An asteroid may have a lot more metals since on earth the metals have mostly sunken to the core, the surface of the earth really is not rich in them since as the planet cooled billions of years ago heavier elements gravitated towards the center of the planet due to gravity. The asteroid would haev these metals more evenly through out it. BUT it is at this point very expensive to capture and mine an asteroid.
Also 500 tons is not big enough to cause a K-T like event. With a bigger asteroid though it might be better to mine it in place and just transport the ore back, avoiding the risk of trying to bring a big asteroid near earth. Not sure.
First point is it mentions the british stats on denial, but the American ones are far worse at 50% denial or so.
Second point i'd like to make, the effects of global warming are especially long reaching and likely will be a gradually worsening trend, over decades. The predictions are very dire, indeed. The predictions being dire does not mean they need to happen overnight, we will likely see the catastrophy gradually set in over decades, things will just keeping getting worse and worse. People have problems seeing something really devastating when it sets in over a period of decades or centuries. That is a problem with human perception. When things dont happen overnight, its harder for people to see. its like with possible malnutrition problems, as these things get worse, having a billion people becoming malnourised becomes the "new normal" and they only see the short term 1% annual change or whatever that their short attention span allows them to see, not the longer term trend. They forget that at some point in the past the number of starving people was vastly less and fail to remember how much it has really gone up, because it happened in centuries, rather than days.
An earthquake gets a lot of attention because it lies within the short attention span, but the gradual global environmental degradation is a lot harder for people to see, even though its much worse than an earthquake, the damage does not suddenly occur.
Christians ideologies and all sorts of popular myths such as 2012 tell of the day the earth ended. Many people think that if the earth will end it will be a sudden disaster like that. the fact is if the earth deos not end in a day many people will say its just not in danger at all. But the fact is the things that could ruin this planet can take centuries to occur.
1701-D would have been huge, perhaps too large to be feasible, the !701-A was 289 M long, 72 M high and 127 meters wide which would make it a lot more feasible
They add new casinos and hotels to vegas all the time. I dont think it would necessarily take away business as it would bring in more people. For a business perceptive, it would be just another resoirt, which many have been added over the years. the Primary attraction of vegas is the resorts, otherwise, its just a desert.
I dont think so. First part of it at least could have been a hotel and restaurant, casino, etc, and those things dont wear off. But i really think that the interest would have held up and would have become very popular, if it was lifelike enough,.
I think 1701-A of 1701-B would look best with a crew staffed in ST II-VI uniforms. There could be a hotel inside, as well as restaurants, all themed like the real ship.
I was never fond of 1701-D or nor the crews unform from that era, though, the STNG series was well written and well executed. I always wished they could couple the story line quality of STNG with the styles of the 1701-A or 1701-B era. I found the tight fitting uniforms of D to be cheesy and the ship too cheesy as well.
Another factor is the 1701-A was a much smaller ship than the D, the D is just a huge thing that might be completely infeasible to build, if they want to build the thing to spec, it would be enormous.
I imagine this thing could have rather than a mock up, could have been an entire building, including a built in hotel and so on. But the saucer section raises quistions on structural support, I am not sure if it would be possible to construct an unsupported, hanging saucer section without some sort of supports from below, in a feasible way. Having support columns from below for the saucer section would take away from the whole thing. Probably the main hull could be fully occupied hotel and attraction space and they might have to settle with a shell for saucer, with some places inside being built, such as the bridge and so on, unless a way can be found to build the saucer.
Enterprise NCC 1701-A and NCC-1701 are different ships. But they are the same design and look exactly the same on the outside. But have very different bridges. The 1701-A is filled with the backlight touch panels. NCC 1701 was destroyed in STIII. I vote for Enterprise 1701-A, since I thought it had the coolest looking interiors and exteriors, and was featured in Star Trek VI ( as well as ST-V, but that should not reflect badly on the ship, it was a fine vessel). If the Las Vegas 1701-A is staffed with a crew, have them wear the Star Trek II-VI uniform style which I liked better than any other style used on the entire series. It was very distinctive but not too cheesy.
I would add that what killed all the dinosaurs was not the asteroid impact itself, but the asteroid winter that caused a collapse of the food chain. The asteroid blast and fire ball and tsunami was localized, it killed dinosaurs locally but its not what killed them off globally, the blockage of the sun did. If enough food can be stored away to get through the winter and then seeds to immediately restart agriculture when things clear, humans can survive it.
