What's killing PC sales is the phone not Windows 8, what's killing Apple is the competition in the phone markets and the fact that people are buying phones instead of PC's. In the case with Apple they are replacing their Apple desktops with PC's. Oh, if anyone is interested in Previewing Windows 8 on VirtualBox you can see a video on it here without buying anything. You can use Windows 8 BEFORE starting to buy and BEFORE you overwrite Windows Windows Vista or Windows 7. Only thing I warn people about is Windows 8 is best used with a touch screen and most PC's from those era's didn't have touch screens. This is a big short term problem with Windows 8 and a bad miscalculation on Microsoft's part.
That's it we have no choice but to develop quantum entaggled particle chips that violate the causality principle that way we can have remote connections to a central server that is un-hackable and can also use energy at very high efficiency, and at speed of light speeds. http://rawcell.com
I was happy to read last week that the Obama administration seems to have been reading the blogs about the mass deployment of modular generation IV reactors. I hope it was brought to their attention by my "We the People" petition to study the efficacy of a plan to convert all coal plants to LFTR Nuclear Reactors but that is probably just wishful thinking. They said that they would be deploying 50 300 MW reactors every year starting in 2050 maybe sooner if they can get the technology right. Unfortunately this is far short of the 5 year start time that I feel we could do with a Manhattan style effort. I came to a capital cost figure of 1.6 Trillion for the conversion process but have recently learned that this figure could be over costly by a factor of two which would bring the figure to 800 billion in capital costs if the new data is right. I believe it is totally worth the 23 Billion dollar effort to make it happen and will try again with another "We the People" petition when they integrate my suggested "Facebook Authentication" into their site. Hopefully with enough signatures we can make this study happen and make the results fully public in all aspects of it's execution and findings.
I wrote an article on the Ulterior Motives: That killed the best nuclear solution to date for the US for nearly seventy years. That solution is LFTR Nuclear Reactors, If it hadn't been for the Oil industry, Nuclear Bombs, and Other Alternative Energy Movements, we would have a nearly endless supply of safe and cheap power. It goes to show you spreading FUD does pay off. Every time I post a message about LFTR reactors someone inevitable says something that is unfounded. Being as impartial a write as possible, I always entertain the arguments by giving them counter arguments which takes a lot of time from research for the defense. Nuclear is a solution and a good one. One the US would be smart to invest in. It would kill the Global Warming problem in 10 years with the right effort with the least environmental impact of any solution that can be deployed to date.
With sugar, water, and enzymes in your tank, you have a fuel kit for a PEM (proton electrolyte membrane) fuel cell vehicle. An onboard battery provides the instant energy for starting the vehicle while the enzymes get to work on their sugary snack. The fuel cell will recharge the battery later from excess sugar energy.
According to Zhang, "Low-temperature PEM fuel cells are used primarily for transportation applications due to their fast startup time, high energy conversion efficiency, low operating temperature (below 180 F), and favorable power-to-weight ratio."
Zhang and Mielenz wrote in a review in the Jan. 28, 2011, issue of the journal Energies, "When polysaccharides and water are mixed, no reaction occurs... When the enzyme cocktail is added, hydrogen and carbon dioxide are generated spontaneously. Our research showed that the gas produced by (synthetic cell-free enzyme pathway biotransformation) contains 67 percent hydrogen and 33 percent carbon dioxide. Hydrogen and carbon dioxide can be separated by membrane technology (or the) mixture can be directly used by PEM fuel cells with approximately 1 percent loss in fuel cell efficiency." The efficiency statement is based on a study by Zhang's lab published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science in 2011.
Zhang wrote in a Perspective column in Energy & Environmental Sciences that the process provides a number of special features suitable for mobile PEM fuel cells: high energy efficiency as a result of extracting all the chemical energy stored in the substrate sugars and some of the low-temperature thermal energy from the fuel cell; high hydrogen storage density; mild reaction conditions, at the same range of those of PEM fuel cells; nearly no costs for product separation; clean products for PEM fuel cells and easy power system configuration; and simple and safe distribution and storage of solid sugars.
