I heard a piece on NPR (maybe it was Marketplace) about a couple that made use of California's tax incentives to install alternative energy sources. With the tax credits, they figured it would take about 10 or 15 years to pay it back. I imagine for a business that if there are specific tax breaks for alternative energy plus regular business expense tax deductions, it might pay for itself even faster.
By all accounts, Microsoft has become internally mired in middle management and ineffeciencies while also stagnating quite a bit in innovation if they ever had it to begin with. But that is another discussion altogether. Google is nimble, making waves and doing very exciting things.
So who do you want--the company that views the world as its domain or the company that views the world as a world of information and possibility?
I would, but all of the features that would be worth my time were dropped in the development process and I have zero desire to "review" a new interface.
Um, no, they won't. A new computer *without* corporate discounts is 25%-30% of [$1,500-$2,000].
So you are saying you can get a new business class computer for $375-$500? Show me one. Here are the minimum specs to be considered business class:
512 Megs of RAM XP Professional CD-RW 80GB Hard drive Office 2003 Basic Major brand name (i.e. not from scratch or knock-off of the month)
Remember, that's a minimum. We don't buy with less than 1 GB of RAM and don't get the Celeron type processors. If you are going to come close to your proposed cost, you can't go that route.
I grow tired of the "Slashdot hates intellectual property rights" argument. I get the sense reading the posts here that very few are against rewarding people that create worthwhile material whether it is music, books, programs or graphical art. What I believe the overwhelming majority here protest is publishers, *AA getting the bulk of profits off the backs of creative geniuses. Also, after paying, "we" want to be able to put it on whatever medium we wish to use what we've already paid for. That's it.
Personally, if I could Paypal bands/artists/creators directly for their works I enjoy, I would. Heck, I'd probably pay again for the same work down the road in the right setting. In the end, the amount they get from me would be substantially higher than what their distributors pay. But that's just me. Your mileage may vary.
Net neutrality advocates seem to forget that network capacity costs real money
No they don't. They (and me) don't think ISPs have any right to double-dip. I pay for my network connection. If Time Warner attempts to solicit extra fees from Vonage for higher priority packet delivery on top of what I pay for the connection, that doesn't make sense no matter how you argue it. The other way of looking at it is that at that point, I'm no longer paying for internet service, but rather some subset that is defined by Time Warner's priorities.
if Vonage spent the money to build their own damn network [snip] Your connection quality probably went down due to an increase in the number of subscribers causing your latency to increase, not because Time Warner is purposefully screwing with Vonage.
I agree. My suspicions are that Vonage has gained customers faster than it has expanded its infrastructure. I have nothing specific to back that up.
I don't think it matters what party is complaining, there is a problem. Period. There has been for a very long time. If you've ever been involved in politics, you know dirty stuff goes on. You get stuff like employers putting the word out that you better vote for this candidate or lose your job. You get people giving alcohol to alcoholics to vote for the person of their choice. There are a whole host of other things, but this stuff really happens. Even today.
There is no doubt that politics are not all fair. Struggles for power never have been since the dawn of man. But shame on us willing to go to so much length to spend money to protect our democracy from outside threats while at the same time not taking similar efforts to protect it from within.
In the telecommunications world, dirty tricks aren't new. They even made laws against some of the tactics.
And for those using Vonage with an ISP such as Comcast that offers a competing service, you haven't seen anything yet. The whole "net neutrality" argument hasn't even begun yet. Just wait until Vonage service starts getting worse while the competitors tout "better service" and such.
As a Vonage customer, I will say that I'm not totally satisfied. There are times when someone calls that I can hear them, but they can't hear me or vice versa. Some calls never ring. Some do, but only after the person calling has already sat through 6 or 7 rings. Sometimes, the person on the other end hears garbled voice despite me hearing them clearly and vice versa. Come to think of it, the problems started after Time Warner bought our ISP. Time Warner has a competing product. Coincidence?
If the right questions had been asked and the Bush administration had taken the threat seriously, they could have:
A) Stopped 9/11 and B) Killed bin Laden.
