Yeah, see, the cost of running the network was already factored into the $300 + $60 * X. It was never a "free" service - it was just cheaper than Microsoft which charged you $300 + $60 * X + another $50/year * Y years.
I also feel confident in saying that even if Sony had charged, it wouldn't have changed the outcome, other than you'd have payed even more money for Sony to lose your data to the crackers.
Chrome OS isn't Linux in the usual sense. It's an extremely, extremely stripped down version of Linux with virtually all of the normal userspace tools removed. You choose to use that, and you get stuck with that choice. Please don't ever again complain about something not being available for Linux because it's not on Chrome OS or I will find your car and put dead fish in the trunk. *grin*
That said, I wouldn't be too terribly surprised if someone could come up with an html+javascript implementation of Keepass. It's open source and the file format and algorithms are documented.
In any case, for just about every remotely common platform which allows real apps to be installed, there's an implementation of KeePass. If you use Chrome OS, you should be used to not having anything available for your platform.
This certainly wouldn't be appropriate everywhere. But, consider the Mississipi River Delta. It's dumping massive amounts of fresh water into salt water anyhow.
It hardly seems like diverting a small percentage of the fresh water being dumped into the ocean by nature, extracting power from it as it gets salty, then dumping the brackish water from the power plant into the ocean, in any reasonable way reduces the fresh water supply, does it?
Or, do you propose that we completely dam up the Mississippi so we don't "use up" all our fresh water?
I think what's new isn't the basic science, but the R&D to try to scale this up to commercial size power plants?
Still, I can't help but think that at some point, this is going to create contention somewhere between some peoples' need for fresh water, and other peoples' need for electricity.
I guess the idea is that places like the Mississippi Delta where a lot of fresh water is just dumping into the ocean (and being "wasted") *anyhow*, it wouldn't hurt to put such a power plant.
There was a Userfriendly.org strip years ago which pretty much summarizes my experience with voice recognition software for the past 15 years. . .
I can't find the link to the comic anymore, but basically, one of the guys in the office had been trying to use voice recog software. Some of his coworkers come to his office. He's not there, but on the screen, they wonder about the mysterious message, "Cod Am Pizza Ship".
Maybe I'm wrong, but it's always been my understanding that Sovereign nations, basically, start in a default state of being able to do anything they want to, until such time as they agree to treaties wherein they agree NOT to do things.
Of course, the reason for signing such treaties is to not face the consequence of other nations doing "anything they want to", because that just leads to war, which few people want. Sometimes the reason for signing the treaty is the promise of a carrot instead of a stick (e.g. the Nuclear Non-Prolif. Treaty, where nations agree to give up their Sovereign Right to pursue development of nuclear weapons, in exchange for a) a hopefully safer world, and b) certain economic and technology benefits granted to them by the Nuclear Powers and other signatories, including assistance in developing peaceful civilian nuclear power programs).
All that is to say this: are there any treaties which specifically take *away* the USA's sovereign right to hunt down and kill terrorists like Bin Laden? You say that what the USA did is illegal by International Law. I'm no lawyer, but I'd sure be more than happy to know what international law actually makes what the USA did, illegal?
"You talk about armed soldiers but there was no declaration of war so he couldn't be considered a soldier by the Geneva Conventions."
Oh please, what do you call a bunch of people with weapons, trained and all working together, using those weapons to try to kill other people?
I don't care that they're not part of any government. Who would congress declare war on? War is declared on nation-states. Not on unaffiliated terrorist 'armies'.
A better analogy would be an armed gang, with a fortified compound, Waco-style, who encourage others to start allied gangs, who go around murdering people. The only way to get into the compound is for a SWAT-style assault team to go in, armed and firing, to take the guy out.
I have no problem if the gang leader gets killed in his illegal armed compound when he and all his people are shooting at the police, throwing grenades, molotov cocktails, firing RPGs at the police choppers, etc.
