Because humans, for the most part, are pretty stupid and fail to grasp that just because there's an uneven number of something, doesn't make it not normal or perfectly fine.
Yes. But, but having an uneven number of something doesn't mean it's automatically bad, wrong, exclusionary or in need of "correction" either.
Simply throwing someone into a position because they do or do not happen to have a dick doesn't mean you're putting someone competent or appropriate in place.
You want to work on something that could HUGELY advance connection speeds in the US?
Work on a law neutralizing all the contact clauses that keep municipally owned fiber networks dark.
Require a "must lease" clause for the municipality and specify a 5 year interval with exclusions of previous lesees if they didn't actively develop the network (to prevent the likes of Comcast from just leasing the networks from the municipalities and then sitting on them.
And you keep forgetting that things like solar and wind cannot be used as baseline power without VAST implementation changes and an improvement in storage technology of several orders of magnitude.
Plus there's the face that there are places you simply should NOT be putting solar and wind power generation.
So you're saying, without a carbon tax, with the other sources of power HEAVILY subsidized by pork, CURRENT low prices in a market the US simply DOES NOT control and with absolutely insane bias against implementation (with accompanying punitive levels of investment required), that Nuclear isn't price competitive. And with anti-nuke nuts going in circles with "This stuff needs reliable storage NOW!" and "Oh! Not THERE!", starting projects they have no intention of completing, and killing projects that already have sunk the majority of their budget. Costing taxpayers billions?
Again, the sun doesn't shine all the time. And there's no storage grid large enough to actually hold that kind of power. Nor is there a planetary grid to help roll-over power.
And there are places that make solar panels seasonably unfeasible.
In the US, solar provides a scant fraction of total power use. Ramping it up several thousand percent just isn't do-able. It's not affordable for everyone to implement, the US power industry couldn't absorb that power and still afford to rebuild and maintain a grid and China couldn't supply the volumes you're talking about in a timely manner.
Instead of TL DR, learn to fucking read and stop trying to shovel your uninformed shit on everyone else you ignorant little nothing.
Luckily, your simply wanting this to be true in no way alters reality.
The inherent danger of or the damage to the environment of any other power source does not in any way make nuclear more attractive, which has the potential to be far more deadly.
Say it PROPERLY please.
It, in no way, makes it more attractive to YOU.
As for the "potential to be far more deadly". Bullshit. It's a binary equation. Sorry. All the relativism is just scaremongering.
Nuclear power is inherently more expensive than other sources of power, and always has been.
Unfuckingbelievable. Reasonably concerned individuals are "ninnies?"
When they stop us from doing what needs doing, and sets us to endless wrangling with no real solution?
FUCK YEAH!
WTF is up with nuke-nutters love-affair with this insanely expensive, forever deadly garbage?
Because it isn't "forever deadly". Sure, the current crop of 50-60 year old tech produces stuff that's hot (lukewarm actually) for tens of thousands of years. But you're okay with it being stored outside on a fucking parking lot?
When we can produce stuff that's safer, and while it's more radiologically "active" (hot) than the current crop, ITS LIFETIME IS FAR SHORTER (decades or hundreds of years).
I look at it from a storage engineering perspective.
Can we build something that's going to last 100 millennia? I dunno.
Can we build something that's going to last 500 years? Probably. The odds are much better.
THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE MORE EXPENSIVE AND MORE DIRTY THAN NUCLEAR
Bullshit. We've been pumping crap into the atmosphere for the last 200+ years. But you're going to try to tell us that nuclear is dirtier? Nuclear's waste is more CONCENTRATED? YES! What's all the environmental pollution done to humanity over the last 200 years?
Oh. Maybe. GLOBAL FUCKING WARMING?
But hey, at least it's more diffuse!
As for more expensive. It's more expensive because the people who are terrified and equate nuclear with "nuclear war" have created a regulatory environment that's made it unfairly expensive. Were fossil fuels required to comply with even HALF of the regulations slapped on nuclear, the price of energy would be unattainable.
But hey, feel free to give up your portion and go shiver in a cave over a meal of grubs.
