Hrm, please provide references for your "Saving the Third World requires gigawatts" estimate.
One of the primary goals of most people who look to develop tech for improving quality of life in the third world is to find ways to increase efficiency so that the "gigawatts" you reference aren't needed. The first world has been spoiled by it's wealth and access to cheap energy (both mostly due to work done in the last few centuries to subjugate the rest of the world, thus creating the third world). People who don't have access to something at all are much more willing to put up with, what people in the first world would consider, inconveniences in order to get it. The idea is that a family in Haiti would be willing to put up with the inconvenience of only having a single, bare, LED bulb for their shack as opposed to the risk of burning to death using an oil lamp, candle, or open fire for light.
I realize that for most people in the first world its hard to imaging having to make that trade-off. For me, it would be unthinkable that I'd have to use anything less than a raft of high lumen light fixtures with diffusers/shades to completely light my living space. I'll gladly replace my incandescent with high efficiency compact fluorescents, but I would never think of downgrading the brightness. Likewise, I would consider it barbaric to have to install oil lamps/torches in my home for light. Of course, I'm not the target market for this product.
Ah, yes. But if you were actually a member of his target audience (dirt poor people in countries like Haiti making $2-$4 per day) then you couldn't afford that fancy $3000 turbine in your wildest dreams. Smaller, more affordable turbines grow dramatically less efficient due to friction forces at small sizes. In order to actually make your point valid, you'd have to find a wind turbine of the same wattage range that is cheaper.
The whole point here is very specific. Poor people, like the ones in Haiti don't have many things that need electricity. The problem is, the only source of light they have is fire based causing an increases risk of burning to death in a hovel fire. The problem is compounded by the fact that third world shanty towns usually don't have much in the way of municipal fire codes. Assuming LED bulbs come down in price far enough (which the look to do eventually) they have the energy efficiency needed to run off this thing, the ruggedness to last in that kind of environment, and the long life to make themselves truly economical. They could, completely, replace oil lamps, candles, and other fire based light sources. It has the added bonus of eliminating one of the motivating factors in the deforestation of Haiti, which, in turn, is one of the reasons they've had such horrible flooding in this last hurricane.
This thing still has a lot of things to prove before it can be said to be useful (durability is one of them) but cost/watt isn't an issue for the application being envisioned. As for first-world applications he can use to fund his third-world goal, he just has to look long enough for similar places where a microturbine might have, otherwise, been the only option.
Well, I don't know the full answer to your question but, in the case of Daedalus, the plan involved throwing actual nuclear bombs out the back of the spaceship. That would, most definitely, have violated the treaty.
"Intel architected its new line of high-performance solid-state drives..."
I'm not normally a grammer nazi, but this one has me curious. Is "architected" actualy a word? I'm american, could it be a different dialect (british, ausie, etc.)? It's also possible that the Intel employee quoted isn't a native english speaker but I'd love for someone to clarify.
Their upload bandwidth is severely constricted because they choose to make it severely constricted. The cable ISP hardware doesn't force them to provide asynchronous service or tell them how to apportion it in the event they do. My ISP, example, has decided to limit my upload bandwidth at ~385kb/s. At least, that's what they advertise.
In any event, the node is supposed to have a much higher bandwidth available to it than any individual user has access to. In a world where the ISPs weren't crooks, they would have enough bandwidth per node to provide their full advertised bandwidth to every user attached to that node 24/7 (since they advertise it as "unlimited", and no I don't thing vague fine print about "acceptable use" absolves them of that responsibility). Barring that, they should have a conservative amount of oversell. Of course, most ISPs have absurd amounts of oversell to the point of having to employ invasive and overbearing practices like Comcast's in order to provide even a somewhat reasonable quality of service to their customers.
They sold me a connection, for unlimited use, that they rate at ~385kb/s. That means I should be able to run a server and put out close to 385kb/s 24/7. I'm a realist. I know that that isn't the way the world, presently, works and I don't expect the ISPs to change, that radically, over night. But, there's no reason that the system Comcast just described couldn't be used to limit the upload usage in the same manner. The problem is that, long ago, most ISP adopted a policy of simply blocking all outgoing communication on ports designated for web and e-mail servers while also adopting arbitrary terms in their TOS banning "servers". If you think about it, that's not so different from what Comcast was doing to P2P except it's worse because Comcast didn't block all P2P communication while most ISPs block all web/e-mail servers.
Really, it's as much a marketing/business problem as it is a network one. American ISPs like to sell Internet access under the illusion that it's unlimited (un-metered). At the same time, they are in a race with each other to advertise huge max bandwidth numbers. They need to be forced to drop the false advertising claims unless they're willing to, actually, provide the service. There's no reason we couldn't go to a tiered system or a metered system. But, whichever system we adopt, it needs to be an honest system.
Since the FCC has made it clear that ISPs shouldn't be allowed to discriminate against users based on the apps they choose to use, and they're already pissed at Comcast, now is the time to kick it up a notch and use the same argument to demand the opening of blocked web/e-mail ports and an invalidation of TOS terms that ban servers. Bandwidth is bandwidth, if I want to run a web server or my own e-mail server then no one should be able to stop me. The system of traffic management they claim to be moving to in the article should work just as well for users running servers. Of course, they falsely advertise it as unlimited usage at a certain bandwidth and, thus, shouldn't be allowed to throttle traffic in the first place but that's a whole other battle in the war against corrupt telecomm companies.
