Excellent point... People just have an innate fear of radioactive materials. If the Three Gorges dam in China broke due to a 9.0 earthquake, I'm sure the resulting disaster would be way worse -- but that people wouldn't say: "we shouldn't build dams anymore"....
There's always a cost-benefit analysis to building nuclear power plants... Sure, they *could* have built it to withstand a 9.9 earthquake and 100m tsunami waves and a 200mph hurricane -- but the cost would have been ridiculous.
They picked a threshold and gambled that there wouldn't be a worse quake coming before the plant served the end of its operational lifetime. Everyone takes a risk... otherwise no one would cross the street.
My "AND" wasn't meant to suggest anything other than that if it was *just* an earthquake, the reactor design wouldn't have failed so spectacularly.
The one-two punch of an earthquake and then a tsunami made this "generation II" reactor vulnerable to meltdown. I don't know what a "generation III" reactor would have done, but with passive cooling, a newer design might have held up better.
Insulin is probably the best example of biorefineries producing widespread drugs... and maybe someday all chemical synthesis will be a type of fermentation process.
I think captcha's will simply become more game-like... so instead of trying to get people to make out distorted letters, they'll be more like "which of these things is not like the others?" games with pictures.
Hmm. The Soyuz manned space missions probably have the best safety record -- beating the shuttle by quite a bit. Not sure what other manned space program to compare the shuttle to that would make the shuttle look better...?
Delos David Harriman, known as "D.D. Harriman," is a character in the fiction of noted science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein. He is an entrepreneurial businessman who masterminded the first landing on the Moon as a private business venture. His story is part of Heinlein's Future History.
Considering that there were also no "video/audio daily doubles" in this match, Watson also has been given a bit of a pass because these Jeopardy games were made for him/it to be able to respond to....
I'm sure if the Jeopardy question creators really wanted a human to win, that they could devise questions that would be impossible for Watson to parse and return a sensible answer. Just require all the correct responses to be in pig latin or something like that....
Though Watson seemed to be running the round and beating Jennings and Rutter to the punch with its answers many times, Welty insisted that Watson had no particular advantage in terms of buzzer speed. Players can't buzz in to give their questions until a light turns on after the answer is read, but Welty says that humans have the advantage of timing and rhythm.
"They're not waiting for the light to come on," Welty said; rather, the human players try to time their buzzer presses so that they're coming in as close as possible to the light. Though Watson's reaction times are faster than a human, Welty noted that Watson has to wait for the light. Dr. Adam Lally, another member of Watson's team, noted that "Ken and Brad are really fast. They have to be."
That doesn't actually explain how Watson doesn't have a speed advantage over humans.... uh, human timing and rhythm are superior to the speed of electrical impulses?
I sorta wonder how Google's search results might compare to Watson, actually. These algorithms don't really "understand" the questions (or answers), so pattern-matching capabilities might be enough to play a decent game of Jeopardy.....
On the post: DailyDirt: Nuclear Power Plants 101
Re: Re: Re: Re: Worst Case
Excellent point... People just have an innate fear of radioactive materials. If the Three Gorges dam in China broke due to a 9.0 earthquake, I'm sure the resulting disaster would be way worse -- but that people wouldn't say: "we shouldn't build dams anymore"....
On the post: DailyDirt: Nuclear Power Plants 101
Re:
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/03/15/josef_oehmen_nuclear_not_wor ried_viral/index.html
On the post: DailyDirt: Nuclear Power Plants 101
Re: Re: Re:
They picked a threshold and gambled that there wouldn't be a worse quake coming before the plant served the end of its operational lifetime. Everyone takes a risk... otherwise no one would cross the street.
On the post: DailyDirt: Nuclear Power Plants 101
Re:
The one-two punch of an earthquake and then a tsunami made this "generation II" reactor vulnerable to meltdown. I don't know what a "generation III" reactor would have done, but with passive cooling, a newer design might have held up better.
On the post: The Tragedy
Re: Out of Date Mirror
http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20010917010814/http://mail1.ats.rochester.edu/~mp003k/ter rorism.html
On the post: DailyDirt: Biodiversity Makes Life More Interesting
Re: Right you are...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tootsie_Pops#Rumors_and_set_Attempts_for_Tootsie_Pop
But the lick estimates range from about a couple hundred to a few thousand....
On the post: DailyDirt: Computers Are Beating Us At Our Own Games
Re: Backgammon
On the post: DailyDirt: Baby Language Development
Re: You forgot dopey, grumpy, and ga-ga
On the post: DailyDirt: Medical Research Discoveries
Re: Hair
That's kind of a solved problem...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_hair_removal
On the post: DailyDirt: Medical Research Discoveries
Re: calm and hairy...
Well... I wonder if drugs meant for treating psychological disorders have exhibited this side effect at all...? That would be interesting.
On the post: DailyDirt: Robot Balancing Acts
Re: High speed robotics ftw
On the post: DailyDirt: Biofuels From Tiny Organisms
Re:
On the post: DailyDirt: Games For People... Not Computers
Re:
On the post: DailyDirt: Food That's Good For You... Maybe?
Re: [Peaches]x10^6
I agree the song can get annoying -- probably b/c it's played with on a basitar and guitbass -- a 3-string guitar and a 2-string bass.
Or maybe it's just an annoyingly repetitious song.
On the post: DailyDirt: Natural, All-Organic Intelligence... For The Birds
FYI.. the discussion on how many 5yo's you can fight...
:)
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Re: space shuttle safety record
On the post: DailyDirt: More Commercial Spaceships On The Way
Re:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delos_D._Harriman
On the post: DailyDirt: Add Jeopardy! To The List Of Games That AI Is Better At Than You....
Re: Re:
I'm sure if the Jeopardy question creators really wanted a human to win, that they could devise questions that would be impossible for Watson to parse and return a sensible answer. Just require all the correct responses to be in pig latin or something like that....
On the post: DailyDirt: Add Jeopardy! To The List Of Games That AI Is Better At Than You....
Re: Re:
That doesn't actually explain how Watson doesn't have a speed advantage over humans.... uh, human timing and rhythm are superior to the speed of electrical impulses?
On the post: DailyDirt: Add Jeopardy! To The List Of Games That AI Is Better At Than You....
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