Sorry, but I've been around too long to buy it. I remember seeing Larry Ellison predict the end of the PC era just as it got going. Literally, I was in the audience, as he described how the NC (Network Computer for those that don't remember) would replace the PC. Conveniently, it was all driven by Oracle. No need for Apple, or Microsoft, or any of their nonsense anymore! And that was in 1998 I think... Remember 1998 folks? You were still using those clunky Netware networks - might have even been on Token Ring still, and you were excited by that new Windows 98 that was coming out that was FINALLY going to fix the problems with Windows 95... me, I was excited about that new fangled phone operating system... Palm OS.
Sorry... Saying that PC's are going to bite it because of the "cloud" is like saying that we have bullet trains now, so you no longer need your car.
(There's your car analogy for those looking for one)
The summary stated that they would take 6% for state and 2% for Fed on each WAGER... That is incorrect... they are taking 6%/2% of your DEPOSIT in the online gaming account. If they took 6%/2% of your WAGERS, you'd be broke in no time!
Given this level of taxation, I'd be in favor, just for the legalization aspect alone... I'm generally not in favor of "feeding the beast" with more tax revenues, but if it gets me legal online gaming, then I'm okay with it.
That's the discussion that I want to see here on slashdot. Wild speculation about what it's mission is. Here is my first shot at it:
- High Tech ASAT machine: ASAT tech (ballistic/laser) weapons mounted in the cargo bay. Makes sense except, why do you need it to come back down... cost of laser perhaps?
- Satellite Stealer: Go up, grab enemy satellite, bring it back down. Deprives enemy of the satellite, and lets you figure out how it works so you can perhaps destroy/disable others like it?
- Special Recon: Allows you to do tactical recon that current fleet of satellites can't do - put it in various different orbits to maximize loiter times?
- Prototype for First Space Fighter: Sure, the Russians already did that, sort of... they had a manned spy satellite with a machine gun on it... and fired it in space (but remotely and unmanned). This would potentially be much better - fit the cargo bay with life support and weapons?
So what is your SWAG as to what this is REALLY for?
Funny thing is, that wasn't a quote from Kirk or Picard... It was Q. And he said it after the Enterprise got carved up by the most vicious villains to come out of Star Trek... The Borg. And it was one of the few times that Q totally beat Picard in an argument.
Of course putting it into context shows that Q was laying down the gauntlet for humanity... He was saying that space exploration will cost lives. Maybe a lot of them. He was calling us out. He was asking us if we have the mettle to do it. Apparently, he's right. We don't. How disappointed he must be!
It is entirely possible that these items are actually PRIVATELY owned now... For instance, the brush that was used on Apollo 14 to clean camera lenses, according to the description, was presented to Fred Haise for his help in the Apollo 14 mission. It says the other astronauts on that mission "gave" it to him. I don't know if they had the right to "give" it to him - our tax dollars paid for the brush, and more importantly, paid to fly it to the moon. But assuming that NASA allowed the astronauts to "have" some of this memorabilia doesn't bother me too much, as these guys put their lives at significant risk. Perhaps this was a form of compensation for that risk? Anyway, from the description, it sounds like the brush belonged PERSONALLY to Fred Haise. If he wants to auction it, or sell it to Big Hoss on Pawn Stars, it's really none of my business, assuming that he came to own the brush legitimately. The same goes for all the other stuff here...
BTW - I want that brush - it has moon dust on it. I won't get it, but that's okay, someone else will, and they'll cherish it in a way the "government" never could. As far as the museum argument - I got to touch a moon rock at the Air and Space Museum... So did everyone else. We got to touch the one part of the rock that wasn't covered in Lucite - a one square inch section, that has been polished down to flat from all that touching. Personally, I'm glad some of this stuff is being preserved in the private sector, where it can't succumb to the tragedy of the commons...
I think the reason he got a stiff sentence (midway between the 15-25 sentencing guideline) was that he got caught TWICE for the same crime. After getting caught the first time, he turned informant, even collecting a $75k salary from the Feds. Meanwhile, he went back to his fraudulent activities and started working an even bigger crime than the one he was originally busted for, and under the Feds noses at that... Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice and I'll throw the book at you.
Census data always becomes public... According to this census data becomes public after 72 years. This is an invaluable resource to those tracing their genealogy. I will be filling out my form fully, but then I'm not an illegal immigrant or a terrorist. I could see why someone in those groups would not want to fill it out. But filling them out provides valuable data today for all kinds of things, from predicting how many students will enroll in your public schools to how many representatives you'll have in local, state, and federal elections.
