Shaving? Out to fight for your country.. and looking awesome.
Towlettes for wiping? Thats new to me.
Food prep? Coffee? thats even more luxurious than my life, all in addition to the paycheck.
If its WAR, its getting people to go and fight. Heck even uniforms are considered too formal, expensive and luxurious for armies in Afghanistan. Youre going to a place where either you or the other person will die. This becomes a matter of life and death. You dont shave, browse the web, drink coffee and watch movies along the way. The survival of the state is also usually at stake, so the soldiers just get by with food, some water (1-2 pints, they usually find more along the way) and MAYBE more shoes if the war drags along for too long.
When the US went to afghanistan to help the 'allied' soldiers, all they were asking for were ammo and shoes. The US gave em nike shoes which you later saw in the time magazines on turbaned men fighting thousands of dediated Taliban, who were much better armed and fed.
The western armies currently are more for foreign policies than actual state war and defence. Soldiers from the US can expect 'peacekeeping' missions in okinawa, kuwait, uzbekistan, italy, germany etc. Theyre just travelling somewhere for the US to make a point. Frequently theyre going to operate computers and tools to work the heavy machinery. Infantry isnt what it used to be.
But for the majority of the worlds armies, its just the survival basics so they wont raze and loot the towns they pass through. They just invest in good weapons. 40 gallons per day IMHO are similar to the US's fuel consumption ratio. Most of it is not needed and just luxury (job perks).
"needs about 20 gallons of water a day, for all purposes"
We all know US soldiers are spoilt, but 20 gallons is rediculous. Did the world war 1 solders shower daily? Did the Civil war veterans need Jacuzzis? Its crappy food and rationed water for all other armies, bathe when you run across a river.
"But once you taste the water, you realize the potential."
I'll probably realize the potential too. In fact once I taste THAT water, I'll probably invest in nortel and place advanced orders on Duke Nukem Forever as well.
It'd be fun to see ads of Coca Cola and even stuff like Marlboro in Counterstrike and WarcraftIII. Maybe travel insurance billboards in Flight sim games, and NRA in GTA3 and counterstrike.
They COULD release 2 versions of games, a cheaper one with ads and expensive without ads, just like cable TV. Slashdotters will stop complaining and everyone will just buy the cheaper one.
I strongly support ads in games. They can really make games cheaper. In time I think they'll make games free. Think of most yahoo and google services. Google isnt posting satellite pictures and petabytes of data storage for the sake of philanthropy. Their ad jobs really pay off, see how big google is now?
Dude youve got it so wrong I dont know what to say. Youve read books and magazines you say?
I write code at work for various things, and then at home for various projects. The only programming books I ever read were an original UNIX K&R C guide and and another Book simply named C. I never read all of the book.
You should read enough to produce a hello world. Even better, just enough till you can find a sample Hello World program that you can alter.
The secret is, you have to have the tools installed on your computer and just GO at it. Need to improve yourself? Join the free software projects, start contributing patches. That way youll be exposed to more good and bad quality code than what you can fit in Britannica.
I never really GOT the whole theory of a 'programming book'. Its like asking for an audio tutorial on how to watch TV. Or showing a TV program to babies on how to walk.
I recently started programming PIC MCUs. First step, I BOUGHT a PIC MCU and programmer. Then I downloaded the datasheets, read the architecture overview and found a hello world type program. Altering that taught me alot, much faster than a book can, and it was interesting all the way.
Years ago I got interested in programming when I was just taking a programming class just for fun (GWBASIC) and realized that I could draw airplanes with code. If they left me with a book, I'd probably be an accountant now. Dont forget the motivation factor that plain old books can just kill.
Or you could try a tape drive, but large DLT tapes can be expensive.
I saw an automatic DVD changer. Its a robotic library that can automatically select one dvd out of 200 and load it. Thats 800GB. Get a DVD burner and one of these babies. Got more money? Get a large chassis and just add 500GB hitachi drives as you need them.
So I guess eventually you're back to just buying the largest harddrives, the least expensive and most convenient thing next to cutting down on fat in your collection.
I dont know what PC means in this sense, but the local hardware machine will always have more bandwidth than whats available online, and so will always be more capable than what is online.
We've seen that in games. Online games are now quite sophisticated, but local run games have advanced much further. This gap will always remain. I've wondered about terminal services games, where the games are entirely run on servers, which have their own GPU farms, and the subscriber sees the game online at the full resolution and refresh rates (given the online bandwidth allows this). This way the subscriber might have a dumb terminal which might as well be a tv with a keyboard, and have pay per view access to any game, movie or application in the world. This should require staggering bandwidth, and even then the computers will be more advanced and capable, so new applications will require a local machine.
