What I still fail to get is why the heck are they wasting payload on making the rockets re-useable. Getting anything from 0 to 18,500 mph takes a LOT of energy so you design things to be as light as possible. If your engine needs to work for 6 minutes you design it to work for 6 minutes plus a safety margin.
Rocket engines are like Top-Fuel Drag racer engines. After every run you have to completely rebuild the engine. Why don't they build the engine to be stronger so they don't have to? Because it would be too heavy to put in a drag racer. ANY additional weight can have a nasty cascade effect. To add that extra pound of weight can require several pounds of fuel which then requires a larger fuel tank which is heavier which requires a more powerful engine. all of which weighs more and requires even more fuel, starting the cycle all over again.
I reload my own ammunition, let me demonstrate the problem with some 22 caliber reloading data.
To accelerate a 40 grain bullet to 2900 fps requires 12 grains of propellant.
To accelerate a 55 grain bullet to 3200 fps requires 26 grains of propellant.
To accelerate a 35 grain bullet to 5100 fps requires 46 grains of propellant.
To double the velocity of an object requires 4 times the energy. Thus the need to make everything as light as possible in a rocket. As you can see in the last example, the propellant weight soon exceeds the weight of the payload.
Why is that a bad thing? That's like saying the US does not have the capability anymore to build zeppelins or Model T Fords..
The only reason to go to the moon is if we get a working fusion reactor that requires Helium 3. Other than that, what is the point? Other than He3 it has no natural resources worth going there for.
You SERIOUSLY expect anyone to be impressed by a 25mm chain gun with a rate of fire so slow, cyclic 180 rpm, as to be little more effective than a heavy machine-gun?
Try this scenario, you have 10 aircraft approaching on a skip bombing run, you have 30 seconds from when they come within 2,000 yards to when the bomb impacts the ship. 90 rounds of 25mm is not gonna cut it unless you're a Jewish Carpenter.
SSTDS and AN/SLQ-25 Nixie are both useless against unguided torpedoes, which simply travel in a preset straight line from the firing ship, which is what will be done with PT style craft. Not to mention that neither system is foolproof in the first place.
This isn't even getting into the problem they will face against Exocets and Sunburns. The odds are far less certain.
Funny, round here it is the exact opposite. Every college student on Craigslist here thinks their 2 year old netbook is worth $250. The pawn shops are far more reasonable.
Sorry, but that is pure fantasy. You could have said the EXACT same thing about basic stamps and graphing calculators, like the Ti-83.
Hand-me-down computers today will completely curb stomp a pi and there is vast quantities of software and software development tools for windows, or even linux, for those who are interested. People who want to "toy about" with programing won't give the pi a second thought because it is simply too slow and too restrictive.
It will be used by serious tinkerers, for high level robotics courses and other advanced projects that can take advantage of its small size. The Pi will compete with BASIC stamps, not PCs.
If you want to educate people in low level programing you use a BASIC stamp. You can program them on any computer you might have and they have plenty of power for the basic robotics stuff.
If you are getting into the more advanced programing, why would you cripple your students by confining them to such a limited platform?
I just go to the local pawn shops and check the computers they have. I turned one cheap Atom netbook into a DVR for my garage. Another is a beater netbook for out by the bonfire, bullet casting, and firing range. (You don't want anything too important when working with molten lead or drunk people by a fire.)
Sometimes they really screw up, I got a $340 NIB AMD C60 netbook with Win7 64 bit for the same price as a 3 year old single core Atom. I then crammed an 8gb stick of ram in it, max "supported" was 4 gb but it worked just fine. I use it as my media computer downstairs. Power consumption is so stupid low I can not worry about accidentally leaving it on.
Often they are way overpriced, but if you keep an eye out you can spot a deal.
Wow dude, really? Nice job of missing the forest for the trees.
"Cessna" is commonly used as a generic term for "Small propeller driven civilian aircraft". It can include larger twin engine turboprop planes. I bet you also think that when they say "speedboat" they are referring to a 16' outboard.
