A page for randomness

Interest in Wii outpaces 360, PS3
After interest in the PS3 peaked, both the Wii and Xbox 360 spiked. While both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 saw demand drop off and level out towards the middle of January, the Wii experienced an additional bump after an initial dropoff. Since that time, consumer interest has leveled off more gradually and is siginficantly higher than that of the other two next-gen consoles.

Source: Compete

The continuing scarcity of the Wii is likely sustaining shoppers’ interest in the console. Compete’s most recent data—from about two weeks ago—shows that consumers are still far more interested in the Wii than either of the other two next-generation consoles. Also, those shopping for the Wii are not as likely to consider buying a different console as those who are shopping for either a PS3 or 360.

Sonys earnings hit by battery, gaming woes
The third quarter of fiscal year 2006 was a rough one for Sony, just as the company had warned. Overall, Sony saw earnings of ¥159.9 billion $1.31 billion on revenues of ¥2.607.7 trillion $21 billion. Although revenues were up over the same quarter last year ¥2.375 trillion, net income declined 5.3 percent from last years ¥168.9 billion $1.39 billion figure.

Sony laid the blame for the earnings shortfall primarily at the feet of Sony Computer Entertainment, the division responsible for consoles. SCE posted a ¥54.2 billion loss $443 million due to the costs associated with manufacturing and launching the PlayStation 3 along with lower sales of the PSP and price cuts on the PS2. Last year, SCE saw a ¥67.8 billion profit $556 million.

Sony reiterated that it would reach the 6-million mark for PlayStation 3 shipments by the end of the fiscal year on March 31. More importantly, the consumer electronics giant said that the PlayStation 3 would break even during the last half of fiscal year 2007.

AppleInsider | Apple revenues could catch Microsoft by 2010
An analysis at 10Layers points out that while both Microsoft and Apple have seen healthy revenue growth in the last 5 years, Apple is growing at a near exponential rate compared to Microsoft’s linear path.

“Microsoft’s revenues have grown approximately 60 percent from just under $30B in 2002 to over $44B in 2006,” the report states. “However, while Microsoft has grown linearly for this period, Apple has accelerated with revenues of just under $6B in 2002 growing to just under $21B in 2006.”

For Apple, that represents an impressive 250 percent revenue growth.

I’ve downloaded emacs for windows… i suppose i am taking the plunge to learn it :-/

School Accidentally Congratulates Unaccepted Students - News
An e-mail sent by admissions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill accidentally congratulated thousands of prospective freshmen on their acceptance to the school.

The problem is none of the 2,700 students has been admitted yet. They’re wait-listed and won’t find out until March whether they’ve made the cut.

UNC said it deeply regrets the error. A school official said two employees accidentally sent the e-mail, which began, “Congratulations again on your admission to the University.”

Admissions officials sent follow-up e-mails apologizing for the error. They’ve also e-mailed admissions counselors around the nation to explain the mistake.

About 20,000 people apply each year to UNC Chapel Hill, and the school enrolls about 3,800 new freshmen anually.

Intel announces 45nm breakthrough
In a nutshell, Intel has announced a pair of advances in their 45nm process that will cut down drastically on leakage current (see below for more), enabling the company to make the transistors on their next generation of chips much smaller without worrying so much about current bleeding through when the transistor is in the “off” position. The first of these advances is the use of a high-k gate dielectric, a first in commercial semiconductor production. The dielectric is essentially an insulator that can now be made very thin without allowing electrical current to seep through (due to quantum tunneling) when the transistor is in the “off” position.

To complement this high-k dielectric, Intel has also moved to a metal gate electrode. This metal gate electrode is more compatible with the new hafnium-based dielectric than the polysilicon electrode used in previous process steps.

The new 45nm process will be used for Intel’s forthcoming Penryn microarchitecture, which is basically just a die shrink of Woodcrest with more cache.

