Playing Devil's Advocate, I'd like to remind you that ordinary visible light IS dangerous... if you are exposed to it at too high an intensity, you can receive horrible (sun)burns. If it is concentrated (through mirrors or lenses), you could even be vaporized. At normal levels, radio waves should be safe as well. At very high levels (feet from the transmitter, perhaps), I suppose they could be harmful (part of the reason they are high up and there are fences around the base to keep people out). My only experience with living close to a high-powered (FM) tower is that the signal overrode much of the FM spectrum, causing that one station to tune-in between all other stations and override some of the weaker ones. Annoying, but not enough to cause me to take down the tower.
Early human settlers used the "Modern Technology" of their day (knapping knives, spearpoints and arrowheads) to successfully conquer their new environment.
Pioneer settlers used the "Modern Technology" of THEIR day (clothes, hatchet, musket, etc) to successfully conquer their new environment. Their naysayer peers probably said things like, "Colonists will be entirely dependent on modern technology to merely keep the the things that keep them alive running. Think of all the component parts and manufacturing technology to replace a musket if it breaks...".
New environment, same old situation. The environment may be harsher, but the technology probably makes up for the difference. There's risk in any of the three scenarios.
Think about this scenario: Say the ISP is legally allowed to block your P2P traffic. What if it chooses to only block selected portions of it? Your download has failed, but the ISP still gets paid for the bandwidth you used (and you may not even be able to tell exactly why the transmission failed). So you try again, fail again, and pay them again. So you pay your ISP for the bandwidth to download more software to get around the ISP's software, and they are still able to block your traffic (if not now, with the next iteration of their sniffers). The only person winning this scenario appears to be the ISP, as you are paying them over and over in your attempt to access the illegal content (much of which is probably quite large).
If Americans lived in Holland, I suspect the energy use would be much higher per-capita at the same quality of life. The population density would be 156,000 per square mile, which is twice as dense as the densest cities in the world - for a region 10 times as large (2000 sq miles) as those cities. (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_world_city_has_the_highest_population_density)
Slashdot Mirror
They don't make Fjords and Czevies the way they used to.
1.21 GW/DeLorean x 5 Deloreans = 6.05 GW x 1000 MW/GW = 6,050 MW ~= 6,000 MW
The Google offshore project will only generate 6,000 MW. That's merely the equivalent of 5 time-traveling DeLoreans!
Actually, it is at the very edge of the observable universe...
Playing Devil's Advocate, I'd like to remind you that ordinary visible light IS dangerous... if you are exposed to it at too high an intensity, you can receive horrible (sun)burns. If it is concentrated (through mirrors or lenses), you could even be vaporized. At normal levels, radio waves should be safe as well. At very high levels (feet from the transmitter, perhaps), I suppose they could be harmful (part of the reason they are high up and there are fences around the base to keep people out). My only experience with living close to a high-powered (FM) tower is that the signal overrode much of the FM spectrum, causing that one station to tune-in between all other stations and override some of the weaker ones. Annoying, but not enough to cause me to take down the tower.
Early human settlers used the "Modern Technology" of their day (knapping knives, spearpoints and arrowheads) to successfully conquer their new environment. Pioneer settlers used the "Modern Technology" of THEIR day (clothes, hatchet, musket, etc) to successfully conquer their new environment. Their naysayer peers probably said things like, "Colonists will be entirely dependent on modern technology to merely keep the the things that keep them alive running. Think of all the component parts and manufacturing technology to replace a musket if it breaks...". New environment, same old situation. The environment may be harsher, but the technology probably makes up for the difference. There's risk in any of the three scenarios.
Think about this scenario: Say the ISP is legally allowed to block your P2P traffic. What if it chooses to only block selected portions of it? Your download has failed, but the ISP still gets paid for the bandwidth you used (and you may not even be able to tell exactly why the transmission failed). So you try again, fail again, and pay them again. So you pay your ISP for the bandwidth to download more software to get around the ISP's software, and they are still able to block your traffic (if not now, with the next iteration of their sniffers). The only person winning this scenario appears to be the ISP, as you are paying them over and over in your attempt to access the illegal content (much of which is probably quite large).
I haven't seen anyone mention this possibility, yet.
If Americans lived in Holland, I suspect the energy use would be much higher per-capita at the same quality of life. The population density would be 156,000 per square mile, which is twice as dense as the densest cities in the world - for a region 10 times as large (2000 sq miles) as those cities. (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_world_city_has_the_highest_population_density)