Dying old people and the irrelevance of TV-news
I was driving a few days ago when i started thinking about the following: When all of the old people have died out, say people born before.. the 70's or 60's, will we need TV-news anymore? Who under the age of 40 seriously spends time looking at actual television news? By the time they come out, they are mostly old news, with tired old big-media coverage of events. On the web, we get multiple angles, multiple viewpoints and minute-by-minute coverage. Why bother with TV-news?
Another thing that will be interesting to see is: will the next generation of pensioners be as grouchy as the current ones? So opposed to technology? I mean, pick a random old lady or geezer off the street, and look into their wallet. I'll bet that they have more cash on them than you do. It's because they don't really use cards, and if they do, it's to get money out of the ATM. It's like they don't trust cards at all. Just take a look at the store. The majority of old people will roll with cash only. Most old people are not on the internet. They do watch TV-news however. Perhaps, because TV is an older invention than the internet. By like. 60 years.
But what about the middle-aged and older people now who do use the internet and credit cards? Will they become increasingly scared of it later on in life? Will they become bitter peeping-toms who spend the entire day watching their neighbors take out their trash? Listening through the walls and marking down what TV-shows their neighbors watch? Or will they stay pretty much the same? I hope they stay the same, so we can finally move on as a society, and not be burdened by people who are unwilling (unable is simply not an argument anymore) to use technology?
How much do we as a society spend to accommodate for these people? Keeping legacy systems around and such?
TV-news are probably dead in the water, as are daily newspapers. They will be around for maybe 20 years, but i don't see an everlasting future for them. People will keep on wanting to get their content current, even if they themselves are getting older. TV as such will remain, because people want to sit down and numb their brains every day for a few hours. They need that. Constant exposure to the harsh realities of the world we live in would drive most people insane. I should know! (Ha haa, he hee)
Here techy techy techy…
This week in tech:
Went to an Oracle event for Solaris 11. Tech content was good. Some of the highlights include improvements for Zones and ZFS, and best of all, an actual package manager that talks to actual repositories and packages that can be upgraded with one command, while keeping dependencies in check. This alone is worth the upgrade for all Solaris toting maniacs. There's also an option to install a very bare bones system, that you can then build up using the package manager. The image was like 300 megs (compared to the full install of 8GB for Solaris 10). Patching has also gotten revamped, and now can contain metadata that creates a cloned environment as a part of the upgrade. Or at least suggests the creation of one. This way you can test how the patch behaves in a cloned environment, and if things go pear-shaped, go back to your original system.You can also create a local mirror for packages if you don't want to use the Sun.. Oracle provided ones, or if you are on some limited bandwidth (which shouldn't be an issue in most countries that want to use Solaris for something). While it's fringe, it still has it's uses, and does some things pretty well.
They are also toting this as the "First Cloud OS". I have no idea what they mean with this, honestly. Sure, it can serve as a host OS in a cloud based service, but uh.. First?
I'm still running Arch, with a 3.1.2 kernel. I've also done some testing on the 3.2 branch (up to RC3 as of this post). Linus has taken to announcing new kernel builds on Google+ which is cool. These threads also get loads of (mostly useless or off-topic stuff from ignorant techno-dweebs and Linus fanboys) comments. I've reported a few bugs so far; among them a few kernel panics (while returning from suspend), and the lack (apparently) of an iwlwifi kernel module, for Intel wifi-cards, which is need for my Thinkpad T410s. Also there was some crash when plugging in a powercord, but that might be related to entirely different stuff like pm-utils or some powersave feature gone awry. The reason i wanted to try the 3.2 builds is that on at least the Thinkpad T410s, the VGA output on either the computer itself or the dock does - not - work. It gives you are wavering picture that will give you instant brain cancer and severe blindness if watched for very long. Now all this has something to do with the intel drivers, and a specific signal that is sent. This is fixed in the 3.2 rc2 and rc3 at least. Which is a great little bonus, especially if i want to hook up a projector (usually VGA) or something when you want to show some schematics to a client or your boss....
