In your thinking you're certified to critique others writing, when you're clearly not.If you can't gather the meaning of words from within the context in which they are written, it is clearly YOU with the problem. Get out your hooked on phonics and get on topic, troll.
English good not need here. Me right any way me can and you no understand than it meen you stupid. me not.
That's nice, but other companies are not your company. We managed to pull it off on the 19,000+ user machines we supported.
Hmm...
Yes, it was an administration nightmare, never worked correctly, and managed to cause more trouble than it fixed (backup data store exceeded quota? no login for you!), but such is the case with most corporate security policies.
It was also policy to perform a DoD wipe and reload of any user PCs/laptops as part of out-processing.
You have a different definition of "pull it off" than most people. Sounds like you were able to present the illusion of it working, without it actually working reliably. Which is probably why many IT shops just force users to store data onto file shares and treat the data on the PC as disposable.
I would rather have my data in hand of governement ONLY (and anyway they almost certainly have it or can subponea it) which is beholden to keep it secure, rather than in the hand in private industry which can sell it to anybody, can be unsecure, and can just snub me if I don't want to have it spread.
But once that data is in the hands of the private company, do you want them to just hand it over to the government without so much as a warrant?
Would you feel better about Facebook privacy if they set up their systems so they could ship all of their logs and other data to the NSA without Facebook themselves being about to view it? Would you want Google (and Bing, etc) encrypt their search history logs customer emails and documents immediately in such a way that only the NSA can decrypt it and feed the data directly over to the NSA for government analysis and safekeeping?
I'd rather that the government had to get a warrant before it's able to obtain any of my data from a private company. Even if the government could be trusted to keep it secure, I don't trust them to use it responsibly. I'm less worried about what Google can do with my data than with what the government can do with it. Google can't legally put me into a secret jail because I'm a threat.
And for all of the fear of companies selling data to everyone, there's no incentive for them to make all of their data available to everyone since they lose competitive advantage. Facebook may be willing to sell some search related data to Google for a high enough price, but they probably aren't going to let Google have their customer social relationship data or Google would use that against them by enhancing Google+. So your complete data will never end up in one place -- unless the government requires that it be turned over to them.
All of these accidents and mistakes, yet we are supposed to believe all of these actions have been unintentional. I call bullshit Google.
Why would Google admit to not deleting the data if they were intentionally trying to hide it? Wouldn't it be easier to hide their supposed illicit activity by saying "yeah, we deleted it all. Here's the pile of destroyed hard drives it used to be on. It's alllll gone now. Yessiree. Ain't no way we copied any of that data to our servers hidden in Albania before "deleting" the data."
And really, what possible use would they have for data they snooped from unencrypted wifi except for the use they've already admitted to?
“In their letter to the ICO today, Google indicated that they wanted to delete the remaining data and asked for the ICO’s instructions on how to proceed. Our response, which has already been issued, makes clear that Google must supply the data to the ICO immediately, so that we can subject it to forensic analysis before deciding on the necessary course of action.
If the data is so sensitive and worrisome, why doesn't the ICO just insist that it be deleted as agreed upon? If it was ok to delete it earlier, why does it have to be handed over now?
I'd rather have my data in the hands of Google than in the hands of Google *and* some random regulatory body. Many companies have a hard time certifying data destruction with multiple redundant offsite backups and replication, and data stored in the cloud where they may not even know every place their cloud provider stores it.
Though really, why is there no outrage about the fact that plaintext email passwords (and credit card numbers or whatever other personal data they are worried about) are even able to be captured with a simple drive-by Wifi scanner? There is no reason why a Wifi router should default to an open unencrypted mode, and even if it does, there is no reason why personal data should be allowed to be sent in the clear. CPU powerh is cheap, SSL should be used to secure *all* sensitive data.
The fact that Google drove by and captured snippets of data is not the problem... they aren't going to steal your credit card number or hack into your bank account (and there is a good chance that they already host your email) - the problem is when an identify thief does the same thing.
you redistribute 10 year old pc's? you cheap bastards!
I'm still using an 8 year old P4 3Ghz machine as my primary desktop at work. I salvaged it myself after we needed to deploy my much newer machine to someone else.
I run linux on it and primarily use it for web browsing and to remote desktop to a Win7 Virtual machine where I can run Outloook and MS-Office for compatibility with the rest of the office.
