Seems to me it will be better to overcome monetary expensiveness than an inherent lack of safety.
Trouble is, nobody gives a hot damn about the safety, all anyone can focus on is the monetary aspect. If a company can produce something that's either safe OR profitable, but can't be both, you can bet a week's pay that profitable will win out. And in this case, that could be the end of us...
I think you have an interesting argument about public vs private nuclear funding.
However, regarding "nuclear power can be clean, safe, and efficient if handled and managed properly... none of these things will happen in the USA," and that "safety costs money" and "waste disposal costs money" -- I would argue that the relative strictness and richness of the USA would enable a scenario for safe nuclear power before poorer countries, which are currently scrapping it together and currently more nuclear plants. And still no one knows how to dispose of the waste, which presents safety problems, and reprocessing the waste and nuke plants in general have ties to weapons which will always make everyone nervous.
In any case, solar currently fulfills all but economical of your list: "proven, scalable, clean, economical," safe, while nuclear fulfills all but safe and all that comes with safe (social/political will). Seems to me it will be better to overcome monetary expensiveness than an inherent lack of safety.
There are other forms of power generation than nuclear, but at the moment it is the only proven, scalable, clean, and economical alternative I noticed you didn't say safe...
Just to add some information to clarify what TFA is going on about,
1. In general the oxide-ion conducting material is known as YSZ (yttria-stabilized zirconia) or 8YSZ (specifying 8% yttria). So it is a ceramic of both yttrium oxide and zirconium oxide with a certain crystal structure that indeed by oxide ion holes conducts O(2-) ions at high temperatures (around 700 to 1000 deg C).
2. What the "invention" is discussing is actually a proton (H+) ion conductor made from the same materials in a different way and not needing to be at the temperature to successfully become an ionic conductive. There are other ceramic materials people have been investigating for proton conductivity and these guys claim that their's has some advantages. Here's a link to the paper from Applied Physics Letters last year - unfortunately you must have an account there to view the full-text; most universities should.
On the beach at -30.68 latitude 114.26 longitude, upon viewing the more than 8 meter (26 ft) long squid, a 4 year 85 day 522 minute old child looked up to see a colorful butterfly with almost a 13-cm (5-in) wingspan traveling at an average 2.32 cm/s (0.91 in/s) at an incline exceeding 23. At just after 11:20 AM, the child asked his nearly 30 year old mother how many sea creatures grew to almost 8 meters (26 ft) in length and 250 kg (550 lb) when stretched out on a beach with their drying carcass receiving as much as 1142 Watts per square meter of peak solar radiation with the sun just shy of 1/20 radians from normal, to which she replied, I'm sure there are more than 230 such species -- I've seen mammals measuring more than 25 meters (82 ft) in length and fish nearly 12 meters (39 ft) long -- which are washing up at at rate exceeding 34 creatures per day (more than 12000 per year).
Please note that those papers are not by the original group responsible for the concept. Klaus Lackner, as credited in the slashdot summary and the GRT information, and all news stories discussing the Branson Prize, wrote such articles about air-capture of carbon dioxide as this and this, and others beforehand.
If we could achieve these meager results, we would worry about energy no more, since converting water into hydrogen and oxygen at even 10% efficiency using sunlight could be converted into enough electrical energy to supply the world's demand.
The hydrogen and oxygen could be converted into enough electrical energy to supply the world's demand? Why is this better than just using the electrical energy directly from a photovoltaic panel, which is already greater than 10% in conversion?
Is what you describe not possible now with a photovoltaic cell coupled with a water electrolyzer? PV at 15% efficient x electrolyzer at 66% efficient (both not top of the line high-efficiency devices, respectively) = 10%. What you describe would make hydrogen at 10%, and then to convert that back to useable electricity in a hydrogen fuel cell at 66% efficiency (using that of the pretty-good but not great electrolyzer) and you're at 6.6%.
