• (disco) in reply to Gaska
    Gaska:
    Yes, you cannot be EU citizen without being a member country's citizen
    You can be an EU citizen by marriage, parentage, etc. while not (I believe) being granted citizenship of the member state.
  • (disco) in reply to anotherusername
    anotherusername:
    In what language does 0x%04x make any sense?

    It's clearly a valid printf format string. Apparently, somehow the format string, itself, was printed instead of being used to format the integer value that should have been printed.

  • (disco) in reply to PWolff
    PWolff:
    What did I miss?

    Well, they typed "self:", not "Self:"

    Obviously they're running on a case-sensitive system...

  • (disco) in reply to Gaska

    (Psst-- the US does possess territory that is not within any of the States.)

  • (disco) in reply to blakeyrat
    blakeyrat:
    (Psst-- the US does possess territory that is not within any of the States.)

    Indeed. Washington DC is one of the better known examples.

  • (disco) in reply to accalia
    accalia:
    they are also highly likely to not be legally enforceale.

    but tht would require lawyers much deeper pockets than you have probably got to find out.

    ...nice little place you got here, very classy, wouldn't want...lawyers...to happen to it?

  • (disco) in reply to kupfernigk

    /me points to the sign behind her reading "Trespassers will be mauled, Lawyers will be mauled then fed to the crocodiles"

  • (disco) in reply to PWolff
    PWolff:
    A black and white printer able to output a full color photo?!

    Oddly, someone (maybe Kyocera, I forget) at one point made a small mono printer. But to try to get a big government contract, they needed a small printer with a scanner, which they didn't make. So they OEMed the first thing they could find which anyone would sell them...and ended up with a printer line which basically went mono printer, colour all-in-one. The result was considerable confusion among the sales force. I think the colour all-in-one was actually a Samsung.

  • (disco) in reply to PWolff
    PWolff:
    So the best shielding against radioactivity would be uranium.

    Because other approaches are failing, the current idea for a fusion reactor is exactly this - the thing is jacketed in U-238 which both shields against the neutrons from the T-De cycle, and itself generates heat from the neutron reactions.

    Small problem - the uranium jacket itself becomes highly radioactive, exactly as if it was a conventional fission reactor. So we're really back to square one, since we know how to make fission reactors already.

    Incidentally after 2 years confirmed deaths from Fukushima incident - 0. Confirmed deaths from Chernobyl - 38.

  • (disco) in reply to accalia
    accalia:
    "Trespassers will be mauled, Lawyers will be mauled then fed to the crocodiles"

    Surely you know that crocodiles and sharks do not attack lawyers1, because there is amity among related professions.

    1Or copier salesmen, management consultants and ITIL contractors, for the same reason.

  • (disco) in reply to kupfernigk

    get the croc hungry enough and it will try to eat its own foot

    or the lawyer will eat it first, in which case i'll rename the lawyer croc and repeat.

  • (disco)

    TRWTF is allowing AVG anywhere near your computer in the first place. AVG had a good product ten years ago. Now they don't.

  • (disco) in reply to Gaska
    Gaska:
    It has government. It has flag and anthem. It has its own territory. It has citizens.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE0X4G7MVBE&t=11s

  • (disco) in reply to kupfernigk
    kupfernigk:
    Incidentally after 2 years confirmed deaths from Fukushima incident - 0. Confirmed deaths from Chernobyl - 38.

    I thought the USSR had been better at handling information than that.

  • (disco) in reply to accalia
    accalia:
    lawyer

    That reminds me of one of the few good ways of applying lawyers.

  • (disco) in reply to kupfernigk
    kupfernigk:
    Incidentally after 2 years confirmed deaths from Fukushima incident - 0. Confirmed deaths from Chernobyl - 38.

    By that logic, smoking is healthy.

    Coincidentally: http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanhae/PIIS2352-3026(15)00094-0.pdf

    Interpretation: This study provides strong evidence of positive associations between protracted low-dose radiation exposure and leukaemia

  • (disco) in reply to PWolff

    i think we need this emoji.....

    [image]
  • (disco)

    This is all nice and well. But your rant forgets one thing: If radiation doesn't kill you outright, it will kill you long-term.

    This means that a mere two(2) years mean squat.

    I won't even get into the absurdity of a "confirmed" death due to long-term exposure to heightened surrounding levels of radioactivity.

    I mean, how do you confirm this? Wait for an alpha particle to confess to its crime: "It was me, guv'nor, me who dunnit!"

    You're also obviously ignoring the article I linked. And your numbers only count the ones who died due to radiation sickness and does not account for the massively heightened cancer rates.

