There are not many more critical networks than that, except maybe control systems for weapons, nuclear plants and some factory control systems.
Actually you can scratch nuclear plants off that list. While it is perhaps possible to imagine compromised software to result in damage to a nuclear plant ( and even that is a stretch since operators could still shut it down by cutting the power to electromagnetically suspended controll rods ), it is extremely unlikely to result in harm to humans, since even a meltdown is unlikely to release radioactivity on its own.
In contrast controll system faults can and has in the past downed airliners, and when these things go down it could easily kill hundreds of people at the very least.
(due to the whole cooling system now being solid metal if they did so and that making it impossible to turn the reactor back on).
Yep, the problem with solidification on shutdown was why the Soviet stoped using lead for their subs. On land it would be much less of an issue since you could just use grid power to melt the lead before starting the reactor again. This is obviously a bit of a tricky thing to do while at sea...
Steam explosions certainly aren't trivial, but let's not kid ourselves: pressurized steam doesn't have near the energy density found in explosive chemical reactions, such as sodium+water.
It was still enough to blow Chernobyl's RBMK reactor to pieces. Besides, even if the explosion itself isn't fatal, the loss of pressure will cause your primary coolant to boil away, potentially giving you a LOCA. Primary coolant leaking is a disaster in any nuclear reactor, and it is much more likely to occur in a water based system than a liquid metal one ( MONJU had a leak in the secondary circuit, the primary circuit remained intact).
Non-corrosive? Tell that to the operators of MONJU. It ate over halfway through the steel cladding that was in place to protect the concrete of the floor and containment structure.
Sodium is non-corrosive to the steel used to build the reactor. Following the shutdown of EBR-II in components which had been imersed in the primary loop still had the scratches from the machinery which was used to cut it. The part-numbers engraved in the pieces were still as readable as when the project started. The leak at MONJU resulted from a broken thermometer, and I'm guessing that the corrosion on the steel where it landed was the result of the compounds formed as the sodium burnt, rather than the sodium itself, thou I don't know that for sure. It is possible that it was teh heat from the fire, rather than a chemical reaction, which damaged the cladding.
Sodium is certainly a lot less corrosive than high temperature water, and orders of magnitude less corrosive than lead. The only commonly used coolant which is less corrosive is Helium, but it needs to be pressurised.
Tell me, what do you think of the prospects of three tons of sodium exploding in the middle of a nuclear reactor will do in terms of further, much larger, releases (and subsequent explosions)? There were over 250 tonnes of sodium in that reactor that could have been released had the sodium from the first leak detonated.
Sodium is a metalic element, it can't just explode on its own the way TNT or nitroglycerin does. The reason it is an explosion hazard is because its reaction with water produces hydrogen, so to get 3 tonnes of sodium to explode you would need to pipe 3 tonnes of water into your reactor. It is true that it burns in air, but while doing so it releases a lot less energy than does hydrocarbons. Most of the energy released when sodium burns on contact with water is the hydrogen burning, not the sodium itself. Also it is incorrect to claim the sodium in the primary loop could have leaked from an explosion following the leak in the secondary. The leak occured in the secondary loop outside primary containment. The primary circuit is much better protected, and in many designs it is of the "pool" configuration with the only point of contact with the secondary circuit being submerged in the sodium pool.
As for lead, it doesn't have all the advantages of sodium. As already mentioned it is a lot more corrosive, its volume change on solidification is greater than that of sodium, it needs to be kept at a higher temperature to remain liquid, upon neutron irradiation traces of Pollonium is formed ( larger quantities if Lead-Bismuth eutectic is used ) and it is also more toxic than is sodium. The reason I prefer it is simply that it has such a large boiling point that coolant voiding is practically eliminated, and as you don't need a secondary buffer loop it will be a lot cheaper to couple it to a supercritical CO2 brayton cycle, thus making it substatially cheaper than the sodium option.
the only 'free' energy with infinite fuel is solar.
Uranium will last for a very long time for the same reason that the sun will last for a very long time, both derive their energy from nuclear reactions. The sun burns hydrogen , we burn uranium. Depending on our consumption rate the latter could be made to last longer than the sun itself.
To which he replied "This is what happens when sodium gets wet," and he threw a chunk of sodium into some water.
Care to guess what happens when 300 C warm and radioactive water goes from 15 mega pascal to neutral pressure within a fraction of a second after a coolant pipe bursts? No matter if it is sodium or water primary coolant leaking is a Bad Thing (tm) , and sodium has the advantage that you don't have to keep it under pressure, thus reducing the chance of a leak greatly.