"Where do we get the ethanol? There's plenty of arable land left for now - so much so that certain governments pay their farmers NOT to plant crops."
DO NOT mod parent up. (1) Converting ethanol to other fuels solves what? (2) Plenty of arable land left "for now". It has been estimated that to meet US fuel demands using corn ethanol, we would need 150% of the current farm cropland, or if placed alongside our current entire farmland, which takes up 40% of the U.S. land area (see U.S. Agricultural Census), we would need to have 70% of the total US land area used for food and biofuels. This is obviously impossible, and you may say, well we can use other more energy-efficient crops. This is fine, and still likely impossible to meet the land area requirements (the best crop yields under intensive agricultural methods are still less than 5% solar conversion to plant matter, followed by losses in converting that matter to fuels), but the incredible use of fertilizers and pesticides is not desirable and as there comes more of an ecomonic incentive for crop-derived ethanol the farmers switch their food-farms to fuel-farms creating a change in the supply of certain foods, linking food and fuel prices. The farmers switch back again to food production when the incentive is less.
Let us not become dependent on farming to create our fuels. It makes no sense from an efficiency perspective, health perspective, or economic perspective. It is not sustainable. I can make you ethanol without using crops, industrially from the same reactants that feed crops.
"That makes no sense. The problem with hydrogen as an energy carrier is that you have to first put the energy into it to separate it from H2O. By creating energy from CO2 and H2O suffers from the same problem."
It is very unfortunate that this is marked "insightful" and brought to the front page for all to read. Off the top of your head, this may seem like the answer. However, another way to think about it is, do we spend possibly more energy up-front at the industrial fuel-production side (in the case of CO2+H2O->HC's+O2) or more energy in the transport (in the case of H2 stored in highly compressed gaseous form, liquified kept extremely cool, absorbed in metal hydrides [no, not adsorbed], build a new infrastructure with high-pressure hydrogen pumps, and basically continually fight against the instability of your fuel under ambient conditions). I would argue that the complexity is best kept up front in a relatively few units than in the distribution and consumer side. BR
"The only reason fossil fuels are efficient is that they already exist. Essentially, they are pre-charged batteries."
I agree. It is also worthwhile to think about why they are our fuels and why plants and photosynthesis work as they do. Much of the physical world and perhaps natural world goes energetically downhill in chemical reactions, forces, etc. In an overall plant cycle, evolution has resulted in their storing energy chemically with CO2 and H2O as reactants, C providing the ambient-temperature stability of the chemical matter formed as liquid or solid. Upfront the cost is higher than just electrolyzing water but for all of the remaining time thereafter they don't need to fight to keep ahold of the fuel they made.
From a response someone made to you: "Biologists and architects will get us over the hump, not physicists."
What an incredible strange thing to say... Why would one occupation help get us over the hump while another will specifically not?
Definitely. I've said for some time that the search for aliens should begin there; what lives in those depths is likely far more extraterrestrial than we may find in outer space. The BBC documentary "Blue Planet" episode "The Deep" begins to shed light - literally, and some of these creatures have never seen sunlight so I wonder about the effects of exposing them to lamp light.
"So while he may 'have a sense' of beat, tempo and melody, sit yourself down at fruity loops and mess around. You'll be pleasantly surprised that after a few hours, you have something that sound cool to you. After a few days, something that might sound cool to others."
Please show us your first few hours or few days of Fruity Loops work that I know you have prepared to back up your claim. Since we know from your use of 'quotes' etc that you are a more skilled musician that this fella, our anticipation and expectations are growing greater each passing hour now!
"taking sounds from different sources that shouldn't work in any coherent sense and making them come together musically."
This reminds me of IDM taken to the extreme and under short deadlines which I've been following - "Iron Chef of Music" contests. They sample from a 1- to 2-minute sound recording and manipulate it into IDM-style songs. Some don't seem to have much to do with the source, but some keep it partially intact so you can hear the process.. In either case, some really great music coming out of that contest. Sometimes I find relatively well-known IDM musicians "competing".