Such aircraft can easily employ skip bombing tactics, which is incredibly effective and low cost, both because you can use cheap iron bombs and aircraft of comparably low performance, as skip bombing is typically done at 200-250 mph, and because it is easy to get hits on a ship with it. The key to it working in modern times is by overwhelming a ships defenses. This is easy enough to do with simple numbers. You build a bunch of $50,000-$100,000 prop driven aircraft with only very basic instrumentation and the payload to carry a 250-500lb bomb and can go fast enough to be good at skip bombing. (Could probably do it for less if you go full mass production.)
Send a couple dozen "speedboats" (PT boats) with one or two Exocets each. Carrier and escorts expend their AA ammunition engaging these threats and several ships will probably take hits. Then you have a couple hundred of these small, low cost, aircraft flying out, each with a 250-500lb bomb strapped to its belly. How many 250-500lb bombs impacting at the waterline can a carrier take before it sinks? Heck, how many before it can't even launch aircraft?
A Phalanx CIWS can only fire 15-25 or so bursts before its magazine is empty, assuming it wasn't knocked out by an Exocet impact. (Leave aside the fact that the Phalanx have never worked in the real world.) Ships that were not hit will be trying to cover stricken ships and thus have limited ability to maneuver and/or have limited AA ordinance at the ready.
Also don't forget that you can "turn-n-burn" with those "Cessna's". They can be quickly reloaded/refueled and sent out again just like the Israelis did during the 6 day war.
All of this is assuming that the country in question does not have AIP submarines with competent crews, in which case the carrier will be scrap on the ocean bottom as soon as it hits the continental shelf. Carriers then have to stay so far offshore as to be irrelevant.
Correct except for the allowing tethering part. The networks in that part of the world can barely handle voice and texting right now, how are they going to cram data in? They tend to buy the obsolete equipment from western countries for cheap that doesn't support high speed data. Even if it did, the bandwidth from the tower to elsewhere isn't there.
For me, no. Too many people I know have experienced catastrophic failures of their SSDs. I can't remember the last time I had a rust drive fail catastrophically with no warning like SSDs do. When Western Digital starts making SSDs, I'll consider them. Until then, a fast enough spinning rust disk and gobs of ram is good enough for me.
Our database server at work is going to be getting SSDs in a RAID because we need the speed. We will see how well they actually work.
You will note I used the word "Destroyed", not "Shot down". There was indeed a second F117 that was so badly damaged that it had to be scrapped, thus the total number destroyed is 2. A destroyed plane is a destroyed plane.
The aircraft was detected when its bomb bay doors were open
That is far from certain, from my understanding the F117 was not shot down near the target site where it would have the bombay door open. That explanation is seen by some as an excuse to cover for shortcomings in stealth technology. The far more likely explanation is that Serbian intelligence figured when and where the F117 would most likely travel and positioned their longwave radar sets accordingly and only turned them on around the time the F117 would be passing by. (Since they would get bombed if they left them on all the time.) Once the aircraft was spotted by longwave radar that data was passed along to mobile SA-3 (or perhaps it was SA-2, not sure.) sites that were also in the general vicinity which then turned on their radar when the F117 would be close enough to be seen, as stealth aircraft can be detected by shorter wave radar if they are close enough to the radar set. The SA-3s were supposedly modified in some form. The weather was also supposedly a factor, allowing the aircraft to be spotted visually and engaged by AAA.
So one confirmed combat loss out of how many sorties means that stealth technology is dead? I guess, at least to you it does.
No, the fact that stealth has always been vulnerable to detection by longwave radar makes stealth of limited utility against a competent foe. The only thing that kept stealth aircraft alive was that, in the past, one could not get a firing solution just on longwave radar data, it simply wasn't precise enough. The only thing that kept more F117s from being shot down was because the Serbs couldn't keep their radar on all the time because it would get bombed by conventional aircraft. Despite this, they made complete fools out of NATO, who failed to do more than superficial damage to the Serbian military. Further advances in passive radar, longwave radar, and IR technology are going to solve the targeting problem, relegating dedicated stealth to obsolescence.
