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10 Technologies MIA
Fantasy Football writes "CNet lists ten technologies they miss, which includes Napster, the originial Palm Pilot, good keyboards, and more. From the article: 'Technology evolves. Good technologies and products usually survive; poor ones usually go extinct. But not all of the technologies and tech products that have swirled down the drain of the tech gene pool deserved their fate. Here are some big, and some small, ideas that we thought we'd have with us forever, but that unfortunately have gone the way of the dodo.'"
1. Manned Space Exploration
Well, I agree that reestablishing travel to the moon and beyond is important, the International Space Station is an important stepping stone that deserves focus. The reason I think so is that I truly believe it's going to take a multinational effort to get to Mars and back.
2. Kozmo.com
Make up your mind, CNET, technology you miss, or giant flop. I suppose it could be both, but even if Kozmo had stayed in business, it could never compete with my neighborhood grocery store.
3. Napster
Any opinion I might express about this would likely start a flame war, so I'll leave this one alone.
4. Concorde
You can't really miss what even yourselves admit was out of reach to almost everyone. I don't seem to miss it at all. How do you miss something you never really had?
5. GM's EV1
Zero Emission Vehicle. ROFLMAO. Zero-emission as long as you don't count the power plant that burned (coal|oil|gas|atomic nuclei) and polluted somone else's back yard. Sure, I suppose the power could have been photoelectric or wind produced, but if you believe no harm to the earth was done in the process of manufacturing those systems, you're clueless. (Hint: Strip mining for metals, processing ore, smelting, doping chemicals for solar, etc). Not that I have a problem with any of the above, but let's be realistic here. There's no such thing as a "Zero Emission Vehicle".
6. The Original Palm Pilot
I don't know. My Zire 31 does everything the original did, plus color and MP3s. I've been eying the Tungsten E2 as an upgrade. Only third party apps have ever crashed it, and that's only twice after over a year of use. The Palm-supplied apps have been rock solid. A lot like the original Palm Pilot.
7. Good Keyboards
Agreed.
8. Wires
You miss wires? Uh, you made the choice to go wireless. If you truly miss wires, just switch back, right? It's not like your old phone company disappeared, and you can't buy ethernet cables. Oh wait... the convenience outweighs the disadvantages of wireless you point to. I guess you don't really miss wires after all.
9. LPs
My wife is an archaeologist. She's told me about digging these up.
10. The Newton
The Newton was good for a laugh, but it was also a good lesson for future manufacturers of PDAs. Without Apple's failure, would we really have seen Palm's success?
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
You are either for the expansion of growth of the human population off the earth and into space or you are for mass murder and restricted personal liberty to control population growth here on earth.
Personally I don't think there's a choice. We must expand into space. Of course, there's also the third option. The so called what, me worry? approach. Which is to just pop your hands over your ears and sing "lalalalalala" and hope the whole issue will go away. Thing is, we can afford to do this, but chances are that the next generation won't.
How we know is more important than what we know.
If the population of the earth keeps growing we won't have enough resources to maintain our current level of living conditions.
While the Earth still has a positive growth rate, that rate has been in decline ever since a certain piece of trash called "The Population Bomb" hit the shelves. If the decline continues we'll hit an equilibrium population of around eight billion when all is said and done. Note that according to the doomsayers who first started whining about population we were supposed to have in excess of eight billion people by the year 2000; it never happened because they didn't bothered to check their facts, which even then indicated that the rate was in decline.
I find it rather interesting that people who still complain about Earth being "overpopulated" fail to mention the declining growth rate, nor the fact that every single prediction they made from the '60's right up to the present has been dead wrong.
As far as the resource argument goes, this only applies if you assume that technological advancement freezes at its current level and never, ever progresses again. Quite clearly that isn't going to happen.
So if you consider the earth as a closed system you have to either raise the standard of living around the world to a level where population growth ceases "naturally" or you have to commit the resources of the rich into forcing the poor not to breed.
The first may eventually happen through technological advancement; the second never will unless you manage to enslave the Earth to a dictatorial one-world government. And so long as folks like me are around, anyone who tries to enforce breeding limits on their fellow citizens will find themselves the subject of a post-natal abortion right quick.
Right, so if we're willing to agree that considering the earth as a closed system leads to the logical conclusion that the world population growth must be controlled by force
We aren't willing to agree. You'll never get a majority of Americans - or anything other than a tiny, tiny minority, I suspect - to agree with your assessment.
We must expand into space.
Settling space is a non-viable population control method. It may be useful for increasing the resource wealth of the Earth itself (your first option - make everyone rich) but no significant portion of the population will ever move off-world. In fact, it'd be a complete waste of resources to even try.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?