PCs in the sense of wintel machines are hardly different from other workstations now. The original PC was limited in their OS, graphics, internal bandwidths etc. But additional bolted on technologies have actually given PCs an edge. GPUs from ATI and nVidia, SATA harddrives, PCIX, DDR2 ram, 64-bit instruction set, MPU capability, OSes like BSD and Linux and now Solaris have blurred the lines between all workstations. Buying a PC now is the same as buying any workstation, only cheaper with more software base, OS options, hardware options and tech expertise. It is buying a Sun machine now that is not feasible, putting base CPU and OS architecture quality aside.
We can already run applications over the web, which are run on the server and the bandwidth is sufficient to deliver the app. Think of any citrix app, or web apps. We cant run ALL apps online yet. Maybe thats why Sun with their web-centric view isnt making a profit yet.
Am I the only one who thought the harddisk could be repaced with this? A minimal windows + office install easily fits 16gb. Ideally with no swap file given enough ram. Additional software may be run off a shared folder.
And if the windows (or linux) installation contains enough drivers, you could have a USB2.0 flash drive with 16 or 32GB space and carry the whole os around.
I know this is easier with knoppix on usb, but I'm thinking big, with the current windows install base. This can do wonders for the corporate maintenance until linux is ready for the desktop.
I've always thought the whole idea of antivirus was bad. Prevention is better than cure for one; and file recovery like ghost is always more effective.
Why not pile more platters like in the XT days to produce terabyte-plus drives already? They could even add a parity platter and RAID the whole system that way.
Include tax, shipping and covert it to CDN its over $100. All for a keyboard with no writing on it. Heck I could do that with the cheap dell keyboards and some thinner.
"that you'll need to use a command line now and again, or edit the Windows registry"
Not too true. I havent touched the command line in XP for a long time. Except for quickly checking the network settings (ipconfig). Come to think of it, theres no 'quick' way to view the full network settings in KDE or GNOME either.
"you need to put in a CD or DVD, press the enter button, give your computer a name, and enter a password for the administrator account"
As a heavy knoppix user, I can tell you I frequently run into hardware for which Linux has either no drivers or crashing drivers. Thats because hardware vendors write drivers only for windows. But the point stays, that you'll probably have to massage Linux more post-installation for your hardware than Windows. Think ATM, arcnet, tokenring or simple VPN settings. Think switching resolution, refresh rates and the plethora of USB hardware.
"with Windows, all you have to do is put in a CD or DVD, do all the above, and then immediately download all the available patches"
For most Linux distributions I've had to add some kind of patches after installation. For most other UNIX OS too. Patches come with any OS. For windows doing that is more critical, but can I dare say less painful? It takes at least me less time to patch windows.
"most Linux systems only come with secure Web browsers, like Firefox; e-mail clients, like Evolution; IM clients, like GAIM; office suites, like OpenOffice.org 2.0; Web page editors, like Nvu; and on, and on, and"
OK you cannot use this. Like AT ALL. Application base is the single biggest reason why the market isnt 100% Linux. It is the single biggest reason why Gates isnt a pauper. Its the single biggest reason why I am and probably you are running Windows (at least on another partition). There are countless little apps that you NEED and have to boot back into windows. Ask the mac people the pain in the ass it is when that critical tax or real estate software doesnt run for them. This is the single biggest reason why mac lovers switch to PC too. Dont use this.
"with Windows you get so many more choices of software, don't you? Like Lotus 1-2... oh really? I didn't know that. Or, WordPerfect... oh, pretty much dead too"
Lotus is one of two reasons why my company cannot goto Linux. Lotus isnt dead. In the corporate where it matters so much, and where IT guys know about Linux, Lotus is a major force for Windows. Maybe youve been working at all those companies where they use Outlook, and hire an extra hand to disinfect machines.
"Reason number 4: Linux isn't secure If Microsoft says so, it has to be true!"
I dont care what Microsoft says. A Linux box of mine was broken into. It was a default install of redhat 7. Taught me NEVER to blindly support an OS. Leave both weak theyll be broken into. Leave both secure, youre good. For Windows it takes much less time, but the rules are the same for both. Linux is popular enough for crackers to scan IPs and attack Linux. FWIW:they had used samba and sendmail overflow bugs to crack in. All because I hadnt patched the OS right after I installed it.
