Interesting. But on the other hand, This is some bastard making money out of stealing somebody else's work. Now, clearly it is immoral/illegal to harass and abuse the guy. But on the other hand he deserves it to an extent.
Life's full of moral dilemmas, I guess.
I suppose having the guy not sleep well at night from the fear that his name might be released could strike the right balance. And thus the fine article reads as "I'll make you a proposition you can't refuse"...
More generally, I believe it is healthy that people feel compelled to comply fully with the GPL: it is good for them, as they benefit from the code and feedback, and good for the community as they benefit from the code and the feedback. Sadly a lot of people seem to require forcing them to do what is good for them.
Basically, either vendors play the game, and they get all the nice code for free, or they can build their own.
What? Corporations can't actually afford building their own OS/toolchain from scratch? Tough shit. Hey, the free market is always right, right? If a corporation can't afford making something, then they don't deserve it.
Basically, I care about free software because I don't like that any for-profit entity dictates to me what I can do or not with a piece of Si/Al/Cu/Polymer.
Now, interestingly, thanks to Turing and Von Neumann, what I can potentially do is without limit, any restriction is therefore extremely onerous. This makes the closed devices, in fact, evil: because a potentially infinitely useful device now only has limited use, even is it is more polished.
I fully recognise the right to design, build, sell, buy and use such devices. I simply don't see why any free help should be given. I cannot understand how anyone would think that it is remotely defensible to support and find excuses for stealing other people's work for profit, and in such a way that the potential utility to the public is dramatically minimised.
Basically, I am questioning the common wisdom the KDE4 and Amarok 2 are failures. I question them mostly because whatever reproach there might be usually is stale. Stale as in: "this was fixed a year ago, now".
But hey, questioning common wisdom on slashdot is good for burning karma. Remember kids: thrashing free projects based on false impressions you got a year ago is fine. Defending them with actual evidence goes against truthiness, and we can't let a fact-based discussion take place.
But this is something I noticed: I have been hanging on slashdot since 1999 (lost my password/login at some point). It used to be that the general knowledgeability of the audience was much higher. As in, you could actually expect the average slashdotter to know some basics of computer science and of having made some contribution to a free project. Or at least be a scientist/engineer of sorts.
Now, it is mostly ranting wanabees and crazy libertarian/ultraconservative mouthpieces that do most of the talking. Not that they are a majority, be who wants to argue with these...
1) There was and is a KDE player with the table paradigm: juk. It works very well. In the 1.x days, I would use it for tagging, and amarok for the listening, now, I do everything in Amarok, because the tagging works now so much better than t used to, whether in the tagging dialogue or in the playlist.
2) Amarok was always about meta-data around the music: similar tracks/recommended artists, WP articles, lyrics, moodbars and whatnot. In the 1.x days it was so, in the 2.x, it is still so. There never was any other reason to use it, except for the sorry excuse that due to KDE3's broken media system, in many case, amarok was at times the only player actually working. This was and is a wrong reason to use a particular player.
3) Current amarok UI is completely customisable, in fact you can have it identical to the 1.x series. This alone makes your comment inane.
4) clearly if command-line playing does the trick for you, then you never actually wanted to use amarok, whether 1 or 2. maybe MPD is more suited to your usage pattern.
5) The usage pattern of many people is precisely yours: put everything in one big list, and then play it at random (sometimes) . Now for some reason, they need to have the whole list, and will not accept only playing at random. If you are not mentally defective and realise that the outcome is the same, amarok dynamic playlists are much, much better, allowing also for biases in favour of artists/tags etc.
6) Amarok is in fact much faster than it ever was in the 1.x days: if you think otherwise, you have a tiny collection of files. Because search is now instant and was not before. If you care about launch time, then you are relaunching your player a significant amount of times: either there is a bug, or you have OCD. This is not a flaw in the player...
7) Integration with last.fm/podcasts/etc. is cool. You may not need/want it, but who are you to deprive me of a feature I like?