According to David Kanter at RealWorldTech, IBM and AMD don’t plan to move to a similar high-k dielectric until the 32nm process node, a decision that may put them at a disadvantage versus Intel at 45 nanometers. Kanter summarizes the situation as follows:

The high-k dielectrics and metal gates will give Intel an advantage on their 45nm process. However, this transistor level advantage will not directly translate to microprocessor performance, without corresponding advances or clever engineering to address wire delay. It will be up to Intel’s MPU designers and marketers to make the most of these benefits, by increasing clock speed or reducing power. The real question is whether the combination of high-k dielectrics and metal gates will shut the window of opportunity for AMD, when they introduce their own 45nm process in mid to late 2008, and only time will tell where the chips will fall.

The story of Mel, a Real Programmer from FOLDOC

Who’s Making Money from Teens? - AcquiretheEvidence.com
Non-profit organizations are required to report the salaries of leaders and “key employees” on the fourth page of the return. Teen Mania reported that, for the year that ended in August 2004, Ron and Katie Luce, combined, were paid $162,000, and the then-Chief Operating Officer, Rick Brenner was paid $180,455. The year Brenner was paid that sum, he was about fifty years old.

Pat Robertson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In 2006 Robertson became a global warming “convert.” One source attributes this conversion to the 2006 North American heat wave. On August 3, 2006, he said on his 700 Club show:

But I tell you stay in doors ladies and gentleman. Stay cool. Get fans or whatever. And the poor, they need emergency fans and ice to cool down — the number of people dead. I have not been one who believed in the global warming. But I tell you, they are making a convert out of me as these blistering summers. They have broken heat records in a number of cities already this year and broken all-time records and it is getting hotter and the ice caps are melting and there is a build up of carbon dioxide in the air. We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels. If we are contributing to the destruction of the planet we need to do [something] about it.

As recently as October of 2005, Robertson (then a disbeliever in global warming), accused the National Association of Evangelicals of teaming up with “far left environmentalists” in stating that global warming was caused by humans and needed to be mitigated.

Now, however, Robertson’s current position on global warming puts him at odds with President George Bush who pulled out of the international Kyoto Protocol in 2001, which sets limits on emissions to curb global warming. Robertson is viewed by one million viewers and often sets the conservative political agenda on national issues
Remarks concerning feminism, homosexuality, and liberalism

Robertson has described feminism as a “socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.” Many of Robertson’s views mirror those of the evangelical activist Jerry Falwell, who has made frequent appearances on The 700 Club. He agreed with Falwell when Falwell stated that the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks were caused by “pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays, lesbians, the American Civil Liberties Union and the People for the American Way.”

After public outcry regarding the dialogue, which was conducted via television monitor and took place only days after the attacks, Robertson claimed that his earpiece was malfunctioning, and that he was unaware of what he was agreeing with at the time.

On the June 8, 1998 edition of his show, Robertson denounced Orlando, Florida and Disney World for allowing a privately sponsored “Gay Days” weekend. Robertson stated that the acceptance of homosexuality could result in hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, terrorist bombings and “possibly a meteor.” The resulting outcry prompted Robertson to return to the topic on June 24, where he quoted the Book of Revelation to support his claims.

While discussing the Mark Foley scandal on the October 5, 2006 broadcast of the show, Robertson condemned Foley saying he “does what gay people do”.
Leg press claims

Robertson claims on his web site that through training and his “Age-Defying energy shake”, he is able to leg press 2,000 pounds while others claim he is a liar, pushing a common energy formula. 2,000 pounds would be an exceptional accomplishment for a world-class athlete, to say nothing of a 76-year-old man like Robertson. For comparative purposes, when Dan Kendra set the Florida State University record of 1,335 pounds, the leg press machine required extensive modifications to hold the proper amount of weight, and the capillaries in both of Kendra’s eyes burst during his successful attempt. Thus, Robertson’s claimed achievement would add 665 pounds to the best-ever total of Kendra, a top athlete in his physical prime, who would go on to play professional football in the National Football League and become a Navy SEAL.