Not to mention that Stealth aircraft have always been easily detected by longwave radar. The problem has always been that longwave radar normally lacks the precision to precisely target the aircraft well enough for a missile, typically only within a couple of miles, however anyone operating longwave radar will know right away that a stealth aircraft is present.
Along with some good intelligence gathering, the Serbs in the Kosovo war managed to destroy two F-117s with 1960's era longwave radar sets, SA-3 SAMs and AAA.
With modern computer power and improved IR/radar gear, combined with the horrifically high cost of building and operating stealth aircraft, dedicated stealth aircraft will probably eventually be phased out. Of course designers WILL try to reduce the detection signature of their aircraft if it does not impede other design attributes.
Look can we all get together and tell these "journalists" to kindly go screw their uninformed clickbait...please? As someone who has been in the trenches since the 386 its REALLY simple, once the MHz wars ended and multicores became cheap PCs went from being "good enough" to insanely overpowered for a good 90% of the planet so like their washer and dryer they don't toss until they break, whereas the cell phone gets flushed by the kiddies, it gets coke spilled on it, its treated as the disposable crap that it is so NO SHIT you're gonna have more of them shipping, because people take better care of their PCs and laptops than they do their "worthless" cell phones.
I was sitting here laughing my butt off at the thought of "The passing of the washer and dryer era"? Can you imagine if a journalist seriously submitted such an article? They'd be either fired or taken in for a 72 hour psychiatric evaluation.
Someone is gonna run one in their house, for whatever reason, and have the DEA bust down their door because they think they are running a grow op via the power bill.
Part of the problem I think is that many of the Linux people do not see PCs as a means to an end, they are an end onto themselves. People use PCs because they are useful for accomplishing a task. The PC needs to be functioning and accomplish whatever task they want to do as efficiently as possible.
There is nothing wrong with having machines that are ends unto themselves, nothing wrong with having a hobby. I have three Mopeds at home, two classics from the late 70's early 80's and one modern friction drive kit I built myself. The two old ones are ends unto themselves. I enjoy fixing them up and keeping them running, they require constant tinkering and tweaking along with a great deal of knowledge. On the other hand, my third one is for "scouting" garage sales on the weekend and sometimes going to work, since it gets 170 mpg, it needs to work with no fiddling or tweaking.
For most people, computers need to be like my third moped, most Linux people I know seem to view computers as I view my first two mopeds. Getting the stupid thing working is half the fun. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people do not get such enjoyment. I understand that when it comes to mopeds, why can't they in regards to computers?
Ironically you use a quote from the bible when it and the Koran are probably the two biggest causes of mass death on this planet, but that has always been a problem with religions, the line between faith and "true believer" is surprisingly small.
Please, Christianity and Islam have nothing on Atheism and secular governments when it comes to mass slaughter.
Remember 20th century militant atheists following the work of Marx and the 100+ million corpses that ideology produced? Christianity and Islam have nothing even closely resembling that even on a per capita basis. And yes, they did do it because of their atheism, to say otherwise simply shows one is not being intellectually honest, militant atheism and the elimination of organized religion were central pillars of Marx and those who followed him.
Their line of reasoning was horrifyingly simple, "People are killed all the time from natural events, why shouldn't we kill those who we deem are impeding the progress of society." Under atheism, there is no reason not to, other than personal subjective preference. Christianity and even Islam have far better ideological safeguards against such wanton slaughter. (Whether or not people actually FOLLOW them is a different matter of course.)
Not to make light of those atrocities, just pointing out the historical reality.
The point of the response is not to be a serious argument, but to simply apply the "Reductio ad absurdum" fallacy to Atheism in the same way Atheists apply it to Christianity. (Whose knowledge of Christianity frequently seems to be limited to that found in a coloring book.) I was using it to simply point out that ridicule is not an argument and does nothing to advance a discussion.
There of course IS an argument that can be formulated against Atheisim that goes along those lines, mainly the problem of an infinite regress and the origin of the universe. An actual past infinity cannot exist, as it leads to logical absurdities, there MUST be an uncaused cause that terminates the line of past events. A cause which exists necessarily. Theists have argued that God is the uncaused cause. Atheists tended to argue that the Universe existed necessarily.
