Yeah, that's another thing; you think you can turn the existing multi-lane 70mph entrances into one lane of 18mph, and this will IMPROVE things?
If you think that the existing entrances move 70 MPH during rush hour, or even 18 MPH, you're not living in my world. You're lucky if the main road goes 18 MPH. It's not uncommon in some areas to take an hour to go 10 miles. Getting 50 MPH average would be a dream!
It'll be backed up for several miles behind each entrance...
Why? What backs it up, when the number of vehicles on the system won't be enough to congest it for some time? Who says I can't have a local network with on-and-off ramps every half mile and spurs from the main line which go two or three miles to either side? One solid line of vehicles moving at even 18 MPH can move more traffic than many 6-lane roads I've seen at rush hour; if you can bump them up to 60+ MPH in between, they'd really cut the travel time.
And at the exits, same deal; you'll be stacking them up at 18mph.
Everything slows down to 18 MPH for the interchanges. This mostly means that the "trains" of cars come together. The neat thing about the system appears to be that you could have the system let you know to exit early or late if your preferred exit was too congested. Flexibility is the antidote to gridlock.
I know, I know. IHBT, IHL, HAND. I just can't resist a non-sequitur. --
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PRT (done right) is all about making things as small and efficient as possible. The cars are as simple as possible, as small as is socially appropriate, and as light as possible.
And a rail-only car on an RUF system is what?
Simple as possible (barely needs batteries),
Small or large as you need (an unmanned car could handle deliveries to any store or strip mall with rail service), and
about as light as you need them to be.
Central maintenance for the rail-only cars handles their reliability just fine; it's not something on which PRT has a monopoly.
But RUF has none of the beautiful minimalism that PRT has.... The biggest reasons to like PRT are lost on something like RUF.
"Beautiful minimalism" is another word for utopian. There's a problem with utopiae: they are very, very inflexible. It's very much worth accepting some inefficiency to increase flexibility. The ability to accept dual-mode vehicles allows the system to serve taxis which go door-to-door.
PRT would be great when there's a station less than a half mile from anywhere I want to go.
There are lots of people who won't or can't walk a half mile, and you'd leave them out in the cold. The RUF system could serve everyone. The RUF could also serve light freight delivery both on and off the rails (though rail-only service could operate without drivers, saving a lot of labor and money). Minimalism is wonderful in theories and perhaps art, but in the real world it doesn't work well under stress. Passenger light rail lost to the personal automobile because of flexibility. Any "solution" which doesn't recognize that is no solution, because it won't be accepted and used. --
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What assumptions? They're listed in the article.
on
Fiddler on the RUF
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· Score: 1
You're making some bad assumptions:
If so, you've failed to address them.
First, that the medians are available. Here in Orlando, they're already spoken for, there won't be medians soon.
You have concrete crash barriers. You probably have light posts, too. The rail goes up in the air on concrete piers; its supports wouldn't take up a significant amount of real estate and might not even make a difference. You could put a pair of rails (express) over the fast lanes supported on median piers, and another pair over the shoulder (local, much more frequent entry/exit opportunities). It all goes up in the air where there is currently nothing vying for space.
Second, you're forgetting that the interchanges to get the RUFs on and off this thing will be HUGE in the US.
Why would they be so big? They're one lane in each direction, so two lanes wide. At worst they'd need to be like a short section of elevated freeway.
Third, you're assuming that while this is being built, we won't have to keep expanding the roads.
The congestion of the roads is the incentive to use the RUF system instead. Anywhere it's cheaper to run RUF rails than to build more lanes of asphalt, that's what you do. We wouldn't need to expand the roads if people didn't keep reacting to increased availability of traffic lanes by driving more and further, so you could just stop the cycle right there.
Nobody is going to want to buy another car *AND* pay an extra $10,000 a year in taxes, just so they can sit in a dinky little weird-ass car with a wall in the middle and a pussy engine.