"Carbohydrates as a hydrogen carrier would meet the U.S. Department of Energy's ultimate target for useful energy based on the mass of the entire onboard system in a light-duty vehicle (7.5 percent hydrogen by weight or 2.5 kilowatt hour per kilogram)," Zhang says.
Stationary energy sites, such as large fuel cell stacks, can also take delivery of carbohydrate powder from local or distant biorefineries and generate hydrogen by using an enzyme cocktail, says Zhang. It is also possible that satellite hydrogen generation stations could produce hydrogen to refill hydrogen-fuel cell vehicles.
The use of renewable carbohydrate as a hydrogen storage carrier addresses the challenges associated with storage, safety, distribution, and infrastructure, Zhang and Mielenz conclude in the review.
What about miracle four – better fuel cells? It's not his field, but he believes most fuel cell problems, such as cost and lifetime, have been solved. "In the long term, improving energy utilization efficiency through hydrogen-fuel cell electricity systems will be vital for sustainable transportation," he says.
In the meantime, there are still a number of process engineering challenges to overcome to implement sugar-powered cars, says Zhang – such as warm-up of the onboard bioreformer where the sugar and water are converted to gas, shut-down of the bioreformer, temperature control for the coupled bioreformer and fuel cells, mixing and gas release control for the bioreformer, and re-generation of used enzymes in the bioreformer. "But such technical challenges can be solved based on available engineering know-how if the great potential is widely realized," he says. http://rawcell.com
WRONG AGAIN---WOULD YOU LIKE TO TRY TO TRY FOR DOUBLE JEOPARDY?
Secondly, this reactor does NOT use a thorium fuel cycle. "It will make use of MOX fuel, a mixture of PuO2 and UO2." (same link above). Rather, what it does is OUTPUT processed thorium that can be used to jump-start a later, hypothetical, thorium-based reactor. In other words: The current project is just "Stage II" in India's 3-stage nuclear program, which has taken since the 1950's to even get to this point. Stage III is now hoped to be a reality maybe around 2050:
It Burns the THORIUM with LESS THAN.1 % WASTE BYPRODUCTS! It is therefor 99.9 % efficient about fuel use. Sorry to not be specific enough.
Conversion of the Power to useful work is what isn't efficient and this has to do with the steam engines not with the THORIUM being burned. Efficiency of the best steam engines which work at a high temperature is somewhere around 55 -60 %. http://rawcell.com
"Started construction of a 500 MW prototype fast breeder reactor at Kalpakkam and this is now under construction by BHAVINI. The unit is expected to be operating in 2010, fuelled with uranium-plutonium oxide (the reactor-grade Pu being from its existing PHWRs). It will have a blanket with thorium and uranium to breed fissile U-233 and plutonium respectively. This will take India's ambitious thorium program to stage 2, and set the scene for eventual full utilization of the country's abundant thorium to fuel reactors. Four more such fast reactors have been announced for construction by 2020. Initial FBRs will be have mixed oxide fuel but these will be followed by metallic-fuelled ones to enable shorter doubling time." linkhttp://rawcell.com
"The 500 MWe FBR being built at Kalpakkam requires two tons of plutonium and seven-eight tons of natural uranium oxide at each fuelling. Thorium Oxide is fed in the periphery of the reactor." This is the only mention I have yet found...link Stay tuned still looking http://rawcell.com
At the moment I can not prove that you are wrong on your second statement. Yes it appears the date has slipped, however on your second statement about it not being able to burn thorium, a technical release from the IGCAR center indicates that it is capable of burning a Thorium Uranium Mix. Unfortunately I can not locate this pdf at this time. I will post the link when I find it.http://rawcell.com
Simple as changing from Uranium to Thorium as a fuel supply. It consumes a small amount of Uranium to keep it's reaction going (which is why it can't go boom ) and burns with 99.9 % efficiency. Most of the remaining waste only remains radioactive for 10 years while a small amount the size of a coke can per MW remains radioactive for 300 years instead of Uranium's 10,000 years. It also is hugely less possible to proliferate than Uranium at the same time. In addition Thorium is so abundant and easy to refine that it appears easy compared to mining coal. It would cost us 1.6 Trillion in capital cost to convert all coal plants to LFTR Reactors (starting in about a 5 year time frame, once we have made the investment (23 Billion ) to overcome the inner containers materials problem. All other problems have been solved. In fact India will have their first full scale Thorium test reactor online THIS YEAR. A 500MW boohemoth! Within 3 years they will have 6 more that will follow for COMMERCIAL USE. So why not the US? I will leave it with this note there is other types of reactors that burn spent Uranium in larger quantities so consideration of them is also is an important feature to getting rid of long term waste.
