I agree with Scorsese's assessment - movie making today is about the thrills, the special effects, the CGI, the car crashes, etc. I first recognized this in Peter Jackson's adaptation of Lord of the Rings. Those films were epic, and deserved every award they got. BUT - the stories were modified to focus so much on the battles, that we lost a lot of the characterizations and interactions that made the books what they were. Older movies moved slower, with less excitement, but you really got to know the characters, and when the movie ended, you wondered what happened to them next. We've lost that, and I miss it.

Excellent observation, and one that almost everybody tends to gloss over when discussing radioactivity. I like to remind people that carbon dating is a very specific use of the measurement of half-life and remaining volatility, something that's measured (in that isotope) in MILLIONS of years. Hell, humans are mildly radioactive - but the carbon based compounds that inhabit US, again, have half-lives so extensive that it's not worth measuring or talking about. Hey, enjoy THAT panic attack.

Looks like somebody forgot to use their tag

Plans and regulations changed because of the 'low-bid' mode the DOE, and every other government agency, operates under. The prime contractor for the operation of the Hanford site has changed at least a dozen times in the past 30 years. Granted, it might be because some of them didn't recognize what they were getting into, but still, it's impossible to develop a long term plan when to the DOE, long-term means a 5 year contract. Hanford is a very big deal - we're not talking about spent fuel pools here, where the bean counters know exactly what's stored in there. These containers are un-labeled, and the guys who had any clue what was in them are long gone. It's a mess, there's no arguing that, but just talking about it, which is what they've been doing for the past 30 years, isn't going to solve the problem.

That was the purpose of Savannah River. They were going to reprocess all the high-level waste into useful fuel for power generation. Unfortunately, what with the panicky regulations and excessive costs involved in anything that says 'nuclear', they've decided that the project won't be continued. The other issue is that while yes, some of the stuff we're talking about is still capable of generating heat, the majority of the decay is now harmful radiation. The heat generated is not on a level which permits it to be harnessed for any useful purpose. It would still suck to have it melt down, but after you shield it to the point where the harmful radiation is negated, you've absorbed all the heat with the shield.

This argument has been going on for years. On one hand, the DOE keeps changing the rules for vitrification, and processing, and keeps the shell game going at Hanford. On the other hand, they've shut down the Savannah River reclamation project, and mothballed Yucca Mountain. So, we keep kicking the can down the road, and in the meantime, the storage containers that currently exist at Hanford are getting older and more subject to decay and leakage. It's going to take another crisis for them to make a definitive plan - but I don't know why I expect anything less....

I wish I had mod points. Well, stated, Sir. The unfortunate fact, though, is that when you pull aside that curtain to reveal the Wizard, you recognize that in each case, it's the same wizard. Content production and delivery are controlled by a small handful of mega-corporations, and what's happening here is pretty much what everyone has begged for since time immemorial - a la carte programming! You want Disney? pay Disney. You want WB? pay WB. You want ESPN? pay ESPN. The advantage to cable service was that they handled all the accounts payable for the different content providers, then streamed it all on one wire. Yeah, you had to pay for shit you didn't wanna see, but how else were they going to fund 'The Curling Channel? Wait until some stuffed shirt at one of the big media companies realizes that they can fragment it even FURTHER. True 'a la carte' would be you paying $1.67 PER CHANNEL for the 30 different streams you want to subscribe to. Yes, that's 30 different bills a month. Hell, yes, cable starts to look good then, doesn't it? Be careful what you ask for.....

I have the antenna, I still need the DVR - where can I find this elusive OTA DVR for $35.