Boycotting a journal because they have people you think are idiots ont the board is a sane, reasonable and good thing to do.
As for quoting the WWF, well why not, as long as the quote is attributed and deemed valid. Clearly, the WWF care about the issue and say a lot about it, so even if they mostly say nonsense (and I am not a fan of their's, though they are not nearly as bad as loathful greenpeace), the odds are they also at times make sense -- and even if it is luck. In science, proper attribution is important.
As for fox, well, unlike the scientists, their typos/misatributions/errors are sadly usually intentionnal. Do yourself a favour, and stop watching it: the signal to noise ratio of stuff getting to you will improve.
You can make any sufficiently large body of text say anything using selective, out-of-context quotes.
You may also not know this, but papers are usually reviewed by more than one guy. Also, the decision to publish does not belong to the reviewers, but to the editor.
I have seen many cases of papers with a "reject" review based essentially on personal feud or conflicting pet theories. Believe it or not,this is very transparent, and the editor usually goes for more opinions.
In the end, the journals have a strong incentive to publish good papers, with good data/analysis, which will get cited more, thus improving the journal's impact factor.
Finally, if you like conspiracies, ask why the emails with the selective quotes heavily emphasised were released just before Copenhagen, were a few parties were very keen on there not be any agreement...
You are part of the problem, you know that? These 1920x1080 monitors are a terrible, terrible rip-of and one should never buy one.
They are a regression from last year's standard "big-ish, cheap-ish" 1920x1200 monitors. This year should have been the year of 20??x1600, but "HD" killed that.
High definition my ass. For a television, maybe. for a monitor, it is a sick, sad joke.
Once again, proof that the general public basically hinders progress through crass ignorance.
I went shopping for monitors a couple months ago, and I was indeed shocked to see that the resolution had regressed. It is not often these days that one actually see (hardware) technology go back, and it is highly disturbing.
Software usefulness is really dependent on network effect, so you understand that the better tech does not always win. But for monitors, which such clear metric as number of pixels and resolution, going down is disturbing.
Clearly, this comes from "HD-ready" sounding better than 1920*1200 (or higher). And that it would sound better to a majority of people puts into question the basic ability of people to read.
Is education the problem? Or is it that the average human is in fact more stupid than I previously thought?
I use a not-stupid browser, which will zoom the whole page. I understand the bandwidth constraints for images. This is fine.
What is _not_ fine is that although I should in practise almost need it, some fucktards decide that pixel sizes for _fonts_, of all things, are a good idea. And then I need three zoom levels for three different pages. Which is highly annoying. Just because some assholes decided to force font sizes in a unit with a non-fixed metric and fixed their layouts completely...
And then there is flash. That is, well, a completely different level of Evil...
Because some people have a clue, and specify percent sizes for elements and percent sizes for fonts (I decide my font size dammit). Then things scale ok. A good browser will reflow the elements in an adequate way in most cases.
And then there are "artists". People who try to force their inane choices of fonts on people. People who think flash is great because things look exactly like they specified (on their own screen, that is), never mind that the size of the screen the content will be displayed on might vary by an order of magnitude.
I feel your pain. Arriving from Europe, I still have not got a mobile in Canada: the fees are outrageous. Never mind data, in Europe, you can get cheap prepaid for just voice and SMS that have an expiry of 6 month after the last call and are really cheap, too.
Apparently, here, "prepaid" really means "slightly cheaper contract (add money every month, or your balance goes to 0), with outrageous fees, but hey, you also get to buy a new phone from us, which we made crappy with useless addons".
I absolutely hate that I cannot buy my own phone and put any SIM in it. I despise the fact that the rates are so bad that SATELLITE PHONE is competitive with, say, rogers. Seriously, look it up. Of course, the antennas are large, and you don't get coverage in buildings -- but at least the global coverage is good.
Basically, I am angry. And I have concluded that obviously whatever organisation is in charge of breaking cartels in Canada is obviously defective.