The problem of course is that the eternal universe does not answer the problem of an infinite regress. Add to that the advent of Big Bang Cosmology in the early 20th century, which pointed to a universe that did not exist necessarily. In 2003 the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem definitively proved this. Multiverse, quantum loop gravity, and other speculative models are all subject to the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem, which disproves the possibility of a past eternal universe which is on average expanding, as ours is.
I personally prefer Natural Theology, as it bypasses all the objection against Christianity that Atheists use and it forces them to answer some strong scientific and philosophical objections to their worldview.
Oh Lord...one of those that believes what some 1800 year dead goat herder wrote about some 2000+ year dead guy, right? Its called LIGHTNING friend, and its already shown that complex chemicals form when you zap base chemicals repeatedly, enjoy the wiki article about the experiements done a half a century ago.
As opposed to an Atheism: The belief that there was nothing & nothing happened to nothing & then nothing magically exploded for no reason creating everything & then a bunch of everything magically rearranged itself for no reason which then turned into dinosaurs.
We can exchange insults back and forth all day, but ridicule is not an argument, you're the one who brought religion into this, not me. I'm not going to fall for your diversion. You'll have to do better than that and give evidence to support your view.
Now to get back on topic: You DO realize that the Miller–Urey experiment has been discredited for decades. (Yes it's still included in some textbooks, my mom is a teacher and the maps in the classrooms still had "Soviet Union" on them in the mid 2000's.)
1. The experiment used the wrong gasses. Miller used water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen in his experiment. While this was in line with what scientists thought the early atmosphere was like at the time, this view soon changed. Hydrogen would have escaped the earths atmosphere as it does today, ammonia is too unstable to exist for the length of time required. Most scientists now think that the Earth’s early atmosphere consisted of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapor. Lab experiments show that this gas mixture can't create organic materials in Miller-Urey-type experiments. This fact alone relegates the Miller-Urey experiment to irrelevance. It was an interesting experiment, but science passed it by.
2. The Miller–Urey experiment produces both left-handed and right-handed amino acids in identical quantities. All amino acids in proteins are left-handed, while all sugars in DNA and RNA, and in the metabolic pathways, are right-handed. The opposite types are not only useless but can also be toxic to life. Right-handed and left-handed amino acids are almost always chemically identical. No way for non-life to tell the difference, yet that difference will prevent proper protein formation. For primitive life that difference is lethal.
3. Miller had to use a cold trap to preserve the amino acids that were formed, the same environment that created them also destroyed them and limited their concentration in the system.
4. Even IF the Miller Urey experiment was valid, you are still nowhere close to getting a living cell. How do those amino acids get arranged into a self-replicating form? Chemical evolution is dead, amino acids do not self arrange into biologically useful proteins. RNA world doesn't work either, the best lab experiments can get is 10% replication in lab conditions that look nothing like what an early earth environment would look like.
How do you get chemicals to arrange only right-handed amino acids into a computer code 500,000 base pairs long that codes for left-handed proteins? A single byte (or 8 bits) can represent 4 DNA base pairs, so the simplest life that we know about and can conceive of effectively requires 125 KB of code to operate. Mathematicians have worked on this and there is neither enough time or enough matter in the universe for this to be even remotely possible from simple chance interactions of chemicals. That's JUST the DNA. Where does the cellular machinery that can process that DNA come from?
My view is based on the scientific evidence. You hold your view despite the evidence. Today, science tells us that even simple life is extraordinarily complex and requires a large amount of information to be simply "put in" at the beginning to get the process started. That does not rule out the possibility of life elsewh
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If they treated it like a religion they would donate money to it to further the cause.
/I'll be here all week, try the fish.
What I still fail to get is why the heck are they wasting payload on making the rockets re-useable. Getting anything from 0 to 18,500 mph takes a LOT of energy so you design things to be as light as possible. If your engine needs to work for 6 minutes you design it to work for 6 minutes plus a safety margin.