In response to the skepticism of this claim, Robertson’s website has claimed that his doctor is able to leg press 2,700 pounds, and that “It is not nearly as hard as the authors of these reports make it out to be.”

A video has also been provided supposedly demonstrating Robertson doing several reps with a weight of 1,000. In the video Pat Robertson is seen using a 45 degree sled type leg press machine, which reduces the effective weight to 707 lbs (sin(45°) x 1000 lbs). He keeps the safety locks in place at the second step which severely limits the range of possible motion. The seat is positioned to allow approximately six inches of travel after the lock. This setup gives Pat Robertson the maximum mechanical advantage at the last few inches of travel. This is generally regarded to be improper leg press technique, and is significantly easier than a proper leg press. The proper technique is to load the weight, place hands on the release levers and then to press the weight from the stops and then to rotate the stops out. Then, the weight is allowed to slide down until the hip and knee joints are at significant flexion. At this point, the person executing the leg press has minimal mechanical advantage and can press the least amount of weight. In the video, Robertson also uses his arms to push on his thighs, which is also regarded as improper technique.

RDRAM - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
RDRAM includes a memory controller on each memory chip, significantly increasing manufacturing complexity compared to SDRAM, which used a single memory controller located on the northbridge chipset. RDRAM was also two to three times the price of PC-133 SDRAM due to a combination of high manufacturing costs and high license fees.

The design of Rambus memory dictates that memory sticks be installed in sets of two. Any remaining open memory slots must be filled with CRIMMs. These sticks provide no extra memory, and only served to terminate the other slot.

Megahertz myth - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The future of the myth

Ironically, Intel is now having to dig itself out of a marketing hole it created for itself when it released the Pentium 4. Their new generation of chips, the Intel Core 2, has clock speeds of around 2-3 GHz. While the Core line is a breakthrough in terms of performance-per-watt, its low clock speed when compared to late generation Pentium 4s (rated at upwards of 3.5 GHz) is likely to cause some marketing confusion. Intel is now in the position of trying to sell consumers processors with lower gigahertz ratings, having spent the better part of the last five years telling consumers that slower clock speed denotes inferiority.

This can also cause problems for third party manufacturers. For example, Panasonic lists a Pentium 4-based machine running at 3 GHz as the minimum system requirement for their soon to be released Blu-ray Disc drives. A 1.8 GHz Core Duo is significantly faster than the 3 GHz Pentium 4, but to some consumers reading specifications on the side of a box this statement can be completely confusing.

Athlon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Athlon is the brand name applied to a series of different x86 processors designed and manufactured by AMD. The original Athlon, or Athlon Classic, was the first seventh-generation x86 processor and, in a first, retained the initial performance lead it had over Intel’s competing processors for a significant period of time. AMD has continued the Athlon name with the Athlon 64, an eighth-generation processor featuring x86-64 (later renamed AMD64) technology.

Intel 80386 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Intel 80386 is a microprocessor which was used as the central processing unit (CPU) of many personal computers from 1986 until 1994 and later. During its design phase the processor was code-named simply “P3″, the third-generation processor in the x86 line, but was and is frequently referred to as the i386. Designed and manufactured by Intel, the i386 processor was taped-out in October of 1985. Intel decided against producing the chip before that date, as the cost of production would have been uneconomical. Full-function chips were first delivered to customers in 1986. Motherboards for 386-based computer systems were highly elaborate and expensive to produce, but were rationalized upon the 386’s mainstream adoption.

The 386 was the first x86 to have a 32-bit architecture. This is an architecture whose use continued for more than a decade, until the introduction of x64, which features a 64-bit architecture.

The first personal computer to make use of the 386 was designed and manufactured by Compaq[1], and Andy Grove, Intel’s CEO at the time, made the decision to single-source the processor, decisions that were ultimately crucial to both the processor’s and Intel’s success in the market.