"Reason number 5: Linux is more expensive"
How much does an IT guy get paid per hour? How much time does it take to install, patch, configure Windows on one machine? How much time does it take to install,patch,configure Linux on one machine? Consider hardware that might not be supported, or beta drivers present. Now multiply the time difference with the IT hourly pay.
Next take the $$ difference between that Linux distro and Windows. Which one is bigger?
Does this mean the more the IT guy is getting paid the more he should choose Windows?
I first used Slackware in 96, and have been finding ways to get Linux to live with Windows, or to replace Windows everywhere. However, I've grown out of the fanboy stage. Experience with all kinds of Linux, OSX, BSD, Windows weaknesses have taught me things. I now consider only the OS that fits the bill and gets the job done for the minimal $$$ for the company/customer. Yes I did once try to shove Linux down a customers throat while it was not ready for prime time. It blew in my face. Experience teaches you things.
By definition there cannot be ice-free Arctic. Therefore, the Arctic will shrink, and we'll see more of subarctic Tundra. Even the Tundra will disappear in time because Tundra has to have ice underneath, and constant over-0 temps will heat the ground below. So we'll see forests creep upward.
All a part of geological cycles. Why is this news?
60% of all American children play games. Or all western children etc.
Also gotta define the age of a 'child' and make SURE little girls are included.
Also define a game. Flash shooters that say you'll win an ipod? Clicking them takes 2 seconds. Is that a 'hit' in this study?
I suspect the vast majority of kids in India and China (even Russia) do not play games daily. I strongly suspect the vast majority of African and Papuan children do not play games daily. So I highly suspect this statistic as it is stated.
Because Linux the community (and BSD too) are a large group of developers in their basements (and various other rooms) submitting code online cleanly, fast and with no risks. No risk of a crashed aircraft, no risk of getting your passport lost, no risk of getting SARS from China or measles from India.
I wonder if such travel expenditures by MSFT execs add to the final cost of the product. I wonder also if their insurance costs (which cover healthcare to deal with things like these) also add to the products cost. Thinking of that, I wonder who pays for Alan Cox's insurance, and what happens when the many kids in their garages get sick.
I dont get why RAID isnt itself integrated into the disk. Instead of just a disk, vendors could sell a metadisk, into which you plug in other disks and the metadisk itself has an IDE or SATA plug, so ordiniary computers could just see it as a disk. Even better, seperate the chips on the disk from the platter structure, so you'd have a standard looking disk, only with two sealed containers instead of one. Should the platters in one 'container' go bad, replace it. The other half will just keep running.
It was 1996 for me. We (3 friends) ordered the Infomagic Linux pack of redhat, slackware and debian. Since it was the first time, none of us actually could install Linux, and I tried both redhat and debian before stalling. Managed to install Slackware 3.0 or something finally. It was the only Linux distro that made sense, and didnt try to be so smart that we couldnt work it.
I just couldnt believe anyone could give out UNIX for free.
" an astronaut living on a space station could be award "wings" for some accomplishment of other, having never travelled in an atmosphere himself."
He'd have to travel through the atmosphere, and quite spectacularly, to GET to space.
Apart from wings, its a strong symbol and very american at that too. What do you want? Buzz Aldrin gets his Exhaust Tail? Neil Armstrong gets his Nosecone?
'Wings' give you the ability to fly, to leave the ground and go far above; conceptually. I wonder if space elevator travellers will be able to get their 'wings' or their pilots license; probably not.
If the current laptops could run for 20+ hours on the current batteries, this will be a non-issue. It will be even less of a non-issue when laptops can run off solar power.
OTOH, should batteries change, you have a whole lot of electrical/chemical issues that come with high amperage, including temperatures high enough to fry your lap. Of course theres a huge demand for high power batteries in the industry. But batteries have changed little and will change little (NiCD was invented in 1899), while moore's law is still working making chips more powerful (or smaller for the same power) much faster than batteries can change, so the focus remains on the silicon.
Slashdot Mirror
What?
Shaving? Out to fight for your country.. and looking awesome.
Towlettes for wiping? Thats new to me.
Food prep? Coffee? thats even more luxurious than my life, all in addition to the paycheck.
If its WAR, its getting people to go and fight. Heck even uniforms are considered too formal, expensive and luxurious for armies in Afghanistan. Youre going to a place where either you or the other person will die. This becomes a matter of life and death. You dont shave, browse the web, drink coffee and watch movies along the way. The survival of the state is also usually at stake, so the soldiers just get by with food, some water (1-2 pints, they usually find more along the way) and MAYBE more shoes if the war drags along for too long.