And don't forget the hidden problem with DIY electric car economics. Pretty much all of the conversions out there use lead-acid batteries because all the better options are so expensive. The problem with lead-acid batteries (besides the fact that their output is killed in cold temperatures) is that they have very low cycle lives. This means that over the 7 years (assuming the mechanical parts of the donor car don't need any major repair) you still have to replace the batteries numerous times. This could be as much as once a year if you drive enough. Also, even the lead-acid batteries tend to be the most expensive part of a conversion. DIY electric car conversions are an interesting hobby but they, simply, aren't economical using the available technology even if done in the most efficient manner possible. There is always the possibility that one of these hobbyists will come up with a hack that brings the cost down, but the average user shouldn't go into it thinking they'll save money. Personally, I've been keeping an eye on it in the hopes that the newer battery technology will come down in price. Some of the new batteries coming out of companies like a123systems, Firefly energy, and Valence offer much better energy density, power density, and (most importantly, cycle life) without the fire dangers of traditional Lithium Ion batteries. If that happens, then DIY electric car conversion might become cost effective, especially if the major car companies drag their feet implementing the technology in production cars or insist on only putting them in high margin luxury cars like the Chevy Volt is shaping up to be (rumored to be heading for ~$35,000 last I heard).
The problem is, it is not theft. It's copyright violation. The difference is that theft requires someone to be deprived of the use of the item in question. In the case of your example with roller coasters, the owner of the roller coaster has been deprived of the use of that seat for the time in which the thief sat in it. This becomes especially important at most modern amusement parks where long lines are common for roller coasters. In contrast, every person on the planet can, theoretically, run the same software at the same time (even multiple times per person) without depriving the owner of selling an infinite amount of more copies if he can find anyone else who needs it and can afford it (aliens?).
If they're demoing it t hen there should be an rise in sales at some point. You can't say everyone that priates a game to demo it find it to be shit when they're often found playing it online a lot.
There could, very well, be a rise in sales related to pirates that intend to just demo the software. It's not like all pirates of this type get together and agree to all buy the game (if they like it) all at the same time so that their impact is easily visualized in accounting's sales numbers. That's just crazy. The truth is, it's hard to isolate those kind of impacts on sales.
The "I wouldn't have bought it anyway so it's not a lost sale" crowd are just idiots. You still got the experience so you had something for free.
So? The point of IP laws, and property laws in general, isn't to deprive people of things just because they can't afford them (that'd just be sadist). The point of property laws is to help ensure the income and security of the person who has produced the product. The problem is, if the person who is violating the property law couldn't afford the product anyway (and isn't likely to be able to afford it in the time the product is relevant), and the original owner isn't deprived of the use of the product so that they can sell it to someone that can afford it, then the point is moot.
Finally, those people hat say the games aren't worth it because developers are just shovelling shit out to sell...well it's worth you taking the time to download, risk getting a virus on your PC and your time sitting there playing it for free so it does have a value, quite a high one if you think your time is valuable and your computer has something worth while on it that you don't want damaged by a virus.
Personally, I've never heard anyone actually espouse this reason. However, if someone were to use this justification then I'd agree with you.
The fact is most people pirate games because they can and they're children whose parents wouldn't buy those games for them or they can't afford them or it's people who spent an absolute fortune on their PC and as far as their concerned they've paid enough for the right to be gaming on that machine.
That would be your opinion, and you are, of course, welcome to it. However, unless you've actually surveyed a statistically significant number of pirates using legitimate statistical polling methodologies, the truth is you don't actually have a clue why people, actually pirate games. You're, simply, conjecturing. Even using polling, you'd just find out what people think are the reasons they do it. Trying to find out the actual reason for the behavior would, probably, require a decent amount of psychology/sociology and is beyond the scope of this conversation. I prefer to focus on the results of piracy as well as the goals of the laws related to it in order to decide if it's actually immoral.
It's going to our emergency rooms. All the people without decent health insurance are forced to rely on emergency room care for medical issues that could be handled, at a vastly lower cost, by a general practitioner. Also, they tend to let what start out as minor medical issues progress far longer because they can't afford to get them treated until an emergency room would deem it bad enough to deal with. That's the hidden reason why socialized healthcare ends up saving money overall, you get to take advantage of preventative medicine and catch issues early before the cost to treat them skyrockets.
Did it ever occur to you there's a reason why Rockoon was abandoned?
Who ever said Rockoons were abandoned? As far as I know, the technology is still being researched and has continued to be used for upper atmospheric research. One example is the Japanese rocket listed at the bottom of this page http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/rockoon.htm that was launched in 1992. I've seen others as well.
The thing is, Rockoons (or balloon launched rockets as they tend to be referred to in modern times) fill a niche. Even if they could be used for large rockets, they would take a lot more logistical effort so they have been relegated to small rockets such as the ones used for upper atmospheric research and now for hobbyist/small business efforts like the n-prize. For small rockets, it's possible to use off-the-shelf weather balloons. The groups that have, traditionally, launched things into space (governments) tend to want to send much larger payloads up.
Except that it doesn't noticeably lower the cost of entry. Your rockets are actually somewhat more expensive (because of the structural penalties imposed by the launch method), and your launches are somewhat more expensive because you add the man hours needed to prepare, handle, and track the balloons on top of that required for the rocket. All you save is a fraction of your fuel - and fuel is cheap.