Actually, you are wrong. What you are suggesting is a lifetime cap.
But really what matters is the average cost of health for the whole population, over their lifetime. Which is hard to predict, because of technological and societal evolution.
On the other hand, if you have a global budget for health, because of socialised medicine, then the problem is simply one of doing stats and updating the costs every year.
Controlling the total budget becomes a question of setting priorities and investing in the right things -- doctors and nurse education, fundamental research, as well as using your clout as a sole provider to negotiate good prices for medicines with the big pharma.
Swindling is not an issue: the issue is the ethics of the care providers, and that is a matter for regulation and training.
It actually works: the resistance is basically the production of some proteins. These cost energy to produce.
Bacteria without the protection will out-compete those with the protection, in the absence of antibiotics: the latter require less energy to live and reproduce.
Their (good) article is really a repeat of the TED talk I was talking about, the Hans Rosling one. Which is why I was pointing there -- free access. It is really easy to find, it is one of the most favorited one ever.
Gahhh! Follow the links instead of believing your fantasies are facts. They've stopped being facts 30 years ago.
The overwhelming statistical fact (with billions of datapoints) is that yes, independently of "culture", people have falling fertility rate when they "modernize" -- even Afghanistan, even during war, and that ought to tell you something.
We are the same species, we behave the same way given the same incentives, and there is a formidable incentive to have fewer kids when the standards of living improve: Having less kids means you can take better care of them (because taking care stopped meaning just "keeping some of them alive"), and then their odds of getting kids improve in turn. And people always shoot for the same final amount of offspring (around 2, on average, yes, even in absurdly patriarchal societies -- remember, getting lots of kids not going to school makes you a worse father than the guy next door with two kids who can read and write).
grrr, I hate the I agree moderation, especially when this is so wrong. people have no idea how their world really looks like.
Go to gapminder.org, look at he stats on longevity and fertility. See the world flatten at an accelerating rate since the 60s. Basically, today, _now_, not "in projections", not "soon", the world has largely moved beyond (as in lower fertility/higher longevity) the fertility/longevity of the US in 1970. Except Africa, mostly because of the AIDS epidemics.
if you have 20 min to kill, go to ted.com and look at Hans Rosling's talk. Best 30 min you'll have today.
And stop worrying about overpopulation. There are enough other things to worry about.You may worry about resources, but you'll find it is nowhere as bad as you think. Yes, the world will go nuclear and GMO, but there really is not other way. And it'll work out fine.
You may worry about water supplies and the climate, however. There is indeed cause for worry, there.
Nothing is free. Ultimately, someone gives time or money for everything.
It works like this: in the emergency room, people get expensive treatment, too late. The cost is handed down to people who can pay, and end up paying more. Of course, as costs rise, less people can pay and more and more people are in the ER because they could not afford anything else.
And costs spiral uncontrollably. And eventually, you cannot get insurance, never mind how wealthy you are, because there are not enough people getting cover to support the market you believe in.
This is not a fatality. Indeed, if everyone gets identical cover, then the costs are spread optimally efficiently -- this is how insurances work, BTW. Of course, this implies triage of the patients: there are only so many doctors/hospital beds/MRI scanners available.
It is not a question of "bringing back to the team"[1], but a question of sustainable/unsustainable. Sometimes, you have to give up on the rhetoric before reality bitch-slaps you.
[1] Which is a despicable way of saying "being poor means you don't deserve a right to live. Not as long or as much as a rich person anyway."[2]
[2] interestingly, I am not sure you would want to put your life in the hands of a doctor who will decide whether you should be treated based on what he thinks you are worth.[3]
[3] In your case, not much; most doctors I know value ethics and selflessness a lot.
Because of regulations, which are much more stringent for the nuclear industry than anything else, no-one can come with the up-front investment. Except, of course, states. And frankly, this is good: I have no particular desire for the infrastructure to be owned by a profit-driven company.
