* Posts by bombastic bob

10507 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015

Nadella says senior management pay now linked to improving gender diversity

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Now the search for the ultimate diversity employee starts.

"military veteran that is over 50"

Yeah, I _WISH_ that gave me an advantage. More likely to get AGE DISCRIMINATION because I believe I'm worth more [or am more willing to bargain for higher wages] for all of that experience, tend to speak up to those "young whippersnappers" who _FEEL_ (not think) that their ideas are "so great" [but obviously aren't, to an old guy], etc. etc..

[it's never fair]

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Symptom of bullshit job

"The commonest reason given by men leaving the [teaching] profession early is fear of unfounded accusations against men."

/me plays 'Don't Stand so Close to Me" by Sting & the Police

(I hear Sting used to be a teacher)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

"40% does 60%, and the rest is dead weight between meetings and long bathroom breaks."

you mean long SMOKE breaks. There, I fixed for ya.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Quality over quantity...

everyone knows that quota hiring and "diversity" is much better than quality or qualifications. Get with the political correctness!!! </snark>

bombastic bob Silver badge
Flame

"America is going down an ugly slippery spiral of 'acceptable racism' in the name of diversity."

has been happening since the concept of racial (and sex) hiring quotas were introduced as "a way" of ensuring that discrimination doesn't happen (back in the 60's) - which of course means discrimination DOES happen in the name of anti-discrimination.

Stupid l[aw]yers. Stupid politicians. Stupid gummint. Stupid liberals.

Must be some "quota hire" that thunk THAT one up

Musk: Come ride my Big F**king Rocket to Mars

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Musk has done good stuff with SpaceX, but...

"The future belongs to EMDrive"

well, if it would work, you would have thought that 17+ years later, someone like Musk would've built one, right?

I see it as being similar to 'cold fusion': MAYBE you get "something" but it's so impractical in actual practice that it's not gonna go anywhere.

I suspect that things *like* the EM drive actually get thrust due to photons and the reaction drive effect you'd get by shining a flashlight. Get a big enough light, and you'll get measurable thrust. Similarly, that conical 'exhaust port' is probably getting the benefit of microwave photons bouncing off of it [effectively, though it would be a form of scattering] and imparting some of their energy to it in the process. One end of the cone has a different resonant frequency than the other end, so if you're converting higher frequency microwaves into lower frequency microwaves, maybe SOME of that energy is becoming kinetic energy... or more likely, HEAT... and the rest would be 'exhausted' out of the back as microwaves (or infrared photons caused by all of the heating).

Still, NOT enough to be practical. Maybe mildly amusing, for a scientist, but that's about it.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

"make a whooshing sound* as they fly by"

the turbine pump noise, however, would be continuous

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Smooth as silk?

I would expect that it's a bit like taking off with a steam catapult on an aircraft carrier, but with more jolting and vibration. But "scaling up" might make the ride smoother, and ya never know until you try, right?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Interesting stuff

"Is the world in a place were individual dudes (or individual dude's companies) can achieve stuff that entire nations cant?"

I'd like to think so. Because when GUMMINTS get involved, it becomes political. Then the cost inflates for various political reasons (because, gummint). And then the funding gets cut because, political reasons.

Look at NASA in the 60's, and then the 70's, for a clear example, with respect to moon landings and what they were spending taxpayer money on. LBJ's socialist programs were eating too much of the budget, so NASA took the hits (in favor of re-distributing money via social programs to likely demo-rat voters). So much for Buck Rogers in the latter half of the 20th century. We have been confined to Earth orbit ever since.

I would prefer that all SOCIALIST spending be dropped in favor of rockets to Mars. At least THAT way you get something for the money being spent [a rocket, to Mars, and the technological breakthroughs in the private sector that go with it]. I doubt that ANY gummint would EVAR see it THAT way, again, not since the 1960's...

/me watched every manned rocket launch and related broadcast that I could, in the 60's and 70's, ever since I was old enough to be aware of what was going on - that'd be since the Gemini program, actually... and *DAMN* those socialists for DE-FUNDING NASA.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

"none of this 3 hours early nonsense"

for the very wealthy, who can afford chartered flights, the check-in process would be considerably faster. first, you're going to use a 'branch' air terminal. In San Diego, for example, that would be the commuter terminal, which only services smaller planes that do short commercial flights (like from San Diego to L.A., or San Diego to Monterey or some other 'whistle stop' airport), as well as CHARTERED planes. And a small private airport (which just has private and chartered planes) would be even easier to do check-in at.