I fail to see how the rockets actually, substantially, more expensive. Most, if not all, of the support structure is built onto the tether attached to the balloon and stays on the balloon when the rocket launches. It tends to be a rather simple, and cost effective, stabilizing rod and very little else. Since you were, almost certainly, already tracking the rocket, no extra cost is incurred there. As for the balloon structure, it is made light enough so that it's intended to be disposable/lost after launch. What's left of the balloon would act as a streamer to slow what little mass is attached as it falls.
As for the fuel, I think you may be underestimating the amount of fuel mass saved by avoiding the dense lower atmosphere. I've also been told that it affects, smaller rockets disproportionately compared to large rockets thought I can't vouch for the numbers personally. Adding fuel to a rocket tends to be a case of diminishing returns. The more fuels mass you add, the more mass the rocket has to push before it is burned. Also, while rocket fuel may be cheap in bulk quantities like those purchased by governments, that doesn't mean that it's cheap in hobbyist/small business quantities or that those groups are even allowed to purchase the more efficient (and, thus, more dangerous to handle) fuels.
What it really boils down to is that the n-prize and other micro-launch endeavors are a special case where the traditional notions of what is common sense for big rocket launches may, or may not, apply. This may lead you to question whether there is a need/good reason to launch micro-payload or for hobbyists/small business to have space launch capabilities, but that isn't what I'm addressing here.
A very similar idea occured to me and I did some research into the feasability. I was less interested in the weapon/tool aspect as in the holloween costume/special effects aspect of a simple, low res, 3D display. It turns out there is a Japanese company that is developing a 3D display based on the same concept. The problem is that it makes a popping noise as the air rapidly heats and the process also releases other, more dangerous, bands of energy besides just the visible spectrum so you and any bystanders would be blinded unless wearing eye protection. Not very practical for either of our uses unless you plan on going on a violent rampage where you don't care who gets hurt but yourself (please don't). I also looked into the concept of Nitrogen or Oxygen photoluminescence similar to what happens in an aurora-borealis, but my understanding is that it would release even worse kinds of radiations even if you could find a way to trigger it.
The Hindenburg would just barely be able to lift John Glenn's Atlas booster. A disposable Hindenburg would cost tens of millions of dollars - while the few thousand gallons of fuel and oxidizer it replaced would cost a few thousand dollars.
No one here has suggested trying to lift Atlas boosters with weather baloons (although the other response to your post suggests that it might, theoretically, be possible). Whats is being suggested here is no different than what was tried, and proven, in the 1940's and 50's with the original Rockoons. Existing, mass produced, weather balloon technology does just fine at lifting small rockets (as used in the n-prize and upper atmosphere experimentation) above the atmosphere's denser layers. The whole point of the concept is to launch micro-satellite's into orbit and lower the cost of entry for such projects such that the talented hobbiest/small business can do so.
It seems to be an attempt to open up space launch capability to the little guy. Sure, when you look at the numbers, those big launch vehicles seem to be down-right cheap per lb., but good luck getting your 1lb. hobby project onto one of those launches. The organizations responsible for launching those rockets are, most likely, working exclusively with companies and fellow governments that need to launch 100lb+ payloads. Even if they'd work with an individual/small business, the red-tape and per-project overhead would destroy those per-lb. price numbers. Is it a good idea to make it possible for any average Joe to launch micro-satellites into space? I don't know, but that seems to be the goal of the N-Prize.
The idea behind balloon launched rockets has nothing to do with escape velocity/gravity. It has to do with aerodynamic drag. Aerodynamic drag plays a big role in eating up launch fuel at lower altitudes where the atmosphere is dense. A balloon launch bypasses that drag with a low cost, and disposable, balloon filled with hydrogen/helium without having to use expensive/heavy rocket fuel. The concept was developed and first implemented in 1949 and has been done a number of times since for high altitude experimentation and hobbiest projects. Wikipedia has a basic article inder the, somewhat archaic, name "rockoon" (mixture of rocket and balloon).
Ah, I stand corrected. Wikipedia agrees with you. It was, however not an Apple exclusive game like Marathon was. I still stand by my main point that the, supposed, irony is destroyed by the fact that it was always being developed for a Microsoft system from the beginning.
Actually, no. I'm assuming you're referring to Halo, which was, actually, originally developed for the PC. Marathon, I think, is the game you are actually thinking of and that was a separate game. Halo can be thought of as a spiritual sequel to Marathon in the vein of Wasteland/Fallout(or even a direct sequel if Bungie works harder at making the continuity line up) but it isn't the same game.
That's not how copyrights work. By default, you have no right to do anything with someone else's copyrighted work.
Um, no. IANAL, but I'm pretty certain that this is how it works:
By default, I can do whatever I want with the copyrighted works I buy as long as I don't redistribute it later. This is part of the legal concept of "Fair Use". For example, If I buy a book I can modify the text in the book however I want and they can't do anything about it. Now, an additional legal concept called "right of first sale" says that I have the right to sell my copy of a book/software/etc. as long as I haven't kept a copy for myself. The "right of first sale" may be invalid if I made changes to the book due to the legal concept of "derivative works". Also, since (in this case) the software wasn't distributed on a physical media, the "right of first sale" may no longer apply.
The way for him to get around the "derivative works" issue would be to release code as a patch that modifies the drivers when run by the end-user. This means he isn't distributing any of Creative's copyrighted code himself and the modification of the code happens at a point where there is no need to further distribute it.