Because of the high degree of compatibility, the range of processors compatible with the 80386 is often collectively termed the i386 architecture; the instruction set for the architecture is now known as IA-32 or, informally, i386.

In May 2006 Intel announced that production of the 386 would cease at the end of September 2007. [2] Although it had long been obsolete as a personal computer CPU, Intel had continued to manufacture the chip for embedded systems.

Greedy algorithm - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The greedy algorithm determines the minimum amount of US coins to give while making change. These are the steps a human would take to emulate a greedy algorithm. Greed manifests itself in this process because the algorithm picks the coins of highest value first.

make - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In computer programming, make is a utility for automatically building large applications. Files specifying instructions for make are called Makefiles. make is most commonly used in C/C projects, but in principle it can be used with almost any compiled language.

The basic tool for building an application from source code is the compiler. make is a separate, higher-level utility which tells the compiler which source code files to process. It tracks which ones have changed since the last time the project was built and invokes the compiler on only the components that depend on those files. Although in principle one could always just write a simple shell script to recompile everything at every build, in large projects this would consume a prohibitive amount of time. Thus, a makefile can be seen as a kind of advanced shell script which tracks dependencies instead of following a fixed sequence of steps.

Today, programmers increasingly rely on Integrated Development Environments and language-specific compiler features to manage the build process for them instead of manually specifying dependencies in makefiles. However, make remains widely used, especially in Unix-based platforms.

Knights of the Lambda Calculus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Knights of the Lambda Calculus’ recursive emblem celebrates Scheme’s theoretical foundation, the lambda calculus. Y in the emblem refers to the Fixed point combinator and the reappearance of the picture in itself refers to the recursion.

Lambda calculus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In mathematical logic and computer science, lambda calculus, also λ-calculus, is a formal system designed to investigate function definition, function application, and recursion. It was introduced by Alonzo Church and Stephen Cole Kleene in the 1930s; Church used lambda calculus in 1936 to give a negative answer to the Entscheidungsproblem. Lambda calculus can be used to define what a computable function is. The question of whether two lambda calculus expressions are equivalent cannot be solved by a general algorithm, and this was the first question, even before the halting problem, for which undecidability could be proved. Lambda calculus has greatly influenced functional programming languages, such as Lisp, ML and Haskell.

Lambda calculus can be called the smallest universal programming language. It consists of a single transformation rule (variable substitution) and a single function definition scheme. Lambda calculus is universal in the sense that any computable function can be expressed and evaluated using this formalism. It is thus equivalent to the Turing machine formalism. However, lambda calculus emphasizes the use of transformation rules, and does not care about the actual machine implementing them. It is an approach more related to software than to hardware.

Turing machine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Turing machines are extremely basic symbol-manipulating devices which — despite their simplicity — can be adapted to simulate the logic of any computer that could possibly be constructed. They were described in 1936 by Alan Turing. Though they were intended to be technically feasible, Turing machines were not meant to be a practical computing technology, but a thought experiment about the limits of mechanical computation; thus they were not actually constructed. Studying their abstract properties yields many insights into computer science and complexity theory.

A Turing machine that is able to simulate any other Turing machine is called a Universal Turing machine (UTM, or simply a universal machine). A more mathematically-oriented definition with a similar “universal” nature was introduced by Alonzo Church, whose work on lambda calculus intertwined with Turing’s in a formal theory of computation known as the Church–Turing thesis. The thesis states that Turing machines indeed capture the informal notion of effective method in logic and mathematics, and provide a precise definition of an algorithm or ‘mechanical procedure’.

D (programming language) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
D is an object-oriented, imperative, multiparadigm system programming language by Walter Bright of Digital Mars. It originated as a re-engineering of C , but even though it is predominantly influenced by that language, it is not a variant of C . D has redesigned some C features and has been influenced by concepts used in other programming languages, such as Java, C# and Eiffel. A stable version, 1.0, was released on January 2, 2007.