When you're that violent and that much of a threat, you give up due process. You've become an enemy army. If Bin Laden had *turned himself in* like the guy in your analogy, then yeah, I'd say let's try him. But he didn't.
When fighting a war against an army, you don't have the possibility of capturing everyone and trying them. The Constitution has NEVER required enemy soldiers/combatants to be given a trial. In some cases, we have been *able* to capture and try some war criminals, like after World War 2, but I'm sure even in that case, not every Nazi general, colonel, or other high ranking officer was able to be captured and tried. Some of them died in combat.
Osama bin Laden died in combat. He made his choices. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
I still don't see why a trial is necessary when the guy has admitted guilt, repeatedly. There's no "reasonable doubt" that Al Qaida and bin Laden where behind the attacks against the World Trade Center.
Due process is about determining guilt when a party claims innocence. Bin Laden never claimed innocence, so due process has not been violated, near as I see.
I get the impression that Pakistan is a "House Divided." That is to say, that there are those within the government and military who are allied with and sympathetic to rule of democratic law, and the U.S. as a strategic, democratic ally.
Then, there are those who are sympathetic to Islamic fundamentalism, Sharia law, and Al Qaida.
My point in bringing this up is that, in the case of Pakistan, I think that you are probably right that there are collaborators who have helped Al Qaida, within the Pakistani government. I think there were also those in the Pakistani government and military who helped us to make this operation possible.
I think that we have an opportunity in Pakistan to help move the government more towards the advocates of democracy and freedom, without going to war and trying to remove the government.
There's two stories floating around because the world is full of idiots who get things wrong. Nothing suspicious about that.
As for the people outside the white house with flags, if you live in the D.C. area, you can be to the whitehouse within 1/2 hour or an hour if you want. Do you realize how many people live in D.C. and the surrounding 'burbs?
According to Wikipedia, "The Washington Metropolitan Area, of which the District is a part, has a population of nearly 5.6 million".
In any large city, even during hours when "most" of the population is asleep, there will be some percentage (I would guess 5 to 10%) of people who are not asleep for one reason or another.
In light of those things, it's completely not surprising that a crowd could quickly go to the Whitehouse for a celebration/demonstration. You absolutely do NOT need a conspiracy to explain that.
Not to award prizes to someone *before* they've actually done anything? They gave the Peace Prize to him based on what they thought he *would* do, not based on anything he'd actually *done*.
That defies all reason.
That said, if it's true, I'm glad that justice has been done and a mass murderer is dead. I can't hold that against Obama.
If he's only "effectively" dead - e.g. in a secret cell deep underground, being interrogated for intelligence.
He's *probably* dead. They are probably telling the truth. But I wouldn't be too upset if they were lying this once, and had actually captured him, and simply didn't want the world to *know* they captured him.
Yeah. Blame us for helping Afghanistan fend off the Soviets. That was terrible of us. Just terrible. Obviously we're just getting our "just desserts".
You can only do, in any situation, what would reasonably seem the right thing at that time. You can never, ever know the entire outcome of every action you take. The thing you can try to decide is, "Is this the RIGHT" thing to do?
Help Afghanistan fight off the Soviets was the right thing to do, just as helping the Libyans fight off Qaddafi is the right thing to do. But, it's entirely possible that in helping the Libyans, that some terrorist will rise from their ranks in the future and attack America. We shouldn't let that stop us from doing the right thing.
Apparently you and the other anonymous poster both missed my point. Guess I wasn't explicit enough about it. So, here, I'll put it down plain as can be: If you can increase efficiency *more* than you also increase costs, the price/Watt comes down because you need fewer solar panels.
So, you could cover maybe 1/3 or 1/2 of your roof with solar panels, get the power you need, and not have to spend money on additional solar panels for the other half (although, if you get a 'feed-in tarrif; that is, you get payed for any net power you put out to the local utility grid, you might still choose to cover the whole roof to get more money from the feed-in tarrif, which is good too).