Rocket engines are like Top-Fuel Drag racer engines. After every run you have to completely rebuild the engine. Why don't they build the engine to be stronger so they don't have to? Because it would be too heavy to put in a drag racer. ANY additional weight can have a nasty cascade effect. To add that extra pound of weight can require several pounds of fuel which then requires a larger fuel tank which is heavier which requires a more powerful engine. all of which weighs more and requires even more fuel, starting the cycle all over again.
I reload my own ammunition, let me demonstrate the problem with some 22 caliber reloading data.
To accelerate a 40 grain bullet to 2900 fps requires 12 grains of propellant.
To accelerate a 55 grain bullet to 3200 fps requires 26 grains of propellant.
To accelerate a 35 grain bullet to 5100 fps requires 46 grains of propellant.
To double the velocity of an object requires 4 times the energy. Thus the need to make everything as light as possible in a rocket. As you can see in the last example, the propellant weight soon exceeds the weight of the payload.
Why is that a bad thing? That's like saying the US does not have the capability anymore to build zeppelins or Model T Fords..
The only reason to go to the moon is if we get a working fusion reactor that requires Helium 3. Other than that, what is the point? Other than He3 it has no natural resources worth going there for.
If anything, MS could sweep Linux from the server market in about a year by pulling a Steam and pricing their server stuff competitively.
Exactly, just buy a regular Windows 7 license, leave it on your bookshelf, and use Tiny. How is Microsoft going to know the difference?
Not to mention it has a maximum number of targets it can engage before exhausting its ammo supply. ( it is finite ) ( Yup, it's classified. )
No it's not. It's 1550 rounds and it typically fires a burst of 60 or 100 rounds per target.
You SERIOUSLY expect anyone to be impressed by a 25mm chain gun with a rate of fire so slow, cyclic 180 rpm, as to be little more effective than a heavy machine-gun?
Try this scenario, you have 10 aircraft approaching on a skip bombing run, you have 30 seconds from when they come within 2,000 yards to when the bomb impacts the ship. 90 rounds of 25mm is not gonna cut it unless you're a Jewish Carpenter.
SSTDS and AN/SLQ-25 Nixie are both useless against unguided torpedoes, which simply travel in a preset straight line from the firing ship, which is what will be done with PT style craft. Not to mention that neither system is foolproof in the first place.
This isn't even getting into the problem they will face against Exocets and Sunburns. The odds are far less certain.
Funny, round here it is the exact opposite. Every college student on Craigslist here thinks their 2 year old netbook is worth $250. The pawn shops are far more reasonable.
Sorry, but that is pure fantasy. You could have said the EXACT same thing about basic stamps and graphing calculators, like the Ti-83.
Hand-me-down computers today will completely curb stomp a pi and there is vast quantities of software and software development tools for windows, or even linux, for those who are interested. People who want to "toy about" with programing won't give the pi a second thought because it is simply too slow and too restrictive.
It will be used by serious tinkerers, for high level robotics courses and other advanced projects that can take advantage of its small size. The Pi will compete with BASIC stamps, not PCs.
If you want to educate people in low level programing you use a BASIC stamp. You can program them on any computer you might have and they have plenty of power for the basic robotics stuff.
If you are getting into the more advanced programing, why would you cripple your students by confining them to such a limited platform?
I just go to the local pawn shops and check the computers they have. I turned one cheap Atom netbook into a DVR for my garage. Another is a beater netbook for out by the bonfire, bullet casting, and firing range. (You don't want anything too important when working with molten lead or drunk people by a fire.)
Sometimes they really screw up, I got a $340 NIB AMD C60 netbook with Win7 64 bit for the same price as a 3 year old single core Atom. I then crammed an 8gb stick of ram in it, max "supported" was 4 gb but it worked just fine. I use it as my media computer downstairs. Power consumption is so stupid low I can not worry about accidentally leaving it on.
Often they are way overpriced, but if you keep an eye out you can spot a deal.
Wow dude, really? Nice job of missing the forest for the trees.