Answer that, definitively, before telling me safely storing waste for 250--> 30K years is even remotely possible.
Or, howsabout we generate power using technology that produces waste that burns off faster or produces long-lived isotopes that are medically or scientifically useful (like plutonium batteries that NASA can't produce anymore because we're out of plutonium)?
Oh, but nuclear radiation kills less people than slippery showers? Except that all it takes is one good accident to throw your bullshit stats into chaos.
Ah, the omnipresent "Nookyoolur = BOMZ!!!!" canard.
The favourite straw man of the pro-nuclear crowd. He sure takes a beating.
What strawman? HE brought it up.
Maybe that's true of what the US buys, but in the EU companies are required to care about where their raw materials come from. As well as meeting standards like RoHS, when calculating taxes on environmental damage what happens in China to mine the materials they use is taken into consideration.
It's not perfect but it has forced China to start cleaning up, at least when it wants to export to the EU.
And if they don't care to? Where does the EU get its rare earths products from THEN?
Or, on the flip side, once it decides to shift the cost of the "cleaner" procedures to the customer, and the prices of rare earths products skyrockets. What then?
No, the biggest problems are the cost and the fact that we want them to be run by people more interested in profit than safety. The latter problem is so bad that insurance companies won't touch nuclear power, and we have to have special regulatory agencies to force responsible behaviour, and even they don't work properly.
New reactor designs won't fix these problems.
The cost is a byproduct of the absolutely psychotic level of fearmongering the anti-nuke crowd has done and the ultra-paranoid regulations morass that's been put in place. And you're right, new, safer reactor designs won't fix people who are hell-bent on terrifying themselves and everyone else about "evil nuclear power".
Hmm... A concrete block with something that can potentially go into meltdown or produce explosive gas inside it. You would be totally reliant on whatever safety features were built in working perfectly, because clearly you can't get to it and just vent off some hydrogen or pump in some cooling water now. Yeah, that sounds like a great plan.
Did you even read...no...no you didn't. Because heaven forbid something contradict your little world view.
We have the ability NOW to produce reactors that simply CANNOT melt down. Where a FAILURE state results in the reactor shutting off, using natural forces like GRAVITY to remove the fuel from the reaction chamber and stop reacting. You pull the plug on the reactor, it shuts down and the fuel moves to a dump tank. The reactor starts to overheat, it shuts down and the fuel moves to a dump tank. Unless you're going to start proposing that we now need to plan for gravity utterly reversing itself....
No gas buildups. No explosions. No boiling water in the reactor.
So, we're back to "Well what if gravity magically reverses itself in a failure?" scenario.
Yes, the products of this form of reactor tend to be more radioactive. That's actually a fairly good thing believe it or not.
People gripe about things like Yucca mountain. Where they're storing stuff that's mildly radioactive and will be for tens of thousands of years. Hell, at some nuclear plants, this stuff is sitting outside, in the open ON A FUCKING PARKING LOT.
Do we REALLY think we're up to engineering storage facilities with that sort of lifespan? Maybe? I'd say they're being unrealistic. The stuff that comes out of an MSR? VERY hot, but VERY short-lived (relatively). Are we up to storing stuff that lives a few decades or a couple hundred years? Yeah! Easily.
Additionally I'm not saying "fission forever".
I'm saying "Fission for now, where it makes sense" (don't build them on active faultlines or near volcanoes, etc). And augment it with renewables.
Once we have a steady, clean power structure in place, BEAT FEET FOR FUSION (again, augmented by renewables).
Ah, the omnipresent "Nookyoolur = BOMZ!!!!" canard.
Steel can be used in construction. Or it can be used to coat bullets. Or make all sorts of implements of death and destruction. Or it can be made into a scalpel to cut out cancer.
The technology for nuclear power, by itself is neither good nor evil. It's all about intent in use.
Also, as noted, the rare earths being mined to make your "renewable" power? Basically being done by China in the cheapest, dirtiest manner possible. Because the US has been so constipated by the "nuclear issue" that nobody wants to invest in rare earths here because the regulations are not just completely overboard and crazed like Chuck Manson on a bad acid trip, but they're actively hostile towards any development of the technology whatsoever, no matter HOW cleanly it can be done.
