If 99% of the people use it for pirating goodies then it's another thing. For yes, you use it for what is legal, but the ruling is for preventing the others from doing harm to the music monopolies.
Likewise, if people only used guns for practicing (as a sport) or hunting, there would be no problem at all.
I know what you say is correct and that blaming P2P for beign a pirates tools is unfair. The uses the mayority of the people give to the tools change and twist everything.
So i would be a good idea to rapidly start finding cool and effective uses for P2P other than trading filez before they somehow taken them away from us (be it DRM or whatever). And not only do we need to find those uses, we need to actually USE it for those things, and shadow other "criminal" uses.
That would clearly indicate the the problem is with some people and not with the tool!
Maybe it's also a marketing move. The can claim all the extra stock was not sold due to the need to replace the hardware.
Ie: "it's not we couldn't sell it. We have to ditch the hardware because of piracy. All money lost due to piracy, DoD please help is, they are destroying the industry!"
So they turn an error in they part into something that can help them strategically. This is just a posibility, but with MS you never know (with Windows, they never did a reversion like this. Remember the bug in XP cds, they just release it on schedule even though the shipped version already had security bugs. They just solved them after release)
Who said manufacturing costs where $300? That's a dream, it surelly is below $300. That $300 figure includes R&D costs. So the more people buy it, the closer they will get to break even.
People missinforming on this subject are helping Microsoft. Unless they can probe the $300 stand for just MANUFACTURING costs, which I bet is lower than that (and it's all COMODITY HARDWARE, except the feture cripling plugs).
Those can't compete with finished windows/osx software. If you tryied Cakewalk and CoolEdit Pro you will not like them, though they are nice for the casual user.
Until we figure out a way for developers to make money for developers (in any field, not some fields) things are going to be scarce/fragmented.
Support? You need good applications first. Where's my CoolEdit and the like under Windows? Blame me, but nobody is willing to fund such a project under an OSS license where Red Hat gets all the benefits and the coders are just "coOl GuyZ"...
I know, -100 troll, but that's how I feel about all this. I want to know how to fund good projects and leting those developers run the show, not "Red Hat Linux".
Red Hat is not doing OSS a favour. I preffer to use any other distro that tries to keep directory structures as the should be, standard packaging systems (debian, slak tgz's), etc.
You are underestimating the power of the laser beams. Imagine them with a miniature nuclear fusion reactor built-in. They can just vanish a missile in miliseconds. In fact, they could vanish hundreds of thouthans of misiles at a more than safe enough distance (5000 miles or more).
I know It doesn't have to happen this way, but it could. The important thing for me is that i find most sci-fi movies either funny or plain stupid.
It could be anything. For example:
- Micromisiles (nanotech size) in the order of several million per target. - Biochemical acids. - Large asteroids accelerated to near light speed in a collision routes (even though it make take them some decades to accelarate the asteroid to such a speed- how do you stop these?).
SW is fantastic and I love it, but if we ever reach that technological level (ships made, etc). surelly the weapon would be much different and deadlier that what's shown. And completelly different.
Very interesting suggestion (or mod me down :-)
on
GUIs for Everyone
·
· Score: 2
I would argue that tabbed documents are best (like in Excel). But also to have the posibility to "detach them" as in Galeon. This would be the best of both worlds.
The MDI methafor does not work very well for me (lots of windows within another window with different sizes). If I want different sizes I'd preffer each to be a TRUE window as I'd probably need another app to the right or left and not another Word document.
In fact, it would be nice to have a generic way of tabbing applications (if there isn't a way already). That way, I could arrange a "tabset" to include a document I am working for, the internet pages i am using as a source, and maybe a gnumeric spreadsheet related to it (ok, you can embed, but that's a different thing with other uses).
I could create different tab sets, detach and rearrange all visually. I could name the describe tab with a relevant name. I don't CARE if it's an Abiword or gnumeric app, I care that it's "this project related stuff i am working on". I could be even giver the opportunity to "sessionize" it, ie: to SAVE ALL, close. And recall the project later.
It'd be like a project manager that could relate all GUI documents no matter what apps I am using. That way I could come back later, of have several "projects open", and not having to guess which is the correct item to click on the taskbar and being reminded of all the parts.