As i described in the previous post, i rooted and upgraded my Desire Z to Cyanogen Mod 7.1 (nightly 263). There hasn't been a nightly since 263, but that's apparently because there are too many damn devices, and simply the build time for each nightly takes over 24 hours in worst cases. Also i think Ice Cream Sandwich, which had it's source code released recently (along with the previously unreleased Honeycomb source in there somewhere). So far, things have been running great. Only a few problems so far, the most serious being that the launcher disappeared once, and wouldn't come back without a reboot. Phone worked fine otherwise.
What I've been watching:
We've been watching some select Anime series lately. Right now we're watching a show called 'Samurai Champloo' which is a bit more on the light comedy side. It's refreshing compared to the serious, violent anime we've previously watched.
Some movies also, but nothing worth mentioning. Well actually, there was a rather good crime-serialkiller thing starring Scott Speedman and Willem Dafoe. It was called Anamorph. Don't buy it for 10 bucks, but consider it for 5-7 bucks.
What I've been listening to:
Podcasts mostly, Caffination, The Ardent Atheist, TechSnap and the Linux Outlaws to name a few.
The Ardent Atheist is a new one, to me, which had a really funny bit that was featured on the linux outlaws. Basically a short demo on how.. uh..well Siri works. Check that episode out here.
This week in news
A few bits and bobs for my odd readers. Not odd as in weird but.. ah, you get the point.
I'm growing increasingly pissed at tabloid "news". I might go as far as calling their bullshit-spinning an art form. Over a million people read tabloid news every day. That's over a fifth of the population. Now does that fall on the age old adage of keeping the stupid unwashed hordes pleased? Maybe. And sometimes looking outside, i'm inclined to believe just that. There's even a thread on MuroBBS dealing with the stupidity that the tabloids churn out each day. I mean, most of this is either purposefully crafted lies, or sheer malice, because i can't believe they are this stupid...
I ordered "Market Forces" by Richard Morgan, which was the only book of his i did not already own. It's starting out pretty well, but of course i'll read it through before passing final judgement. It's this whole future (though this time near-future), corporations run shit deal. I picked up the book used, since i was feeling like getting a hardcover. This was shipped over from the UK, from the "East Riding of Yorkshire Library", and used to actually be a library copy. It's wrapped in tough plastic film, but you do see signs of wear and tear. Perfectly readable though, but the seller posted it as "very good condition", which is a bit iffy. But for the 3.50 euro (including postage) that i paid, i'm as happy as a pigeon with a french fry. Bought if off play.com, through their playtrade-thingy.
On the Android-side of life, i switched from GingerReal, to the Cyanogen Mod, while also upgrading to the 2.3.5 kernel. I'm running on the nightly version of the 7.0 for Samsung Galaxy S. It's a version obviously built each night, but the codebase seems to be fairly stable, so so far i've had no large issues with it. Some things change wildly over night, such as the lockscreen, or the camera, but it's mostly for the better. The customizability is unparalleled, and though the synthetic benchmark scores are lower (1600 vs. 2100 for GingerReal), but the system still seems responsive (enough), and above all else, more stable. GingerReal does have more tweaks for the kernel, the processor and the filesystem so that explains most of the weirdness, and the crazy-high performance.
At work, i've spent the last few weeks setting up a Sun M4000 box with Solaris 10 U10, and then installing some new UPS's. The M4000 was otherwise rather uneventful, but a notable detail was that the XSCF console port still only handshakes with fucking 100mbit. Which means, that some of our more high-end Cisco-gear don't really want to talk to it. Which means, just for this purpose, we have to hook it up to a switch that also talks 100mbit. I wonder how much more it could honestly cost, considering it's a several-ten-thousand-euro machine. Twenty cents? Bring it Oracle, our budget can take it!
Did i mention the price of coffee is rising something crazy here in Finland? Well if not, then i'll say it now. The price of coffee is rising something crazy here in Finland. Honestly. The brand of espresso i buy, from Paulig, has gone up nearly a euro. For a five euro bag to now cost six-ish euros, is pretty steep. For 250 grams of pre-ground coffee, that is. And since i have my DeLonghi espresso-machine, i can't really not use it, being the caffeine-addict that i am. I still mostly drink instant coffee, which will probably be frowned upon by most people. But seriously, try it out. Forget the preconceptions. The coffee i drink mostly is Nescafés' Classic (used to be Red Cup). The price of that has also gone up, but.. It's kind of like gasoline. We said "we refuse to drive if gasoline costs over 1.50 euros" (which it now does), but yet, the traffic jams each morning are as bad as they ever were. I wonder if 2 euros will be the limit? Probably not. So keep on raising those prices Oil and Gasoline-guys, we can still take it further up the ass!