"Cessna" is commonly used as a generic term for "Small propeller driven civilian aircraft". It can include larger twin engine turboprop planes. I bet you also think that when they say "speedboat" they are referring to a 16' outboard.
Such aircraft can easily employ skip bombing tactics, which is incredibly effective and low cost, both because you can use cheap iron bombs and aircraft of comparably low performance, as skip bombing is typically done at 200-250 mph, and because it is easy to get hits on a ship with it. The key to it working in modern times is by overwhelming a ships defenses. This is easy enough to do with simple numbers. You build a bunch of $50,000-$100,000 prop driven aircraft with only very basic instrumentation and the payload to carry a 250-500lb bomb and can go fast enough to be good at skip bombing. (Could probably do it for less if you go full mass production.)
Send a couple dozen "speedboats" (PT boats) with one or two Exocets each. Carrier and escorts expend their AA ammunition engaging these threats and several ships will probably take hits. Then you have a couple hundred of these small, low cost, aircraft flying out, each with a 250-500lb bomb strapped to its belly. How many 250-500lb bombs impacting at the waterline can a carrier take before it sinks? Heck, how many before it can't even launch aircraft?
A Phalanx CIWS can only fire 15-25 or so bursts before its magazine is empty, assuming it wasn't knocked out by an Exocet impact. (Leave aside the fact that the Phalanx have never worked in the real world.) Ships that were not hit will be trying to cover stricken ships and thus have limited ability to maneuver and/or have limited AA ordinance at the ready.
Also don't forget that you can "turn-n-burn" with those "Cessna's". They can be quickly reloaded/refueled and sent out again just like the Israelis did during the 6 day war.
All of this is assuming that the country in question does not have AIP submarines with competent crews, in which case the carrier will be scrap on the ocean bottom as soon as it hits the continental shelf. Carriers then have to stay so far offshore as to be irrelevant.
Correct except for the allowing tethering part. The networks in that part of the world can barely handle voice and texting right now, how are they going to cram data in? They tend to buy the obsolete equipment from western countries for cheap that doesn't support high speed data. Even if it did, the bandwidth from the tower to elsewhere isn't there.
Assumption 5: The bearings on the drive are going out.
In the third world I'd say they are largely "pre-PC". To them, cell phones are like land-lines were to our parents/grand parents.
For me, no. Too many people I know have experienced catastrophic failures of their SSDs. I can't remember the last time I had a rust drive fail catastrophically with no warning like SSDs do. When Western Digital starts making SSDs, I'll consider them. Until then, a fast enough spinning rust disk and gobs of ram is good enough for me.
Our database server at work is going to be getting SSDs in a RAID because we need the speed. We will see how well they actually work.
The aircraft was detected when its bomb bay doors were open
That is far from certain, from my understanding the F117 was not shot down near the target site where it would have the bombay door open. That explanation is seen by some as an excuse to cover for shortcomings in stealth technology. The far more likely explanation is that Serbian intelligence figured when and where the F117 would most likely travel and positioned their longwave radar sets accordingly and only turned them on around the time the F117 would be passing by. (Since they would get bombed if they left them on all the time.) Once the aircraft was spotted by longwave radar that data was passed along to mobile SA-3 (or perhaps it was SA-2, not sure.) sites that were also in the general vicinity which then turned on their radar when the F117 would be close enough to be seen, as stealth aircraft can be detected by shorter wave radar if they are close enough to the radar set. The SA-3s were supposedly modified in some form. The weather was also supposedly a factor, allowing the aircraft to be spotted visually and engaged by AAA.
So one confirmed combat loss out of how many sorties means that stealth technology is dead? I guess, at least to you it does.
No, the fact that stealth has always been vulnerable to detection by longwave radar makes stealth of limited utility against a competent foe. The only thing that kept stealth aircraft alive was that, in the past, one could not get a firing solution just on longwave radar data, it simply wasn't precise enough. The only thing that kept more F117s from being shot down was because the Serbs couldn't keep their radar on all the time because it would get bombed by conventional aircraft. Despite this, they made complete fools out of NATO, who failed to do more than superficial damage to the Serbian military. Further advances in passive radar, longwave radar, and IR technology are going to solve the targeting problem, relegating dedicated stealth to obsolescence.