The CPU speed is fine, but I wish I could put more than 2GB of RAM in it.
For any company worth it's salt. They've been doing automated backups in the background for you. Anything you do, even wiping your drive will not take those backups away.
My company doesn't back up any desktops - if it's not put on a fileserver drive, it's not backed up.
You can have all the skills required, who cares. When your competition is offering 30 cents to the dollar cost; you lose. When the government says it will not intervene on your behalf, you lose. Mathematically speaking, all 3 time losers, are also 2 time losers.
You need to make sure that you just don't have the "skills required", but also the skills that can't be offshored easily - I've onshored entire offshored projects that were failing because it turns out that running a successful offshored project is harder than many companies think it is. There's no reason why a USA citizen (or company) can't compare with offshored companies. There are some projects and jobs that are well suited for off-shoring, some that are not. The language, cultural, physical and timezone differences are all hurdles that need to be overcome - a local candidate has none of those issues. But he has to be more than just a "coder" - if I have to do all of the requirements analysis and architecture myself, I may as well just offshore the coding, but if I can find a local developer that already knows something about my business and I don't have to walk him through every step of the development and testing, then I don't care if I have to pay him 3 times as much since he saved me 3 times the work.
Unless your Chevy truck gets better than 53/48 mpg, then my electric hybrid generates less CO2 than your truck since both of our vehicles are powered by the same fuel - gasoline.
Does that include the increased CO2 generation caused by the mining and refinement of the lithium in your battery pack?
Let's not even talk about the added environmentally devastating pollution your hybrid causes indirectly through its manufacture or its later disposal. It's much more convenient to focus on a vague general statistic, like "pounds of CO2 released or produced". (Kinda like those propaganda fliers about how many gallons of water, etc. a single pound of meat "uses" to produce.)
Well, no, but I didn't include the increased CO2 generation caused by mining and refinement of the iron ore to build the truck that weighs twice as much as the Prius (Ford F-150 = 5300 lbs, Prius C = 2500lbs. The 60 lb Li-Ion battery pack in the Prius can be recycled - much like the 50 lb lead acid battery in the truck. Are there other exotic and toxic materials in the Prius that aren't in the truck?
But if you have the CO2 figures that factor in all costs of construction for both a hybrid and conventional car, I'd like to see them.
Why not use the seawater to cool your cooling fluid instead of using saltwater directly?
Have a look at ships' hulls and see what saltwater does to metal.
I tried to look under a 50 year old naval ship but I couldn't see the hull because it was *still floating*! There are lots of aluminum hulled boats on the water too, and aluminum reacts even more strongly with seawater than steel.
It's almost as if there's a way through good design, alloy selection and regular maintenance that metals can survive contact with water. Now if only someone could figure out how to use seawater for cooling...maybe they could even make it work for a nuclear reactor. I wonder how the Navy keeps it's shipboard nuclear reactors cool?
Note that I didn't say to send the seawater through your reactor, use heat exchangers to cool your "clean" cooling fluid that's circulated through the reactor.
With enough electrical energy we could convert to a hydrogen/oxygen economy, rather than a carbon-based one. There are some issues though, like the Hindenburg.
Then don't build your airship with a highly flamable skin - hydrogen was only part of the problem.
It turns out that Hydrogen in a normal Earthlike atmosphere is explosive.
So are many other common fuels like gasoline and natural gas, yet we've learned to harness them safely.
Also, it wants to be a gas rather than a liquid, which limits its utility.
As does natural gas, yet there's growing talk of using Natural Gas to fuel long haul trucks due to the dropping costs of natural gas.
And as a gas, it passes freely through any known material at room temperature because hydrogen2 molecules are as small as molecules get.
Generate it at the filling station so it doesn't have to be pumped for long distances, and dissolve it in some other substance to ease storage.
And then there's the whole "we get half of our electrical energy from coal" thing, and the conversion losses.
But the whole premise of this article is that we need to move to "clean" nuclear power, not fossil fuels.
Unless we get some good watts from some other source, your electric hybrid is likely generating more CO2 than my Chevy truck.
Unless your Chevy truck gets better than 53/48 mpg, then my electric hybrid generates less CO2 than your truck since both of our vehicles are powered by the same fuel - gasoline. Even when electric cars are powered by coal plants, they than conventional cars.
If I had an electric car, most of its power would come from hydroelectric power.
