But are the problems of decaying OLEDs fixed now? the first ones only lasted a couple of years if I remember correctly.
If they get cheap enough, and there's a reasonable recycling program, who cares? Why not consider the optical component a consumable? So long as the initial purchase price plus the cost of a few replacement optical units is less than the purchase price of competing technologies, the consumer wins.
The only problem with this is that it potentially opens up a whole new product to the "razor handle" marketing model. If we go down this path, I think the best option would be for standards to be set early, so people can make purchasing decisions based on openness of standards and product quality - if you don't care, buy that < insert developing country that undercuts China in price and quality > replacement insert, but if you want the best, buy the Big Brand or Quality OEM one. If it goes the razor or printer way, I guess I could live with it - but I'd much prefer it if it went the same way as the lightbulb.
That was the blue one, IIRC. The red one included a Windows licence.
The red one didn't include windows, you had to have it. The blue one did include windows.
Okay, obviously I didn't remember correctly... I should have, as I have a Warp 3 Blue Upgrade pack in the garage. I think what confused me is the fact that the 2.0 and 2.1 I have require windows, and I needed to install them before I could install Warp (2.0 -> 2.1 Upgrade -> 3 Upgrade in one day from floppy... not pretty)
Yes, it was Win16. And yes, they did have the Windows source code to build it from. I believe this happened because of OS/2 originally being a joint IBM/MS venture.
There have been various non-IBM efforts to support Win32 applications in OS/2, including this
As for the name, I never understood why they called it OS/2 _for_ Windows. It wasn't as if it ran on top of Windows, as many people seemed to believe. It simply had a nifty way of letting the Windows kernel run inside OS/2 and display windows as if they were native PM windows.
It was called OS/2 for Windows because it was intended for people with a Windows licence already - it was generally installed over the top of a working Windows installation, or at least that's the way IBM recommended and the way I usually did it. That was the blue one, IIRC. The red one included a Windows licence. Watch this thread for more on Red OS/2, Blue OS/2 and the inevitable string of bad (even by Slashdot standards) Matrix jokes.
If we are buying a single license for a movie or an album (as according to the RIAA and the MPAA), we should be able to go exchange our DVDs for whatever comes out next at no cost.
I don't think we'd ever get the "at no cost" bit through, and I don't really think that would be fair anyway - there's manufacturing and distribution costs for a start. How would it be fair for me to expect to exchange my scratched, rotted DVD for a shiny new Super-Opto Vidcube(TM) at no cost?
If we look at paying only for the fair and reasonable costs for a replacement in the new or the same format, we're looking at removing the royalty component of the cost - that's what, five to ten percent? By the time we then look at what would be needed to properly audit such a system (sighting and destroying old media to ensure no infringing copies exist, audit docmentation etc) there are additional costs - plus this is a new service, and it's only going to happen if there's a dollar in it for the record companies.
Much as I hate to say it, I don't believe we'll get the ability to download and burn anything we have a licence for to whatever media we wish until such time as there is a decent DRM system in place. One that lets us re-assign our rights if we decide we don't like something, in just the same way as we can sell a CD or DVD we discover we hate. One that allows us to treat our local media as a disposable copy that will eventually wear out and be replaced by a new, fault-free copy.
One issue that will have to be addressed in any such system is what constitutes a "licenced work". Say I licence a movie under such a system, and it's the dying days of the DVD era. I download and burn my DVD image (complete with digital fingerprints so I can be slapped on the wrist if I do the wrong thing - hey, fair's fair) and six months later my son decides to see what happens when you microwave DVDs. I've just bought a Super-Opto Vidcube(TM) player, and the local 7-11 has a writer that will legally write licenced materials on my behalf if I drop a $30 coin in it. I notice that there's an enhanced-definition version available, but the scum-sucking parasitic Hollywood types won't let me burn it unless I buy a licence for it! That's Wrong! I bought the movie, I should get the new format for free! The most it will do is let me write to the cube in DVD-Compatibility mode! And they should throw in the cube for nothing! Which brings us back to the original point...
Hmmm... I can think of a fun activity, then.
Arp-poisoning pigeons in the park!
