I understand what you are saying now. I agree. For the past two decades MS has not cared what the hardware was as long as their OS ran on it. The hardware just happened to be Intel and clones. In the last year or two Gates has said that software was the future and that hardware wouldn't matter. I agree. The hardware market is very competitive and the margins are razor thin.
I question what Apple's future will be. If computer hardware is not a good bussiness to be in where does that leave Apple? If Apple tried to sell their OS on commodity hardware I think MS will drop on them like a tonne of bricks. I don't think that MacOS for x86 would sell well anyway. MacOS by itself isn't that special any more. Macs sell because of the combination of MacOS and the hardware. The other traditional hardware companies, HP, Sun, IBM, have already started into the services bussiness. Even Dell is trying to sell services. Apple does not apear to have started this sort of transistion. Is Apple destined to become an iPod and creativity software company?
Don't get your hopes up. You could just as easily say that PowerPC has "caught on" due to the huge number of PowerPC chips in cars. I would hazard a guess that more processors based on the PowerPC core shipped last year then Intel and AMD mainstream processors. Saying MS has abandoned x86 is simply wrong. PowerPC is not going to beat Intel and AMD on the desktop for the same reason PowerPC didn't take over a decade ago: backward compatibility. MS is able to switch architectures on the XBox because backward compatibility is not expected. PowerPC has always been a better architecture. It makes complete sense that MS would look at alternatives.
Motorola and IBM own the PowerPC architechture. It was jointly developed. Apple did have some say in the design, but nothing significant.
Apple will never get into the chip design and manufactureing bussiness. It is well beyond their expertise. In much the same way that building a spaceship is beyond Apple's expertise.
Part of Apple's problems with the PowerPC and Motorola was because Apple was not a big enough customer. When the PowerPC workstation market failed to take off Motorola became more interested in the embedded processor PowerPC lines then workstation processors. Over a decade ago the theory was that IBM, Apple, and other companies would want to make workstations and servers with the PowerPC chip that Motorola would make. It was hoped that there would be enough smaller manufacturers and demand for the PowerPC to keep prices down. Of the three companies only Apple relied on the PowerPC. IBM was making workstations with both Intel, and PowerPC. Motorola had many other bussiness lines. When the other computer makers did not show up there wasn't enough demand for faster PowerPCs to keep Motorola interested. IBM made a number of machines based on the PowerPC but eventually lost interest when it was clear that WinNT 4.0 on Intel was going to win on the workstation.
It is easy to look back now and say that Apple made a mistake. But at the time the situation wasn't clear. Intel was having a hard time with what would become the Pentium. There was alot of doom and gloom that the i386 architecture could not scale. MS wasn't not yet entrenched on the desktop. MS had also said that their workstation/server OS, WinNT, would be ported to PowerPC, along with Alpha, MIPS, and Intel[1]. PowerPC really did look like the way of the future. It is a shame PowerPC didn't catch on. It is a great architechture.
[1] The Windows NT kernel is actually quite nice, and was designed with portability in mind. Windows NT 4.0 supported Alpha, PowerPC, MIPS and Intel. Alpha support survived to ServicePack 6. PowerPC and MIPS support was dropped earlier.
If you are not too far from the border lookup a store that has mailboxes. In the past I have used a UPS store just across the border. The UPS store I use charges $5 per shipment, and dosen't require any addition paperwork or other nonsense. I just give them a call before ordering. As a bonus the store has a real shipping address, not a PO BOX so all companies will deliver there.
Also some shops don't have an online order form for a Canadian address, but if you call they will sometimes ship to you. Due to brokerage fees the US PostalService is still the best way to ship across the border. Usually it is pretty fast.
Does my handheld have to decrypt everything it receives
In theory yes. It is not nearly as hard as it sounds. The device only has to decrypt enough to get the destination hardware address. A hardware crypto coprocessor does all the work. In practice 802.11 only encrypts the frame body. The source and destination hardware addresses and some other control fields are sent in the clear.