See the connection between efficiency and price per watt? Of course, that does only hold true, as I said, if the more efficient panels aren't significantly more expensive than the less efficient ones.
Here I thought Slashdot was news for NERDS, so I didn't have to spell EVERYTHING out.
I just chose the number as an easy example for the math. People can then scale it to their personal situation. You could also think of it as getting an extra.8kW for every kW you currently get (so if your roof gives you 3kW, you get an extra 2.4kW, etc).
Yeah, and the real world results have been 9% capacity factors. 9%. That's not efficiency. For those unfamiliar with the term, capacity factor is the ratio of the actual power output divided by the maximum theoretical output of a power source if it operated 100% of the time at full power during the comparison period (that is, you can talk about a capacity factor for a day, or a week, or a year, or a decade, whatever time period you wish to compare).
So, we're already talking about a power source which is inefficient to begin with, and then they are only getting 9% of the power output. In places like the U.S. Southwest, North Africa, or the middle east, you can get somewhere around 30-35% capacity factors. That's ok. That's about the best you can get though, because the Sun doesn't shine for at least 12 hours a day, and during the other 12 hours, it's only shining at maximum intensity for about 6 hours, and shining at reduced intensity the other 6 hours (morning/evening).
Still, in those places, with enough solar cells, and enough storage, you could theoretically get all the power you need to run a nation from solar. It'd be expensive, but not so terribly expensive the idea is completely without merit.
In Germany, the real power output over time is so pathetic, and so expensive, it truly makes no sense to do solar power in Germany. Germany hasn't accepted that reality yet, but give it a few more years, and reality will force them to that conclusion.
The Saud's are running out oil anyhow. They need to start planning for how *they* will power their nation when the oil production drops to 50% of what it used to be.
There's a reason that the UAE is planning a $20Bn nuclear plant. Saudi Arabia is part of a coalition of States working with UAE on that plant, and I believe the idea is that they'll build a large plant in UAE, then Saudi Arabia and other nearby nations can buy power from that plant, sent via transmission lines.
However, while solar isn't a great option in places like Germany or the Northern and Eastern United States, it could provide lots of power in places like the Arabian Peninsula, or the U.S. Southwest.
Technology is definitely making progress towards better solar cells. The big problems now are storage and reducing transmission losses, so you can store enough surplus power during the day for use at night and cloudy days (which, for the Arabian peninsula, isn't going to be many days a year, at least), and don't lose too much power during transmission.
The problem with price per Watt, while that's certainly important, is that, say for example with current Tech, covering every square inch of your roof with solar panels gives you, let's say 1kW, that's the maximum you can get out of the area of your roof. You'd need more area to get more power.
Now, increase the efficiency by 80%, and you get 1.8kW out of that same area. Of course, if the price increases more than 80%, then you are coming out behind, because even though you get more power, it costs more.
The hope would be that you get 80% more power at something less than 50% higher cost.
It's a little more complex than that. For areas that the Constitution grants authority to the Federal Government, Federal law has *always* (well, at least as long as the Constitution has been ratified) been the case that Federal law pre-empts State law.
However, the argument that Federal laws regulating drug related activities that occur entirely within a State's borders somehow fall under the constitutional authority of the federal government seems rather strange to me.
There's the concept, embodied in the Constitution, that any powers not explicitly granted to Congress by the Constitution are reserved to the States. Seems to many of us that the Federal government has, in many areas, overstepped the bounds of it's constitutional authority.
I think by "cloud" solution, the GP is intending something which is not owned and controlled by a single entity, but more of a massive peer-to-peer network. Something where your copies of your data are maintained all over the place, and where only small 'fragments' of your data are on any one computer.
Add encryption so that you are the only one who can re-assemble and decrypt those fragments, and the security of the data would be somewhat good (although, as you rightly point out, if the Feds really want your key, they can probably get it, either through keyloggers, hidden cameras, other high tech means, or. . . more conventional means).