...So, if Sunday you're free,
Why don't you come with me
And we'll arp poison the pigeons in the park.
And maybe we'll do
In a wifi-enabled squirrel or two,
While we're arp poisoning pigeons in the park.
As we learned in Econ 101, it probably comes down to value. Most people do not ascribe value to computer security; they see it as "something the IT guys make us do."
There have been times when I've been severely tempted to do some easily repairable damage to try to get the message through to these lusers. Only the fact that I like where I work has held me back...
Guess I still need that coffee. I walked right into that one. I love the mercury analogy.
Seriously, don't you think there's a balance to be struck here? Doesn't seem to me like asking the question "Maglev trains are perceived as having a more disturbing sound -- Why?" is a sign that ingenuity is dead. Personally I like living in a world where airports need to think about the noise produced by their traffic patterns. If we figure out what quality these trains might have that makes their sounds more irritating, we can decide whether to do something about it and how much it'd cost. No harm done.
Indeed. I agree with you. And if I could go back and edit what I'd posted, I would probably turn "Where once upon a time new technologies were just introduced, we now run the risk of getting them bludgeoned to death by special-interest groups and environmental impact statements" into "Where once upon a time new technologies were just introduced, sometimes with inadeqate checks and balances, we now run the risk of getting them bludgeoned to death by special-interest groups and environmental impact statements that sometimes don't so much address real issues as expose biases and personal unfamiliarity with the issues at hand".
Determining why people find these trains more irritating than "whooooooooooooooooosh" overlaying "clu-clunk, clu-clunk, clu-clunk" is very important, but if it turns out that it's simply because they have grown up with one set of noises and the other is intrusive only because it is new then I'm afraid they don't get much sympathy from me. At least, no more sympathy than anyone who is getting a new rail line in their back yard would get from me.
Some participants in the study said the sound made them 'feel insecure, some found it startling, and disliked the occasional shrill sound the maglevs produced.' The researcher postulated that unfamiliarity with the noise might be part of the problem."
Given time, people can become comfortable with anything. Who woulda thunk that we could sleep through traffic noise, normal rail noise, low-flying jet aircraft etc?
Where once upon a time new technologies were just introduced, we now run the risk of getting them bludgeoned to death by special-interest groups and environmental impact statements. There is no reason why in time maglev sounds should not become a familiar part of the soundscape, barely noticed if at all, and a realisation that people might be uncomfortable with something just because it is new may help us determine whether something really is damaging or if it's just a baseless case of NIMBY (as opposed to "it really is damaging, so get it the fuck away from me") when people oppose something new.
(aplogies if this is incoherent... it's been three hours since my last coffee)
...and although I don't usually deal with Windows vulnerabilities (not my job, lucky me) I felt compelled to take a little mitigating action when I found out about this one. I know it's not a lot, but as I'm one of the guys at work who looks after the web filters I've added a couple of sites to the blocklist. The whole sodding place is full of users who will quite happily follow links in spam, judging by some of the spyware I removed from their desktops in a previous life.
I haven't added many yet, but it's a start.
Now, I just have to try to get manglement approval to add known spyware sites to the list as well...
I don't quite understand why this vision, as stated, would be some sort of "left-wing utopia". It's only left-wing if you assume that these things can only happen if the government does it for us rather than allowing market mechanisms to operate.
That's the problem with stream-of-consciousness./-ing - you never manage to put all your underlying assumptions in a post.
I think I was trying to address the idea that some people would see it as a necessarily Lefty idea, and make it more inclusive. The underlying idea (which I admit may not have been terribly well articulated, if at all) was that those with power usually try to keep it - regardless of their political persuasion. Some energy companies may believe they have a vested interest in seeing the status quo maintained, others may see the writing on the wall and shift a few eggs around so they can maintain shareholder value even if their gas, oil and coal businesses get "forcibly restructured". Maybe some governmental involvement will be required to get the industry players to play nice, but I see that as more a way of formalising the ground rules than actually performing the implementation. Although, that said, I believe that many essential pieces of infrastructure (e.g. water, sewage) are better off in the hands of government, so why not power too if fusion comes to fruition? California and Victoria spring to mind as nice examples of private-energy-gone-wrong (although, as a Victorian, I can see that there were political impediments to some necessary restructuring that were removed when power generation and distribution went from public to private hands).