(Where'd you pull that number from?) If that dinky little weird-ass car could turn an hour's one-way commute in heavy traffic into 25 minutes of automated zipping along while I read the newspaper, that's 70 minutes a day or about 290 hours a year that becomes mine again. At my billing rate, 290 hours will pay for a new car every year. You think I wouldn't buy one, you're nuts. --
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That in turn means that each off-ramp will need a landing zone capable of stacking up a few cars while their drivers get their acts together.
All it means is that the car has to have someone attentive at the controls before control gets handed off. This isn't a big problem; the car is capable of driving back onto the rail all by itself, so if the driver fails to respond in time to accept the hand-off the car just keeps going (which is a hell of a lot better than idiots stopping on the freeway to try to get onto the backed-up offramp). If you miss two off-ramps it flags the cops and stops somewhere for them to make sure you're okay. --
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RUF seems rather awkward, and I'm not sure what it would provide. But the basic idea of automated individual vehicles seems quite practical to me (PRT being a much more practical implementation).
It looks to me like RUF is essentially PRT with vehicles which can also be driven off-system (though I am not sure about the difference in switching details). If you could operate some PRT-like vehicles on an RUF rail network, it would be the best of both worlds and could shift usage modes as personal tastes and lifestyles change. --
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It cruises 62 MPH (100 kph) and could be faster.
on
Fiddler on the RUF
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The average speed is so much lower because the design assumes an interchange every few miles where the speed drops to 30 kph (19 MPH) to allow traffic to merge and exit.
There is no reason that this assumption has to be followed. If you had an "express rail" that went for 10 or 20 miles between interchanges, you could do the full 62 MPH for most of that. The designer probably picked 62 MPH because it's a nice round number in metric units. It would probably be a small matter to make that 70 MPH (113 kph). Voila, your average speed is probably closer to 67 MPH than 50 MPH. Would you be happy with that for your daily commute? --
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why would I want to jump into something with a top speed of 62mph when I can legally do 70 without breaking a sweat...
Ever try driving 70 MPH in bumper-to-bumper rush-hour traffic? If you ever did I'm glad I wasn't there, and I'm really glad I don't have to pay your car insurance.
There's another twist to this. Because nobody can build a ZEV that people want to buy, California is allowing lightly modified electric golf carts (yes, golf carts) to be called "city cars" and count against the ZEV requirement (about 0.6 credit/vehicle). This kind of rail system gives a vehicle like that practically unlimited range and maintains speeds a lot higher than you can achieve in most traffic jams - and you don't have to drive it, you can read your newspaper or write letters or catch up on Slashdot. It would be just the thing for taking these silly "city cars" and turning them into serious transportation.
It's definitely not for everyone, including long-distance drivers. But it has a niche. Besides, if you only need a long-distance car once a month or so you can always rent one. The cost of renting now and then plus an RUF car might be cheaper than owning a regular car. I'd consider it. --
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What property? It goes in *highway medians*.
on
Fiddler on the RUF
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I'd be interested in this... but not so much so that I'd be willing to pay the massive tax increases necessary to build this parallel system...
Because the rails can go up in the air above existing highway medians (and perhaps also above major surface roads), the land-acquisition costs for this system would be nil. Compare this to the cost of buying land to widen a road or put in some new freeway. Looks like no contest to me: the rail system wins hands-down.
and not so much so that I'd be willing to be a party to the massive invasion of other people's property rights to build it.
I think you have this confused with freeways again. The state already owns the air space over existing roads, so I don't see where other people's property rights are affected at all.
There are some real attractive features to this system. Taking a bunch of traffic off the pavement and putting it in the air will relieve a lot of congestion. If you've ever seen Los Angeles or Chicago at rush hour, you'll see why people would love this. --
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Absolutely not, except acoustically. The place could be full of people and you'd not have the slightest problem with their noise drowning out the conversation at your table.
and the ability to choose your own entertainment at whim?
Why not? If there's a conversation at the table that I'm not really involved in, two TV channels on screens and someone playing on stage, I could use the headphones to be able to hear either of the TV tracks or the guy on stage better. It wouldn't make it harder for the people in the conversation to hear each other, either.