"And it will cost something like 10..100x time that to deconstruct it as the end of its lifetime."
Oh, really? Citation needed.
We don't need to store nuclear waste for 'long-term'. It's idiotic that we are even talking about long term storage. The solution to nuclear waste is to burn off the long-lived elements in either a fast-breeder reactor, or a Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor. Once you do that, the final 'waste' only needs to be stored for 200 years, then it's basically inert soil which can be buried anywhere. We really need to move forward on one or both of those technologies, ASAP.
Also, if you use fast breeder (like the Integral Fast Reactor - IFR) or thorium reactors, we have enough fuel to last us for about 100,000 years. It's been estimated that we could power the U.S. for about 5000 years just by burning our current inventory of 'nuclear waste' in IFR-style reactors.
However, you're right about Uranium supplies in as much as our current 'once through' reactors will near the end of their ability to extract power from known Uranium supplies within about a century, I believe. But, like I said, you burn the waste from our current reactors in an Integral Fast Reactor, and we have many thousands of years of fuel supply.
The security and other operations costs are very small for nuclear, compared to the energy output/revenues from the reactors.
At least in the U.S., utility companies which operate nuclear reactors are required to pay money for nuclear waste disposal AND decommissioning costs, into funds dedicated for those purposes, for each kWh sold. Even with those additional costs, the per kWh price of nuclear electricity is competitive with coal and gas.
It's also possible for plants to make some relatively inexpensive (compared to the amount of revenues expected to be generated) upgrades and repairs/replacements, to keep them safe, and be able to renew their licenses by 20 years. Those additional 20 years make nuclear dramatically more economical, because the initial construction costs, AND the decommissioning costs have been payed for after the first 20 or 30 years.
So, nuclear plants which have earned a licenses extension can typically sell electricity during that last 20 year extension at a price significantly *below* coal/gas prices (and make great profits for the owners even at those low prices).
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, see, the cost of running the network was already factored into the $300 + $60 * X. It was never a "free" service - it was just cheaper than Microsoft which charged you $300 + $60 * X + another $50/year * Y years.
I also feel confident in saying that even if Sony had charged, it wouldn't have changed the outcome, other than you'd have payed even more money for Sony to lose your data to the crackers.
Chrome OS isn't Linux in the usual sense. It's an extremely, extremely stripped down version of Linux with virtually all of the normal userspace tools removed. You choose to use that, and you get stuck with that choice. Please don't ever again complain about something not being available for Linux because it's not on Chrome OS or I will find your car and put dead fish in the trunk. *grin*
That said, I wouldn't be too terribly surprised if someone could come up with an html+javascript implementation of Keepass. It's open source and the file format and algorithms are documented.
In any case, for just about every remotely common platform which allows real apps to be installed, there's an implementation of KeePass. If you use Chrome OS, you should be used to not having anything available for your platform.
This certainly wouldn't be appropriate everywhere. But, consider the Mississipi River Delta. It's dumping massive amounts of fresh water into salt water anyhow.
It hardly seems like diverting a small percentage of the fresh water being dumped into the ocean by nature, extracting power from it as it gets salty, then dumping the brackish water from the power plant into the ocean, in any reasonable way reduces the fresh water supply, does it?
Or, do you propose that we completely dam up the Mississippi so we don't "use up" all our fresh water?
I think what's new isn't the basic science, but the R&D to try to scale this up to commercial size power plants?
Still, I can't help but think that at some point, this is going to create contention somewhere between some peoples' need for fresh water, and other peoples' need for electricity.
I guess the idea is that places like the Mississippi Delta where a lot of fresh water is just dumping into the ocean (and being "wasted") *anyhow*, it wouldn't hurt to put such a power plant.
The Strip.
There was a Userfriendly.org strip years ago which pretty much summarizes my experience with voice recognition software for the past 15 years. . .