If France found that gaz turbines or coal were cheaper, they would have switched a long time ago... They went nuclear because of the oil crisis, and now that the barrel is higher than it was then,they know they made the right economic choice. Compare and contrast: Iraq.
And Areva having problems with their new power plant? Yeah, sure. New model. Of course, it is typical for activists (you did quote indymedia above...) to blame civil engineering mishaps on nuclear power. Of course, it must be the curse of nuclear that the concrete mix design was wrong!
These are not "accidents", these are incidents. If you think nuclear energy should be banned because of the excessive risk caused by such, I sure hope that you also want all cars banned. And swimming pools, and planes.
And walking should be restricted. No human activity is wholly without risks. But as it goes, nuclear power generation is so absurdly risk-free that people are more afraid than they should.
The Bopal disaster should have put the lid on chemical factories. Countless deaths due to coal should have made this energy source a big no-no.
Do you think mining for the rare earths required by solar panels is "clean"?
By the standards of energy generation, yes, nuclear is clean. By any standard, it is safe.
This is not the point. Solar is good -- though recycling the panels is going to be somewhat hard. I actually like the aesthetics of a field of wind turbines.
Simply, you have to provide for the baseline needs. For that, you need large plants. Currently, your options are gaz, coal, large hydro, and nuclear. In certain regions, solar also. My preferred options are, in order, large hydro, solar, nuclear gaz and coal.
But large hydro and solar are only possible at certain locations. And it is highly unfortunate that people go for coal, which is highly polluting (even the "clean" version) or gaz, which is polluting and has nasty side-effects in terms of geopolitics.
Geothermal might be the best option in the medium-long term. dunno.
Of course, insulation, better grids, using dams as large capacitors, cogeneration, even mass transit are all part of the solution, but in general nuclear will remain the cleanest source of electricity for the next century for the baseline. Probably not more, as deep storage place is not infinite.
In the context of a rapidly developing World, it is highly desirable that nuclear be the choice for large-scale generation, because otherwise, we might not live to try an solve the problems of waste. In China and India, and soon Africa, half of Humanity are getting out of poverty. They will want, and will have power consumption on par with the first world.
In fact, they will need more, because efficient infrastructure is long to build. Large plants will be required to meet the needs. Because of politics and economics, many of these will be dirty coal. And the only thing the first World can do is reduce its emissions. This will compensate in large part for the new emissions, and ensure that the infrastructure keeps us competitive, until such time as the world is really flat, and we all get our energy from fusion plants and solar platforms.
you know,you can give the link, I can read German, albeit no very well.
The needs in electricity are going to increase dramatically. Although the efficiency of everything will increase, when all cars are plugged-in for the night's charge, a very important baseline will be required.
Production of CO2 is a problem for now, nuclear waste is a problem for later, and will be solved by breeders, which reduce dramatically the volume of waste. It is easy and safe to burrow the final products from these reactors, the only problem being NIMBY and anti-nuclear activists. Because if the uranium was fine in the mine when it was dug up, the bismuth-lead-plutonium-uranium will be just as fine there. We know from natural occurrences that it is safe and harmless to have the waste buried deep for a couple million years.
Yes this is not a satisfactory solution in the long term (because there is only so much waste you can bury), you need other solutions. But the problem is we face global warming now, and waste issues in 1000 years... In fact, if the climate really goes awry, I hope the activists will be first against the wall.
As for the "real" price of nuclear, it is a bit like the US medical system, a larger part of the price comes from terrible legislation and political opposition, not from the intrinsic cost. No other industry is held to the same standards. Basically on nuclear standards, each time some poor chap died by falling from a wind turbine, the whole park would shut down six months for investigations...
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting. But on the other hand, This is some bastard making money out of stealing somebody else's work. Now, clearly it is immoral/illegal to harass and abuse the guy. But on the other hand he deserves it to an extent.
Life's full of moral dilemmas, I guess.
