I thought that the article was fairly concise, and accurately described 10 reasons why the format wars have already failed.
But they forgot another one - most Americans don't have, and don't want to buy, an HDTV set that would even need either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, nor do most consumers see any reason to pay twice as much for the same product they can use today.
Is this true in a few years? Perhaps not. But it's true today.
Which leads us to the conclusion that both Sony and our other player decided to fight this battle early, after what happened to them when Beta and VHS fought - the stakes are so high they're trying to front-end the decision, but both sides ended up trying to steal a march on their competition, resulting in two formats way too early for consumers to be interested in either.
PErhaps americans.. but in Canada most of the upper and upper middle class already have a HDTV and as a agent working for a local content provider, 1/2 my calls are from people asking about HDTV and HD content.
Advantages of switching from VHS to DVD: Much higher quality video and audio Random access Don't have to rewind them Switchable audio tracks Subtitles that are optional Extras Nifty menus Advantages of switching from DVD to HD/BR: Much higher audio and video quality if your TV cost four digits. Small improvement in quality on low-end HD or SDTV....and that's about it.
Also multi disc movies can now be on 1 disc and the menus can have more neat things int hem liek small java games ect.. Also the major studios have decided thats the way they want to go and if they do it right you won't have much of an option just as it's very hard to find vinyl copies of yoru favorite top 40 hits it'll be very difficult to find DVD's of your favorite movies eventually.
So, what you are saying is that solutions around problems do not exist, because you cannot see the solution only the problem. Your viewpoint is typical of the mass group think that society uses.
My analogy requires DEDUCTIVE logic, and the presumption that solutions work around problems. Where there is no problem (ie low oil prices) there is no solution (ie alternative), because there is no need to solve a problem that doesn't exist.
Yes, LINUX was a by-product of Unix, no one is disputing this. But it started out as NOTHING more than a sort of research project. The need to make it better was so great that people, not getting paid, continued to support and develop it to the point where it COULD replace the monopoly. The solution was in the developement because of a problem (M$) that existed. It gained traction as a ROUTE around M$.
My view is that if not LINUX than something else (BeOS, OS/2, who-knows-what). M$ Didn't force LINUX into existance, it forced a solution to the M$ Monopoly. LINUX was the solution but didn't have to be. Like I said, it could have been something else. We only see LINUX today because it suceeded inspite of the M$ Monopoly.
As for Oil and energy density/generation problem, how do you know that is the reason why? Perhaps someone would have figured out where Tesla was going with "free energy", perhaps something higher in energy density would have been developed, whatever. The problem is, we don't know, and everything else is..... a plain old guess.
"The break up of standard oil didn't force the exsistance of a mysterious alternate fuel source to nto appear."
You are either a troll or a flake. None of your support actually supports yrou arguements. Monopolies stifle innovation in all examples of it's exsistance.
Can the market really sort this out? In a word... YES.
The problem is that RARELY is the market allowed to anymore. People fear Monopolies. Me? I Look at them not as problems, but oppotunities in disguise. Linux would NOT be where it is today, if it weren't for M$ Monopoly. Linux, IMHO, is a direct result of the Market routing around a break in the system.
Some systems, it just takes longer to route around the problem, but it eventually will.
Take Oil (Petroleum) for example. A hundred years ago, a naturally occuring monopoly occured in the marketplace and Standard Oil controlled a M$ type share of the Oil and Gasoline market. Along came do-gooders creating laws that broke up the company into itty-bitty pieces. Today, we are OIL dependant, and have no alternatives (to speak of).
Let us say, for the sake of arguement that nothing was done 100 years ago and Standard Oil was left untouched. Today, we would probably have 1) more mass transit 2) cities and highways designed for effiency alternative transportation etc 3) alternative fuels 4) no wars over oil (Iraq/Iran???) and the pety dictators world wide.
The unintended consequences for breaking up Standard Oil are completely unknown, but I am 100% sure that the world would have routed around the problem by now. But for political expediency and short term gains, we chose otherwise, and are living with the consequences.