I don't for a moment believe that only governments can do this for us, but I don't see many businesses likely to want to turn power distrution and billing upside-down unless there is a huge up-side for them.
I suspect that that is in fact the assumption of the post (this is./ after all), but the technological implications that emerge seem to be a reasonable extrapolation of any economic model that assumes exponential real growth suficiently far into the future. The question of whether this is a statist or libertarian model only adjusts the decade in which the facts as stated occur.
Yes, but which way? Each camp would have us believe that the other is in league with Satan, will make our whites come out of the wash grey, and will take away our important "freedoms" and "rights" (as defined to suit the argument of the moment). Is it better to have zero real input into how a reasonably well-run government that for the most part leaves you alone is selected, or to be able to choose which lizard you want in office? Both models potentially have pretty grave flaws, and pretty good benefits for society as a whole. But, people being people, we'll find a way to screw things up - which is why we need to keep talking about the issues. Who knows, future Corporate Uberlords might be better for society than elected or appointed officials. Honest, intelligent appointed officials might make better decisions and help more people than self-interested businesses or stupid, corrupt elected officials ever could. We all need to be open-minded enough to recognise the potential flaws in our own pet political hobby-horses, and merit in those of others, so we can know what's broken and fix it.
The same will probably be true in the future. Sure, their will always be the enlightened (or even, dare I say, the illuminated) but for the most part people will still be people. As they said in the seventies, science gave them two options: a bomb or the keys to world peace. And people chose the former and discarded the latter. The enlightenment they dreamed of the 19th century, in the 20th century (look at 1950's scifi), and even now may eventually come but it is not inevitiable. The day may be waiting to dawn but I have to admit, I doubt the people will find their way to it on their own.
Indeed. This is a problem... having to deal with people...
I don't think anybody has all the answers, and we need to make some things up as we go along.
As for how to help people find it, well, that is a tough one to crack - but part of it has to be to keep talking about the issues.
So when was the break even point that they recover all the money that has been spent developing it?
Who cares? I don't.
We need cheap, clean power. Fission is cheap and clean if done well, but with past waste disposal
practices waiting to bite us on our collective bums in the future and certain incidents like that one in the Ukraine 18 years ago in the public memory, I don't think we can afford to risk it. Oil and coal are dirty and running out. Solar, wind, tidal? Useful adjuncts to conventional generation techniques, but blighted by NIMBY and power storage issues.
Everything that has been spent on fusion research could be multiplied tenfold, a hundredfold, and the payoff for humanity would still be worthwhile.
A hundred years from now, I want a fresh set of environmental and social problems. I want our biggest concerns to be the marginal increase in salinity in some ocean currents from desalination plants and some wacky local weather issues due to waste heat from the fusion plants. I want population growth to be a non-issue because of better education of formerly developing and subsistence economies and cultures. I don't even care if my great-great-grandchildren speak Hindi or Arabic or Mandarin so long as the improvement between my life and theirs (materially and in freedoms) is comparable to the improvement between the Middle Ages and now - is it really an issue that I don't speak Middle English, Old Norse, Latin? Or that most of the world doesn't either?I want it to be a world in which pertoleum is seen as too valuable to burn, and as a valuable raw material for manufacturing. I want a world in which it is so cheap to transport and recycle our waste that is easier to "mine" our garbage than process new raw materials.
The thing is, power that is too cheap to meter (at least in personal-use quantities) is going to shake up things considerably. In the West we have all sorts of neat manufactured goods because power is cheap compared with a century ago. Imagine conveying those benefits to Africa, India, China, Iraq without the environmental downside. Imagine a world in which manufactured goods and food are so easy to produce that it doesn't matter that a significant percentage of the population don't make or grow things. Many Western economies are heading towards being services-based rather than manufacturing-based, but we can only continue to do this at the expense of the developing world - unless we can give everybody the same opportunities. We can turn the advent of fusion power into a golden age. Our descendents can wonder at a world in which it made more sense to build something in Beijing than Boston because the people in Beijing were paid less and lived under worse conditions than those in Boston. Our great-great-great-great-grandchildren can scratch their heads in wonder at the fact that people used to get sick and die because they could not afford to heat their homes in winter. They can stare in history books in disbelief, not comprehending what it would be like to live in a world before Universal Service Obligations extended beyond basic telecommunications to the energy necessary to sustain and enjoy life.