Even though its good to plan for precuations and deflection efforts, the fact is, humans could survive a Chicxulub sized impact fairly easy, it is completely survivable here on earth. Unlike dinosaurs humans can store away enough food to get through a long period of time without sunlight, and store a seed bank supply containing huge stores of all seeds from food plants and livestock to repopulate and restore agriculture afterward, and libraries filled with the accumulated knowledge of humanity. Unless, we include the entire population of these efforts so the entire population stores away huge amounts of freeze dried and preserved food, the survival facility would have to be secret and heavily protected from the riots and chaos that would ensue in a asteroid winter. There would be many of these facilities located in top secret all over the planet so even if one was destroyed by the impact there would still be others. The people participating in them would have to live nearby and would have to go underground at a moments notice. Some of them would have to be located near fertile, farmable areas for recovery long after the strike. They would be far underground and bult to withstand wildfires, huge winds, earthquakes and all the other stuff that could happen. They would be protected from tsunami, located inland and so on and from any other conceivable disaster.
All of this could allow humanity to survive on earth even easier and with less trouble than on mars. It is actually easier to survive here on earth after an asteroid than it would be on mars.
By the way what they are asking is similar to demanding that you give them the keys to your house so they can search your house, or them demanding that they strip search you, even an employer searching your purse or bags is unacceptable, among other things. What is going on here is something like stalking, harrassment, invasion of privacy and so on, employers who do this must be punished. This is an example of how corporations and private entities can be as much or more of a violation of rights against us, and why we need legal protections against corporations and private entities as much as we do government.
This is not perfect, but one possibility might be to set up a dummy facebook account and give that to them, rather than your real one. However, it is clear, this should be illegal, people who run into this should contact a lawyer and file lawsuits, as well, Facebook has expressed interest in filing lawsuits against employers who do this, so, notify Facebook of this if an Employer, or anyone else, has requested your password.
This news story would be much more exciting and interesting if it were the discovery of an ET martian base, possibly for scientific observation of the Earth. Otherwise, it seems to be rather mind numbingly boring.
I dont think the article is correct. What Linux really needs is a lot of good applications, games and great hardware support. Sure, Liinux works fine if you are lucky enough that your hardware has a driver and you dont want to play any games that are sold in stores. But, its pretty much unuseable if your hardware is not supported or you want to play a game that is sold in stores.
I think to get these things Linux has to welcome more hardware vendors to providing drivers, even if they are binary only drivers, understanding that looking at this pragmatically, a few binary drivers goes a long way to overall increasing deployment of an open source operating system. As well, the user could switch to open source drivers when they become avialable.Binary drivers could actually boost open source development by increasing demand for Linux and ways to monetize that for providing support services andn so on that, leading tio more revenue into Linux companies that can be used for open source development.
A key to any useable OS is backwards compatability,. Users dont want to have to worry if a specific driver or application works with their version of the OS, they just want to install the application and use it. So binary compatability layer for older binary drivers would pretty much be a necessity.
Probably two projects that could really harm windows and boost Linux would be support Windows drivers and for WINE to actually be able to run over 99% of Windows applications. PC vendors might cionsider actually replacing Windows with Linux on the computers they ship.
Eventually many will get tired of having to use a tiny screen (even 15" is tiny compared to my 27" monitor) and all of the inflexibilities of a tablet. They will also get tired of the carpal tunnel and taking 1 minute to type a sentance on a crappy screen or chiclet keyboard.
If tablets came first, desktops would be considered the next great thing that will replace tablet. You mean you can actually choose and replace your own mouse, keyboard and monitor? You can actually have the unit upgraded or service, even do it yourself? More RAM and functionality for less money? A much better quality screen? Far more power and resource for less money? More durable and less prone to overheating adn breakage?
I have a huge 27" monitor. I have a big full size ergonomic keyboard. Terabytes of hard drive space. A nice mouse and joystick. Surround speakers. 16 GB ram. quad core 3 GHz. You can keep your tablet. I will keep my nice big desktop.
I'd rather not have your corporate/government tracking and electronic body monitoring thing so I can be monitored 24 hours a day by facebook. I enjoy my privacy and being able to get away from the electronics, such as going out on a nature walk. Your idea is right out of 1984 Orwellian nigthmare. No thanks.
