You can run at over 330 km/h, but the maintanence costs per kilometer for all the 330 km/h running is going to be exorbitant because of the meticulous upkeep of the overhead wiring and especially the steel wheels and steel rail.
The USA is actually better suited for maglev trains, because with the longer distances between city centers maglevs actually make more sense (imagine downtown Dallas to downtown Houston in around one hour!).
A big winner in this could be the Walt Disney Company. Can you imagine only a 2-4 minute shuttle bus ride from the train station in Anaheim, CA or the train station in Orlando, FL literally to the front gate of Disneyland or Disney World?
I like the London taxicab idea, except the US model will use a CNG-fueled engine based on a modified current Nissan Sentra drivetrain. That way, you get the generally very low emissions of CNG-fueled vehicles, and since you're in New York City CNG refueling stations can be set up at various points in the five NYC boroughs and at JFK and LaGuardia airports.
Then how come Canonical haven't been successful in putting in Ubuntu Linux on the netbooks from Acer, Asus and MSI? Imagine running a modern, relatively easy to use Linux distribution that has now taken a huge marketshare lately, probably one of the few Linux distros widely used enough that we could resolve a lot of the headaches in terms of hardware and software compatibility?
I'm surprised you haven't been run off Slashdot.;-)
But you are 100% correct, though. Despite its imperfections, Windows XP Home Edition--being so widely used--is easily understood on how to make it work in terms of hardware compatibility, software compatibility and even security issues.
I am hopeful, however, that the success of Canonical's Ubuntu Linux distribution will finally make the vast majority of Linux users gravitate towards a majority-used Linux distribution, and that will tremendously make it far easier for personal computer manufacturers to offer a single Linux distribution that is widely understood in terms of hardware and software compatibility to make it easier for administrators and end users.
There's also something else, too--current netbooks with 1 GB of RAM, 160 GB hard drive, 1024x600 display and Intel Atom N270 CPU are easily within the sweet spot for Windows XP Home Edition. As such, Windows runs reasonably fast on these netbooks, and because it's Windows XP it also means maximum commpatibility with all the third party hardware out there, too.
We have to remember that today's netbooks with their 1 GB of RAM, 160 GB hard drive, decent amount of video memory and the 1.6 GHz Intel Atom CPU is well within the "sweet spot" for running Windows XP Home Edition (SP2/SP3). Because everybody knows how to do tech support on Windows XP, small wonder why most netbooks nowadays run Windows XP Home Edition.
Yes, it may be nice to run Ubuntu Linux 8.10 desktop edition, but the third-party compatibility and support issues may conspire against supporting that on netbooks on a large scale.
I think you're trying to look at the ending from the modern point of view. As such, it doesn't make sense by 2009 standards.
Now, place yourself in Lee Adama's point of view. What has he seen for most of his life? Technology run amok that has caused untold suffering. Is it small wonder why in the end when they arrived on "our" Earth they decided on destroying those spaceships?
However, that is an implied ending that was difficult to understand if you watched it only once--you had to watch it multiple times to get what David Chase was trying to imply.
Small wonder why many viewers felt frustrated and cheated by the ending on first viewing.
Here's the problem with FLAC: very few players can play back FLAC files "out of the box." Meanwhile, every non-shuffle iPod since the 4G iPod (hard disk version) can play back Apple Lossless files "out of the box." (Yes, some iPods can be upgraded to play FLAC files with the Rockbox firmware, but 2G and newer iPod nanos, 5.5G and newer iPod classics, the iPhone and iPod touch can't be upgraded.)
If the music companies decide to offer lossless format downloads they'll go with Apple Lossless, if only because of the potentially huge number of potential customers for this format.
That would be great except a huge fraction of the world's portable music players don't support the FLAC format "out of the box."
In my opinion, if the music companies decide to sell music online in a lossless format, they'll use the Apple Lossless format (about 260 MB of data per 74 minutes of music). Why Apple Lossless? Because at least every iPod since the original 4G iPod (except for the shuffle) can play back the Apple Lossless format, and that means the potential audience for Apple Lossless files is huge.
Actually, it does make sense because all that technology has brought only one thing: untold suffering on both sides.