Please stop abuseing the phrase "security through obscurity." The catch phrase was meant to apply to one and only one case: The practive of obscuring encryption algorithms. Bruce Schneier's thesis was that an encryption system that relied on a secret or hidden algorithm was not secure. The phrase "security through obscurity" does not apply to anything else.
Some forms off security relies on obscurity. Encryption is just a fancy word for data obscurity. Passwords, secure tokens, and RSA private keys should all be kept hidden or obscured. It should not be to hard to think of many forms of physical and data security that include some form of obscurity.
One of the advantages to using encryption at the link layer is that it is harder to perform traffic analysis if an attacker can't determine the destination of the packet. Another advantage is access control. Only hosts that know the secret key can join the network. Both of these advantages are forms of security.
RF amplifiers and audio amplifiers shouldn't be compared as the problems in each field are different. The signals being amplified are different. Obviously the frequency is different, but also the modulation is diffrent. The modulation used affects the amplitude of the signal, and how that amplitude behaves. The power output is even measured differently.
In an earlier post I outline why RF amplifiers use tubes. One of the reasons is that tunning a bank of parrallel solid state amplifiers is hard. An audio amplifier would not have the same tunning problems as audio phase issues are easier to deal with.
As a point of interest compare the costs and size two solid state RF and Audio amps. High power audio amps are not consumer devices and should carry a similar (small market) markup as amature RF amps. The RF amplifier is larger and costs more for less power. This suggests that solid state audio amplifiers are easier to build then RF. A Peavey 3kW audio amp costs $1150 USD and fits in 1160 cubic inches. A Icom 1kW HF amp costs $4550 USD and fitst in a "compact" 2200 cubic inches. As stated above you shouldn't really compare RF and audio amplifiers. This cost and size dispairity is an indication how different these fields really are.
One of the advantages of tube RF amplifiers is that you can build larger tubes to handle more power. You can't do the same for transistors. It is a matter of physics. To handle large power loads with transistors you have to gang the transistors together in parrallel. This is harder then it sounds. If the tunning isn't perfect there will be distortion, or worst feedback which will quickly destroy the amplifier.
I would not call solid state RF amps "exotic technology." The technology has been well understood for atleast three decades now. However, building a high power solid state amp may be beyond the average hobbiest. At least, building a similar vacuum tube amp may be much easier. I haven't tried building either. For an idea of the state of the art in solid state amplifiers have a look at the Nautel products. The image of the 2.5kW transmitter is telling. It is not a small little transmitter.
From an employers perspective hireing a fresh Masters or Ph.D graduate is dubious at best. If the employer is not a pure researcher there is always the problem that the new hire will not find your work interesting and move on to a true research position. There is also the value problem where an advanced degree is worth no more then a Bachelor to employer A, but worth much more to employer B. Employer A is often unwilling to hire a person with the advanced degree as again the employer is concerned the new employee will move on as soon as possible. (MacDonald's dosen't like to higher unemployed university grads for the same reason.) Also the specific knowledge of the new hire may be (and often is) too specialised to be of any practical benefit. However a person who earned their advanced degree after being employed for a few years can be worth quite a lot. Such a person has experience, and their specialised knowledge is probably valuable. A person with experience is more likely to concentrate on a field that has practical benefits.
On the flip side it is truely depressing when a field you enjoy is turned into a depressing job. I am working in a job that I should enjoy, but by lunchtime I want to go home.
I encourage everyone to find a job to pay the bills, and persue thier field of choice as a hobby. Unfortunately this is not always possible. I imagine that some of the genetic engineering gear costs a little more then the average hobbiest can afford.
I think if you look back through the past 200 years you will find that academics have always been under paid, and poorly apreciated. Despite the lack of funds science has advanced because of self sacrifice and dedication. I don't believe this is good. Rather I wish to show that it is not a new problem.
The real crisis may not be one of quantity but of quality.