I bought a GM car in 1998 partly because it had a heads up display. I have to say that it was awesome. For those that are talking about the distraction factor, you shouldn't opine unless you've used one. My display was on a Grand Prix GTP and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't miss that car.
The HUD on that car was done by reflecting an LCD display into the windshield. It displayed way more than just your speed. It gave you the outside temperature (excellent for the season in New England where the temp would be around freezing and it was raining, snowing, or drizzling out). It also showed you what radio station you were on, whether or not your headlights were on, and your blinkers among other things.
But the coolest part of it was when you drove a lonely, 2 lane road at night through the hills or the mountains. In such cases, I would turn my dashboard lighting off completely. I still knew my speed and other info from the HUD, and thus never had to take my eyes away from the road.
But more importantly, when the dashboard lights were off, and it was dark, the road and it's surroundings slowly began to illuminate for me, the same way that a dark room slowly gets brighter when you come in from bright sunlight. After a few minutes, the otherwise completely dark SIDES of the road would begin to glow and you could see the trees and fields far better than with your dash lights on. This saved my life one night...
I was driving on a back road in NH and a deer came dashing out of the woods, and crossed the road in front of me. I was able to see the movement at the side of the road because my eyes had adjusted to the light. I reacted by slowing down early, and this allowed the deer to cross the road before I got to it. Had I seen it just a little later, I probably would have hit it. Either way, at 60mph on a dark road at night, a HUD is your best friend.
That's why I copyright all my emails, and encrypt them with the Double ROT 13 Encryption Algorithm. I explicitly say this in my email SIG, and notify the reader that decryption is a violation of the DMCA and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. That way when the ISP or FBI read my email, I will sue them and become rich!
I tend to pick a carrier first, and the phone second. That's because I'm one of the seemingly few people left who actually care whether the phone part works. Verizon has good coverage in the US... Can't speak to Canada, but if you have no complaints about coverage, I'd tend to stay with that carrier. I am also a Verizon customer, and there is no doubt that you pay through the nose for their services, but again, there is that 'wanting my phone to work' thing that I can't seem to get past.
ATT is another obvious choice, with good coverage in the US and likely in Canada as well. You'd have to compare rates on those two carriers. After that, you get into the lesser carriers (IMHO) such as Sprint. Cheaper per month, but for me they had radically worse coverage.
Other considerations would be what the networks are of those you call most - if they are all on Verizon, all those calls are airtime free if you are on Verizon too... Same would go for the other carriers.
Another poster pointed out that you could go with a generic GSM phone and use prepaid sim cards in both countries and tie them together with Google Voice. You'll lose the free minutes thing, so it makes sense to think about how much you call people.
As for the smartphone thing, you can get good smartphones from all the carriers now. They all seem to have blackberries and ATT has the iPhone while Verizon has the Droid. I waited a LONG time for Verizon to offer me a really nice (read: trendy) phone, and now have a Droid and like it very much. I don't want to engage in the whole iPhone/Droid debate... suffice it to say that they are both cool, both very usable, and both are a pleasure to have.
But in summary, I'd say examine the network first, phones second. Then pays the money, whatever it works out to be. The frustration of a big phone bill pales in comparison to a phone/network that doesn't work for you. That is a daily frustration, and the bill only comes once a month.
It's also the beauty of the Imperial system. 1 pound of water = 1 pint... and since beer is mostly water, 1 pint of beer is also 1 pound, and pretty much you can by a beer in England for 1 pound of money... Beat that, Metric System!
Your argument is ridiculous. You only looked at one side of the ledger. Sure, the price of oil goes up in US dollars. But in the kind of inflation you talk about, your home currency will also reflect that US dollar inflation - in other words, your home currency will buy more dollars, and then you can use those inflated dollars to buy oil priced in inflated US dollars.
The same is true of all other commodity items like Gold, Silver, Pork Bellies, and Randolf and Mortimer Duke's favorite - Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice
They should have gone all in with this one and done Computer Hacker Barbie instead... A black tee shirt that says "1337 h4x0rz pwn j00!", some tatts, purple hair, and black converse hi tops. Keep the nerd glasses though...
So what they are proposing is that we will do lots with relatively small rockets, and anything BIG that is needed can be built piecemeal. That is an approach - the one followed by ISS. The other approach is Skylab. We had a Saturn IVb knocking around, so we built a space station and lofted it up in one shot. Skylab was still probably bigger in total volume than the ISS is today, as it nears completion.