So, is this some left-wing Utopia? Maybe. But there's no reason it couldn't be shared by all - except that those currently holding the purse-strings will feel threatened - it's only natural that present energy suppliers may feel this way, although the more astute ones will already be diversifying and looking at possible futures. New industries will spring up that we can't even imagine now. Jobs will be displaced - but will we really need a coal miner then any more than we need cloth fullers now? Half the jobs our great-great-great-great-Grandchildren will be doing probably haven't even been invented yet.
So, when will the great payoff from fusion occur?
With the first child's life that it saves. With the better husbanding of the scarce resources of this world, and with access to those of the rest of the solar system (Str
I can see a few local cable companies getting scared, but I think where it will be really useful is for existing cable companies who need to service new subdivisions - laying new cables isn't cheap, and using otherwise empty broadcast spectrum might make a lot of economic sense.
Sure, welding the hood shut is a very provocative step, and the majority of the comments are about "stopping on a highway" etc. You think you can fix engine problems on new, modern cars yourself?
Remember, today's high-tech engine is tomorrow's clunker.
On another note, this may not be such a bad thing for certain classes of user - and may even have benefits for properly-clued smaller and home mechanics anyway. Before anyone asks WTF I'm smoking, hear me out.
Logically, if the bonnet is welded shut you'll need to drop the whole engine and drivetrain to do stuff to the engine. What's the hardest part of working on engines? Reaching around between the engine and the body, especially with today's designs.
In order to make servicing such a vehicle economical, I would envisage about eight bolts
(threaded) to lock things in place, about four slide bolts to allow the engine and drivetrain to drop out, an exhaust quick-release assembly (why not? Stainless steel, some wacky clamps and an asbestos gasket) a single connector for fuel and vapour lines, and a single connector for power and data connections.
So, you drive the vehicle onto a custom ramp.
You use some chassis stands to hold the vehicle up at the jacking points, undo the bolts and connectors, lower the part of the ramp below
the wheels slowly and then wheel the power unit out from under the front of the car. Everything is easy to get to, making it easier to do the job properly.
If they can standardise the dimensions, it should even make it easier to change between types of engine. Feeling green? Install a hybrid on your next service, or a CNG engine (along with the appropriate fuel delivery kit, also modular and designed to fit into a particular chassis series). Need more zing? Go the 3 litre turbo this time around. I also can't see a reason why engines couldn't be serviced on an "exchange" basis - they drop the old one, put another one in that's guaranteed to give a certain performance level until your next service, and away you go. Who knows - maybe you could buy the shell, but just lease the power plant appropriate for your needs?
Personal transportation is already a commodity for those who can afford it to be; if you have a Volvo or a BMW, you take it back to the dealer once every few months and probably never bother with what's under the bonnet. Although this will very much cater exclusively to this class of motorist in the beginning, it could introduce some design practices that could benefit us all.
The only people it might disadvantage are the people who drive the kind of crap I drive... although there are compelling arguments that clearing smokey deathtraps off the road is a good thing.
I don't care how many launch titles it has, I'm not going to pay much more than $300 for a videogame system. I can't imagine anyone else will either. I don't see Microsoft being willing to lose $2200 on a console, then wait for me to buy 44 $50 games to make their money back.
Of course they won't lose $2200 on each console.
It's pretty standard in the console world for
companies to design their new systems many years
in advance of their anticipated release date.
What would people have said in the early 90's
about a mips processor and an SGI-derived graphics
subsystem being used in a gaming console? Yet today,
people are happily trading in their "antiquated" N64's
on a PowerPC-based console and whining about how
the R&D projects that are being leaked will be too
expensive to get any sort of consumer following
when they hit the market...