Now, I may be going out on a limb here but I think you're wrong about what happens when their EULA gets invalidated as well. My understanding is that were their EULA to get thrown out by the courts you would basically have free use of the software limited only by standard copyright laws. They are the ones that distributed the software; they don't just get to take that back because their EULA was illegal.
Ah, but he's not the one applying the patch and, therefore, he's not the one creating the derivative work. The end user is the one creating the derivative work and as long as they don't distribute the software to anyone else once they've done this then they aren't violating copyright laws.
The problem is that, while raw computing power has grown exponentially since then, that doesn't mean that all of the many, advanced, technologies needed have followed suite. Things that rely on basic physics, like propulsion, may not have become that much more cost efficient. Anything that requires lots of space, equipment, etc. would still, most likely, be very expensive.
Things that, off the top of my head, may still be on that list could be communication/tracking (large antenna arrays are expensive and still in the realm of government spending) and rugedization of equipment. People always wonder, and complain about, how the US military spends $500 a piece for things like soap dishes on advance aircraft but there is, very often, a very good reason for it. As the working environment the hardware has to endure gets progressively harsher, the price of that equipment goes up sharply. Space, is one of the harshest (if not the harshest) environment to have equipment operate in.
A good example of this is all that high-speed computer equipment you referenced. While it's gotten faster, commercial grade equipment is still no more durable than the old stuff and may be even more susceptible to things like cold and radiation due to its increased complexity. The US government (and thus NASA) has had access to specially shielded electronics since early in the Cold War for surviving things like extreme cold and the electro-magnetic pulse from a nuclear weapon blast. This stuff wasn't cheap then and there's no reason to think it's especially cheap now (even if a private buyer can acquire it, which they may not be, legally, able to) because there has never been a reason to mass produce it even if the process isn't inherently more complex/expensive.
Again, I can't say one way or the other whether these issues, or any other, will be a deal-breaker for amateurs entering the Lunar X-Prize but simply looking at how much time has passed and how far computing power has increased as justifications for this project being a cake-walk (compared to the effort NASA had to put into it) just doesn't seem realistic to me. One last thing to consider, is that even if the final cost of the project turned out to be massively smaller than what NASA spent in the 60s, that could still, easily, be more than the $30 million when you look at just how much NASA actually spent when adjusted for inflation.
That will only matter if we actually manage to develop, and mass produce, photovoltaic cells that reach anywhere near the efficiency of traditional heat engine generator facilities at a reasonable price per watt over the life of the panel. Much like the fuel cell, we've had the photovoltaic technology for a very long time and have yet to produce any truly efficient products that weren't extremely high priced specialty items for things like satellites and such. It would be great if we manage to come out with an economical device, but past experience suggests that we shouldn't hold our breath for a major breakthrough anymore than we should for other similar technology such as fuel cells, fusion power, or Artificial Intelligence (all of which are perpetually X years away from becoming practical and X never seems to shrink).
"Yes, I totally want to drive around in a completely gutless (it HAS to be to save power) electric car with a 200-mile range filled with 500 lbs. of lead-acid batteries. No pollution there. And it costs twice as much as a comparable gas vehicle."
Actually, there's no reason electric cars have to be "gutless". Electric motors get all their torque right from the get-go. As long as the electronics are laid out right, you should be able to actually out accelerate almost any gas car. An example of this is the aforementioned Tesla roadster. You're probably getting you impression of gutlessness from either golf carts or older generation electric cars like the EV1. Golf carts are based on ancient technology and have had no reason to change for a long time. They are built dirt-simple. The EV1 was the auto industries first real attempt at an electric car and certainly needed to be improved on. As for top speed, it may be limited but, then again, there's really no excuse for driving faster than ~90mph on public roads anyway, even when passing.
The other thing you need in order to avoid the "gutless" problem is to get rid of the lead acid batteries you hate so much. This is a large part of the problem with golf carts and the EV1. You are right that they are horrible for the environment (though most states are very effective at recycling them so that should mitigate most of the environmental impact). The other thing that they do is severely limit the amount of power you can draw at once without killing the battery pack.
The good news is that we have alternatives to lead acid batteries that didn't exist when the EV1 was developed. We have Nickel-Metal-Hydride and Lithium Ion batteries that are lighter, provide far more power, and are made of chemicals that are mostly inert from an environmental standpoint. While there have been problems with Lithium Ion batteries in laptops exploding, the newest generations of batteries uses a completely different chemistry and are capable of being punctured with the possibility of blowing up.
The other thing you need to make electric vehicles a possibility is somewhere to plug them in. Here in Chicago, most people live in apartments and park on the street. That means we have no power plug to plug into at the end of the day. Even if the apartment complex you live in happens to rent garages (and you want to shell out the $100+/month for it) it's unlikely to have power running to it.
That still leaves a lot of people with houses who could benefit from an electric car. As long as there's enough range to meet any daily driving needs (which the new batteries also help accomplish) then it should work out just fine. Planes, trains, buses, etc can be used for any trips longer than a day's drive.
You do realise that WoW is a "me too" game, right? It copied games like Asheron's Call and Everquest which copied games like Sierra's "The Realm" and Meridian59 which copied games like the original Neverwinter Nights and MUDs...etc. Heck, even the storyline is a rip off of Warhammer, which borrows heavily from Tolkien.