  • (disco) in reply to Antarctica
    Antarctica:
    UX department

    that's the new fancy thing all the city boys are talking now?

  • (disco) in reply to PWolff
    PWolff:
    Gold is better because greater specific mass. Lead is used for its lower price, mostly.

    Btw, ist't the reason they're making weapons out of uranium that it is even more dense? So the best shielding against radioactivity would be uranium.

    What? They were talking about stable nuclei that radioactive isotopes decay into. How did you jump to shielding? And why would you even consider using a RADIOACTIVE ELEMENT for RADIOACTIVE SHIELDING?

  • (disco) in reply to accalia
    accalia:
    1e50

    Hey, you're getting the notation right now! :P

  • (disco) in reply to abarker
    abarker:
    What? They were talking about stable nuclei that radioactive isotopes decay into. How did you jump to shielding? And why would you even consider using a RADIOACTIVE ELEMENT for RADIOACTIVE SHIELDING?

    Well, U-238 is an alpha emitter so you could tape a plastic foil behind it (or simply keep a distance more than 10 cm) and be safe. Plus, it has a half-life of 4.468·10E9 a :stuck_out_tongue:

  • (disco) in reply to Rhywden

    Yeah, but what about those well known effects where subjecting a radioactive material to a radioactive source can accelerate radioactive decay? So much for your shielding when it suddenly starts to decay. ;)

  • (disco) in reply to abarker

    Considering that you'll end up with radioactive matter anyway, I suppose it doesn't really ... matter.

    ...

    Thanks, I'll be here all week.

  • (disco) in reply to abarker
    abarker:
    What? They were talking about stable nuclei that radioactive isotopes decay into. How did you jump to shielding?
    That's one of the disadvantages of a not very intuitive user interface (just tried to click the name of a poster of a post that was replied to - Discurse actually shows the discussion thread instead of the user profile as I expected. And I had still the metal-covered disks in mind. My fault.
    abarker:
    And why would you even consider using a RADIOACTIVE ELEMENT for RADIOACTIVE SHIELDING?
    Why not? As long as it is some orders of magnitude less radioactive than the stuff it shields, it should do. Besides that, my fault again, I forgot to add an irony tag.
  • (disco) in reply to PWolff
    PWolff:
    Discurse

    I like that name variant.

  • (disco)

    Your unknown is nearing end of life.

    It turns out that the last part is based on one of "those" boolean flags. Other values of the message:

    Your unknown is nearing end of file. Your unknown is nearing file not found. Your unknown is nearing true. Your unknown is nearing false. Your unknown is nearing more true. Your unknown is nearing more false. Your unknown is nearing undetermined.

    You don't want to know what the object blank is connected to.

  • (disco)
    kupfernigk:
    Since you call my post a rant, I've deleted it; I can't argue with people who simply resort to abuse of anyone who disagrees with them.

    You call that abuse? And deem it cause to delete your post? Ok ...

    :popcorn:

  • (disco)

    Y'know, I could try to catch every single boundary condition when making statements or I could also start using weasel words. But the former would be tedious and the second would make me a politician. Both are not fun. So excuse me if I keep my posts short which usually leads to people like you only partially understanding them.

    And if I cannot call your wall of text a rant which was only partially related to the topic, you're in for a very bad experience in the internet overall I fear.

    And no real background? That's rich coming from someone who counted merely 38 deaths from Czernobyl (the proper number would be 50, by the way) and discounts the thousands of cancer-related deaths due to the widely accepted theory that there is no safe threshold and that total lifetime dosage counts when calculating cancer risks, I find it fascinating that you of all people are accusing me here. You did hear of terms like LNT?

    In essence, your disregard of long-term cancer risks (which your idiotic "only 38 died to Czernobyl!" amounted to) lead me to the comparison to cigarettes because the risks for those are similarly long-term. I was not talking about the magnitude.

    Oh, and to make you really froth at the mouth: You do realize that you're talking to someone who studied Physics and actually handles radioactive stuff on a regular basis?

  • (disco) in reply to Rhywden
    Rhywden:
    PWolff:
    Discurse

    I like that name variant.

    Indeed. It's been in the Discopædia since 9 Oct 2014. Earliest use that discosearch can find is 19 Jun 2014.

  • (disco) in reply to abarker
    abarker:
    You call that abuse? And deem it cause to delete your post? Ok ..

    Apparently odd but not irrational. I thought at first of making it a PM, but then when I saw the reaction I deleted it.

  • (disco)

    Are we allowed to change topics of article comments threads? Because this one has long ceased to be that...