Maybe this new approach will work, and I hope it will. But I believe that it won't. The Mercury astronauts said it best. No Buck Rogers, No Bucks. Without manned spaceflight, we'll mostly turn our attention to unmanned spaceflight, which is cool, and cheap, and makes great discoveries. The public will tire of this too. Robots are good and they can be used successfully, but "boots on the ground" or in this case "boots in space" are also required.
The US has now essentially ceded manned spaceflight to the Russians and the Chinese... just as Spain and Portugal ceded the new world to the English and French. Unless there is a national commitment to a GOAL in manned spaceflight, not much of it will make sense, other than going back and forth to the ISS.
By all means, we should look on the bright side... but the bright side is considerably dimmer now
According to those that want a "government option" for healthcare, there is room for both. In fact, according to their healthcare logic, we HAVE to have both private and government sponsored space programs, otherwise evil, for profit space transportation firms will charge exorbitant costs for space travel, and I think we can all agree that affordable space travel is the right of every American!
The X-Prise was cool and lit imaginations. But don't fool yourself into thinking that it is a substitute for a man-rated ORBITAL system. The X-Prise was to get into space. Straight up and down. Alan Shepard did this as well in the 1960's. It was the FIRST step in the US manned space program. But he didn't get to ORBIT.** And neither did Rutan, and neither will his SpaceShip2. None of it will get you to LEO. Now there are others out there working on private manned, orbital space flight. They're trying to figure out if there is a business model for it - flying really rich people into space and bringing them back down safely, on a budget. Some are working on non-man-rated resupply missions for the ISS. But orbital manned space flight isn't cheap, or easy. If it was, the companies that make rockets to launch satellites would be all over this. To date, the only man-rated orbital vehicles flying people right now are sponsored by governments - and there are all of 3 today - the US, Russia, and China. Some others are getting close. When the shuttle retires, there will be one less. Not a victory for manned space flight in any way, shape or form.
** on that flight... he did get into orbit and even walked on the moon. But his first ride was straight up and down.
Privatization may seem like a good idea, and I hope it will turn out to be. But I doubt it. Right now, the US has one - count them - one man-rated orbital vehicle. That's the shuttle, and it will be ending soon. Without a replacement, the US will be forced to hitch rides in the short term with Russia, maybe even China. In fact, since we've outsourced much of our manufacturing base to China anyway, why not our space program? Well here's why: other countries, maybe even private companies in the future will fly in space. Maybe they'll let the US hitch rides. Maybe not. Either way they won't be building their launchers and space vehicles with US program goals in mind. They'll be building whatever makes sense for them. It may or may not be what makes sense for US goals. So in the end, we'll have an ISS that we continue to pay for - funding for that is in the budget, and no way to get there from the US. Excellent. The Mercury astronauts had it right... No Bucks, No Buck Rogers. We'll continue to send neat probes to other planets. And we'll continue to get amazing pictures. But in the end, people will tire of that too. That'll leave us with No Bucks. When you look back 200 years from now, this will be the moment that people say the US "jumped the shark"...
Wow! A $500 Atom based desktop (monitor sold separately)... For reference, bought a $219 Acer netbook, with Windows and a smallish display (hey, it's a netbook). Now that only came with 1 gig of ram, but for $30 I can swap that to 2 gig. Fails worse that Coakley in MA!!!
Wish I had mod points... referred to my 27 year old brother in law who lives in my basement as Captain Dunsel yesterday... he didn't get it, which was the point of my comment.
... Not to mention the fact that I can't remember the last time I used a battery powered lawnmower on my lap - a place of great concern to me... leaving aside the fact that the whirring blades might not bode well for my lap, I can also say that I would not like a battery to spontaneously combust while using a laptop lawnmower.
I think it would be interesting to see if this thing picks up any sign of ETI... You could make the argument that initial communications for ETI might be in the infrared spectrum, as this is what is required to search for asteroids that might wipe out your home world. Any sufficiently intelligent species should have such an early warning system, indeed - you might see that as a necessary capability for an "intelligent" species.
Slashdot Mirror
How many wheels on a tricycle?
TrueKnowledge.com: 2
Fail.
http://www.trueknowledge.com/q/how_many_wheels_on_a_tricycle
I said that line at work today. The guy I said it to just said "WOPR" in reply...