I for one welcome the ability for individuals to record their lives, so long as they don't reveal that data without a court case(and the penalties for doing so should be high). Having it for ones personal use I don't see a problem with. Tends to hold everyone accountable for their actions. I am sure this statement will create a flood of controversy! http://rawcell.com
When is data recovery day? Have to wait till then for discounts on getting my _________(inject your whatever here, looking for some ideas). http://rawcell.com
The problem with using this material is that it breaks down during the conversion process. This leaves you with a catalyst that doesn't work any more. Anyone know if this is true? rawcell.com
We should be looking at getting the technology to capture LARGE asteroids instead of planning a mission to mars. If we use government funds to push private industries into getting a large rock with value into moons orbit it can provide us with a source of material to help us colonies space which is a much better goal than trying to visit mars with humans. We can continue use robots to explore mars while we work on mining space rocks for rare earths for earth and also for space and for a moon base. Perhaps it would be even better to capture a comet since the most valuable space element is water. http://rawcell.com/
I just finished writing an article on 16 ways to save the planet. Number 8 was to institute a efficiency standards. Design a moving goal post to keep pressing the issue in a sort of energy efficiency Mores Law. Currently our brains are a million times more efficient than the computers we run and at the same time are a million times more powerful! If we press the issue and put money into it we can build the technology to get our computers to match the efficiency of the human brain. There already has been several designs proposed to make this happen including using old analog types of computer designs instead of digital ones which are far more efficient for some things. Also designing chips to come up with correct answers using the chaos and noise rather than by overriding the noise by pushing high voltage differences between 1's and 0's.
The fact is we have enough Thorium to power the US for a 1000 years from ONE mountain PASS. That's right ONE mountain pass will supply the US with 100% of it's needs for 1000 years! There is enough Thorium in that mountain pass to shovel it into a bin and nearly use it without processing (when compared with conventional reactor refining) to supply us with 1000 years at current energy consumption for every last WATT we use. That link points to facts about Thorium as a fuel.
This is a publicity stunt. It's meant to show how the streets look O.K. to be filled with people again. It's the silent radiation killer that is the problem as everyone knows. Fukushima is a peering legacy like Chernobyl before it about the dangers of conventional generation I, II, and III nuclear reactors. We should have been long off these types of reactors. If we had been investing like the most brilliant minds said about Thorium (since 1940's) we would have had 73 years to develop them and we would all be driving around Thorium powered cars by now. With a million times the power density of coal, and much higher power density than current nuclear meltdown prone nuclear reactors we could be free of energy concern for 1000 years. No Melt Downs and No Global Warming and abundant cheap energy.
That's what I have been trying to tell the Slashdot crowd at every chance I can. I am willing to bet with a 4 year effort similar to the 4 years of the Manhattan project (1942-1945) where we went from ground zero ( No Pun Intended) to a developed nuclear bomb for 23 Billion in 2013 dollars that we could over come the materials problem for such high temperatures (700 degrees Celsius) and high neutron flux. I have actually proposed a workable solution for this problem (although it would be a little expensive) but others have proposed alternate materials for the inner reactor container. There is only a few other problems which haven't been resolved to make the generation IV reactors viable. On the other hand the fusion reactors will take another 50 years to commercialize. It will be great when they do so it's a worthy investment. Although they aught to invest in alternatives other than Tokamaks. You can read about generation IV reactors here or about India's Thorium Reactor which comes online this year.