Not to mention that Stealth aircraft have always been easily detected by longwave radar. The problem has always been that longwave radar normally lacks the precision to precisely target the aircraft well enough for a missile, typically only within a couple of miles, however anyone operating longwave radar will know right away that a stealth aircraft is present.
Along with some good intelligence gathering, the Serbs in the Kosovo war managed to destroy two F-117s with 1960's era longwave radar sets, SA-3 SAMs and AAA.
With modern computer power and improved IR/radar gear, combined with the horrifically high cost of building and operating stealth aircraft, dedicated stealth aircraft will probably eventually be phased out. Of course designers WILL try to reduce the detection signature of their aircraft if it does not impede other design attributes.
Found a good article on the subject on this "Post PC" nonsense.
http://www.telerikwatch.com/2011/08/post-pc-era-is-myth-relating-evolution.html
Look can we all get together and tell these "journalists" to kindly go screw their uninformed clickbait...please? As someone who has been in the trenches since the 386 its REALLY simple, once the MHz wars ended and multicores became cheap PCs went from being "good enough" to insanely overpowered for a good 90% of the planet so like their washer and dryer they don't toss until they break, whereas the cell phone gets flushed by the kiddies, it gets coke spilled on it, its treated as the disposable crap that it is so NO SHIT you're gonna have more of them shipping, because people take better care of their PCs and laptops than they do their "worthless" cell phones.
I was sitting here laughing my butt off at the thought of "The passing of the washer and dryer era"? Can you imagine if a journalist seriously submitted such an article? They'd be either fired or taken in for a 72 hour psychiatric evaluation.
Someone is gonna run one in their house, for whatever reason, and have the DEA bust down their door because they think they are running a grow op via the power bill.
Part of the problem I think is that many of the Linux people do not see PCs as a means to an end, they are an end onto themselves. People use PCs because they are useful for accomplishing a task. The PC needs to be functioning and accomplish whatever task they want to do as efficiently as possible.
There is nothing wrong with having machines that are ends unto themselves, nothing wrong with having a hobby. I have three Mopeds at home, two classics from the late 70's early 80's and one modern friction drive kit I built myself. The two old ones are ends unto themselves. I enjoy fixing them up and keeping them running, they require constant tinkering and tweaking along with a great deal of knowledge. On the other hand, my third one is for "scouting" garage sales on the weekend and sometimes going to work, since it gets 170 mpg, it needs to work with no fiddling or tweaking.
For most people, computers need to be like my third moped, most Linux people I know seem to view computers as I view my first two mopeds. Getting the stupid thing working is half the fun. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people do not get such enjoyment. I understand that when it comes to mopeds, why can't they in regards to computers?
Ironically you use a quote from the bible when it and the Koran are probably the two biggest causes of mass death on this planet, but that has always been a problem with religions, the line between faith and "true believer" is surprisingly small.
Please, Christianity and Islam have nothing on Atheism and secular governments when it comes to mass slaughter.
Remember 20th century militant atheists following the work of Marx and the 100+ million corpses that ideology produced? Christianity and Islam have nothing even closely resembling that even on a per capita basis. And yes, they did do it because of their atheism, to say otherwise simply shows one is not being intellectually honest, militant atheism and the elimination of organized religion were central pillars of Marx and those who followed him.
Their line of reasoning was horrifyingly simple, "People are killed all the time from natural events, why shouldn't we kill those who we deem are impeding the progress of society." Under atheism, there is no reason not to, other than personal subjective preference. Christianity and even Islam have far better ideological safeguards against such wanton slaughter. (Whether or not people actually FOLLOW them is a different matter of course.)
Not to make light of those atrocities, just pointing out the historical reality.
The point of the response is not to be a serious argument, but to simply apply the "Reductio ad absurdum" fallacy to Atheism in the same way Atheists apply it to Christianity. (Whose knowledge of Christianity frequently seems to be limited to that found in a coloring book.) I was using it to simply point out that ridicule is not an argument and does nothing to advance a discussion.
