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To: GraceZ who wrote (16243)	1/24/2004 3:22:18 AM
From: Spekulatius	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

Grace, "breakeven" with respect to fusion just means that the reactor generates more energy than it consumes. Don't talk about a return on investment at this point. In addition a fusion reactor generates a lot of "hard" radiation, so there would be problems with radioactivity as well. I would say commercial fusion energy is at least 30 years out. Saving energy is hard to beat as a "source " of energy for a developed country. I agree with you on hybrids, they may become the standard car within ten years. I also think that the optimism on fuel cells for cars is overblown , because it will take a long time to get an infrastructure for refueling into place. I'd say 20 if not 30 years. Better insulation for houses could contribute a good deal to,compared to Europe the energy consumption for heating in the US is a joke due to lack of insulation.

To: GraceZ who wrote (16243)	1/24/2004 1:17:25 PM
From: Tradelite	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

re: new technologies which might create new jobs and make the world turn in the not-distant future..... This a.m. on a business/stock market radio show, I heard a respected source talk about a company (of course I didn't keep track of the name, dammit)which is developing a new technology which looks like it could totally replace DVDs---just as DVDs replaced other types of recording media in the not-distant past. The company's small-cap stock reportedly is soaring to new heights on increasing volume and yet is still below the radar screen of most people. (I hope this development isn't similar to the MCOM disaster. Those bulky Metricom modems were available to real estate agents many years ago, although only a rare bird ever used them. They required you to be in close proximity to a site where a special contraption was mounted, which only made it practical in big cities or train stations or airports. A real bummer of an idea, and yet I saw people on SI during the tech bubble proclaiming this as the "wave of the future." Give me a break.) Then there was the TV news story last week about a community in my area being the first in the country to test a new technology whereby, if you want to plug your computer into the internet, you simply plug it into a little black box about the size of an old-fashioned modem, and then plug the little black box into the phone outlet in your home. Some contraption mounted on the outside telephone wire or pole makes it work for the entire neighborhood, I believe. Not wireless, not dial-up, not cable--simply internet access achieved by using your regular telephone line without an internet service provider (as I understood it). Perhaps you technological whizzes are already tuned into these remarkable developments, but they were new to me and both were brought to my attention in just the past week or two. What else haven't I heard of yet? Along the same line of discussion, I have a relative who is remaking his life after a career of helping run a family-owned computer-networked business in the publishing field, which was founded by his father many decades ago, and after briefly pursuing the photography career he originally trained for after high school. He has gone through the education and is just now beginning to get work in hospitals as some sort of medical radiological imaging specialist. Opportunities abound in the medical field, and the technology is speeding along there, from what I can see.