Sorry, but I've been around too long to buy it. I remember seeing Larry Ellison predict the end of the PC era just as it got going. Literally, I was in the audience, as he described how the NC (Network Computer for those that don't remember) would replace the PC. Conveniently, it was all driven by Oracle. No need for Apple, or Microsoft, or any of their nonsense anymore! And that was in 1998 I think... Remember 1998 folks? You were still using those clunky Netware networks - might have even been on Token Ring still, and you were excited by that new Windows 98 that was coming out that was FINALLY going to fix the problems with Windows 95... me, I was excited about that new fangled phone operating system... Palm OS.
Sorry... Saying that PC's are going to bite it because of the "cloud" is like saying that we have bullet trains now, so you no longer need your car.
(There's your car analogy for those looking for one)
The summary stated that they would take 6% for state and 2% for Fed on each WAGER... That is incorrect... they are taking 6%/2% of your DEPOSIT in the online gaming account. If they took 6%/2% of your WAGERS, you'd be broke in no time!
Given this level of taxation, I'd be in favor, just for the legalization aspect alone... I'm generally not in favor of "feeding the beast" with more tax revenues, but if it gets me legal online gaming, then I'm okay with it.
That's the discussion that I want to see here on slashdot. Wild speculation about what it's mission is. Here is my first shot at it:
- High Tech ASAT machine: ASAT tech (ballistic/laser) weapons mounted in the cargo bay. Makes sense except, why do you need it to come back down... cost of laser perhaps?
- Satellite Stealer: Go up, grab enemy satellite, bring it back down. Deprives enemy of the satellite, and lets you figure out how it works so you can perhaps destroy/disable others like it?
- Special Recon: Allows you to do tactical recon that current fleet of satellites can't do - put it in various different orbits to maximize loiter times?
- Prototype for First Space Fighter: Sure, the Russians already did that, sort of... they had a manned spy satellite with a machine gun on it... and fired it in space (but remotely and unmanned). This would potentially be much better - fit the cargo bay with life support and weapons?
So what is your SWAG as to what this is REALLY for?
Funny thing is, that wasn't a quote from Kirk or Picard... It was Q. And he said it after the Enterprise got carved up by the most vicious villains to come out of Star Trek... The Borg. And it was one of the few times that Q totally beat Picard in an argument.
Of course putting it into context shows that Q was laying down the gauntlet for humanity... He was saying that space exploration will cost lives. Maybe a lot of them. He was calling us out. He was asking us if we have the mettle to do it. Apparently, he's right. We don't. How disappointed he must be!
It is entirely possible that these items are actually PRIVATELY owned now... For instance, the brush that was used on Apollo 14 to clean camera lenses, according to the description, was presented to Fred Haise for his help in the Apollo 14 mission. It says the other astronauts on that mission "gave" it to him. I don't know if they had the right to "give" it to him - our tax dollars paid for the brush, and more importantly, paid to fly it to the moon. But assuming that NASA allowed the astronauts to "have" some of this memorabilia doesn't bother me too much, as these guys put their lives at significant risk. Perhaps this was a form of compensation for that risk? Anyway, from the description, it sounds like the brush belonged PERSONALLY to Fred Haise. If he wants to auction it, or sell it to Big Hoss on Pawn Stars, it's really none of my business, assuming that he came to own the brush legitimately. The same goes for all the other stuff here...
BTW - I want that brush - it has moon dust on it. I won't get it, but that's okay, someone else will, and they'll cherish it in a way the "government" never could. As far as the museum argument - I got to touch a moon rock at the Air and Space Museum... So did everyone else. We got to touch the one part of the rock that wasn't covered in Lucite - a one square inch section, that has been polished down to flat from all that touching. Personally, I'm glad some of this stuff is being preserved in the private sector, where it can't succumb to the tragedy of the commons...
I think the reason he got a stiff sentence (midway between the 15-25 sentencing guideline) was that he got caught TWICE for the same crime. After getting caught the first time, he turned informant, even collecting a $75k salary from the Feds. Meanwhile, he went back to his fraudulent activities and started working an even bigger crime than the one he was originally busted for, and under the Feds noses at that... Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice and I'll throw the book at you.
Census data always becomes public... According to this census data becomes public after 72 years. This is an invaluable resource to those tracing their genealogy. I will be filling out my form fully, but then I'm not an illegal immigrant or a terrorist. I could see why someone in those groups would not want to fill it out. But filling them out provides valuable data today for all kinds of things, from predicting how many students will enroll in your public schools to how many representatives you'll have in local, state, and federal elections.