I believe that this is the larger issue. In my experience many university science professors have a distorted view of the world beyond their walls. As a result the material they teach and their methods do not serve their students. This problem is not one of teching theory over practice. I am a big proponent of universities teaching theory only. Rather it is beliefs such as "If you want to do anything in field X you require a Ph.D." Or like my professor insisting that I would not be able to find a job with such a low mark in his course. (I was already employed.) Too many of my professors taught in such a manner that the highest marked students were the ones who memorized the material prior to an exam, and proptly forgot everything when they put their pencils down. This practice of encourageing memorization is a dumbing down of university curriculum. It is great for pumping out "scientists." But it dosen't encourage science.
americans read MORE now than they did 10 years ago
This is probably not a good thing. Most text on the Internet (includeing this post) is of very poor quality. This problem is not restricted to just the web forums and blogs. Even supposedly professional sites such as Salon produce terrible dreck.
Just because anyone can be published on the Internet dosen't mean that everyone should.
I have seen two tv shows that tested those cell phone boaster devices. Several devices were tested, all were found to not work. It was found that most of the devices were non conductive. One of the devices that was conductive actually interfered with the signal reduceing range. Beside just conductivity one of the shows went a step furthure and tested if the devices had any affect on radio waves in the cellular bands. All devices tested had no affect and were basically invisible at the frequencies tested.
Both shows asked real professors, at real acredited universities to conduct the tests. One professor had a Ph.D in physics, the other had a Ph.D in Electrical Engineering.
The fact that these cell phone boasters don't work is no surprise. Antenna design, and tunning, is hard. You can't randomly stick a bit of metal next to an antenna and expect the antenna to work better.
These WiFi antennas should work though. As others have posted the antenna apears to be similar to this antenna. This parabolic antenna is simple to build, and it will work. That is because this antenna is a specific shape, and is placed at a specific distance from the typical omni WiFi antennas.
bah. You only need neon lights if you are trying to attract the babes. As for the blinkenlights, those are for management. If there aren't any blinkenlights, how is management going to know if the hardware is working?
Geeks are pureist. They like to see the elegant clean lines of the hardware itself.
You do not need software to demo hardware. Chances are that the demo software that you use will apeal to the wrong audience. Worst, you will spend more time answering software questions then hardware questions. Make the hardware look cool. Show the guts. If your servers have redundant bits, demo that.
The only software that you will need is operating systems. Sysadmins will want to know if the hardware runs their operating system of choice. If you only support Windows, only demo Windows. If your company is OS agnostic have several OSes installed, possibly in multiboot configurations.
Geeks have a bad reputation for being too narrowly focused. In my experience it is a well deserved reputation. Give the students books that they would not normally read. Force them to think outside their world.
In particular I recommend the Dale Carnegie books: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living and How to Win Friends & Influence People. Both these books are easy to read and can help someone for a lifetime. Others have recommended Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintanence. It is a good book about life, and only tagentally related to motorcycles.
I also recommend that you choose books that don't seem like school books. If you are going to choose literature, choose P.G. Woodhouse, not Steinbeck.
If there's any conflicts, just wait a few days for the issue to be fixed - how hard can that be?
It is not hard, it is just not something that I want to mess around with on production workstations. I have better and more interesting things to do then micro manage Debian workstations. Tracking unstable is a time consumeing chore. A good procedure for any operating system is to upgrade a test machine. Test the upgrades. Then rollout the upgrades onto the production workstations. There are atleast a dozen new Debian/Unstable packages a week. It gets a little ridiculous trying to track the moving target.
Did you absolutely need the newest versions of Samba/KDE?
Maybe. There could have been an important security update. The point is I don't want to mess around with problems like this on production workstations.
Another problem with nuclear power is that uranium mining is very dirty. Huge mounds of midly radioactive waste slag is produced. It is almost a given that some of the waste will make it into the ground water. Elliot Lake is a good example of this.