On the OpenBSD-front, i did some upgrading of my 4.9 box, to bring it up to -current. It was a fun and educational experience. Waiting for 5.0, even though it won't be anything revolutionary, as the OpenBSD schedule advances .1 every 6 months. Round numbers mean nothing. Except maybe symbolically. I did not manage to get the kernel to build, and Google wasn't being too helpful. I'll have to look at that some other time.
My pet peeve privacy is probably going to take a big hit thanks to our glorious Minister of the Interior, Päivi Räsänen (of the beloved Christian Democratic party). She's now come out and said that she would support releasing fingerprint data collected for new biometric passports since 2009 for use in criminal investigations of "serious crime". Now take a seat and close your eyes. The other one too. And go way back to 2009. We were told that this new biometric data being added to the passports was due to international pressure, and would not be used for anything else except travel related identification. You can open your eyes now, and fast forward to 2011. What are they saying? They want to give the data to cops who are investigating "serious crimes"? Gee-whiz! I never saw this coming! Slide something in, convince people it's not what they think, and then fuck them over once they've forgotten about what you said. Also, who the hell decides what a serious crime is? But yeah, i guess that was the previous administration who made all those promises, so in our grand democratic system, those things are all forgotten and buried. But rest assured, i have not forgotten. And lucky me! I'm up for a passport renewal (since they cut the maximum validity of a passport from 10 to 5 years...), so i'll have to get a passport with the fingerprint if i want to go to the US next year for Hope number..9? Is it really number nine already? I guess.
Enough ranting for this post.
Vacation-man posts again
So i'm on week two of my four-week summer vacation. Still reading Broken Angels. I'm at the part with the scary nano tech. Thing.
I tried kernel 3.0 from the kernel ppa for ubuntu, but that didn't work out too well. I guess fglrx is to blame, because i received errors about it during kernel installation. It booted fine, but graphics were.. well there were no graphics. I decided to wait for a while with 3.0. I've been practicing a bit of perl during my off hours; just basic scripts and stuff. It's funny that i actually started out with perl during elementary school. We had this computer club that was i think once a week, and we had a guy from TKK come and teach us. He taught us perl at the tender age of.. what eight? Anyway. I remember it fairly well and it's fun to do perl again. Back then it was simple stuff, but a good foundation, now that i look back at it.
Google+ is.. well it's there. It's not like i'm using it or anything. It's just there. Many of my friends have moved a lot of their stuff (or so i surmise) to Google+ but for me it's just another platform to voice thoughts and place comments. I do like the integration of media, and how easy it is to upload photos or other stuff. I haven't tried the Hangout-thing yet, i don't have a webcam, except in my work-Thinkpad. I spend maybe 30 minutes a week on Google+ i'd say. I'm not sure i'll stay.
It's still unbearably hot in here. It's Finland for fucks sake. I didn't sign up for this. All my hardware has been running admirably, though, which is a bonus. I haven't spent as much time at the summerhouse as i'd like to, but that's due to other circumstances that i will not go into here. There's still a lot to do there, and i hope i can go next week.
Been playing a lot of (for me anyway) Battlefield: Bad Company 2. I have clocked a total of.. 88.5 hours of BC2. And it's still one of the best multiplayer FPS's if you ask me!
My little mini-garden on the balcony is bearing "fruit". I've got a bunch of salad, and the basil is coming along nicely. As it is still very hot and nice, i'm considering other stuff as well. Here's a pic!
Isn't it fucking great?
I found out that the apartment does have a 10/10mbit connection that is part of the rent. Provided by Elisa. Latencies were fuck-all, so it's probably very close to fiber. I do also have fiber up to the apartment, but no card with an SC connector to try it out with. Care to sponsor one for me? Heh, thought so. Not sure it's even hooked up. It probably needs to be ordered separately. Anyway.
Have a nice day.
Marvelous miscellania
Amazon delivered my copy of "Just for Fun" by Linus Torvalds and David Diamond. It's going to be a good read, i can feel it! In parallel i am still reading "Broken Angels" by Richard Morgan. Still recommend the latter.