  • (disco) in reply to Rhywden
    Rhywden:
    Y'know, I could try to catch every single boundary condition when making statements or I could also start using weasel words. But the former would be tedious and the second would make me a politician. Both are not fun.

    Oh, and to make you really froth at the mouth: You do realize that you're talking to someone who studied Physics and actually handles radioactive stuff on a regular basis?

    Your first paragraph is just self-justification. Using statistics properly is not weasel words. Politicians use them improperly, scientists attempt to be correct.

    Your last paragraph - well, I had you down as a chemist but I stand corrected. I have only worked with "radioactive stuff" on a regular basis for about a decade but I have also had responsibility for radiological protection. I have also worked with heavy metals - mostly lead, nickel, chromium and copper - and been responsible for operator and environmental protection where they were concerned. I'm not an expert, but I have a little experience in protecting scientists and engineers from their own folly, so I do understand risk mitigation a bit. What you describe as a rant was an attempt to explain that we are subject to many, many environmental stresses which have an impact on life expectancy, and the important thing is the severity, plus the risk/benefit analysis. I won't go into this again because you don't see the relevance, but radionucleides and radiation are things we can mitigate but not eliminate - unless we can somehow stop cosmic rays, remove the uranium from granite and replace all the potassium in our bodies with the non-active isotopes only. Really this is our point of disagreement; you see risks in very black and white terms and regard any attempt to quantify as "weasel words", I try and get a more overall picture. But then, perhaps your wife hasn't had 15 successive days of bombardment with medium energy X-rays to try to kill off any surviving tumour cells, and you don't have a friend who has had radioactive needles inserted to (successfully) treat a different cancer. A risk of lymphoma or leukaemia in a three decade timescale is better than the certainty of death within 5 years.

    Finally, what's with the Czernobyl ? The first letter of that town is Ч which is very definitely a "Ch" not a "Cz". Is it pronounced differently in Ukrainian and there is some significance I'm missing here? (This is a genuine question, I don't want to put my foot into it if there is a "Russian" and a "Ukrainian" pronunciation and I use the wrong one in the wrong circumstances, like Kosova and Kosovo.)

  • (disco) in reply to kupfernigk

    If you had actually this kind of experience then you would know that your "only 38 deaths" number is a flat-out lie.

    I dare say that the IAEA knows a bit more about this than you do and they are projecting the deaths in the thousands.

  • (disco) in reply to Rhywden

    I notice that you are as usual trying to shift the boundaries - I mention deaths to date, you shift to projected deaths.

    Well, the IAEA put their logo on a document which included this:

    "Such an increase could mean eventually up to several thousand fatal cancers in addition to perhaps one hundred thousand cancer deaths expected in these populations from all other causes. An increase of this magnitude would be very difficult to detect, even with long term epidemiological studies."

    • in other words it might be thousands, we aren't sure and we probably won't know anyway because the increase is too small to measure reliably.

    (The problem was that some people read the paper carelessly and thought it said that the expected death rate due to Chernobyl was 100 000 - read it again, carefully this time.)

    In 2010 Dose-Response published this article:

    Observations on the Chernobyl Disaster and LNT

    A lot of the literate on Chernobyl actually seems to consist of people saying "You know those projections? Well, they were exaggerated." Time and again papers resort to "could eventually mean" or "up to", because Armageddon failed to materialise. There is even some evidence that suggests that some of the people who received higher dosages might even have had a reduction in susceptibility to solid tumours - and after all, that's why we have radiotherapy.

    I realise that you aren't going to be convinced by any number of research papers, and that this is wildly off topic, but if a single person other than you reads this, looks into things for themselves and as a result starts to think about the relative importance of different hazards and how to mitigate them, I will feel it's worth posting.

  • (disco) in reply to kupfernigk
    kupfernigk:
    Time and again papers resort to "could eventually mean" or "up to", because Armageddon failed to materialise.

    In part because people took action to try to limit absorbed doses in areas where fallout was high. I believe the main worries — outside the immediate vicinity of the plant — centre around radioactive cæsium and iodine because they're medium lifetime radio-nucleotides, pretty bioavailable and are retained in the body. Things that are longer-lived are mostly just chemically unpleasant (because heavy metals) and short-life stuff rapidly ceases to be.

  • (disco) in reply to kupfernigk

    Your "deaths to date" does not include cancer-related deaths, you moron. And you absolutely fail at statistics.