I wrote an article on things we can do to save the planet. It was meant for the Digg crowd but some might want to read it here. One of the ways was to buy up the remainder of the rain forest. It's expensive that's true but as they say there is probably a cure for cancer in there somewhere! Save the Planet: 16 Ways
The next competition is going to be in OS less installs and thread based virtualization for servers, workstations and mobile devices. I am sure all the major plays will jump on the band wagon. As far as VMWare, I have been running my VMWare install for 4 years and have only needed to reboot it once and that was probably my fault when I had a routing loop. VMware is very stable. VirtualBox is less so but then again its a type 2 hypervisor ( I use the term hypervisor loosely so don't call me out on it) compared to ESX's type 1 hypervisor. Xen is a pain to get running. And my proxmox 2.0 install on Debian with KVM simply just works although it doesn't easily support lots of features ( at least it didn't 4 years ago when I used it). Being able to live migrate an infrastructure is very valuable. Having Purple screens of death or guest lockups or host lockups doesn't fly in the enterprise. Virtualization is rapidly becoming like a utility company, everyone expects it and no one wants to pay for it. Same will happen to all parts of the computer industry including programmers when the A.I gets good enough. There is no job that is safe in the world, everything and everyone can be replaced with something cheaper, faster or better. http://rawcell.com/
Slashdot Mirror
What's killing PC sales is the phone not Windows 8, what's killing Apple is the competition in the phone markets and the fact that people are buying phones instead of PC's. In the case with Apple they are replacing their Apple desktops with PC's. Oh, if anyone is interested in Previewing Windows 8 on VirtualBox you can see a video on it here without buying anything. You can use Windows 8 BEFORE starting to buy and BEFORE you overwrite Windows Windows Vista or Windows 7. Only thing I warn people about is Windows 8 is best used with a touch screen and most PC's from those era's didn't have touch screens. This is a big short term problem with Windows 8 and a bad miscalculation on Microsoft's part.
That's it we have no choice but to develop quantum entaggled particle chips that violate the causality principle that way we can have remote connections to a central server that is un-hackable and can also use energy at very high efficiency, and at speed of light speeds. http://rawcell.com
I wanted to read the article to find out information about the method, but there website ain't working. Too much traffic.
I was happy to read last week that the Obama administration seems to have been reading the blogs about the mass deployment of modular generation IV reactors. I hope it was brought to their attention by my "We the People" petition to study the efficacy of a plan to convert all coal plants to LFTR Nuclear Reactors but that is probably just wishful thinking. They said that they would be deploying 50 300 MW reactors every year starting in 2050 maybe sooner if they can get the technology right. Unfortunately this is far short of the 5 year start time that I feel we could do with a Manhattan style effort. I came to a capital cost figure of 1.6 Trillion for the conversion process but have recently learned that this figure could be over costly by a factor of two which would bring the figure to 800 billion in capital costs if the new data is right. I believe it is totally worth the 23 Billion dollar effort to make it happen and will try again with another "We the People" petition when they integrate my suggested "Facebook Authentication" into their site. Hopefully with enough signatures we can make this study happen and make the results fully public in all aspects of it's execution and findings.
I wrote an article on the Ulterior Motives: That killed the best nuclear solution to date for the US for nearly seventy years. That solution is LFTR Nuclear Reactors, If it hadn't been for the Oil industry, Nuclear Bombs, and Other Alternative Energy Movements, we would have a nearly endless supply of safe and cheap power. It goes to show you spreading FUD does pay off. Every time I post a message about LFTR reactors someone inevitable says something that is unfounded. Being as impartial a write as possible, I always entertain the arguments by giving them counter arguments which takes a lot of time from research for the defense. Nuclear is a solution and a good one. One the US would be smart to invest in. It would kill the Global Warming problem in 10 years with the right effort with the least environmental impact of any solution that can be deployed to date.