So when you consider the TSA-caused slowdowns of normal "coach" flyers, the really really rich ALREADY have their "separate and UNequal" system locked-in. For them, it's still "fun to fly".

but since rockets to mars (or suborbital earth city to city) would ONLY have the super-rich affording the cost of a ticket, then I suppose whatever check-in process THEY go through could be a 'new experience' of sorts.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

"let mankind escape the surly bonds of Earth"

more like, "escape the surly bonds of Earth GUMMINTS"

A new frontier! YAY!

Internet-wide security update put on hold over fears 60 million people would be kicked offline

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Who does this really affect, its hard to tell....

I suspect it only affects DNS resolvers running on ISP servers, and individual users won't be affected at all, even when you're running an ancient version of windows...

In order to state the query as 'authoritative' you'll need that key stuff mentioned in RFC 8145 is for the conversation between the 'resolver' (running on the client) and the server, using DNSSEC. I don't believe that DNSSEC is actually _REQUIRED_ though, and older servers should still work.

I would expect older clients NOT using DNSSEC to work just fine, also.

If you're trying to resolve the queries yourself, and NOT use an ISP server for DNS, then maybe this will affect you. Or not.

If you're using a forwarding server or cacheing server from your ISP (or 8.8.8.8 for google's DNS server) then I'd expect it to work just fine and not break anything.

but worst case you could temporarily turn off DNSSEC [though I doubt it would be necessary]

The question here is MOST likely what the ISP cacheing servers will be doing, and whether those would all need to be updated. And yeah, it could cause a BIG problem if they can't resolve DNS queries any more...

Ex-sperm-inate! Sam the sex-droid 'heavily soiled' in randy nerd rampage

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Why the delay?

"Can they make a Megurine Luka version"

Kagamine Rin would be better. Heh.

troll icon because it ALSO looks like a lecherous grin

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Poor Samantha

could Samantha be considered a RAPE victim? Will her software undergo PTSD? SJW's, what's YOUR call on this? [I say just erase her memory, like it NEVER happened, a few minor repairs, and "good to go"]

yeah I know THIS post will get the hate it deserves. heh.

troll icon, for obvious reasons.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

"at this level our CO2 emissions would drop to sustainable levels"

but our METHANE levels would increase, as men continue to eat greasy foods like they're still 15, etc.. "Pull my finger - Muahahahaha!" No need to 'hold it in' or blame the dog, when your 'woman' is a robot. Farts become fun again.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Gimmi!

@alain

a poster man for 'nomarriage.com' [welcome to the club]

I'm close to both Tijuana _AND_ Nevada. A few weekend trips per year, and you "get it" more often, at lower cost, with much greater satisfaction. Just sayin'.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Gimmi!

"/Kidding ;-)"

heh, nice recovery. did your 'significant other' see you posting that? "Nyeth, Dear..." [the sound of the ultra-nagged kitty-whipped milquetoast hen-pecked hubby]

at least, if a robot were to start nagging, you could be like Harcourt Fenton Mudd, and just say "Shut up, Stella..." (yeah obligatory Star Trek reference - they recently played an Original Star Trek marathon on BBC America channel, worthy of mention)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Heavily soiled?

"Did they have a sexbot room complete wth tissues and running Weird Science for the little perverts?"

you are SO judgemental about the 'robosexual' lifestyle. ROBO-PHOBE!

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Humanity is doomed

"Not humanity is doomed, women are."

heh - robosexuality - for politically correct reasons, they MUST accept it.

I wonder how long the SJW's would defend robosexuals...?

This can easily descend into a 2D vs 3DPD rant, like on certain image boards

and don't forget THIS web site...

Angst in her pants: Alleged US govt leaker Reality Winner stashed docs in her pantyhose

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: What were they thinking??

"When they hired a person with the name "Reality Winner"???"

I'm tempted to say "Obaka-era quota hire" but I won't. (oops, too late)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: I hope she didn't take all 81 pages in one go...

A4 is a metric size - in the USA, we still use inches (8.5x11)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: 10 Years? Fck!

"He won't break. Shall we bring out the Leroy Neiman paintings?"

play Barney 7/24 until he cracks. (like in 'Men who stare at goats')

bombastic bob Silver badge
Megaphone

Re: 10 Years? Fck!

"That's getting off light."

yes.

When I was in the military, I got a clue when it comes to classified information, why something that doesn't seem like it should be 'Secret' is classified 'Secret'.