Even if I were to concede your point that being public servants shouldn't, automatically, strip them of that protection, (which I don't, they're free to not seek out government jobs if they don't want people watching them work) the fact that they are allowed to carry guns around and use deadly force, largely, at their discretion certainly nails the coffin on this issue as far as I'm concerned. The fact that, as has been stated elsewhere, courts also take their word over an average citizen and that police are notorious for "protecting their own" simply serve to drive the point home.
You may, or may not, feel the need to cry for the IBM employees who are losing their jobs but better people to cry for might be the competent employees in the rest of the IT sector who now have to deal with a flooded job market. As long as they weren't fired for cause, their resumes look just as good as a competent employee's would. Even employed IT workers should be, at least, a little worried as the average pay rate stands to plummet and their higher pay rates become a liability to job security.
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Hrm, please provide references for your "Saving the Third World requires gigawatts" estimate.
One of the primary goals of most people who look to develop tech for improving quality of life in the third world is to find ways to increase efficiency so that the "gigawatts" you reference aren't needed. The first world has been spoiled by it's wealth and access to cheap energy (both mostly due to work done in the last few centuries to subjugate the rest of the world, thus creating the third world). People who don't have access to something at all are much more willing to put up with, what people in the first world would consider, inconveniences in order to get it. The idea is that a family in Haiti would be willing to put up with the inconvenience of only having a single, bare, LED bulb for their shack as opposed to the risk of burning to death using an oil lamp, candle, or open fire for light.
I realize that for most people in the first world its hard to imaging having to make that trade-off. For me, it would be unthinkable that I'd have to use anything less than a raft of high lumen light fixtures with diffusers/shades to completely light my living space. I'll gladly replace my incandescent with high efficiency compact fluorescents, but I would never think of downgrading the brightness. Likewise, I would consider it barbaric to have to install oil lamps/torches in my home for light. Of course, I'm not the target market for this product.
Ah, yes. But if you were actually a member of his target audience (dirt poor people in countries like Haiti making $2-$4 per day) then you couldn't afford that fancy $3000 turbine in your wildest dreams. Smaller, more affordable turbines grow dramatically less efficient due to friction forces at small sizes. In order to actually make your point valid, you'd have to find a wind turbine of the same wattage range that is cheaper.
The whole point here is very specific. Poor people, like the ones in Haiti don't have many things that need electricity. The problem is, the only source of light they have is fire based causing an increases risk of burning to death in a hovel fire. The problem is compounded by the fact that third world shanty towns usually don't have much in the way of municipal fire codes. Assuming LED bulbs come down in price far enough (which the look to do eventually) they have the energy efficiency needed to run off this thing, the ruggedness to last in that kind of environment, and the long life to make themselves truly economical. They could, completely, replace oil lamps, candles, and other fire based light sources. It has the added bonus of eliminating one of the motivating factors in the deforestation of Haiti, which, in turn, is one of the reasons they've had such horrible flooding in this last hurricane.
This thing still has a lot of things to prove before it can be said to be useful (durability is one of them) but cost/watt isn't an issue for the application being envisioned. As for first-world applications he can use to fund his third-world goal, he just has to look long enough for similar places where a microturbine might have, otherwise, been the only option.
Well, I don't know the full answer to your question but, in the case of Daedalus, the plan involved throwing actual nuclear bombs out the back of the spaceship. That would, most definitely, have violated the treaty.
From the article:
I'm not normally a grammer nazi, but this one has me curious. Is "architected" actualy a word? I'm american, could it be a different dialect (british, ausie, etc.)? It's also possible that the Intel employee quoted isn't a native english speaker but I'd love for someone to clarify.
Their upload bandwidth is severely constricted because they choose to make it severely constricted. The cable ISP hardware doesn't force them to provide asynchronous service or tell them how to apportion it in the event they do. My ISP, example, has decided to limit my upload bandwidth at ~385kb/s. At least, that's what they advertise.
In any event, the node is supposed to have a much higher bandwidth available to it than any individual user has access to. In a world where the ISPs weren't crooks, they would have enough bandwidth per node to provide their full advertised bandwidth to every user attached to that node 24/7 (since they advertise it as "unlimited", and no I don't thing vague fine print about "acceptable use" absolves them of that responsibility). Barring that, they should have a conservative amount of oversell. Of course, most ISPs have absurd amounts of oversell to the point of having to employ invasive and overbearing practices like Comcast's in order to provide even a somewhat reasonable quality of service to their customers.
They sold me a connection, for unlimited use, that they rate at ~385kb/s. That means I should be able to run a server and put out close to 385kb/s 24/7. I'm a realist. I know that that isn't the way the world, presently, works and I don't expect the ISPs to change, that radically, over night. But, there's no reason that the system Comcast just described couldn't be used to limit the upload usage in the same manner. The problem is that, long ago, most ISP adopted a policy of simply blocking all outgoing communication on ports designated for web and e-mail servers while also adopting arbitrary terms in their TOS banning "servers". If you think about it, that's not so different from what Comcast was doing to P2P except it's worse because Comcast didn't block all P2P communication while most ISPs block all web/e-mail servers.
Really, it's as much a marketing/business problem as it is a network one. American ISPs like to sell Internet access under the illusion that it's unlimited (un-metered). At the same time, they are in a race with each other to advertise huge max bandwidth numbers. They need to be forced to drop the false advertising claims unless they're willing to, actually, provide the service. There's no reason we couldn't go to a tiered system or a metered system. But, whichever system we adopt, it needs to be an honest system.