Nuclear is preferable over coal and oil fired electricity. Fossil fuel power produces insane ammounts of toxic waste. The newer "clean" power plants turn airborn polution into solid toxic waste. A state of the art coal fired plant uses lime to remove airborn polution. For every tonne it removes from the air, 6 tonnes of solid toxic waste are produced. While not radioactive, it is still a huge pile of junk that is going to sit around for a very long time.
Nuclear power, and fossil power are the two cheaper forms of electricity, and can be used any where. Unlike hydro electric, solar, or wind which have specific requirements.
I don't have to tar the reputation of Greenpeace. They have done it to themselves.
Why can't an environmentalist like nuclear energy and genetically engineered foods? Both have advantages and risks. In some cases the advantages outweigh the risks.
Debian unstable (Sid) is not absolutely fine for desktop use. Unstable does break. Recently Samba and parts of KDE could not coexist due to print library dependancies. This is not acceptable for computers that are used for work.
Debian stable is ancient. There have been some nice software updates in the past two years. Using backports.org is a solution, but has its own problems. The quality of backports is not garanteed to be as good as Debian proper. More importantly security updates are garanteed to be released promptly.
Just because unstable is acceptable for your use, does not make it acceptable for the rest of us.
On the radio there was an interview with one of the founders of Greenpeace. He was pushed out of the organization because he wasn't radical enough. Greenpeace was originally a group of environmentalists opposed to nuclear weapons. It was not the environmental activist group it has become. This founder told the story of how the ship's galley (kitchen) was subverted. First it was taken over by the vegatarians, then it was taken over by the vegans. This forshadowed what happened to Greenpeace itself.
Greenpeace is typical of too many activist groups. It has been taken over by a bunch of stupid angry people. The angry people might be in the minority, but their actions control the group. As a result the group's message is lost. The message is lost, not because the message isn't important, but because the methods used to convey the message overshadow the message itself.
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I understand what you are saying now. I agree. For the past two decades MS has not cared what the hardware was as long as their OS ran on it. The hardware just happened to be Intel and clones. In the last year or two Gates has said that software was the future and that hardware wouldn't matter. I agree. The hardware market is very competitive and the margins are razor thin.
I question what Apple's future will be. If computer hardware is not a good bussiness to be in where does that leave Apple? If Apple tried to sell their OS on commodity hardware I think MS will drop on them like a tonne of bricks. I don't think that MacOS for x86 would sell well anyway. MacOS by itself isn't that special any more. Macs sell because of the combination of MacOS and the hardware. The other traditional hardware companies, HP, Sun, IBM, have already started into the services bussiness. Even Dell is trying to sell services. Apple does not apear to have started this sort of transistion. Is Apple destined to become an iPod and creativity software company?
Don't get your hopes up. You could just as easily say that PowerPC has "caught on" due to the huge number of PowerPC chips in cars. I would hazard a guess that more processors based on the PowerPC core shipped last year then Intel and AMD mainstream processors. Saying MS has abandoned x86 is simply wrong. PowerPC is not going to beat Intel and AMD on the desktop for the same reason PowerPC didn't take over a decade ago: backward compatibility. MS is able to switch architectures on the XBox because backward compatibility is not expected. PowerPC has always been a better architecture. It makes complete sense that MS would look at alternatives.
who actually owns the ppc arch designs?
Motorola and IBM own the PowerPC architechture. It was jointly developed. Apple did have some say in the design, but nothing significant.
Apple will never get into the chip design and manufactureing bussiness. It is well beyond their expertise. In much the same way that building a spaceship is beyond Apple's expertise.
Part of Apple's problems with the PowerPC and Motorola was because Apple was not a big enough customer. When the PowerPC workstation market failed to take off Motorola became more interested in the embedded processor PowerPC lines then workstation processors. Over a decade ago the theory was that IBM, Apple, and other companies would want to make workstations and servers with the PowerPC chip that Motorola would make. It was hoped that there would be enough smaller manufacturers and demand for the PowerPC to keep prices down. Of the three companies only Apple relied on the PowerPC. IBM was making workstations with both Intel, and PowerPC. Motorola had many other bussiness lines. When the other computer makers did not show up there wasn't enough demand for faster PowerPCs to keep Motorola interested. IBM made a number of machines based on the PowerPC but eventually lost interest when it was clear that WinNT 4.0 on Intel was going to win on the workstation.