With sugar, water, and enzymes in your tank, you have a fuel kit for a PEM (proton electrolyte membrane) fuel cell vehicle. An onboard battery provides the instant energy for starting the vehicle while the enzymes get to work on their sugary snack. The fuel cell will recharge the battery later from excess sugar energy. According to Zhang, "Low-temperature PEM fuel cells are used primarily for transportation applications due to their fast startup time, high energy conversion efficiency, low operating temperature (below 180 F), and favorable power-to-weight ratio." Zhang and Mielenz wrote in a review in the Jan. 28, 2011, issue of the journal Energies, "When polysaccharides and water are mixed, no reaction occurs ... When the enzyme cocktail is added, hydrogen and carbon dioxide are generated spontaneously. Our research showed that the gas produced by (synthetic cell-free enzyme pathway biotransformation) contains 67 percent hydrogen and 33 percent carbon dioxide. Hydrogen and carbon dioxide can be separated by membrane technology (or the) mixture can be directly used by PEM fuel cells with approximately 1 percent loss in fuel cell efficiency." The efficiency statement is based on a study by Zhang's lab published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science in 2011.
Zhang wrote in a Perspective column in Energy & Environmental Sciences that the process provides a number of special features suitable for mobile PEM fuel cells: high energy efficiency as a result of extracting all the chemical energy stored in the substrate sugars and some of the low-temperature thermal energy from the fuel cell; high hydrogen storage density; mild reaction conditions, at the same range of those of PEM fuel cells; nearly no costs for product separation; clean products for PEM fuel cells and easy power system configuration; and simple and safe distribution and storage of solid sugars.
"Carbohydrates as a hydrogen carrier would meet the U.S. Department of Energy's ultimate target for useful energy based on the mass of the entire onboard system in a light-duty vehicle (7.5 percent hydrogen by weight or 2.5 kilowatt hour per kilogram)," Zhang says.
Stationary energy sites, such as large fuel cell stacks, can also take delivery of carbohydrate powder from local or distant biorefineries and generate hydrogen by using an enzyme cocktail, says Zhang. It is also possible that satellite hydrogen generation stations could produce hydrogen to refill hydrogen-fuel cell vehicles.
The use of renewable carbohydrate as a hydrogen storage carrier addresses the challenges associated with storage, safety, distribution, and infrastructure, Zhang and Mielenz conclude in the review.
What about miracle four – better fuel cells? It's not his field, but he believes most fuel cell problems, such as cost and lifetime, have been solved. "In the long term, improving energy utilization efficiency through hydrogen-fuel cell electricity systems will be vital for sustainable transportation," he says.
In the meantime, there are still a number of process engineering challenges to overcome to implement sugar-powered cars, says Zhang – such as warm-up of the onboard bioreformer where the sugar and water are converted to gas, shut-down of the bioreformer, temperature control for the coupled bioreformer and fuel cells, mixing and gas release control for the bioreformer, and re-generation of used enzymes in the bioreformer. "But such technical challenges can be solved based on available engineering know-how if the great potential is widely realized," he says. http://rawcell.com
Secondly, this reactor does NOT use a thorium fuel cycle. "It will make use of MOX fuel, a mixture of PuO2 and UO2." (same link above). Rather, what it does is OUTPUT processed thorium that can be used to jump-start a later, hypothetical, thorium-based reactor. In other words: The current project is just "Stage II" in India's 3-stage nuclear program, which has taken since the 1950's to even get to this point. Stage III is now hoped to be a reality maybe around 2050:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%27s_three_stage_nuclear_power_programme#Stage_III_.E2.80.93_thorium_based_reactors
HERE IS THE REAL ANSWER---TIME TO UPDATE WikiPedia Started construction of a 500 MW prototype fast breeder reactor at Kalpakkam and this is now under construction by BHAVINI. The unit is expected to be operating in 2010, fuelled with uranium-plutonium oxide (the reactor-grade Pu being from its existing PHWRs). It will have a blanket with thorium and uranium to breed fissile U-233 and plutonium respectively. This will take India's ambitious thorium program to stage 2, and set the scene for eventual full utilization of the country's abundant thorium to fuel reactors. Four more such fast reactors have been announced for construction by 2020. Initial FBRs will be have mixed oxide fuel but these will be followed by metallic-fuelled ones to enable shorter doubling time. http://rawcell.com The 500 MWe FBR being built at Kalpakkam requires two tons of plutonium and seven-eight tons of natural uranium oxide at each fuelling. Thorium Oxide is fed in the periphery of the reactor. rawcell.com
It Burns the THORIUM with LESS THAN .1 % WASTE BYPRODUCTS! It is therefor 99.9 % efficient about fuel use. Sorry to not be specific enough.