It is not disputed that our intelligence agencies had at least taken notice that suspected terrorists were taking flight lessons. They also had been warned bin Laden wanted to attack us. How long would it have taken to connect the dots?
Imagine how different the world would be if we had accomplished A and B instead of neither.
Go out there and listen to some internet radio stations.
Right. When I'm driving.
If you're relying on the guy in charge of the music at the stations in your area to find your music for you, then I suggest you are the lazy one.
I never said I was relying. I only commented on what I heard while driving. Satellite radio fares little better in my experience. I thought about subscribing until I rode with someone on 10 hour trip. The radio station we were listening to literally cycled through the same loop of songs in the same exact order after a few hours. What kind of crap is that? At least randomize the songs.
there is MORE good music available today than there was 10 or 20 years ago.
That is too ambiguous.
You just appear to be looking in the wrong place.
Of course. But since the same places I'm looking represent the vast majority of distribution channels, so is everyone else. The internet set the stage and file sharing stole the show. The distribution channels that want to control the majority of music were blind-sided by it. Remember, that's what this whole thread is about anyway--whether file sharing hurts the music business.
Music today is no better nor worse than yesterday.
I think I'll be the one to decide that when it comes to spending my money since this is a highly subjective matter.
I don't buy CDs nearly as much as I used to. Radio stations play the same music they've played for about 5 or 6 years now. I find myself turning the channel to talk radio more often than not because I'm tired of hearing the same music over and over and over again.
Those are facts. We can argue the cause of the facts if you want.
Not buying CDs
1) I'll admit that music isn't as big in my life now as it was say in college. So perhaps age has something to do with it.
2) I'm older and wiser and whenever I even think about buying a CD (which isn't often) I think of better ways to spend my money.
3) Perhaps I'm falling out of touch with whatever is the fad of the day. (See #2)
Same music over and over
1) Perhaps there really aren't that many good new songs being released. (i.e. today's music really IS worse)
2) Maybe whomever is in charge of the music at the stations in my area are lazy.
3) What if (wait for it . ..) the music industry decision makers have lost touch with what's good and let great talent sit unnoticed?
While I'm thinking about it (since #3 in the second group got me on this train of thought), I'll go ahead and say what I'll wager has crossed the mind of anyone who has more than three brain cells holding hands and singing "kum ba ya". File sharing kills off bands that suck. It just does. If you download and sample the other songs from a band besides the hit playing constantly on the radio and find out that they are a one hit wonder, are you going to fork out the full price of a CD for that one song? I wouldn't.
Artists are (or should be) afraid of file sharing because it exposes their weakness at making a tight album. Music execs hate it because (among other things) it allows people to easily sample before they buy. I say easily because it seems to me that if someone takes the time to go to the music store, they would be more likely to buy something than if they didn't.
In conclusion, I'll say that file sharing won't kill music or bankrupt talented artists. If the music industry is smart, it won't even hurt their bottom line that much. But I'll tell you what it will kill--the album as we know it.
Don't get too upset about it. I suspect that the overall quality of the average song will actually improve since bands will quit messing around with songs that nobody likes.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with a waiter recommending something either. In fact, they usually do in a subtle way via "Tonight's special is . .."
"Fix" is such an ambiguous word sometimes when it comes to computers, isn't it? It isn't like a flat tire because often I hear "Can you fix my computer and make that never happen again?" or something to that effect. If they are sincere about that last part, can you really put Windows back on their computer? I usually reply with "I can't guarantee you something like that won't happen again, but I can offer you something that will come as close as possible to that. I want you to understand that going this path is a bit different from what you are used to, but it shouldn't take long to feel right at home."
If they are interested, I explain further. It is with a tag line like this that you find out how serious they are about "make it never happen again" because as soon as they learn their favorite piece of software probably won't work (it might with Wine, but no guarantee), you find out what is really important.
I would argue that as a technician, your job is not only to "fix" the problem, but to offer them a solution. Reinstalling Windows is a fix. Installing Linux is a solution. Not all solutions in the world offer one to one options. Sometimes, some things must be given up to truly solve a problem.