Why? Nuke-ninnies like yourself.
And sure, China's rare earths are cheap right now. Until they aren't anymore. Then what?
And what about the vast environmental damage China's doing with their dirty mining procedures? Because you know their digs aren't regulated like they would be in the US. And the equipment they use sure as fuck doesn't run on pixie dust, unicorn piss and fairy farts.
So don't pretend that your pie-in-the-sky renewable daydream is anything but.
Also, you're still dependent on fossil fuels for when the renewables can't handle the load.
On top of that, the only thing that will make truly widespread implementation of renewables anything CLOSE to viable is a MASSIVE improvement in storage technologies.
Even then, it's NEVER going to be able to be ramped up to a level where it can truly account for both base load AND peak load. You'd have to carpet the entire country in solar cells and windmills. Regardless of whether the location of implementation is truly viable or not. Let's not even talk about worldwide.
THEN you're locked into a continual "buy new ones now that these have worn out" cycle.
That basically makes us, permanently, an economic vassal-state to a hostile foreign power.
The biggest problem with nuclear power today is the fact that there's BEEN little to no new implementation for the last 20-ish years. The last completed reactor was Watts Barr 1 in Tennessee in 1996. This year, Watts Barr 2 is due to come online.
ONE new nuclear power plant in 19 years. And the median age of reactors in the US is 33 years.
Reactors are normally slated to run for 40 years, with the ability to apply for a 20 year extension.
So we have a bunch of reactors coming due for their extension. Old, crude reactors based on 50-60 year old technology.
We have the ability TODAY, to build reactors with new technology that are clean, safe and self-contained. You dig a hole in the ground, drop a concrete slab, drop the reactor in, and cover it in more concrete and bury. At the end of its lifespan, you dig it out and send it back to the factory for reprocessing and drop a new/refurbished one in.
Reactors where the facility isn't 10% reactor and 90% Rube-Goldberg safety systems. Reactors that are 100% reactor which are engineered FROM THE GET GO to be inherently safe. Where a failure doesn't result in a meltdown. Where a failure results in the reactor shutting itself off and keeping the unspent fuel contained and cool, away from the reaction mass.
On top of that, you could jump-start the US rare earths industry again. Because, rather than worrying about all that "radioactive crap" that comes up with the rare earths? That "radioactive crap" becomes "fuel" for reactors. And while costs MIGHT be a bit higher than the dirty Chinese market, they'll be making money at BOTH ends of the spectrum. Both from the rare earths and the rest of the stuff as fuel. Hell, the tailings from ONE modest-sized mine for a year could conceivably satisfy the entirety of the US power appetite for that same period PLUS.
But no. Nuclear = EEEEEEVIL and just waking up in the morning becomes a proliferation risk.
Also, how long as the US been relying on nuclear power? How many lives has that reliance saved?
3D has been "The next big thing" for more than 150 years. Starting with crude Stereoscope viewers in the mid 1800's, a resurgence in the 70's with the first mass market 3D movies, an attempt at another resurgence in the 2000's, and a push by the industry for 3D TV's more recently. Each of these technologies has shown the exact same pattern - a bit of novelty when they're first introduced, then tiredness, and quickly - a clear consumer rejection.
The amount of money tech companies have invested in 3D over the last century is staggering, and the consumer rejection has been consistent. I can't think of a better disconnect between producer and consumer.
So here we are again. We're supposed to get excited over yet another 3D Next Big Thing. No thanks. Just like every example that's come before, I'm perfectly happy and even prefer the current state of my photography. I am an avid first-adopter, but I have absolutely no intention of ever adopting 3D photography.
And you have pretty much summed up everything I was going to say (and probably in a more concise manner).
I, frankly, don't understand this relentless desire to FORCE the consumer onto 3D.
I mean, I could get kinda excited about a 3D holographic format. But you wouldn't be using that on a phone, tablet or laptop. And you wouldn't be using it as a primary interface for a desktop either. But, as an entertainment format I could see it being fun.
But stereoscopic 3D on a flat surface is just a headache-inducing eyesore.