Necessity is the mother of invention. We don't "need" another fuel source, so none has been invented. Relating this back to M$ and Linux, WE needed an alternative to M$ and Linux was the route around the problem (over simplified version).
Your anology doesn't make sense. The break up of standard oil didn't force the exsistance of a mysterious alternate fuel source to nto appear. It simply made colluding to fix fuel rpices to be a bit harder. As well microsoft didn't force linux into exsistance. You haven't provided any back up for yoru assertions. Linux was a reaction to Unix, trying to provide the same functionaility without paying big blue a million dollars. And the lack of a alternative to oil is due to problems of nergy density and enrgy generation.
People keep on claiming this, but miss the truth. Yes, Sony never said the PS2 could render Toy Story in real time. They said it could render the cutscenes from Final Fantasy 8 in real time. Final Fantasy 8's cutscenes were about as complex graphically as Toy Story, so it's a completely equivilent claim.
Yes, Sony never said "Toy Story" but they might as well have. They claimed the same thing.
If you are from a poor Chinese family, this is the only chance you will have to get into get into a university, with the govt. paying most or all of the costs. It is a way out of poverty for a whole family; the pressures are enormous, and there are many suicides of students who failed to get high enough scores on the entrance exam (held just once per year, typically on a Thursday). So, anything goes. If you can't afford to pay a tutor, or are not quite smart enough in the first place, and don't have a Party member for a family friend to pull some strings, you are doomed to work in an IPod factory or even a rice paddy for the rest of your life. So, you do whatever it takes.
In the west, we have lots of opportunities and second chances, and China is doing better these days, but has much govt. control still. It's a developing country, with a huge gap between the 'haves' and 'have nots'.
I personally hope the Chinese govt. can keep things from boiling over at some point. People (over 1 Gig of people there) want more than the Govt. can supply, and it's a balancing act. Most of the top govt. officials are engineers, which (if you know engineers) is both good and bad.
This is true in general of all countries and all education systems. Success anf progression requires some amount of money. My degree cost me 35,000 CND. A pitance compared to a yale or harvard degree which is more rpestigious.
IT's also a recent game sort of. Since it came out recently for the GBA. All the other games on the list came out in the last 4 mo and yoshi's island did too for the GBA.
In my opinion, the 360 had a completely uninteresting launch. The lineup of games weren't so good, but it didn't really matter. M$ had plenty of room for error. The units sold out anyway, and they still had nearly a year to come out with something interesting before Sony even has a chance to threaten them.
Ia gree, but you need to add that the initial supply was miniscule for the first 3 months or so. The shortage wasn't so much that it was popular just that it was in short supply. durring all periods the 360 was on sale it was out sold by the Ps2 and the prev xbox.
I think Sony's biggest problem with getting widespread adoption of Blu-Ray is that the vast majority of users are happy with the current DVD format. The improvement from VHS to DVD was obvious. Replacing your DVD collection with an expensive Blu-Ray collection that may never catch on with most people seems ludicrous. People might find Blu-Ray equipment in the closet with their Betamax VCRs and their old minidisc players.
Lets frame this agruement by using it when DVDs came out:
I think Phillip's biggest problem with getting widespread adoption of DVD is that the vast majority of users are happy with the current VHS format. The improvement from 35mm players to VHS was obvious. Replacing your VHS collection with an expensive DVD collection that may never catch on with most people seems ludicrous. People might find DVD equipment in the closet with their 35mm film players and their record players./
Several 1080p games can fit on a single floppy (Minesweeper, solitaire, etc). Unless there is pre-recorded full-motion video involved, there is *no* connection between data storage format and a game's output resolution.
Mine sweeper has no hi-res textures which in fact do correlate disk size to output resolution. FMV are one portion of what makes a game require a large amoutn of space on disk. The other factor is Textures and 3d models. 3d models tend to be trivial but textures are immense.