The board of directors of a corporation have to answer to their shareholders. Period. When China offers entry to the market if Google meets their demands, making a decision on that is not black and white for the executives and the board. Regardless of what YOUR morals say, corporations have more than just how they feel when going to bed at night to consider.
It's much easier for Wikipedia to take the high moral road when they are donation driven as opposed to a public profit driven company. Perhaps it is even necessary to keep their image clean. China is one of the fastest (is it the fastest?) growing economies in the world. It has a staggering population of would-be customers. For them to take the high road and refuse to do business there would probably not go over well with investors--especially when their competition is entering the market there.
As the IT Manager for an SMB, I can tell you that there are indeed some companies that will not deploy Vista. Period. We're one of them. After Microsoft figures out few people want it, we'll see what happens.
I'm sure some organizations will deploy it, but watch for a large number that don't. Ever. Even if that means migrating to Linux or OSX.
Warm water (a by-product of global warming) is only one of the components. This summer, I spoke with a local in Myrtle Beach, SC. He surfs in the winter (not sure how good the waves are) after the tourists go home. He said in the 40 years or so since he has lived there that this is the warmest the water has stayed during the winter (2005-2006). He gave a specific water temperature (I don't remember what) so this isn't a wild guess, it's hard numbers.
Record number of hurricanes or no, temperatures are staying warmer longer in many areas. This includes areas that this is a bad thing. It even includes areas that this isn't a bad thing in terms of a threat to humanity, but a great loss of an icon. We even have signs of a species going extinct from the heat. Not to be left out of the party, even humans are at risk.
I just wonder how much more climate-related disasters are needed before people stop and admit that there is a very strongly correlated statistical smoking gun that humans just _might_ be the central cause.
the internet is the modern equivalent of the lawless west where there are . . . far too few . . . effective laws put into place to deal with criminals.
This argument is exactly what causes new cyber laws to be needlessly written. It's pure balderdash. Theft is still theft, extortion is still extortion, etc. Just because the behavior is done over the wire doesn't make it any less or more of a crime. The only part of the law that might be lacking is extradition where someone in country A launches an attack of some sort on someone in Country B.
The only thing the internet does is make crime less risky in terms of immediate repercussions. If you rob a bank in person with a gun, all sorts of things can go wrong. If you do it over the wire, you can have your money and be sitting on the beach of a country with no extradition treaties (see above argument) sipping on a cool drink before the authorities even know your name. Even better than that, you can do it from the beach while sipping on a cool drink.
The internet melts international borders. The law hasn't cought up with that yet. Focus on that and getting better trained law enforcement to deal with cyber crime more quickly. If the law needs to be changed, the only thing I suggest is to make cyber crime default to maximum penalties. You don't need to reinvent the wheel to deal with the same crime that has been around since laws began.
It is my experience that higher academians tend to be very territorial folk. It wouldn't surprise me if this sprung from a discussion at a faculty dinner/luncheon/benefit where recent discussions by the IAU were the topic of the moment. Heck, the geologist might have even had a few drinks in him enough to get upset at the discussion. Just my guess.
The bottom line is that we are not running out of oil and will not run out of oil anytime soon. What we are running out of is the cheap and inexpensive oil that we are used to. However as technology advances and/or prices increase we will be increasingly be able to tap into reserves that were previously impossible or simply cost prohibitive to tap.
I think we can all agree on two things -- 1) The supply of oil on this planet is not unlimited and 2) As reserves are depleted and the first stipulation comes closer to being realized, the cost of oil will go up.
The question really boils down to whether it makes sense to focus research and intellectual energy on dealing with those two stipulations long term or just thinking short term and forcing the problem on subsequent generations. Short of the destruction of civilization, the planet or religious armageddon, our species will have to deal with this at some point. It is inevitable.
As long as they do regular backups that are retained off-site, no problem. Actually, this should be required (if it isn't already) that regular backups for all government agencies are stored in multiple redundant highly secure bunker-type areas. It is easier to shred a few pieces of paper than to make many different copies of backups from multpile locations vanish.