I dont think many people will find watching movies on a 4" screen to be a great experience. the point is, desktops provide far better value and experience. Same for web pages. The idea of trying to read a web page on a 4" screen is lame.
Also mobile devices are lower powered, have less disk space and memory and so on than a desktop, leading to a worse user experience and less value.
I disagree on the web and the game console. It would be really sheer stupidity for something to walk into a best buy and trade say they want to trade in their 20" screen and full size keyboaerd for a 4" screen and chiclet keys.
If mobile devices had come along first, Desktop computers would be the upgrade.
The mobile devies are useful, but people misunderstand what people use them for. Its a niche device for mobile use. At home desktop is a far better user experience.
Also most users do care about value, which means, more RAM, bigger screen, big, full sized ergonomic keyboard, hard drive space and CPU speed for less money is a better value. Desktop wins here hands down.
There is for instance, huge room for expanded CPU processing for gaming, such as real time ray tracing and more realistic 3D scene generation.
Nope. Actually its pretty logical. Mobile devices are great for on the go, such as in a subway. But are just lousy at home. Destops will always be the best value and experience at home. Also, i said that mobile smartphone market is unsaturated, hence the growth, eventually the growth will stop as everyone who wants to buy the phones has one, and it enters more of a replacement cycle type thing where people replace their phones when they become worn out.
Desktops becoming more relevant, mobile is a niche
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Mozilla To Support H.264
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· Score: 2, Interesting
It is true that firefox should try to work its way onto mobile devices. There was some talk about the alternative such as the Ogg formats that were not patent encumbered, one wonders if some sort of plugin for browsers like IE would have removed a barrier to adoption.
However, I think the idea that firefox will become irrelevant if they do not make their way onto mobile is dubious, because desktops will remain the primary means of computing, for many reasons. This is due to the fact that desktops are superior and a better value overall, mobile devices are only good in a niche usage when in a car on in a subway or out and about town. However, at home in the evening, mobile devices provide a drastistically worse usage characteristics and value than desktop. Do we really think that its a good idea to trade in your 20" screen, full sized keyboard and fast, memory expansive system for a 4" screen with a chiclet sized keyboard or some overpriced tablet that gives far less computing power and reliability than a desktop system? It seems absurd to me.
I do think that desktops will be used in conjunction with a mobile device, like a smart phone and or lap/netbook and that allowing these two to share data will be important (hello, remote desktop anyone).
Smart phones are a very specific usage niche, they only really make since when one is on the go, in their car, on a subway, or walking about town. This is a trade off because the mobile device provides much worse user experience and value than a desktop, which is only tolerable where portability is important. At home, in the den, the desktops strengths vastly excel over a mobile device, and in that place the mobile has absolutely no advantage. So, desktops will be used at home, few people want to do spread sheets, work on a collage paper, play a 3D game or such on some lousy mobile device.
Another fact is that since the mobile has a smaller display and different usage characteristics, the GUI is customized for that environment, however, the GUI that works well on a mobile, such as tabs, does not work very well on the desktop where full window system is very workable. So these two classes of computing device will have different UI designs.
It is true there has been growth in the smart phone sector. However, this should not be read as these becoming more popular than desktop, but that the mobile platform is unsaturated so far so that there is more room to growth. This growth as well is due to a technological tresh-hold that has been reached recently which has made smart phones viable for purposes. However, this is a business cyle, eventually mobile sales will fall of significantly, and i expect that mobile and desktop sales will eventually equalize as people have purchased both and enter more of a long term wear out replacement cycle on mobiles as with desktops.
As well, desktops are a better value in general for computing, providing higher speeds and more RAM for lower cost. They are also a general all in one computing device which can fill the role of DVR, Game console, office management, home management, communications and web browsing, telephone and video chat from home, and so on. Doing all of this with a desktop general purpose computer is a much, much better value than buying a bunch of seperate specific purpose computers like a wii or a tivo. It is far less wasteful becuse all of these devices have a general purpose computer and it makes sense to do all of these functions with a single general purpose computer rather than 3 seperate devices. As CPU speeds have increased and RAM has increased, a single desktop computer has enough resources that gaming, DVR, and office functions can all be done simultaneously. All of this results in desktops being able to multiple things for less cost making them a better value.
Mobile devices are a niche device and eventually sales of these will decline. Desktop sales will remain steady over time due to the much better value and better and more versatile usage characteristics.
This is a sales tax. Not a download tax. It will be on the money paid for the service, if no money is paid for a download, there is no tax.
