I remember meeting Karlheinz Brandenburg (Picture here - he's second from the right). Those guys over at Fraunhofer IIS really did something good.
He was the hard core engineer type; complete with powerful glasses, and greasy hair. He seemed tired of all the politicking. He was probably frustrated that so many people were using mp3 and Fraunhofer wasn't seeing a dime. Maybe he was frustrated by lack of credit; I'm not sure. That genie was out of the bottle, and it wasn't going back in.
Anyway, a younger, less tactful member of our group, who felt strongly about non-proprietary codecs was talking with Mr. Brandenburg, and, well - the guy just went ballistic. I remember the words "vy don't you start a company, and ve'll see how you do!" shouted loudly and with a good bit of spittle. Hee hee. I'll never forget that look. That young buck was like a deer in the headlights. I was really surprised that someone with that kind of fame (well, ok, nobody knows who this guy is. But co-inventor of mp3 gets you major geek points in my book) would lose his cool like that. Poor guy must've been under pressure.
The look on my colleague's face as he staggered back over to us was worth it, though.
The Honorable Tripmaster has neglected an few important matters in his suggestion of the second part - namely, that only *naughty* (former) Jedi force-choke people, and that the force-choke ability *may* be distance dependant. I move that we nominate a panel to investigate my second postulation. Hrrmph.
Unfortunately, Greenpeace's position on this one shows ignorance.
Now, would it be good if the 4.5 billion euros were used for some other purpose, say saving starving children, or building wind generators? Quite possibly. Will the sponsors of this project give 4.5 billion euros to starving children in Africa? I'll leave that for you to answer.
People are greedy for (electric) power. Until we have a fundamental culture shift, or the population growth levels off (projection: 70 years), world power consumption WILL grow, period. I'm not even including the fact that power consumption per-capita is going to go up.
So, in answer to greenpeace, yes, I wish that humans had their priorities straight, too, and yes, this power plant will not make an immediate dent at a measley rate of 500MW (France alone consumes 500 billion kWh. Wind farms would give us a more immediate bonus. I would like to see more windfarms, too, but in the long run, I think that fusion will give us a better energy output per square kilometer used. We need to do it eventually, and I'd rather we start now. Hopefully some political genius could use the existance of fusion power to get countries to lower their stockpiles of nukes (fission-based). Well, I can dream, anyway.
The good part is, if this works, the efficiency scales with size. Also, if there is an accident, the reaction will burn itself out, rather than polluting the surrounding area for years to come, like a fission meltdown would.
Of course, you'd want to be far away if a leak happened, in a remote control centre.
Look, the guys at Forbes just wanted to spread a little controversy. Even though De Raadt feels that way about a lot of things, the Forbes people thought it would be fun to see an open-source pseudo-hippy (their view) rant against something popular on "their" (our) side of the fence (Linux/Open src).
I wouldn't be suprised if Bill Gates and Forbes' CEO are in a room somewhere, giggling. I almost wouldn't blame 'em.
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I remember meeting Karlheinz Brandenburg (Picture here - he's second from the right). Those guys over at Fraunhofer IIS really did something good.
He was the hard core engineer type; complete with powerful glasses, and greasy hair. He seemed tired of all the politicking. He was probably frustrated that so many people were using mp3 and Fraunhofer wasn't seeing a dime. Maybe he was frustrated by lack of credit; I'm not sure. That genie was out of the bottle, and it wasn't going back in.
Anyway, a younger, less tactful member of our group, who felt strongly about non-proprietary codecs was talking with Mr. Brandenburg, and, well - the guy just went ballistic. I remember the words "vy don't you start a company, and ve'll see how you do!" shouted loudly and with a good bit of spittle. Hee hee. I'll never forget that look. That young buck was like a deer in the headlights. I was really surprised that someone with that kind of fame (well, ok, nobody knows who this guy is. But co-inventor of mp3 gets you major geek points in my book) would lose his cool like that. Poor guy must've been under pressure.
The look on my colleague's face as he staggered back over to us was worth it, though.
The Honorable Tripmaster has neglected an few important matters in his suggestion of the second part - namely, that only *naughty* (former) Jedi force-choke people, and that the force-choke ability *may* be distance dependant. I move that we nominate a panel to investigate my second postulation. Hrrmph.
Unfortunately, Greenpeace's position on this one shows ignorance.
Now, would it be good if the 4.5 billion euros were used for some other purpose, say saving starving children, or building wind generators? Quite possibly. Will the sponsors of this project give 4.5 billion euros to starving children in Africa? I'll leave that for you to answer.
People are greedy for (electric) power. Until we have a fundamental culture shift, or the population growth levels off (projection: 70 years), world power consumption WILL grow, period. I'm not even including the fact that power consumption per-capita is going to go up.
So, in answer to greenpeace, yes, I wish that humans had their priorities straight, too, and yes, this power plant will not make an immediate dent at a measley rate of 500MW (France alone consumes 500 billion kWh. Wind farms would give us a more immediate bonus. I would like to see more windfarms, too, but in the long run, I think that fusion will give us a better energy output per square kilometer used. We need to do it eventually, and I'd rather we start now. Hopefully some political genius could use the existance of fusion power to get countries to lower their stockpiles of nukes (fission-based). Well, I can dream, anyway.
Of course, you'd want to be far away if a leak happened, in a remote control centre.
I wouldn't be suprised if Bill Gates and Forbes' CEO are in a room somewhere, giggling. I almost wouldn't blame 'em.