In a far off, seldom visited corner of my companies campus is a wall of patents granted over the years. A few weeks ago I found myself browsing them and noticed one of them was for a proximity sensor on a phone. In this case it was designed to automatically switch the phone from normal mode to speaker phone depending on proximity but it doesn't take a genius to see other uses for this. It was granted in 1998. Apple "steals" from other companies just as much as they claim people steal from them.

But you can't watch them via a streamed connection as the case against Zediva has shown. Zediva bought individual discs and streamed them on a one-to-one basis to users. For all intents the user had rented a real physical disc but because it was streamed over a network the courts deemed it a violation of copyright. So no, streaming companies cannot just buy used or new discs from just anyone. This would be the same as requiring all used car lots to buy their cars from the licensed dealer (no car auctions, no trade-ins, no private purchases).

Pascals are a unit of pressure.

Metric uses Newtons for force.

1 N is the force required to accelerate 1 kg at 1m/s^2

So on Earth (g ~= 9.8 m/s^2) 1 kg weighs 9.8 Newtons.

In the Foot-pound-second system the unit of mass is a slug

To answer the question more directly.

PHB -> Pointy Haired Boss

In other words Dilbert's boss and synonymous with clueless manager.

Nonsense, the heavy water actually promotes the reaction (it's a neutron moderator). Getting rid of it and cooling with normal fresh or sea water would be doable and simply serve the double role of cooling AND stopping the chain reaction (by virtue of not being heavy water).

It's even safer than that. The primary purpose of heavy water in a CANDU reactor is not to cool, but to act as a neutron moderator (it slows the neutrons down). Without this moderator the reaction stops (CANDU reactors do not use enriched uranium so neutron moderation is required to keep the chain reaction going). In addition to control rods CANDU reactor support either moderator poisoning (they inject chemicals into the moderator tank that absorb neutrons bringing the reaction to an end) or a moderator dump (they actually dump the heavy water from the moderator tank). This coupled with the non-enriched uranium just makes them plain safer. It's a shame they didn't sell more of them.

Actually no, congress didn't outright block the transfer of prisoners from Guantanamo. They simply imposed conditions (admittedly excessive ones) that needed to be met before the transfer could be made (unless I missed something). From the bill (section 9011) I know of we have:

Yes, it's a lot of paper work (there's further notifications required 15 days prior to moving) but none of it is impossible. Also note, at no point does it require further approval of congress. Once the paperwork is submitted the President is good to go. Now admittedly, if he did try this congress would likely try to introduce a new bill blocking it (thus the 45 day notice) but hey, he could veto that one specifically unless overruled by congress in which case it really isn't his fault anymore. But he hasn't. The only thing stopping him at this point is paperwork. No law or specific prohibition from congress is doing it. And that is the disgraceful part of it.

Well, the second article I linked mentioned:

So it's likely they took at least one sample forty miles out (for the record a forty mile radius would be about 5000 square miles so obviously they didn't do uniform sampling over all that area). Hopefully the report itself will have more details, unfortunately I haven't been able to find a copy online anywhere.

As far as I can tell Dr Joye though seems to me fairly level headed and the media has been a little overzealous in reporting on her work. Even she admits there won't be any lasting damage saying “The Gulf is resilient" and “I do believe that it will recover from this insult, but I don’t think it’s going to recover fully by 2012." I believe she just wants people to realize that the damage was more extensive than reported and we may not see the full effect for a couple of years yet.

Another thing she pointed out in an interview she did was her sampling technique appears to be more precise than those typically used by BP and others. Apparently the "pools" of oil are fairly delicate and can be blown away if you don't take your core very carefully (i.e. slowly). BP re-measured several of her sites using her technique and came away with the same results she got. If anything, this should help improve the process used to monitor the area.

From this article:

Sounds like a fairly large survey to me. Definitely the largest to date (much larger than BP's "studies"). Now granted, I don't know if this entire area counts as "wellhead dives" as the language is a little vague but I'm confident we can believe her when she says the damage is extensive and widespread.

This is another interesting article postulating the mechanism behind the oil deposits.

Not strictly true. There where a handful of large piston engined helicopters like the S-58/H-34 which could carry ~6000 lbs (or 12 troops). But yes, turbine powered craft soon became the preferred option.