A Sales tax on a financial transaction is not unreasonable, since people would pay such a tax anyway with buying things locally, the way sales taxes have been have been severely imbalanced against local retailers.
This is one of the most ridiculous things i've ever heard. Not everyone has internet or smartphones and I think it will always be that way. I give business cards as a personal contact as well for business use. Many of the people i give cards to do not have smart phone or even internet so they need my phone number. People who do have email I would have to give my email address anyway and its easier to jsut give them a card with the address they can punch in later rather than trying to speak it out loud. In many ways, demanding another party you are speaking with to use some odd online app may also be rude and inconsiderate, intead of just giving them a business card. There is a simplicity with business cards as well, where an online sort thing thing tends to actually bring in more complexity and frustration. I would often end up writing down my web address anyway on a piece of paper, which is what I have on my business cards anyway. Business cards are simple and "just work" while some electronic alternative is often very complex and prone to numerous technical glitches.
One solution may be to use multiple layers of AES. Rather than double or tripling anonymity it shoulod increase it exponentially, as long as one AES layer is placed directly in the other. The reason is if you include an AES layer in some sort of wrapper like an header that is predictable, if the analysis breaks through the first layer, they look for predictable data to indicate that, such as ASCII data or TCP headers or what not. So you dont want to give them that, if they "break through the first layer", and all they get is more random data, they will have no way of knowing if they actually have broken through, right?
Re:That's why I like the basic Kindle
on
The eBook Backlash
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· Score: 0
having a device for each different thing I do is wasteful, its just more money have to spend on buying a bunch of special use devices. I would rather just buy one and have it do everything I need to do, including check mail, and then just turn off the check mail notification. Also consider the huge environmental cost in having all of these special purpose computers, such as game system, DVR, etc, which are all totally inflexible with software that makes it impossible to multipurpose use them or do what you want them to do when you in fact paid for the hardware. many of these devices could be replaced by a general purpose computer. I do see 3 different device classes with different usage, such as a smartphone for use when one is mobile or walking, a laptop for use when one is able to sit down and a desktop computer for use at home for serious work and play such as writing, taxes, game playing and for work. I think we would see a best scenario when these devices can be interconnected and work together.
Slashdot Mirror
An asteroid may have a lot more metals since on earth the metals have mostly sunken to the core, the surface of the earth really is not rich in them since as the planet cooled billions of years ago heavier elements gravitated towards the center of the planet due to gravity. The asteroid would haev these metals more evenly through out it. BUT it is at this point very expensive to capture and mine an asteroid.
Also 500 tons is not big enough to cause a K-T like event. With a bigger asteroid though it might be better to mine it in place and just transport the ore back, avoiding the risk of trying to bring a big asteroid near earth. Not sure.
First point is it mentions the british stats on denial, but the American ones are far worse at 50% denial or so.
Second point i'd like to make, the effects of global warming are especially long reaching and likely will be a gradually worsening trend, over decades. The predictions are very dire, indeed. The predictions being dire does not mean they need to happen overnight, we will likely see the catastrophy gradually set in over decades, things will just keeping getting worse and worse. People have problems seeing something really devastating when it sets in over a period of decades or centuries. That is a problem with human perception. When things dont happen overnight, its harder for people to see. its like with possible malnutrition problems, as these things get worse, having a billion people becoming malnourised becomes the "new normal" and they only see the short term 1% annual change or whatever that their short attention span allows them to see, not the longer term trend. They forget that at some point in the past the number of starving people was vastly less and fail to remember how much it has really gone up, because it happened in centuries, rather than days.
An earthquake gets a lot of attention because it lies within the short attention span, but the gradual global environmental degradation is a lot harder for people to see, even though its much worse than an earthquake, the damage does not suddenly occur.
Christians ideologies and all sorts of popular myths such as 2012 tell of the day the earth ended. Many people think that if the earth will end it will be a sudden disaster like that. the fact is if the earth deos not end in a day many people will say its just not in danger at all. But the fact is the things that could ruin this planet can take centuries to occur.
1701-D would have been huge, perhaps too large to be feasible, the !701-A was 289 M long, 72 M high and 127 meters wide which would make it a lot more feasible
They add new casinos and hotels to vegas all the time. I dont think it would necessarily take away business as it would bring in more people. For a business perceptive, it would be just another resoirt, which many have been added over the years. the Primary attraction of vegas is the resorts, otherwise, its just a desert.