Yes, what Lee Adama wanted doesn't make sense by our modern standards, but makes sense by his standards for two reasons: 1) he didn't want whatever enemy Cylons remaining to find the spaceships and 2) he wanted to live the ideal of a simpler life.
What I liked about the ending is that Ronald D. Moore left enough ambiguity that we could argue about this ad nauseum, but yet, had enough clarity that we did have something that the finale of The Sopranos lacked: final closure.
The last images of the robots we see on the widescreen TV's perfect demonstrate George Santayana's most famous quote: those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
And with broadband being so widely available, the next trend for digital downloads after the success of the iTunes Music Store and the Amazon MP3 download service will be music downloads in lossless formats.
Don't laugh: there's a reason why Apple developed the Apple Lossless format--they're waiting for the day when broadband speeds are fast enough and media storage is really cheap so we can buy songs and albums in this format. And it's not as limited a format as you think either--the vast majority of iPods sold can play back Apple Lossless format files. Once this happens this could really hurt Compact Disc sales.
I'll say this: if Apple had offered right from the start at low cost a short dongle with the player controls on it so you can plug in any headphone with a 3.5 mm stereo phone jack, we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place.
But since Apple didn't do that, the whole thing smacks of "illegal product tie-in" and ends up forcing a long delay as third-party iPod manufacturers make the dongle and headphone manufacturers redesign their headphone cables to be truly compatible with the 3G shuffle.
Intel better watch out because there is a precedent on this: the case against the United Shoe Machinery Company by the US government, namely abusing patent and other intellectual property rights laws to drive out competitors (USM had a huge patent portfolio on shoe-making equipment that they used to keep competitors at bay).
Given Intel's near-total domination of the x86 market and the property rights over several Intel CPU features, they risk being hit by the Feds like what the Feds to USM several decades ago.
I believe that in the end, Intel and AMD will settle because if Intel tries to force AMD out of the x86 business Intel will face the same government lawsuit that brought down the United Shoe Machinery Company in the 1960's--namely abusing patent and intellectual property laws to protect its monopoly or near-monopoly position.
One of the biggest problems the USA has is that because of some 67,500-plus pages of regulation derived from the Title 26, the Internal Revenue Code, the result is that there is ENORMOUS incentive for tax evasion either by participating in the cash-only underground economy or using every possible loophole in our tax laws to send money to offshore financial centers (OFCs) around the world. (I've read the current estimate of liquid assets sent "offshore" could be as high as a mind-boggling US$16 TRILLION!)
With the FairTax system in place, that incentive to "offshore" assets and participate in the underground economy goes away, since savings and investments are no longer subject to tax. Not only will we see most of that US$16 TRILLION return to the USA, but we could see several trillion more come in from foreign investors eager to take advantage of no more taxes on earning money. We're talking a potential US$20 TRILLION in liquidity entering our financial system, an amount so huge that it makes any Obama Administration stimulus plan look tiny in comparison and is big enough to even recapitalize failing companies like AIG, Citicorp and even the Big Three automakers.
An interesting side note: under FairTax, we could see a huge number of cargo ships suddenly becoming US-flagged because there will be no more taxes on the revenue they generate from carrying cargo around the world--the USA becomes the world's largest "flag of convenience" for cargo ships. That means all those abandoned and idled shipping ports will come to life again, bringing in potentially hundreds of thousands of jobs to the USA.
In fact, I see the primary use of these radar picket blimps flying at 65,000 feet altitude to be used to monitor air traffic flying in from the south.
If I remember correctly, there are stories about the Russians seriously considering basing some of their bombers in Cuba and Venezuela. With these high-flying radar blimps in operation, the Russians might not want to base their bombers in Cuba because we'll pick them up on radar as soon as the bombers take off!
Your concerns is probably the reason why the networks need to seriously look at new distribution means for tech-savvy audiences.
Whether it's on-demand viewing through your cable provider, using an online viewing system like Hulu.com, distribution using the Roku box from NetFlix or Amazon, downloading to the Apple TV box through the iTunes Music Store video download service, or even pressing DVDs specifically for distribution by NetFlix's mail order distribution system, these new delivery methods can specifically target audiences with way less concerns about pleasing the Nielsen ratings or pleasing advertisers. Indeed, online video distribution will be the way to go, especially in the future when network bandwidth is better and everyone is on IPv6 addressing.