When the US went to afghanistan to help the 'allied' soldiers, all they were asking for were ammo and shoes. The US gave em nike shoes which you later saw in the time magazines on turbaned men fighting thousands of dediated Taliban, who were much better armed and fed.
The western armies currently are more for foreign policies than actual state war and defence. Soldiers from the US can expect 'peacekeeping' missions in okinawa, kuwait, uzbekistan, italy, germany etc. Theyre just travelling somewhere for the US to make a point. Frequently theyre going to operate computers and tools to work the heavy machinery. Infantry isnt what it used to be.
But for the majority of the worlds armies, its just the survival basics so they wont raze and loot the towns they pass through. They just invest in good weapons. 40 gallons per day IMHO are similar to the US's fuel consumption ratio. Most of it is not needed and just luxury (job perks).
"needs about 20 gallons of water a day, for all purposes"
We all know US soldiers are spoilt, but 20 gallons is rediculous. Did the world war 1 solders shower daily? Did the Civil war veterans need Jacuzzis? Its crappy food and rationed water for all other armies, bathe when you run across a river.
"But once you taste the water, you realize the potential."
I'll probably realize the potential too. In fact once I taste THAT water, I'll probably invest in nortel and place advanced orders on Duke Nukem Forever as well.
It'd be fun to see ads of Coca Cola and even stuff like Marlboro in Counterstrike and WarcraftIII. Maybe travel insurance billboards in Flight sim games, and NRA in GTA3 and counterstrike.
They COULD release 2 versions of games, a cheaper one with ads and expensive without ads, just like cable TV. Slashdotters will stop complaining and everyone will just buy the cheaper one.
I strongly support ads in games. They can really make games cheaper. In time I think they'll make games free. Think of most yahoo and google services. Google isnt posting satellite pictures and petabytes of data storage for the sake of philanthropy. Their ad jobs really pay off, see how big google is now?
Dude youve got it so wrong I dont know what to say. Youve read books and magazines you say?
I write code at work for various things, and then at home for various projects. The only programming books I ever read were an original UNIX K&R C guide and and another Book simply named C. I never read all of the book.
You should read enough to produce a hello world. Even better, just enough till you can find a sample Hello World program that you can alter.
The secret is, you have to have the tools installed on your computer and just GO at it. Need to improve yourself? Join the free software projects, start contributing patches. That way youll be exposed to more good and bad quality code than what you can fit in Britannica.
I never really GOT the whole theory of a 'programming book'. Its like asking for an audio tutorial on how to watch TV. Or showing a TV program to babies on how to walk.
I recently started programming PIC MCUs. First step, I BOUGHT a PIC MCU and programmer. Then I downloaded the datasheets, read the architecture overview and found a hello world type program. Altering that taught me alot, much faster than a book can, and it was interesting all the way.
Years ago I got interested in programming when I was just taking a programming class just for fun (GWBASIC) and realized that I could draw airplanes with code. If they left me with a book, I'd probably be an accountant now. Dont forget the motivation factor that plain old books can just kill.
Your harddrive will be nearly empty.
Or you could try a tape drive, but large DLT tapes can be expensive.
I saw an automatic DVD changer. Its a robotic library that can automatically select one dvd out of 200 and load it. Thats 800GB. Get a DVD burner and one of these babies. Got more money? Get a large chassis and just add 500GB hitachi drives as you need them.
So I guess eventually you're back to just buying the largest harddrives, the least expensive and most convenient thing next to cutting down on fat in your collection.
Their management must really have something against their customers.
I dont know what PC means in this sense, but the local hardware machine will always have more bandwidth than whats available online, and so will always be more capable than what is online.
We've seen that in games. Online games are now quite sophisticated, but local run games have advanced much further. This gap will always remain. I've wondered about terminal services games, where the games are entirely run on servers, which have their own GPU farms, and the subscriber sees the game online at the full resolution and refresh rates (given the online bandwidth allows this). This way the subscriber might have a dumb terminal which might as well be a tv with a keyboard, and have pay per view access to any game, movie or application in the world. This should require staggering bandwidth, and even then the computers will be more advanced and capable, so new applications will require a local machine.