You apparently don't want to socialize with anyone new
Sure I do. I just don't want to have to shout to be heard over the people at the next table after I walk over to introduce myself. I'd also like to be able to hear the entertainment better without having to have it be really loud. Headphones let you tune different things in, or out, at your pleasure and experience them at the level you like. It would be really great for many purposes, like people with hearing problems. --
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The company produced the conflict, not him. From the article:
... however I could see that the company was heading in the area I was working on.
The company was informed about what he was doing, and management still chose to go into the area where VirtualUK was working. This means that any conflict is due to the company's actions, and they have no business claiming any ownership of VirtualUK's work. If anything, the company is trying to mis-appropriate V's work under false pretenses. --
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the target market includes airtraffic, as normal cell/digital phones have substantial problems when communicating with multiple towers as they fly overhead.
That market is already sewn up for over-land flights. If you've been in an airliner recently you've certainly seen the phone in the back of the middle seat in each row of three. These operate from plane-to-ground through a dedicated set of ground stations, and don't have the expense or complications of going through satellites.
There would be a market for satellite phones, and data connectivity, for trans-oceanic and trans-polar flights. When you consider how long it takes to go to Japan or Australia, lots of business types would probably be happy to spend $1.50/minute for voice or $5.00/megabyte for data so they can keep working. When you consider what their time can be worth, that's cheap. It's fewer planes to hook up, but you've got the market to yourself. Might be even more profitable. --
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Motorola et al. ate the US$5e9 cost of the satellite constellation, and sold it for a mere US$2.5e7. They didn't dump it in the ocean, they sold it to someone who thought they could make money with it. As long as the operating costs are low enough that you can get positive cash flow, there is no reason to dump the satellites; you can always recoup some money by selling to someone with another business plan.
This means that Iridium isn't going to go into the ocean until one of three things happens:
The satellites break down or run out of propellant.
The market for services which can be offered using the satellites won't support the operating costs.
The market takes off, and the spectrum becomes so valuable that the satellites have to be dumped to make room for better ones.
Until then you can expect to see one operator or another trying to eke out some money from Iridium's shrinking cluster of birds. --
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First thing I'd want in a geek bar: clean air. If I can't breathe, I'm outta there. NO SMOKING, PERIOD.
Second thing I'd want in a geek bar: quiet space. Most places are too loud to have a conversation. Acoustic engineering isn't quite rocket science, you could have booths or entire rooms which are lined to absorb sound from people and things more than a short distance away.
Third thing: Connectivity and power, with table space. I'd love to be able to haul in my laptop and plug it into a 10baseT and a 12-volt supply (why not 110 volts? because the cable that plugs into a car is a lot lighter and smaller than the transformer for line power).
Fourth thing: security. Cable locks for computers, lockers for books and bags. Build them into the tables and booth-backs, charge a quarter to release the key like airport lockers. Maybe plant a security tag in the key so that anyone trying to take one out of the building gets "beeped".
Fifth thing: I want to be able to select my own entertainment. If I can't play what I want by streaming it from my laptop (or even if I can, because laptop speakers are so tinny) I'd like to be able to pick what's coming over the speakers in my booth. Let the speakers cancel what's coming from the booths on either side (active noise cancellation). Or put the building inside a Faraday cage and broadcast different music, news and TV sound channels over little 100 mW FM transmitters. Bring a headset radio and tune in whichever thing you want for background, put the volume up or down at your pleasure.
Sixth, food. Geeks get enough grease and too little exercise at work. I want to be able to get good coffee, fresh salads and tasty low-fat food. If the kitchen doesn't even have a grill or a deep-fat fryer, GREAT. Put it next door to a sushi bar for real fun, man I'd never leave (what's that smell?).
I second the vote for "no sports". SciFi, Cartoon Channel, financial news, but no sports. --
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You're writing this... on a weblog powered by Perl, a language written by a devout Christian. The main tome of the Perl language... is filled with Biblical [and] Tolkien allusions....