I suppose having the guy not sleep well at night from the fear that his name might be released could strike the right balance. And thus the fine article reads as "I'll make you a proposition you can't refuse"...
More generally, I believe it is healthy that people feel compelled to comply fully with the GPL: it is good for them, as they benefit from the code and feedback, and good for the community as they benefit from the code and the feedback. Sadly a lot of people seem to require forcing them to do what is good for them.
Basically, either vendors play the game, and they get all the nice code for free, or they can build their own.
What? Corporations can't actually afford building their own OS/toolchain from scratch? Tough shit. Hey, the free market is always right, right? If a corporation can't afford making something, then they don't deserve it.
Basically, I care about free software because I don't like that any for-profit entity dictates to me what I can do or not with a piece of Si/Al/Cu/Polymer.
Now, interestingly, thanks to Turing and Von Neumann, what I can potentially do is without limit, any restriction is therefore extremely onerous. This makes the closed devices, in fact, evil: because a potentially infinitely useful device now only has limited use, even is it is more polished.
I fully recognise the right to design, build, sell, buy and use such devices. I simply don't see why any free help should be given. I cannot understand how anyone would think that it is remotely defensible to support and find excuses for stealing other people's work for profit, and in such a way that the potential utility to the public is dramatically minimised.
Basically, I am questioning the common wisdom the KDE4 and Amarok 2 are failures. I question them mostly because whatever reproach there might be usually is stale. Stale as in: "this was fixed a year ago, now".
But hey, questioning common wisdom on slashdot is good for burning karma. Remember kids: thrashing free projects based on false impressions you got a year ago is fine. Defending them with actual evidence goes against truthiness, and we can't let a fact-based discussion take place.
But this is something I noticed: I have been hanging on slashdot since 1999 (lost my password/login at some point). It used to be that the general knowledgeability of the audience was much higher. As in, you could actually expect the average slashdotter to know some basics of computer science and of having made some contribution to a free project. Or at least be a scientist/engineer of sorts.
Now, it is mostly ranting wanabees and crazy libertarian/ultraconservative mouthpieces that do most of the talking. Not that they are a majority, be who wants to argue with these...
This comment is disturbing in many ways.
1) There was and is a KDE player with the table paradigm: juk. It works very well. In the 1.x days, I would use it for tagging, and amarok for the listening, now, I do everything in Amarok, because the tagging works now so much better than t used to, whether in the tagging dialogue or in the playlist.
2) Amarok was always about meta-data around the music: similar tracks/recommended artists, WP articles, lyrics, moodbars and whatnot. In the 1.x days it was so, in the 2.x, it is still so. There never was any other reason to use it, except for the sorry excuse that due to KDE3's broken media system, in many case, amarok was at times the only player actually working. This was and is a wrong reason to use a particular player.
3) Current amarok UI is completely customisable, in fact you can have it identical to the 1.x series. This alone makes your comment inane.
4) clearly if command-line playing does the trick for you, then you never actually wanted to use amarok, whether 1 or 2. maybe MPD is more suited to your usage pattern.
5) The usage pattern of many people is precisely yours: put everything in one big list, and then play it at random (sometimes) . Now for some reason, they need to have the whole list, and will not accept only playing at random. If you are not mentally defective and realise that the outcome is the same, amarok dynamic playlists are much, much better, allowing also for biases in favour of artists/tags etc.
6) Amarok is in fact much faster than it ever was in the 1.x days: if you think otherwise, you have a tiny collection of files. Because search is now instant and was not before. If you care about launch time, then you are relaunching your player a significant amount of times: either there is a bug, or you have OCD. This is not a flaw in the player...
7) Integration with last.fm/podcasts/etc. is cool. You may not need/want it, but who are you to deprive me of a feature I like?
Boycotting a journal because they have people you think are idiots ont the board is a sane, reasonable and good thing to do.