The 1701-A is smaller, only 200 meters or so. Which would be more doable. the D would just be enormous.
I dont think so. First part of it at least could have been a hotel and restaurant, casino, etc, and those things dont wear off. But i really think that the interest would have held up and would have become very popular, if it was lifelike enough,.
I think 1701-A of 1701-B would look best with a crew staffed in ST II-VI uniforms. There could be a hotel inside, as well as restaurants, all themed like the real ship.
I was never fond of 1701-D or nor the crews unform from that era, though, the STNG series was well written and well executed. I always wished they could couple the story line quality of STNG with the styles of the 1701-A or 1701-B era. I found the tight fitting uniforms of D to be cheesy and the ship too cheesy as well.
Another factor is the 1701-A was a much smaller ship than the D, the D is just a huge thing that might be completely infeasible to build, if they want to build the thing to spec, it would be enormous.
I imagine this thing could have rather than a mock up, could have been an entire building, including a built in hotel and so on. But the saucer section raises quistions on structural support, I am not sure if it would be possible to construct an unsupported, hanging saucer section without some sort of supports from below, in a feasible way. Having support columns from below for the saucer section would take away from the whole thing. Probably the main hull could be fully occupied hotel and attraction space and they might have to settle with a shell for saucer, with some places inside being built, such as the bridge and so on, unless a way can be found to build the saucer.
Enterprise NCC 1701-A and NCC-1701 are different ships. But they are the same design and look exactly the same on the outside. But have very different bridges. The 1701-A is filled with the backlight touch panels. NCC 1701 was destroyed in STIII. I vote for Enterprise 1701-A, since I thought it had the coolest looking interiors and exteriors, and was featured in Star Trek VI ( as well as ST-V, but that should not reflect badly on the ship, it was a fine vessel). If the Las Vegas 1701-A is staffed with a crew, have them wear the Star Trek II-VI uniform style which I liked better than any other style used on the entire series. It was very distinctive but not too cheesy.
I would add that what killed all the dinosaurs was not the asteroid impact itself, but the asteroid winter that caused a collapse of the food chain. The asteroid blast and fire ball and tsunami was localized, it killed dinosaurs locally but its not what killed them off globally, the blockage of the sun did. If enough food can be stored away to get through the winter and then seeds to immediately restart agriculture when things clear, humans can survive it.
Even though its good to plan for precuations and deflection efforts, the fact is, humans could survive a Chicxulub sized impact fairly easy, it is completely survivable here on earth. Unlike dinosaurs humans can store away enough food to get through a long period of time without sunlight, and store a seed bank supply containing huge stores of all seeds from food plants and livestock to repopulate and restore agriculture afterward, and libraries filled with the accumulated knowledge of humanity. Unless, we include the entire population of these efforts so the entire population stores away huge amounts of freeze dried and preserved food, the survival facility would have to be secret and heavily protected from the riots and chaos that would ensue in a asteroid winter. There would be many of these facilities located in top secret all over the planet so even if one was destroyed by the impact there would still be others. The people participating in them would have to live nearby and would have to go underground at a moments notice. Some of them would have to be located near fertile, farmable areas for recovery long after the strike. They would be far underground and bult to withstand wildfires, huge winds, earthquakes and all the other stuff that could happen. They would be protected from tsunami, located inland and so on and from any other conceivable disaster.
All of this could allow humanity to survive on earth even easier and with less trouble than on mars. It is actually easier to survive here on earth after an asteroid than it would be on mars.
By the way what they are asking is similar to demanding that you give them the keys to your house so they can search your house, or them demanding that they strip search you, even an employer searching your purse or bags is unacceptable, among other things. What is going on here is something like stalking, harrassment, invasion of privacy and so on, employers who do this must be punished. This is an example of how corporations and private entities can be as much or more of a violation of rights against us, and why we need legal protections against corporations and private entities as much as we do government.
This is not perfect, but one possibility might be to set up a dummy facebook account and give that to them, rather than your real one. However, it is clear, this should be illegal, people who run into this should contact a lawyer and file lawsuits, as well, Facebook has expressed interest in filing lawsuits against employers who do this, so, notify Facebook of this if an Employer, or anyone else, has requested your password.
This news story would be much more exciting and interesting if it were the discovery of an ET martian base, possibly for scientific observation of the Earth. Otherwise, it seems to be rather mind numbingly boring.