I can't find the link to the comic anymore, but basically, one of the guys in the office had been trying to use voice recog software. Some of his coworkers come to his office. He's not there, but on the screen, they wonder about the mysterious message, "Cod Am Pizza Ship".
Maybe I'm wrong, but it's always been my understanding that Sovereign nations, basically, start in a default state of being able to do anything they want to, until such time as they agree to treaties wherein they agree NOT to do things.
Of course, the reason for signing such treaties is to not face the consequence of other nations doing "anything they want to", because that just leads to war, which few people want. Sometimes the reason for signing the treaty is the promise of a carrot instead of a stick (e.g. the Nuclear Non-Prolif. Treaty, where nations agree to give up their Sovereign Right to pursue development of nuclear weapons, in exchange for a) a hopefully safer world, and b) certain economic and technology benefits granted to them by the Nuclear Powers and other signatories, including assistance in developing peaceful civilian nuclear power programs).
All that is to say this: are there any treaties which specifically take *away* the USA's sovereign right to hunt down and kill terrorists like Bin Laden? You say that what the USA did is illegal by International Law. I'm no lawyer, but I'd sure be more than happy to know what international law actually makes what the USA did, illegal?
"You talk about armed soldiers but there was no declaration of war so he couldn't be considered a soldier by the Geneva Conventions."
Oh please, what do you call a bunch of people with weapons, trained and all working together, using those weapons to try to kill other people?
I don't care that they're not part of any government. Who would congress declare war on? War is declared on nation-states. Not on unaffiliated terrorist 'armies'.
A better analogy would be an armed gang, with a fortified compound, Waco-style, who encourage others to start allied gangs, who go around murdering people. The only way to get into the compound is for a SWAT-style assault team to go in, armed and firing, to take the guy out.
I have no problem if the gang leader gets killed in his illegal armed compound when he and all his people are shooting at the police, throwing grenades, molotov cocktails, firing RPGs at the police choppers, etc.
When you're that violent and that much of a threat, you give up due process. You've become an enemy army. If Bin Laden had *turned himself in* like the guy in your analogy, then yeah, I'd say let's try him. But he didn't.
When fighting a war against an army, you don't have the possibility of capturing everyone and trying them. The Constitution has NEVER required enemy soldiers/combatants to be given a trial. In some cases, we have been *able* to capture and try some war criminals, like after World War 2, but I'm sure even in that case, not every Nazi general, colonel, or other high ranking officer was able to be captured and tried. Some of them died in combat.
Osama bin Laden died in combat. He made his choices. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
I still don't see why a trial is necessary when the guy has admitted guilt, repeatedly. There's no "reasonable doubt" that Al Qaida and bin Laden where behind the attacks against the World Trade Center.
Due process is about determining guilt when a party claims innocence. Bin Laden never claimed innocence, so due process has not been violated, near as I see.
I get the impression that Pakistan is a "House Divided." That is to say, that there are those within the government and military who are allied with and sympathetic to rule of democratic law, and the U.S. as a strategic, democratic ally.
Then, there are those who are sympathetic to Islamic fundamentalism, Sharia law, and Al Qaida.
My point in bringing this up is that, in the case of Pakistan, I think that you are probably right that there are collaborators who have helped Al Qaida, within the Pakistani government. I think there were also those in the Pakistani government and military who helped us to make this operation possible.
I think that we have an opportunity in Pakistan to help move the government more towards the advocates of democracy and freedom, without going to war and trying to remove the government.
There's two stories floating around because the world is full of idiots who get things wrong. Nothing suspicious about that.
As for the people outside the white house with flags, if you live in the D.C. area, you can be to the whitehouse within 1/2 hour or an hour if you want. Do you realize how many people live in D.C. and the surrounding 'burbs?
According to Wikipedia, "The Washington Metropolitan Area, of which the District is a part, has a population of nearly 5.6 million".
In any large city, even during hours when "most" of the population is asleep, there will be some percentage (I would guess 5 to 10%) of people who are not asleep for one reason or another.