Perhaps you can elaborate on what you _think_ special relativity has to do with what I said. Since our velocity on Earth and that of the Voyager are not changing much, the frame of reference to c remains unchanged during the lifetime of the measurement. Thus, the unit of measure time remains constant for the purpose of this measurement with regards to our frame of reference.
So, by all means, please elaborate on how you think special relativity fits in the picture.
You aren't going to get much performance nor hardware support from a VM, so why not just use one of the the thin client platforms I mentioned in the subject header? Your hardware cost on the client-side would diminish, you are guaranteed the same performance regardless of what kind of hardware your client has and you simlify your administrative tasks. There isn't any reason you couldn't run your server on a VM if you really wanted to (thus achieving the same result BTW only on server-side). I manage a Terminal Server that runs on VMWare right now, so I know it works.
There are cases where using VMs on the desktop makes sense, but I don't think you are gaining anything by this case. In theory, you could use various applications that require 3D accelerations (such as AutoCAD) if you ran your Terminal Server local and not as a VM on your server. You would just need a heavy duty graphics card in the system. I've never tried that, so I don't know how well it would work.
Bottom line is that while you could probably accomplish what you are trying to do, I'm not convinced it is the best way to achieve what I believe to be your goal--a unified desktop experience regardless of where a user sits down and what computer they use. This problem was solved (and has since been quite refined) with thin clients. If you require Windows applications, Citrix offers a few more bells and whistles over Terminal Services, but they are not worlds apart.
To be exact, it would be 50,034.6s = 833m 54.6s = 13h 53m 54.6s . . . one way.
Or, 100,069.2s = 1,667m 49.2s = 27h 47m 49.2s roundtrip . . . assuming a perfect vaccum and no processing time on both ends.
Of course, these calculations are based on static distances and it would require a bit more tweaking to figure out the exact numbers to account for the delta in distance up to this minute and the delta in distance during the sending of a signal.
Slashdot Mirror
I heard a piece on NPR (maybe it was Marketplace) about a couple that made use of California's tax incentives to install alternative energy sources. With the tax credits, they figured it would take about 10 or 15 years to pay it back. I imagine for a business that if there are specific tax breaks for alternative energy plus regular business expense tax deductions, it might pay for itself even faster.
By all accounts, Microsoft has become internally mired in middle management and ineffeciencies while also stagnating quite a bit in innovation if they ever had it to begin with. But that is another discussion altogether. Google is nimble, making waves and doing very exciting things.
So who do you want--the company that views the world as its domain or the company that views the world as a world of information and possibility?
I would, but all of the features that would be worth my time were dropped in the development process and I have zero desire to "review" a new interface.
Um, no, they won't. A new computer *without* corporate discounts is 25%-30% of [$1,500-$2,000].
So you are saying you can get a new business class computer for $375-$500? Show me one. Here are the minimum specs to be considered business class:
512 Megs of RAM
XP Professional
CD-RW
80GB Hard drive
Office 2003 Basic
Major brand name (i.e. not from scratch or knock-off of the month)
Remember, that's a minimum. We don't buy with less than 1 GB of RAM and don't get the Celeron type processors. If you are going to come close to your proposed cost, you can't go that route.
Good luck with your search.
I grow tired of the "Slashdot hates intellectual property rights" argument. I get the sense reading the posts here that very few are against rewarding people that create worthwhile material whether it is music, books, programs or graphical art. What I believe the overwhelming majority here protest is publishers, *AA getting the bulk of profits off the backs of creative geniuses. Also, after paying, "we" want to be able to put it on whatever medium we wish to use what we've already paid for. That's it.
Personally, if I could Paypal bands/artists/creators directly for their works I enjoy, I would. Heck, I'd probably pay again for the same work down the road in the right setting. In the end, the amount they get from me would be substantially higher than what their distributors pay. But that's just me. Your mileage may vary.