Think of it like this (my interpretation):

'for official use only' - disclosure might embarrass the government or create diplomatic problems

'confidential' - disclosure might give advantage to a potential enemy in war, or compromise our advantage

'secret' - disclosure might get spies or informants killed, or greatly compromise intelligence gathering

'top secret' - disclosure might cause war or otherwise get a lot of people killed

and it goes up in importance and consequence from there, I'm sure.

The point is, if you're trusted with classified information, it's NOT your job to determine whether or not you should or can disclose it. You probably do not have the "need to know" of just how important (or unimportant) that information is, nor the implications of actually disclosing it. And the penalties for disclosure _SHOULD_ be very very high, because if they're not, you won't be able to trust ANYONE.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Terminator

Re: A certain Kirsten Dunst look about her

there's a YUGE stink regarding all of the rebellious "leaking" going on in the security branches of the U.S. gummint. Trump had to apologize to your PM over it a few months back...

I think she'll be used as an example. A mid-20's decent looking female, who probably had a really good career in front of her at the NSA, and might've married well and had a family... and who NOW won't get out of the Iron Bar Hotel until she's close to FORTY. Say buh-bye to your "youth", there, girly, because you just FLUSHED IT DOWN THE CRAPPER!

[when she gets out she'll probably write a book, but that's no guarantee of income]

Trump's tax tease will be a massive payday for Valley tech giants and their shareholders

bombastic bob Silver badge
Megaphone

"Not sure if a 20% corporate tax rate is good enough to get companies like Apple holding trillions overseas to bring it home."

I agree. corporate tax rate should be ZERO. Individuals (stock holders, employees) pay MORE THAN ENOUGH taxes already, so in effect corporate income is DOUBLE TAXED. That's hardly "fair".

bombastic bob Silver badge
WTF?

Re: I'm its a coincidence the plan includes a huge tax break for Trump

regarding S corporations...

if you owned one, you'd know that what you said was COMPLETE BOVINE SEWAGE.

Most people who own S corporations are independent contractors and small business owners. It's a way to avoid 'C' corporation regulations and nonsense, while simplifying the liability problems. LLC's are similar, as well as sole proprieterships, as far as 'income' goes. It costs me a flat $800/year for cali-fornicate-you state taxes, regardless of whether or not I earn money. I'm also required to PAY MYSELF A WAGE rather than taking all of the income as 'shareholder draft'. That wage has to be 'fair market value' or (as I understand it) you could get audited and have to pay penalties. Most of the tax difference is 'social security and medicaire' taxes, things I'll probably NEVER see [I'll just work until I'm dead, and never retire, and to hell with gummint programs, I don't want them and they'll be bankrupt before I'm eligible anyway]. So by paying myself a reasonable salary [which is taxed like everyone else], AND taking shareholder drafts on whatever profit I'm lucky enough to EARN, then I probably end up paying MORE taxes than the average person in the process [plus all of the extra costs associated with the additional tax filings and so on].

It's a _LOT_ different when you have to sign the FRONT of the checks...

And consider this: if you can get a *SLIGHT* tax break for owning a business where you are NOW taxed at a lower rate when you FINALLY get far enough ahead that you can ENJOY the fruits of your labors, then the difference between 40% and 25% could be...

A _ N E W _ E M P L O Y E E !!!

That's right, you HIRE SOMEONE with the extra money, to grow the business, relieve yourself from having to do ALL of the work yourself, yotta yotta.

Or you buy new equipment. Or you purchase more inventory. Or you open another store front or grow the business in another kind of way. Whichever.

LET PEOPLE KEEP WHAT THEY EARN! It's "fair".

bombastic bob Silver badge
FAIL

Re: Trumpkins Of The World, Unite!

"Cutting taxes for the top 1% while eliminating the state tax deduction for the bottom 90%. Is this what you voted for?"

fake news if you think THAT is happening. Still, I _WISH_ that top rates REALLY WERE were being cut! Sadly, I think the current political situation won't support it. Dumb-feels "feel" instead of think, "the rich" is an oppressed minority, and [believe it or not] the high marginal tax rates aren't ON "the rich", they're REALLY on people trying to _BECOME_ "the rich" !!! [high marginal tax rates on upper income earners help to keep the 'haves' and 'have nots' separated, in other words, and history confirms my premise]

If a 'rich' person is heavily taxed, that money goes to gummint. The money is then used to keep politicians in power, keep people doing busywork, and (effectively) pay people to STAY POOR (you know, welfare, food stamps, the social welfare tit, yotta yotta).

If a rich person is taxed LESS, the extra money goes to BUYING THINGS and HIRING PEOPLE for service work. In turn, more people are hired to MAKE things, etc..