In light of those things, it's completely not surprising that a crowd could quickly go to the Whitehouse for a celebration/demonstration. You absolutely do NOT need a conspiracy to explain that.
Not to award prizes to someone *before* they've actually done anything? They gave the Peace Prize to him based on what they thought he *would* do, not based on anything he'd actually *done*.
That defies all reason.
That said, if it's true, I'm glad that justice has been done and a mass murderer is dead. I can't hold that against Obama.
If he's only "effectively" dead - e.g. in a secret cell deep underground, being interrogated for intelligence.
He's *probably* dead. They are probably telling the truth. But I wouldn't be too upset if they were lying this once, and had actually captured him, and simply didn't want the world to *know* they captured him.
Yeah. Blame us for helping Afghanistan fend off the Soviets. That was terrible of us. Just terrible. Obviously we're just getting our "just desserts".
You can only do, in any situation, what would reasonably seem the right thing at that time. You can never, ever know the entire outcome of every action you take. The thing you can try to decide is, "Is this the RIGHT" thing to do?
Help Afghanistan fight off the Soviets was the right thing to do, just as helping the Libyans fight off Qaddafi is the right thing to do. But, it's entirely possible that in helping the Libyans, that some terrorist will rise from their ranks in the future and attack America. We shouldn't let that stop us from doing the right thing.
The guy took credit for the Sept 11 attacks. For 9 years. That sounds like a guilty plea to me. You don't get a trial if you plead guilty.
Apparently you and the other anonymous poster both missed my point. Guess I wasn't explicit enough about it. So, here, I'll put it down plain as can be: If you can increase efficiency *more* than you also increase costs, the price/Watt comes down because you need fewer solar panels.
So, you could cover maybe 1/3 or 1/2 of your roof with solar panels, get the power you need, and not have to spend money on additional solar panels for the other half (although, if you get a 'feed-in tarrif; that is, you get payed for any net power you put out to the local utility grid, you might still choose to cover the whole roof to get more money from the feed-in tarrif, which is good too).
See the connection between efficiency and price per watt? Of course, that does only hold true, as I said, if the more efficient panels aren't significantly more expensive than the less efficient ones.
Here I thought Slashdot was news for NERDS, so I didn't have to spell EVERYTHING out.
I just chose the number as an easy example for the math. People can then scale it to their personal situation. You could also think of it as getting an extra .8kW for every kW you currently get (so if your roof gives you 3kW, you get an extra 2.4kW, etc).
Yeah, and the real world results have been 9% capacity factors. 9%. That's not efficiency. For those unfamiliar with the term, capacity factor is the ratio of the actual power output divided by the maximum theoretical output of a power source if it operated 100% of the time at full power during the comparison period (that is, you can talk about a capacity factor for a day, or a week, or a year, or a decade, whatever time period you wish to compare).
So, we're already talking about a power source which is inefficient to begin with, and then they are only getting 9% of the power output. In places like the U.S. Southwest, North Africa, or the middle east, you can get somewhere around 30-35% capacity factors. That's ok. That's about the best you can get though, because the Sun doesn't shine for at least 12 hours a day, and during the other 12 hours, it's only shining at maximum intensity for about 6 hours, and shining at reduced intensity the other 6 hours (morning/evening).
Still, in those places, with enough solar cells, and enough storage, you could theoretically get all the power you need to run a nation from solar. It'd be expensive, but not so terribly expensive the idea is completely without merit.
In Germany, the real power output over time is so pathetic, and so expensive, it truly makes no sense to do solar power in Germany. Germany hasn't accepted that reality yet, but give it a few more years, and reality will force them to that conclusion.
The Saud's are running out oil anyhow. They need to start planning for how *they* will power their nation when the oil production drops to 50% of what it used to be.
There's a reason that the UAE is planning a $20Bn nuclear plant. Saudi Arabia is part of a coalition of States working with UAE on that plant, and I believe the idea is that they'll build a large plant in UAE, then Saudi Arabia and other nearby nations can buy power from that plant, sent via transmission lines.