...and when they do, there will be a fresh, new
generation to complain about how the multi-gigahertz,
16-way SMP research consoles that do distributed
real-time rendering with your fridge, toaster and
mobile phone for an extra performance boost won't
sell because "I'm not going to pay much more than
$300 for a videogame system." Trust me, if the past
is anything to go by, by the time they hit the market you won't have to.
Okay, so there's the perverted duck, his dead lover and a photographer. I think it's pretty obvious which one is "the Internet" - the question is, is Verisign getting its jollies or holding the camera?
Or would you have to kind of cobble together something that's rarely normally done for it to be hacking?
Does home-brew emissions control count?
I had the misfortune of driving a late 70's Corolla that had seen far better days. The last time I took the head off (to replace the gasket) I noticed that a couple of pistons had nicks out of their top edges, and some pretty nasty cavitation in their crowns. Not surprisingly, it still blew a lot of exhaust gases out through the crankcase after I got it back together - so much so, in fact, that it blew the oil filler cap out at high revs.
This was remedied with the patent-pending Mr. Roadkill "Moto-Bong". This consisted of about four feet of garden hose running from the top of the engine (where the breather hose used to go) into a four litre oil bottle tied behind the right-hand headlight and about 3/4 filled with water.I managed to get another couple of thousand kilometres out of that car before it finally died.
How about an unlicenced transmitter?
The car after that, a '67 Corona (with the 12R instead of the stock 2R, in case anyone is interested) needed new ignition leads, and I had no money. No problem - Air-spaced TV coax can be hacked to suit. I used Dick Smith W-2082 (as I worked there at the time and got it cheap). Pull the outer sheath off carefully, take the foil and braid off the dielectric, and then slip the dielectric back into the sheath. Sparkplugs have those screw terminals for a reason, and you can make connectors into the distributor and coil easily enough by wrapping the centre conductor around the sheath a few times, and maybe making the end oval with a pair of pliers to increase grip in the sockets you wedge the ends into. The neighbours always knew when I was about to get home, because of the snow on their televisions.
Besides, how are you supposed to GET the e-mail address of someone if you don't have an internet connection? Let me guess, you write them a letter with your address included...
Well, yes, actually.
Only, you wouldn't send it on paper - you'd send it to the designated operator in a particular village, and ask them to ensure delivery to a particular person. Their name and location becomes their address.
We had a conceptually similar system in most western countries for decades - only instead of laptops on motorbikes, we used copper wires and specially trained operaters who manually applied electric currents to them - it was called Telegraphy.
Man I grew up on turkish coffee poured into warmed milk poured over old bread. Trying to tell her that this is not normal in Australia sort of half worked. I finally persuaded her to buy corn flakes... over which she poured the coffee & warm milk...
Hmm... swap Weet Bix for the bread, and I think we have a contender for the true "Breakfast of Champions".
Substitute decaf for the "Breakfast of Champignons".
My heritage is from a lot further north. I'm still trying to find a way to incorporate Vodka and Rollmops into a balanced breakfast without adding antacids.
While this is nice for hobbyists, the people who *NEED* Solaris surely could afford 20$ for a copy for a long time now.
Indeed. ISTR the reason Sun gave for the $20 download fee was to stop kiddies with unlimited broadband plans slurping it up and not doing anything with it - they had a phenomenal number of downloads, but nobody was actually using it. Bandwidth costs somebody money, and Sun needed to have access to a lot of it and a lot of huge boxes in order to serve up all those ISOs that got looked at a couple of times and then binned because the kidlets couldn't figure out how to install Solaris.
On a slightly different note, I haven't checked out the licence in depth but I did notice the options on the download page (Educational use, Development use, or 60 day trial). ISTR that Solaris 8 was free for use on systems with 4 or less processors for any purpose, but Sun now want to sting you if you want to use it for real work. Fair enough I guess, since they'll be selling some really beefy X86 Solaris boxes now and they won't want people whiteboxing them out of business, but they'll have to make Solaris the obvious platform of choice or people will just stick Linux on unless the suits demand that there be someone they can sue when Things Go Wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
The only problem with this is that it potentially opens up a whole new product to the "razor handle" marketing model. If we go down this path, I think the best option would be for standards to be set early, so people can make purchasing decisions based on openness of standards and product quality - if you don't care, buy that < insert developing country that undercuts China in price and quality > replacement insert, but if you want the best, buy the Big Brand or Quality OEM one. If it goes the razor or printer way, I guess I could live with it - but I'd much prefer it if it went the same way as the lightbulb.