Conversion of the Power to useful work is what isn't efficient and this has to do with the steam engines not with the THORIUM being burned. Efficiency of the best steam engines which work at a high temperature is somewhere around 55 -60 %. http://rawcell.com
"Started construction of a 500 MW prototype fast breeder reactor at Kalpakkam and this is now under construction by BHAVINI. The unit is expected to be operating in 2010, fuelled with uranium-plutonium oxide (the reactor-grade Pu being from its existing PHWRs). It will have a blanket with thorium and uranium to breed fissile U-233 and plutonium respectively. This will take India's ambitious thorium program to stage 2, and set the scene for eventual full utilization of the country's abundant thorium to fuel reactors. Four more such fast reactors have been announced for construction by 2020. Initial FBRs will be have mixed oxide fuel but these will be followed by metallic-fuelled ones to enable shorter doubling time." link http://rawcell.com
"The 500 MWe FBR being built at Kalpakkam requires two tons of plutonium and seven-eight tons of natural uranium oxide at each fuelling. Thorium Oxide is fed in the periphery of the reactor." This is the only mention I have yet found...link Stay tuned still looking http://rawcell.com
At the moment I can not prove that you are wrong on your second statement. Yes it appears the date has slipped, however on your second statement about it not being able to burn thorium, a technical release from the IGCAR center indicates that it is capable of burning a Thorium Uranium Mix. Unfortunately I can not locate this pdf at this time. I will post the link when I find it.http://rawcell.com
Absolutely and I will stand 50 feet away from the reactor core too! http://rawcell.com Did you know you can hold Thorium in the palm of your hand?
Simple as changing from Uranium to Thorium as a fuel supply. It consumes a small amount of Uranium to keep it's reaction going (which is why it can't go boom ) and burns with 99.9 % efficiency. Most of the remaining waste only remains radioactive for 10 years while a small amount the size of a coke can per MW remains radioactive for 300 years instead of Uranium's 10,000 years. It also is hugely less possible to proliferate than Uranium at the same time. In addition Thorium is so abundant and easy to refine that it appears easy compared to mining coal. It would cost us 1.6 Trillion in capital cost to convert all coal plants to LFTR Reactors (starting in about a 5 year time frame, once we have made the investment (23 Billion ) to overcome the inner containers materials problem. All other problems have been solved. In fact India will have their first full scale Thorium test reactor online THIS YEAR. A 500MW boohemoth! Within 3 years they will have 6 more that will follow for COMMERCIAL USE. So why not the US? I will leave it with this note there is other types of reactors that burn spent Uranium in larger quantities so consideration of them is also is an important feature to getting rid of long term waste.
I for one welcome the ability for individuals to record their lives, so long as they don't reveal that data without a court case(and the penalties for doing so should be high). Having it for ones personal use I don't see a problem with. Tends to hold everyone accountable for their actions. I am sure this statement will create a flood of controversy! http://rawcell.com
When is data recovery day? Have to wait till then for discounts on getting my _________(inject your whatever here, looking for some ideas). http://rawcell.com
Bitcoin Miners Threaten Strike Over Fed Regulations
The problem with using this material is that it breaks down during the conversion process. This leaves you with a catalyst that doesn't work any more. Anyone know if this is true? rawcell.com
We should be looking at getting the technology to capture LARGE asteroids instead of planning a mission to mars. If we use government funds to push private industries into getting a large rock with value into moons orbit it can provide us with a source of material to help us colonies space which is a much better goal than trying to visit mars with humans. We can continue use robots to explore mars while we work on mining space rocks for rare earths for earth and also for space and for a moon base. Perhaps it would be even better to capture a comet since the most valuable space element is water. http://rawcell.com/
I just finished writing an article on 16 ways to save the planet. Number 8 was to institute a efficiency standards. Design a moving goal post to keep pressing the issue in a sort of energy efficiency Mores Law. Currently our brains are a million times more efficient than the computers we run and at the same time are a million times more powerful! If we press the issue and put money into it we can build the technology to get our computers to match the efficiency of the human brain. There already has been several designs proposed to make this happen including using old analog types of computer designs instead of digital ones which are far more efficient for some things. Also designing chips to come up with correct answers using the chaos and noise rather than by overriding the noise by pushing high voltage differences between 1's and 0's.