So you are saying that Larry Wall has a thing for good fiction, both classic and modern?
It's a mistake to make the claim you're implying. It's the reverse of the ad-hominem argument. It is undeniable that Richard Wagner wrote some terrific music, but some of his personal beliefs (particularly his anti-semitism) were dead wrong and people holding similar beliefs today are held in very low esteem in enlightened circles. Just because Larry Wall made a useful and popular language doesn't mean that everything he thinks, believes, does or stands for is the same. It all has to be evaluated on the merits.
If you have any argument about the merits of the work vs. the merits of the person, look at Wednesday's Harlan Ellison thread. The guy has an ego the size of New York City, and it really makes him lose sympathy. That doesn't mean that his work is bad or his cause unjust... nor does it mean that a sympathetic person's work is good, nor their causes worthy. --
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Elephant-grass filler for plastic parts is fine, but the reporter seems to think that this is going to lead to biodegradable cars.
If that happens, it's going to be for political reasons, not practical ones. There are a few inconvenient facts that environmental "reporters" can't seem to get their minds around, and it throws a monkey wrench into these schemes:
What matters isn't the manufacturing cost or disposal cost, but the life-cycle cost.
If energy consumption is the measure, most of the energy used by a vehicle isn't involved in making it, but in pushing it around for 200,000 km.
The energy cost of pushing a car depends a lot on its weight.
Wood is heavier and weaker than metal.
Therefore, a wooden car will use more energy per unit of distance than a metal car.
The old "small earth" mantra goes "Reduce, re-use, recycle". Metal recycles very well, and a stronger and lighter structure reduces energy use. A wood-filled bio-polymer car that weighs more than its competition, can't be recycled, probably won't be fit to be re-used, and increases energy consumption instead of decreasing it. It's superficially appealing, but even a cursory look at the environmental consequences proves it's a loser. --
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...this is one of the best ways known to get material off the moon. Required energy (and hence barrel length) is much lower, and there's no atmosphere to cause problems.
I'm assuming you mean the Z-pinch machine, not magnetic launchers in general. What makes you think that this would have enough aiming and velocity accuracy to be able to put things where they are desired? The Princeton mass-driver appears to be much better for that, because the length of the track produces accurate aiming. You can launch much heavier and more fragile payloads, too; the long travel reduces acceleration and instantaneous power requirements. --
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... it means that we go back to the days of the one-man computer shop assembling computers from parts in the basement.
Look at the various "proprietary" devices out there. The TiVo has been hacked. The iOpener was hacked. Just about anything that exists can be hacked into a platform which can then be used for purposes not intended, or even dreamed of, by its manufacturer.
If we somehow wind up in a world of "proprietary" disk drives and such, there will be ways around it. Even if M$ gets lots of people in the USA to pay monthly rent for their software, there are a few billion people around the world who can't afford it (Mexico) or whose governments will oppose such things as a matter of policy (China, probably India). These people will want Linux, and they are not only a market, they are manufacturers of a lot of this hardware. They'll be more than willing to supply the US market if US companies are stupid enough to abandon it.
Even with "copyright respecting" disk drives, one has to have a way of writing material to it without some externally-supplied key. Consider swap space and the OS boot; you can't have to go outside the computer to get a key to allow the OS to be read! We will always be able to write our own OS, even if it gets icky. Worst-case, someone will hack the command set and publish the spec, then we're off and running again.
As long as we can get parts, we will be able to build computers from them that do what we want them to. As long as there is any kind of market in upgrades, or servers, or industrial computers, there'll be a market for parts. Someone will supply that market. Things might not be quite as cheap in relative terms as they are now, when mass-market economies lead to very small retail markups, but they'll be there. --
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You couldn't find a CD/cassette boom box with a mic input? Your response makes no sense any other way. If that's what you meant, the explanation is simple: nobody puts microphone inputs on them because it increases the cost, and people who want to record stuff either use high-quality dedicated stereo gear or low-quality monaural dictation recorders. The boom box isn't great quality and it's a huge bulk. The market for boom boxes with mic inputs isn't big enough to justify the cost. --
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I think we're going to start seeing the backlash soon whereby the words 'well, c'mon, we gotta make money, so can you blame us' coming from the mouth of a corperation does not neccessarily gel with people.
