The thing that is always shocking about these incidents is how ultimately they are normally down to the action of one individual and the others who paid the ultimate price for being unfortunate enough to be trapped by their actions. I'm not 100% sure how complex the computer systems on modern aircraft are, but it presents an interesting thought - why do we still let people fly planes at all? Or even down to the case of, if something is wrong (and in this case ATC knew something was wrong before the plane went down) why isn't there a system in place to remove control of the plane from the pilots and somehow fly it from the ground?
In my opinion, we put to much faith in people we don't know anything about to get us around and there is nothing we can do about it. That is the scary part.
Let's not forget what is being suggested here, clean renewable energy which is promised to be much more predictable than wind and solar. Reading the previous comments about predictable vs dispatch-ability are spot on, but maybe forgetting one thing. The issue with current renewables is not that we don't have enough power, the big power stations produce more than enough most of the time but it is key in the distribution infrastructure that the National Grid control the amount of power entering and leaving the network (supply and demand) and the predictability of large amounts of tide energy coming onto and off the grid compares favourably with balancing renewables production with nuclear and other sources putting power onto the grid.
The cost may be high for consumers initially, but then again new technologies in the power industry always are. There is an opportunity with tidal power to generate a huge amount of electricity in the UK, with no CO2 or other nasty things like radioactive waste. I honestly think that "green" technologies will always be significantly more expensive to run and maintain than traditional ones like gas/coal/oil and even nuclear, but the fact is that the additional cost is worth paying to look after the environment. It may not offset the cost to consumers, but in terms of government backing for this I could see the lagoons having a positive impact on tourism in the areas they are built too.
A few others have pointed out that the EU has publicly funded broadband roll out and access which is totally true, but ultimately it comes down to who is willing to continually invest in new technologies.
If you look at current Fibre to the Home (FTTH) availability, Asian markets like South Korea dominate. Talking to some contacts who work in a big ISP here in the UK, FTTH roll out still seems pretty far in the future - government funded technology roll outs (and government owned telecoms) will always be able to get things done quicker as they have the funds available and aren't so much a business.
Has there been some change over recent years that has made phones hard to get out of your pocket? Why would you want to do anything on such a tiny screen when a bigger one is within reach almost 100% of the time?
I was playing with the android version of Instagram on a BlackBerry Q10 a while back, and the application didn't quite look right on the small screen of the Q10 (iGrann looks better since it was built for BlackBerry). If BlackBerry are going to focus more on hardware keyboard devices with the majority of apps coming from android I think it is something they need to work on and consider carefully. Otherwise, this is a step in the right direction for the once big mobile company!
It was announced this week that GCHQ don't need permission to snoop on UK citizen's activity when the services being used are located abroad as they class it as "external communication" (for the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Google).
It wouldn't surprise me in the light of recent events, if the UK government back this plan, to only turn around and say, "Yes you need to keep the data in Europe, but we don't want it here." just so they can continue to *legally* spy on the people via this "external" (overseas) communication loophole.
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The thing that is always shocking about these incidents is how ultimately they are normally down to the action of one individual and the others who paid the ultimate price for being unfortunate enough to be trapped by their actions. I'm not 100% sure how complex the computer systems on modern aircraft are, but it presents an interesting thought - why do we still let people fly planes at all? Or even down to the case of, if something is wrong (and in this case ATC knew something was wrong before the plane went down) why isn't there a system in place to remove control of the plane from the pilots and somehow fly it from the ground? In my opinion, we put to much faith in people we don't know anything about to get us around and there is nothing we can do about it. That is the scary part.
Let's not forget what is being suggested here, clean renewable energy which is promised to be much more predictable than wind and solar. Reading the previous comments about predictable vs dispatch-ability are spot on, but maybe forgetting one thing. The issue with current renewables is not that we don't have enough power, the big power stations produce more than enough most of the time but it is key in the distribution infrastructure that the National Grid control the amount of power entering and leaving the network (supply and demand) and the predictability of large amounts of tide energy coming onto and off the grid compares favourably with balancing renewables production with nuclear and other sources putting power onto the grid. The cost may be high for consumers initially, but then again new technologies in the power industry always are. There is an opportunity with tidal power to generate a huge amount of electricity in the UK, with no CO2 or other nasty things like radioactive waste. I honestly think that "green" technologies will always be significantly more expensive to run and maintain than traditional ones like gas/coal/oil and even nuclear, but the fact is that the additional cost is worth paying to look after the environment. It may not offset the cost to consumers, but in terms of government backing for this I could see the lagoons having a positive impact on tourism in the areas they are built too.
A few others have pointed out that the EU has publicly funded broadband roll out and access which is totally true, but ultimately it comes down to who is willing to continually invest in new technologies. If you look at current Fibre to the Home (FTTH) availability, Asian markets like South Korea dominate. Talking to some contacts who work in a big ISP here in the UK, FTTH roll out still seems pretty far in the future - government funded technology roll outs (and government owned telecoms) will always be able to get things done quicker as they have the funds available and aren't so much a business.
Has there been some change over recent years that has made phones hard to get out of your pocket? Why would you want to do anything on such a tiny screen when a bigger one is within reach almost 100% of the time?
I was playing with the android version of Instagram on a BlackBerry Q10 a while back, and the application didn't quite look right on the small screen of the Q10 (iGrann looks better since it was built for BlackBerry). If BlackBerry are going to focus more on hardware keyboard devices with the majority of apps coming from android I think it is something they need to work on and consider carefully. Otherwise, this is a step in the right direction for the once big mobile company!
It was announced this week that GCHQ don't need permission to snoop on UK citizen's activity when the services being used are located abroad as they class it as "external communication" (for the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Google). It wouldn't surprise me in the light of recent events, if the UK government back this plan, to only turn around and say, "Yes you need to keep the data in Europe, but we don't want it here." just so they can continue to *legally* spy on the people via this "external" (overseas) communication loophole.