That is certainly how it works in Australia. Cheap pre-paid phones can (literally) be picked up at your local 7-11.
The interesting point about this type of charging in Australia is that the cost of local (landline) phone calls has been a hot political issue in the past. These have always had an untimed, fixed per call charge since I can remember. Telstra (the once wholly govt. owned Monopoly telco) tried to change this a few times (esp. after modems became commonplace) but public outcry stopped the changes. But no one has complained about timed charges on mobile phones. Since a enormous number of calls now involve at least 1 mobile, we have pretty much have timed local calls anyway.
I have the mag and the article makes for sobering reading. It's written by a former marine who is certainly no tree-hugging hippie, but he admits he was disturbed by much of what he found in his series of interviews and investigations across the country. In short: there's a shitload of bad stuff out there and there's more being produced every day.
Before reading this article I felt like the poster who ranted about activists making mountains out of molehills and ignoring the many advantages of nuclear power. But afterwards I wasn't so sure. Sure, a lot of the crap out there now is due to mismanagement, ignorance and lack of foresight (all alarmingly detailed in the NG article). But even if it was perfectly managed all the time, are the risks still too high? This question reminds me of an earlier discussion on/. about server uptime. Some people were saying that extremely high uptime is not worth it, but others pointed out that the nature of the application matters. One astute reader mentioned a pacemaker as an example - while not really comparable to a computer server, it shows an application where a device must work 100% of the time or someone DIES. Nuclear power is much more complicated than a pacemaker, and I think only a fool would guarantee 100% uptime - or "safety" in this case. So something will eventually go wrong, just as it would with any other complicated power system. It seems to me, however, that a nuclear mistake is likely to cause a lot more trouble than a mistake with any other technology. Even if a coal plant blew up catastrophically, the danger is over when the fire goes out. Even if all the wind turbines fell over on top of people picnicking under them, it wouldn't be the ongoing liability a release of radioactive matter into the atmosphere a Chernobyl-like incident (or worse) would cause.
Perhaps I'm talking out my not-very-scientific arse, and the potential failure consequences aren't that high. However, it's not like we don't have alternatives. Sure, they need money to be developed. But how much money are we really spending on nuclear? We are told Yucca will cost 58 billion to build, but what of the ongoing costs of transportation and security at the reactors and military facilities all over the country that Yucca will continue to get new stuff from? I suspect that would buy a lot of wind/solar/fusion/hydrogen/fart power research.
As for Yucca Mountain itself, the basic principle seems sound. The waste we have is here, we can't get rid of it, so it might as well be stored in one single facility with the best technology and security available. Of course, it must be transported there, but this a risk we'll just have to take to get it safely (whatever that means) stored. Of course, if we keep using nuclear power, this is a risk we must continue to take every day.
Note: I live in Australia, so I use the we pronoun above to mean humanity in general, rather than the American populace:-)
...and still be a billionaire, according to the current figures at the Bill Gates Wealth Clock.
But seriously, it's interesting to read the comments here. I think the poster who said that we don't have enough "political capital" said it best. It's a large simplification, but in a democracy, this basically means the majority of people don't want to go. They've got other things they care about more. In the decades-old "billions for space vs. other stuff" argument, other stuff is winning. I would suggest that this will remain the case in the forseeable future, unless the world climate changes considerably, or proponents find a more compelling argument for the general populace than "let's do it to see what's there".
I'm not sure where I stand. I'd love for people (preferably me:-) to go, but it's a tough argument when many people live in abject poverty and the world has many problems. I don't believe these could be solved just throwing 20 billion at them, but I'm sure we could all find a lot of ways to help disadvantaged people with 20 billion. In any case, if someone DID come up with the cash, might it not be better to spend the cash on the so-called Space Elevator? Similar costs have been quoted for that project, and it would seem to me that would bring more tangible benefits for the world. Making access to space cheap would make all space exploration, research and commercial exploitation (including manned mars missions) much cheaper, thus making a greater range of potential payoffs available to us. What do others think?
<rant> I think the "must wrap up everything in 50 minutes" emphasis in many shows is a real shame. Extra time would not only allow for more character development, it's just more plain old storytelling time. This is especially important in shows that sometimes explore complex themes and ideas. Take Star Trek:TNG as an example. I loved that show as much as the next geek, but sometimes they would establish a great premise, add interesting twists and complications and then magically wrap everything up in the few minutes after the last commercial break. (The solutions nearly always involved tachyons, IIRC:-)
TNG also suffered from another common characteristic of episodic television: each episode is pretty much a clean slate, where the events of previous episodes are conveniently forgotten. You'd think characters who were taken to other dimensions or lived an entire lifetime on another planet would have some ongoing issues, no? Not to mention more pragmatic matters: how many times did you ask yourself "why didn't they use that technology they discovered in that other episode?"
I know I'm being picky. It's probably unreasonable to expect a long running series to be completely internally consistent when you're using many different writers and directors and doing different things all the time (which is a Good Thing). You also have to keep the series accessible to casual and new viewers. So I'm prepared to suspend my disbelief, but is it too much to ask for some longer stories? Everyone seems to love those TNG double episodes: I for one wished at the climax of a few other episodes that I would soon see those magic words: To Be Continued. Alas, it was not to be. </rant>
Full credit goes to the newer generation of US cable shows (Sopranos et al) which seem to suffer less from these problems.
P.S. I used TNG as a specific example, but the complaint applies to many shows. Regarding TNG specifically, I've never really seen Babylon 5, and will get around it eventually; so don't hassle me:-)
Slashdot Mirror
...they're tracking news back to 200BC:
http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=apollo&btnG=Search+Archives&scoring=t
A lot of interest in Apollo back then, and not a Cylon in sight.
