Bob the Sane's Moment of Clarity

That’s it. I’m deleting my FB account. Since it got hacked, along with a great many other accounts, and of course FB will claim, like always, that people clicked on something they shouldn’t have.

Guess what assholes, I barely use FB. Know why? Because it sucks. Which means that no, I didn’t click on something bad, because I don’t USE IT for much of anything.

This means that YOUR SYSTEM got compromised, not MY ACCOUNT. It also means that I am doing what I should have done a long time ago and dropping the damned Facey Spaces like a hot potato.

Or, to put it another way:

Dear Facebook,

FUCK YOU.

Strong letter to follow.

So reading through Slashdot, this story caught my eye:

Nuclear Fusion-Fission Hybrid Could Destroy Nuclear Waste And Contribute to Carbon-Free Energy Future

January 27, 2009

AUSTIN, Texas — Physicists at The University of Texas at Austin have designed a new system that, when fully developed, would use fusion to eliminate most of the transuranic waste produced by nuclear power plants.

Reading further into the article, they claim to be able to ‘burn’ 99% of all the waste generated in your average light-water reactor. Folks, that’s an awful lot of radioactive crap with a half-life sometime a million years from now. A bunch (read as tens of thousands of TONS) of glowing sludge that we currently have nowhere to dispose of, aside from a geologically unstable mountain in Nevada.

In other words, in one fell swoop these pocket-protector-jockeys have managed to completely override the primary argument against the widespread adoption of nuclear energy to generate the power modern society needs in order to function.

Much more elegantly, I might add, than my own solution to the question of what to do with the piles of waste. I figured our best bet would be to load it onto rockets and shoot the stuff into a decaying solar orbit. Of course, I once had a tree-hugging hippie idiot try to tell me that doing so would destabilize the sun. I gave up trying to explain basic physics and the fact that the sun is itself a gigantic nuclear fusion reactor when I realized I would have better luck explaining orbital ephemeri to a fence post. But I digress.

Clean power, no emissions, and almost no waste. How awesome would that be? And because these are light water reactors, the fuel cannot be weaponised. I could easily foresee a time when power companies make a mint on developing, constructing, and delivering self-contained reactors all over the world. Who needs a power grid when every city has the potential for it’s own cheap and clean power generation?

Suffering brownouts? No problem, buy and install another reactor. And the beauty of it is it could be literally as simple as having the unit flown in and plugged in.

But I’m sure the Neo-Luddites will find some reason to bitch about this solution too.

Found on Recording Industry vs. The People:

RIAA withdraws subpoena and discontinues case in Austin, Texas, proceedings targeting Rhode Island students, in Arista Records v. Does 1-22

Once again the RIAA thugs have been dealt a blow in their illogical (and some say illegal) quest to sue the world.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I believe artists and musicians should be paid for their work just like anyone else. Everyone’s gotta eat, right? So why is it that the music makers themselves are against the RIAA’s legal onslaught (with the exception of Metallica who have become a joke in their own right)?

Could it perhaps be because the artists don’t see a single red cent from these proceedings? Could it also be because the RIAA is SUING THEIR OWN FANBASE??? What a way to make a living! Let’s SUE OUR OWN FANS!

And the RIAA wonders why record sales are in the tank.

Oh, wait, that’s not even true either. Online music sales continue to rise, more than making up for falling physical media sales.

Perhaps the problem is that 90% of all the music mass-produced by the RIAA member companies is SHITE?

Bite your tongue, Mr. the Sane!

What really gets me is the fact that the RIAA feels entitled to this filthy lucre. These people had NOTHING to do with the creation of this music. All they provided was a conduit to deliver this music to the masses. And this is a conduit which is rapidly becoming obsolete and irrelevant in the new world of instant digital content delivery. For these services of increasingly questionable value, the big record labels rape the artists of almost every dime their music garners them, and in most cases also divests the artist of any semblance of control over their own creativity and artistic work.

Why do you think so many musicians are now going independent? With the advent of digital delivery, they can completely cut out the labels. This of course threatens the very existence of these obnoxious thieving organizations. Their cash cows are mooing their last! Ye gods! What shall we DO???

Sue the customer. Yeah! Thereby *ensuring* their impending extinction.

I look forward to the day when I read in the financial papers that the big labels have officially gone belly up. Maybe they will go to congress, hat in hand, asking for a bailout as well?