PCs in the sense of wintel machines are hardly different from other workstations now. The original PC was limited in their OS, graphics, internal bandwidths etc. But additional bolted on technologies have actually given PCs an edge. GPUs from ATI and nVidia, SATA harddrives, PCIX, DDR2 ram, 64-bit instruction set, MPU capability, OSes like BSD and Linux and now Solaris have blurred the lines between all workstations. Buying a PC now is the same as buying any workstation, only cheaper with more software base, OS options, hardware options and tech expertise. It is buying a Sun machine now that is not feasible, putting base CPU and OS architecture quality aside.
We can already run applications over the web, which are run on the server and the bandwidth is sufficient to deliver the app. Think of any citrix app, or web apps. We cant run ALL apps online yet. Maybe thats why Sun with their web-centric view isnt making a profit yet.
News:
Robert kills 25,000 in New Orleans while Adolf uproots trees in Toronto.
"It seems it's really all about the money"
You are so new to this universe.
Am I the only one who thought the harddisk could be repaced with this? A minimal windows + office install easily fits 16gb. Ideally with no swap file given enough ram. Additional software may be run off a shared folder.
And if the windows (or linux) installation contains enough drivers, you could have a USB2.0 flash drive with 16 or 32GB space and carry the whole os around.
I know this is easier with knoppix on usb, but I'm thinking big, with the current windows install base. This can do wonders for the corporate maintenance until linux is ready for the desktop.
I've always thought the whole idea of antivirus was bad. Prevention is better than cure for one; and file recovery like ghost is always more effective.
But the mistake of user education was funny.
Why not pile more platters like in the XT days to produce terabyte-plus drives already? They could even add a parity platter and RAID the whole system that way.
And add an iPod adapter too.
Is its pricetag. $79.
Include tax, shipping and covert it to CDN its over $100. All for a keyboard with no writing on it. Heck I could do that with the cheap dell keyboards and some thinner.
Qmail is best. Preferably on a FreeBSD server. So hard to kill it in any way.
Get a server with RAIDed SCSI disks preferably hot-pluggable. Install FreeBSD, Qmail and other packages you might need as you go.
Ideally keep the emails in a Maildir format.
I dont know where the Novell idea came from.
She is learning the lesson from New Orleans.
And from the tsunami. Scary times.
"that you'll need to use a command line now and again, or edit the Windows registry"
Not too true. I havent touched the command line in XP for a long time. Except for quickly checking the network settings (ipconfig). Come to think of it, theres no 'quick' way to view the full network settings in KDE or GNOME either.
"you need to put in a CD or DVD, press the enter button, give your computer a name, and enter a password for the administrator account"
As a heavy knoppix user, I can tell you I frequently run into hardware for which Linux has either no drivers or crashing drivers. Thats because hardware vendors write drivers only for windows. But the point stays, that you'll probably have to massage Linux more post-installation for your hardware than Windows. Think ATM, arcnet, tokenring or simple VPN settings. Think switching resolution, refresh rates and the plethora of USB hardware.
"with Windows, all you have to do is put in a CD or DVD, do all the above, and then immediately download all the available patches"
For most Linux distributions I've had to add some kind of patches after installation. For most other UNIX OS too. Patches come with any OS. For windows doing that is more critical, but can I dare say less painful? It takes at least me less time to patch windows.
"most Linux systems only come with secure Web browsers, like Firefox; e-mail clients, like Evolution; IM clients, like GAIM; office suites, like OpenOffice.org 2.0; Web page editors, like Nvu; and on, and on, and"
OK you cannot use this. Like AT ALL. Application base is the single biggest reason why the market isnt 100% Linux. It is the single biggest reason why Gates isnt a pauper. Its the single biggest reason why I am and probably you are running Windows (at least on another partition). There are countless little apps that you NEED and have to boot back into windows. Ask the mac people the pain in the ass it is when that critical tax or real estate software doesnt run for them. This is the single biggest reason why mac lovers switch to PC too. Dont use this.
"with Windows you get so many more choices of software, don't you? Like Lotus 1-2... oh really? I didn't know that. Or, WordPerfect... oh, pretty much dead too"
Lotus is one of two reasons why my company cannot goto Linux. Lotus isnt dead. In the corporate where it matters so much, and where IT guys know about Linux, Lotus is a major force for Windows. Maybe youve been working at all those companies where they use Outlook, and hire an extra hand to disinfect machines.
"Reason number 4: Linux isn't secure
If Microsoft says so, it has to be true!"
I dont care what Microsoft says. A Linux box of mine was broken into. It was a default install of redhat 7. Taught me NEVER to blindly support an OS. Leave both weak theyll be broken into. Leave both secure, youre good. For Windows it takes much less time, but the rules are the same for both. Linux is popular enough for crackers to scan IPs and attack Linux. FWIW:they had used samba and sendmail overflow bugs to crack in. All because I hadnt patched the OS right after I installed it.