I dont think the article is correct. What Linux really needs is a lot of good applications, games and great hardware support. Sure, Liinux works fine if you are lucky enough that your hardware has a driver and you dont want to play any games that are sold in stores. But, its pretty much unuseable if your hardware is not supported or you want to play a game that is sold in stores.
I think to get these things Linux has to welcome more hardware vendors to providing drivers, even if they are binary only drivers, understanding that looking at this pragmatically, a few binary drivers goes a long way to overall increasing deployment of an open source operating system. As well, the user could switch to open source drivers when they become avialable.Binary drivers could actually boost open source development by increasing demand for Linux and ways to monetize that for providing support services andn so on that, leading tio more revenue into Linux companies that can be used for open source development.
A key to any useable OS is backwards compatability,. Users dont want to have to worry if a specific driver or application works with their version of the OS, they just want to install the application and use it. So binary compatability layer for older binary drivers would pretty much be a necessity.
Probably two projects that could really harm windows and boost Linux would be support Windows drivers and for WINE to actually be able to run over 99% of Windows applications. PC vendors might cionsider actually replacing Windows with Linux on the computers they ship.
Eventually many will get tired of having to use a tiny screen (even 15" is tiny compared to my 27" monitor) and all of the inflexibilities of a tablet. They will also get tired of the carpal tunnel and taking 1 minute to type a sentance on a crappy screen or chiclet keyboard.
If tablets came first, desktops would be considered the next great thing that will replace tablet. You mean you can actually choose and replace your own mouse, keyboard and monitor? You can actually have the unit upgraded or service, even do it yourself? More RAM and functionality for less money? A much better quality screen? Far more power and resource for less money? More durable and less prone to overheating adn breakage?
I have a huge 27" monitor. I have a big full size ergonomic keyboard. Terabytes of hard drive space. A nice mouse and joystick. Surround speakers. 16 GB ram. quad core 3 GHz. You can keep your tablet. I will keep my nice big desktop.
I'd rather not have your corporate/government tracking and electronic body monitoring thing so I can be monitored 24 hours a day by facebook. I enjoy my privacy and being able to get away from the electronics, such as going out on a nature walk. Your idea is right out of 1984 Orwellian nigthmare. No thanks.
I dont think many people will find watching movies on a 4" screen to be a great experience. the point is, desktops provide far better value and experience. Same for web pages. The idea of trying to read a web page on a 4" screen is lame.
Also mobile devices are lower powered, have less disk space and memory and so on than a desktop, leading to a worse user experience and less value.
I disagree on the web and the game console. It would be really sheer stupidity for something to walk into a best buy and trade say they want to trade in their 20" screen and full size keyboaerd for a 4" screen and chiclet keys.
If mobile devices had come along first, Desktop computers would be the upgrade.
The mobile devies are useful, but people misunderstand what people use them for. Its a niche device for mobile use. At home desktop is a far better user experience.
Also most users do care about value, which means, more RAM, bigger screen, big, full sized ergonomic keyboard, hard drive space and CPU speed for less money is a better value. Desktop wins here hands down.
There is for instance, huge room for expanded CPU processing for gaming, such as real time ray tracing and more realistic 3D scene generation.
Nope. Actually its pretty logical. Mobile devices are great for on the go, such as in a subway. But are just lousy at home. Destops will always be the best value and experience at home. Also, i said that mobile smartphone market is unsaturated, hence the growth, eventually the growth will stop as everyone who wants to buy the phones has one, and it enters more of a replacement cycle type thing where people replace their phones when they become worn out.
It is true that firefox should try to work its way onto mobile devices. There was some talk about the alternative such as the Ogg formats that were not patent encumbered, one wonders if some sort of plugin for browsers like IE would have removed a barrier to adoption.
However, I think the idea that firefox will become irrelevant if they do not make their way onto mobile is dubious, because desktops will remain the primary means of computing, for many reasons. This is due to the fact that desktops are superior and a better value overall, mobile devices are only good in a niche usage when in a car on in a subway or out and about town. However, at home in the evening, mobile devices provide a drastistically worse usage characteristics and value than desktop. Do we really think that its a good idea to trade in your 20" screen, full sized keyboard and fast, memory expansive system for a 4" screen with a chiclet sized keyboard or some overpriced tablet that gives far less computing power and reliability than a desktop system? It seems absurd to me.