Yeah, no clue what he's thinking, I love the option of playing NES and GCN games on my Wii or PS1 games on a PS2/PS3. Maybe it's "XBOX" gamers that don't care so much about it, because Xbox only has ONE generation to fall back on, and right now developers are basically only making souped-up "new versions" of games that already came out on Xbox!
Basically the Xbox had 3 genres (FPS/Sports/3rd person adventure) that were ever Xbox exclusive, all three of these genres generally get a brand new iteration every year and the xbox has very few is any gems like PS1's Castlevania:SOTN or Final Fantasy Tactics or any of the 3 final fantasies or even the PS2's damacy katamari. There isn't as much onus to make it backwards compatable because new version of those games are coming out shortly. Myself personally, I can only tolerate about 30 min of most fo the xbox games except halo (ninja gaiden, project gotham, fable, ect.. all bored me after about 30 min). Those styles of games just don't interest me and thats why I never got one. In fact only two people in my circle of friends has one and halo is the only thing that those two systems every see.
dogs step on it and *snap* its gone. oh you wanted to update that rough draft of a book you backed up? too bad, you now have to burn back 45 gigs of data!
It's a different approach to problem solving, not an indication of knowledge. I dont particularly remember saying you should always fix things first, many problems are completely subjective! (read: previous) Many are intractable. I think it's worth noting that you cannot engineer ANYTHING without refactoring and it is a solid approach. Try programming without a "fix things here first".
Going with your anology. Your insisting that a group of database coders should dedicate their time to fixing kernel bugs instead of trying to make a efficient relational database. It doesn't make any sense since the money that goes into these projects does not detract from money spent on social programs/famine relief/ect... The money for these projects competes with other projects like research into making better bombs and more dependable rifles. A lot of the money spent ont he space program would have went into DND spending had it not been spent on rocketry, material sciences, recycling technology and all the things that help get us into space. Your arguement is a red herring because you can still "fix things here first" and look for a new place to live in. Or do you take a month off, and stop showing; eating; and deficating if you need to find a new apartment?
That's a difference in perspective, not a truth. You're also under the delusion that speading *HUMANS* into the universe is critical, important, or even a good idea. Theoretically, sending samples of DNA in random directions from our solar system is a much more efficient idea. Then again, almost all space elevator advocates are trapped in sci-fi utopian fantasy worldview.
The longest term view is we as a species are large mammals that are one mass exstintion event from ceasing to exsist. This is an event that will happen and our biological imperitive is to live. Thus our greatest priority is to spread. As well all problems here have a diminishing return. Money spent fighting poverty in various places do almost nothing due to the diminihsed returns as well as corruption. You can't mention a single major biological/ sociological/ mechanical problem where merely money would solve it. People who always spout "fix things here first" are often myopic and don't actualyl know much about the problems they propose we solve first. Also the money being spent on these projects are miniscule compared to where the real waste and graft are in the system.
The strongest argument against it, is that we haven't solved simpler CRITICAL social, biological, and mechanical problems. Why support this? It deserves derision.
Thats a red herring. Spreading into the universe is our most CRITICAL social/biological/mechanical problem. The rest is merely distractions. Hunger is nto a problem resources alone will solve since so many vested parties have an interest in keeping those people starving. Pollution is on the decline int he west and will eb as well in the east and the population has stabalized mostly.
Check your Math: MOAB - weight 21,000 pounds ~ 11.5 tons Hiroshima yield = 14.5 kilatons of TNT. Since the MOAB is purely a chemical reaction, you cannot believe that the explosives of the MOAB are 1000 times more explosive than TNT! Also MOAB's don't give you a nice EMP or radioactive fallout, so they aren't as effective. A quickly build japanese nuclear device will take weeks of logistic work, time and travel, to mount a single attack which there after cannot be repeated. Right, b/c international trade will suddenly stop to this nation? If you so then that nation has lost.