I am also still on Ubuntu 11.04, but without Unity. I can't do it. I can't deal with unity, i can't seem to configure it so that i can use it sensibly. I can't deal with the side-menu thing popping in and out. I can't deal with not seeing the toolbars at all times, i can't deal with having the max,min and close buttons be on the left side if i maximize the window, when I've specified in gconf that i want them on the right side. I realize that i can configure these things somewhere. What i don't realize is why make things like this by default? Unless you've never used Ubuntu before, you're going to shit a brick. Me. No. Understandy.
Something i also realized was that something that changed in the propietary ATI driver, or Compiz, or some other relating concept messed up h.264 playback in Ubuntu. VLC would act as if something was wrong with the overlay.. The video was either entirely black, but with audio playing perfectly. Or, i'd get the video, but it was the top most level of everything. Try to open a menu like File in VLC, and the video would overlap that menu, so you wouldn't see it. Very annoying, and made watching video nearly impossible. The fix, or workaround for now, was to disable compiz entirely. Another annoying feature of Ubuntu 11.04 - The System - > Preferences - > Appearance tab that controlled compiz is gone. No way to disable it that way. You even have to download the compiz configuration manager separately if you want to configure it! So i did the metacity --replace trick to kill compiz and replace it with metacity, that does away with the overlay-problem.
A big sigh. But at least it works now.
It's also time to head out of the city and into the untamed wilderness known as our summer cottage. I started my four-week vacation, and i intend to spend a lot of the time out there. If i can. My allergies are acting up, and if they get bad enough, i can't stay there. Which blows.There's lots to do there. Some trees to cut down and chainsaw into pieces, a new balcony-thing to build. Some electrical work at the Sauna.
There's a shortage of podcasts to listen to in Summertime. Somehow. Or then there is too much time vs. the amount of podcasts, which is static.
I should try the 3.0 RC kernel. I have a colleague who's tried it under VMware Workstation, and says that it works well. There was some issue with it, but it was patched by someone (tm). I also read an interesting article that B pasted to me on the end of the AltQ in OpenBSD. You can read that here. PF has been serving me well since version 3.7 or 3.8, in a modest box sitting beneath my desk here, diligently filtering through all of my Internet traffic. It rarely breaks. And when it does, it's due to some syntax error in my configuration, or failing hardware. In any case, it's a great product.
A few minutes before writing this post, the Space Shuttle Atlantis separated from the International Space Station for the last time in Space Shuttle history. A sad moment. The end of an era. In all, the space shuttles spent over 300 days docked to the ISS. Sad to see it just floating away, the thrusters firing somberly to adjust slightly. I get a slight scifi kick from it all. Seeing the planet drift by below at blistering speeds. To see an orbital sunrise live from my own PC. A final victory lap around the station, and she is gone. Starting de-orbiting procedures. After this, the US has no way to get people into orbit, without help from the Russians. Next up, perhaps a commercial alternative. The Atlas V? Some rocket-based system in any case. Waiting for the Chinese to do their thing. Seeing the Russians put people up like they have for 50 years.No more space planes for a while. Not in the governmental sector anyway. Private spaceflight is the way to go for the next decades, mark my word.
Ok time to end this blabber and prepare for a departure of my own, to the summer house.
Weekend Activities
This week i have been mostly reading...NOTHING
Poor reference to some British comedy of the not-so-recent past. Anyway, what i want to say is I am currently re-reading the sequel (Broken Angels) to the excellent book by Richard Morgan, "Altered Carbon". If you like high-flying Sci-Fi, you'll like Richard Morgan's books. The paperbacks cost next to nothing on for instance play.com, so order up. Meanwhile, back at the point, i'm looking for something to read. The last "new" book i read was "Burning Chrome", by William Gibson, which was brilliant. The one before that was Zero Day, by Mark Russinovich which was a load of bollocks. The one before that was Kingpin by Kevin Poulsen, which was again a winner.
Any recommendations are welcome. And nothing that will bore me or insult me.