As for quoting the WWF, well why not, as long as the quote is attributed and deemed valid. Clearly, the WWF care about the issue and say a lot about it, so even if they mostly say nonsense (and I am not a fan of their's, though they are not nearly as bad as loathful greenpeace), the odds are they also at times make sense -- and even if it is luck. In science, proper attribution is important.
As for fox, well, unlike the scientists, their typos/misatributions/errors are sadly usually intentionnal. Do yourself a favour, and stop watching it: the signal to noise ratio of stuff getting to you will improve.
You can make any sufficiently large body of text say anything using selective, out-of-context quotes.
You may also not know this, but papers are usually reviewed by more than one guy. Also, the decision to publish does not belong to the reviewers, but to the editor.
I have seen many cases of papers with a "reject" review based essentially on personal feud or conflicting pet theories. Believe it or not,this is very transparent, and the editor usually goes for more opinions.
In the end, the journals have a strong incentive to publish good papers, with good data/analysis, which will get cited more, thus improving the journal's impact factor.
Finally, if you like conspiracies, ask why the emails with the selective quotes heavily emphasised were released just before Copenhagen, were a few parties were very keen on there not be any agreement...
You are part of the problem, you know that? These 1920x1080 monitors are a terrible, terrible rip-of and one should never buy one.
They are a regression from last year's standard "big-ish, cheap-ish" 1920x1200 monitors. This year should have been the year of 20??x1600, but "HD" killed that.
High definition my ass. For a television, maybe. for a monitor, it is a sick, sad joke.
Once again, proof that the general public basically hinders progress through crass ignorance.
I went shopping for monitors a couple months ago, and I was indeed shocked to see that the resolution had regressed. It is not often these days that one actually see (hardware) technology go back, and it is highly disturbing.
Software usefulness is really dependent on network effect, so you understand that the better tech does not always win. But for monitors, which such clear metric as number of pixels and resolution, going down is disturbing.
Clearly, this comes from "HD-ready" sounding better than 1920*1200 (or higher). And that it would sound better to a majority of people puts into question the basic ability of people to read.
Is education the problem? Or is it that the average human is in fact more stupid than I previously thought?
I use a not-stupid browser, which will zoom the whole page. I understand the bandwidth constraints for images. This is fine.
What is _not_ fine is that although I should in practise almost need it, some fucktards decide that pixel sizes for _fonts_, of all things, are a good idea. And then I need three zoom levels for three different pages. Which is highly annoying. Just because some assholes decided to force font sizes in a unit with a non-fixed metric and fixed their layouts completely...
And then there is flash. That is, well, a completely different level of Evil...
Because some people have a clue, and specify percent sizes for elements and percent sizes for fonts (I decide my font size dammit). Then things scale ok. A good browser will reflow the elements in an adequate way in most cases.
And then there are "artists". People who try to force their inane choices of fonts on people. People who think flash is great because things look exactly like they specified (on their own screen, that is), never mind that the size of the screen the content will be displayed on might vary by an order of magnitude.
I hate them.
I feel your pain. Arriving from Europe, I still have not got a mobile in Canada: the fees are outrageous. Never mind data, in Europe, you can get cheap prepaid for just voice and SMS that have an expiry of 6 month after the last call and are really cheap, too.
Apparently, here, "prepaid" really means "slightly cheaper contract (add money every month, or your balance goes to 0), with outrageous fees, but hey, you also get to buy a new phone from us, which we made crappy with useless addons".
I absolutely hate that I cannot buy my own phone and put any SIM in it. I despise the fact that the rates are so bad that SATELLITE PHONE is competitive with, say, rogers. Seriously, look it up. Of course, the antennas are large, and you don't get coverage in buildings -- but at least the global coverage is good.
Basically, I am angry. And I have concluded that obviously whatever organisation is in charge of breaking cartels in Canada is obviously defective.
Actually, you are wrong. What you are suggesting is a lifetime cap.
But really what matters is the average cost of health for the whole population, over their lifetime. Which is hard to predict, because of technological and societal evolution.