The point didn't change. cargo ships aren't an effective weaposn delivery method and any errant flights will be intercepted. Any legitimate flights or ever a ship loaded with a nuke will succeed at most once. There after there will be a trace of which country the ship was from and much tighter security int he air and on in the sea. You have one shit and one shit only. N. Korea has developed the bomb, and they have been working for the past 10 years on a effective vector for this weapon. They have recently made a missle that could hit japan. Japan is veyr close to N Korea. To make an ICBM they are about 20-35 years away at the very least. Why doesn't N Kores load a weapon onto a cargo ship / cargo plane? because it's nto a very effectiev vector.
And exactly how many times to you figure you can get away with launching nuclear weapons from an icbm?!?
In fact a ship or plane seems infinately more likely/logical...pretty damn tough to say that big missle hole in the ground is NOT yours or belongs to a rogue group!
Since one MIRV ICBM can theoretically hit every major city on any given continent and since missle silos are fairly hard to detect and can be build virtually anywhere you can hit as often you can build them and you can build them in advance. As well Sub launched ICBM's can also get a few dozen off at a time. The difference is, A quickly build japanese nuclear device will take weeks of logistic work, time and travel, to mount a single attack which there after cannot be repeated. A MIRV ICBM can basically annihalate any nation or almost any combination of nations alone.
also it took decades of research to improve yeild. The initial nuclear devices wheren't that much more destuctive then a b-52 loaded with MOABs. But those MOABs are a hell of a lot less expensive to make.
A Nuke is easy to make. A delivery method is much harder. Japan could not fabricate this at whim. It would take 2-3 years to contruct test and assemble then 5 years to make a delivery vehicle that could get it off japanese soil...
That's not how it went down it WWII.
The US already had air supuriority. They could have done the same damage with convention weapons since they owned the skies.
A delivery method is much harder. They're called ships, and they float on the ocean, or if attacking a land locked country use an airplane
Which is very limiting as you'd get at most 1 shot with this delivery method. Same for Air. If you didn't already have air dominance you are then gambling on these methods. Also their fairly slow methods. The coast gaurd / air traffic control and air defence would also run a significant chance of intercepting any traffic that isn't normal and a disguised ship will only work once or twice.
2) A country would almost have to be crazy to not want a nuclear arsenal. In a conflict, nukes easily make the difference between entering a negotiation among peers (of a sort), and getting invaded. In a world where Pakistan has the Bomb, where do you stand if you do not? (And don't bring up countries like Japan; they do have a nuclear program and could make nuclear weapons almost at a whim, and already have powerful nuke-armed allies).
A Nuke is easy to make. A delivery method is much harder. Japan could not fabricate this at whim. It would take 2-3 years to contruct test and assemble then 5 years to make a delivery vehicle that could get it off japanese soil and about 10 more to make a icbm.
Actually I'm Italian. Not only that but Sicilian. For the uneducated the Sicilian is one of the lowest "rank" of Italians (sometimes not even recognized as Italian) due to their closeness and "breeding" with Africans which lend us our dark skin. I know about opression, I know about jokes/comments/racism, I also have the ability to differentiate words and a little light-hearted poking fun. I believe that people need to get out of this brainwashed political correctness bullshit and just live. Be who you are, be proud of it, identify with it... the good and the bad. Confronting stereotypes and being able to laugh at yourself are very powerful things, shielding yourself and others and pretending otherwise is damaging and the true evil of PC'ness.
Italians where considered non white about 50 years ago. Right now italians are treated pretty much like white people.
Sure, you laugh at it now, but just wait until you see Tiger Woods 2008 -- Not only will you be able to play golf, you can head into the clubhouse for a few drinks after, pick up hookers, and then walk through the parking lot smashing the windows of your competitor's cars.
That's not all though. If you beat the entire game on the hardest level you get to drive an M1A2 Abrams Tank as a golf cart.
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I thought that the article was fairly concise, and accurately described 10 reasons why the format wars have already failed.
But they forgot another one - most Americans don't have, and don't want to buy, an HDTV set that would even need either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, nor do most consumers see any reason to pay twice as much for the same product they can use today.