You get what you pay for. In the case of sending money to gummint, you get more gummint, more social safety net for people who don't have jobs, and so on. In the case of KEEPING your earned cash, and spending it on things that have to be MADE or DONE, you get people WORKING to get the money.

I prefer the 2nd scenario. So, CUT TAXES ACROSS THE BOARD!

That's right. Let's get some WORK done for the money being spent. And it seems that only RICH people have money to SPEND these days. Taxing them MORE will only make things WORSE. Taxing them LESS will _MAKE_! _A_! _HUGE_! _DIFFERENCE_! in boosting the economy, WORLD WIDE.

It worked back in the 80's. and don't lie about the 80's, either. I was THERE. I was there in the 70's, too, and I know the difference. You can't convince me otherwise. The truth is the truth.

IKEA flat-packs TaskRabbit to crack assembly code

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Reading a manual

I always "read over" the manual, but when assembling furniture, you really do have to follow the procedure, to avoid the 'where does THIS panel go" problem, when you put the screws into the wrong one, etc. etc. and embarassingly have to remove them and put them into the RIGHT one...

[I got used to following procedures in the military. sometimes it makes more sense to do that]

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

"Is this because of 'Millennials' who may have seen exotic countries, lived at home with mom and dad for 20-odd years, and never had to do anything on their own or even <gasp> with their hands?"

actually I see this as "job opportunity" for teenagers. Excessively high minimum wages and illegal immigration have basically left teens with very few good opportunities for earning money, RESULTING in things like "living with mom and dad for 20 years"...

If I were a teenager, I'd do it. I used to do things like walking a lawnmower around the neighborhood looking for people in serious need of gardening help, then "do it for 5 bucks" - a one-time hit.

pirate icon because, after all, I _AM_ a privateer!

EU tells Facebook and Twitter: Obey us or we'll start regulating

bombastic bob Silver badge
Mushroom

"illegal content inciting hatred, violence and terrorism online"

and which "illegal content" would THAT be?

Is it *ILLEGAL* in the EU to speak your mind, when "they" don't agree with you?

OK they won't admit it's going in this direction, but it's going in this direction. Just like when the howler monkeys do the downvote poo-slinging, the EU socialists are going to SUPPRESS free expression, and they'll use corporations to do it.

If content is "illegal", why not prosecute the person who posted it? Oops, is that person OUTSIDE OF THE EU? Well, TOO! FREAKING! BAD!!!

The only people inciting HATRED VIOLENCE and TERRORISM are those who seek to PREVENT FREE SPEECH. This is what we get from the Califate Daesh-bags to left wing SOCIALIST "ANTIFA" types. The LAST thing that THEY want is someone expressing an opinion that THEY do not agree with, ESPECIALLY without THEM doing mud-slinging, downvotes, gang-up behavior, and outright BULLYING in one form or another, to SILENCE opposing ideas.

that's how they operate

Hotter than the Sun: JET – Earth’s biggest fusion reactor, in Culham

bombastic bob Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Muon catalysed fusion

"Does anyone know if there is significant effort going into muon catalysed fusion these days?"

dunno - I'm too lazy to look.

I'm a fan of using resonance. Anybody researching THAT? In the nuclear physics world, 'resonance capture' applies to neutrons. At certain neutron energies, Uranium [and other materials] will capture a neutron but the Uranium will never fission from it. It may spit it back out again, later, or may just keep it. Or it might alpha decay into something else. Whatever. You lose the neutron and the uranium atom, and that's the point. The idea is to slow the neutron down to thermal energies in as short of a distance as possible in order to minimize the capture. On the other hand... breeder reactors with U238 in them would rely on this factoid, and the slowing down length is MUCH bigger which is why they moderate with carbon instead of water.

In any case - the concept of resonance is *REAL*. Therefore, has anyone discovered the connection between proton/deuteron/trition resonant energies and the probability of a fusion reaction?

'duck duck go' search brought up one scientific paper, along with some links to other unrelated things like fusion music, MRI scans, and so forth. Not very helpful...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Boffin

Re: "The fission process turns two forms of hydrogen"

"The neutrons pass out of the magnetic fields because they are neutral, and strike atoms in the lining of the torus. These then undergo radioactive funtimes and release heat that's used to generate electricity."

nuclear reactions are fun in a lot of ways. but they still obey the laws of physics, like conservation of momentum.

When you add up the total momentum of the fission or fusion products, it will match what it was before the reaction. In the case of fission, the uranium is sitting still, so the split atom products will buzz off in opposite directions [this heats the fuel material]. You also get neutrons, and a LOT of gamma.