They've built for multiple companies at one time or another.
Their in-house systems tend to be beefy in the extreme and engineered right (powerful internal fans, rather than passive cooling). Their desktop replacement are generally LOUDER than other laptops, but tend to have fewer problems overheating.
I'd call and talk with them about "Desktop Replacement" systems. And let them steer you towards what you're looking for.
Okay, currently Google Fiber is $70/month for Gig service. Now, say it goes up that $67/year that was quoted. That means it's going to be $76/month (call it $80 just to be outrageous).
So, oh NOEZ! I'm now paying more for service!
When, before, my other options were $125/month for Comcast's 50/10 service and $50/month for 3M/512K DSL?
Will it be more expensive on a channel-by-channel basis?
Sure!
But if I'm paying $100 a month for 200 channels, that's 50 cents per channel.
Even if we saw a tenfold increase ($5/channel). If I was only watching 3-4 of those 200 channels, that's $15-20. A fairly substantial savings. AND, the money the cable company owes would be going to DIRECTLY subsidize the channels I want. Rather than handing me 10 ESPN channels (which I don't want and never EVER *EVER!* watch), and then tacking in a bunch more crap that I never watch, just so I can get a couple channels that have the content I'm ACTUALLY interested in.
As for something like this being unfair to channels that just don't have the draw to stay subsidized? All I can say is "I sure love my buggy whip!". In a free market, you're also free to fail.
Basically this is just a way of flagellating their political opponents.
"Hey! Here's this bill we KNOW won't pass! Because the big telcom/cable providers have you all in their pockets! We know this because we're in the pocket with you!"
*Doesn't pass*
"The REPUBLICANS hate net neutrality! NYAHHHHHH!"
That's basically the long and short of it. Standard bullshit political brinksmanship.
If there's anything that'll push forward legal restrictions on 3D printers/home CNC, it'll be assholes like this making a media push over how easy it is to make weapons and OMG THE CHILDREN. This is why we can't have nice things.
Sorry, but staying silent and furtive about it is no better protection. And it allows them to make all sorts of unopposed claims about how "bad" an activity is as the government fucks over its citizenry yet again.
Our space exploration program is what's going to, eventually, save the human race from extinction when our planet becomes uninhabitable for ANY reason. That's our long-term goal. And it's a worthy one.
However, we have a lot of other things that could lead to our extinction in the shorter term. Some of that stuff is environmental, yes. But a lot of the problems are social. This istuff that is NOT solved by leaving the planet behind. So going broke on a space program, and leaving other, more immediately necessary things undone could be a recipe for disaster in the short term.
The big thing is, there are LOTS of programs run by our government that have NOTHING to do with EITHER of these sets of problems. And THOSE programs are the ones sucking up all the available capital. And is our government going to prioritize away from "pork"? The answer, from our government at least, is unambiguous.
"Fuck no! Fuck you! You're un-American for asking! Someone arrest him for terrorism please?"
Which of those cases didn't have an impact on the world?
I didn't say "had an impact".
I said "changed".
While you may think of it as splitting hairs, the difference is quite real.
Each of the technologies talked about brought about an evolution in the market.
I'm talking about a world-wide revolution brought about by the tech. All the crazy shit they always promise and pie-in-the-sky about and never actually deliver.
It sounds like you're arguing FOR VR but don't realize it.
You apparently missed the part where I said I'm a fan of VR, as a concept. It's just that the current implementation is far, FAR behind where it needs to be to reasonably become a ubiquitous technology.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not so sure this is a "tech industry" thing as much as it is a "media narrative" thing.
I vote "media narrative" thing.
Because humans, for the most part, are pretty stupid and fail to grasp that just because there's an uneven number of something, doesn't make it not normal or perfectly fine.
Yes. But, but having an uneven number of something doesn't mean it's automatically bad, wrong, exclusionary or in need of "correction" either.
Simply throwing someone into a position because they do or do not happen to have a dick doesn't mean you're putting someone competent or appropriate in place.
You want to work on something that could HUGELY advance connection speeds in the US?
Work on a law neutralizing all the contact clauses that keep municipally owned fiber networks dark.