Net neutrality advocates seem to forget that network capacity costs real money
No they don't. They (and me) don't think ISPs have any right to double-dip. I pay for my network connection. If Time Warner attempts to solicit extra fees from Vonage for higher priority packet delivery on top of what I pay for the connection, that doesn't make sense no matter how you argue it. The other way of looking at it is that at that point, I'm no longer paying for internet service, but rather some subset that is defined by Time Warner's priorities.
if Vonage spent the money to build their own damn network [snip] Your connection quality probably went down due to an increase in the number of subscribers causing your latency to increase, not because Time Warner is purposefully screwing with Vonage.
I agree. My suspicions are that Vonage has gained customers faster than it has expanded its infrastructure. I have nothing specific to back that up.
I don't think it matters what party is complaining, there is a problem. Period. There has been for a very long time. If you've ever been involved in politics, you know dirty stuff goes on. You get stuff like employers putting the word out that you better vote for this candidate or lose your job. You get people giving alcohol to alcoholics to vote for the person of their choice. There are a whole host of other things, but this stuff really happens. Even today.
There is no doubt that politics are not all fair. Struggles for power never have been since the dawn of man. But shame on us willing to go to so much length to spend money to protect our democracy from outside threats while at the same time not taking similar efforts to protect it from within.
In the telecommunications world, dirty tricks aren't new. They even made laws against some of the tactics.
And for those using Vonage with an ISP such as Comcast that offers a competing service, you haven't seen anything yet. The whole "net neutrality" argument hasn't even begun yet. Just wait until Vonage service starts getting worse while the competitors tout "better service" and such.
As a Vonage customer, I will say that I'm not totally satisfied. There are times when someone calls that I can hear them, but they can't hear me or vice versa. Some calls never ring. Some do, but only after the person calling has already sat through 6 or 7 rings. Sometimes, the person on the other end hears garbled voice despite me hearing them clearly and vice versa. Come to think of it, the problems started after Time Warner bought our ISP. Time Warner has a competing product. Coincidence?
If the right questions had been asked and the Bush administration had taken the threat seriously, they could have:
A) Stopped 9/11
and
B) Killed bin Laden.
It is not disputed that our intelligence agencies had at least taken notice that suspected terrorists were taking flight lessons. They also had been warned bin Laden wanted to attack us. How long would it have taken to connect the dots?
Imagine how different the world would be if we had accomplished A and B instead of neither.
Go out there and listen to some internet radio stations.
Right. When I'm driving.
If you're relying on the guy in charge of the music at the stations in your area to find your music for you, then I suggest you are the lazy one.
I never said I was relying. I only commented on what I heard while driving. Satellite radio fares little better in my experience. I thought about subscribing until I rode with someone on 10 hour trip. The radio station we were listening to literally cycled through the same loop of songs in the same exact order after a few hours. What kind of crap is that? At least randomize the songs.
there is MORE good music available today than there was 10 or 20 years ago.
That is too ambiguous.
You just appear to be looking in the wrong place.
Of course. But since the same places I'm looking represent the vast majority of distribution channels, so is everyone else. The internet set the stage and file sharing stole the show. The distribution channels that want to control the majority of music were blind-sided by it. Remember, that's what this whole thread is about anyway--whether file sharing hurts the music business.
Who needs luck when you have documentation?
Music today is no better nor worse than yesterday.
.) the music industry decision makers have lost touch with what's good and let great talent sit unnoticed?
I think I'll be the one to decide that when it comes to spending my money since this is a highly subjective matter.
I don't buy CDs nearly as much as I used to. Radio stations play the same music they've played for about 5 or 6 years now. I find myself turning the channel to talk radio more often than not because I'm tired of hearing the same music over and over and over again.
Those are facts. We can argue the cause of the facts if you want.
Not buying CDs
1) I'll admit that music isn't as big in my life now as it was say in college. So perhaps age has something to do with it.
2) I'm older and wiser and whenever I even think about buying a CD (which isn't often) I think of better ways to spend my money.
3) Perhaps I'm falling out of touch with whatever is the fad of the day. (See #2)
Same music over and over
1) Perhaps there really aren't that many good new songs being released. (i.e. today's music really IS worse)
2) Maybe whomever is in charge of the music at the stations in my area are lazy.
3) What if (wait for it . .