This is what we saw with Fukushima. That reactor was well designed - and the others in the region held up decently. If the plant had been kept up even close to spec - there wouldn't have been a disaster. Hell, even if after the initial issue,
The reactor was well designed to faulty assumptions that in retrospect never should have been accepted.
if they had just dumped the core, it would of been a passing mention in the newspaper. Instead, somebody who valued money over other peoples lives, decided to make a profitable decision instead of a safe one.
It only takes one stupid idiot to ruin a good thing.
I'm not sure what you mean by "dump the core", but I believe the reactors all underwent a SCRAM to shut down after the quake. But even after shutdown, the reactor core continues to emit a significant amount of heat for quite some time, and when the cooling failed, there was no way to dissipate that heat.
Its much easier to adapt to climate change than it is to control the global climate.
Depending on what results from the changes in the global climate.... If increasingly acidic oceans kills off ocean food sources and changing weather conditions turn formerly productive farming regions into drought stricken arid wastelands without also changing formerly unfarmable areas into productive farming regions, then the adaptation will mean dramatic reductions in the population the earth can support.
If Nuclear really is the answer, then vastly increasing our use of nuclear power over the coming decades is probably an easier adaption than watching 1/3 of the world's population die when we can't produce enough food.
I doubt the climate changes will be so dramatic, but no one really knows for sure - we may hit a tipping point that uncontrollably drives the climate to new extremes never seen before.
That's why I said it's a big "if", but in any case, the cost of nuclear power versus fossil fuels depends on how seriously you believe that there is a link between carbon emissions and global warming. Global warming could result in many trillions of dollars of damage as coastal areas are inundated by rising seas, droughts and other extreme weather, crop loss, etc.
If Nuclear power really does emit less carbon and carbon is causing global warming, then nuclear power could be far less costly even if the raw price per kwh is higher.
Even in the USA, we're dealing with nuclear and coal plants on the brink of shutting down, because the mild winter and extended drought is bringing rivers down near critical levels.
Fortunately, most of the population lives close to the coasts where there's lots of water available.
In Africa, you need to desalinate water before you can do anything.
Why not use the seawater to cool your cooling fluid instead of using saltwater directly? Pump the heated waste water far offshore.
And desalination creates its own set of problems (what do you do with the brine?).
Why not put it back where it came from -- the ocean? Let it seep out of miles of pipe to reduce local effects of high salinity.
Nuclear Energy is stupid. It's bad enough we have a bunch of cartels making massive profits of oil, nuclear power has an even higher barrier to entry than that.
So what's your answer? Only generate power from generator-bicycles so there's a much lower barrier to entry?
Nuclear fusion may ultimately prove to be an even cleaner source of power -- with an even higher barrier to entry than fission. Should fusion be abandoned because it will have a high barrier to entry?
Of course, Phoenix expects 110 degree temperatures so they plan for it when they build things. Unlike other areas that usually don't see those high temperatures.
A small scale nuclear war to produce a nuclear winter to offset global warming will do the trick, and possibly cut the population at the same time.
I was going to suggest the same thing -- creating a nuclear winter is probably not any more risky that other ideas that have been floated around that have side effects that are just as poorly understood -- like large scale seeding of oceans with iron to encourage phytoplankton growth that will be a carbon sink.
And even nuclear power is a problem there - mining and enrichment are very expensive phases and they produce carbon dioxide.
It's a question of calculating the total emissions for each type of energy source, and it's not an easy process.
If you had practically unlimited and cheap electrical power available from nukes (an awfully big "if"), you could eliminate much of the carbon emissions while extracting nuclear fuel. If nothing else you could split hydrogen out of water and use hydrogen as a fuel for equipment and processing plants. There'd still be some carbon emissions from things like deforestation during mining, etc.
I moved to Alaska several years ago. After three winters, I am acclimatized. For instance, when it gets up to 50 degrees Fahrenheit I am strolling around in shorts and a t-shirt. Trying to survive shifting climate is something life has always done. Those who migrate and adapt survive. Those who nuke themselves deserve what they get - just leave the rest of us out of it.
It's much easier to adapt to a cooler climate than a warmer one. When you get cold you can put on another jacket. You can only remove so many clothes to remain comfortable when the temperature rises to 101 degrees with high humidity.
So then... Because I-BM finds yet another way to circumvent the labor laws of the US Americans should sit quietly?