Is this true in a few years? Perhaps not. But it's true today.
Which leads us to the conclusion that both Sony and our other player decided to fight this battle early, after what happened to them when Beta and VHS fought - the stakes are so high they're trying to front-end the decision, but both sides ended up trying to steal a march on their competition, resulting in two formats way too early for consumers to be interested in either.
PErhaps americans.. but in Canada most of the upper and upper middle class already have a HDTV and as a agent working for a local content provider, 1/2 my calls are from people asking about HDTV and HD content.
Advantages of switching from VHS to DVD: ...and that's about it.
Much higher quality video and audio
Random access
Don't have to rewind them
Switchable audio tracks
Subtitles that are optional
Extras
Nifty menus
Advantages of switching from DVD to HD/BR:
Much higher audio and video quality if your TV cost four digits. Small improvement in quality on low-end HD or SDTV.
Also multi disc movies can now be on 1 disc and the menus can have more neat things int hem liek small java games ect.. Also the major studios have decided thats the way they want to go and if they do it right you won't have much of an option just as it's very hard to find vinyl copies of yoru favorite top 40 hits it'll be very difficult to find DVD's of your favorite movies eventually.
There are some grandious title on doors that turn out to be wood shops if you open them. The Condensed Matter Physics labs. I found that very funny.
So, what you are saying is that solutions around problems do not exist, because you cannot see the solution only the problem. Your viewpoint is typical of the mass group think that society uses.
..... a plain old guess.
My analogy requires DEDUCTIVE logic, and the presumption that solutions work around problems. Where there is no problem (ie low oil prices) there is no solution (ie alternative), because there is no need to solve a problem that doesn't exist.
Yes, LINUX was a by-product of Unix, no one is disputing this. But it started out as NOTHING more than a sort of research project. The need to make it better was so great that people, not getting paid, continued to support and develop it to the point where it COULD replace the monopoly. The solution was in the developement because of a problem (M$) that existed. It gained traction as a ROUTE around M$.
My view is that if not LINUX than something else (BeOS, OS/2, who-knows-what). M$ Didn't force LINUX into existance, it forced a solution to the M$ Monopoly. LINUX was the solution but didn't have to be. Like I said, it could have been something else. We only see LINUX today because it suceeded inspite of the M$ Monopoly.
As for Oil and energy density/generation problem, how do you know that is the reason why? Perhaps someone would have figured out where Tesla was going with "free energy", perhaps something higher in energy density would have been developed, whatever. The problem is, we don't know, and everything else is
"The break up of standard oil didn't force the exsistance of a mysterious alternate fuel source to nto appear."
You are either a troll or a flake. None of your support actually supports yrou arguements. Monopolies stifle innovation in all examples of it's exsistance.
Can the market really sort this out? In a word ... YES.
The problem is that RARELY is the market allowed to anymore. People fear Monopolies. Me? I Look at them not as problems, but oppotunities in disguise. Linux would NOT be where it is today, if it weren't for M$ Monopoly. Linux, IMHO, is a direct result of the Market routing around a break in the system.
Some systems, it just takes longer to route around the problem, but it eventually will.
Take Oil (Petroleum) for example. A hundred years ago, a naturally occuring monopoly occured in the marketplace and Standard Oil controlled a M$ type share of the Oil and Gasoline market. Along came do-gooders creating laws that broke up the company into itty-bitty pieces. Today, we are OIL dependant, and have no alternatives (to speak of).
Let us say, for the sake of arguement that nothing was done 100 years ago and Standard Oil was left untouched. Today, we would probably have 1) more mass transit 2) cities and highways designed for effiency alternative transportation etc 3) alternative fuels 4) no wars over oil (Iraq/Iran???) and the pety dictators world wide.
The unintended consequences for breaking up Standard Oil are completely unknown, but I am 100% sure that the world would have routed around the problem by now. But for political expediency and short term gains, we chose otherwise, and are living with the consequences.