Well, we'll just have to hope that their competitors will implement the technology

Already have. Actually Alcatel is pretty much playing catchup with all this. Nortel introduced a 40Gb/s dual polarization coherent terminal 4 years ago (despite many people, including Alcatel, saying it wasn't possible). Furthermore Nortel Optical (now Ciena) already has a 100Gb/s version available. Alcatel is pretty late to this game.

Fermilab had a beam loss event in 2003 (beam came into contact with part of the ring). The beam drilled a 2.8 mm hole through a 5mm tungsten support. It also etched a groove 25 cm long and 1.5 mm deep into a stainless steel collimator (after passing through the tungsten). Apparently this took about 8.3 ms (over several turns of the beam) before the beam dissipated.

I'm guessing if you could insert your hand fast enough (not possible, even if there wasn't a vacuum tube) you would end up with a nice small hole drilled through your hand.

This is the report from the Fermi incident:

http://beamdocs.fnal.gov/DocDB/0011/001185/001/FN-751.pdf

FTA:

Apparently they aren't using Silicon based electronics so they don't need to keep the sensor that cool (at least from a silicon point of view). But even if the electronics can handle it I'm still not entirely sure what they would use to power it all (Sodium Nickel Chloride battery typically work between 270 and 350C, other molten salt batteries used in missile systems typically operate between 400-550C).

Personally I believe it was the delay from the license lawsuit that really killed it. The first couple of generations of LCD and Plasma's screens weren't cheap to produce either. But while the SED technology was mired in litigation the LCD and Plasma manufactures sold screens and used the money to develop better and cheaper manufacturing processes. Once the SED litigation was cleared up it was too late. They had missed the ramp up stage. The had an expensive new technology competing against a cheap mature one. The stupid thing is the biggest loser in the whole ordeal is probably Nano Proprietary, the ones who started the litigation in the first place. If they had just let the joint venture build the damn things they would be collecting royalty checks today. Instead they sued their only revenue source out of existence.

Though BP has shelled out a lot more than $75 million. And they are actually able to. Different situation for nuclear energy companies.

The $75 million cap does only apply to the economic impact to any disaster (lost jobs, business, property, etc). The companies are still on the hook for direct cleanup cost which is what BP has mostly paid to date (although typically the direct cleanup costs are the smaller part of any large scale disaster). BP has said they will cover all economic losses as well but it remains to be seen how truthful this is as the costs pile up (there's also the issue of the cap being removed if gross negligence can be proven....)

Let one of the French nuclear power plants go boom and the effects are a _lot_ worse.

Could be. I'm not familiar with French nuclear reactor design. I am however familiar with Canadian CANDU reactors and can say with some certainty they are much safer than most (use unenriched fuel, require heavy water moderation, vacuum building, etc...). Not to say a CANDU accident wouldn't be bad but it would certainly be better than, say, Chernobyl. The point I'm trying to make is nuclear reactors can be built safer. Newer designs, like pebble bed reactors, can not melt down by design. If there wasn't such fear mongering about nuclear energy we could invest in and build these safer reactors. Instead we're stuck with many aging reactors with suspect safety records.

Also, Africa has had an oil spill of similar size for ages and no one would think of starting to stop it as it's apparently not cost-efficient. And that is on land. Where people live. Not hidden under water by ways of chemicals.

Not entirely sure how this helps your argument against nuclear energy. It just goes to show again that oil can be just as damaging as nuclear.

Wrong. It's easy to process CO_2 into O_2 and C_x. It's just not economically feasible.

Yes, you can scrub, sequester, and convert fossil fuel emissions but as you stated it's not economically feasible. Recycling nuclear waste is economically feasible. They already do it in France and Britain. They don't do it in North America for political reasons (not technical or economic reasons).

I prefer to pay for my stuff in a way that makes sure the ones getting rich from what I pay have to shoulder the costs, as well. Not that I pay them _and_ pay extra for clean-up.

And this is my issue with how people think about fossil fuels. We are shouldering the burden of using them. For example increased smog causes more health issues which places extra burden health care which we all end up paying for with taxes (well, outside the US at least). So in truth, we are paying them and paying extra for the clean-up (just in different ways). At least with nuclear energy the problem is fairly well contained and solutions do exist (admittedly some better than others).