I realize they are one of many corps that justify their actions by citing the corporate manifesto of profits over patriotism but that won't stop people like me calling as it is.
They aren't circumventing the labor laws of the USA -- they are working within the labor laws in India. Even though I work in a job that is often outsourced I don't think that outsourcing should be banned - in many cases it makes a lot of sense, in others not so much. I try to make sure I keep skills and knowledge that is hard to outsource.
Pay range for entry level agents in India is $200 - $350/month Where are these cheap Americans that will work for $1.75/hour?
That may be so, but American companies that contract with Indian outsource firms are *certainly* paying more than that.
And American companies that pay their call center agents $10/hour are still billing them out for more than that to account for benefits and overhead (including agent training, facilities, administration, etc). But since nearly everything is cheaper in India, the final bill rate for an Indian call center agent still ends up being less than an American call center agent.
You don't need a college degree to know how to work a phone. I know the HR hysteria in the USA would have you believe otherwise, but trust me! It's not that hard...
But one of the big justifications for outsourcing call centers to India was that you could get college-educated workers for cheap. If you're going to be staffing the call centers with people who have just a high school education, then you might as well do that in the United States and not deal with the language/accent barrier.
You're missing the cheap part -- highschool grads in India are cheaper than high school grads in the USA. That's why they deal with the language/culture/accent barrier.
Workers without a college degree are cheap enough in America as it is.
Pay range for entry level agents in India is $200 - $350/month. Where are these cheap Americans that will work for $1.75/hour?
Moreover, it's strongly implied that IBM is misrepresenting the educational level of the employees in these outsourced call centers. Regardless of whether workers in call centers should need a college degree, it's not kosher to say or imply that your workers do when in fact they don't.
Where is this implied? I never assume that first level tech support agents will have any kind of relevant college degree - they all seem to follow a script (and I wish they'd just publish the scripts online so I could follow them myself).
Slashdot Mirror
In your thinking you're certified to critique others writing, when you're clearly not.If you can't gather the meaning of words from within the context in which they are written, it is clearly YOU with the problem. Get out your hooked on phonics and get on topic, troll.
English good not need here. Me right any way me can and you no understand than it meen you stupid. me not.
That's nice, but other companies are not your company. We managed to pull it off on the 19,000+ user machines we supported.
Hmm...
Yes, it was an administration nightmare, never worked correctly, and managed to cause more trouble than it fixed (backup data store exceeded quota? no login for you!), but such is the case with most corporate security policies.
It was also policy to perform a DoD wipe and reload of any user PCs/laptops as part of out-processing.
You have a different definition of "pull it off" than most people. Sounds like you were able to present the illusion of it working, without it actually working reliably. Which is probably why many IT shops just force users to store data onto file shares and treat the data on the PC as disposable.
I would rather have my data in hand of governement ONLY (and anyway they almost certainly have it or can subponea it) which is beholden to keep it secure, rather than in the hand in private industry which can sell it to anybody, can be unsecure, and can just snub me if I don't want to have it spread.
But once that data is in the hands of the private company, do you want them to just hand it over to the government without so much as a warrant?
Would you feel better about Facebook privacy if they set up their systems so they could ship all of their logs and other data to the NSA without Facebook themselves being about to view it? Would you want Google (and Bing, etc) encrypt their search history logs customer emails and documents immediately in such a way that only the NSA can decrypt it and feed the data directly over to the NSA for government analysis and safekeeping?
I'd rather that the government had to get a warrant before it's able to obtain any of my data from a private company. Even if the government could be trusted to keep it secure, I don't trust them to use it responsibly. I'm less worried about what Google can do with my data than with what the government can do with it. Google can't legally put me into a secret jail because I'm a threat.
And for all of the fear of companies selling data to everyone, there's no incentive for them to make all of their data available to everyone since they lose competitive advantage. Facebook may be willing to sell some search related data to Google for a high enough price, but they probably aren't going to let Google have their customer social relationship data or Google would use that against them by enhancing Google+. So your complete data will never end up in one place -- unless the government requires that it be turned over to them.
All of these accidents and mistakes, yet we are supposed to believe all of these actions have been unintentional. I call bullshit Google.