Necessity is the mother of invention. We don't "need" another fuel source, so none has been invented. Relating this back to M$ and Linux, WE needed an alternative to M$ and Linux was the route around the problem (over simplified version).
Your anology doesn't make sense. The break up of standard oil didn't force the exsistance of a mysterious alternate fuel source to nto appear. It simply made colluding to fix fuel rpices to be a bit harder. As well microsoft didn't force linux into exsistance. You haven't provided any back up for yoru assertions. Linux was a reaction to Unix, trying to provide the same functionaility without paying big blue a million dollars. And the lack of a alternative to oil is due to problems of nergy density and enrgy generation.
People keep on claiming this, but miss the truth. Yes, Sony never said the PS2 could render Toy Story in real time. They said it could render the cutscenes from Final Fantasy 8 in real time. Final Fantasy 8's cutscenes were about as complex graphically as Toy Story, so it's a completely equivilent claim.
Yes, Sony never said "Toy Story" but they might as well have. They claimed the same thing.
Render sure.. but at what frame rate?
Finding a good job is hard, jobs are plrentiful there. A lot of them suck however and involve a lot of menial labour and unpaid overtime.
If you are from a poor Chinese family, this is the only chance you will have to get into get into a university, with the govt. paying most or all of the costs. It is a way out of poverty for a whole family; the pressures are enormous, and there are many suicides of students who failed to get high enough scores on the entrance exam (held just once per year, typically on a Thursday). So, anything goes. If you can't afford to pay a tutor, or are not quite smart enough in the first place, and don't have a Party member for a family friend to pull some strings, you are doomed to work in an IPod factory or even a rice paddy for the rest of your life. So, you do whatever it takes.
In the west, we have lots of opportunities and second chances, and China is doing better these days, but has much govt. control still. It's a developing country, with a huge gap between the 'haves' and 'have nots'.
I personally hope the Chinese govt. can keep things from boiling over at some point. People (over 1 Gig of people there) want more than the Govt. can supply, and it's a balancing act. Most of the top govt. officials are engineers, which (if you know engineers) is both good and bad.
This is true in general of all countries and all education systems. Success anf progression requires some amount of money. My degree cost me 35,000 CND. A pitance compared to a yale or harvard degree which is more rpestigious.
IT's also a recent game sort of. Since it came out recently for the GBA. All the other games on the list came out in the last 4 mo and yoshi's island did too for the GBA.
IT's nto a list of classic 2d games only up and coming or current 2d games.
In my opinion, the 360 had a completely uninteresting launch. The lineup of games weren't so good, but it didn't really matter. M$ had plenty of room for error. The units sold out anyway, and they still had nearly a year to come out with something interesting before Sony even has a chance to threaten them.
Ia gree, but you need to add that the initial supply was miniscule for the first 3 months or so. The shortage wasn't so much that it was popular just that it was in short supply. durring all periods the 360 was on sale it was out sold by the Ps2 and the prev xbox.
I think Sony's biggest problem with getting widespread adoption of Blu-Ray is that the vast majority of users are happy with the current DVD format. The improvement from VHS to DVD was obvious. Replacing your DVD collection with an expensive Blu-Ray collection that may never catch on with most people seems ludicrous. People might find Blu-Ray equipment in the closet with their Betamax VCRs and their old minidisc players.
Lets frame this agruement by using it when DVDs came out:
I think Phillip's biggest problem with getting widespread adoption of DVD is that the vast majority of users are happy with the current VHS format. The improvement from 35mm players to VHS was obvious. Replacing your VHS collection with an expensive DVD collection that may never catch on with most people seems ludicrous. People might find DVD equipment in the closet with their 35mm film players and their record players./
Several 1080p games can fit on a single floppy (Minesweeper, solitaire, etc). Unless there is pre-recorded full-motion video involved, there is *no* connection between data storage format and a game's output resolution.
Mine sweeper has no hi-res textures which in fact do correlate disk size to output resolution. FMV are one portion of what makes a game require a large amoutn of space on disk. The other factor is Textures and 3d models. 3d models tend to be trivial but textures are immense.