On the other hand, if you have a global budget for health, because of socialised medicine, then the problem is simply one of doing stats and updating the costs every year.
Controlling the total budget becomes a question of setting priorities and investing in the right things -- doctors and nurse education, fundamental research, as well as using your clout as a sole provider to negotiate good prices for medicines with the big pharma.
Swindling is not an issue: the issue is the ethics of the care providers, and that is a matter for regulation and training.
It actually works: the resistance is basically the production of some proteins. These cost energy to produce.
Bacteria without the protection will out-compete those with the protection, in the absence of antibiotics: the latter require less energy to live and reproduce.
You know, I'm happy to know I am not alone thinking precisely that :) You have made my day.
Next time, I'll try to rant and produce a string of mouthbites. It somehow augments your impact (and moderation score).
Their (good) article is really a repeat of the TED talk I was talking about, the Hans Rosling one. Which is why I was pointing there -- free access. It is really easy to find, it is one of the most favorited one ever.
Gahhh! Follow the links instead of believing your fantasies are facts. They've stopped being facts 30 years ago.
The overwhelming statistical fact (with billions of datapoints) is that yes, independently of "culture", people have falling fertility rate when they "modernize" -- even Afghanistan, even during war, and that ought to tell you something.
We are the same species, we behave the same way given the same incentives, and there is a formidable incentive to have fewer kids when the standards of living improve: Having less kids means you can take better care of them (because taking care stopped meaning just "keeping some of them alive"), and then their odds of getting kids improve in turn. And people always shoot for the same final amount of offspring (around 2, on average, yes, even in absurdly patriarchal societies -- remember, getting lots of kids not going to school makes you a worse father than the guy next door with two kids who can read and write).
grrr, I hate the I agree moderation, especially when this is so wrong. people have no idea how their world really looks like.
Go to gapminder.org, look at he stats on longevity and fertility. See the world flatten at an accelerating rate since the 60s. Basically, today, _now_, not "in projections", not "soon", the world has largely moved beyond (as in lower fertility/higher longevity) the fertility/longevity of the US in 1970. Except Africa, mostly because of the AIDS epidemics.
if you have 20 min to kill, go to ted.com and look at Hans Rosling's talk. Best 30 min you'll have today.
And stop worrying about overpopulation. There are enough other things to worry about.You may worry about resources, but you'll find it is nowhere as bad as you think. Yes, the world will go nuclear and GMO, but there really is not other way. And it'll work out fine.
You may worry about water supplies and the climate, however. There is indeed cause for worry, there.
This is stupid.
Nothing is free. Ultimately, someone gives time or money for everything.
It works like this: in the emergency room, people get expensive treatment, too late. The cost is handed down to people who can pay, and end up paying more. Of course, as costs rise, less people can pay and more and more people are in the ER because they could not afford anything else.
And costs spiral uncontrollably. And eventually, you cannot get insurance, never mind how wealthy you are, because there are not enough people getting cover to support the market you believe in.
This is not a fatality. Indeed, if everyone gets identical cover, then the costs are spread optimally efficiently -- this is how insurances work, BTW. Of course, this implies triage of the patients: there are only so many doctors/hospital beds/MRI scanners available.
It is not a question of "bringing back to the team"[1], but a question of sustainable/unsustainable. Sometimes, you have to give up on the rhetoric before reality bitch-slaps you.
[1] Which is a despicable way of saying "being poor means you don't deserve a right to live. Not as long or as much as a rich person anyway."[2]
[2] interestingly, I am not sure you would want to put your life in the hands of a doctor who will decide whether you should be treated based on what he thinks you are worth.[3]
[3] In your case, not much; most doctors I know value ethics and selflessness a lot.
Actually, by your logic, a payment by card is precisely not cash: it involves no physical monies :)
Which is what was meant here. See, the universes is coherent!
you are, of course, completely correct. I wrote too fast.
that is called a gibibyte. Yes, it sounds funny, but hey, it's he standard :)
Because of regulations, which are much more stringent for the nuclear industry than anything else, no-one can come with the up-front investment. Except, of course, states. And frankly, this is good: I have no particular desire for the infrastructure to be owned by a profit-driven company.