In the case of fusion, it's a bit different. the products fuse together to produce one "thing" plus a neutron. The velocity of the neutron may be very high compared to the original products, but it can't be TOO high, because [after all] you MUST conserve momentum.

So where does the energy end up? gamma. Gamma has no actual mass, and so its momentum is based on the "planck's constant stuff" and you can have more than one and they can all buzz off in different directions as long as TOTAL momentum is the same as it was when you started out. [in theory the neutron could go back the other way at extreme speed and the helium go in the same direction, and ALL of the energy could be in neutron + helium, with total momentum conserved, but this is much less likely than the ejection of gammas from the fused helium, which may actually NOT produce a neutron immediately].

And so, most of the energy is gamma. Trapping gamma is easy. You just need enough mass to slow ti down and heat up in the process.

Slowing down neutrons is a bit harder. you need something to 'scatter' it, something that weighs about as much as a neutron. like hydrogen. in water.

You could try to ABSORB neutrons, but that tends to deplete the material that does it. Boron 10 has a high affinity for absorbing neutrons. It becomes Boron 11 and then doesn't do squat for neutrons after that. boron is cheap, however, and might still be useful if you replace it often [or somehow just pump it through the system].

In any case, all of that energy becomes a) fusion products [He5, He4, Li5, etc.], b) neutrons [probably moving very very fast], and c) gamma radiation [most of it]

So you just need to collect the energy from the gamma. Easiest method: cooling system, using water. If the water blanket is thick enough, about 3 feet per "tenth thickness" as I recall, you'll get the energy from the neutrons as well. you just need to make sure the temperature is high enough so that you can boil water [direct boiling is possible, but probably a bad idea, because of neutron activation] and make steam and drive generator turbines with it.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: Fun times....

"We've had an economic revolution since then - there's no money left."

same as it ever was. politicians will make sure that their power is the only power that controls the economy, whenever they get a chance. If that means higher taxes and more spending, so be it. It empowers them.

bombastic bob Silver badge

Re: Do not press

"It's about what the US spends on the MIC per month"

and on "entitlements", per week. just sayin'.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Boffin

Re: "you probably won't go over 1200 psi, or about 550 deg F (as I recall). "

"Try that in Centigrade and you'd be nearer the mark."

uh, what? I could run the calculations in 'El Reg' units and it wouldn't change the efficiency. duh.

"The pressure for modern supercritical coal and oil plants is about 2x that."

2400psi? if you base that on the mollier diagram, that wouldn't be a whole lot hotter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mollier_diagram

It's a bit hard to read in that zone, but the temperature would be just under 1100R as I recall. The boiling point at 2000 psi was in the 600F range (1060R), if I remember correctly. the temperature change for a large pressure change in that zone is not very large. A few deg F gives you a major change in saturation pressure, maybe even doubling it.

So now by doubling the steam pressure you change your temperature by about 60F or so, which isn't a whole lot for the Carnot efficiency. You'd do better by trying to pre-cool the coolant more, get condenser vacuum up.

Not to mention the kinds of materials you'd need to handle 2000psi steam at 600F. But like I mentioned, it's been 30 years or so since I was "in the industry" so to speak. Tech has advanced a bit. but it hasn't managed to break the laws of physics. You still have limitations based on the physics characteristics of water and steam.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: scaling up is the answer?

"Also high temp superconductors are playing a big role."

the fact that they're using superconductors are even NECESSARY is a big problem in and of itself.

Gamma radiation disrupts superconductivity. The primary energy output of a fusion reaction is GAMMA ENERGY, and the secondary is neutron energy. This would be due to conservation of momentum, actually. And let's not mention the COOLING REQUIREMENT for these superconductors. Consider that the closest thing to a gamma source will absorb MOST of the energy, like the innermost part of the walls of the containment vessel. Magnets would be right outside of that, I'd expect. They'd get a nice heavy dose of gamma and neutrons, and heat up rapidly [which we know is bad for superconductors also, not just the effects that gamma radiation have on superconductivity].

So there ya have it. The very operation of the reactor causes its confinement mechanism to fail.

(it's another reason why I favor a more linear design, to limit the need for strong superconducting magnets that operate at extremely high temperatures, and also to rely more on electrostatic effects for confinement)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: scaling up is the answer?

"ITER is a money well"

that's one way to put it, yeah.

Back to my original point: They need to use something that's NOT a Tokomak. Thanks for pointing out the bit about replacing the housing after operating for a short period of time. that's not something that ended up in the article.