"Unfortunately (in my opinion), Britney Spears, 50 Cent, Snoop Dog, etc. are all considered artists in society right now. That doesn't matter though; Nobody is holding me captive and forcing me to listen to their product."
"The concentrator doesn't make the device more efficient at converting solar radiation into electrical power, it just concentrates the light so you don't have to use as large of a device."
Concentrating the sunlight does in fact make the device more efficient in conversion, as long as you keep the temperature (which decreases the efficiency during increase) in check, i.e. near ambient conditions. See the upper right graph on pg2 of this product data sheet from the company that this slashdot article is discussing for an old version of their cells here.
"First of all, improved efficiency reduces the investment cost, thus reducing the cost per watt (at least in a proper market economy, which the energy market unfortunately isnt)."
I'm sorry, but that definitely doesn't make any sense. You can have a $800 100W panel with 25% efficiency, or a $500 100W panel with 10% efficiency. The first is more efficient, smaller surface area, and costs more. The second has a larger surface area but costs less, due to let's say being made of a thin film of semiconductors and a cheap manufacturing process.
As an aside, the shadowing argument vs problems with alternatives is not convincing.. I'll be convinced when you or someone else explains at least partially the effects, rather than throwing it out as an idea (and waiting for Insightful points, which you expect because you convincingly called the last guy Not insightful or in fact, obvious, when he was right all along about "let's see $/W increase rather than efficiency increase.")
The mindshare they're worried about is that of the villagers receiving the computers, who are harmed by receiving them: "The people are harmed because these sorts of schemes are sopping up mind-share time of the people who might be doing something actually useful."
The villagers waste time setting up linux just right, keeping all their software updated, working on their wireless signal strength, reading message boards at "slash dot"...
While their current version says it shows somber imagery during a scowl and brighter imagery during a smile, there's of course no reason that can't be completely different. Further, the ability for something to change based on viewer-mood-recognition could in theory even enhance the thought-provoking nature of a piece of art. So it is not anti-art or anything by definition and the technology has some potential.
I'm not sure why the other post pointing to DSlinux is (0), but there is at least one ssh client for DSlinux - Dropbear. I haven't tried it yet. Of course you'd need a flash cart or (mini/micro/normal)-SD adapter such as the M3.
I know the cycle. Good point about the ratios. I don't think it will affect anything either, but it would be good to study in biospheres or even just model. However, we are sure that the increased atmospheric CO2 is affecting, so if there is not time/interest/money, perhaps it is best to act.
I agree: multiple sources, depending on the location. The nuclear methods and tidal are good options; the former having a lot of political baggage and waste disposal R&D needed, the latter being able to contribute only relatively insignificantly. Wind in large scale has unknown, possibly great impact on climate streams and comes indirectly from solar. Geothermal doesn't have an unexploited capacity large enough to contribute substantially either (except in Iceland?).
I do think PV can solve all needs, in time. One more benefit to tack onto it is its relative independence from geographic location. Sure, some areas receive more direct sunlight than others, but with panels performing well in diffuse light situations and a good storage system, it should suffice everywhere. The other renewables apart from nuclear are much more localized (actually, solar can even be installed far from water or pipelines).
In the near-term, integrating intermittent solar electricity into the grid provides few technical difficulties, even when considering much higher levels of solar power usage, shown by studies and field experience. Storage is key in the long-term and is being studied (but I agree, perhaps not enough). Of course we could always put together that worldwide electric grid if we could all get along:]
Off hand, all the solutions (CO2 sequestering,etc) that allow us to keep our oil/coal dependancies will probably come back to bite us. Far better to bite the bullet now, and switch to nukes(fission and fusion) and alternatives.
They will probably come back to bite? I am a big proponent of biting the bullet and switching to solar, but the time is not yet right, but in the meantime we may need to store CO2. I don't see how sequestering CO2 by converting silicate rock to carbonate rock could come back to bite us; they are entirely stable (unless the acidity of rain increases incredibly, in which case we have more serious problems than released CO2).