While I'm thinking about it (since #3 in the second group got me on this train of thought), I'll go ahead and say what I'll wager has crossed the mind of anyone who has more than three brain cells holding hands and singing "kum ba ya". File sharing kills off bands that suck. It just does. If you download and sample the other songs from a band besides the hit playing constantly on the radio and find out that they are a one hit wonder, are you going to fork out the full price of a CD for that one song? I wouldn't.
Artists are (or should be) afraid of file sharing because it exposes their weakness at making a tight album. Music execs hate it because (among other things) it allows people to easily sample before they buy. I say easily because it seems to me that if someone takes the time to go to the music store, they would be more likely to buy something than if they didn't.
In conclusion, I'll say that file sharing won't kill music or bankrupt talented artists. If the music industry is smart, it won't even hurt their bottom line that much. But I'll tell you what it will kill--the album as we know it.
Don't get too upset about it. I suspect that the overall quality of the average song will actually improve since bands will quit messing around with songs that nobody likes.
Just $0.02.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with a waiter recommending something either. In fact, they usually do in a subtle way via "Tonight's special is . . ."
"Fix" is such an ambiguous word sometimes when it comes to computers, isn't it? It isn't like a flat tire because often I hear "Can you fix my computer and make that never happen again?" or something to that effect. If they are sincere about that last part, can you really put Windows back on their computer? I usually reply with "I can't guarantee you something like that won't happen again, but I can offer you something that will come as close as possible to that. I want you to understand that going this path is a bit different from what you are used to, but it shouldn't take long to feel right at home."
If they are interested, I explain further. It is with a tag line like this that you find out how serious they are about "make it never happen again" because as soon as they learn their favorite piece of software probably won't work (it might with Wine, but no guarantee), you find out what is really important.
I would argue that as a technician, your job is not only to "fix" the problem, but to offer them a solution. Reinstalling Windows is a fix. Installing Linux is a solution. Not all solutions in the world offer one to one options. Sometimes, some things must be given up to truly solve a problem.
The board of directors of a corporation have to answer to their shareholders. Period. When China offers entry to the market if Google meets their demands, making a decision on that is not black and white for the executives and the board. Regardless of what YOUR morals say, corporations have more than just how they feel when going to bed at night to consider.
Read more here and here
It's much easier for Wikipedia to take the high moral road when they are donation driven as opposed to a public profit driven company. Perhaps it is even necessary to keep their image clean. China is one of the fastest (is it the fastest?) growing economies in the world. It has a staggering population of would-be customers. For them to take the high road and refuse to do business there would probably not go over well with investors--especially when their competition is entering the market there.
As the IT Manager for an SMB, I can tell you that there are indeed some companies that will not deploy Vista. Period. We're one of them. After Microsoft figures out few people want it, we'll see what happens.
I'm sure some organizations will deploy it, but watch for a large number that don't. Ever. Even if that means migrating to Linux or OSX.
Heated oceans are not the only component of a hurricane.
Warm water (a by-product of global warming) is only one of the components. This summer, I spoke with a local in Myrtle Beach, SC. He surfs in the winter (not sure how good the waves are) after the tourists go home. He said in the 40 years or so since he has lived there that this is the warmest the water has stayed during the winter (2005-2006). He gave a specific water temperature (I don't remember what) so this isn't a wild guess, it's hard numbers.
Record number of hurricanes or no, temperatures are staying warmer longer in many areas. This includes areas that this is a bad thing. It even includes areas that this isn't a bad thing in terms of a threat to humanity, but a great loss of an icon. We even have signs of a species going extinct from the heat. Not to be left out of the party, even humans are at risk.
I just wonder how much more climate-related disasters are needed before people stop and admit that there is a very strongly correlated statistical smoking gun that humans just _might_ be the central cause.
the internet is the modern equivalent of the lawless west where there are . . . far too few . . . effective laws put into place to deal with criminals.
This argument is exactly what causes new cyber laws to be needlessly written. It's pure balderdash. Theft is still theft, extortion is still extortion, etc. Just because the behavior is done over the wire doesn't make it any less or more of a crime. The only part of the law that might be lacking is extradition where someone in country A launches an attack of some sort on someone in Country B.