It's also why I would favor a linear design, embedded within a tank of water, which would act like heat exchanger and boiler, or just heat exchanger if you want to use a primary/secondary system like a PWR fission plant. Radioactive steam, due to neutron activation of various things in the water, is kinda, uh, bad.

The problem with a linear design is you'd have to make THAT large, too, and put lots of fuel through it, just to get it running. That might frighten the scientists because 'too much fuel' could become an H bomb. yeah, no risk involved in coming up with a design. However, the advantage would be the 'continuous operation' aspect. You'd have to magnetically and/or electrostatically confine the plasma, but you wouldn't have to worry about bending its direction of travel, nor the 'twisty/turny' aspect of having the outside portion going faster than the inside portion. You could use resonant cavities to 'bunch' the protons at ideal energy levels, and thereby allow their own energies to confine the fuel into tight enough bunches to cause fusion to happen THAT way. But I can't see this happening in a short distance, and I'm not sure how long the thing would actually have to be. CERN long? probably not, but if nobody builds the thing, how would we know?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: scaling up is the answer?

"Eventually, maybe, we'll have a useful reactor that's smaller than, say, a skyscraper."

Skyscraper sized - if we stick with Tokomak, yes, could be.

But of course, they SHOULD do it. At least one. As a proof of concept.

Like the first 'general use' computer, which was ginormous and had to be programmed by re-wiring it. That wouldn't be the specialized 'Collossus' machine developed by Turing and the Bletchley Park group [I don't know how that one was programmed, exactly] which was not 'general purpose', but still pretty damn good at the time. I think the first 'general use' computer was Eniac, which had to be re-wired to re-program it. And it was ginormous. That's the point.

As for my preference, there's a design that's based on keeping the plasma flow all at the same velocity, that twists and turns in somewhat unusual ways, producing a 'ribbon' effect as I recall. I can't remember what it is called, though...

And there are other possibilities with 'linear' rather than 'cyclic' accelerators.

And I don't know if they're at least looking into RESONANCE ENERGIES and other physical effects to assist with the fusion process. A linear system could employ something similar to a 'travelling wave tube' to bunch the protons/deuterons together at ideal energy levels, as one example. It would be a type of 'resonance confinement'.

Anyway you'd think they'd be talking about this stuff if it were being done, right?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Boffin

Re: scaling up is the answer?

(regarding the post by 'The Man Who Fell To Earth')

Uh, I visited the first link and did not see any of that information. The 2nd one was interesting [keep in mind I was talking about steam plants, not gas turbines].

I might as well give a bit of background on max efficiency:

Carnot Efficiency: https://www.e-education.psu.edu/egee102/node/1942

Here are some calculations based on Carnot efficiency.

For a 1200 psi steam plant, appx 550 deg F with 60F rejection temperature - that would be 1010R and 520R, approximately. Yeah I'm using deg R. deal with it. Would you prefer an El Reg unit?

max efficiency = (1010R - 520R) / 1010R, approximately 44.5%

That's the theoretical maximum assuming 100% efficiency everywhere else. A bit better than I expect, actually.

Of course In actual practice it's considerably lower than this. So achieving better than 30% is actually VERY good, so I won't doubt your claims outright.

But if you assume ~30% total efficiency instead of ~25%, you STILL end up using a third of that electricity just to run the fusion reactor. And THAT was my point, along with pointing out that Tokomak is probably NOT the best design for an actual power plant.

As for overall plant efficiency, you have turbine blade efficiency, the effects of condenser vacuum [or lack of it], delta-temperature across the condenser, generator efficiency, secondary steam systems, superheaters, and power required to run all of the support equipment (in particular all of the pumps, like cooling water pumps, and primary coolant pumps for a nuke plant).

And when you consider that 70% of the thermal energy goes out through the cooling system, those pumps have gotta be BIG. A high 'delta T' on the condenser would reduce its efficiency even more, so the flow rate for the cooling water has to be MASSIVE to keep efficiency up. Big pumps, with big electricity consumption, in other words.

Again, I've been out of the industry for a while. I remember what I've worked with. So kudos to steam plant makers who've squeezed an extra few percent efficiency out in the last 30 years. Well done.

Of course gas fired plants would have higher efficiency than steam plants, because they're not limited by the physics of steam.

But good luck transferring a bunch of gamma energy into a gas.