If France found that gaz turbines or coal were cheaper, they would have switched a long time ago... They went nuclear because of the oil crisis, and now that the barrel is higher than it was then,they know they made the right economic choice. Compare and contrast: Iraq.
And Areva having problems with their new power plant? Yeah, sure. New model. Of course, it is typical for activists (you did quote indymedia above...) to blame civil engineering mishaps on nuclear power. Of course, it must be the curse of nuclear that the concrete mix design was wrong!
These are not "accidents", these are incidents. If you think nuclear energy should be banned because of the excessive risk caused by such, I sure hope that you also want all cars banned. And swimming pools, and planes.
And walking should be restricted. No human activity is wholly without risks. But as it goes, nuclear power generation is so absurdly risk-free that people are more afraid than they should.
The Bopal disaster should have put the lid on chemical factories. Countless deaths due to coal should have made this energy source a big no-no.
Do you think mining for the rare earths required by solar panels is "clean"?
By the standards of energy generation, yes, nuclear is clean. By any standard, it is safe.
This is not the point. Solar is good -- though recycling the panels is going to be somewhat hard. I actually like the aesthetics of a field of wind turbines.
Simply, you have to provide for the baseline needs. For that, you need large plants. Currently, your options are gaz, coal, large hydro, and nuclear. In certain regions, solar also. My preferred options are, in order, large hydro, solar, nuclear gaz and coal.
But large hydro and solar are only possible at certain locations. And it is highly unfortunate that people go for coal, which is highly polluting (even the "clean" version) or gaz, which is polluting and has nasty side-effects in terms of geopolitics.
Geothermal might be the best option in the medium-long term. dunno.
Of course, insulation, better grids, using dams as large capacitors, cogeneration, even mass transit are all part of the solution, but in general nuclear will remain the cleanest source of electricity for the next century for the baseline. Probably not more, as deep storage place is not infinite.
In the context of a rapidly developing World, it is highly desirable that nuclear be the choice for large-scale generation, because otherwise, we might not live to try an solve the problems of waste. In China and India, and soon Africa, half of Humanity are getting out of poverty. They will want, and will have power consumption on par with the first world.
In fact, they will need more, because efficient infrastructure is long to build. Large plants will be required to meet the needs. Because of politics and economics, many of these will be dirty coal. And the only thing the first World can do is reduce its emissions. This will compensate in large part for the new emissions, and ensure that the infrastructure keeps us competitive, until such time as the world is really flat, and we all get our energy from fusion plants and solar platforms.
This is only possible with nuclear.
you know,you can give the link, I can read German, albeit no very well.
The needs in electricity are going to increase dramatically. Although the efficiency of everything will increase, when all cars are plugged-in for the night's charge, a very important baseline will be required.
Production of CO2 is a problem for now, nuclear waste is a problem for later, and will be solved by breeders, which reduce dramatically the volume of waste. It is easy and safe to burrow the final products from these reactors, the only problem being NIMBY and anti-nuclear activists. Because if the uranium was fine in the mine when it was dug up, the bismuth-lead-plutonium-uranium will be just as fine there. We know from natural occurrences that it is safe and harmless to have the waste buried deep for a couple million years.
Yes this is not a satisfactory solution in the long term (because there is only so much waste you can bury), you need other solutions. But the problem is we face global warming now, and waste issues in 1000 years... In fact, if the climate really goes awry, I hope the activists will be first against the wall.
As for the "real" price of nuclear, it is a bit like the US medical system, a larger part of the price comes from terrible legislation and political opposition, not from the intrinsic cost. No other industry is held to the same standards. Basically on nuclear standards, each time some poor chap died by falling from a wind turbine, the whole park would shut down six months for investigations...