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Comment Re:Who needs oil? (Score 1) 305

Fusion would break the stranglehold of petro-exporting countries in the Middle East as well as belligerent exporters like Russia and Iran.

You're assuming said fusion plants would be radically cheaper to construct and operate than existing fission plants...something the anti-nuclear activists would probably complicate despite the obvious benefits of fusion over fission. Never underestimate the public fear of the word "nuclear" even if the processes involved are ridiculously different.

I can hear the rallying cry now: "They want to build a plant that works the same way as a thermonuclear bomb! Do you want a nuclear bomb IN YOUR BACKYARD???"

People are still terrified of fluoride in their water. Can you imagine their reponse to the above?

Comment The power of the future... (Score 2) 305

Fusion power is roughly 20 years away from being viable...and has been for the last 40 years LOL.

Seriously, I'll start worrying about proliferation risks when a commercially viable fusion reactor DESIGN is created. Building one -- assuming it's ever viable to begin with -- would take years, which is plenty of time to address proliferation concerns before it came online.

Comment Re:Safety vs Law (Score 4, Insightful) 475

Wrong, wrong, wrong. It is 100% the fault of the person making an unsafe lane change if there is an accident, NOT the person who was driving too slow for your taste. You still have not given a single legitimate reason why low speed limits (by themselves), or slow drivers (by themselves) are dangerous.

People who are driving at a speed that is far outside the average speed on a particular road are a danger simply because the difference between their speed and others is likely to be large. Note that whether they're going "faster" or "slower" doesn't matter - it's the difference in speed.

If I'm going 90MPH and I bump someone going 89MPH we'll be fine and have minimal damage to our cars. If I'm going 45 and bump someone going 44 it's the same. But bumping someone who's going 45 when you're going 90 will result in a major accident.

I remember reading something a few years ago said by a patrol officer. Basically, fast drivers and slow drivers cause the same number of accidents. But in his experience the fast drivers were part of the accident while the slow drivers caused other people to have an accident (trying to avoid the slow poke) and drove off possibly unaware that they had caused an accident.

Comment Re:The obvious /. question... (Score 1) 215

You make a good point. I am sure that HP would never, ever compromise the legendary high quality of their notebook computers by failing to adhere strictly to the standards of the Windows Logo Program.

I must have confused them with another computer manufacturer with lower standards who might be willing to sacrifice the usability of their product just to squeeze a few more dollars our of every sale.

Comment Re:Oh really... (Score 4, Insightful) 142

They're already the second largest Iaas provider after Amazon (EC2 vs Azure) and the second largest business Saas provider after Salesforce (SF vs Office365/Dynamics cloud). As they cloudify more of their offerings they'll be able to capture plenty of revenue from mobile, and since they'll actually be eating their own dogfood their tools for large customers should get better and more and more small customers will just host with them.

Comment Re:Limited storage (Score 1) 215

So only 32gigs of storage on the device eh? Hmm. I dunno, seems kinda limited with no way to expand it without buying my own storage.

I'm afraid that very few computers of any kind offer a way to expand the storage without buying storage.

You could try stealing three USB drives and a high capacity SDXC card and fitting them into the available ports on the Stream 14, easily expanding the storage by as much as you want, but speaking as your attorney I would have to advise you that that could cause you some legal difficulties in the future.

Comment Re:The obvious /. question... (Score 1, Interesting) 215

It doesn't matter in this case, since -- per the fucking summary -- the computer in question is using an AMD A4 (which is x86).

The fucking summary said nothing about whether or not the system used "Secure Boot" or whether it would continue to allow the end user to add a custom bootloader or new trusted certificates. The CPU can understand whatever instruction set it wants, but that won't make any difference if the system firmware won't allow you to run code that isn't signed by Microsoft or HP.

Comment Re:Doing it wrong. (Score 1) 376

You don't want to cut off their web browsing, you want to cut their power. Get the electric companies to cut the power till they pay up. Can't download or watch them infringing files with no power.

Cut the power!!!!

Actually the analogous action would be to drop their line voltage to 30V and perhaps change the frequency to 20Hz.

Comment Re: Amost sounds like a good deal ... (Score 1) 376

You cannot prove a negative.

Sure you can. I was once falsely (and maliciously) accused of something, and was able to prove that I was 100 km away in a different city for the extended weekend, with hundreds of witnesses. 7 witnesses was more than sufficient.

So, you proved that you were somewhere else, which is a positive.

Comment Re:Now what could go wrong? (Score 1) 376

Oh for fucks sake, you KNEW what he meant by the post.

Of course he knew what the OP meant, but I have to side with mrchaotica and I'll tell you why. A large part of the population thinks that copyrights are something that only big companies own. When people say "it's illegal to download copyrighted content" they perpetuate that myth. Nearly everything I download in a given day is copyrighted, it's just that the author has given permission for it to be downloaded. All the posts on /. are a great example.

So the issue is about whether it's unauthorized sharing, not whether it's copyrighted. I make that distinction simply because I don't want to help lay the groundwork for a fundamental change in copyright law at some point.

Comment Re:Just red tape? (Score 1) 142

The AP1000 is a worldwide design, and Westinghouse is going to use parts of the supply chain from China for plants around the world (like just about everything else more complicated than a bread box). My point was that they've managed to supply all of the parts for the Chinese facilities very close to on time so the delays are not with Westinghouse, they're with the US based construction contractors.

Comment Re:Just red tape? (Score 1) 142

Part of the problem is that the infrastructure and supply paths for constructing nuclear plants has to be re-constituted as no plants have been built for quite some time.

Not really, the first two AP1000 are basically finished in China, only about 9 months behind the original schedule whereas these US plants are looking to be about 4 years behind the original schedule. I have to assume it's the typical contractor issue where there's plenty of money to be made being part of the problem.

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