In addition sodium is practically non-corrosive to steal, while boric-acid spiked water at 300 C is quite agressive. Sodium also has a much better heat conductivity than water, so the reactor won't melt down if the primary cooling pumps fail ( natural convection of the coolant is enough to cool the spent fuel once the chain reaction has stopped, as it will do due to thermal expansion of the fuel rods ).
Having said this, my favourite candidate for coolant is molten-lead. Like sodium you don't have to pressurise it, it doesn't react with water or air, it won't boil even if you overheat teh ractor so much that the steel melts, and it is an excellent radiation shield against gamma-radiation. Main issue is corrosion, but 20+ years of research has produced alloys that are very stable in molten lead, so you could expect comercial plants using it within a deacde or two.
On a related note, nuclear engineers were using molten salts decades ago, and even developed a special corrosion resistant alloy, Hastelloy-N, to deal with the corrosion problems. However, the molten salt system turned out to be more expensive than water based technology, thou this may change if thermochemical production of hydrogen kicks of.
Essentially, proponents of solar power usually like to fantasize about theoretical advances in solar technology, while simultaneously refusing to recognise advances in nuclear technology. As an example, electric cars are usually touted as being CO2 neutral "if the electricity comes from renewables". It is outright obvious that this remains true with nuclear as well, but that is scary and hence rarely mentioned. Similarily advances in electric storage is usually touted as a means of allowing solar to be used for baseload, but rarely is it pointed out that the same tech coudl allow nuclear to deliver peak-energy at increased efficiency by running the plant at its maximum output even when demand is low.
just recently upped the CAFE standards for gas mileage in cars
With the new targets being significantly more modest than the European equivalents.
Also, most people are not too upset about the US finding it difficult to cut greenhouse gas emissions. We can understand that. What we are REALLY pissed about is that your government has decided to launch a corrupt attack on the scientific process rather than admitting they have a problem and that it is hurting the entire globe. The disinformation they are promoting in order to save their own face is making it difficult for countries that DO try to make a difference to explain it to their population.
In short, the Bush administrations anti-scientific propaganda is causing Europeans who don't know better to reject their local governments attempts at curtailing emissions. Thus while they may just be doing it to save their own face, their lies are causing major trouble across the globe, and it is pissing of a lot of people.
Previously kubuntu release have been synchronous with the ubuntu releases, this decision breaks that pattern which is why it is news. It looks as if ubuntu and kubuntu may actually diverge enough to become separate distributions.
despite the people who perceive Linux support is 'rtfm
Well, to be fair, Linux man pages is actually useful support, as compared to: "Did you remember to turn on your printer? Did this help? If not, contact your system manager..."
Certainly I am talking *very* small. But, combine this with some hard liquor and you hav a much larger bomb.
Yea, I'm going to create a bomb using batteries and nail-scissors that I combine with things I buy on the tax free, like liqour, propane-propelled deoeodrant, crushed glass shrapnel, matches, razor blades... In fact, forget about the batteries and scissors.
Seriously, if I'm allowed to bring a 2kg candle through the security check, then I can't quite see the use in confiscating any liquid container in excess of 100ml (as if 100ml of explosives isn't enough to take down an airliner anyway ). If nothing else the OMGTERRORISTS could just set of their bombs in the security queue. Must have been thousands of people there last time I used the airport.
Of course, people could simply avoid "leaking" the music to p2p networks. That would solve the problem rather easily, wouldn't it?
Yes, because the record industry never makes mistakes, it never sues peopel even when they have no evidence, and they have never lied in court? Heck, they don't even have to make a mistake, it is enough if a user makes a mistake and gets his life ruined as a result. Say Joe-Shmoe send his laptop to repair and the staff at the repair shop decides toc opy the files. Joe-shmoe gets his life ruined ith a $100.000 fine, the story hits national news. Heck, he doesn't even need to be innocent, first time somebody gets caught they can simply claim they are innocent and that the whole thing is a mistake, it will kill the market all the same.
Watermarking is not about locking content. The idea is to embed customer details in music they sell you so they can sue you if you upload it to the net. Problem is if they do this even once people will be scared of false positives. With DRM going wrong you risked not being able to use something you payed for. With watermarking messing up you risk having your life ruined. If customers hated the former you can imagine how happy they will be about the latter. It is doomed to fail.
Maybe I'm being naive here, but if I can get DRM-free, reasonably encoded music at a reasonable price, why would I want to continue sharing music on p2p networks? I mean, wasn't that the entire point?
You missed the point, say you never ever touch a p2p network ever again, what stops the RIAA from posting the latest Britney Spears song, marking it ith YOUR watermark, and then sue you for $100.000.