Bottom line: instead of a Window Frame, a "Windows Project Frame" with built in docking and that could "assimilate" several files no matter what apps are used. And with advances features like detach, save all, shortcuts for example to cycle with them (and optionaly a toolbar, menubar, or whatever needed).
> limitations that the linux GUI is suffering right now
I think that we are forgeting how things work. Trying to find the perfect GUI is nonsense. If I am writing a letter the logical thing is to just *amazingly* to type it! If I am in a hurry or have a disability, I can dictate it (but it's slower and hard to correct. And you will find yourself tired after talking to a computer for 1 or two hours straigt).
And why does it just make sense? Because that's what works. A book has a simple interface: you open it and start reading it. Or you may like to have a audio-book. But that's just it!
TV is similar, you look at the movie, show, change the channel and end of story.
The comunication with people is also the same: position yourself closely and start talking. There's no need to "improve the experience", it just works.
I will argue that the UI of today do are not limiting us in any way. Why would we want to change them?
Of course, if you can really really turn a computer into a pseudo-inteligent creature you will be able to make the experience more pleasurable. You could ask thing by just asking, like in StarTrek. But that would be moving back to the natural interface.
Let's face it, what has already been done works out nice and can't be improved much by current technology. It's as good as it gets.
"Style", "Cleanness", "Shortcuts" and other aestetics or time savers are not a GUI methafor, they are just tastes and convenience.
What can be done? Look for what already works and people understand easily, etc. It usualy involves the addition of a button, the rearrangement of button, the adding of toolbar or the renaming of an option in the menu.
All I am saying is forget reinventing the wheel. What we have already works. Small improvements can be done until we reach an era of trully smart computers.
"If they need to use the keyboard to configure something (excluding user data), they'll think it's techie, beta or even broken".
Anyway, I don't think it's productive to learn for each an every program how should I get help. It can be --help or -h or man or info or "cd/usr/doc|find./ -name "*something*" or less./README or maybe an HTML or some file under/opt/gnome/share/doc, or.....
And that's just for help. It's time consuming for me not to learn but to remember all the different letters and flags the program use. With some program you can execute the binary and I will print help, with others it will launch a deamon no matter if you used a wrong flag (like --help).
Though I don't bother much, I can understand why normal users preffer to just press the [HELP] button in a GUI app and get contextual and relevant information, with a nice clickable index, etc. (I am not saying it's more powerfull than man, just saying it can be a pleasure and not harm your productivity).
This is how if feel, though I mostly use the command line to connect to the net, etc. But I tend to write a script or alias so as to not have to remember all flags.
The laser will kill parabolic arc "exploding" missiles long before they reach the target, unless they are heavy in cinetic energy.
A very strong laser that is not fixed and that is auto movil (either ground, underwater or sky/space) and with a perfect and near speedlight aiming skill will make them obsolete. The only way to avoid it would be to have the missile surface perfectly reflexive in the entire surface.
Of course, there will be other other weapons we just haven't though of, but not the "this will explode" missiles we are used to. Cinetic bombs will be terrible, and some of them would be unstopable. For example, send a 5 km asteroid in the direction of your enemy and NOT 20 X-Wing star fighters or even a "Death Star".
Future wars will look like (of course, automated with some strategy left for human "confirmation") something we can even grasp, just a cavemen couldn't have imagined a laser, a guided missile or a nuke.
The laser will be the first weapon to reshape defense strategies, obsoleting all the missile threats creates do far.
The explosive charges will still be used, but not as missiles. You'll just try to infiltrate the bomb into the enemy by other means (troyan horse, terrorist cells, etc).
Just my futuristic point of view though. Need need not agree (I do find your opinion interesting, even if I disagree:-)
High level vs. Low level is not related to the fact that a language has a compiler or not. A low language level is bound to some hardware architecture. A high level language should not in principle.
(A) If you see CS more as a way to solve generic problems then you'll like to teach a high level language. (B) If you see it more like a hardware/software problem solving, then you'd like to teach a low level language.
Which is best depends on what are doing. (A) is more akin to a real abstract science (you may not care how memory segments are referenced, or if a particular machine uses 64 bit or 32 bit registers) and (B) is would be a more practical aproach that would allow some more thing to be done with the actual hardware in use today.