Since the FCC has made it clear that ISPs shouldn't be allowed to discriminate against users based on the apps they choose to use, and they're already pissed at Comcast, now is the time to kick it up a notch and use the same argument to demand the opening of blocked web/e-mail ports and an invalidation of TOS terms that ban servers. Bandwidth is bandwidth, if I want to run a web server or my own e-mail server then no one should be able to stop me. The system of traffic management they claim to be moving to in the article should work just as well for users running servers. Of course, they falsely advertise it as unlimited usage at a certain bandwidth and, thus, shouldn't be allowed to throttle traffic in the first place but that's a whole other battle in the war against corrupt telecomm companies.
And don't forget the hidden problem with DIY electric car economics. Pretty much all of the conversions out there use lead-acid batteries because all the better options are so expensive. The problem with lead-acid batteries (besides the fact that their output is killed in cold temperatures) is that they have very low cycle lives. This means that over the 7 years (assuming the mechanical parts of the donor car don't need any major repair) you still have to replace the batteries numerous times. This could be as much as once a year if you drive enough. Also, even the lead-acid batteries tend to be the most expensive part of a conversion.
DIY electric car conversions are an interesting hobby but they, simply, aren't economical using the available technology even if done in the most efficient manner possible. There is always the possibility that one of these hobbyists will come up with a hack that brings the cost down, but the average user shouldn't go into it thinking they'll save money. Personally, I've been keeping an eye on it in the hopes that the newer battery technology will come down in price. Some of the new batteries coming out of companies like a123systems, Firefly energy, and Valence offer much better energy density, power density, and (most importantly, cycle life) without the fire dangers of traditional Lithium Ion batteries. If that happens, then DIY electric car conversion might become cost effective, especially if the major car companies drag their feet implementing the technology in production cars or insist on only putting them in high margin luxury cars like the Chevy Volt is shaping up to be (rumored to be heading for ~$35,000 last I heard).
The problem is, it is not theft. It's copyright violation. The difference is that theft requires someone to be deprived of the use of the item in question. In the case of your example with roller coasters, the owner of the roller coaster has been deprived of the use of that seat for the time in which the thief sat in it. This becomes especially important at most modern amusement parks where long lines are common for roller coasters. In contrast, every person on the planet can, theoretically, run the same software at the same time (even multiple times per person) without depriving the owner of selling an infinite amount of more copies if he can find anyone else who needs it and can afford it (aliens?).
There could, very well, be a rise in sales related to pirates that intend to just demo the software. It's not like all pirates of this type get together and agree to all buy the game (if they like it) all at the same time so that their impact is easily visualized in accounting's sales numbers. That's just crazy. The truth is, it's hard to isolate those kind of impacts on sales.
So? The point of IP laws, and property laws in general, isn't to deprive people of things just because they can't afford them (that'd just be sadist). The point of property laws is to help ensure the income and security of the person who has produced the product. The problem is, if the person who is violating the property law couldn't afford the product anyway (and isn't likely to be able to afford it in the time the product is relevant), and the original owner isn't deprived of the use of the product so that they can sell it to someone that can afford it, then the point is moot.
Personally, I've never heard anyone actually espouse this reason. However, if someone were to use this justification then I'd agree with you.
That would be your opinion, and you are, of course, welcome to it. However, unless you've actually surveyed a statistically significant number of pirates using legitimate statistical polling methodologies, the truth is you don't actually have a clue why people, actually pirate games. You're, simply, conjecturing. Even using polling, you'd just find out what people think are the reasons they do it. Trying to find out the actual reason for the behavior would, probably, require a decent amount of psychology/sociology and is beyond the scope of this conversation. I prefer to focus on the results of piracy as well as the goals of the laws related to it in order to decide if it's actually immoral.
It's going to our emergency rooms. All the people without decent health insurance are forced to rely on emergency room care for medical issues that could be handled, at a vastly lower cost, by a general practitioner. Also, they tend to let what start out as minor medical issues progress far longer because they can't afford to get them treated until an emergency room would deem it bad enough to deal with. That's the hidden reason why socialized healthcare ends up saving money overall, you get to take advantage of preventative medicine and catch issues early before the cost to treat them skyrockets.
Who ever said Rockoons were abandoned? As far as I know, the technology is still being researched and has continued to be used for upper atmospheric research. One example is the Japanese rocket listed at the bottom of this page http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/rockoon.htm that was launched in 1992. I've seen others as well.
The thing is, Rockoons (or balloon launched rockets as they tend to be referred to in modern times) fill a niche. Even if they could be used for large rockets, they would take a lot more logistical effort so they have been relegated to small rockets such as the ones used for upper atmospheric research and now for hobbyist/small business efforts like the n-prize. For small rockets, it's possible to use off-the-shelf weather balloons. The groups that have, traditionally, launched things into space (governments) tend to want to send much larger payloads up.
I fail to see how the rockets actually, substantially, more expensive. Most, if not all, of the support structure is built onto the tether attached to the balloon and stays on the balloon when the rocket launches. It tends to be a rather simple, and cost effective, stabilizing rod and very little else. Since you were, almost certainly, already tracking the rocket, no extra cost is incurred there. As for the balloon structure, it is made light enough so that it's intended to be disposable/lost after launch. What's left of the balloon would act as a streamer to slow what little mass is attached as it falls.