It is easy to look back now and say that Apple made a mistake. But at the time the situation wasn't clear. Intel was having a hard time with what would become the Pentium. There was alot of doom and gloom that the i386 architecture could not scale. MS wasn't not yet entrenched on the desktop. MS had also said that their workstation/server OS, WinNT, would be ported to PowerPC, along with Alpha, MIPS, and Intel[1]. PowerPC really did look like the way of the future. It is a shame PowerPC didn't catch on. It is a great architechture.
[1] The Windows NT kernel is actually quite nice, and was designed with portability in mind. Windows NT 4.0 supported Alpha, PowerPC, MIPS and Intel. Alpha support survived to ServicePack 6. PowerPC and MIPS support was dropped earlier.
If you are not too far from the border lookup a store that has mailboxes. In the past I have used a UPS store just across the border. The UPS store I use charges $5 per shipment, and dosen't require any addition paperwork or other nonsense. I just give them a call before ordering. As a bonus the store has a real shipping address, not a PO BOX so all companies will deliver there.
Also some shops don't have an online order form for a Canadian address, but if you call they will sometimes ship to you. Due to brokerage fees the US PostalService is still the best way to ship across the border. Usually it is pretty fast.
Does my handheld have to decrypt everything it receives
In theory yes. It is not nearly as hard as it sounds. The device only has to decrypt enough to get the destination hardware address. A hardware crypto coprocessor does all the work. In practice 802.11 only encrypts the frame body. The source and destination hardware addresses and some other control fields are sent in the clear.
That's security through obsurity
Please stop abuseing the phrase "security through obscurity." The catch phrase was meant to apply to one and only one case: The practive of obscuring encryption algorithms. Bruce Schneier's thesis was that an encryption system that relied on a secret or hidden algorithm was not secure. The phrase "security through obscurity" does not apply to anything else.
Some forms off security relies on obscurity. Encryption is just a fancy word for data obscurity. Passwords, secure tokens, and RSA private keys should all be kept hidden or obscured. It should not be to hard to think of many forms of physical and data security that include some form of obscurity.
One of the advantages to using encryption at the link layer is that it is harder to perform traffic analysis if an attacker can't determine the destination of the packet. Another advantage is access control. Only hosts that know the secret key can join the network. Both of these advantages are forms of security.
RF amplifiers and audio amplifiers shouldn't be compared as the problems in each field are different. The signals being amplified are different. Obviously the frequency is different, but also the modulation is diffrent. The modulation used affects the amplitude of the signal, and how that amplitude behaves. The power output is even measured differently.
In an earlier post I outline why RF amplifiers use tubes. One of the reasons is that tunning a bank of parrallel solid state amplifiers is hard. An audio amplifier would not have the same tunning problems as audio phase issues are easier to deal with.
As a point of interest compare the costs and size two solid state RF and Audio amps. High power audio amps are not consumer devices and should carry a similar (small market) markup as amature RF amps. The RF amplifier is larger and costs more for less power. This suggests that solid state audio amplifiers are easier to build then RF. A Peavey 3kW audio amp costs $1150 USD and fits in 1160 cubic inches. A Icom 1kW HF amp costs $4550 USD and fitst in a "compact" 2200 cubic inches. As stated above you shouldn't really compare RF and audio amplifiers. This cost and size dispairity is an indication how different these fields really are.
One of the advantages of tube RF amplifiers is that you can build larger tubes to handle more power. You can't do the same for transistors. It is a matter of physics. To handle large power loads with transistors you have to gang the transistors together in parrallel. This is harder then it sounds. If the tunning isn't perfect there will be distortion, or worst feedback which will quickly destroy the amplifier.