Require a "must lease" clause for the municipality and specify a 5 year interval with exclusions of previous lesees if they didn't actively develop the network (to prevent the likes of Comcast from just leasing the networks from the municipalities and then sitting on them.
And you keep forgetting that things like solar and wind cannot be used as baseline power without VAST implementation changes and an improvement in storage technology of several orders of magnitude.
Plus there's the face that there are places you simply should NOT be putting solar and wind power generation.
So you're saying, without a carbon tax, with the other sources of power HEAVILY subsidized by pork, CURRENT low prices in a market the US simply DOES NOT control and with absolutely insane bias against implementation (with accompanying punitive levels of investment required), that Nuclear isn't price competitive. And with anti-nuke nuts going in circles with "This stuff needs reliable storage NOW!" and "Oh! Not THERE!", starting projects they have no intention of completing, and killing projects that already have sunk the majority of their budget. Costing taxpayers billions?
Well, DUH.
Sorry. But simply defining an argument as a strawman doesn't make it a strawman.
Try harder.
Again, the sun doesn't shine all the time. And there's no storage grid large enough to actually hold that kind of power. Nor is there a planetary grid to help roll-over power.
And there are places that make solar panels seasonably unfeasible.
In the US, solar provides a scant fraction of total power use. Ramping it up several thousand percent just isn't do-able. It's not affordable for everyone to implement, the US power industry couldn't absorb that power and still afford to rebuild and maintain a grid and China couldn't supply the volumes you're talking about in a timely manner.
Instead of TL DR, learn to fucking read and stop trying to shovel your uninformed shit on everyone else you ignorant little nothing.
FUCK YOU! You big-brother assmunch!
Your argument is fallacious.
Luckily, your simply wanting this to be true in no way alters reality.
The inherent danger of or the damage to the environment of any other power source does not in any way make nuclear more attractive, which has the potential to be far more deadly.
Say it PROPERLY please.
It, in no way, makes it more attractive to YOU.
As for the "potential to be far more deadly". Bullshit. It's a binary equation. Sorry. All the relativism is just scaremongering.
Nuclear power is inherently more expensive than other sources of power, and always has been.
Again, keep saying it. It'll keep NOT being true.
For their solution!
I'm not saying that low voter turnout isn't a problem.
But it's a problem of laziness, apathy and misinformation.
Bitcoin is just flat-out NOT equipped for solving those problems.
Unfuckingbelievable. Reasonably concerned individuals are "ninnies?"
When they stop us from doing what needs doing, and sets us to endless wrangling with no real solution?
FUCK YEAH!
WTF is up with nuke-nutters love-affair with this insanely expensive, forever deadly garbage?
Because it isn't "forever deadly". Sure, the current crop of 50-60 year old tech produces stuff that's hot (lukewarm actually) for tens of thousands of years.
But you're okay with it being stored outside on a fucking parking lot?
When we can produce stuff that's safer, and while it's more radiologically "active" (hot) than the current crop, ITS LIFETIME IS FAR SHORTER (decades or hundreds of years).
I look at it from a storage engineering perspective.
Can we build something that's going to last 100 millennia?
I dunno.
Can we build something that's going to last 500 years?
Probably. The odds are much better.
THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE MORE EXPENSIVE AND MORE DIRTY THAN NUCLEAR
Bullshit. We've been pumping crap into the atmosphere for the last 200+ years. But you're going to try to tell us that nuclear is dirtier?
Nuclear's waste is more CONCENTRATED? YES! What's all the environmental pollution done to humanity over the last 200 years?
Oh. Maybe. GLOBAL FUCKING WARMING?
But hey, at least it's more diffuse!
As for more expensive. It's more expensive because the people who are terrified and equate nuclear with "nuclear war" have created a regulatory environment that's made it unfairly expensive.
Were fossil fuels required to comply with even HALF of the regulations slapped on nuclear, the price of energy would be unattainable.
But hey, feel free to give up your portion and go shiver in a cave over a meal of grubs.
Answer that, definitively, before telling me safely storing waste for 250--> 30K years is even remotely possible.
