I love my 4 year old 5 button Microsoft Optical Intellimouse. Still runs great and I wouldnt trade it for anything.
I'm the opposite. I've had the same Logitech mouse (3 button basic PS/2 OEM model) for four years. It feels solid and it has valliantly survived countless knocks and falls. I recently acquired a Microsoft Intellimouse. Despite its technical superiority (it was an optical USB model), it felt so cheap and tacky that I can't stand to use it.
Would you rather the wastes and radiation be dispersed through the atmosphere, like we have with our other fuel sources? Personally, I prefer having waste concentrated in a small container.
Greenhouse gases are far easier to deal with than radioactive waste. Gases like carbon dioxide can be offset by things like trees. Nothing can offset radioactivity, you are stuck with it for millennia.
Can you guarantee that the waste will stay in that "small container" for the thousands of years that it will pose a danger? There are thousands of nuclear waste sites globally, and none of them can guarantee that. The closest would be Yucca Mountain, and there are arguments that Yucca Mountain may not be a safe place, either.
Reactor facilities are strongly reinforced, making them awfully hard to blow up.
Read my sentence carefully: "Nuclear power makes a tempting terrorist target: blowing up a power station or waste transportation vehicle can easily irradiate millions of people."
Nuclear waste is often transported to be stored or processed. In many places the transportation goes through urban areas. It is very possible that something could go wrong (a crash, a terrorist attack, etc.), in which case the waste would lose its containment and be spread, posing a significant risk to life.
Could you point out some of these dangerous reactors you mentioned?
The future of energy production is going to be nuclear, wind, and solar.
It's sad that nuclear power is still on the agenda in many countries. Contrary to what the nuclear industry wants you to think, nuclear power is not clean, safe or cheap.
Uranium needs to be mined, transported and processed, which requires considerable amounts of energy and destroys ecosystems. Once used, nuclear waste needs to be stored. this waste has a half life of thousands of years, and it needs to be put in a place where it cannot harm anyone or anything for this period of time. Obviously we cannot plan that far ahead. Nuclear waste needs to be transported for processing (often through urban areas), and it is usually stored on-site.
Nuclear power makes a tempting terrorist target: blowing up a power station or waste transportation vehicle can easily irradiate millions of people.
Nuclear power stations cannot be decommissioned easily. It is cheaper to keep a station running, meaning that many old, inefficient and potentially dangerous reactors are still operational.
Speaking of nuclear weapons (re: your sig), if the trillions of dollars currently being thrown into the black hole of nuclear research (which includes fusion power) were spent on renewable energy sources like wind and solar, we might have solved many of our energy and pollution problems by now.
That's been possible for a long time now. What would be great to see more widely is a distributed electricity grid. Individual houses and properties could generate power for themselves via solar, wind or other means. If the energy generated isn't enough, power can be bought from the grid. If there is an excess, it can be sold back to the grid. There would be far less dependence on centralised power stations, which have their own set of problems (cost to build and maintain, terrorist threats, if a single generator goes down millions can be affected, etc.).
That reminds me of 'Queer as Folk'. The UK version was okay, but the US version was shite. Unfortunately here in Australia we usually get US versions of TV shows:(
"Brendan spoke about the need for innovation, and not just clinging to web standards."
This is heading towards proprietary extensions territory, a la Netscape/IE. Even if the implementations are 100% free software, this might lock out other apps and projects. It would take a major undertaking for them to comply with the new 'standards'.
The patent was applied for ages ago, and I think it expires later this year. Why would any court accept the claims of this company when they never defended their patent in the past?
If just a fraction of the trillions of dollars which have been wasted on the political, economic and military defence of oil interests were diverted into R&D of alternatives, we would have a cheap, clean energy source by now. Countries could be more secure: they could be self sufficient in energy and not be at the mercy of oil producing countries. Most importantly, they would not need to piss off a large section of the world's population to power their cars and industries.
Ice in the sea won't make any difference to water levels if they melt. Ice on land (e.g. in Antarctica) will.
Another problem is that ice is freshwater, so if it melts it will dilute the salt water of the seas. That could produce a range of environmental effects, and some reports predict that it will shut down the Gulf Stream which heats much of Europe.
I was wondering the same thing. Xorg is based on XFree86, but the FreeDesktop.org version is based on Kdrive (which is quite different architecturally). Will these two projects co-operate or will one die?
"There's also this little thing called the population explosion which really hasn't stopped."
The world population growth rate has actually been decreasing over the last decade. The population is still growing in absolute terms, but it is slowing down.
I've seen an increasing number of video files on the Internet being distributed in Vorbis/Xvid format (i.e. Ogg Vorbis audio and Xvid video). Which raises the question: why is Ogg Theora always looked upon as the champion open source video format? Xvid is GPL, and from my experience it delivers the best quality/compression performance of all the codecs out there. Most importantly, it works -- now.