However, while solar isn't a great option in places like Germany or the Northern and Eastern United States, it could provide lots of power in places like the Arabian Peninsula, or the U.S. Southwest.
Technology is definitely making progress towards better solar cells. The big problems now are storage and reducing transmission losses, so you can store enough surplus power during the day for use at night and cloudy days (which, for the Arabian peninsula, isn't going to be many days a year, at least), and don't lose too much power during transmission.
The problem with price per Watt, while that's certainly important, is that, say for example with current Tech, covering every square inch of your roof with solar panels gives you, let's say 1kW, that's the maximum you can get out of the area of your roof. You'd need more area to get more power.
Now, increase the efficiency by 80%, and you get 1.8kW out of that same area. Of course, if the price increases more than 80%, then you are coming out behind, because even though you get more power, it costs more.
The hope would be that you get 80% more power at something less than 50% higher cost.
It's a little more complex than that. For areas that the Constitution grants authority to the Federal Government, Federal law has *always* (well, at least as long as the Constitution has been ratified) been the case that Federal law pre-empts State law.
However, the argument that Federal laws regulating drug related activities that occur entirely within a State's borders somehow fall under the constitutional authority of the federal government seems rather strange to me.
There's the concept, embodied in the Constitution, that any powers not explicitly granted to Congress by the Constitution are reserved to the States. Seems to many of us that the Federal government has, in many areas, overstepped the bounds of it's constitutional authority.
I think by "cloud" solution, the GP is intending something which is not owned and controlled by a single entity, but more of a massive peer-to-peer network. Something where your copies of your data are maintained all over the place, and where only small 'fragments' of your data are on any one computer.
Add encryption so that you are the only one who can re-assemble and decrypt those fragments, and the security of the data would be somewhat good (although, as you rightly point out, if the Feds really want your key, they can probably get it, either through keyloggers, hidden cameras, other high tech means, or. . . more conventional means).
"And it will cost something like 10..100x time that to deconstruct it as the end of its lifetime."
Oh, really? Citation needed.
We don't need to store nuclear waste for 'long-term'. It's idiotic that we are even talking about long term storage. The solution to nuclear waste is to burn off the long-lived elements in either a fast-breeder reactor, or a Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor. Once you do that, the final 'waste' only needs to be stored for 200 years, then it's basically inert soil which can be buried anywhere. We really need to move forward on one or both of those technologies, ASAP.
Also, if you use fast breeder (like the Integral Fast Reactor - IFR) or thorium reactors, we have enough fuel to last us for about 100,000 years. It's been estimated that we could power the U.S. for about 5000 years just by burning our current inventory of 'nuclear waste' in IFR-style reactors.
However, you're right about Uranium supplies in as much as our current 'once through' reactors will near the end of their ability to extract power from known Uranium supplies within about a century, I believe. But, like I said, you burn the waste from our current reactors in an Integral Fast Reactor, and we have many thousands of years of fuel supply.
The security and other operations costs are very small for nuclear, compared to the energy output/revenues from the reactors.
At least in the U.S., utility companies which operate nuclear reactors are required to pay money for nuclear waste disposal AND decommissioning costs, into funds dedicated for those purposes, for each kWh sold. Even with those additional costs, the per kWh price of nuclear electricity is competitive with coal and gas.
It's also possible for plants to make some relatively inexpensive (compared to the amount of revenues expected to be generated) upgrades and repairs/replacements, to keep them safe, and be able to renew their licenses by 20 years. Those additional 20 years make nuclear dramatically more economical, because the initial construction costs, AND the decommissioning costs have been payed for after the first 20 or 30 years.
So, nuclear plants which have earned a licenses extension can typically sell electricity during that last 20 year extension at a price significantly *below* coal/gas prices (and make great profits for the owners even at those low prices).