I bought a GM car in 1998 partly because it had a heads up display. I have to say that it was awesome. For those that are talking about the distraction factor, you shouldn't opine unless you've used one. My display was on a Grand Prix GTP and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't miss that car.
The HUD on that car was done by reflecting an LCD display into the windshield. It displayed way more than just your speed. It gave you the outside temperature (excellent for the season in New England where the temp would be around freezing and it was raining, snowing, or drizzling out). It also showed you what radio station you were on, whether or not your headlights were on, and your blinkers among other things.
But the coolest part of it was when you drove a lonely, 2 lane road at night through the hills or the mountains. In such cases, I would turn my dashboard lighting off completely. I still knew my speed and other info from the HUD, and thus never had to take my eyes away from the road.
But more importantly, when the dashboard lights were off, and it was dark, the road and it's surroundings slowly began to illuminate for me, the same way that a dark room slowly gets brighter when you come in from bright sunlight. After a few minutes, the otherwise completely dark SIDES of the road would begin to glow and you could see the trees and fields far better than with your dash lights on. This saved my life one night...
I was driving on a back road in NH and a deer came dashing out of the woods, and crossed the road in front of me. I was able to see the movement at the side of the road because my eyes had adjusted to the light. I reacted by slowing down early, and this allowed the deer to cross the road before I got to it. Had I seen it just a little later, I probably would have hit it. Either way, at 60mph on a dark road at night, a HUD is your best friend.
One word: NASCAR, Baby!
That's why I copyright all my emails, and encrypt them with the Double ROT 13 Encryption Algorithm. I explicitly say this in my email SIG, and notify the reader that decryption is a violation of the DMCA and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. That way when the ISP or FBI read my email, I will sue them and become rich!
I tend to pick a carrier first, and the phone second. That's because I'm one of the seemingly few people left who actually care whether the phone part works. Verizon has good coverage in the US... Can't speak to Canada, but if you have no complaints about coverage, I'd tend to stay with that carrier. I am also a Verizon customer, and there is no doubt that you pay through the nose for their services, but again, there is that 'wanting my phone to work' thing that I can't seem to get past.
ATT is another obvious choice, with good coverage in the US and likely in Canada as well. You'd have to compare rates on those two carriers. After that, you get into the lesser carriers (IMHO) such as Sprint. Cheaper per month, but for me they had radically worse coverage.
Other considerations would be what the networks are of those you call most - if they are all on Verizon, all those calls are airtime free if you are on Verizon too... Same would go for the other carriers.
Another poster pointed out that you could go with a generic GSM phone and use prepaid sim cards in both countries and tie them together with Google Voice. You'll lose the free minutes thing, so it makes sense to think about how much you call people.
As for the smartphone thing, you can get good smartphones from all the carriers now. They all seem to have blackberries and ATT has the iPhone while Verizon has the Droid. I waited a LONG time for Verizon to offer me a really nice (read: trendy) phone, and now have a Droid and like it very much. I don't want to engage in the whole iPhone/Droid debate... suffice it to say that they are both cool, both very usable, and both are a pleasure to have.
But in summary, I'd say examine the network first, phones second. Then pays the money, whatever it works out to be. The frustration of a big phone bill pales in comparison to a phone/network that doesn't work for you. That is a daily frustration, and the bill only comes once a month.
It's also the beauty of the Imperial system. 1 pound of water = 1 pint... and since beer is mostly water, 1 pint of beer is also 1 pound, and pretty much you can by a beer in England for 1 pound of money... Beat that, Metric System!
Your argument is ridiculous. You only looked at one side of the ledger. Sure, the price of oil goes up in US dollars. But in the kind of inflation you talk about, your home currency will also reflect that US dollar inflation - in other words, your home currency will buy more dollars, and then you can use those inflated dollars to buy oil priced in inflated US dollars.
The same is true of all other commodity items like Gold, Silver, Pork Bellies, and Randolf and Mortimer Duke's favorite - Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice
The phases of programming (and lots of other things) are:
- Disgruntled
- Jaded
- Bitter
- Postal
- Indifferent
The Systems Development Life Cycle can be thusly described:
- Wild Enthusiam
- Beffudlement
- The Disaster
- The Search for the Guilty
- The Punishment of the Innocent
- The Promotion of the Uninvolved
(yes - 45 year old programmer who is now a pointy haired bossman)
They should have gone all in with this one and done Computer Hacker Barbie instead... A black tee shirt that says "1337 h4x0rz pwn j00!", some tatts, purple hair, and black converse hi tops. Keep the nerd glasses though...
