The problem with nuclear power is that two of the major steps in the process that would make it viable are completely unknown. First, we have no idea how to re-process and re-use spent fuel rods and second, we have no idea what to do with the high-level radioactive waste. This stuff has a half-life of 25,000 thousand years. Do we really need energy so badly we're willing to generate waste that will last longer than human history? Seem like an unbelievable short-sighted thing to do. What if the Romans had done this all over the Europe... we'd hardly appreciate having to dodge their radioactive waste sites for another 50,000 years.
A far better solution would be to switch as much as possible to natural gas which burns far cleaner and is in pretty good supply in the US and then put a huge effort into really making solar and wind viable options.
We got to the moon in ten years and built a nuclear bomb from scratch in 6. Seems like we could develop hydrogen fuel cells and cheap solar/wind power if there was any real governmental/financial commitment to it.
Kudos to David Merrill for starting this thread. This post has been a goldmine of usefulness even above and beyond the usual/. fare. One thing I haven't seen covered yet is any places that sell (relatively) cheap LCD screens.
Anyone out there know somewhere that sells LCD's either in a totally raw state or in a format that's a bit more usable? This would ideally be an LCD that had some simple power and video input that I could embed in various art projects without having to get a degree in electronics - I could do some basic wiring but I'm not particularly in the habit of hacking together cables and power supplies. I guess I'm looking for either OEM LCD's with very good instructions or some semi-finished thing that doesn't cost what a finished LCD monitor or mini-dvd screen would go for,
Thanks
Superfly
Hi
Much of my PhD work involves tracking ants as they run around on video clips so I too have a fair amount of mindless time on my hands.
My recommendations are:
This American Life -- www.thisamericanlife.org 1-hour shows. 4 years of archives online (that's about 400 hours). People seem to either love it or hate it, but I have passed many a long hour tracking ants listening to TAL's crazy stories.
BBC Radio -- http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/ Like NPR but from an English perspective.
- Also BBC World Service: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/index.shtml?logo . The news is particularly informative as an alternative to the usual US stuff. If you click on the "Start Radio Player" link, it will pop up a box that you can choose from all the day's programs. I try to listen to "The World" most days which is a bit like a news oriented version of All Things Considered. (note if you have a pop-up blocker you may need to right-click and do an "Open in a new window" to spawn the Radio player.
Democracy Now and pacifica radio -- www.democracynow.org / www.pacifica.org
- Left-leaning but quite informative daily news show. 1-hour. I can't always stomach listening to it every day since they seem to never cover any good news, but if mainstream media leaves you feeling like you might not be hearing the whole story, Democracy Now gives an alternative perspective. Although they definitely choose to interview people who don't agree with the current administration, the people they have on often have substantial credential (e.g. Pulitzer prizes winning journalists, etc.).
Crazy story you have freejung. Made even crazier for me to read because I've been to a lot of those places. I even stayed in Cabinas Tesoro a few years back. The more time I spend in Costa Rica, the more I get the feeling there is a bunch totally crazy shit going on just below the surface. Glad you got out of it all ok.
I'm surprised at the vehemence of some of these negative responses. I had no idea people might be so antagonistic to someone asking a genuine questions about finding their path in life.
I agree with freeyoung's comments wholeheartedly.
I think Rilke said it best in his "Letter's to a young poet"
"...have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within you the possibility of creating and forming, as an especially blessed and pure way of living; train your for that - but take whatever comes, with great trust, and as long as it comes out of your will, out of some need of your innermost self, then take it upon yourself, and don't hate anything."
Or as Rumi put it, a bit more succinctly,
"Let who you are be what you do,
there are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth."
You don't have to follow the rules, but you do have to learn what they are and figure out how to get around them.:)
I'm glad somebody brought this subject up. Pay wireless seems like one of those things that in a few years everyone will be wondering "who ever thought that would work". It seems like there are two paradigms for making money on things like this, one is to take something people really want, that is close to free for the provider, and charge through the nose for it, and the other is to provide the service for free, ingratiating yourself to your customers, generating loyalty to your business, and then make money when people buy other services from you (i.e. coffee from your cafe)
The business model for pay wireless just doesn't seem sustainable. A cafe annoys their customers by forcing them to pay $6 or so for something that costs them next to nothing and they get maybe $3 back from T-mobile, which is about the cost of a latte. When a cafe down the street is offering wireless for free, I'll go there and they'll get my $3 and I'll get free wireless. Furthermore, all it takes is a few open wireless nodes in an apartment complex nextdoor and no one will need to pay for the T-mobile connection anyway.
It's even less explicable in airports. For travelers, wireless will soon be an expected service in a well designed airport. Sure it must cost the airport something marginal to give everyone wireless, but so does keeping their bathrooms clean and keeping the lights on. It would hardly seem reasonable for O'hare to put those little paymeters on their toilet stalls, but somehow it seems normal to charge me $10-20 so I can get some work done while waiting for my next flight. As the trend in airport design seems to be towards making it an office for those on the road, I can't imagine how charging people for wireless generates a revenue stream for anyone but the 3rd-party ISP that is even close to worth the inconvenience it causes travellers who aren't on an expense account.
Slashdot Mirror
What is that, the dance of the friendly phallus? It moves so expressively!