If you set up a 1,000 MW power plant, whether you're burning oil or cracking atoms (or smashing them together) to get that energy, that's a billion watts of power going into our ecosystem that wasn't there before. [...] If we started doing a lot of mass-to-energy conversion, we'd probably want to offset the energy that we're dumping into the biosphere from our power plants by decreasing the input from the sun a little. So basically, we figure out our energy production, and "dial down" the solar radiation by that amount.
We should just do a lot of energy-to-energy conversion, namely photovoltaic. Then we solve your problem by avoiding dumping, sort of 'regulate' the sun, we don't introduce excess heat -- in fact we can make use of input heat, and we solve the bigger problem being discussed.
The technology is currently satisfactory, as is evident by all of the new solar panels being installed and solar companies starting up, and new technologies will only bring the costs down further to be cost-effective without subsidizing. Simple solution using the energy being input to the planet! I study energy systems full time, so take this with a grain of salt:]
Do companies make money from their proprietary instant messengers? Is it just ad revenue? Every person I know either uses Gaim or Trillian or doesn't click on ads that show up in AOL IM. Perhaps it is just branding name attached. I am sure the competition is good somehow. Maybe it encourages innovation as each tries to outdo the other in features.
However, when will it be that instant messenging gets a standard protocol (or regains it, i.e. IRC)? When I want to email someone, I know their address and I can email them, I don't have to think about which program they are using to read/write their email. When I want to call someone on the phone, I dial their phone number to reach them anywhere in the world.
So, instant messenging has been around since IRC started. Now with Gaim you can treat IRC transparently as another IM client (not that you couldn't before, but now anyone can). So Gaim can symbollically merge them to make a standard protocol. The Gaim protocol, haha.
We have seen so many different messenging systems and they all work the same. The add-ons or upgrades can be good and important - text formatting, voice, video, images. I would like to see a system where you can login to instant messenging, and have all of those features that you want, and even a Nintendo DS can login and use Pictochat. It streams each data based on a standard signal.
Maybe it is just bound to happen and I don't have to worry about it, but it is frustrating to see other forms of communication standardized and not this. Actually it doesn't bother me in the least in day to day life, but then when you stop and think of a better alternative..
I guess no one can just do it for free (although IRC seems to run for free, maybe most servers are at universities). We pay for our email or have ads in our gmail. Hmm.. solution? Maybe google will have one.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you have an interesting argument about public vs private nuclear funding.
... none of these things will happen in the USA," and that "safety costs money" and "waste disposal costs money" -- I would argue that the relative strictness and richness of the USA would enable a scenario for safe nuclear power before poorer countries, which are currently scrapping it together and currently more nuclear plants. And still no one knows how to dispose of the waste, which presents safety problems, and reprocessing the waste and nuke plants in general have ties to weapons which will always make everyone nervous.
However, regarding "nuclear power can be clean, safe, and efficient if handled and managed properly
In any case, solar currently fulfills all but economical of your list: "proven, scalable, clean, economical," safe, while nuclear fulfills all but safe and all that comes with safe (social/political will). Seems to me it will be better to overcome monetary expensiveness than an inherent lack of safety.
Just to add some information to clarify what TFA is going on about,
1. In general the oxide-ion conducting material is known as YSZ (yttria-stabilized zirconia) or 8YSZ (specifying 8% yttria). So it is a ceramic of both yttrium oxide and zirconium oxide with a certain crystal structure that indeed by oxide ion holes conducts O(2-) ions at high temperatures (around 700 to 1000 deg C).
2. What the "invention" is discussing is actually a proton (H+) ion conductor made from the same materials in a different way and not needing to be at the temperature to successfully become an ionic conductive. There are other ceramic materials people have been investigating for proton conductivity and these guys claim that their's has some advantages. Here's a link to the paper from Applied Physics Letters last year - unfortunately you must have an account there to view the full-text; most universities should.