Nuclear aircraft were tried, at one time, and that one big problem of transferring nuke heat into air for a jet engine's turbine cycle became impractical. Sure, you COULD do it, if the heat transfer surface were 'big enough'. You'd need something that could absorb gamma AND neutron radiation, and would tolerate the higher temperatures. And pressurized water would land you back in the same realm as a fission plant. So there ya go.

And that was my point all along [so thanks to everyone for all of the thumbs down, a testament to your ignorance of practical applications in the realm of power plant engineering].

In answer to another question, the only reason they don't hire _ME_ is because I don't have their "lovely academic pedigree". After all, a paper pedigree makes you SO smart these days... [academic arrogance, yeah]. And yet I see it often enough, where "those who can't, teach". In the IT realm, professors who call themselves 'programmers' generate some of the most impractical, inefficient, and unmaintainable code I've ever seen. In Python. [used to be BASIC]

Question: how many people in this forum have ACTUALLY OPERATED a nuclear reactor or even a steam plant? (I have, just sayin')

Limp Weiner to get 21 months in the hole

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: The shame

"how the girl sold her story to an English Newspaper"

Your tabloids in the UK are better than ours, that's all.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: With his habits and a name like Weiner

"Religion"

you say that politics is more 'unaccepting' of the "sexuality of power"? In many cases, it's equally bad, and [to the elitists in BOTH arenas], "not a big deal". To them, it's just one of the 'percs' associated with power over other people.

"Another case of a priest or preacher engaging in sexual misconduct" - *yawn*

"Another case of a politician engaging in sexual misconduct" - *yawn*

Everyone forgot about Mr. Bill "sexual favors from an intern while on the phone in the Oval Office" Clinton?

[perhaps that makes Mrs. Clinton "the most cheated on woman in the world" and perhaps Huma, Weiner's wife, "the second most cheated on woman"]

(The Clintons - worse than any royal family, EVAR)

SQL Server 2017: What's new, what's missing on Linux, and what's next?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

Re: Why would you ever want to run SQL Server on Linux?

"That seems unlikely as Windows Server generally outperforms Linux on the same hardware in benchmarks."

not the ones _I_ have done.

As I recall Linux and FreeBSD were around 25% faster by my own measurements. It's been a while since I tested it, but I doubt this has changed. (I used Samba 3 when I did it, on equivalent hardware). But of course, the license agreements for various windows products [even back then] had something about "not publishing the results" without approval in the EULA. But how hard is it to do a simple file copy operation across a network using equivalent hardware? Anyone can benchmark THAT, and reproduce the kinds of results I saw.

and on winders, I'd run the test by using XCOPY from the command line, and not the GUI. That'd be "more fair". Then use "smbclient" on the Linux end. That way you test both client AND server operations. Windows to Linux, Linux to Windows, Windows to Windows, Linux to Linux, with the same file, NTFS vs EXT4 (or whatever) in addition to all of that, using Samba vs Windows' internal SMB stack.

Yeah, not hard. And since then, I haven't seen nor heard of any changes in relative performance that would justify me re-running that test.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Does its own memory management and threading??

FYI - you don't need a kernel module to manage threads. You'd just need a customized version of the 'pthreads' library, or (more likely) a wrapper around it.

I once wrote a threading library for 16-bit windows 3.x that used cooperative sharing (you'd have to call a function periodically that did cooperative thread switching). It was convenient enough to allow multi-thread solutions and to keep the UI working while you did background things, though Windows 3.x was always a single core. All you really needed to do was maintain a thread context and a separate stack for each thread, then prioritize and switch to them at the correct time, handle messages, yotta yotta. If you were waiting for UI, the thread switcher would happily run background tasks until you did something, and then it would dispatch the appropriate message to the handler like a normal windows application. So the UI was fast and responsive at the same time.

I expect that SQL Server's thread manager just does similar kinds of things, in userland. Windows now has something called 'fibers' that (as I understand) are very similar to the way I did cooperative threading. I also believe that SQL Server makes use of these a LOT. And Windows has a limit to the total number of threads per process, but an SQL Server thread manager could greatly increase this by use of its own stack/context switching method [which, again, could be done in userland].

Anyway, that's my take on it. I see no reason for a kernel module here. It would be better to avoid that anyway, so I guess I agree with the original premise of "wouldn't touch it with a 20 foot pitchfork" etc..

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Free forever!

don't think they haven't looked at this a lot harder than you might expect...

Windows has a built-in "license API" for things *LIKE* SQL Server. I have only looked at it in a cursory manner so I'm no expert. However, being as such a thing does NOT exist in Linux [and probably never will], and it's most likely VERY easy to circumvent any such thing on a Linux system, MS basically throws in the towel knowing that this is a battle they cannot win.