I would not call solid state RF amps "exotic technology." The technology has been well understood for atleast three decades now. However, building a high power solid state amp may be beyond the average hobbiest. At least, building a similar vacuum tube amp may be much easier. I haven't tried building either. For an idea of the state of the art in solid state amplifiers have a look at the Nautel products. The image of the 2.5kW transmitter is telling. It is not a small little transmitter.
From an employers perspective hireing a fresh Masters or Ph.D graduate is dubious at best. If the employer is not a pure researcher there is always the problem that the new hire will not find your work interesting and move on to a true research position. There is also the value problem where an advanced degree is worth no more then a Bachelor to employer A, but worth much more to employer B. Employer A is often unwilling to hire a person with the advanced degree as again the employer is concerned the new employee will move on as soon as possible. (MacDonald's dosen't like to higher unemployed university grads for the same reason.) Also the specific knowledge of the new hire may be (and often is) too specialised to be of any practical benefit. However a person who earned their advanced degree after being employed for a few years can be worth quite a lot. Such a person has experience, and their specialised knowledge is probably valuable. A person with experience is more likely to concentrate on a field that has practical benefits.
On the flip side it is truely depressing when a field you enjoy is turned into a depressing job. I am working in a job that I should enjoy, but by lunchtime I want to go home.
I encourage everyone to find a job to pay the bills, and persue thier field of choice as a hobby. Unfortunately this is not always possible. I imagine that some of the genetic engineering gear costs a little more then the average hobbiest can afford.
I think if you look back through the past 200 years you will find that academics have always been under paid, and poorly apreciated. Despite the lack of funds science has advanced because of self sacrifice and dedication. I don't believe this is good. Rather I wish to show that it is not a new problem.
The real crisis may not be one of quantity but of quality.
I believe that this is the larger issue. In my experience many university science professors have a distorted view of the world beyond their walls. As a result the material they teach and their methods do not serve their students. This problem is not one of teching theory over practice. I am a big proponent of universities teaching theory only. Rather it is beliefs such as "If you want to do anything in field X you require a Ph.D." Or like my professor insisting that I would not be able to find a job with such a low mark in his course. (I was already employed.) Too many of my professors taught in such a manner that the highest marked students were the ones who memorized the material prior to an exam, and proptly forgot everything when they put their pencils down. This practice of encourageing memorization is a dumbing down of university curriculum. It is great for pumping out "scientists." But it dosen't encourage science.
americans read MORE now than they did 10 years ago
This is probably not a good thing. Most text on the Internet (includeing this post) is of very poor quality. This problem is not restricted to just the web forums and blogs. Even supposedly professional sites such as Salon produce terrible dreck.
Just because anyone can be published on the Internet dosen't mean that everyone should.
he's still a friend, not a whiny old bastard.
Sometimes he is both.
I have seen two tv shows that tested those cell phone boaster devices. Several devices were tested, all were found to not work. It was found that most of the devices were non conductive. One of the devices that was conductive actually interfered with the signal reduceing range. Beside just conductivity one of the shows went a step furthure and tested if the devices had any affect on radio waves in the cellular bands. All devices tested had no affect and were basically invisible at the frequencies tested.
Both shows asked real professors, at real acredited universities to conduct the tests. One professor had a Ph.D in physics, the other had a Ph.D in Electrical Engineering.
The fact that these cell phone boasters don't work is no surprise. Antenna design, and tunning, is hard. You can't randomly stick a bit of metal next to an antenna and expect the antenna to work better.
These WiFi antennas should work though. As others have posted the antenna apears to be similar to this antenna. This parabolic antenna is simple to build, and it will work. That is because this antenna is a specific shape, and is placed at a specific distance from the typical omni WiFi antennas.
bah. You only need neon lights if you are trying to attract the babes. As for the blinkenlights, those are for management. If there aren't any blinkenlights, how is management going to know if the hardware is working?