There of course IS an argument that can be formulated against Atheisim that goes along those lines, mainly the problem of an infinite regress and the origin of the universe. An actual past infinity cannot exist, as it leads to logical absurdities, there MUST be an uncaused cause that terminates the line of past events. A cause which exists necessarily. Theists have argued that God is the uncaused cause. Atheists tended to argue that the Universe existed necessarily.
The problem of course is that the eternal universe does not answer the problem of an infinite regress. Add to that the advent of Big Bang Cosmology in the early 20th century, which pointed to a universe that did not exist necessarily. In 2003 the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem definitively proved this. Multiverse, quantum loop gravity, and other speculative models are all subject to the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem, which disproves the possibility of a past eternal universe which is on average expanding, as ours is.
I personally prefer Natural Theology, as it bypasses all the objection against Christianity that Atheists use and it forces them to answer some strong scientific and philosophical objections to their worldview.
Oh Lord...one of those that believes what some 1800 year dead goat herder wrote about some 2000+ year dead guy, right? Its called LIGHTNING friend, and its already shown that complex chemicals form when you zap base chemicals repeatedly, enjoy the wiki article about the experiements done a half a century ago.
As opposed to an Atheism: The belief that there was nothing & nothing happened to nothing & then nothing magically exploded for no reason creating everything & then a bunch of everything magically rearranged itself for no reason which then turned into dinosaurs.
We can exchange insults back and forth all day, but ridicule is not an argument, you're the one who brought religion into this, not me. I'm not going to fall for your diversion. You'll have to do better than that and give evidence to support your view.
Now to get back on topic: You DO realize that the Miller–Urey experiment has been discredited for decades. (Yes it's still included in some textbooks, my mom is a teacher and the maps in the classrooms still had "Soviet Union" on them in the mid 2000's.)
1. The experiment used the wrong gasses. Miller used water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen in his experiment. While this was in line with what scientists thought the early atmosphere was like at the time, this view soon changed. Hydrogen would have escaped the earths atmosphere as it does today, ammonia is too unstable to exist for the length of time required. Most scientists now think that the Earth’s early atmosphere consisted of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapor. Lab experiments show that this gas mixture can't create organic materials in Miller-Urey-type experiments. This fact alone relegates the Miller-Urey experiment to irrelevance. It was an interesting experiment, but science passed it by.
2. The Miller–Urey experiment produces both left-handed and right-handed amino acids in identical quantities. All amino acids in proteins are left-handed, while all sugars in DNA and RNA, and in the metabolic pathways, are right-handed. The opposite types are not only useless but can also be toxic to life. Right-handed and left-handed amino acids are almost always chemically identical. No way for non-life to tell the difference, yet that difference will prevent proper protein formation. For primitive life that difference is lethal.
3. Miller had to use a cold trap to preserve the amino acids that were formed, the same environment that created them also destroyed them and limited their concentration in the system.
4. Even IF the Miller Urey experiment was valid, you are still nowhere close to getting a living cell. How do those amino acids get arranged into a self-replicating form? Chemical evolution is dead, amino acids do not self arrange into biologically useful proteins. RNA world doesn't work either, the best lab experiments can get is 10% replication in lab conditions that look nothing like what an early earth environment would look like.
How do you get chemicals to arrange only right-handed amino acids into a computer code 500,000 base pairs long that codes for left-handed proteins? A single byte (or 8 bits) can represent 4 DNA base pairs, so the simplest life that we know about and can conceive of effectively requires 125 KB of code to operate. Mathematicians have worked on this and there is neither enough time or enough matter in the universe for this to be even remotely possible from simple chance interactions of chemicals. That's JUST the DNA. Where does the cellular machinery that can process that DNA come from?
My view is based on the scientific evidence. You hold your view despite the evidence. Today, science tells us that even simple life is extraordinarily complex and requires a large amount of information to be simply "put in" at the beginning to get the process started. That does not rule out the possibility of life elsewh