Actually, what killed Futurama on its first run on FOX was the fact the programmed it at 7 pm Eastern time on Sunday nights--which turned into a disaster because of the innumerable overruns from FOX 4 pm Eastern time NFL games, which meant the Eastern and Central time zones never saw the series during its first run.
Today's 1920x1200 monitors is more or less a de facto TV, especially now the new ones support HDCP over the DVI-D connection, which allows any computer with a Blu-ray drive and HDCP support in the computer to play back the video a Blu-ray movie or HDTV broadcast (provided the computer has an ATSC/QAM tuner).
Re:Not right in soooo many ways
on
Why TV Lost
·
· Score: 1
It does not have to boot for a minute or two.
The biggest problems with computers nowadays is that when you power it on, it does take some time to boot because of the need to load the operating system and ancillary programs from the hard drive into RAM. Even with today's Serial ATA-II hard drives, we're still limited by the 7200 rpm spindle speed of these drives, which effectively limits them to about 16 megabytes per second sustained data transfer rate.
But with rapid improvements in solid-state memory technology, I say within 15 years hard disk drives will be consigned to history, replaced by 2 to 4 terabyte solid-state memory modules about the size of today's 1/3 height 3.5" hard drive. Since solid-state drives don't have the mechanical access limitations of hard drives, the result is lightning fast loading of data from the solid state drive into RAM, which means instead of waiting 60 to 120 seconds for a system boot the entire boot will be done in 4-5 seconds!:-)
Re:Welcome to the Brave New World
on
Why TV Lost
·
· Score: 1
Alas, that leap forward won't happend until we get a lot more bandwidth and everyone is on IPv6.
Interestingly, the very high resolution of HDTV (1920x1080) could make it even more possible for a convergence between a computer and TV.
Since 1920x1080 is a slight subset of the 1920x1200 resolution used by 24" and bigger LCD monitors, it means you can watch true 1080p video and still have a very high resolution computer display that can show two side-by-side pages of text very clearly.
Already, most of the new 1920x1200 resolution computer monitors with DVI-D connections support HDCP, so they can accept signals from a computer with a Blu-ray drive that also has HDCP support.
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You can run at over 330 km/h, but the maintanence costs per kilometer for all the 330 km/h running is going to be exorbitant because of the meticulous upkeep of the overhead wiring and especially the steel wheels and steel rail.
The USA is actually better suited for maglev trains, because with the longer distances between city centers maglevs actually make more sense (imagine downtown Dallas to downtown Houston in around one hour!).
A big winner in this could be the Walt Disney Company. Can you imagine only a 2-4 minute shuttle bus ride from the train station in Anaheim, CA or the train station in Orlando, FL literally to the front gate of Disneyland or Disney World?
I like the London taxicab idea, except the US model will use a CNG-fueled engine based on a modified current Nissan Sentra drivetrain. That way, you get the generally very low emissions of CNG-fueled vehicles, and since you're in New York City CNG refueling stations can be set up at various points in the five NYC boroughs and at JFK and LaGuardia airports.
Then how come Canonical haven't been successful in putting in Ubuntu Linux on the netbooks from Acer, Asus and MSI? Imagine running a modern, relatively easy to use Linux distribution that has now taken a huge marketshare lately, probably one of the few Linux distros widely used enough that we could resolve a lot of the headaches in terms of hardware and software compatibility?
I'm surprised you haven't been run off Slashdot. ;-)
But you are 100% correct, though. Despite its imperfections, Windows XP Home Edition--being so widely used--is easily understood on how to make it work in terms of hardware compatibility, software compatibility and even security issues.
I am hopeful, however, that the success of Canonical's Ubuntu Linux distribution will finally make the vast majority of Linux users gravitate towards a majority-used Linux distribution, and that will tremendously make it far easier for personal computer manufacturers to offer a single Linux distribution that is widely understood in terms of hardware and software compatibility to make it easier for administrators and end users.
There's also something else, too--current netbooks with 1 GB of RAM, 160 GB hard drive, 1024x600 display and Intel Atom N270 CPU are easily within the sweet spot for Windows XP Home Edition. As such, Windows runs reasonably fast on these netbooks, and because it's Windows XP it also means maximum commpatibility with all the third party hardware out there, too.