Or, howsabout we generate power using technology that produces waste that burns off faster or produces long-lived isotopes that are medically or scientifically useful (like plutonium batteries that NASA can't produce anymore because we're out of plutonium)?
Oh, but nuclear radiation kills less people than slippery showers? Except that all it takes is one good accident to throw your bullshit stats into chaos.
Like an oil spill?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... (Not to mention the oil lakes and oil fires)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
Or coal mine disasters?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2...
Ah, the omnipresent "Nookyoolur = BOMZ!!!!" canard.
The favourite straw man of the pro-nuclear crowd. He sure takes a beating.
What strawman? HE brought it up.
Maybe that's true of what the US buys, but in the EU companies are required to care about where their raw materials come from. As well as meeting standards like RoHS, when calculating taxes on environmental damage what happens in China to mine the materials they use is taken into consideration.
It's not perfect but it has forced China to start cleaning up, at least when it wants to export to the EU.
And if they don't care to? Where does the EU get its rare earths products from THEN?
Or, on the flip side, once it decides to shift the cost of the "cleaner" procedures to the customer, and the prices of rare earths products skyrockets. What then?
No, the biggest problems are the cost and the fact that we want them to be run by people more interested in profit than safety. The latter problem is so bad that insurance companies won't touch nuclear power, and we have to have special regulatory agencies to force responsible behaviour, and even they don't work properly.
New reactor designs won't fix these problems.
The cost is a byproduct of the absolutely psychotic level of fearmongering the anti-nuke crowd has done and the ultra-paranoid regulations morass that's been put in place. And you're right, new, safer reactor designs won't fix people who are hell-bent on terrifying themselves and everyone else about "evil nuclear power".
Hmm... A concrete block with something that can potentially go into meltdown or produce explosive gas inside it. You would be totally reliant on whatever safety features were built in working perfectly, because clearly you can't get to it and just vent off some hydrogen or pump in some cooling water now. Yeah, that sounds like a great plan.
Did you even read...no...no you didn't. Because heaven forbid something contradict your little world view.
We have the ability NOW to produce reactors that simply CANNOT melt down. Where a FAILURE state results in the reactor shutting off, using natural forces like GRAVITY to remove the fuel from the reaction chamber and stop reacting. You pull the plug on the reactor, it shuts down and the fuel moves to a dump tank. The reactor starts to overheat, it shuts down and the fuel moves to a dump tank. Unless you're going to start proposing that we now need to plan for gravity utterly reversing itself....
No gas buildups. No explosions. No boiling water in the reactor.
So, we're back to "Well what if gravity magically reverses itself in a failure?" scenario.
No such design exists.
Please. Try not to show your ignorance.
Yes, the products of this form of reactor tend to be more radioactive. That's actually a fairly good thing believe it or not.
People gripe about things like Yucca mountain. Where they're storing stuff that's mildly radioactive and will be for tens of thousands of years.
Hell, at some nuclear plants, this stuff is sitting outside, in the open ON A FUCKING PARKING LOT.
Do we REALLY think we're up to engineering storage facilities with that sort of lifespan?
Maybe? I'd say they're being unrealistic.
The stuff that comes out of an MSR? VERY hot, but VERY short-lived (relatively).
Are we up to storing stuff that lives a few decades or a couple hundred years? Yeah! Easily.
Additionally I'm not saying "fission forever".
I'm saying "Fission for now, where it makes sense" (don't build them on active faultlines or near volcanoes, etc). And augment it with renewables.
Once we have a steady, clean power structure in place, BEAT FEET FOR FUSION (again, augmented by renewables).
The faster we get to the fusion stage,
Ah, the omnipresent "Nookyoolur = BOMZ!!!!" canard.
Steel can be used in construction. Or it can be used to coat bullets. Or make all sorts of implements of death and destruction. Or it can be made into a scalpel to cut out cancer.
The technology for nuclear power, by itself is neither good nor evil. It's all about intent in use.
Also, as noted, the rare earths being mined to make your "renewable" power? Basically being done by China in the cheapest, dirtiest manner possible. Because the US has been so constipated by the "nuclear issue" that nobody wants to invest in rare earths here because the regulations are not just completely overboard and crazed like Chuck Manson on a bad acid trip, but they're actively hostile towards any development of the technology whatsoever, no matter HOW cleanly it can be done.