Static library - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
When one uses static libraries to create an executable, its size will be large when compared to an executable which uses dynamic libraries. This is due to the fact that linking to static libraries includes the actual code for the library function(s)/procedure(s) with the executable, whether linked at compile-time or at run-time. However, in some cases, linking to static libraries can result in a performance improvement over linking to dynamic libraries, and, of course, one avoids DLL hell in Microsoft Windows. But these advantages are by far not the sole consideration, and many executables (especially those targeting Microsoft Windows) use both static and dynamic libraries.

It is important to note that any static library function can call a function or procedure in another static library; the linker/linking loader/loader handles this the same way as for any “normal” object file.

Hello world program - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A “hello world” program is a software program that prints out “Hello world!” on a display device. It is used in many introductory tutorials for teaching a programming language. Such a program is typically one of the simplest programs possible in a computer language. Some are surprisingly complex, especially in some graphical user interface (GUI) contexts, but most are very simple, especially those which rely heavily on a particular command line interpreter (”shell”) to perform the actual output. In many embedded systems, the text may be sent to a one or two-line liquid crystal display (LCD), or some other appropriate signal, such as an LED being turned on, may substitute for the message.

A “hello world” program can be a useful sanity test to make sure that a language’s compiler, development environment, and run-time environment are correctly installed. Configuring a complete programming toolchain from scratch to the point where even trivial programs can be compiled and run can involve substantial amounts of work. For this reason, a simple program is used first when testing a new tool chain.

While small test programs existed since the development of programmable computers, the tradition of using the phrase “Hello world!” as a test message was influenced by an example program in the book The C Programming Language. The example program from that book prints “hello, world” (without capital letters or exclamation sign), and was inherited from a 1974 Bell Laboratories internal memorandum by Brian Kernighan, Programming in C: A Tutorial, which contains the first known version.

Backus–Naur form - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As an example, consider this possible BNF for a U.S. postal address:

::=   

 ::=
  
|

::=  |  “.”

 ::=    

 ::=  “,”   

This translates into English as:

• A postal address consists of a name-part, followed by a street-address part, followed by a zip-code part.
• A name-part consists of either: a personal-part followed by a last name followed by an optional “jr-part” (Jr., Sr., or dynastic number) and end-of-line, or a personal part followed by a name part (this rule illustrates the use of recursion in BNFs, covering the case of people who use multiple first and middle names and/or initials).
• A personal-part consists of either a first name or an initial followed by a dot.
• A street address consists of an optional apartment specifier, followed by a house number, followed by a street name, followed by an end-of-line.
• A zip-part consists of a town-name, followed by a comma, followed by a state code, followed by a ZIP-code followed by an end-of-line.

Note that many things (such as the format of a first-name, apartment specifier, or ZIP-code) are left unspecified here. If necessary, they may be described using additional BNF rules.

Backus–Naur form - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Backus–Naur form (also known as BNF, the Backus–Naur formalism, Backus normal form, or Panini–Backus Form) is a metasyntax used to express context-free grammars: that is, a formal way to describe formal languages.

BNF is widely used as a notation for the grammars of computer programming languages, instruction sets and communication protocols, as well as a notation for representing parts of natural language grammars (for example, meter in Venpa poetry.) Most textbooks for programming language theory and/or semantics document the programming language in BNF.

There are many extensions of and variants on BNF.

Good versus evil. What makes something good or evil? If there were no evil, would good seem so “good”? It is a reflection thing, you look at what is around you in order to value other things. If everyone wants your special item, doesn’t it make it that much more precious to you (Think Wii)? You label someone (or yourself) as good, and by comparison of those around you, you are able to determine how “good” they/you really are.

Most people around here believe that there is an almighty “god”. In general, they also believe that this god (from now on referenced as “God”) is all knowing, all loving, and just the flat out definition of “good”. These same people generally believe that people, when they die, go to heaven or go to hell, based upon their good deeds and/or other factors, and that it is God who sends them there, based upon his judgement. How could a god who is “good” condemn people to eternal suffering? What is the reasoning behind such a thing?