If we look at paying only for the fair and reasonable costs for a replacement in the new or the same format, we're looking at removing the royalty component of the cost - that's what, five to ten percent? By the time we then look at what would be needed to properly audit such a system (sighting and destroying old media to ensure no infringing copies exist, audit docmentation etc) there are additional costs - plus this is a new service, and it's only going to happen if there's a dollar in it for the record companies.
Much as I hate to say it, I don't believe we'll get the ability to download and burn anything we have a licence for to whatever media we wish until such time as there is a decent DRM system in place. One that lets us re-assign our rights if we decide we don't like something, in just the same way as we can sell a CD or DVD we discover we hate. One that allows us to treat our local media as a disposable copy that will eventually wear out and be replaced by a new, fault-free copy.
One issue that will have to be addressed in any such system is what constitutes a "licenced work". Say I licence a movie under such a system, and it's the dying days of the DVD era. I download and burn my DVD image (complete with digital fingerprints so I can be slapped on the wrist if I do the wrong thing - hey, fair's fair) and six months later my son decides to see what happens when you microwave DVDs. I've just bought a Super-Opto Vidcube(TM) player, and the local 7-11 has a writer that will legally write licenced materials on my behalf if I drop a $30 coin in it. I notice that there's an enhanced-definition version available, but the scum-sucking parasitic Hollywood types won't let me burn it unless I buy a licence for it! That's Wrong! I bought the movie, I should get the new format for free! The most it will do is let me write to the cube in DVD-Compatibility mode! And they should throw in the cube for nothing! Which brings us back to the original point...
Why don't you come with me
And we'll arp poison the pigeons in the park.
And maybe we'll do
In a wifi-enabled squirrel or two,
While we're arp poisoning pigeons in the park.
(With profound apologies to Tom Lehrer)
Determining why people find these trains more irritating than "whooooooooooooooooosh" overlaying "clu-clunk, clu-clunk, clu-clunk" is very important, but if it turns out that it's simply because they have grown up with one set of noises and the other is intrusive only because it is new then I'm afraid they don't get much sympathy from me. At least, no more sympathy than anyone who is getting a new rail line in their back yard would get from me.
Where once upon a time new technologies were just introduced, we now run the risk of getting them bludgeoned to death by special-interest groups and environmental impact statements. There is no reason why in time maglev sounds should not become a familiar part of the soundscape, barely noticed if at all, and a realisation that people might be uncomfortable with something just because it is new may help us determine whether something really is damaging or if it's just a baseless case of NIMBY (as opposed to "it really is damaging, so get it the fuck away from me") when people oppose something new.
(aplogies if this is incoherent... it's been three hours since my last coffee)
I haven't added many yet, but it's a start.
Now, I just have to try to get manglement approval to add known spyware sites to the list as well...
I guess that means you've used Windows XP...
I think I was trying to address the idea that some people would see it as a necessarily Lefty idea, and make it more inclusive. The underlying idea (which I admit may not have been terribly well articulated, if at all) was that those with power usually try to keep it - regardless of their political persuasion. Some energy companies may believe they have a vested interest in seeing the status quo maintained, others may see the writing on the wall and shift a few eggs around so they can maintain shareholder value even if their gas, oil and coal businesses get "forcibly restructured". Maybe some governmental involvement will be required to get the industry players to play nice, but I see that as more a way of formalising the ground rules than actually performing the implementation. Although, that said, I believe that many essential pieces of infrastructure (e.g. water, sewage) are better off in the hands of government, so why not power too if fusion comes to fruition? California and Victoria spring to mind as nice examples of private-energy-gone-wrong (although, as a Victorian, I can see that there were political impediments to some necessary restructuring that were removed when power generation and distribution went from public to private hands). I don't for a moment believe that only governments can do this for us, but I don't see many businesses likely to want to turn power distrution and billing upside-down unless there is a huge up-side for them.