Why? Nuke-ninnies like yourself.
And sure, China's rare earths are cheap right now. Until they aren't anymore. Then what?
And what about the vast environmental damage China's doing with their dirty mining procedures? Because you know their digs aren't regulated like they would be in the US.
And the equipment they use sure as fuck doesn't run on pixie dust, unicorn piss and fairy farts.
So don't pretend that your pie-in-the-sky renewable daydream is anything but.
Also, you're still dependent on fossil fuels for when the renewables can't handle the load.
On top of that, the only thing that will make truly widespread implementation of renewables anything CLOSE to viable is a MASSIVE improvement in storage technologies.
Even then, it's NEVER going to be able to be ramped up to a level where it can truly account for both base load AND peak load. You'd have to carpet the entire country in solar cells and windmills. Regardless of whether the location of implementation is truly viable or not. Let's not even talk about worldwide.
THEN you're locked into a continual "buy new ones now that these have worn out" cycle.
That basically makes us, permanently, an economic vassal-state to a hostile foreign power.
The biggest problem with nuclear power today is the fact that there's BEEN little to no new implementation for the last 20-ish years. The last completed reactor was Watts Barr 1 in Tennessee in 1996. This year, Watts Barr 2 is due to come online.
ONE new nuclear power plant in 19 years. And the median age of reactors in the US is 33 years.
Reactors are normally slated to run for 40 years, with the ability to apply for a 20 year extension.
So we have a bunch of reactors coming due for their extension. Old, crude reactors based on 50-60 year old technology.
We have the ability TODAY, to build reactors with new technology that are clean, safe and self-contained. You dig a hole in the ground, drop a concrete slab, drop the reactor in, and cover it in more concrete and bury. At the end of its lifespan, you dig it out and send it back to the factory for reprocessing and drop a new/refurbished one in.
Reactors where the facility isn't 10% reactor and 90% Rube-Goldberg safety systems. Reactors that are 100% reactor which are engineered FROM THE GET GO to be inherently safe. Where a failure doesn't result in a meltdown. Where a failure results in the reactor shutting itself off and keeping the unspent fuel contained and cool, away from the reaction mass.
On top of that, you could jump-start the US rare earths industry again. Because, rather than worrying about all that "radioactive crap" that comes up with the rare earths? That "radioactive crap" becomes "fuel" for reactors. And while costs MIGHT be a bit higher than the dirty Chinese market, they'll be making money at BOTH ends of the spectrum. Both from the rare earths and the rest of the stuff as fuel. Hell, the tailings from ONE modest-sized mine for a year could conceivably satisfy the entirety of the US power appetite for that same period PLUS.
But no. Nuclear = EEEEEEVIL and just waking up in the morning becomes a proliferation risk.
Also, how long as the US been relying on nuclear power? How many lives has that reliance saved?
Nope.
NOT going to play that game. Even a little.
Not playing the "Who's liability IS it?" game.
Because all it takes is one nasty lawsuit to fuck over someone for life.
3D has been "The next big thing" for more than 150 years. Starting with crude Stereoscope viewers in the mid 1800's, a resurgence in the 70's with the first mass market 3D movies, an attempt at another resurgence in the 2000's, and a push by the industry for 3D TV's more recently. Each of these technologies has shown the exact same pattern - a bit of novelty when they're first introduced, then tiredness, and quickly - a clear consumer rejection.
The amount of money tech companies have invested in 3D over the last century is staggering, and the consumer rejection has been consistent. I can't think of a better disconnect between producer and consumer.
So here we are again. We're supposed to get excited over yet another 3D Next Big Thing. No thanks. Just like every example that's come before, I'm perfectly happy and even prefer the current state of my photography. I am an avid first-adopter, but I have absolutely no intention of ever adopting 3D photography.
And you have pretty much summed up everything I was going to say (and probably in a more concise manner).
I, frankly, don't understand this relentless desire to FORCE the consumer onto 3D.
