On (2), I see no problem if humans can get eagle's eyesight and elephant's long life. What's wrong with that? You don't have to make monsters, after all - unless that's what you really want to do;-)
A much longer, healthier life would be a plus too.
As Jesus used to say (more or less): "Every politician who argues against medical research must promise to commit sepukku at the age of 50" - since that's how long people would live without those e-e-e-e-vil doctors...
Let's see how many people would gladly give up the chance of longer life in exchange for their moral values. IMO, any of those who do would be nothing less than a saint.
First, an average movie would be about 1-2 GB if compressed really well. An average broadband user has probably 100-200 kBps download speed on average. This amounts to 3 hours of downloading per movie, at least. Non-geeks probably will be displeased.
Second, the movies have to be purchased ($10 per download, for example) and stored on the HDD. The HDD is either 40 or 80 GB, making it capable of storing anywhere from 20 to 60 movies. What the customer should do after the disk is full?
There are solutions to both problems, though. The bandwidth can be spread between users using BitTorrent, and the customer can be allowed to re-download the same movie at a later time, as long as he presents the same key to the web store.
But for an average user a DVD player and a DVD store and/or rental place work just as well, and with much less hassle. iTunes works because it is easy. But downloading of a movie is anything but easy, at least so far.
Possibly, though, Apple looks far ahead. But if they just wanted to set up a video distribution business they could have released some iFlicks software for Windows, this results in an instantaneous user base, no need to wait for anything built or sold, and they can have the video store running within days.
Come back when Exeem team starts charging you per album downloaded.
What they do is no different from charging for your Internet access, or for the computer that you use. They charge for the tool, but not for the content. The content is still free, and as long as neither eXeem nor you charge your peers for each download you should be OK.
PKI and courier delivery of key material will continue to be the order of the day for quite some time
Unless you want to have a completely secure network of computers. Make a grid out of them and you cover the whole country. Every node will have to be as secure as the origin and destination, but likely these will be the nodes themselves, so no harm done. Also it may be possible to use layers of encryption, so that every node to node link carries message encrypted for some other node, and thus no single breach can reveal the message.
No courier can be as efficient as a country-wide network with near-instantaneous transmission times. Any government, any military would want it.
Given those limitations (which I don't think can be surmounted)
Think outside of the box. Bounce the laser light off of a satellite. Directly communicate with planets and spaceships. That's where most of the communication will be occurring within 100 years.
If you have a ton of sand with some gold nuggets mixed in, it's kinda tedious to manually inspect every grain of sand and throw it away if it doesn't look like gold.
However, it is perfectly reasonable to borrow a large sieve with a water tray - which both work on all the grains simultaneously - and then the job becomes doable in hours.
As I understand it, no one has ever seen Aero outside of Microsoft... Aero is going to be what compels the average user to Longhorn.
Why do you think so if neither yourself, not any of your friends saw the thing? MS sang the same song about their "playskool" class Luna theme, which resulted in exactly nothing.
People will be wanting exactly what they want today (and 1000 years ago) - to communicate in all forms. How exactly the communication is presented to them is secondary. This Aero thing must be really revolutionary in all aspects to be a lure more powerful than just a basic desire of Intraweb and email:-)
And besides, MS will be pitted against itself when vendors will be offering WinXP boxes for $200 and LH boxes for $1000 (given the massive hardware expense that LH needs.) Guess which one will be the winner? And if MS decides to stop WinXP sales to OEMs then it won't get even that revenue because desktop Linux will take its place readily (at least while the box is being sold; who knows what OS will be loaded after the sale.)
I don't debate the quality issue. If you pay for something you expect to get something for your money, be it usefulness, performance or support (or maybe just a pleasant feeling...) The main contribution of OpenOffice is not that it is better (whatever that means), but that it is an alternative, and it is up to you to choose.
IMO, some software can not be really developed within F/OSS model. For example take mechanical CADs (since there was a thread on/. today.) To make anything similar to SolidWorks or AI you need to first fork some $millions over to engine developers, and only then you can start wrapping your own logic and UI on top. This is just too expensive; it would take probably the entire effort that was focused into Linux, and that is not very realistic.