Just a bit of Humor in good fun! "Bitcoin Miners Threaten Strike Over Fed Regulations!"
The fact is we have enough Thorium to power the US for a 1000 years from ONE mountain PASS. That's right ONE mountain pass will supply the US with 100% of it's needs for 1000 years! There is enough Thorium in that mountain pass to shovel it into a bin and nearly use it without processing (when compared with conventional reactor refining) to supply us with 1000 years at current energy consumption for every last WATT we use. That link points to facts about Thorium as a fuel.
This is a publicity stunt. It's meant to show how the streets look O.K. to be filled with people again. It's the silent radiation killer that is the problem as everyone knows. Fukushima is a peering legacy like Chernobyl before it about the dangers of conventional generation I, II, and III nuclear reactors. We should have been long off these types of reactors. If we had been investing like the most brilliant minds said about Thorium (since 1940's) we would have had 73 years to develop them and we would all be driving around Thorium powered cars by now. With a million times the power density of coal, and much higher power density than current nuclear meltdown prone nuclear reactors we could be free of energy concern for 1000 years. No Melt Downs and No Global Warming and abundant cheap energy.
That's what I have been trying to tell the Slashdot crowd at every chance I can. I am willing to bet with a 4 year effort similar to the 4 years of the Manhattan project (1942-1945) where we went from ground zero ( No Pun Intended) to a developed nuclear bomb for 23 Billion in 2013 dollars that we could over come the materials problem for such high temperatures (700 degrees Celsius) and high neutron flux. I have actually proposed a workable solution for this problem (although it would be a little expensive) but others have proposed alternate materials for the inner reactor container. There is only a few other problems which haven't been resolved to make the generation IV reactors viable. On the other hand the fusion reactors will take another 50 years to commercialize. It will be great when they do so it's a worthy investment. Although they aught to invest in alternatives other than Tokamaks. You can read about generation IV reactors here or about India's Thorium Reactor which comes online this year.
I wrote an article on things we can do to save the planet. It was meant for the Digg crowd but some might want to read it here. One of the ways was to buy up the remainder of the rain forest. It's expensive that's true but as they say there is probably a cure for cancer in there somewhere! Save the Planet: 16 Ways
The next competition is going to be in OS less installs and thread based virtualization for servers, workstations and mobile devices. I am sure all the major plays will jump on the band wagon. As far as VMWare, I have been running my VMWare install for 4 years and have only needed to reboot it once and that was probably my fault when I had a routing loop. VMware is very stable. VirtualBox is less so but then again its a type 2 hypervisor ( I use the term hypervisor loosely so don't call me out on it) compared to ESX's type 1 hypervisor. Xen is a pain to get running. And my proxmox 2.0 install on Debian with KVM simply just works although it doesn't easily support lots of features ( at least it didn't 4 years ago when I used it). Being able to live migrate an infrastructure is very valuable. Having Purple screens of death or guest lockups or host lockups doesn't fly in the enterprise. Virtualization is rapidly becoming like a utility company, everyone expects it and no one wants to pay for it. Same will happen to all parts of the computer industry including programmers when the A.I gets good enough. There is no job that is safe in the world, everything and everyone can be replaced with something cheaper, faster or better. http://rawcell.com/