Otherwise, they'd put some kind of kernel-enforced per-seat licensing in it. You KNOW they would.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Why would you ever want to run SQL Server on Linux?

I would say M-shaft sees the writing on the wall, and their server OS business (especially as a VM in a cloud-based thingy) is losing _BIG_ to Linux. The only thing that might be keeping VMs running as a windows OS is, perhaps, an instance of SQL Server... and they're losing to DBMS's that CAN run on Linux, and they're once again "leading from behind" and trying desperately to catch up.

Because the Linux file system and kernel I/O handling is SO much better than windows [and has been for a VERY long time] it's extremely lkely that SQL Server plus Translation Layer on Linux _WILL_ be faster than SQL Server on _ANY_ version of windows.

And Micro-shaft KNOWS this.

In the mean time - amazingly, a LOT of developers swallow Micro-shaft's coolaid whenever they do a massive market campaign of their latest "new, shiny". How many people drank the ".Not" and "C-Pound" coolaid? How many drank the "Silverlight" coolaid? How many are currently drinking the "UWP" Coolaid?

So if your product/business is _ALREADY_ locked into some feature that ONLY SQL SERVER has, like the way they do stored procedures, or something equally similar [I haven't followed their development direction at all since they stated deviating from NORMAL SQL stuff] that can't be done (easily) with PG or MySQL or even Oracle, and it would be WAY TOO EXPENSIVE to "re-develop" everything, then you'll have an inclination to consider running SQL Server on "something that actually has performance" like Linux.

Otherwise, for new products, I'd suggest going with the lowest common denominator on the SQL side, so that ANY DBMS can be used with your product, thus eliminating the lock-in to any ONE. But not everyone thinks the way _I_ do, unfortunately.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

Re: ''Various flavours of Linux''

usually the compatibility problems between different 'flavours' (or 'flavors' if you're in the U.S.) is caused by linking with shared libs. If you static link instead [my preference] you can simply load the binaries into the correct places because Linux is Linux except for userland.

So, in theory, they could link static "everything" and then release as a tarball with a shell script to install it.

All of that Linux shared lib "DLL HELL" is like a bad echo of "what's wrong with Windows" anyway...

[if this potentially violates the GPL they can use clang instead of gcc, or ship their own binaries for their own shared libs along with the source for those libs]

Helium's for balloons and squeaky voices, not this 10TB Toshiba beast

bombastic bob Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Why any gas at all?

"I heard something about the read/write heads floating above the plates, and apparently the gas acts as a lubricant or something?"

The laminar boundary layer would prevent the heads contacting the disk (in normal operation).

When you have fluid flow, the molecules right on the surface of the pipe/container/whatever aren't moving. Molecules NEXT to those move, but not as fast as the total air flow. If you plot the fluid velocity vs distance from the surface, you get an exponential curve. The characteristics are based on velocity and the viscosity/pressure/etc. of the fluid. And, it forms what's known as a laminar boundary layer. Outside of that layer you get 'turbulent flow' which generally moves at the speed of the fluid. With spinning disks, this 'flow rate' is actually relative to the disk speed.

Anyway,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laminar_flow

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_layer

I expect Helium to have different laminar boundary layer characteristics than "plain air" and this is probably why the drive spins faster. It may also be physically smaller using Helium [which might have a thinner boundary layer] because the heads float closer to the disk [my speculation].

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Save the Helium, ban balloons

got... Helium? [we can make it by building fusion reactors, yeah!]

Seriously, regarding Helium: it can leak through just about anything, so eventually that helium will leak out. The question is whether or not it will be in any significant amount within a few years' time.

I understand that the Helium atom is small enough to pass through metals. I don't know about glass, though. Plastic helium balloons deflate within a few days, whereas 'plain air' balloons stay inflated almost indefinitely.

So I have to wonder if a 5 year old helium-filled hard drive will still work properly. I mean, how often do you recycle drives on a computer?

Mozilla whips out Rusty new Firefox Quantum (and that's a good thing)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Many of the good ones cannot be ported at this time

Australis SUCKS like a Kirby. I _HATE_ the 2D FLATSO!

well, we can always fork it like Mate and Devuan

Scared of that new-fangled 'cloud'? Office 2019 to the rescue!

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: And everything will ether have a GUI update or functions removed.

"external then I'd put my LinkedIn profile link instead."

I'd just take some random words strung together to appear in the form of a sentence. "Bat intestine repossesses sinking horse thought" or similar

otherwise, sigs are pointless, except in USENET or blogs