Some people believe that only 144,000 people will enter heaven. The rest of the people, all the billions that have come and gone, will be sent to hell. Going back to the idea that how good something is can be defined by factors surrounding it. Here is why God is so damn good…

Think about your typical university situation. High admission standards, not a lot of people get in, the value/demand goes up, because less people have the chance to experience it. The same applies to God and heaven. By sending everyone but just a small unimaginable percentage of those who have ever lived to hell, he makes heaven that much better. If all those other people go to hell, and therefore help to define what is evil more (and also what is not good), heaven is more and more defined as good and God becomes the most “good” that he will ever be.

Good luck getting to your destination.

// ——————————-

// ExecuteTests.C

#include
#include “PointTest.H”

int main (int argc, char* argv[])
{
// declare a test runner
CppUnit::TextUi::TestRunner runner;

// this is where you add your test cases.
runner.addTest (PointTestCase::suite ());

// runs the tests
runner.run ();
return 0;
}

// ——————————-

// PointTest.H

#ifndef CAJUN_POINTTEST_H
#define CAJUN_POINTTEST_H

#include
#include

// this is the class you with to test
#include “point_t.H”

class PointTestCase : public CppUnit::TestCase
{
// register this case in the test suite
CPPUNIT_TEST_SUITE (PointTestCase);

// all tests you intend to run should be added here
// for example, adding something that checks for
// subtraction: CPPUNIT_TEST (TestSubtraction)
// where “TestSubtraction” is the name of the function
// that is defined below
CPPUNIT_TEST (TestAddition);

// required
CPPUNIT_TEST_SUITE_END ();

public:
// any initialization procedures go here
void setUp ();

// any finalization procedures go here
void tearDown ();

protected:
// the test functions
void TestAddition ();

private:
// declare a variable of the type you are testing
point_t* m_point;

};

#endif
// ——————————-

// PointTest.C

#include “PointTest.H”

// this registers your test case (required)
CPPUNIT_TEST_SUITE_REGISTRATION (PointTestCase);

// any setup procedures such as memory allocations
void PointTestCase::setUp ()
{
m_point = new point_t ();
}

// any finalization procedures such as deletions
void PointTestCase::tearDown ()
{
delete m_point;
m_point = NULL;
}

// a test function
void PointTestCase::TestAddition ()
{
// make a call to the function you are trying to test
m_point->add(42.0);
// now check to see if everyone performed as expected
CPPUNIT_ASSERT_EQUAL (42.0, m_point->get_value ());

// CPPUNIT_ASSERT_EQUAL (expected_value, myvar.getActualValue ());
// There are other similar functions, some that include a “delta” value (like if 0 doesn’t equal 0 for some reason, it happens)

}
// ——————————-

// Point.H

#ifndef CAJUN_POINT_T_H
#define CAJUN_POINT_T_H

// sample class
class point_t
{
private:
double m_value;

public:
point_t ();

// add some value to this point_t
void add (double);

// get the value of this point_t
double get_value ();
};

#endif
// ——————————-

// Point.C

#include

point_t::point_t ()
{
m_value = 0.0;
}

void point_t::add (double x)
{
m_value += x;
}

double point_t::get_value ()
{
return m_value;
}

Study suggests economics, not morality key to online movie piracy
Approximately 80 percent of movie downloaders only do so illegally according to Digital Life America. The profile of an average P2P downloader is a 29-year-old male (63 percent are male, 37 percent female) with 16 movie titles stored on his computer. Only 40 percent of those surveyed believed that downloading copyrighted movies was a “very serious offense.” Study director Kaan Yigit said that this attitude is a likely result of the Robin Hood effect. “Most people perceive celebrities and studios to be rich already and as a result don’t think of movie downloading as a big deal,” he said. However, 78 percent believed that physically stealing a DVD from a store was equally offensive, indicating that increased likeliness of getting caught red-handed is what drives people’s perception of which crime is worse, not the Robin Hood effect. And as another metric for what survey respondents considered “very serious,” 59 percent said that parking in a fire lane was a very serious offense as well.