On the beach at -30.68 latitude 114.26 longitude, upon viewing the more than 8 meter (26 ft) long squid, a 4 year 85 day 522 minute old child looked up to see a colorful butterfly with almost a 13-cm (5-in) wingspan traveling at an average 2.32 cm/s (0.91 in/s) at an incline exceeding 23. At just after 11:20 AM, the child asked his nearly 30 year old mother how many sea creatures grew to almost 8 meters (26 ft) in length and 250 kg (550 lb) when stretched out on a beach with their drying carcass receiving as much as 1142 Watts per square meter of peak solar radiation with the sun just shy of 1/20 radians from normal, to which she replied, I'm sure there are more than 230 such species -- I've seen mammals measuring more than 25 meters (82 ft) in length and fish nearly 12 meters (39 ft) long -- which are washing up at at rate exceeding 34 creatures per day (more than 12000 per year).
Please note that those papers are not by the original group responsible for the concept. Klaus Lackner, as credited in the slashdot summary and the GRT information, and all news stories discussing the Branson Prize, wrote such articles about air-capture of carbon dioxide as this and this, and others beforehand.
The hydrogen and oxygen could be converted into enough electrical energy to supply the world's demand? Why is this better than just using the electrical energy directly from a photovoltaic panel, which is already greater than 10% in conversion?
Is what you describe not possible now with a photovoltaic cell coupled with a water electrolyzer? PV at 15% efficient x electrolyzer at 66% efficient (both not top of the line high-efficiency devices, respectively) = 10%. What you describe would make hydrogen at 10%, and then to convert that back to useable electricity in a hydrogen fuel cell at 66% efficiency (using that of the pretty-good but not great electrolyzer) and you're at 6.6%.
Please give evidence of a longer than 20 year lifespan for a PV panel.
"Solar pannels also contains a lot of dangerous materials (As, Ge, Ga...) and their production causes some nasty pollution."
I think you mean "Some solar panels contain a lot of dangerous..."
"Where do we get the ethanol? There's plenty of arable land left for now - so much so that certain governments pay their farmers NOT to plant crops."
DO NOT mod parent up. (1) Converting ethanol to other fuels solves what? (2) Plenty of arable land left "for now". It has been estimated that to meet US fuel demands using corn ethanol, we would need 150% of the current farm cropland, or if placed alongside our current entire farmland, which takes up 40% of the U.S. land area (see U.S. Agricultural Census), we would need to have 70% of the total US land area used for food and biofuels. This is obviously impossible, and you may say, well we can use other more energy-efficient crops. This is fine, and still likely impossible to meet the land area requirements (the best crop yields under intensive agricultural methods are still less than 5% solar conversion to plant matter, followed by losses in converting that matter to fuels), but the incredible use of fertilizers and pesticides is not desirable and as there comes more of an ecomonic incentive for crop-derived ethanol the farmers switch their food-farms to fuel-farms creating a change in the supply of certain foods, linking food and fuel prices. The farmers switch back again to food production when the incentive is less.
Let us not become dependent on farming to create our fuels. It makes no sense from an efficiency perspective, health perspective, or economic perspective. It is not sustainable. I can make you ethanol without using crops, industrially from the same reactants that feed crops.
"That makes no sense. The problem with hydrogen as an energy carrier is that you have to first put the energy into it to separate it from H2O. By creating energy from CO2 and H2O suffers from the same problem."
It is very unfortunate that this is marked "insightful" and brought to the front page for all to read. Off the top of your head, this may seem like the answer. However, another way to think about it is, do we spend possibly more energy up-front at the industrial fuel-production side (in the case of CO2+H2O->HC's+O2) or more energy in the transport (in the case of H2 stored in highly compressed gaseous form, liquified kept extremely cool, absorbed in metal hydrides [no, not adsorbed], build a new infrastructure with high-pressure hydrogen pumps, and basically continually fight against the instability of your fuel under ambient conditions). I would argue that the complexity is best kept up front in a relatively few units than in the distribution and consumer side.