As for the fuel, I think you may be underestimating the amount of fuel mass saved by avoiding the dense lower atmosphere. I've also been told that it affects, smaller rockets disproportionately compared to large rockets thought I can't vouch for the numbers personally. Adding fuel to a rocket tends to be a case of diminishing returns. The more fuels mass you add, the more mass the rocket has to push before it is burned. Also, while rocket fuel may be cheap in bulk quantities like those purchased by governments, that doesn't mean that it's cheap in hobbyist/small business quantities or that those groups are even allowed to purchase the more efficient (and, thus, more dangerous to handle) fuels.
What it really boils down to is that the n-prize and other micro-launch endeavors are a special case where the traditional notions of what is common sense for big rocket launches may, or may not, apply. This may lead you to question whether there is a need/good reason to launch micro-payload or for hobbyists/small business to have space launch capabilities, but that isn't what I'm addressing here.
A very similar idea occured to me and I did some research into the feasability. I was less interested in the weapon/tool aspect as in the holloween costume/special effects aspect of a simple, low res, 3D display. It turns out there is a Japanese company that is developing a 3D display based on the same concept. The problem is that it makes a popping noise as the air rapidly heats and the process also releases other, more dangerous, bands of energy besides just the visible spectrum so you and any bystanders would be blinded unless wearing eye protection. Not very practical for either of our uses unless you plan on going on a violent rampage where you don't care who gets hurt but yourself (please don't). I also looked into the concept of Nitrogen or Oxygen photoluminescence similar to what happens in an aurora-borealis, but my understanding is that it would release even worse kinds of radiations even if you could find a way to trigger it.
No one here has suggested trying to lift Atlas boosters with weather baloons (although the other response to your post suggests that it might, theoretically, be possible). Whats is being suggested here is no different than what was tried, and proven, in the 1940's and 50's with the original Rockoons. Existing, mass produced, weather balloon technology does just fine at lifting small rockets (as used in the n-prize and upper atmosphere experimentation) above the atmosphere's denser layers. The whole point of the concept is to launch micro-satellite's into orbit and lower the cost of entry for such projects such that the talented hobbiest/small business can do so.
It seems to be an attempt to open up space launch capability to the little guy. Sure, when you look at the numbers, those big launch vehicles seem to be down-right cheap per lb., but good luck getting your 1lb. hobby project onto one of those launches. The organizations responsible for launching those rockets are, most likely, working exclusively with companies and fellow governments that need to launch 100lb+ payloads. Even if they'd work with an individual/small business, the red-tape and per-project overhead would destroy those per-lb. price numbers. Is it a good idea to make it possible for any average Joe to launch micro-satellites into space? I don't know, but that seems to be the goal of the N-Prize.
The idea behind balloon launched rockets has nothing to do with escape velocity/gravity. It has to do with aerodynamic drag. Aerodynamic drag plays a big role in eating up launch fuel at lower altitudes where the atmosphere is dense. A balloon launch bypasses that drag with a low cost, and disposable, balloon filled with hydrogen/helium without having to use expensive/heavy rocket fuel. The concept was developed and first implemented in 1949 and has been done a number of times since for high altitude experimentation and hobbiest projects. Wikipedia has a basic article inder the, somewhat archaic, name "rockoon" (mixture of rocket and balloon).
Ah, I stand corrected. Wikipedia agrees with you. It was, however not an Apple exclusive game like Marathon was. I still stand by my main point that the, supposed, irony is destroyed by the fact that it was always being developed for a Microsoft system from the beginning.
Actually, no. I'm assuming you're referring to Halo, which was, actually, originally developed for the PC. Marathon, I think, is the game you are actually thinking of and that was a separate game. Halo can be thought of as a spiritual sequel to Marathon in the vein of Wasteland/Fallout(or even a direct sequel if Bungie works harder at making the continuity line up) but it isn't the same game.
That's not how copyrights work. By default, you have no right to do anything with someone else's copyrighted work.
Um, no. IANAL, but I'm pretty certain that this is how it works:
By default, I can do whatever I want with the copyrighted works I buy as long as I don't redistribute it later. This is part of the legal concept of "Fair Use". For example, If I buy a book I can modify the text in the book however I want and they can't do anything about it. Now, an additional legal concept called "right of first sale" says that I have the right to sell my copy of a book/software/etc. as long as I haven't kept a copy for myself. The "right of first sale" may be invalid if I made changes to the book due to the legal concept of "derivative works". Also, since (in this case) the software wasn't distributed on a physical media, the "right of first sale" may no longer apply.
The way for him to get around the "derivative works" issue would be to release code as a patch that modifies the drivers when run by the end-user. This means he isn't distributing any of Creative's copyrighted code himself and the modification of the code happens at a point where there is no need to further distribute it.
Now, I may be going out on a limb here but I think you're wrong about what happens when their EULA gets invalidated as well. My understanding is that were their EULA to get thrown out by the courts you would basically have free use of the software limited only by standard copyright laws. They are the ones that distributed the software; they don't just get to take that back because their EULA was illegal.
Ah, but he's not the one applying the patch and, therefore, he's not the one creating the derivative work. The end user is the one creating the derivative work and as long as they don't distribute the software to anyone else once they've done this then they aren't violating copyright laws.
The problem is that, while raw computing power has grown exponentially since then, that doesn't mean that all of the many, advanced, technologies needed have followed suite. Things that rely on basic physics, like propulsion, may not have become that much more cost efficient. Anything that requires lots of space, equipment, etc. would still, most likely, be very expensive.