Another way of looking at this part of the survey data is to acknowledge that illegal downloading is less the result of a moral calculation on the downloader’s part than it is the result of a simple economic calculation. The illegal downloader looks at the risk vs. reward equation, factors in other terms like convenience and price, and ulimtimately finds the illegal download overwhelmingly more attractive than the legal download.

Kira Nerys - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
When DS9 was first conceived, “Star Trek: The Next Generation” character Ensign Ro Laren was to have played a major role in the new series. “Major Kira” was created when actress Michelle Forbes declined the offer to appear in the new series.

Nana Visitor and Alexander Siddig formerly called Siddig El Fadil, who plays Dr. Bashir on the show, were married during the seriess run. Nanas pregnancy with their child, Django El Tahir El Siddig, was written into the story when Kira accepted the OBriens unborn child into her womb after an accident aboard a runabout. The actors have since divorced.

Kira is considered the best springball player on the station.

Plutonium - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
During the initial years after the discovery of plutonium, when its biological and physical properties were very poorly understood, a series of human radiation experiments were performed by the U.S. government and by private organizations acting on its behalf. During and after the end of World War II, scientists working on the Manhattan Project and other nuclear weapons research projects conducted studies of the effects of plutonium on laboratory animals and human subjects. In the case of human subjects, this involved injecting solutions containing (typically) five micrograms of plutonium into hospital patients thought to be either terminally ill, or to have a life expectancy of less than ten years either due to age or chronic disease condition. These eighteen injections were made without the informed consent of those patients and were not done with the belief that the injections would heal their conditions; rather, they were used to develop diagnostic tools for determining the uptake of plutonium in the body for use in developing safety standards for people working with plutonium during the course of developing nuclear weapons.[10]

The episode is now considered to be a serious breach of medical ethics and of the Hippocratic Oath, and has been sharply criticised as failing “both the test of our national values and the test of humanity.”[11] More sympathetic commentators have noted that while it was definitely a breach in trust and ethics, “the effects of the plutonium injections were not as damaging to the subjects as the early news stories painted, nor were they so inconsequential as many scientists, then and now, believe.”

Uranium-235 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Only around 0.72% of all natural uranium is uranium-235, the rest being mostly uranium-238. This concentration is insufficient for a self sustaining reaction in a light water reactor; enrichment, which just means separating out the uranium-238, must take place to get a usable concentration of uranium-235. Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors, other heavy water reactors, and some graphite moderated reactors are known for using unenriched uranium. Uranium which has been processed to boost its uranium-235 proportion is known as enriched uranium, different applications require unique levels of enrichment.

The fissile uranium in nuclear weapons usually contains 85% or more of 235U known as weapon(s)-grade, though for a crude, inefficient weapon 20% is sufficient (called weapon(s)-usable); even less is sufficient, but then the critical mass required rapidly increases. However, judicious use of implosion and neutron reflectors can enable construction of a weapon from a quantity of uranium below the usual critical mass for its level of enrichment, though this would likely only be possible in a country which already had extensive experience in developing nuclear weapons. The Little Boy atomic bomb was fueled by enriched uranium. Most modern nuclear arsenals use plutonium as the fissile component, however U-235 devices remain a nuclear proliferation concern due to the simplicity of the design.

Uranium-235 has a half-life of 700 million years.

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Cokelore (Feel the Curves!)
This poster was released in the mid 80s and prompted a total recall of all posters because of the picture painted in ice-cubes at bottom right corner - a woman performing an act. The graphic artist who designed the picture put this in as a joke, and it went through unnoticed until someone spotted it on the back of a Coke truck. The artist lost his job and was sued, and all promotional material had to be recalled and destroyed. Very rare and hard to get hold of — released in South Australia in mid ’80s.