This weekend I've spent with my son. Later today, H will come back from a road trip to the untamed wilds of north-eastern Finland. Or somewhere. Before that i intend to clean the place, and do some re-wiring because the current wiring looks like un-diluted ass. A great inspiration to this was that Stefan Didak, workstation-GOD, has been posting a few things about his... 7th iteration of his famous home office. Check out his new posts here. If i had a billion googolplex of money, i'd do the same thing, but i'm stuck with my same old, same old. My next buy's will probably be an SSD drive for the operating system, as I've grown very fond of the Thinkpad T410s i have at work. Boot times are fast, well, it's a Thinkpad on top of that. Godlike. I willingly gave up my 17" pimped out Macbook Pro to get that Thinkpad. Many will say i am crazy, but I've found I'm much more a Thinkpad-guy than an Apple-guy. Other areas are really not an issue at the moment. RAM is enough at 4GB, and the graphics card, though old, (a Radeon 4850), is more than enough for the games i play. The past year i've played mostly Bad Company 2, and Civilization 5. Both of which run brilliantly on this card. Sure it's not 9001 FPS, but enough for me. CPU is quad-core and more than enough also. I would like a second screen, and that Ergotron arm that i originally set my sights on from a Stefan Didak post on his v. 6.0 home office.
I could also pick up on a new TV show. True Blood has continued, but no in Finland of course, so officially one cannot get any episodes yet. Same with Game of Thrones which was recently recommended to me by some younger geeks.
That was an adventure all on it's own, let me tell you. I was at this birthday party of a friend of H's. People.. 5-7 years younger than me, and apologizing in advance for being so geeky. I laughed and said i bet i'm more geeky than any of them. But i found that the term geek has now changed. I fiddled around with computers before these people were born! And they are seriously trying to over-geek me. But the thing is, geekdom is different. I was considered odd for not watching Anime. Or not having seen Game of Thrones (no time to watch that...yet), and so on. I did know nyan cat, but that's just because i hang around 4chan way too much. But basically i got comments like "How can you call yourself a geek!". I was stumped. I can install Gentoo! I can compile a kernel, while remotely installing a Solaris 10 server on the other side of the world. But.. i guess being a geek isn't just what it used to be. I really didn't fit into that crowd. "Have you watched Naruto?" -"Uh..what's a Naruto?". And then I'm faced with some apparently funny "music video" from some anime called Naruto. And inside, i was crying.
Societal Rage
So i was heading up the escalator at Pasila train station here in Helsinki.. The custom here, is that if you don't want to walk up the escalators, you stand on the right and ride it up. If you are in a rush, you take the left "lane". Simple things, nobody gets hurt.
Enter fat fucker. A woman walks up next to me on the left side, taking a few steps and then stops, blocking the left lane. So people, supposedly in a hurry, walk up to her, and ask (and i'm not shitting you) politely if she could let them pass. Her reply? "No. And you're not allowed to pass people on the left!". I start giggling like an idiot, and she starts giving me the evil-eye, which i promptly ignore and continued laughing. People pass her anyway, which was a feat on its own, because she was a fat bastard. I bet she does this every morning, and gives everyone the same old reply, just to.. i don't know? Make someone elses day just a little bit more difficult? Channel your own rage about being fat on other people? Maybe a little of both. I just find it hard to believe why someone would intentionally just try to piss people off. Makes no sense and just causes a stir.
Had someone been extra stressed out that morning, that fattie might have accidentally tripped and fallen down 10 meters of escalator. And i will add a picture here of my probable emotional reaction to that hypothetical scenario:
Sufficed to say, if you act like a prick, you deserve what's coming next. I'm not encouraging violent acts, by any means, but i'm also not saying i might not enjoy them. Convoluted enough? Good.
More assorted ramblings for week 21/2011
So this past week has kind of sucked ass in multiple ways, most of which i will describe as this post grows longer.
This week was spent learning about Horde 4, which was kind of a good start. But i dunno the rest of the week has been so-so. Yesterday i was going to attend a meeting that was supposed to start at 14:00, according to the mail the meeting organizer sent out the day before. So, a colleague drives me downtown, and since we were in a bit of a rush, we took the subway to the end destination. The problem? I had no more time on my "metrocard" which i thought i did. I figured, two stations, i can't be so unlucky as to be ticket-inspected.
Oh how wrong i was.