Yeah, no clue what he's thinking, I love the option of playing NES and GCN games on my Wii or PS1 games on a PS2/PS3. Maybe it's "XBOX" gamers that don't care so much about it, because Xbox only has ONE generation to fall back on, and right now developers are basically only making souped-up "new versions" of games that already came out on Xbox!
Basically the Xbox had 3 genres (FPS/Sports/3rd person adventure) that were ever Xbox exclusive, all three of these genres generally get a brand new iteration every year and the xbox has very few is any gems like PS1's Castlevania:SOTN or Final Fantasy Tactics or any of the 3 final fantasies or even the PS2's damacy katamari. There isn't as much onus to make it backwards compatable because new version of those games are coming out shortly. Myself personally, I can only tolerate about 30 min of most fo the xbox games except halo (ninja gaiden, project gotham, fable, ect.. all bored me after about 30 min). Those styles of games just don't interest me and thats why I never got one. In fact only two people in my circle of friends has one and halo is the only thing that those two systems every see.
dogs step on it and *snap* its gone. oh you wanted to update that rough draft of a book you backed up? too bad, you now have to burn back 45 gigs of data!
Thats one long novel.
It's a different approach to problem solving, not an indication of knowledge. I dont particularly remember saying you should always fix things first, many problems are completely subjective! (read: previous) Many are intractable. I think it's worth noting that you cannot engineer ANYTHING without refactoring and it is a solid approach. Try programming without a "fix things here first".
Going with your anology. Your insisting that a group of database coders should dedicate their time to fixing kernel bugs instead of trying to make a efficient relational database. It doesn't make any sense since the money that goes into these projects does not detract from money spent on social programs/famine relief/ect... The money for these projects competes with other projects like research into making better bombs and more dependable rifles. A lot of the money spent ont he space program would have went into DND spending had it not been spent on rocketry, material sciences, recycling technology and all the things that help get us into space. Your arguement is a red herring because you can still "fix things here first" and look for a new place to live in. Or do you take a month off, and stop showing; eating; and deficating if you need to find a new apartment?
That's a difference in perspective, not a truth. You're also under the delusion that speading *HUMANS* into the universe is critical, important, or even a good idea. Theoretically, sending samples of DNA in random directions from our solar system is a much more efficient idea. Then again, almost all space elevator advocates are trapped in sci-fi utopian fantasy worldview.
The longest term view is we as a species are large mammals that are one mass exstintion event from ceasing to exsist. This is an event that will happen and our biological imperitive is to live. Thus our greatest priority is to spread. As well all problems here have a diminishing return. Money spent fighting poverty in various places do almost nothing due to the diminihsed returns as well as corruption. You can't mention a single major biological/ sociological/ mechanical problem where merely money would solve it. People who always spout "fix things here first" are often myopic and don't actualyl know much about the problems they propose we solve first. Also the money being spent on these projects are miniscule compared to where the real waste and graft are in the system.
The strongest argument against it, is that we haven't solved simpler CRITICAL social, biological, and mechanical problems. Why support this? It deserves derision.
Thats a red herring. Spreading into the universe is our most CRITICAL social/biological/mechanical problem. The rest is merely distractions. Hunger is nto a problem resources alone will solve since so many vested parties have an interest in keeping those people starving. Pollution is on the decline int he west and will eb as well in the east and the population has stabalized mostly.
Check your Math: MOAB - weight 21,000 pounds ~ 11.5 tons Hiroshima yield = 14.5 kilatons of TNT. Since the MOAB is purely a chemical reaction, you cannot believe that the explosives of the MOAB are 1000 times more explosive than TNT! Also MOAB's don't give you a nice EMP or radioactive fallout, so they aren't as effective. A quickly build japanese nuclear device will take weeks of logistic work, time and travel, to mount a single attack which there after cannot be repeated. Right, b/c international trade will suddenly stop to this nation? If you so then that nation has lost.