Why would Google admit to not deleting the data if they were intentionally trying to hide it? Wouldn't it be easier to hide their supposed illicit activity by saying "yeah, we deleted it all. Here's the pile of destroyed hard drives it used to be on. It's alllll gone now. Yessiree. Ain't no way we copied any of that data to our servers hidden in Albania before "deleting" the data."
And really, what possible use would they have for data they snooped from unencrypted wifi except for the use they've already admitted to?
This makes no sense:
“In their letter to the ICO today, Google indicated that they wanted to delete the remaining data and asked for the ICO’s instructions on how to proceed. Our response, which has already been issued, makes clear that Google must supply the data to the ICO immediately, so that we can subject it to forensic analysis before deciding on the necessary course of action.
If the data is so sensitive and worrisome, why doesn't the ICO just insist that it be deleted as agreed upon? If it was ok to delete it earlier, why does it have to be handed over now?
I'd rather have my data in the hands of Google than in the hands of Google *and* some random regulatory body. Many companies have a hard time certifying data destruction with multiple redundant offsite backups and replication, and data stored in the cloud where they may not even know every place their cloud provider stores it.
Though really, why is there no outrage about the fact that plaintext email passwords (and credit card numbers or whatever other personal data they are worried about) are even able to be captured with a simple drive-by Wifi scanner? There is no reason why a Wifi router should default to an open unencrypted mode, and even if it does, there is no reason why personal data should be allowed to be sent in the clear. CPU powerh is cheap, SSL should be used to secure *all* sensitive data.
The fact that Google drove by and captured snippets of data is not the problem... they aren't going to steal your credit card number or hack into your bank account (and there is a good chance that they already host your email) - the problem is when an identify thief does the same thing.
you redistribute 10 year old pc's? you cheap bastards!
I'm still using an 8 year old P4 3Ghz machine as my primary desktop at work. I salvaged it myself after we needed to deploy my much newer machine to someone else.
I run linux on it and primarily use it for web browsing and to remote desktop to a Win7 Virtual machine where I can run Outloook and MS-Office for compatibility with the rest of the office.
The CPU speed is fine, but I wish I could put more than 2GB of RAM in it.
For any company worth it's salt. They've been doing automated backups in the background for you. Anything you do, even wiping your drive will not take those backups away.
My company doesn't back up any desktops - if it's not put on a fileserver drive, it's not backed up.
You can have all the skills required, who cares. When your competition is offering 30 cents to the dollar cost; you lose. When the government says it will not intervene on your behalf, you lose. Mathematically speaking, all 3 time losers, are also 2 time losers.
You need to make sure that you just don't have the "skills required", but also the skills that can't be offshored easily - I've onshored entire offshored projects that were failing because it turns out that running a successful offshored project is harder than many companies think it is. There's no reason why a USA citizen (or company) can't compare with offshored companies. There are some projects and jobs that are well suited for off-shoring, some that are not. The language, cultural, physical and timezone differences are all hurdles that need to be overcome - a local candidate has none of those issues. But he has to be more than just a "coder" - if I have to do all of the requirements analysis and architecture myself, I may as well just offshore the coding, but if I can find a local developer that already knows something about my business and I don't have to walk him through every step of the development and testing, then I don't care if I have to pay him 3 times as much since he saved me 3 times the work.
Unless your Chevy truck gets better than 53/48 mpg, then my electric hybrid generates less CO2 than your truck since both of our vehicles are powered by the same fuel - gasoline.
Does that include the increased CO2 generation caused by the mining and refinement of the lithium in your battery pack?
Let's not even talk about the added environmentally devastating pollution your hybrid causes indirectly through its manufacture or its later disposal. It's much more convenient to focus on a vague general statistic, like "pounds of CO2 released or produced". (Kinda like those propaganda fliers about how many gallons of water, etc. a single pound of meat "uses" to produce.)
Well, no, but I didn't include the increased CO2 generation caused by mining and refinement of the iron ore to build the truck that weighs twice as much as the Prius (Ford F-150 = 5300 lbs, Prius C = 2500lbs. The 60 lb Li-Ion battery pack in the Prius can be recycled - much like the 50 lb lead acid battery in the truck. Are there other exotic and toxic materials in the Prius that aren't in the truck?
But if you have the CO2 figures that factor in all costs of construction for both a hybrid and conventional car, I'd like to see them.
Have a look at ships' hulls and see what saltwater does to metal.