We have to remember that today's netbooks with their 1 GB of RAM, 160 GB hard drive, decent amount of video memory and the 1.6 GHz Intel Atom CPU is well within the "sweet spot" for running Windows XP Home Edition (SP2/SP3). Because everybody knows how to do tech support on Windows XP, small wonder why most netbooks nowadays run Windows XP Home Edition.
Yes, it may be nice to run Ubuntu Linux 8.10 desktop edition, but the third-party compatibility and support issues may conspire against supporting that on netbooks on a large scale.
I think you're trying to look at the ending from the modern point of view. As such, it doesn't make sense by 2009 standards.
Now, place yourself in Lee Adama's point of view. What has he seen for most of his life? Technology run amok that has caused untold suffering. Is it small wonder why in the end when they arrived on "our" Earth they decided on destroying those spaceships?
However, that is an implied ending that was difficult to understand if you watched it only once--you had to watch it multiple times to get what David Chase was trying to imply.
Small wonder why many viewers felt frustrated and cheated by the ending on first viewing.
Here's the problem with FLAC: very few players can play back FLAC files "out of the box." Meanwhile, every non-shuffle iPod since the 4G iPod (hard disk version) can play back Apple Lossless files "out of the box." (Yes, some iPods can be upgraded to play FLAC files with the Rockbox firmware, but 2G and newer iPod nanos, 5.5G and newer iPod classics, the iPhone and iPod touch can't be upgraded.)
If the music companies decide to offer lossless format downloads they'll go with Apple Lossless, if only because of the potentially huge number of potential customers for this format.
That would be great except a huge fraction of the world's portable music players don't support the FLAC format "out of the box."
In my opinion, if the music companies decide to sell music online in a lossless format, they'll use the Apple Lossless format (about 260 MB of data per 74 minutes of music). Why Apple Lossless? Because at least every iPod since the original 4G iPod (except for the shuffle) can play back the Apple Lossless format, and that means the potential audience for Apple Lossless files is huge.
Actually, it does make sense because all that technology has brought only one thing: untold suffering on both sides.
Yes, what Lee Adama wanted doesn't make sense by our modern standards, but makes sense by his standards for two reasons: 1) he didn't want whatever enemy Cylons remaining to find the spaceships and 2) he wanted to live the ideal of a simpler life.
What I liked about the ending is that Ronald D. Moore left enough ambiguity that we could argue about this ad nauseum, but yet, had enough clarity that we did have something that the finale of The Sopranos lacked: final closure.
The last images of the robots we see on the widescreen TV's perfect demonstrate George Santayana's most famous quote: those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
And with broadband being so widely available, the next trend for digital downloads after the success of the iTunes Music Store and the Amazon MP3 download service will be music downloads in lossless formats.
Don't laugh: there's a reason why Apple developed the Apple Lossless format--they're waiting for the day when broadband speeds are fast enough and media storage is really cheap so we can buy songs and albums in this format. And it's not as limited a format as you think either--the vast majority of iPods sold can play back Apple Lossless format files. Once this happens this could really hurt Compact Disc sales.
I'll say this: if Apple had offered right from the start at low cost a short dongle with the player controls on it so you can plug in any headphone with a 3.5 mm stereo phone jack, we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place.
But since Apple didn't do that, the whole thing smacks of "illegal product tie-in" and ends up forcing a long delay as third-party iPod manufacturers make the dongle and headphone manufacturers redesign their headphone cables to be truly compatible with the 3G shuffle.
Intel better watch out because there is a precedent on this: the case against the United Shoe Machinery Company by the US government, namely abusing patent and other intellectual property rights laws to drive out competitors (USM had a huge patent portfolio on shoe-making equipment that they used to keep competitors at bay).
Given Intel's near-total domination of the x86 market and the property rights over several Intel CPU features, they risk being hit by the Feds like what the Feds to USM several decades ago.
I believe that in the end, Intel and AMD will settle because if Intel tries to force AMD out of the x86 business Intel will face the same government lawsuit that brought down the United Shoe Machinery Company in the 1960's--namely abusing patent and intellectual property laws to protect its monopoly or near-monopoly position.
This would be a non-issue in the US if we adopted the Fair Tax Plan ( http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_main ) or something similar.
AMEN!!