Things that, off the top of my head, may still be on that list could be communication/tracking (large antenna arrays are expensive and still in the realm of government spending) and rugedization of equipment. People always wonder, and complain about, how the US military spends $500 a piece for things like soap dishes on advance aircraft but there is, very often, a very good reason for it. As the working environment the hardware has to endure gets progressively harsher, the price of that equipment goes up sharply. Space, is one of the harshest (if not the harshest) environment to have equipment operate in.
A good example of this is all that high-speed computer equipment you referenced. While it's gotten faster, commercial grade equipment is still no more durable than the old stuff and may be even more susceptible to things like cold and radiation due to its increased complexity. The US government (and thus NASA) has had access to specially shielded electronics since early in the Cold War for surviving things like extreme cold and the electro-magnetic pulse from a nuclear weapon blast. This stuff wasn't cheap then and there's no reason to think it's especially cheap now (even if a private buyer can acquire it, which they may not be, legally, able to) because there has never been a reason to mass produce it even if the process isn't inherently more complex/expensive.
Again, I can't say one way or the other whether these issues, or any other, will be a deal-breaker for amateurs entering the Lunar X-Prize but simply looking at how much time has passed and how far computing power has increased as justifications for this project being a cake-walk (compared to the effort NASA had to put into it) just doesn't seem realistic to me. One last thing to consider, is that even if the final cost of the project turned out to be massively smaller than what NASA spent in the 60s, that could still, easily, be more than the $30 million when you look at just how much NASA actually spent when adjusted for inflation.
-GameMaster
That will only matter if we actually manage to develop, and mass produce, photovoltaic cells that reach anywhere near the efficiency of traditional heat engine generator facilities at a reasonable price per watt over the life of the panel. Much like the fuel cell, we've had the photovoltaic technology for a very long time and have yet to produce any truly efficient products that weren't extremely high priced specialty items for things like satellites and such. It would be great if we manage to come out with an economical device, but past experience suggests that we shouldn't hold our breath for a major breakthrough anymore than we should for other similar technology such as fuel cells, fusion power, or Artificial Intelligence (all of which are perpetually X years away from becoming practical and X never seems to shrink).
"Yes, I totally want to drive around in a completely gutless (it HAS to be to save power) electric car with a 200-mile range filled with 500 lbs. of lead-acid batteries. No pollution there. And it costs twice as much as a comparable gas vehicle."
Actually, there's no reason electric cars have to be "gutless". Electric motors get all their torque right from the get-go. As long as the electronics are laid out right, you should be able to actually out accelerate almost any gas car. An example of this is the aforementioned Tesla roadster. You're probably getting you impression of gutlessness from either golf carts or older generation electric cars like the EV1. Golf carts are based on ancient technology and have had no reason to change for a long time. They are built dirt-simple. The EV1 was the auto industries first real attempt at an electric car and certainly needed to be improved on. As for top speed, it may be limited but, then again, there's really no excuse for driving faster than ~90mph on public roads anyway, even when passing.
The other thing you need in order to avoid the "gutless" problem is to get rid of the lead acid batteries you hate so much. This is a large part of the problem with golf carts and the EV1. You are right that they are horrible for the environment (though most states are very effective at recycling them so that should mitigate most of the environmental impact). The other thing that they do is severely limit the amount of power you can draw at once without killing the battery pack.
The good news is that we have alternatives to lead acid batteries that didn't exist when the EV1 was developed. We have Nickel-Metal-Hydride and Lithium Ion batteries that are lighter, provide far more power, and are made of chemicals that are mostly inert from an environmental standpoint. While there have been problems with Lithium Ion batteries in laptops exploding, the newest generations of batteries uses a completely different chemistry and are capable of being punctured with the possibility of blowing up.
The other thing you need to make electric vehicles a possibility is somewhere to plug them in. Here in Chicago, most people live in apartments and park on the street. That means we have no power plug to plug into at the end of the day. Even if the apartment complex you live in happens to rent garages (and you want to shell out the $100+/month for it) it's unlikely to have power running to it.
That still leaves a lot of people with houses who could benefit from an electric car. As long as there's enough range to meet any daily driving needs (which the new batteries also help accomplish) then it should work out just fine. Planes, trains, buses, etc can be used for any trips longer than a day's drive.
-GameMaster
You do realise that WoW is a "me too" game, right? It copied games like Asheron's Call and Everquest which copied games like Sierra's "The Realm" and Meridian59 which copied games like the original Neverwinter Nights and MUDs...etc. Heck, even the storyline is a rip off of Warhammer, which borrows heavily from Tolkien.
-GameMaster
Land shark, I mean, Pizza...
Even if I were to concede your point that being public servants shouldn't, automatically, strip them of that protection, (which I don't, they're free to not seek out government jobs if they don't want people watching them work) the fact that they are allowed to carry guns around and use deadly force, largely, at their discretion certainly nails the coffin on this issue as far as I'm concerned. The fact that, as has been stated elsewhere, courts also take their word over an average citizen and that police are notorious for "protecting their own" simply serve to drive the point home.
-GameMaster
You may, or may not, feel the need to cry for the IBM employees who are losing their jobs but better people to cry for might be the competent employees in the rest of the IT sector who now have to deal with a flooded job market. As long as they weren't fired for cause, their resumes look just as good as a competent employee's would. Even employed IT workers should be, at least, a little worried as the average pay rate stands to plummet and their higher pay rates become a liability to job security.
-GameMaster