That is certainly how it works in Australia. Cheap pre-paid phones can (literally) be picked up at your local 7-11.
The interesting point about this type of charging in Australia is that the cost of local (landline) phone calls has been a hot political issue in the past. These have always had an untimed, fixed per call charge since I can remember. Telstra (the once wholly govt. owned Monopoly telco) tried to change this a few times (esp. after modems became commonplace) but public outcry stopped the changes. But no one has complained about timed charges on mobile phones. Since a enormous number of calls now involve at least 1 mobile, we have pretty much have timed local calls anyway.
In view of the fact that 90% of the images in the Internet are p0rns, it's extremely difficult to check them all out.
I volunteer.
...an American general will have to play a really serious game of Galactic Battlegrounds.
There is a summary of the article at their web site.
/. about server uptime. Some people were saying that extremely high uptime is not worth it, but others pointed out that the nature of the application matters. One astute reader mentioned a pacemaker as an example - while not really comparable to a computer server, it shows an application where a device must work 100% of the time or someone DIES. Nuclear power is much more complicated than a pacemaker, and I think only a fool would guarantee 100% uptime - or "safety" in this case. So something will eventually go wrong, just as it would with any other complicated power system. It seems to me, however, that a nuclear mistake is likely to cause a lot more trouble than a mistake with any other technology. Even if a coal plant blew up catastrophically, the danger is over when the fire goes out. Even if all the wind turbines fell over on top of people picnicking under them, it wouldn't be the ongoing liability a release of radioactive matter into the atmosphere a Chernobyl-like incident (or worse) would cause.
:-)
I have the mag and the article makes for sobering reading. It's written by a former marine who is certainly no tree-hugging hippie, but he admits he was disturbed by much of what he found in his series of interviews and investigations across the country. In short: there's a shitload of bad stuff out there and there's more being produced every day.
Before reading this article I felt like the poster who ranted about activists making mountains out of molehills and ignoring the many advantages of nuclear power. But afterwards I wasn't so sure. Sure, a lot of the crap out there now is due to mismanagement, ignorance and lack of foresight (all alarmingly detailed in the NG article). But even if it was perfectly managed all the time, are the risks still too high? This question reminds me of an earlier discussion on
Perhaps I'm talking out my not-very-scientific arse, and the potential failure consequences aren't that high. However, it's not like we don't have alternatives. Sure, they need money to be developed. But how much money are we really spending on nuclear? We are told Yucca will cost 58 billion to build, but what of the ongoing costs of transportation and security at the reactors and military facilities all over the country that Yucca will continue to get new stuff from? I suspect that would buy a lot of wind/solar/fusion/hydrogen/fart power research.
As for Yucca Mountain itself, the basic principle seems sound. The waste we have is here, we can't get rid of it, so it might as well be stored in one single facility with the best technology and security available. Of course, it must be transported there, but this a risk we'll just have to take to get it safely (whatever that means) stored. Of course, if we keep using nuclear power, this is a risk we must continue to take every day.
Note: I live in Australia, so I use the we pronoun above to mean humanity in general, rather than the American populace
...and still be a billionaire, according to the current figures at the Bill Gates Wealth Clock.
:-) to go, but it's a tough argument when many people live in abject poverty and the world has many problems. I don't believe these could be solved just throwing 20 billion at them, but I'm sure we could all find a lot of ways to help disadvantaged people with 20 billion. In any case, if someone DID come up with the cash, might it not be better to spend the cash on the so-called Space Elevator? Similar costs have been quoted for that project, and it would seem to me that would bring more tangible benefits for the world. Making access to space cheap would make all space exploration, research and commercial exploitation (including manned mars missions) much cheaper, thus making a greater range of potential payoffs available to us. What do others think?
But seriously, it's interesting to read the comments here. I think the poster who said that we don't have enough "political capital" said it best. It's a large simplification, but in a democracy, this basically means the majority of people don't want to go. They've got other things they care about more. In the decades-old "billions for space vs. other stuff" argument, other stuff is winning. I would suggest that this will remain the case in the forseeable future, unless the world climate changes considerably, or proponents find a more compelling argument for the general populace than "let's do it to see what's there".
I'm not sure where I stand. I'd love for people (preferably me
Good point.
:-)
:-)
<rant>
I think the "must wrap up everything in 50 minutes" emphasis in many shows is a real shame. Extra time would not only allow for more character development, it's just more plain old storytelling time. This is especially important in shows that sometimes explore complex themes and ideas. Take Star Trek:TNG as an example. I loved that show as much as the next geek, but sometimes they would establish a great premise, add interesting twists and complications and then magically wrap everything up in the few minutes after the last commercial break. (The solutions nearly always involved tachyons, IIRC
TNG also suffered from another common characteristic of episodic television: each episode is pretty much a clean slate, where the events of previous episodes are conveniently forgotten. You'd think characters who were taken to other dimensions or lived an entire lifetime on another planet would have some ongoing issues, no? Not to mention more pragmatic matters: how many times did you ask yourself "why didn't they use that technology they discovered in that other episode?"
I know I'm being picky. It's probably unreasonable to expect a long running series to be completely internally consistent when you're using many different writers and directors and doing different things all the time (which is a Good Thing). You also have to keep the series accessible to casual and new viewers. So I'm prepared to suspend my disbelief, but is it too much to ask for some longer stories? Everyone seems to love those TNG double episodes: I for one wished at the climax of a few other episodes that I would soon see those magic words: To Be Continued. Alas, it was not to be.
</rant>
Full credit goes to the newer generation of US cable shows (Sopranos et al) which seem to suffer less from these problems.
P.S. I used TNG as a specific example, but the complaint applies to many shows. Regarding TNG specifically, I've never really seen Babylon 5, and will get around it eventually; so don't hassle me