The point didn't change. cargo ships aren't an effective weaposn delivery method and any errant flights will be intercepted. Any legitimate flights or ever a ship loaded with a nuke will succeed at most once. There after there will be a trace of which country the ship was from and much tighter security int he air and on in the sea. You have one shit and one shit only. N. Korea has developed the bomb, and they have been working for the past 10 years on a effective vector for this weapon. They have recently made a missle that could hit japan. Japan is veyr close to N Korea. To make an ICBM they are about 20-35 years away at the very least. Why doesn't N Kores load a weapon onto a cargo ship / cargo plane? because it's nto a very effectiev vector.
And exactly how many times to you figure you can get away with launching nuclear weapons from an icbm?!?
In fact a ship or plane seems infinately more likely/logical...pretty damn tough to say that big missle hole in the ground is NOT yours or belongs to a rogue group!
Since one MIRV ICBM can theoretically hit every major city on any given continent and since missle silos are fairly hard to detect and can be build virtually anywhere you can hit as often you can build them and you can build them in advance. As well Sub launched ICBM's can also get a few dozen off at a time. The difference is, A quickly build japanese nuclear device will take weeks of logistic work, time and travel, to mount a single attack which there after cannot be repeated. A MIRV ICBM can basically annihalate any nation or almost any combination of nations alone.
also it took decades of research to improve yeild. The initial nuclear devices wheren't that much more destuctive then a b-52 loaded with MOABs. But those MOABs are a hell of a lot less expensive to make.
A Nuke is easy to make. A delivery method is much harder. Japan could not fabricate this at whim. It would take 2-3 years to contruct test and assemble then 5 years to make a delivery vehicle that could get it off japanese soil...
That's not how it went down it WWII.
The US already had air supuriority. They could have done the same damage with convention weapons since they owned the skies.
A delivery method is much harder.
They're called ships, and they float on the ocean, or if attacking a land locked country use an airplane
Which is very limiting as you'd get at most 1 shot with this delivery method. Same for Air. If you didn't already have air dominance you are then gambling on these methods. Also their fairly slow methods. The coast gaurd / air traffic control and air defence would also run a significant chance of intercepting any traffic that isn't normal and a disguised ship will only work once or twice.
2) A country would almost have to be crazy to not want a nuclear arsenal. In a conflict, nukes easily make the difference between entering a negotiation among peers (of a sort), and getting invaded. In a world where Pakistan has the Bomb, where do you stand if you do not? (And don't bring up countries like Japan; they do have a nuclear program and could make nuclear weapons almost at a whim, and already have powerful nuke-armed allies).
A Nuke is easy to make. A delivery method is much harder. Japan could not fabricate this at whim. It would take 2-3 years to contruct test and assemble then 5 years to make a delivery vehicle that could get it off japanese soil and about 10 more to make a icbm.
Actually I'm Italian. Not only that but Sicilian. For the uneducated the Sicilian is one of the lowest "rank" of Italians (sometimes not even recognized as Italian) due to their closeness and "breeding" with Africans which lend us our dark skin. I know about opression, I know about jokes/comments/racism, I also have the ability to differentiate words and a little light-hearted poking fun. I believe that people need to get out of this brainwashed political correctness bullshit and just live. Be who you are, be proud of it, identify with it... the good and the bad. Confronting stereotypes and being able to laugh at yourself are very powerful things, shielding yourself and others and pretending otherwise is damaging and the true evil of PC'ness.
Italians where considered non white about 50 years ago. Right now italians are treated pretty much like white people.
Sure, you laugh at it now, but just wait until you see Tiger Woods 2008 -- Not only will you be able to play golf, you can head into the clubhouse for a few drinks after, pick up hookers, and then walk through the parking lot smashing the windows of your competitor's cars.
That's not all though. If you beat the entire game on the hardest level you get to drive an M1A2 Abrams Tank as a golf cart.
Now that's innovation!
Sadly, you suggestions seem like a lot of fun.