I do think that desktops will be used in conjunction with a mobile device, like a smart phone and or lap/netbook and that allowing these two to share data will be important (hello, remote desktop anyone).
Smart phones are a very specific usage niche, they only really make since when one is on the go, in their car, on a subway, or walking about town. This is a trade off because the mobile device provides much worse user experience and value than a desktop, which is only tolerable where portability is important. At home, in the den, the desktops strengths vastly excel over a mobile device, and in that place the mobile has absolutely no advantage. So, desktops will be used at home, few people want to do spread sheets, work on a collage paper, play a 3D game or such on some lousy mobile device.
Another fact is that since the mobile has a smaller display and different usage characteristics, the GUI is customized for that environment, however, the GUI that works well on a mobile, such as tabs, does not work very well on the desktop where full window system is very workable. So these two classes of computing device will have different UI designs.
It is true there has been growth in the smart phone sector. However, this should not be read as these becoming more popular than desktop, but that the mobile platform is unsaturated so far so that there is more room to growth. This growth as well is due to a technological tresh-hold that has been reached recently which has made smart phones viable for purposes. However, this is a business cyle, eventually mobile sales will fall of significantly, and i expect that mobile and desktop sales will eventually equalize as people have purchased both and enter more of a long term wear out replacement cycle on mobiles as with desktops.
As well, desktops are a better value in general for computing, providing higher speeds and more RAM for lower cost. They are also a general all in one computing device which can fill the role of DVR, Game console, office management, home management, communications and web browsing, telephone and video chat from home, and so on. Doing all of this with a desktop general purpose computer is a much, much better value than buying a bunch of seperate specific purpose computers like a wii or a tivo. It is far less wasteful becuse all of these devices have a general purpose computer and it makes sense to do all of these functions with a single general purpose computer rather than 3 seperate devices. As CPU speeds have increased and RAM has increased, a single desktop computer has enough resources that gaming, DVR, and office functions can all be done simultaneously. All of this results in desktops being able to multiple things for less cost making them a better value.
Mobile devices are a niche device and eventually sales of these will decline. Desktop sales will remain steady over time due to the much better value and better and more versatile usage characteristics.
This is a sales tax. Not a download tax. It will be on the money paid for the service, if no money is paid for a download, there is no tax.
A Sales tax on a financial transaction is not unreasonable, since people would pay such a tax anyway with buying things locally, the way sales taxes have been have been severely imbalanced against local retailers.
This is one of the most ridiculous things i've ever heard. Not everyone has internet or smartphones and I think it will always be that way. I give business cards as a personal contact as well for business use. Many of the people i give cards to do not have smart phone or even internet so they need my phone number. People who do have email I would have to give my email address anyway and its easier to jsut give them a card with the address they can punch in later rather than trying to speak it out loud. In many ways, demanding another party you are speaking with to use some odd online app may also be rude and inconsiderate, intead of just giving them a business card. There is a simplicity with business cards as well, where an online sort thing thing tends to actually bring in more complexity and frustration. I would often end up writing down my web address anyway on a piece of paper, which is what I have on my business cards anyway. Business cards are simple and "just work" while some electronic alternative is often very complex and prone to numerous technical glitches.
One solution may be to use multiple layers of AES. Rather than double or tripling anonymity it shoulod increase it exponentially, as long as one AES layer is placed directly in the other. The reason is if you include an AES layer in some sort of wrapper like an header that is predictable, if the analysis breaks through the first layer, they look for predictable data to indicate that, such as ASCII data or TCP headers or what not. So you dont want to give them that, if they "break through the first layer", and all they get is more random data, they will have no way of knowing if they actually have broken through, right?
having a device for each different thing I do is wasteful, its just more money have to spend on buying a bunch of special use devices. I would rather just buy one and have it do everything I need to do, including check mail, and then just turn off the check mail notification. Also consider the huge environmental cost in having all of these special purpose computers, such as game system, DVR, etc, which are all totally inflexible with software that makes it impossible to multipurpose use them or do what you want them to do when you in fact paid for the hardware. many of these devices could be replaced by a general purpose computer. I do see 3 different device classes with different usage, such as a smartphone for use when one is mobile or walking, a laptop for use when one is able to sit down and a desktop computer for use at home for serious work and play such as writing, taxes, game playing and for work. I think we would see a best scenario when these devices can be interconnected and work together.