Yes, but which way? Each camp would have us believe that the other is in league with Satan, will make our whites come out of the wash grey, and will take away our important "freedoms" and "rights" (as defined to suit the argument of the moment). Is it better to have zero real input into how a reasonably well-run government that for the most part leaves you alone is selected, or to be able to choose which lizard you want in office? Both models potentially have pretty grave flaws, and pretty good benefits for society as a whole. But, people being people, we'll find a way to screw things up - which is why we need to keep talking about the issues. Who knows, future Corporate Uberlords might be better for society than elected or appointed officials. Honest, intelligent appointed officials might make better decisions and help more people than self-interested businesses or stupid, corrupt elected officials ever could. We all need to be open-minded enough to recognise the potential flaws in our own pet political hobby-horses, and merit in those of others, so we can know what's broken and fix it.Indeed. This is a problem... having to deal with people...
I don't think anybody has all the answers, and we need to make some things up as we go along.
As for how to help people find it, well, that is a tough one to crack - but part of it has to be to keep talking about the issues.
Who cares? I don't.
We need cheap, clean power. Fission is cheap and clean if done well, but with past waste disposal practices waiting to bite us on our collective bums in the future and certain incidents like that one in the Ukraine 18 years ago in the public memory, I don't think we can afford to risk it. Oil and coal are dirty and running out. Solar, wind, tidal? Useful adjuncts to conventional generation techniques, but blighted by NIMBY and power storage issues.
Everything that has been spent on fusion research could be multiplied tenfold, a hundredfold, and the payoff for humanity would still be worthwhile.
A hundred years from now, I want a fresh set of environmental and social problems. I want our biggest concerns to be the marginal increase in salinity in some ocean currents from desalination plants and some wacky local weather issues due to waste heat from the fusion plants. I want population growth to be a non-issue because of better education of formerly developing and subsistence economies and cultures. I don't even care if my great-great-grandchildren speak Hindi or Arabic or Mandarin so long as the improvement between my life and theirs (materially and in freedoms) is comparable to the improvement between the Middle Ages and now - is it really an issue that I don't speak Middle English, Old Norse, Latin? Or that most of the world doesn't either?I want it to be a world in which pertoleum is seen as too valuable to burn, and as a valuable raw material for manufacturing. I want a world in which it is so cheap to transport and recycle our waste that is easier to "mine" our garbage than process new raw materials.
The thing is, power that is too cheap to meter (at least in personal-use quantities) is going to shake up things considerably. In the West we have all sorts of neat manufactured goods because power is cheap compared with a century ago. Imagine conveying those benefits to Africa, India, China, Iraq without the environmental downside. Imagine a world in which manufactured goods and food are so easy to produce that it doesn't matter that a significant percentage of the population don't make or grow things. Many Western economies are heading towards being services-based rather than manufacturing-based, but we can only continue to do this at the expense of the developing world - unless we can give everybody the same opportunities. We can turn the advent of fusion power into a golden age. Our descendents can wonder at a world in which it made more sense to build something in Beijing than Boston because the people in Beijing were paid less and lived under worse conditions than those in Boston. Our great-great-great-great-grandchildren can scratch their heads in wonder at the fact that people used to get sick and die because they could not afford to heat their homes in winter. They can stare in history books in disbelief, not comprehending what it would be like to live in a world before Universal Service Obligations extended beyond basic telecommunications to the energy necessary to sustain and enjoy life.
So, is this some left-wing Utopia? Maybe. But there's no reason it couldn't be shared by all - except that those currently holding the purse-strings will feel threatened - it's only natural that present energy suppliers may feel this way, although the more astute ones will already be diversifying and looking at possible futures. New industries will spring up that we can't even imagine now. Jobs will be displaced - but will we really need a coal miner then any more than we need cloth fullers now? Half the jobs our great-great-great-great-Grandchildren will be doing probably haven't even been invented yet.
So, when will the great payoff from fusion occur? With the first child's life that it saves. With the better husbanding of the scarce resources of this world, and with access to those of the rest of the solar system (Str
I can see a few local cable companies getting scared, but I think where it will be really useful is for existing cable companies who need to service new subdivisions - laying new cables isn't cheap, and using otherwise empty broadcast spectrum might make a lot of economic sense.