Simply put, if watermakrs were to become accepted as evidence in the court of law it would allow the people who make the watermarks to frame ANYBODY WHO BUYS FROM THEM. I.e, the moment they have your credit card number you're unable to criticise them or they could frame you by uploading a bunch of music to piratebay, marking it with your details.
It only takes ONE false positive to destroy the entire watermarking scheme. One mistake, one virus, trojan or worm uploding an inncoent victim's music to the web. It takes one person to buy a song , upload it to the net, and then deny it, hand the police a clean harddrive... game over. If it happens to even one person customers will be scared of it.
The scheme is doomed to fail. Perhaps mroe so than DRM. With DRM you were risking to not be able to play your music when the vendor makes a mistake, with watermarked media you risk having your life ruined from legal fees. If they even thought about enforcing it they would kill their entire market. Yet somehow they think that "this time it will be different".
I'm a little surprised Google isn't doing much in this area yet. My guess is they are waiting for the predators to kill one another so they can feast on the remains.
As DRM dies the fools will start using digital watermarking to sue people who leak to p2p networks. This will ruin numerous lives until some clever lawyer points out that since the distributor knows the watermark THEY can upload it to p2p networks in order to frame people they wish to sue. Eventually this fact will sink in among judges, but before that happens thousands of people will have been burnt, new draconian legislation will have been passed, and music sales will have fallen even more.
Following this the process of suing based on watermarks will wane, but the distributors will instead disconnect people from their websites if they find their watermarks on p2p. The result will be that those burnt ( weather guilty or not ) will migrate to filesharing.
In essence, despite the obvious fiasco that is DRM the same garbage will continue due to greed and stupidity. Really, DRM in one clothing or another has been arround for some time, it as never been successful, but that hasn't stopped people from trying. It will continue this way for quite some time still.
I tried a tungsten carbide ring but it caused me to break out as well. Now the quest for another "alternative" metal continues anew:)
I'm not a chemist, but I imagine it should be plausible to coat a tungsten ring in a layer of titanium using electroplating. Dnno if it would be pure enough for your needs thou.
You will want to reduce heat generation as much as possible, if you can change to SSD drives that will help you, it will also reduce the cooling requirements thus getting the noise level down. Try to make sure you get good airflow past the equipment so you need less noisy fans. You proably want some sound barrier as well.
What would help music sales, cd or otherwise, is a decent way to find the music people wants to hear.
Yea, I hate to SEARCH for music. It would be nice if I didn't have to SEARCH so much, like if there was a webpage which could help me SEARCH for music. Heck, you could even imagine a company making money by offering a SEARCH service of some sort. Like when people SEARCH for airline tickets travel agencies do the SEARCH for them. If there was only some sort of SEARCH company which could help me SEARCH for music in a similar way. Maybe if there was a way to combine SEARCH with ADVERTISING. Do you think anybody could make money that way?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually you can scratch nuclear plants off that list. While it is perhaps possible to imagine compromised software to result in damage to a nuclear plant ( and even that is a stretch since operators could still shut it down by cutting the power to electromagnetically suspended controll rods ), it is extremely unlikely to result in harm to humans, since even a meltdown is unlikely to release radioactivity on its own.
In contrast controll system faults can and has in the past downed airliners, and when these things go down it could easily kill hundreds of people at the very least.
Simple. First you build a silicon foundry...
"Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to make sure." ?
Yep, the problem with solidification on shutdown was why the Soviet stoped using lead for their subs. On land it would be much less of an issue since you could just use grid power to melt the lead before starting the reactor again. This is obviously a bit of a tricky thing to do while at sea...
It was still enough to blow Chernobyl's RBMK reactor to pieces. Besides, even if the explosion itself isn't fatal, the loss of pressure will cause your primary coolant to boil away, potentially giving you a LOCA. Primary coolant leaking is a disaster in any nuclear reactor, and it is much more likely to occur in a water based system than a liquid metal one ( MONJU had a leak in the secondary circuit, the primary circuit remained intact).
Sodium is non-corrosive to the steel used to build the reactor. Following the shutdown of EBR-II in components which had been imersed in the primary loop still had the scratches from the machinery which was used to cut it. The part-numbers engraved in the pieces were still as readable as when the project started. The leak at MONJU resulted from a broken thermometer, and I'm guessing that the corrosion on the steel where it landed was the result of the compounds formed as the sodium burnt, rather than the sodium itself, thou I don't know that for sure. It is possible that it was teh heat from the fire, rather than a chemical reaction, which damaged the cladding.