The only thing the internet does is make crime less risky in terms of immediate repercussions. If you rob a bank in person with a gun, all sorts of things can go wrong. If you do it over the wire, you can have your money and be sitting on the beach of a country with no extradition treaties (see above argument) sipping on a cool drink before the authorities even know your name. Even better than that, you can do it from the beach while sipping on a cool drink.
The internet melts international borders. The law hasn't cought up with that yet. Focus on that and getting better trained law enforcement to deal with cyber crime more quickly. If the law needs to be changed, the only thing I suggest is to make cyber crime default to maximum penalties. You don't need to reinvent the wheel to deal with the same crime that has been around since laws began.
It is my experience that higher academians tend to be very territorial folk. It wouldn't surprise me if this sprung from a discussion at a faculty dinner/luncheon/benefit where recent discussions by the IAU were the topic of the moment. Heck, the geologist might have even had a few drinks in him enough to get upset at the discussion. Just my guess.
The bottom line is that we are not running out of oil and will not run out of oil anytime soon. What we are running out of is the cheap and inexpensive oil that we are used to. However as technology advances and/or prices increase we will be increasingly be able to tap into reserves that were previously impossible or simply cost prohibitive to tap.
I think we can all agree on two things -- 1) The supply of oil on this planet is not unlimited and 2) As reserves are depleted and the first stipulation comes closer to being realized, the cost of oil will go up.
The question really boils down to whether it makes sense to focus research and intellectual energy on dealing with those two stipulations long term or just thinking short term and forcing the problem on subsequent generations. Short of the destruction of civilization, the planet or religious armageddon, our species will have to deal with this at some point. It is inevitable.
>>> Who will use this?
One of the primary arguments by the PHB's in my company against Linux on the desktop is Microsoft Office. Do not pretend it isn't a big deal.
As long as they do regular backups that are retained off-site, no problem. Actually, this should be required (if it isn't already) that regular backups for all government agencies are stored in multiple redundant highly secure bunker-type areas. It is easier to shred a few pieces of paper than to make many different copies of backups from multpile locations vanish.
Perhaps you can elaborate on what you _think_ special relativity has to do with what I said. Since our velocity on Earth and that of the Voyager are not changing much, the frame of reference to c remains unchanged during the lifetime of the measurement. Thus, the unit of measure time remains constant for the purpose of this measurement with regards to our frame of reference.
So, by all means, please elaborate on how you think special relativity fits in the picture.
You aren't going to get much performance nor hardware support from a VM, so why not just use one of the the thin client platforms I mentioned in the subject header? Your hardware cost on the client-side would diminish, you are guaranteed the same performance regardless of what kind of hardware your client has and you simlify your administrative tasks. There isn't any reason you couldn't run your server on a VM if you really wanted to (thus achieving the same result BTW only on server-side). I manage a Terminal Server that runs on VMWare right now, so I know it works.
There are cases where using VMs on the desktop makes sense, but I don't think you are gaining anything by this case. In theory, you could use various applications that require 3D accelerations (such as AutoCAD) if you ran your Terminal Server local and not as a VM on your server. You would just need a heavy duty graphics card in the system. I've never tried that, so I don't know how well it would work.
Bottom line is that while you could probably accomplish what you are trying to do, I'm not convinced it is the best way to achieve what I believe to be your goal--a unified desktop experience regardless of where a user sits down and what computer they use. This problem was solved (and has since been quite refined) with thin clients. If you require Windows applications, Citrix offers a few more bells and whistles over Terminal Services, but they are not worlds apart.
To be exact, it would be 50,034.6s = 833m 54.6s = 13h 53m 54.6s . . . one way.
Or, 100,069.2s = 1,667m 49.2s = 27h 47m 49.2s roundtrip . . . assuming a perfect vaccum and no processing time on both ends.
Of course, these calculations are based on static distances and it would require a bit more tweaking to figure out the exact numbers to account for the delta in distance up to this minute and the delta in distance during the sending of a signal.