I tried to look under a 50 year old naval ship but I couldn't see the hull because it was *still floating*! There are lots of aluminum hulled boats on the water too, and aluminum reacts even more strongly with seawater than steel.
It's almost as if there's a way through good design, alloy selection and regular maintenance that metals can survive contact with water. Now if only someone could figure out how to use seawater for cooling...maybe they could even make it work for a nuclear reactor. I wonder how the Navy keeps it's shipboard nuclear reactors cool?
Why not use the seawater to cool your cooling fluid instead of using saltwater directly? Pump the heated waste water far offshore.
I hear that salt water tends to corrode steel. Just a rumor though.
Also, due to using seawater as emergency coolant at Fukushima, we learned that the presence of salt in the water causes the fuel rods to oxidize much more rapidly, and dissolve.
Not the best idea in the world, unfortunately.
Yeah you're right, seawater cooling would never work.
Note that I didn't say to send the seawater through your reactor, use heat exchangers to cool your "clean" cooling fluid that's circulated through the reactor.
If power, from whatever source, was free, what would the world look like?
A whole lot brighter at night!
With enough electrical energy we could convert to a hydrogen/oxygen economy, rather than a carbon-based one. There are some issues though, like the Hindenburg.
Then don't build your airship with a highly flamable skin - hydrogen was only part of the problem.
It turns out that Hydrogen in a normal Earthlike atmosphere is explosive.
So are many other common fuels like gasoline and natural gas, yet we've learned to harness them safely.
Also, it wants to be a gas rather than a liquid, which limits its utility.
As does natural gas, yet there's growing talk of using Natural Gas to fuel long haul trucks due to the dropping costs of natural gas.
And as a gas, it passes freely through any known material at room temperature because hydrogen2 molecules are as small as molecules get.
Generate it at the filling station so it doesn't have to be pumped for long distances, and dissolve it in some other substance to ease storage.
And then there's the whole "we get half of our electrical energy from coal" thing, and the conversion losses.
But the whole premise of this article is that we need to move to "clean" nuclear power, not fossil fuels.
Unless we get some good watts from some other source, your electric hybrid is likely generating more CO2 than my Chevy truck.
Unless your Chevy truck gets better than 53/48 mpg, then my electric hybrid generates less CO2 than your truck since both of our vehicles are powered by the same fuel - gasoline. Even when electric cars are powered by coal plants, they than conventional cars.
If I had an electric car, most of its power would come from hydroelectric power.
This is what we saw with Fukushima. That reactor was well designed - and the others in the region held up decently. If the plant had been kept up even close to spec - there wouldn't have been a disaster. Hell, even if after the initial issue,
The reactor was well designed to faulty assumptions that in retrospect never should have been accepted.
if they had just dumped the core, it would of been a passing mention in the newspaper. Instead, somebody who valued money over other peoples lives, decided to make a profitable decision instead of a safe one.
It only takes one stupid idiot to ruin a good thing.
I'm not sure what you mean by "dump the core", but I believe the reactors all underwent a SCRAM to shut down after the quake. But even after shutdown, the reactor core continues to emit a significant amount of heat for quite some time, and when the cooling failed, there was no way to dissipate that heat.
Its much easier to adapt to climate change than it is to control the global climate.
Depending on what results from the changes in the global climate.... If increasingly acidic oceans kills off ocean food sources and changing weather conditions turn formerly productive farming regions into drought stricken arid wastelands without also changing formerly unfarmable areas into productive farming regions, then the adaptation will mean dramatic reductions in the population the earth can support.
If Nuclear really is the answer, then vastly increasing our use of nuclear power over the coming decades is probably an easier adaption than watching 1/3 of the world's population die when we can't produce enough food.
I doubt the climate changes will be so dramatic, but no one really knows for sure - we may hit a tipping point that uncontrollably drives the climate to new extremes never seen before.
cheap electrical power available from nukes
That's not really true.
That's why I said it's a big "if", but in any case, the cost of nuclear power versus fossil fuels depends on how seriously you believe that there is a link between carbon emissions and global warming. Global warming could result in many trillions of dollars of damage as coastal areas are inundated by rising seas, droughts and other extreme weather, crop loss, etc.
If Nuclear power really does emit less carbon and carbon is causing global warming, then nuclear power could be far less costly even if the raw price per kwh is higher.
Even in the USA, we're dealing with nuclear and coal plants on the brink of shutting down,
because the mild winter and extended drought is bringing rivers down near critical levels.