On another note, this may not be such a bad thing for certain classes of user - and may even have benefits for properly-clued smaller and home mechanics anyway. Before anyone asks WTF I'm smoking, hear me out.
Logically, if the bonnet is welded shut you'll need to drop the whole engine and drivetrain to do stuff to the engine. What's the hardest part of working on engines? Reaching around between the engine and the body, especially with today's designs.
In order to make servicing such a vehicle economical, I would envisage about eight bolts (threaded) to lock things in place, about four slide bolts to allow the engine and drivetrain to drop out, an exhaust quick-release assembly (why not? Stainless steel, some wacky clamps and an asbestos gasket) a single connector for fuel and vapour lines, and a single connector for power and data connections.
So, you drive the vehicle onto a custom ramp. You use some chassis stands to hold the vehicle up at the jacking points, undo the bolts and connectors, lower the part of the ramp below the wheels slowly and then wheel the power unit out from under the front of the car. Everything is easy to get to, making it easier to do the job properly.
If they can standardise the dimensions, it should even make it easier to change between types of engine. Feeling green? Install a hybrid on your next service, or a CNG engine (along with the appropriate fuel delivery kit, also modular and designed to fit into a particular chassis series). Need more zing? Go the 3 litre turbo this time around. I also can't see a reason why engines couldn't be serviced on an "exchange" basis - they drop the old one, put another one in that's guaranteed to give a certain performance level until your next service, and away you go. Who knows - maybe you could buy the shell, but just lease the power plant appropriate for your needs?
Personal transportation is already a commodity for those who can afford it to be; if you have a Volvo or a BMW, you take it back to the dealer once every few months and probably never bother with what's under the bonnet. Although this will very much cater exclusively to this class of motorist in the beginning, it could introduce some design practices that could benefit us all.
The only people it might disadvantage are the people who drive the kind of crap I drive... although there are compelling arguments that clearing smokey deathtraps off the road is a good thing.
Of course they won't lose $2200 on each console. It's pretty standard in the console world for companies to design their new systems many years in advance of their anticipated release date. What would people have said in the early 90's about a mips processor and an SGI-derived graphics subsystem being used in a gaming console? Yet today, people are happily trading in their "antiquated" N64's on a PowerPC-based console and whining about how the R&D projects that are being leaked will be too expensive to get any sort of consumer following when they hit the market...
Okay, so there's the perverted duck, his dead lover and a photographer. I think it's pretty obvious which one is "the Internet" - the question is, is Verisign getting its jollies or holding the camera?
I had the misfortune of driving a late 70's Corolla that had seen far better days. The last time I took the head off (to replace the gasket) I noticed that a couple of pistons had nicks out of their top edges, and some pretty nasty cavitation in their crowns. Not surprisingly, it still blew a lot of exhaust gases out through the crankcase after I got it back together - so much so, in fact, that it blew the oil filler cap out at high revs.
This was remedied with the patent-pending Mr. Roadkill "Moto-Bong". This consisted of about four feet of garden hose running from the top of the engine (where the breather hose used to go) into a four litre oil bottle tied behind the right-hand headlight and about 3/4 filled with water.I managed to get another couple of thousand kilometres out of that car before it finally died.
How about an unlicenced transmitter?
The car after that, a '67 Corona (with the 12R instead of the stock 2R, in case anyone is interested) needed new ignition leads, and I had no money. No problem - Air-spaced TV coax can be hacked to suit. I used Dick Smith W-2082 (as I worked there at the time and got it cheap). Pull the outer sheath off carefully, take the foil and braid off the dielectric, and then slip the dielectric back into the sheath. Sparkplugs have those screw terminals for a reason, and you can make connectors into the distributor and coil easily enough by wrapping the centre conductor around the sheath a few times, and maybe making the end oval with a pair of pliers to increase grip in the sockets you wedge the ends into. The neighbours always knew when I was about to get home, because of the snow on their televisions.
Substitute decaf for the "Breakfast of Champignons".
My heritage is from a lot further north. I'm still trying to find a way to incorporate Vodka and Rollmops into a balanced breakfast without adding antacids.