Nobody's been able to make an argument like that in public since the statement "what is good for General Motors is good for the country, and vice versa" attained notoriety.
White-collar conservative flashin' down the street
Pointin' his plastic finger at me....
-- Jimi Hendrix
None of this is new, it just needs to be kept alive. --
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It requires universal acceptance by cell manufacurers.
Maybe BlueLinx's device does, but there's an alternative. If someone re-broadcast the connection-status data over Bluetooth and jammed the normal connection-status channel, only courtesy-enabled devices would function. The phone would have to look for its notice of incoming calls to come in over the Bluetooth frequences or it wouldn't operate.
It requires acceptance by venue management.
So do jammers, by definition. This isn't an issue.
It'll kill battery life.
Not likely. If a phone that's listening to the control channel continuously polls another frequency every 10 seconds to see if it's in a courtesy quiet zone, it's going to use about the same amount of power.
American phone users are likely to resent the feature, and opt to buy phones where it isn't installed...
Not a problem if the policy is enforced by jamming all non-compliant devices. It would also be really popular with the manufacturers, because they'd be able to sell a lot of new phones to replace the non-compliant ones.
The idea of requiring all cellular devices to vibrate is an excellent one. Work has been handing out Nokia phones left and right. Bad: people leave them on in the office. Worse: there is no vibrator in the phone itself; you have to order a special battery pack to have the silent-ring option! Sure would be nice to declare those phones illegal.... --
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I was refering to Low-Flying airplaines, helicopters as well. If you don't think you own a lot of the sky, you need to take a look at a skyscraper some time and see how much airspace they've taken over above their property.
If you look at the FAA regulations regarding airplanes, the pilot of an airplane (fixed-wing, anyway; I am not certain about helicopters) is required to keep the craft at a minimum distance away from any persons, vehicles or structures. The smallest figure I have ever seen for this minimum clearance is 500 feet unless a waiver is obtained. Banner towing has a minimum clearance of 1000 feet according to part 11 (the FAA site is really slow). Part 8 sets bigger clearances over congested areas:
(2) Over congested areas. Over any congested area of a city, town, or settlement, or over any open-air assembly of persons, an altitude of 300m (1,000 feet) above the highest obstacle within a horizontal radius of 600m (2,000 feet) of the aircraft.
That's as close as anyone should be able to fly past you. You don't own this airspace as such, but you are entitled to complain about anyone who violates it. The violator is likely to have action taken against their license. --
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Slashdot Mirror
I know, I know. IHBT, IHL, HAND. I just can't resist a non-sequitur.
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- Simple as possible (barely needs batteries),
- Small or large as you need (an unmanned car could handle deliveries to any store or strip mall with rail service), and
- about as light as you need them to be.
Central maintenance for the rail-only cars handles their reliability just fine; it's not something on which PRT has a monopoly. "Beautiful minimalism" is another word for utopian. There's a problem with utopiae: they are very, very inflexible. It's very much worth accepting some inefficiency to increase flexibility. The ability to accept dual-mode vehicles allows the system to serve taxis which go door-to-door. There are lots of people who won't or can't walk a half mile, and you'd leave them out in the cold. The RUF system could serve everyone. The RUF could also serve light freight delivery both on and off the rails (though rail-only service could operate without drivers, saving a lot of labor and money). Minimalism is wonderful in theories and perhaps art, but in the real world it doesn't work well under stress. Passenger light rail lost to the personal automobile because of flexibility. Any "solution" which doesn't recognize that is no solution, because it won't be accepted and used.--
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There is no reason that this assumption has to be followed. If you had an "express rail" that went for 10 or 20 miles between interchanges, you could do the full 62 MPH for most of that. The designer probably picked 62 MPH because it's a nice round number in metric units. It would probably be a small matter to make that 70 MPH (113 kph). Voila, your average speed is probably closer to 67 MPH than 50 MPH. Would you be happy with that for your daily commute?