I have a Roku TV. The Roku UI provides a search function, which will tell me if the content I want is available on the popular streaming services, and for what price. When we decide we want to watch something, that's the first stop. If it's free on one of the services to which we subscribe (Netflix, Hulu, Prime), that's where we watch it. If it's not free, my next stop is usually the public library. I live in a mid-major city, so our library has copies of damn near everything you'd ever want to see. Sometimes it takes two whole days for the DVD package to be delivered to my local branch (1/4 mile away, closer than the nearest RedBox). As old as I am, I remember making the choice of 'do I pay for this at the theater or wait til it comes out on TV?' Most of the time, TV won out, so I'm patient enough to wait a few months for the latest and greatest movies to get to the library. I suppose if it were a dire need (HA!) I could fire up an instance of Kodi and stream it, but patience usually wins out.

Thank you

Unless the laws of physics have been suspended in the last 40 years, I have vivid memory of the Apollo missions, when orbiting the Moon, 'going dark' while on the far side. Unless somebody has learned how to transmit radio waves through soil, I don't understand how a spacecraft on the dark side can send images or data. Is there a geosynchronous repeater somewhere that they're bouncing signals through?

Instead of arguing about the merits of Disney IP being in or out of the public domain, why not make the copyright law useful? In the case of a company who is still exploiting their rights (Disney, etc.) to IP created FOREVER ago, let's require that the copyright be RENEWABLE - for a fee, to maintain ownership of the IP. That way, abandonware, old images, stuff that people are no longer monetizing can become public domain the way the original law was intended, and the leeches, erm, copyright owners who have an interest in continued monetizing of a brand or trademark after say, 50 years, can renew that lease and continue the practice. It's a win-win - another revenue stream for the gub'mint and a way to make the law work correctly. To avoid the patent/copyright trolls, you'd need to prove that you were monetizing the brand or trademark in a way other than litigation, but I think it'd work.

The PBX at my place of employment takes care of the business calls. Business associates who have my cell phone number are already in my address book so I can identify them when they call, and I answer those. I have a relatively small family, and all of their phone numbers are ALSO in my address book, making caller ID work well for them, too. Unless it's Publisher's Clearinghouse calling me to figure out where to drop off that big check, anybody else is an unwanted call. Whether that's bill collectors, telemarketers, or politicos, if they're not in my book, they can talk to my voicemail. Furthermore, the majority of my interaction with my family members is through text messaging anyway, since those are 'auto-delayed' if I'm busy. If I'm in a meeting, and you call, I won't answer the phone, and if you don't leave a voicemail (the new definition of ghost-knocking - extremely rude) I will NOT call you back. If you text me with 'hey, got a minute' chances are you'll get a response as soon as I'm free. Eventually the bastards will all switch to SMS messaging. I'm already getting those, but again, it's auto-delayed, and I can immediately block the originating number if it's bullshit, so it's a one shot for them. In any case, telemarketing is going the way of the fax machine. It's a relic of a much older age that has reached it's saturation point, and it's just a matter of time before the industry either evolves or dies.

What Sigma 7 is referring to, is that if you know the solution already (the discovery of which requires that you complete at least the majority of the puzzles in the game) you can reach the end game in mere moments. I've demonstrated that exact process to my children when they became disillusioned with the puzzles - just to get the game over with. - That said, I completed the original Myst game after about 2 weeks of exploring and figuring things out, then moved on to the sequels. It's an acquired taste, and not something that I would ever suggest to anybody who lives for Halo or GTA. I loved the mental challenges, and the backstory is also kinda neat. There are entire books (a trilogy) describing the world of Myst and its connections to present day. But, it's not for everybody. - The folks at Ubisoft have released the 25th anniversary edition already, we've got it, and have played it (looks awesome on a 4k TV) but it's still the same game. You either love it or it drives you nutz.

I did this years ago when working for an ISP. Put together a BSD box as a gateway, configured it to maintain an always-on PPTP connection to my free-because-I-was-an-employee dialup account, put in a couple of network cards, configured the routing internally, and had 3 computers sharing one dialup connection. Yeah, it was horribly slow, but it was free, and at the time (new baby, crappy tech support job, etc.) that's what we could afford. I don't know that I'd go through the trouble just to download a program guide from Tivo, though....