When i get to the station, and get off, i see the row of inspectors checking everyone getting off the subway, making sure they all have valid tickets. Most of them did. I did not. My own fault. Using my quick intellect (sarcasm here), i order a mobile ticket and walk up to the inspectors. My ploy failed, as the ticket has a timestamp, and the rule is that you need to have a valid ticket when you enter your departing station. So i was fined 80 bucks. This is the first time i've messed up, and the first time i've been fined. And i've been using public transport since i was seven!
Slightly miffed, i walk, fine in hand to the office where the meeting was supposed to take place. And then they tell us we are half an hour early. And we are like "Bitch, the mail you sent out says 14:00, not 14:30". And inside, i'm hurting, because i figure, if i came half an hour later, i would not have been fined.
Aaaand to top things off, the meeting was a total commercial bust, with scarcely anything worth my time. So a total fucking waste of time and money.
Today was time for the annual inspection of my car, which is mandatory in Finland. I was pretty sure it wasn't going to pass, since it already has about 160 000 km on the meter, and it has had it's share of problems. And oh how right i was. Turns out i have to fix three different items, then have it re-inspected within a month. And all this will cost me about 300 euro in all. Wonderful.
I just also paid the 1000 euro security deposit on the new apartment, so i'm not exactly swimming in cash. This sucks.
On the other hand, this time next week i should be typing away at the new apartment, all nice and clean and with fast connectivity. Bliss.
Oh also, my MRI results came back "negative". No, to everyone's shock, turns out i do have a brain! But nothing of concern. Two minor structural "differences" from the perfect theoretical brain, but nothing that merits any action, further inspection or concern. So i'm fine. Which is kind of a relief for me. I was kind of concerned, but then i'm a hypochondric of some degree.
Don’t push me now cause I’m close to the edge
Ok so today was one of those days. I figured writing about today's events would help ease the fucking throbbing pain and dull suffering feeling that I am experiencing.
First i woke up at like 6 AM because my girlfriend noticed her bus-card was .. lost.. at work or somewhere and she needed a ride to work, which starts at 7 AM. So i get up. Drive her to work. And since i'm a fucking retard, i decide to drive to work early. Get to work.Someone else is there too, in-fucking-credibly. And there's freshly brewed coffee! This day may yet be saved!
The morning is spent doing various administrative tasks, more or less routine stuff, nothing too exciting. Change a backup tape here, check on a storage system there..
Noon rolls around, and suddenly, a task which was supposed to have two weeks left, has to be done on friday. "On friday is good enough, it doesn't have to be "before friday", one of my bosses assures me. Great. Calendar already swamped, i desperately try to delegate. Then i come across a Solaris problem. I'm showing a new LUN to a server, and it's simply not seeing it. Google is full of "Oh run cfgadm -al and all your problems will be gone!". Well listen pal, they are not. devfsadm, devfsadm -C, devfsadm -c disk, luxadm probe.. whatever i do, the LUN is simply not showing up. And every god damn page is the same, try this fucking magic, it'll work, i promise! I would like to do a boot -r but as we all know, that's not always an option.
I try removing some un-used LUNs. That works fine! So it must be talking to the SAN! Re-add the same LUNs i just removed? Not showing up. Na-ha. So i guess i have my work cut out for me.
Don't get me wrong, i love a good conundrum. But sometimes these things just accumulate and fuck up your day.
Ok so, i leave the problem, which i hate doing, because i have to make it to the bank. The bank, which is supposed to serve the fucking working population, is open only between 8 and 16:30. This is when regular fucking people are at work. I guess physical banks are for pensioners and fucking bums, eh? The problem is, i had some cash that needed to be deposited, and there's no other way to do that, than to visit an actual physical bank, and talk to some dude, who will look at you funny because you walk in with a wad of cash, thinking you've stolen it from somewhere. "Where did you get this money, sir?". And i'm trying to think of something witty to say, but end up giving him the real explanation: it was just my birthday. I know it's their job to ask when the deposit is over a certain sum, so uh... terrorists i guess? can't deposit money to fund their illegal activities. And if i were a terrorist, i'd be sure to say "Oh these? They came from various drug deals and illegal arms trade"
So i deposit my cash, and go to the store, which i already know will end in fucking tears and disaster. Everyone and their grandmother is out shopping because it's a special fucking day: Monday! So i do my shopping, trying my best to avoid human contact, weaving and ducking inbetween the unwashed masses. I make it to the check-out where, to my dismay, the fat lady infront of me is trying to pay for her shopping with a piece of paper. So i shoulder-surf the paper and see that it's from the welfare bureau. I look at the check-out lady, who is ready to commit suicide because she has no idea on how to handle this as a payment method, clearly. I sympathize. I sold household appliances for two-and-a-half years when i was studying, and saw my fair share of those notes. They are a bureaucratic nightmare to handle.
