In this context, Germany is not a state. In the USA (remember, Slashdot is a US web site, it's in the FAQ) you say "country" when referring to a foreign entity. Germany is a country. California is a state.

"Chernobyl: a crazy design with a strongly positive void coefficient. No one else has ever made such designs, even before Chernobyl because it was always known to be dangerous."

Hmm.. which unit? not widely known, two meltdowns occurred at Chernobyl. NPP, Unit 1, September 9, 1982 and then the Unit 4 explosion April 26, 1986, which was hidden from world until the fallout trigger a Swedish radiation monitor.

Eight days days later, (May 4, 1986), a pebble fuel pellet got stuck in the piping in a German 750MWth, AVR PBM reactor. Efforts to dislodge the pellet caused a release of both core and coolant into the atmosphere. Local plant management tried to blame on the Chernobyl disaster. But a professor at a local university in Frelburg, analyzed the fallout which contained radioactive Pa-233 and determined that a second nuclear incident had occurred nearby.

So their is a list of three(3) incidents, each time management/government tried to cover up and there is much more.

Don't fooled, TMI unit II was only 4 months old when a valve got stuck and melted down.. Fukushima is the worst yet, three(3) fully mature reactor cores have melted down and now reside somewhere below the reactors, releasing deadly fission by products into an underground river flowing underneath it.

Millions of humans have succumbed to early death, and Ten's of millions more are suffering the consequences, and that is just the tip of iceberg. Their is nothing clean about Nuclear Power plants, each refueling cycle discharges a large amount of radioactive gas into the environment, and the effect is detectable in the surrounding population.

I wonder.

Is the Onion printing strictly factual stories today?

At "sub $100" what is it's advantage over a $35 Rasberry pi 2?

I think you may be confused -- Who could forget Dark Star.

John Carpenters best film.

Maybe you mean "the Black Hole"?

Starring in crappy films with shitty stories and idiotic directors harms actors careers?

Who'd a thunk it.

I have several teapots in my cupboard, which I am fairly certain is currently orbiting the sun.

Russell made more stipulations than that of course.

Well I guess its a contradiction from a certain point of view.

I gotta disagree with you on Hamill. Every person I personally know who tried acting got a comercial or a traveling stage show or something a few times but ended up quitting after 5 years or less and now has a different job.

Mark Hamill did a lot better than just sign autographs. He had a good number of small roles in the 80s and 90s (check imdb) and most actors would kill to have a bit part on a few shows. He is also a pretty successful voice actor.

His career is in the top 1% of people who try to be actors. Harrison Ford's career is in the top 0.00001%. That's the difference, in my opinion.

No, not too harsh at all. He made Ewan McGregor look like a high-school drama geek. "Wooden Talentless Hack" is a great way to put it. Those scenes on Kamino were so bad I actually hurt for poor Ewan. He must cringe whenever anyone brings up Star Wars. For God's Sake, this is Ewan McGregor we're talking about. Ever see him in Trainspotting? He was absolutely brilliant.

To my mind, the difference is clear. It's Lucas.

It's not a contradiction at all. The agent works for the agent's benefit primarily. The vast, vast majority of actors never land a role where the agent can take a significant cut. So, to them, it's like a "bird in the hand vs. two in the bush" type of thing. They can get a few bucks out of the actor, who cares if their long-term prospects are stunted. Fact is, they most likely wouldn't get anywhere anyway. Remember, the agent works for the agent. There is always another good-looking young actor coming along to represent.

To say Mark Hamill (for instance) would have been more successful without being in Star Wars is ridiculous. While he didn't hit it big like Harrison Ford, he certainly had a career that was more successful than 99% of people who try to act.

The micro-USB thing is huge. It is such a pain in the ass that I can't mix and match connectors with my ipod and other devices. I'm glad MS isn't going for nonstandard (read: lucrative) connectors (yet).

If the battery life pans out to be real (and video consumption is second only to wifi as a battery killer in my experience) this might be my next tablet...

That's only true if you see education's function as solely to prepare you for a specific vocation.

#4: There's massive amounts of stuff to do backups for UNIX.

That's odd.. I use Linux Mint/ddrescue to backup/restore images of Win OS partitions/disks all the time. WIndose doesn't have anything even close. I can even mount those NTFS file images as partitions and modify the contents as needed. Have you tried to mount a Ext-3/4 FS on windows lately?

M$ has a nasty habit stripping out long established features, obfuscates, cripples/breaks, and/or removes them, then monetizes it as a paid feature. I.E. Network users(>10,>20), Backups, SQL, Exchange, etc.. Meanwhile Linux/Open source rarely removes features and incorporates new features all the time.