You are not the only one. For me it is much more comfortable to just bring all the papers to them and have them do all the work. It is not worth my time to learn a trade of tax preparer for mere $75 or whatever they charge for a simple return. Besides, if I make a mistake I may end up paying more in late fees than I saved.
It took far more than "two or three years" to switch from CP/M and Lotus to Windows and Excel. And there were earlier mini-computers too, like PDP-11. So we are talking about 10-20 years here. Many programs can be born, used and retired within this time frame.
And besides, there is nothing wrong with reimplementing of commercial software. We have OpenOffice, and who is hurt by that? Nobody, MS included; but now you have more choices.
Businesses take risks and invest into development of new stuff. In return they get to sell the new product, until other people start offering imitations - and some of them will be free; some of them even displace the original product. For example, we do not use light bulbs with carbon filaments, though that's how they were invented. As another example, which browser got the tabbed browsing first? Those who follow the path can afford to look around, and often they see what the first team missed.
Might have something to do with a fact that one electrical grill consumes more power than 20 customers. Businesses don't want to be penny-wise and pound-foolish. This problem exists only in minds of/. editors:-)
The signal power does not decrease with distance, not even a tiny bit, losses in non-vacuum excepted.
What happens, though, is that the wavefront becomes larger , and you have to build antennas also larger to capture the same amount of energy.
But, for example, if you completely surround the transmitter with your antenna then you will reclaim all the transmitted energy. This is one of fundamental principles of the field theory. Mathworld has a very good explanation that leads into Maxwell equations.
Also, the path loss in a given direction does not depend on the antenna.
The article about the book, and about the author, already existed and it was long enough. It was my opinion that expanding it even further makes it unreadable.
The names and places were linked through special pages where ambiguous names can be resolved. I added the proper link, so that is not the problem either.
Most articles can be found only through the search, though I added cross-links in my material. Maybe there is a way to browse the complete index, but with so many articles it is impractical. This is the case with any encyclopedia large enough; you can't just read it from end to end, life is not long enough.
My contribution was on a subject that I know well enough, and I provided links to other Web sites which prove what I said. This didn't help. My contribution was not needed, and if you now wonder what book the $Hero comes from, Wikipedia is no help here. Try Google, it will give you links to Web sites that are designed by persons, not by a committee.
I tried to contribute a couple of new articles about some literary heroes and events. They were immediately deleted by the overseers, who were kind enough to state the reason - "it doesn't belong here." I was surprised - a node in a tree, a page accessible only after you search for it, how could it possibly hurt the project? I haven't been back since.
Slashdot Mirror
It is said that every genius is somewhat mad. So you right indeed.
On (2), I see no problem if humans can get eagle's eyesight and elephant's long life. What's wrong with that? You don't have to make monsters, after all - unless that's what you really want to do ;-)
As Jesus used to say (more or less): "Every politician who argues against medical research must promise to commit sepukku at the age of 50" - since that's how long people would live without those e-e-e-e-vil doctors...
Let's see how many people would gladly give up the chance of longer life in exchange for their moral values. IMO, any of those who do would be nothing less than a saint.
Second, the movies have to be purchased ($10 per download, for example) and stored on the HDD. The HDD is either 40 or 80 GB, making it capable of storing anywhere from 20 to 60 movies. What the customer should do after the disk is full?
There are solutions to both problems, though. The bandwidth can be spread between users using BitTorrent, and the customer can be allowed to re-download the same movie at a later time, as long as he presents the same key to the web store.
But for an average user a DVD player and a DVD store and/or rental place work just as well, and with much less hassle. iTunes works because it is easy. But downloading of a movie is anything but easy, at least so far.
Possibly, though, Apple looks far ahead. But if they just wanted to set up a video distribution business they could have released some iFlicks software for Windows, this results in an instantaneous user base, no need to wait for anything built or sold, and they can have the video store running within days.
Come back when Exeem team starts charging you per album downloaded.
What they do is no different from charging for your Internet access, or for the computer that you use. They charge for the tool, but not for the content. The content is still free, and as long as neither eXeem nor you charge your peers for each download you should be OK.
A contractor can send you a blank CD, collect his 50% and never ever be heard from again.
Unless you want to have a completely secure network of computers. Make a grid out of them and you cover the whole country. Every node will have to be as secure as the origin and destination, but likely these will be the nodes themselves, so no harm done. Also it may be possible to use layers of encryption, so that every node to node link carries message encrypted for some other node, and thus no single breach can reveal the message.