Fortunately, most of the population lives close to the coasts where there's lots of water available.
In Africa, you need to desalinate water before you can do anything.
Why not use the seawater to cool your cooling fluid instead of using saltwater directly? Pump the heated waste water far offshore.
And desalination creates its own set of problems (what do you do with the brine?).
Why not put it back where it came from -- the ocean? Let it seep out of miles of pipe to reduce local effects of high salinity.
Nuclear Energy is stupid. It's bad enough we have a bunch of cartels making massive profits of oil, nuclear power has an even higher barrier to entry than that.
So what's your answer? Only generate power from generator-bicycles so there's a much lower barrier to entry?
Nuclear fusion may ultimately prove to be an even cleaner source of power -- with an even higher barrier to entry than fission. Should fusion be abandoned because it will have a high barrier to entry?
Parking lots in Phoenix seem to do just fine.
Of course, Phoenix expects 110 degree temperatures so they plan for it when they build things. Unlike other areas that usually don't see those high temperatures.
A small scale nuclear war to produce a nuclear winter to offset global warming will do the trick, and possibly cut the population at the same time.
I was going to suggest the same thing -- creating a nuclear winter is probably not any more risky that other ideas that have been floated around that have side effects that are just as poorly understood -- like large scale seeding of oceans with iron to encourage phytoplankton growth that will be a carbon sink.
And even nuclear power is a problem there - mining and enrichment are very expensive phases and they produce carbon dioxide.
It's a question of calculating the total emissions for each type of energy source, and it's not an easy process.
If you had practically unlimited and cheap electrical power available from nukes (an awfully big "if"), you could eliminate much of the carbon emissions while extracting nuclear fuel. If nothing else you could split hydrogen out of water and use hydrogen as a fuel for equipment and processing plants. There'd still be some carbon emissions from things like deforestation during mining, etc.
I moved to Alaska several years ago. After three winters, I am acclimatized. For instance, when it gets up to 50 degrees Fahrenheit I am strolling around in shorts and a t-shirt. Trying to survive shifting climate is something life has always done. Those who migrate and adapt survive. Those who nuke themselves deserve what they get - just leave the rest of us out of it.
It's much easier to adapt to a cooler climate than a warmer one. When you get cold you can put on another jacket. You can only remove so many clothes to remain comfortable when the temperature rises to 101 degrees with high humidity.
So then... Because I-BM finds yet another way to circumvent the labor laws of the US Americans should sit quietly?
I realize they are one of many corps that justify their actions by citing the corporate manifesto of profits over patriotism but that won't stop people like me calling as it is.
They aren't circumventing the labor laws of the USA -- they are working within the labor laws in India. Even though I work in a job that is often outsourced I don't think that outsourcing should be banned - in many cases it makes a lot of sense, in others not so much. I try to make sure I keep skills and knowledge that is hard to outsource.
Pay range for entry level agents in India is $200 - $350/month Where are these cheap Americans that will work for $1.75/hour?
That may be so, but American companies that contract with Indian outsource firms are *certainly* paying more than that.
And American companies that pay their call center agents $10/hour are still billing them out for more than that to account for benefits and overhead (including agent training, facilities, administration, etc). But since nearly everything is cheaper in India, the final bill rate for an Indian call center agent still ends up being less than an American call center agent.
You don't need a college degree to know how to work a phone. I know the HR hysteria in the USA would have you believe otherwise, but trust me! It's not that hard...
But one of the big justifications for outsourcing call centers to India was that you could get college-educated workers for cheap. If you're going to be staffing the call centers with people who have just a high school education, then you might as well do that in the United States and not deal with the language/accent barrier.
You're missing the cheap part -- highschool grads in India are cheaper than high school grads in the USA. That's why they deal with the language/culture/accent barrier.
Workers without a college degree are cheap enough in America as it is.
Pay range for entry level agents in India is $200 - $350/month. Where are these cheap Americans that will work for $1.75/hour?
Moreover, it's strongly implied that IBM is misrepresenting the educational level of the employees in these outsourced call centers. Regardless of whether workers in call centers should need a college degree, it's not kosher to say or imply that your workers do when in fact they don't.
Where is this implied? I never assume that first level tech support agents will have any kind of relevant college degree - they all seem to follow a script (and I wish they'd just publish the scripts online so I could follow them myself).