If I knew I'd live 400 years, I'd certainly learn a high level language first. But that depends, because you can abstract the hardware specifics in low level languages to some part of the program (but then again, why should you care? ).
of all sciences. Believe it or not, CS means nothing unless you know some other science (but it can also glue other things, like information management, which is not a science but actual data).
If recursion and looping were not equivalent, there would be operations which you could not do without one or the other approach
Yes, but I though loop was a subset of recursion, not a different beast. I only learned recursion when loops where not good enough for doing what I needed (ie: I just _couldn't_ find a way to accomplish the task:-).
Thanks for insight!
Re:Not about computer science; try SICP instead
on
Think Python
·
· Score: 2
Oh thanks! (It sounded like a place to buy the book) I'll try and see if I can get along with it (I don't like math much though I adore logic), it seems more akin to what I need... (ie: I know to how to program, but not how to make good programs. Every tome i need to add unexpected features or when I review my old stupid ugly code, I am reminded of that fact:-)
Isn't looping a subset of recursion, or a limited way of recursion?
A loop is like a recursion in which you declare all function variables as globals, you can't pass arguments (can't declare anything local). And with no return functionality?
Looping is a very special case of recursion, isn't it. I am not a good programer for sure, but after fully grasping recursion I wonder why do we need loops at all. Maybe only to save some stack memory in special cases, but loops should be teached well after recursion, and only as a practical convenience or short cut.
I'm not good at math, but will definetly take a look at this book:) (neither do I studied CS or CE). But any science should force you to study CS or at least advanced programing. It's a shame to see Economists using paper writen math in publications and not programs, or even Excel spreadshits for complex stuff which should have been a program really.
Re:Not about computer science; try SICP instead
on
Think Python
·
· Score: 2
We want it for free:(... though many of the critics are ineed covered in the book: naming of variables, abstracting and not hardcoding stuff, making it readable, making it generic, wrapping code, etc.
"It's something like do as I do (though I am not saying it explicitly every 5 seconds)".
It's a tax in the same sense food is a tax on living. You can't get away without food as well as you can't get away from MS software. Is it theoretically posible to get rid of the MS tax? Yes. Is it in practice possible to get away from the MS tax? Very rarely, depending on what you do.
For instance, you'll pay a huge penalty if not using Office or even Windows. And because of that, many applications run only under Windows when they could easily be ported to other plataforms.
Why does that happen? Because they reached a state of Monopoly (90% market share?) and also because they abuse that position. Maybe because they did everything right. Maybe because they know how to leverage their products. Maybe because they where lucky. Why is not the real problem. The tax is the problem.
As a side note, I tryed to buy mi notebook without Windows and failed miseraly. It's an IBM notebook. The fact that you can _sometimes_ get a tax refund doesn't it make it less of tax.
Microsoft is where taxes are collected from all the other industries. The problem is Microsoft doesn't redistribute those taxes to either the goverment or the final users. They keep it all to themselves. This is as true as [insert favourite example].
On the good side-effects, the US is better off every time MS sells software to foreing countries. So the net effect depends on how much MS hurts your economy by making US companies inefficient (higher costs) in relation of how much "taxes" they collect from abroad.
The problem MS sees is that if the "foreign taxes" get low, then the US should better end the monopoly ASAP. So MS NEEDS TO BUY POLITICIANS to FUD foreign countries representatives. If the rest of the world gets rid of the MS tax, so must the US. They can't let that happen. It would be their end.
Also note MS can't create ANY jobs in Peru. What they actually do is take the dollars away from their economy and back to the US banks. They need to keep 15000 employees just as IRS needs employees. No good for Peru, no love Peru, just FUD.
Who said the lasers would be fixed to a ship? They could as well have wings, deflector shields, feet or anti-gravity. If you want conventional spread damage it's fine, as long as laser doesn't catch them before reaching the target. They should be undetectable for this to happen (or troyan horses).:)
I really don't know why in this case the market isn't a perfect judge of the true value of this project.