The problem with nuclear power is that two of the major steps in the process that would make it viable are completely unknown. First, we have no idea how to re-process and re-use spent fuel rods and second, we have no idea what to do with the high-level radioactive waste. This stuff has a half-life of 25,000 thousand years. Do we really need energy so badly we're willing to generate waste that will last longer than human history? Seem like an unbelievable short-sighted thing to do. What if the Romans had done this all over the Europe... we'd hardly appreciate having to dodge their radioactive waste sites for another 50,000 years.
A far better solution would be to switch as much as possible to natural gas which burns far cleaner and is in pretty good supply in the US and then put a huge effort into really making solar and wind viable options.
We got to the moon in ten years and built a nuclear bomb from scratch in 6. Seems like we could develop hydrogen fuel cells and cheap solar/wind power if there was any real governmental/financial commitment to it.
Kudos to David Merrill for starting this thread. This post has been a goldmine of usefulness even above and beyond the usual /. fare. One thing I haven't seen covered yet is any places that sell (relatively) cheap LCD screens.
Anyone out there know somewhere that sells LCD's either in a totally raw state or in a format that's a bit more usable? This would ideally be an LCD that had some simple power and video input that I could embed in various art projects without having to get a degree in electronics - I could do some basic wiring but I'm not particularly in the habit of hacking together cables and power supplies. I guess I'm looking for either OEM LCD's with very good instructions or some semi-finished thing that doesn't cost what a finished LCD monitor or mini-dvd screen would go for,
Thanks
Superfly
Hi Much of my PhD work involves tracking ants as they run around on video clips so I too have a fair amount of mindless time on my hands.
o .
My recommendations are:
This American Life -- www.thisamericanlife.org 1-hour shows. 4 years of archives online (that's about 400 hours). People seem to either love it or hate it, but I have passed many a long hour tracking ants listening to TAL's crazy stories.
BBC Radio -- http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/
Like NPR but from an English perspective.
- Also BBC World Service: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/index.shtml?log
The news is particularly informative as an alternative to the usual US stuff. If you click on the "Start Radio Player" link, it will pop up a box that you can choose from all the day's programs. I try to listen to "The World" most days which is a bit like a news oriented version of All Things Considered. (note if you have a pop-up blocker you may need to right-click and do an "Open in a new window" to spawn the Radio player.
Democracy Now and pacifica radio -- www.democracynow.org / www.pacifica.org
- Left-leaning but quite informative daily news show. 1-hour. I can't always stomach listening to it every day since they seem to never cover any good news, but if mainstream media leaves you feeling like you might not be hearing the whole story, Democracy Now gives an alternative perspective. Although they definitely choose to interview people who don't agree with the current administration, the people they have on often have substantial credential (e.g. Pulitzer prizes winning journalists, etc.).
Hope that helps
Tim
www.infiniteworld.org
Crazy story you have freejung. Made even crazier for me to read because I've been to a lot of those places. I even stayed in Cabinas Tesoro a few years back. The more time I spend in Costa Rica, the more I get the feeling there is a bunch totally crazy shit going on just below the surface. Glad you got out of it all ok.
I'm surprised at the vehemence of some of these negative responses. I had no idea people might be so antagonistic to someone asking a genuine questions about finding their path in life.
:)
I agree with freeyoung's comments wholeheartedly.
I think Rilke said it best in his "Letter's to a young poet"
"...have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within you the possibility of creating and forming, as an especially blessed and pure way of living; train your for that - but take whatever comes, with great trust, and as long as it comes out of your will, out of some need of your innermost self, then take it upon yourself, and don't hate anything."
Or as Rumi put it, a bit more succinctly,
"Let who you are be what you do, there are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth."
You don't have to follow the rules, but you do have to learn what they are and figure out how to get around them.
good luck
I'm glad somebody brought this subject up. Pay wireless seems like one of those things that in a few years everyone will be wondering "who ever thought that would work". It seems like there are two paradigms for making money on things like this, one is to take something people really want, that is close to free for the provider, and charge through the nose for it, and the other is to provide the service for free, ingratiating yourself to your customers, generating loyalty to your business, and then make money when people buy other services from you (i.e. coffee from your cafe)
The business model for pay wireless just doesn't seem sustainable. A cafe annoys their customers by forcing them to pay $6 or so for something that costs them next to nothing and they get maybe $3 back from T-mobile, which is about the cost of a latte. When a cafe down the street is offering wireless for free, I'll go there and they'll get my $3 and I'll get free wireless. Furthermore, all it takes is a few open wireless nodes in an apartment complex nextdoor and no one will need to pay for the T-mobile connection anyway.
It's even less explicable in airports. For travelers, wireless will soon be an expected service in a well designed airport. Sure it must cost the airport something marginal to give everyone wireless, but so does keeping their bathrooms clean and keeping the lights on. It would hardly seem reasonable for O'hare to put those little paymeters on their toilet stalls, but somehow it seems normal to charge me $10-20 so I can get some work done while waiting for my next flight. As the trend in airport design seems to be towards making it an office for those on the road, I can't imagine how charging people for wireless generates a revenue stream for anyone but the 3rd-party ISP that is even close to worth the inconvenience it causes travellers who aren't on an expense account.