I mean, I could get kinda excited about a 3D holographic format. But you wouldn't be using that on a phone, tablet or laptop. And you wouldn't be using it as a primary interface for a desktop either. But, as an entertainment format I could see it being fun.
But stereoscopic 3D on a flat surface is just a headache-inducing eyesore.
{Anonymous}Script kiddies of the world UNITE! Everyone download a copy of LOIC so we can just DDOS people!
{Everyone Else} *Sigh*
E-Peen! AWAYYYYYYYYY!
http://www.sagernotebook.com/h...
They've built for multiple companies at one time or another.
Their in-house systems tend to be beefy in the extreme and engineered right (powerful internal fans, rather than passive cooling).
Their desktop replacement are generally LOUDER than other laptops, but tend to have fewer problems overheating.
I'd call and talk with them about "Desktop Replacement" systems. And let them steer you towards what you're looking for.
Okay, currently Google Fiber is $70/month for Gig service.
Now, say it goes up that $67/year that was quoted.
That means it's going to be $76/month (call it $80 just to be outrageous).
So, oh NOEZ! I'm now paying more for service!
When, before, my other options were $125/month for Comcast's 50/10 service and $50/month for 3M/512K DSL?
Oh! The pain! The pain!
'nuff said
Will it be more expensive on a channel-by-channel basis?
Sure!
But if I'm paying $100 a month for 200 channels, that's 50 cents per channel.
Even if we saw a tenfold increase ($5/channel). If I was only watching 3-4 of those 200 channels, that's $15-20.
A fairly substantial savings. AND, the money the cable company owes would be going to DIRECTLY subsidize the channels I want. Rather than handing me 10 ESPN channels (which I don't want and never EVER *EVER!* watch), and then tacking in a bunch more crap that I never watch, just so I can get a couple channels that have the content I'm ACTUALLY interested in.
As for something like this being unfair to channels that just don't have the draw to stay subsidized? All I can say is "I sure love my buggy whip!".
In a free market, you're also free to fail.
Basically this is just a way of flagellating their political opponents.
"Hey! Here's this bill we KNOW won't pass! Because the big telcom/cable providers have you all in their pockets! We know this because we're in the pocket with you!"
*Doesn't pass*
"The REPUBLICANS hate net neutrality! NYAHHHHHH!"
That's basically the long and short of it. Standard bullshit political brinksmanship.
Fuck them.
Fuck them all.
If there's anything that'll push forward legal restrictions on 3D printers/home CNC, it'll be assholes like this making a media push over how easy it is to make weapons and OMG THE CHILDREN. This is why we can't have nice things.
Sorry, but staying silent and furtive about it is no better protection. And it allows them to make all sorts of unopposed claims about how "bad" an activity is as the government fucks over its citizenry yet again.
Our space exploration program is what's going to, eventually, save the human race from extinction when our planet becomes uninhabitable for ANY reason. That's our long-term goal. And it's a worthy one.
However, we have a lot of other things that could lead to our extinction in the shorter term. Some of that stuff is environmental, yes. But a lot of the problems are social. This istuff that is NOT solved by leaving the planet behind. So going broke on a space program, and leaving other, more immediately necessary things undone could be a recipe for disaster in the short term.
The big thing is, there are LOTS of programs run by our government that have NOTHING to do with EITHER of these sets of problems. And THOSE programs are the ones sucking up all the available capital. And is our government going to prioritize away from "pork"? The answer, from our government at least, is unambiguous.
"Fuck no! Fuck you! You're un-American for asking! Someone arrest him for terrorism please?"
Which of those cases didn't have an impact on the world?
I didn't say "had an impact".
I said "changed".
While you may think of it as splitting hairs, the difference is quite real.
Each of the technologies talked about brought about an evolution in the market.
I'm talking about a world-wide revolution brought about by the tech. All the crazy shit they always promise and pie-in-the-sky about and never actually deliver.
It sounds like you're arguing FOR VR but don't realize it.
You apparently missed the part where I said I'm a fan of VR, as a concept. It's just that the current implementation is far, FAR behind where it needs to be to reasonably become a ubiquitous technology.