It doesn't work well for two reasons:
1 - Market price reflects value when you can exclude people from using it if they don't pay a price. In any other case it means free-riding. This is why taxes are not optional (though the problem with taxes is you don't get to choose what public goods you do fund).
2 - Distributed development and a lack of a formal structure in the organizations: "Hey, pay me some money, i promse to keep working on this project!" is not good enough. There must be some way to make sure where the money goes and that it's used for that porpuse. This may not look like a problem but it is. For example, people are bidding to open the sources to Blender. But what happens if they don't reach the 100k limit? Donations are not good enough in the sense that companies try not to donate but prefer to fund (meaning the developer just can't do whatever he likes with the money).
That's about it. The misconceptions about the "market and it's benefits" are so widespread, but not their limitations. So I felt like posting my view (which is by no means different than what an economist will tell you)
It's funny. I see startwars and future sci-fi movies all using rockets or short lasers and stuff. The future will probably be an automated battlefield where the weapons are only lasers. It'll look more like a rave party than anything else. This is just a small step in that direction.
You may say rockets will be always there. But what would would a rocket be if a laser can bring it down in miliseconds, just after leaving a launcher bay. And automated targeting system in this era will probably have 100% precision and near lightspeed rotators.
The only other weapon i can think may be effective are balistics (sending 1 gram of something at near lightspeed towards a target).
Everything else will be "historical movies". I say funny, because when I see sci-fi (like ST or SW) it always looks to me like a historic movies with sci-fi look and feel (like a theme or skin).
Slashdot Mirror
It's the manner in which the tool is used
If 99% of the people use it for pirating goodies then it's another thing. For yes, you use it for what is legal, but the ruling is for preventing the others from doing harm to the music monopolies.
Likewise, if people only used guns for practicing (as a sport) or hunting, there would be no problem at all.
I know what you say is correct and that blaming P2P for beign a pirates tools is unfair. The uses the mayority of the people give to the tools change and twist everything.
So i would be a good idea to rapidly start finding cool and effective uses for P2P other than trading filez before they somehow taken them away from us (be it DRM or whatever). And not only do we need to find those uses, we need to actually USE it for those things, and shadow other "criminal" uses.
That would clearly indicate the the problem is with some people and not with the tool!
Simple: Microsoft OWNS Nvidia (And if it's not them directly, it's some investor deep in MS or MS shareholders pockets)
Maybe it's also a marketing move. The can claim all the extra stock was not sold due to the need to replace the hardware.
Ie: "it's not we couldn't sell it. We have to ditch the hardware because of piracy. All money lost due to piracy, DoD please help is, they are destroying the industry!"
So they turn an error in they part into something that can help them strategically. This is just a posibility, but with MS you never know (with Windows, they never did a reversion like this. Remember the bug in XP cds, they just release it on schedule even though the shipped version already had security bugs. They just solved them after release)
Who said manufacturing costs where $300? That's a dream, it surelly is below $300. That $300 figure includes R&D costs. So the more people buy it, the closer they will get to break even.
People missinforming on this subject are helping Microsoft. Unless they can probe the $300 stand for just MANUFACTURING costs, which I bet is lower than that (and it's all COMODITY HARDWARE, except the feture cripling plugs).
Those can't compete with finished windows/osx software. If you tryied Cakewalk and CoolEdit Pro you will not like them, though they are nice for the casual user.
Until we figure out a way for developers to make money for developers (in any field, not some fields) things are going to be scarce/fragmented.
Support? You need good applications first. Where's my CoolEdit and the like under Windows? Blame me, but nobody is willing to fund such a project under an OSS license where Red Hat gets all the benefits and the coders are just "coOl GuyZ"...
I know, -100 troll, but that's how I feel about all this. I want to know how to fund good projects and leting those developers run the show, not "Red Hat Linux".
Red Hat is not doing OSS a favour. I preffer to use any other distro that tries to keep directory structures as the should be, standard packaging systems (debian, slak tgz's), etc.
Anyone can choose what they like of course.
You are underestimating the power of the laser beams. Imagine them with a miniature nuclear fusion reactor built-in. They can just vanish a missile in miliseconds. In fact, they could vanish hundreds of thouthans of misiles at a more than safe enough distance (5000 miles or more).