No courier can be as efficient as a country-wide network with near-instantaneous transmission times. Any government, any military would want it.
Think outside of the box. Bounce the laser light off of a satellite. Directly communicate with planets and spaceships. That's where most of the communication will be occurring within 100 years.
However, it is perfectly reasonable to borrow a large sieve with a water tray - which both work on all the grains simultaneously - and then the job becomes doable in hours.
Why do you think so if neither yourself, not any of your friends saw the thing? MS sang the same song about their "playskool" class Luna theme, which resulted in exactly nothing.
People will be wanting exactly what they want today (and 1000 years ago) - to communicate in all forms. How exactly the communication is presented to them is secondary. This Aero thing must be really revolutionary in all aspects to be a lure more powerful than just a basic desire of Intraweb and email :-)
And besides, MS will be pitted against itself when vendors will be offering WinXP boxes for $200 and LH boxes for $1000 (given the massive hardware expense that LH needs.) Guess which one will be the winner? And if MS decides to stop WinXP sales to OEMs then it won't get even that revenue because desktop Linux will take its place readily (at least while the box is being sold; who knows what OS will be loaded after the sale.)
IMO, some software can not be really developed within F/OSS model. For example take mechanical CADs (since there was a thread on /. today.) To make anything similar to SolidWorks or AI you need to first fork some $millions over to engine developers, and only then you can start wrapping your own logic and UI on top. This is just too expensive; it would take probably the entire effort that was focused into Linux, and that is not very realistic.
You are not the only one. For me it is much more comfortable to just bring all the papers to them and have them do all the work. It is not worth my time to learn a trade of tax preparer for mere $75 or whatever they charge for a simple return. Besides, if I make a mistake I may end up paying more in late fees than I saved.
And besides, there is nothing wrong with reimplementing of commercial software. We have OpenOffice, and who is hurt by that? Nobody, MS included; but now you have more choices.
Businesses take risks and invest into development of new stuff. In return they get to sell the new product, until other people start offering imitations - and some of them will be free; some of them even displace the original product. For example, we do not use light bulbs with carbon filaments, though that's how they were invented. As another example, which browser got the tabbed browsing first? Those who follow the path can afford to look around, and often they see what the first team missed.
The antenna in the kit was probably offering -20 dB gain (even if matched.) This way a plain vanilla dipole would be equivalent to a EME Yagi :-)
Might have something to do with a fact that one electrical grill consumes more power than 20 customers. Businesses don't want to be penny-wise and pound-foolish. This problem exists only in minds of /. editors :-)
What happens, though, is that the wavefront becomes larger , and you have to build antennas also larger to capture the same amount of energy.
But, for example, if you completely surround the transmitter with your antenna then you will reclaim all the transmitted energy. This is one of fundamental principles of the field theory. Mathworld has a very good explanation that leads into Maxwell equations.
Also, the path loss in a given direction does not depend on the antenna.
The article about the book, and about the author, already existed and it was long enough. It was my opinion that expanding it even further makes it unreadable.
The names and places were linked through special pages where ambiguous names can be resolved. I added the proper link, so that is not the problem either.
Most articles can be found only through the search, though I added cross-links in my material. Maybe there is a way to browse the complete index, but with so many articles it is impractical. This is the case with any encyclopedia large enough; you can't just read it from end to end, life is not long enough.
My contribution was on a subject that I know well enough, and I provided links to other Web sites which prove what I said. This didn't help. My contribution was not needed, and if you now wonder what book the $Hero comes from, Wikipedia is no help here. Try Google, it will give you links to Web sites that are designed by persons, not by a committee.
I tried to contribute a couple of new articles about some literary heroes and events. They were immediately deleted by the overseers, who were kind enough to state the reason - "it doesn't belong here." I was surprised - a node in a tree, a page accessible only after you search for it, how could it possibly hurt the project? I haven't been back since.
They got a better reason on 1/28/1986 ...
Just use a different whip.
That's how evolution works...
No surprise - those stone tablets probably were too heavy for him to start with...
No need to wait, one object hit Earth just a moment ago (I dropped my keys.)
No, can't say more - NDA.
One out of hundreds.