not as if people here have any level of scepticism towards claims that align with their opinions anyway.
The problem is that that "grain of truth" is often universal, and applies to people outside the groups. Many Jews are greedy and influential in the media? Well guess what, the same applies to people of all faiths.
You will frequently find that the stereotypes that "have a grain of truth" are often similar to stereotypes other people are exposed to. What you hear people in the US say about Mexicans, you frequently hear in Europe as well, except that over here it is not Mexicans that are the target.
Depends a lot on how you measure intelligence. Chimpanzees and other apes give most
animals decent competition. Some of them have been taught to read, count and occasionally
even invent new words for things people have not taught them.
Also, animals in general tend to be more intelligent than people think. Most people get
surprised when the learn that it's quite possible to train goldfish to perform tricks.
It's a necessary, but not sufficient, condition. Fascism also implies a lack of democracy, and are almost by definition always one-party states. You could imagine a democratic and transparent government where corporations were run by government. Many socialists envision such a state. The difference from fascism is that fascists usually reject democracy, though they may not always be open about it.
Not quite. After shut-down the core continues to produce heat at 6% of nominal output. This heat must be transported away, or you will get a meltdown. If you build teh reactor underground, this gets much harder. Building underground also does not really help prevent contamination much, because the pressure inside the containment building can get quite high, meaning you want to vent it ( European reactor operators have filters that can catch most of the radioactive aerosols released during an accident, in order to relieve pressure while only emitting minor amounts of radioactivity ).
Another issue with building underground is that it increases costs, which is money that could otherwise be spent on more effective safety measures, such as catalytic hydrogen scrubbers, redundant cooling systems, larger containment volume, etc...
Windscale was not civilian. It was designed to breed plutonium for Britain's nuclear weapons program. It didn't even have power generating facilities.
Every country except Norway and Japan...
Based on your concern over excessive land use I can only assume you're strictly vegan, or at least don't consume any animal products from grain-fed livestock?
Because you do realize that if you want to reduce the land needed to produce your food, then the by far most effective way to do so would be to drastically cut your consumption of meat (including fish), dairy products and eggs. It is true that under some very specific conditions free-grazing animals can have a low environmental impact, comparable to some vegetable crops, but it most certainly is not true for the way most of meat is presently produced. When considering present agricultural practices in the US, switching to a vegan diet would reduce the land area required to feed you by up to a factor of 10, depending mostly on how much meat / veg you're eating at the moment.
Also, if you want to increase crop yields without environmental impact, then using a greenhouse with a controlled environment and optimised irrigation will do much better than drenching the field in pesticides. It will likely be more expensive as well, but that's not what we're talking about.
You don't understand how patents work ( or at least not how they are intended to work).
The idea is pretty much the following:
Apple makes a fuel cell for laptops that runs on fuel A, using technology X. Now other companies can either license the patent from them, in which case they benefit for having invented it, or they can try to create a different type of fuel cell which doesn't infringe the patent. So say they go for the second option, creating a fuel cell running on fuel B using technology Y. Now, at least in theory, society has two types of fuel cells, and can use 2 types of fuels.
There's a lot of reasons why this may not work out in practice of course, and hence the patent system is supposed to have limitations such as obviousness and prior art, in order to stop abusive patents. Unfortunately the patent office and courts have proven unable to enforce that.
At least some models are also used for fun and games. They even feature in the Olympics, along with archery, spear throwing and fencing.
Of course, it could be argued that the more peaceful uses of them could be made to have lighter, softer and slower bullets that are less likely to kill people.