"Reason number 5: Linux is more expensive"
How much does an IT guy get paid per hour? How much time does it take to install, patch, configure Windows on one machine? How much time does it take to install,patch,configure Linux on one machine? Consider hardware that might not be supported, or beta drivers present. Now multiply the time difference with the IT hourly pay.
Next take the $$ difference between that Linux distro and Windows. Which one is bigger?
Does this mean the more the IT guy is getting paid the more he should choose Windows?
I first used Slackware in 96, and have been finding ways to get Linux to live with Windows, or to replace Windows everywhere. However, I've grown out of the fanboy stage. Experience with all kinds of Linux, OSX, BSD, Windows weaknesses have taught me things. I now consider only the OS that fits the bill and gets the job done for the minimal $$$ for the company/customer. Yes I did once try to shove Linux down a customers throat while it was not ready for prime time. It blew in my face. Experience teaches you things.
By definition there cannot be ice-free Arctic. Therefore, the Arctic will shrink, and we'll see more of subarctic Tundra. Even the Tundra will disappear in time because Tundra has to have ice underneath, and constant over-0 temps will heat the ground below. So we'll see forests creep upward.
All a part of geological cycles. Why is this news?
60% of all American children play games. Or all western children etc.
Also gotta define the age of a 'child' and make SURE little girls are included.
Also define a game. Flash shooters that say you'll win an ipod? Clicking them takes 2 seconds. Is that a 'hit' in this study?
I suspect the vast majority of kids in India and China (even Russia) do not play games daily. I strongly suspect the vast majority of African and Papuan children do not play games daily. So I highly suspect this statistic as it is stated.
Microsoft gets infected with a virus.
Linux cant. And guess why.
Because Linux the community (and BSD too) are a large group of developers in their basements (and various other rooms) submitting code online cleanly, fast and with no risks. No risk of a crashed aircraft, no risk of getting your passport lost, no risk of getting SARS from China or measles from India.
I wonder if such travel expenditures by MSFT execs add to the final cost of the product. I wonder also if their insurance costs (which cover healthcare to deal with things like these) also add to the products cost. Thinking of that, I wonder who pays for Alan Cox's insurance, and what happens when the many kids in their garages get sick.
I dont get why RAID isnt itself integrated into the disk. Instead of just a disk, vendors could sell a metadisk, into which you plug in other disks and the metadisk itself has an IDE or SATA plug, so ordiniary computers could just see it as a disk. Even better, seperate the chips on the disk from the platter structure, so you'd have a standard looking disk, only with two sealed containers instead of one. Should the platters in one 'container' go bad, replace it. The other half will just keep running.
It was 1996 for me. We (3 friends) ordered the Infomagic Linux pack of redhat, slackware and debian. Since it was the first time, none of us actually could install Linux, and I tried both redhat and debian before stalling. Managed to install Slackware 3.0 or something finally. It was the only Linux distro that made sense, and didnt try to be so smart that we couldnt work it.
I just couldnt believe anyone could give out UNIX for free.
" an astronaut living on a space station could be award "wings" for some accomplishment of other, having never travelled in an atmosphere himself."
He'd have to travel through the atmosphere, and quite spectacularly, to GET to space.
Apart from wings, its a strong symbol and very american at that too. What do you want? Buzz Aldrin gets his Exhaust Tail? Neil Armstrong gets his Nosecone?
'Wings' give you the ability to fly, to leave the ground and go far above; conceptually. I wonder if space elevator travellers will be able to get their 'wings' or their pilots license; probably not.
If the current laptops could run for 20+ hours on the current batteries, this will be a non-issue. It will be even less of a non-issue when laptops can run off solar power.
OTOH, should batteries change, you have a whole lot of electrical/chemical issues that come with high amperage, including temperatures high enough to fry your lap. Of course theres a huge demand for high power batteries in the industry. But batteries have changed little and will change little (NiCD was invented in 1899), while moore's law is still working making chips more powerful (or smaller for the same power) much faster than batteries can change, so the focus remains on the silicon.
Use Lotus Notes? Flightsims? Win32 ERP software? win32 tax software? win32 realestate software? Easy access to Active directory? Rdesktop server? use nforce network card? electronic cad software? autocad? adobe photoshop?
This is what I noticed I used last week. I can come up with a bigger list but we're talking 10 days so I'll stop here.
Did I mention everything that requires Directx?