BR "The only reason fossil fuels are efficient is that they already exist. Essentially, they are pre-charged batteries."
I agree. It is also worthwhile to think about why they are our fuels and why plants and photosynthesis work as they do. Much of the physical world and perhaps natural world goes energetically downhill in chemical reactions, forces, etc. In an overall plant cycle, evolution has resulted in their storing energy chemically with CO2 and H2O as reactants, C providing the ambient-temperature stability of the chemical matter formed as liquid or solid. Upfront the cost is higher than just electrolyzing water but for all of the remaining time thereafter they don't need to fight to keep ahold of the fuel they made.
From a response someone made to you: "Biologists and architects will get us over the hump, not physicists."
What an incredible strange thing to say... Why would one occupation help get us over the hump while another will specifically not?
"You didn't read the article. Hydrogen is just a 25% efficient battery. We already have much better batteries."
Can you quickly refill the better batteries with fuel or do you have to charge them for many hours?
Definitely. I've said for some time that the search for aliens should begin there; what lives in those depths is likely far more extraterrestrial than we may find in outer space. The BBC documentary "Blue Planet" episode "The Deep" begins to shed light - literally, and some of these creatures have never seen sunlight so I wonder about the effects of exposing them to lamp light.
"So while he may 'have a sense' of beat, tempo and melody, sit yourself down at fruity loops and mess around. You'll be pleasantly surprised that after a few hours, you have something that sound cool to you. After a few days, something that might sound cool to others."
Please show us your first few hours or few days of Fruity Loops work that I know you have prepared to back up your claim. Since we know from your use of 'quotes' etc that you are a more skilled musician that this fella, our anticipation and expectations are growing greater each passing hour now!
"taking sounds from different sources that shouldn't work in any coherent sense and making them come together musically."
This reminds me of IDM taken to the extreme and under short deadlines which I've been following - "Iron Chef of Music" contests. They sample from a 1- to 2-minute sound recording and manipulate it into IDM-style songs. Some don't seem to have much to do with the source, but some keep it partially intact so you can hear the process.. In either case, some really great music coming out of that contest. Sometimes I find relatively well-known IDM musicians "competing".
"Unfortunately (in my opinion), Britney Spears, 50 Cent, Snoop Dog, etc. are all considered artists in society right now. That doesn't matter though; Nobody is holding me captive and forcing me to listen to their product."
But what about Dr Dre?
"The concentrator doesn't make the device more efficient at converting solar radiation into electrical power, it just concentrates the light so you don't have to use as large of a device."
Concentrating the sunlight does in fact make the device more efficient in conversion, as long as you keep the temperature (which decreases the efficiency during increase) in check, i.e. near ambient conditions. See the upper right graph on pg2 of this product data sheet from the company that this slashdot article is discussing for an old version of their cells here.
"First of all, improved efficiency reduces the investment cost, thus reducing the cost per watt (at least in a proper market economy, which the energy market unfortunately isnt)."
I'm sorry, but that definitely doesn't make any sense. You can have a $800 100W panel with 25% efficiency, or a $500 100W panel with 10% efficiency. The first is more efficient, smaller surface area, and costs more. The second has a larger surface area but costs less, due to let's say being made of a thin film of semiconductors and a cheap manufacturing process.
As an aside, the shadowing argument vs problems with alternatives is not convincing.. I'll be convinced when you or someone else explains at least partially the effects, rather than throwing it out as an idea (and waiting for Insightful points, which you expect because you convincingly called the last guy Not insightful or in fact, obvious, when he was right all along about "let's see $/W increase rather than efficiency increase.")
The mindshare they're worried about is that of the villagers receiving the computers, who are harmed by receiving them: "The people are harmed because these sorts of schemes are sopping up mind-share time of the people who might be doing something actually useful."