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There's another twist to this. Because nobody can build a ZEV that people want to buy, California is allowing lightly modified electric golf carts (yes, golf carts) to be called "city cars" and count against the ZEV requirement (about 0.6 credit/vehicle). This kind of rail system gives a vehicle like that practically unlimited range and maintains speeds a lot higher than you can achieve in most traffic jams - and you don't have to drive it, you can read your newspaper or write letters or catch up on Slashdot. It would be just the thing for taking these silly "city cars" and turning them into serious transportation.
It's definitely not for everyone, including long-distance drivers. But it has a niche. Besides, if you only need a long-distance car once a month or so you can always rent one. The cost of renting now and then plus an RUF car might be cheaper than owning a regular car. I'd consider it.
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There are some real attractive features to this system. Taking a bunch of traffic off the pavement and putting it in the air will relieve a lot of congestion. If you've ever seen Los Angeles or Chicago at rush hour, you'll see why people would love this.
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Clueless father: "Does Barbie come with Ken?"
Witty store clerk: "Barbie comes with G.I. Joe; she only fakes it with Ken."
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See response 33 for some of my thoughts about that.
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"apogee" has nothing to do with Arabic; it is from the Greek via Latin.
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Take a look at this article.
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The company was informed about what he was doing, and management still chose to go into the area where VirtualUK was working. This means that any conflict is due to the company's actions, and they have no business claiming any ownership of VirtualUK's work. If anything, the company is trying to mis-appropriate V's work under false pretenses.
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There would be a market for satellite phones, and data connectivity, for trans-oceanic and trans-polar flights. When you consider how long it takes to go to Japan or Australia, lots of business types would probably be happy to spend $1.50/minute for voice or $5.00/megabyte for data so they can keep working. When you consider what their time can be worth, that's cheap. It's fewer planes to hook up, but you've got the market to yourself. Might be even more profitable.
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Motorola et al. ate the US$5e9 cost of the satellite constellation, and sold it for a mere US$2.5e7. They didn't dump it in the ocean, they sold it to someone who thought they could make money with it. As long as the operating costs are low enough that you can get positive cash flow, there is no reason to dump the satellites; you can always recoup some money by selling to someone with another business plan.
This means that Iridium isn't going to go into the ocean until one of three things happens:
- The satellites break down or run out of propellant.
- The market for services which can be offered using the satellites won't support the operating costs.
- The market takes off, and the spectrum becomes so valuable that the satellites have to be dumped to make room for better ones.
Until then you can expect to see one operator or another trying to eke out some money from Iridium's shrinking cluster of birds.--
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Second thing I'd want in a geek bar: quiet space. Most places are too loud to have a conversation. Acoustic engineering isn't quite rocket science, you could have booths or entire rooms which are lined to absorb sound from people and things more than a short distance away.
Third thing: Connectivity and power, with table space. I'd love to be able to haul in my laptop and plug it into a 10baseT and a 12-volt supply (why not 110 volts? because the cable that plugs into a car is a lot lighter and smaller than the transformer for line power).
Fourth thing: security. Cable locks for computers, lockers for books and bags. Build them into the tables and booth-backs, charge a quarter to release the key like airport lockers. Maybe plant a security tag in the key so that anyone trying to take one out of the building gets "beeped".
Fifth thing: I want to be able to select my own entertainment. If I can't play what I want by streaming it from my laptop (or even if I can, because laptop speakers are so tinny) I'd like to be able to pick what's coming over the speakers in my booth. Let the speakers cancel what's coming from the booths on either side (active noise cancellation). Or put the building inside a Faraday cage and broadcast different music, news and TV sound channels over little 100 mW FM transmitters. Bring a headset radio and tune in whichever thing you want for background, put the volume up or down at your pleasure.