Sodium is certainly a lot less corrosive than high temperature water, and orders of magnitude less corrosive than lead. The only commonly used coolant which is less corrosive is Helium, but it needs to be pressurised.
Sodium is a metalic element, it can't just explode on its own the way TNT or nitroglycerin does. The reason it is an explosion hazard is because its reaction with water produces hydrogen, so to get 3 tonnes of sodium to explode you would need to pipe 3 tonnes of water into your reactor. It is true that it burns in air, but while doing so it releases a lot less energy than does hydrocarbons. Most of the energy released when sodium burns on contact with water is the hydrogen burning, not the sodium itself. Also it is incorrect to claim the sodium in the primary loop could have leaked from an explosion following the leak in the secondary. The leak occured in the secondary loop outside primary containment. The primary circuit is much better protected, and in many designs it is of the "pool" configuration with the only point of contact with the secondary circuit being submerged in the sodium pool.
As for lead, it doesn't have all the advantages of sodium. As already mentioned it is a lot more corrosive, its volume change on solidification is greater than that of sodium, it needs to be kept at a higher temperature to remain liquid, upon neutron irradiation traces of Pollonium is formed ( larger quantities if Lead-Bismuth eutectic is used ) and it is also more toxic than is sodium. The reason I prefer it is simply that it has such a large boiling point that coolant voiding is practically eliminated, and as you don't need a secondary buffer loop it will be a lot cheaper to couple it to a supercritical CO2 brayton cycle, thus making it substatially cheaper than the sodium option.
Uranium will last for a very long time for the same reason that the sun will last for a very long time, both derive their energy from nuclear reactions. The sun burns hydrogen , we burn uranium. Depending on our consumption rate the latter could be made to last longer than the sun itself.
Care to guess what happens when 300 C warm and radioactive water goes from 15 mega pascal to neutral pressure within a fraction of a second after a coolant pipe bursts? No matter if it is sodium or water primary coolant leaking is a Bad Thing (tm) , and sodium has the advantage that you don't have to keep it under pressure, thus reducing the chance of a leak greatly.
In addition sodium is practically non-corrosive to steal, while boric-acid spiked water at 300 C is quite agressive. Sodium also has a much better heat conductivity than water, so the reactor won't melt down if the primary cooling pumps fail ( natural convection of the coolant is enough to cool the spent fuel once the chain reaction has stopped, as it will do due to thermal expansion of the fuel rods ).
Having said this, my favourite candidate for coolant is molten-lead. Like sodium you don't have to pressurise it, it doesn't react with water or air, it won't boil even if you overheat teh ractor so much that the steel melts, and it is an excellent radiation shield against gamma-radiation. Main issue is corrosion, but 20+ years of research has produced alloys that are very stable in molten lead, so you could expect comercial plants using it within a deacde or two.
On a related note, nuclear engineers were using molten salts decades ago, and even developed a special corrosion resistant alloy, Hastelloy-N, to deal with the corrosion problems. However, the molten salt system turned out to be more expensive than water based technology, thou this may change if thermochemical production of hydrogen kicks of.
Essentially, proponents of solar power usually like to fantasize about theoretical advances in solar technology, while simultaneously refusing to recognise advances in nuclear technology. As an example, electric cars are usually touted as being CO2 neutral "if the electricity comes from renewables". It is outright obvious that this remains true with nuclear as well, but that is scary and hence rarely mentioned. Similarily advances in electric storage is usually touted as a means of allowing solar to be used for baseload, but rarely is it pointed out that the same tech coudl allow nuclear to deliver peak-energy at increased efficiency by running the plant at its maximum output even when demand is low.
With the new targets being significantly more modest than the European equivalents.
Also, most people are not too upset about the US finding it difficult to cut greenhouse gas emissions. We can understand that. What we are REALLY pissed about is that your government has decided to launch a corrupt attack on the scientific process rather than admitting they have a problem and that it is hurting the entire globe. The disinformation they are promoting in order to save their own face is making it difficult for countries that DO try to make a difference to explain it to their population.
In short, the Bush administrations anti-scientific propaganda is causing Europeans who don't know better to reject their local governments attempts at curtailing emissions. Thus while they may just be doing it to save their own face, their lies are causing major trouble across the globe, and it is pissing of a lot of people.
Previously kubuntu release have been synchronous with the ubuntu releases, this decision breaks that pattern which is why it is news. It looks as if ubuntu and kubuntu may actually diverge enough to become separate distributions.
In a moment now he will start worrying about precious fluids.