So then, as the check-out lady finally figures it out, the fat customer-lady has the audacity to ask if she can swipe her bonus-card as well, and the check-out lady tells her she can't. So let me get this straight: She gets my money from the welfare bureau and then she wants bonus for her shopping too? I was nearing the breaking point.
I pay for my shoppings, which come out at less than i had expected; just about the only positive piece of news i've had all day. I pack my stuff. Prepare to leave. And then i see him: The Shadow.
The Shadow was an infamous nutcase from when i sold electronics back in the day, in East-Helsinki. He would drop by every now and then, wearing the same clothes, and an old casette Walkman (which i doubt played anything). He'd walk into the store, and find a customer who was discussing with one of our sales guys. He'd then smooch up real close to the customer, uncomfortably close, so that they get disturbed, and he'd say things like "That TV is cheaper in this other store!". He never bought anything, and we always threw him out, because we were not allowed to resort to physical violence.
So there he is, in the flesh: The Shadow. Wearing, probably, the same clothes, the same motherfucking walkman, and muttering to himself. I overheard just one sentence, which was nearly enough to throw me into a homicidal rage: "There's so many people here because they are playing hockey today on the TV!". He said this to nobody in particular, and walked at this unnaturally fast pace toward the exit.
I swear i just stood there with my groceries, staring blankly. I hope i wasn't drooling uncontrollably, but that may not have been far. I made it home, and after ranting about all this to my girlfriend, i had to come and write this down.
Nuclear Rage!
I've ranted about a number of things, and you might think i'm quite the cynical bastard. And you'd be right! Today's target is the big boogey-man of the month: Nuclear Power! Yes! Good old Mr. Atom!
The events in Japan following the M9.0 earthquake and the consequent tsunami caused major issues at the Fukushima nuclear powerplant. Radiation has been released. Water and soil in the local area has been contaminated. Meltdown has occurred. So should this be the end for nuclear power? Not if you ask me.
First of all, all of these words sound really scary to Joe-Average. Radiation! Meltdown! I'll add the echo effect in post-production. But if one has even a cursory concept of how nuclear power, or radiation works, it should calm you down somewhat. Meltdown is simply the process in which the fuel in the reactor is overheating, and causing the fuel to literally melt. This releases radiation. Radiation on the other hand comes in many different shapes and sizes. Elements that are radioactive are not stable and they have a half-life. For instance, the isotope of Iodine released from the reactor core was 131 if i'm not mistaken. This isotope of Iodine is very dangerous to humans because it gets stored up in the thyroid gland and causes issues. But this particular isotope also has a very short half life; 8 days. Which means that the isotope will not stay dangerous for long. That's not to say it can't cause damage, but it is to say that people on the other side of the fucking globe will not be affected.
What people can do if there is a release of Iodine-131 is to eat iodine supplements. The thyroid gland in the human body can fit an x-amount of iodine, be it of a stable or a (dangerous) unstable isotope. "Filling up" your thyroid gland makes sense if you are in the area that has a high chance of getting elevated doses of dangerous Iodine isotopes. It does not make sense to eat them in say Finland, or most other place in the world. Yet, we had people stocking up on iodine pills "just in case". And i'm willing to bet a number of people started eating them too, as soon as the news of the accident broke.
I'm not belittling the accident at Fukushima. I am belittling once again the idiots of our world. But i dunno.. does stupidity based on ignorance count? I vote yes.
A meltdown does not equal a nuclear explosion either. A meltdown sounds really bad, but all it really is, is elevated temperatures in the fuel rods which cause the fuel containers and finally the fissile material to melt, and release radioactive isotopes into the surrounding areas (usually still inside the core containment structure). The elevated temperatures were caused by failure of the cooling and redundant cooling systems due to the tsunami and earth-quake. The Fukushima plant was designed to handle up to 18 foot ( 6 meter ) waves, and the tsunami of the M9.0 earth quake exceeded this, thereby causing the facility to fail. Failure of the cooling system prevented water from cycling in the system, thereby increasing temperatures, melting zircaloy surrounding the actual fuel, creating hydrogen gas, and thereby pressure (which resulted in some spectacular releases of that pressure in the form of smokey puffs, partially destroying the building). Correcting this was accomplished using seawater pumped in with hoses and dropped from various aircraft.