Sixth, food. Geeks get enough grease and too little exercise at work. I want to be able to get good coffee, fresh salads and tasty low-fat food. If the kitchen doesn't even have a grill or a deep-fat fryer, GREAT. Put it next door to a sushi bar for real fun, man I'd never leave (what's that smell?).
I second the vote for "no sports". SciFi, Cartoon Channel, financial news, but no sports.
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It's a mistake to make the claim you're implying. It's the reverse of the ad-hominem argument. It is undeniable that Richard Wagner wrote some terrific music, but some of his personal beliefs (particularly his anti-semitism) were dead wrong and people holding similar beliefs today are held in very low esteem in enlightened circles. Just because Larry Wall made a useful and popular language doesn't mean that everything he thinks, believes, does or stands for is the same. It all has to be evaluated on the merits.
If you have any argument about the merits of the work vs. the merits of the person, look at Wednesday's Harlan Ellison thread. The guy has an ego the size of New York City, and it really makes him lose sympathy. That doesn't mean that his work is bad or his cause unjust... nor does it mean that a sympathetic person's work is good, nor their causes worthy.
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If that happens, it's going to be for political reasons, not practical ones. There are a few inconvenient facts that environmental "reporters" can't seem to get their minds around, and it throws a monkey wrench into these schemes:
- What matters isn't the manufacturing cost or disposal cost, but the life-cycle cost.
- If energy consumption is the measure, most of the energy used by a vehicle isn't involved in making it, but in pushing it around for 200,000 km.
- The energy cost of pushing a car depends a lot on its weight.
- Wood is heavier and weaker than metal.
- Therefore, a wooden car will use more energy per unit of distance than a metal car.
The old "small earth" mantra goes "Reduce, re-use, recycle". Metal recycles very well, and a stronger and lighter structure reduces energy use. A wood-filled bio-polymer car that weighs more than its competition, can't be recycled, probably won't be fit to be re-used, and increases energy consumption instead of decreasing it. It's superficially appealing, but even a cursory look at the environmental consequences proves it's a loser.--
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Look at the various "proprietary" devices out there. The TiVo has been hacked. The iOpener was hacked. Just about anything that exists can be hacked into a platform which can then be used for purposes not intended, or even dreamed of, by its manufacturer.
If we somehow wind up in a world of "proprietary" disk drives and such, there will be ways around it. Even if M$ gets lots of people in the USA to pay monthly rent for their software, there are a few billion people around the world who can't afford it (Mexico) or whose governments will oppose such things as a matter of policy (China, probably India). These people will want Linux, and they are not only a market, they are manufacturers of a lot of this hardware. They'll be more than willing to supply the US market if US companies are stupid enough to abandon it.
Even with "copyright respecting" disk drives, one has to have a way of writing material to it without some externally-supplied key. Consider swap space and the OS boot; you can't have to go outside the computer to get a key to allow the OS to be read! We will always be able to write our own OS, even if it gets icky. Worst-case, someone will hack the command set and publish the spec, then we're off and running again.
As long as we can get parts, we will be able to build computers from them that do what we want them to. As long as there is any kind of market in upgrades, or servers, or industrial computers, there'll be a market for parts. Someone will supply that market. Things might not be quite as cheap in relative terms as they are now, when mass-market economies lead to very small retail markups, but they'll be there.
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You couldn't find a CD/cassette boom box with a mic input? Your response makes no sense any other way. If that's what you meant, the explanation is simple: nobody puts microphone inputs on them because it increases the cost, and people who want to record stuff either use high-quality dedicated stereo gear or low-quality monaural dictation recorders. The boom box isn't great quality and it's a huge bulk. The market for boom boxes with mic inputs isn't big enough to justify the cost.
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White-collar conservative flashin' down the street
None of this is new, it just needs to be kept alive.Pointin' his plastic finger at me....
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The idea of requiring all cellular devices to vibrate is an excellent one. Work has been handing out Nokia phones left and right. Bad: people leave them on in the office. Worse: there is no vibrator in the phone itself; you have to order a special battery pack to have the silent-ring option! Sure would be nice to declare those phones illegal....
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