Well, to be fair, Linux man pages is actually useful support, as compared to: "Did you remember to turn on your printer? Did this help? If not, contact your system manager..."
Yea, I'm going to create a bomb using batteries and nail-scissors that I combine with things I buy on the tax free, like liqour, propane-propelled deoeodrant, crushed glass shrapnel, matches, razor blades... In fact, forget about the batteries and scissors.
Seriously, if I'm allowed to bring a 2kg candle through the security check, then I can't quite see the use in confiscating any liquid container in excess of 100ml (as if 100ml of explosives isn't enough to take down an airliner anyway ). If nothing else the OMGTERRORISTS could just set of their bombs in the security queue. Must have been thousands of people there last time I used the airport.
Yes, because the record industry never makes mistakes, it never sues peopel even when they have no evidence, and they have never lied in court? Heck, they don't even have to make a mistake, it is enough if a user makes a mistake and gets his life ruined as a result. Say Joe-Shmoe send his laptop to repair and the staff at the repair shop decides toc opy the files. Joe-shmoe gets his life ruined ith a $100.000 fine, the story hits national news. Heck, he doesn't even need to be innocent, first time somebody gets caught they can simply claim they are innocent and that the whole thing is a mistake, it will kill the market all the same.
Watermarking is not about locking content. The idea is to embed customer details in music they sell you so they can sue you if you upload it to the net. Problem is if they do this even once people will be scared of false positives. With DRM going wrong you risked not being able to use something you payed for. With watermarking messing up you risk having your life ruined. If customers hated the former you can imagine how happy they will be about the latter. It is doomed to fail.
You missed the point, say you never ever touch a p2p network ever again, what stops the RIAA from posting the latest Britney Spears song, marking it ith YOUR watermark, and then sue you for $100.000.
Simply put, if watermakrs were to become accepted as evidence in the court of law it would allow the people who make the watermarks to frame ANYBODY WHO BUYS FROM THEM. I.e, the moment they have your credit card number you're unable to criticise them or they could frame you by uploading a bunch of music to piratebay, marking it with your details.
It only takes ONE false positive to destroy the entire watermarking scheme. One mistake, one virus, trojan or worm uploding an inncoent victim's music to the web. It takes one person to buy a song , upload it to the net, and then deny it, hand the police a clean harddrive... game over. If it happens to even one person customers will be scared of it.
The scheme is doomed to fail. Perhaps mroe so than DRM. With DRM you were risking to not be able to play your music when the vendor makes a mistake, with watermarked media you risk having your life ruined from legal fees. If they even thought about enforcing it they would kill their entire market. Yet somehow they think that "this time it will be different".
I'm a little surprised Google isn't doing much in this area yet. My guess is they are waiting for the predators to kill one another so they can feast on the remains.
As DRM dies the fools will start using digital watermarking to sue people who leak to p2p networks. This will ruin numerous lives until some clever lawyer points out that since the distributor knows the watermark THEY can upload it to p2p networks in order to frame people they wish to sue. Eventually this fact will sink in among judges, but before that happens thousands of people will have been burnt, new draconian legislation will have been passed, and music sales will have fallen even more.
Following this the process of suing based on watermarks will wane, but the distributors will instead disconnect people from their websites if they find their watermarks on p2p. The result will be that those burnt ( weather guilty or not ) will migrate to filesharing.
In essence, despite the obvious fiasco that is DRM the same garbage will continue due to greed and stupidity. Really, DRM in one clothing or another has been arround for some time, it as never been successful, but that hasn't stopped people from trying. It will continue this way for quite some time still.
Allright, lets call it a draw.
I'm not a chemist, but I imagine it should be plausible to coat a tungsten ring in a layer of titanium using electroplating. Dnno if it would be pure enough for your needs thou.
Kekekekekeke Orwell rush.
You will want to reduce heat generation as much as possible, if you can change to SSD drives that will help you, it will also reduce the cooling requirements thus getting the noise level down. Try to make sure you get good airflow past the equipment so you need less noisy fans. You proably want some sound barrier as well.
Yea, I hate to SEARCH for music. It would be nice if I didn't have to SEARCH so much, like if there was a webpage which could help me SEARCH for music. Heck, you could even imagine a company making money by offering a SEARCH service of some sort. Like when people SEARCH for airline tickets travel agencies do the SEARCH for them. If there was only some sort of SEARCH company which could help me SEARCH for music in a similar way. Maybe if there was a way to combine SEARCH with ADVERTISING. Do you think anybody could make money that way?
I'm still waiting for gTunes.
Physics to the rescue:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elitzur-Vaidman_bomb-tester