So what they are proposing is that we will do lots with relatively small rockets, and anything BIG that is needed can be built piecemeal. That is an approach - the one followed by ISS. The other approach is Skylab. We had a Saturn IVb knocking around, so we built a space station and lofted it up in one shot. Skylab was still probably bigger in total volume than the ISS is today, as it nears completion.
Maybe this new approach will work, and I hope it will. But I believe that it won't. The Mercury astronauts said it best. No Buck Rogers, No Bucks. Without manned spaceflight, we'll mostly turn our attention to unmanned spaceflight, which is cool, and cheap, and makes great discoveries. The public will tire of this too. Robots are good and they can be used successfully, but "boots on the ground" or in this case "boots in space" are also required.
The US has now essentially ceded manned spaceflight to the Russians and the Chinese... just as Spain and Portugal ceded the new world to the English and French. Unless there is a national commitment to a GOAL in manned spaceflight, not much of it will make sense, other than going back and forth to the ISS.
By all means, we should look on the bright side... but the bright side is considerably dimmer now
According to those that want a "government option" for healthcare, there is room for both. In fact, according to their healthcare logic, we HAVE to have both private and government sponsored space programs, otherwise evil, for profit space transportation firms will charge exorbitant costs for space travel, and I think we can all agree that affordable space travel is the right of every American!
The X-Prise was cool and lit imaginations. But don't fool yourself into thinking that it is a substitute for a man-rated ORBITAL system. The X-Prise was to get into space. Straight up and down. Alan Shepard did this as well in the 1960's. It was the FIRST step in the US manned space program. But he didn't get to ORBIT.** And neither did Rutan, and neither will his SpaceShip2. None of it will get you to LEO. Now there are others out there working on private manned, orbital space flight. They're trying to figure out if there is a business model for it - flying really rich people into space and bringing them back down safely, on a budget. Some are working on non-man-rated resupply missions for the ISS. But orbital manned space flight isn't cheap, or easy. If it was, the companies that make rockets to launch satellites would be all over this. To date, the only man-rated orbital vehicles flying people right now are sponsored by governments - and there are all of 3 today - the US, Russia, and China. Some others are getting close. When the shuttle retires, there will be one less. Not a victory for manned space flight in any way, shape or form.
** on that flight... he did get into orbit and even walked on the moon. But his first ride was straight up and down.
Privatization may seem like a good idea, and I hope it will turn out to be. But I doubt it. Right now, the US has one - count them - one man-rated orbital vehicle. That's the shuttle, and it will be ending soon. Without a replacement, the US will be forced to hitch rides in the short term with Russia, maybe even China. In fact, since we've outsourced much of our manufacturing base to China anyway, why not our space program? Well here's why: other countries, maybe even private companies in the future will fly in space. Maybe they'll let the US hitch rides. Maybe not. Either way they won't be building their launchers and space vehicles with US program goals in mind. They'll be building whatever makes sense for them. It may or may not be what makes sense for US goals. So in the end, we'll have an ISS that we continue to pay for - funding for that is in the budget, and no way to get there from the US. Excellent. The Mercury astronauts had it right... No Bucks, No Buck Rogers. We'll continue to send neat probes to other planets. And we'll continue to get amazing pictures. But in the end, people will tire of that too. That'll leave us with No Bucks. When you look back 200 years from now, this will be the moment that people say the US "jumped the shark"...
Wow! A $500 Atom based desktop (monitor sold separately)... For reference, bought a $219 Acer netbook, with Windows and a smallish display (hey, it's a netbook). Now that only came with 1 gig of ram, but for $30 I can swap that to 2 gig. Fails worse that Coakley in MA!!!
Wish I had mod points... referred to my 27 year old brother in law who lives in my basement as Captain Dunsel yesterday... he didn't get it, which was the point of my comment.
... Not to mention the fact that I can't remember the last time I used a battery powered lawnmower on my lap - a place of great concern to me... leaving aside the fact that the whirring blades might not bode well for my lap, I can also say that I would not like a battery to spontaneously combust while using a laptop lawnmower.
I think it would be interesting to see if this thing picks up any sign of ETI... You could make the argument that initial communications for ETI might be in the infrared spectrum, as this is what is required to search for asteroids that might wipe out your home world. Any sufficiently intelligent species should have such an early warning system, indeed - you might see that as a necessary capability for an "intelligent" species.