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My thoughts exactly. It looks a lot like the dual-screen version of the Game & Watch.
One step closer to a universal translator.
I don't like carbon dioxide either, but at least it can be soaked up by plants and trees.
But that radioactivity is nowhere near the level generated by nuclear reactors. You can't just spread that around.
Can you guarantee that the waste will stay in that "small container" for the thousands of years that it will pose a danger? There are thousands of nuclear waste sites globally, and none of them can guarantee that. The closest would be Yucca Mountain, and there are arguments that Yucca Mountain may not be a safe place, either.
Nuclear security is not as strong as you might think.Read my sentence carefully: "Nuclear power makes a tempting terrorist target: blowing up a power station or waste transportation vehicle can easily irradiate millions of people."
Nuclear waste is often transported to be stored or processed. In many places the transportation goes through urban areas. It is very possible that something could go wrong (a crash, a terrorist attack, etc.), in which case the waste would lose its containment and be spread, posing a significant risk to life.
There are plenty in Eastern Europe, for example.Uranium needs to be mined, transported and processed, which requires considerable amounts of energy and destroys ecosystems. Once used, nuclear waste needs to be stored. this waste has a half life of thousands of years, and it needs to be put in a place where it cannot harm anyone or anything for this period of time. Obviously we cannot plan that far ahead. Nuclear waste needs to be transported for processing (often through urban areas), and it is usually stored on-site.
Nuclear power makes a tempting terrorist target: blowing up a power station or waste transportation vehicle can easily irradiate millions of people.
Nuclear power stations cannot be decommissioned easily. It is cheaper to keep a station running, meaning that many old, inefficient and potentially dangerous reactors are still operational.
Speaking of nuclear weapons (re: your sig), if the trillions of dollars currently being thrown into the black hole of nuclear research (which includes fusion power) were spent on renewable energy sources like wind and solar, we might have solved many of our energy and pollution problems by now.
That's been possible for a long time now. What would be great to see more widely is a distributed electricity grid. Individual houses and properties could generate power for themselves via solar, wind or other means. If the energy generated isn't enough, power can be bought from the grid. If there is an excess, it can be sold back to the grid. There would be far less dependence on centralised power stations, which have their own set of problems (cost to build and maintain, terrorist threats, if a single generator goes down millions can be affected, etc.).
That reminds me of 'Queer as Folk'. The UK version was okay, but the US version was shite. Unfortunately here in Australia we usually get US versions of TV shows :(
I don't know about WINE, but I do know how to Install iPod Update v1.4/v2.2 in GNU/Linux.
"Brendan spoke about the need for innovation, and not just clinging to web standards."
This is heading towards proprietary extensions territory, a la Netscape/IE. Even if the implementations are 100% free software, this might lock out other apps and projects. It would take a major undertaking for them to comply with the new 'standards'.
The sooner we get JPEG 2000, the better. What's taking them so long, anyway? They're already four years late (going by the name).
The patent was applied for ages ago, and I think it expires later this year. Why would any court accept the claims of this company when they never defended their patent in the past?
If just a fraction of the trillions of dollars which have been wasted on the political, economic and military defence of oil interests were diverted into R&D of alternatives, we would have a cheap, clean energy source by now. Countries could be more secure: they could be self sufficient in energy and not be at the mercy of oil producing countries. Most importantly, they would not need to piss off a large section of the world's population to power their cars and industries.
Ice in the sea won't make any difference to water levels if they melt. Ice on land (e.g. in Antarctica) will.
Another problem is that ice is freshwater, so if it melts it will dilute the salt water of the seas. That could produce a range of environmental effects, and some reports predict that it will shut down the Gulf Stream which heats much of Europe.
I was wondering the same thing. Xorg is based on XFree86, but the FreeDesktop.org version is based on Kdrive (which is quite different architecturally). Will these two projects co-operate or will one die?
"There's also this little thing called the population explosion which really hasn't stopped."
The world population growth rate has actually been decreasing over the last decade. The population is still growing in absolute terms, but it is slowing down.
'e-mail' is more correct. In recent years people have become lazy and have omitted the dash. That doesnt necessarily make it correct, though.
I've always thought it should be spelt 'e-mu', like 'e-mail' :)
More convicts were sent to the USA than to Australia. The only reason that England started to send convicts here to Australia was that the independence of the USA prevented them from sending any more there.
Than say 'prime minister', then. You don't hear anyone saying 'governor' when they mean 'president' (of the United States), do you?
Kind of like fist? :)
I've seen an increasing number of video files on the Internet being distributed in Vorbis/Xvid format (i.e. Ogg Vorbis audio and Xvid video). Which raises the question: why is Ogg Theora always looked upon as the champion open source video format? Xvid is GPL, and from my experience it delivers the best quality/compression performance of all the codecs out there. Most importantly, it works -- now.
What made the Amiga so cool? I could go on for hours, but I'll sum things up in two words: Video Toaster.