One of the biggest problems the USA has is that because of some 67,500-plus pages of regulation derived from the Title 26, the Internal Revenue Code, the result is that there is ENORMOUS incentive for tax evasion either by participating in the cash-only underground economy or using every possible loophole in our tax laws to send money to offshore financial centers (OFCs) around the world. (I've read the current estimate of liquid assets sent "offshore" could be as high as a mind-boggling US$16 TRILLION!)
With the FairTax system in place, that incentive to "offshore" assets and participate in the underground economy goes away, since savings and investments are no longer subject to tax. Not only will we see most of that US$16 TRILLION return to the USA, but we could see several trillion more come in from foreign investors eager to take advantage of no more taxes on earning money. We're talking a potential US$20 TRILLION in liquidity entering our financial system, an amount so huge that it makes any Obama Administration stimulus plan look tiny in comparison and is big enough to even recapitalize failing companies like AIG, Citicorp and even the Big Three automakers.
An interesting side note: under FairTax, we could see a huge number of cargo ships suddenly becoming US-flagged because there will be no more taxes on the revenue they generate from carrying cargo around the world--the USA becomes the world's largest "flag of convenience" for cargo ships. That means all those abandoned and idled shipping ports will come to life again, bringing in potentially hundreds of thousands of jobs to the USA.
In fact, I see the primary use of these radar picket blimps flying at 65,000 feet altitude to be used to monitor air traffic flying in from the south.
If I remember correctly, there are stories about the Russians seriously considering basing some of their bombers in Cuba and Venezuela. With these high-flying radar blimps in operation, the Russians might not want to base their bombers in Cuba because we'll pick them up on radar as soon as the bombers take off!
Your concerns is probably the reason why the networks need to seriously look at new distribution means for tech-savvy audiences.
Whether it's on-demand viewing through your cable provider, using an online viewing system like Hulu.com, distribution using the Roku box from NetFlix or Amazon, downloading to the Apple TV box through the iTunes Music Store video download service, or even pressing DVDs specifically for distribution by NetFlix's mail order distribution system, these new delivery methods can specifically target audiences with way less concerns about pleasing the Nielsen ratings or pleasing advertisers. Indeed, online video distribution will be the way to go, especially in the future when network bandwidth is better and everyone is on IPv6 addressing.
Actually, what killed Futurama on its first run on FOX was the fact the programmed it at 7 pm Eastern time on Sunday nights--which turned into a disaster because of the innumerable overruns from FOX 4 pm Eastern time NFL games, which meant the Eastern and Central time zones never saw the series during its first run.
Today's 1920x1200 monitors is more or less a de facto TV, especially now the new ones support HDCP over the DVI-D connection, which allows any computer with a Blu-ray drive and HDCP support in the computer to play back the video a Blu-ray movie or HDTV broadcast (provided the computer has an ATSC/QAM tuner).
It does not have to boot for a minute or two.
The biggest problems with computers nowadays is that when you power it on, it does take some time to boot because of the need to load the operating system and ancillary programs from the hard drive into RAM. Even with today's Serial ATA-II hard drives, we're still limited by the 7200 rpm spindle speed of these drives, which effectively limits them to about 16 megabytes per second sustained data transfer rate.
But with rapid improvements in solid-state memory technology, I say within 15 years hard disk drives will be consigned to history, replaced by 2 to 4 terabyte solid-state memory modules about the size of today's 1/3 height 3.5" hard drive. Since solid-state drives don't have the mechanical access limitations of hard drives, the result is lightning fast loading of data from the solid state drive into RAM, which means instead of waiting 60 to 120 seconds for a system boot the entire boot will be done in 4-5 seconds! :-)
Alas, that leap forward won't happend until we get a lot more bandwidth and everyone is on IPv6.
Interestingly, the very high resolution of HDTV (1920x1080) could make it even more possible for a convergence between a computer and TV.
Since 1920x1080 is a slight subset of the 1920x1200 resolution used by 24" and bigger LCD monitors, it means you can watch true 1080p video and still have a very high resolution computer display that can show two side-by-side pages of text very clearly.
Already, most of the new 1920x1200 resolution computer monitors with DVI-D connections support HDCP, so they can accept signals from a computer with a Blu-ray drive that also has HDCP support.