Geeks are pureist. They like to see the elegant clean lines of the hardware itself.
Build a balista. You will need to build a specific "cup" to hold the CD.
An advantage to a balista is that once you tire of shooting CDs you can switch to other fun projectiles >:->
You do not need software to demo hardware. Chances are that the demo software that you use will apeal to the wrong audience. Worst, you will spend more time answering software questions then hardware questions. Make the hardware look cool. Show the guts. If your servers have redundant bits, demo that.
The only software that you will need is operating systems. Sysadmins will want to know if the hardware runs their operating system of choice. If you only support Windows, only demo Windows. If your company is OS agnostic have several OSes installed, possibly in multiboot configurations.
Geeks have a bad reputation for being too narrowly focused. In my experience it is a well deserved reputation. Give the students books that they would not normally read. Force them to think outside their world.
In particular I recommend the Dale Carnegie books: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living and How to Win Friends & Influence People. Both these books are easy to read and can help someone for a lifetime. Others have recommended Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintanence. It is a good book about life, and only tagentally related to motorcycles.
I also recommend that you choose books that don't seem like school books. If you are going to choose literature, choose P.G. Woodhouse, not Steinbeck.
If there's any conflicts, just wait a few days for the issue to be fixed - how hard can that be?
It is not hard, it is just not something that I want to mess around with on production workstations. I have better and more interesting things to do then micro manage Debian workstations. Tracking unstable is a time consumeing chore. A good procedure for any operating system is to upgrade a test machine. Test the upgrades. Then rollout the upgrades onto the production workstations. There are atleast a dozen new Debian/Unstable packages a week. It gets a little ridiculous trying to track the moving target.
Did you absolutely need the newest versions of Samba/KDE?
Maybe. There could have been an important security update. The point is I don't want to mess around with problems like this on production workstations.
Another problem with nuclear power is that uranium mining is very dirty. Huge mounds of midly radioactive waste slag is produced. It is almost a given that some of the waste will make it into the ground water. Elliot Lake is a good example of this.
Nuclear is preferable over coal and oil fired electricity. Fossil fuel power produces insane ammounts of toxic waste. The newer "clean" power plants turn airborn polution into solid toxic waste. A state of the art coal fired plant uses lime to remove airborn polution. For every tonne it removes from the air, 6 tonnes of solid toxic waste are produced. While not radioactive, it is still a huge pile of junk that is going to sit around for a very long time.
Nuclear power, and fossil power are the two cheaper forms of electricity, and can be used any where. Unlike hydro electric, solar, or wind which have specific requirements.
I don't have to tar the reputation of Greenpeace. They have done it to themselves.
Why can't an environmentalist like nuclear energy and genetically engineered foods? Both have advantages and risks. In some cases the advantages outweigh the risks.
Debian unstable (Sid) is not absolutely fine for desktop use. Unstable does break. Recently Samba and parts of KDE could not coexist due to print library dependancies. This is not acceptable for computers that are used for work.
Debian stable is ancient. There have been some nice software updates in the past two years. Using backports.org is a solution, but has its own problems. The quality of backports is not garanteed to be as good as Debian proper. More importantly security updates are garanteed to be released promptly.
Just because unstable is acceptable for your use, does not make it acceptable for the rest of us.
On the radio there was an interview with one of the founders of Greenpeace. He was pushed out of the organization because he wasn't radical enough. Greenpeace was originally a group of environmentalists opposed to nuclear weapons. It was not the environmental activist group it has become. This founder told the story of how the ship's galley (kitchen) was subverted. First it was taken over by the vegatarians, then it was taken over by the vegans. This forshadowed what happened to Greenpeace itself.
Greenpeace is typical of too many activist groups. It has been taken over by a bunch of stupid angry people. The angry people might be in the minority, but their actions control the group. As a result the group's message is lost. The message is lost, not because the message isn't important, but because the methods used to convey the message overshadow the message itself.