    It worries me that you're allowed to work on radioactive stuff.

    dkf:
    In part because people took action to try to limit absorbed doses in areas where fallout was high. I believe the main worries — outside the immediate vicinity of the plant — centre around radioactive cæsium and iodine because they're medium lifetime radio-nucleotides, pretty bioavailable and are retained in the body. Things that are longer-lived are mostly just chemically unpleasant (because heavy metals) and short-life stuff rapidly ceases to be.
    Give it up. Someone who's pathologically incapable of admitting that his number of 38 is a lie and who disputes that increased cancer risks due to radioactivity is a thing does not really deserve that you argue with him.

    Also, he doesn't quite comprehend that you can't directly attribute a cancer death to radioactivity (evidence: His lack of comprehension of my quip about a "guilty alpha particle") and thus tries to argue that thus you cannot make radioactivity responsible for such deaths. He also doesn't understand that this same argument could also be used to argue that cigarettes don't cause deaths.

  • (disco)

    Please read my text again.

  • (disco) in reply to Gaska

    Really shouldn't, but we could Jeff the offending posts. I'll look into that after I fix my desktop.

  • (disco) in reply to abarker

    But Jeffing isn't fun, unlike randomly changing topic names.

  • (disco) in reply to PWolff
    PWolff:
    Rhywden:
    Which is usually lead
    Gold is better because greater specific mass. Lead is used for its lower price, mostly.

    Btw, ist't the reason they're making weapons out of uranium that it is even more dense? So the best shielding against radioactivity would be uranium.

    That depends on which weapons you're talking about. Kinetic penetrator rounds are (or have been) made of depleted uranium because:
    • It is very dense, and certainly denser than anything else remotely common.
    • We have lots of it and there aren't that many things we can do with it.
    • It is pyrophoric, and therefore spreads burning fragments inside the target if it breaches the armour.
    • DU penetrators have the useful property of being "self-sharpening" which helps them penetrate cleanly. Competing high-density materials, such as tungsten, usually lack this property.

    It is also usable in that component of a nuclear weapon called the "tamper", but that's a whole other story.

  • (disco) in reply to Steve_The_Cynic

    And it gives a new meaning to the "scorched earth" tactic

  • (disco) in reply to anotherusername
    anotherusername:
    In what language does 0x%04x make any sense?

    In all of them that use printf syntax?

    printf("0x%04x", error_code);

    produces

    0x0ABC

    if error_code had value ABC

  • (disco) in reply to kupfernigk
    kupfernigk:
    Is it pronounced differently in Ukrainian and there is some significance I'm missing here?

    Apart from the first syllable the Ukrainian name Чорнобиль is the same as Russian Чернобыль and definitely should be expressed with CH in English. Wikipedia lists both pronunciation variants based either on Ukrainian or Russian:

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

    Last syllable difference between и and ы cannot be properly distinguished in English in this case. CZ would make sense in some Western Slavic languages like Czech or Polish, I think.

  • (disco) in reply to obeselymorbid

    Well, that makes a little more sense than my theory which was that they printed a 16-bit integer as two characters which somehow got escaped to %04x.

  • (disco) in reply to Rhywden
    Rhywden:
    who disputes that increased cancer risks due to radioactivity is a thing does not really deserve that you argue with him.

    You really are very good at attributing to me things I didn't write. I don't dispute that. I just keep boringly pointing out that your exaggerations are exaggerations.

    Rhywden:
    Also, he doesn't quite comprehend that you can't directly attribute a cancer death to radioactivity (evidence: His lack of comprehension of my quip about a "guilty alpha particle") and thus tries to argue that thus you cannot make radioactivity responsible for such deaths. He also doesn't understand that this same argument could also be used to argue that cigarettes don't cause deaths.

    Again you are telling a third party that I don't understand something that I understand very well thank you - I think it is you who doesn't understand the methodology of investigations of environmental factors - and how variable the results can be depending on your initial assumptions.

    However, someone above suggests that your "Czernobyl" may be anglicisation of Czech or another Slavic language. Perhaps English isn't your first language and you don't fully understand the literature in English. I don't know. All I know is, you are very, very full of yourself.

  • (disco) in reply to Rhywden
    Rhywden:
    If radiation doesn't kill you outright, it will kill you long-term.

    Via skin cancer or Vitamin D overdose? :tropical_fish:

    Gaska:
    Are we allowed to change topics of article comments threads?

    Please don't - I've no idea what it would do to the links from the front page articles.

  • (disco) in reply to PJH
    PJH:
    I've no idea what it would do to the links from the front page articles

    I suppose it would just discorrect them. Nothing else.

  • (disco) in reply to PJH
    PJH:
    Please don't - I've no idea what it would do to the links from the front page articles.
    Let's find out! :trolleybus:

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