The villagers waste time setting up linux just right, keeping all their software updated, working on their wireless signal strength, reading message boards at "slash dot"...
While their current version says it shows somber imagery during a scowl and brighter imagery during a smile, there's of course no reason that can't be completely different. Further, the ability for something to change based on viewer-mood-recognition could in theory even enhance the thought-provoking nature of a piece of art. So it is not anti-art or anything by definition and the technology has some potential.
I'm not sure why the other post pointing to DSlinux is (0), but there is at least one ssh client for DSlinux - Dropbear. I haven't tried it yet. Of course you'd need a flash cart or (mini/micro/normal)-SD adapter such as the M3.
Or at least until you get something resembling the final product which compiles.
I know the cycle. Good point about the ratios. I don't think it will affect anything either, but it would be good to study in biospheres or even just model. However, we are sure that the increased atmospheric CO2 is affecting, so if there is not time/interest/money, perhaps it is best to act.
:]
I agree: multiple sources, depending on the location. The nuclear methods and tidal are good options; the former having a lot of political baggage and waste disposal R&D needed, the latter being able to contribute only relatively insignificantly. Wind in large scale has unknown, possibly great impact on climate streams and comes indirectly from solar. Geothermal doesn't have an unexploited capacity large enough to contribute substantially either (except in Iceland?).
I do think PV can solve all needs, in time. One more benefit to tack onto it is its relative independence from geographic location. Sure, some areas receive more direct sunlight than others, but with panels performing well in diffuse light situations and a good storage system, it should suffice everywhere. The other renewables apart from nuclear are much more localized (actually, solar can even be installed far from water or pipelines).
In the near-term, integrating intermittent solar electricity into the grid provides few technical difficulties, even when considering much higher levels of solar power usage, shown by studies and field experience. Storage is key in the long-term and is being studied (but I agree, perhaps not enough). Of course we could always put together that worldwide electric grid if we could all get along
We should just do a lot of energy-to-energy conversion, namely photovoltaic. Then we solve your problem by avoiding dumping, sort of 'regulate' the sun, we don't introduce excess heat -- in fact we can make use of input heat, and we solve the bigger problem being discussed. The technology is currently satisfactory, as is evident by all of the new solar panels being installed and solar companies starting up, and new technologies will only bring the costs down further to be cost-effective without subsidizing. Simple solution using the energy being input to the planet! I study energy systems full time, so take this with a grain of salt
Do companies make money from their proprietary instant messengers? Is it just ad revenue? Every person I know either uses Gaim or Trillian or doesn't click on ads that show up in AOL IM. Perhaps it is just branding name attached. I am sure the competition is good somehow. Maybe it encourages innovation as each tries to outdo the other in features.
However, when will it be that instant messenging gets a standard protocol (or regains it, i.e. IRC)? When I want to email someone, I know their address and I can email them, I don't have to think about which program they are using to read/write their email. When I want to call someone on the phone, I dial their phone number to reach them anywhere in the world.
So, instant messenging has been around since IRC started. Now with Gaim you can treat IRC transparently as another IM client (not that you couldn't before, but now anyone can). So Gaim can symbollically merge them to make a standard protocol. The Gaim protocol, haha.
We have seen so many different messenging systems and they all work the same. The add-ons or upgrades can be good and important - text formatting, voice, video, images. I would like to see a system where you can login to instant messenging, and have all of those features that you want, and even a Nintendo DS can login and use Pictochat. It streams each data based on a standard signal.
Maybe it is just bound to happen and I don't have to worry about it, but it is frustrating to see other forms of communication standardized and not this. Actually it doesn't bother me in the least in day to day life, but then when you stop and think of a better alternative..
I guess no one can just do it for free (although IRC seems to run for free, maybe most servers are at universities). We pay for our email or have ads in our gmail. Hmm.. solution? Maybe google will have one.