But again, it's easy to also blame the media. Fear sells. Nuclear fear sells better. In this video (thanks BoingBoing for the link), a CNN news anchor goes apeshit on a meteorologist (who goes "oh boy here we go again.."), when the weatherman firmly asserts that no harmful levels of radiation are or will reach the US West-Coast. The news anchor tries desperately to keep the atmosphere of fear going. Sure, measurable increases in radiation are reaching the continental US, but measurable does not mean dangerous. Measurable means that you can detect if a fucking radioactive mosquito farted on the south pacific and the wind carried it to the general direction of the US. The type of technology used is so incredibly sensitive, and because of this fact we have good time to move people out of affected areas, when the increase in radiation is upcoming. It does not just happen. It's physics. There are rules for such things. No matter how afraid you are, the magical radiation will not enter your home, unless there are conditions that warrant that. There are distances, half-lives, dissipation, weather, and countless other factors that are all of critical importance. This is not guesswork.
Although, shit-points also go to Tepco, the power company responsible for Fukushima. In one report of radiation levels, they apparently misplaced a comma somewhere, and ended up reporting ass-crazy results. People who have problems dealing with numbers should not be involved with nuclear reactors. Media outlets who are speaking out of their assholes should not be on the air spreading fear. I don't want to suppress freedom of speech, but this kind of fear-mongering is fucking rediculous.
Should we stop using nuclear power because a power company failed to put in adequate measures of protection for their stuff? Hell no!
Out of the viable methods of producing power, nuclear power is still the safest, and provides us with the most power to fill the needs of industry and increasing urbanisation. Sure we can go back to coal only, but do you want to have a look at the number of people who died of fossil-fuel based pollution world wide last year for instance? While i don't have the numbers with me, coal production, logistics, handling and combustion is a major cause for concern world wide. Sure, no radiation, but killing people? Oh hell yes.
Ok, so the alternatives then. We have wind, which is cool. But to provide the amounts of energy that even a small western country such as Finland needs (we have a lot of industry, in proportion), we would need to fill up a vast space with wind power. Wind is also not predictable, and the initial costs vs. the amount of power derived from the finished product is not a happy number to look at.
Solar power then? Ok, let's just pick a state and fill that with panels and we'll be all done. Oh wait, that will cost insane amounts, and is not nearly suited for every place on the planet. Take Finland for instance. We have maybe three actual months of real summer and sunshine, and while new solar panels are better att charging from ambient light even when it is filtered through clouds, it does not make it effective by any stretch of the imagination. I think current solar panels are able to get a 20-25% conversion ratio of sunshine hitting the panel -> power. When we can up that just a bit, and make it suitable for places that do not have fucking sunshine, then we'll talk again.
Other alternatives include tidal- and other water based power generation methods, geothermal, even looking at making power out of magma (Iceland i think was looking at this), the fact is that at the current state, we do not have the technology and/or the money to just magically switch off our nuclear power plants and move to something green. It's just not feasible.
I'm not saying we should stop looking at alternative power, infact i encourage it. But what we can't do is make a five year phased plan and just shut all our reactors down, because 5 years is not enough time to do jack shit in terms of widespread development and deployment of alternative, renewable power sources. Period. 20-40 years, perhaps. But tomorrow? Keep dreaming. We keep using the still safe nuclear power, focus on securing our reactors against possible risks (everything can't be accounted for in any system, but we can at least try (I'm looking at you Tecpo!), and also focus on better ways to handle nuclear waste. On the side, energy companies commit to researching and developing *feasible* solutions for producing the amount of power that a country needs. Either that, or we shut down 50% of our industry, and then make a law that you can watch TV for one hour a day, no dishwashers and laundry can be done once a week. See how that feels for the average voter, who spends most of his life in front of the fucking televison. I'm not arguing that we can't make power using alternative techniques, but i'm saying we're just not there for the kind of large scale deployments that we need to support our industry and residential power usage.
End of rant.