I know It doesn't have to happen this way, but it could. The important thing for me is that i find most sci-fi movies either funny or plain stupid.
It could be anything. For example:
- Micromisiles (nanotech size) in the order of several million per target.
- Biochemical acids.
- Large asteroids accelerated to near light speed in a collision routes (even though it make take them some decades to accelarate the asteroid to such a speed- how do you stop these?).
SW is fantastic and I love it, but if we ever reach that technological level (ships made, etc). surelly the weapon would be much different and deadlier that what's shown. And completelly different.
I would argue that tabbed documents are best (like in Excel). But also to have the posibility to "detach them" as in Galeon. This would be the best of both worlds.
The MDI methafor does not work very well for me (lots of windows within another window with different sizes). If I want different sizes I'd preffer each to be a TRUE window as I'd probably need another app to the right or left and not another Word document.
In fact, it would be nice to have a generic way of tabbing applications (if there isn't a way already). That way, I could arrange a "tabset" to include a document I am working for, the internet pages i am using as a source, and maybe a gnumeric spreadsheet related to it (ok, you can embed, but that's a different thing with other uses).
I could create different tab sets, detach and rearrange all visually. I could name the describe tab with a relevant name. I don't CARE if it's an Abiword or gnumeric app, I care that it's "this project related stuff i am working on". I could be even giver the opportunity to "sessionize" it, ie: to SAVE ALL, close. And recall the project later.
It'd be like a project manager that could relate all GUI documents no matter what apps I am using. That way I could come back later, of have several "projects open", and not having to guess which is the correct item to click on the taskbar and being reminded of all the parts.
Bottom line: instead of a Window Frame, a "Windows Project Frame" with built in docking and that could "assimilate" several files no matter what apps are used. And with advances features like detach, save all, shortcuts for example to cycle with them (and optionaly a toolbar, menubar, or whatever needed).
Anyone would like this?
> limitations that the linux GUI is suffering right now
I think that we are forgeting how things work. Trying to find the perfect GUI is nonsense. If I am writing a letter the logical thing is to just *amazingly* to type it! If I am in a hurry or have a disability, I can dictate it (but it's slower and hard to correct. And you will find yourself tired after talking to a computer for 1 or two hours straigt).
And why does it just make sense? Because that's what works. A book has a simple interface: you open it and start reading it. Or you may like to have a audio-book. But that's just it!
TV is similar, you look at the movie, show, change the channel and end of story.
The comunication with people is also the same: position yourself closely and start talking. There's no need to "improve the experience", it just works.
I will argue that the UI of today do are not limiting us in any way. Why would we want to change them?
Of course, if you can really really turn a computer into a pseudo-inteligent creature you
will be able to make the experience more pleasurable. You could ask thing by just asking, like in StarTrek. But that would be moving back to the natural interface.
Let's face it, what has already been done works out nice and can't be improved much by current technology. It's as good as it gets.
"Style", "Cleanness", "Shortcuts" and other aestetics or time savers are not a GUI methafor, they are just tastes and convenience.
What can be done? Look for what already works and people understand easily, etc. It usualy involves the addition of a button, the rearrangement of button, the adding of toolbar or the renaming of an option in the menu.
All I am saying is forget reinventing the wheel. What we have already works. Small improvements can be done until we reach an era of trully smart computers.
My definition would be:
/usr/doc|find ./ -name "*something*" or less ./README or maybe an HTML or some file under /opt/gnome/share/doc, or .....
"If they need to use the keyboard to configure something (excluding user data), they'll think it's techie, beta or even broken".
Anyway, I don't think it's productive to learn for each an every program how should I get help. It can be --help or -h or man or info or "cd
And that's just for help. It's time consuming for me not to learn but to remember all the different letters and flags the program use. With some program you can execute the binary and I will print help, with others it will launch a deamon no matter if you used a wrong flag (like --help).
Though I don't bother much, I can understand why normal users preffer to just press the [HELP] button in a GUI app and get contextual and relevant information, with a nice clickable index, etc. (I am not saying it's more powerfull than man, just saying it can be a pleasure and not harm your productivity).
This is how if feel, though I mostly use the command line to connect to the net, etc. But I tend to write a script or alias so as to not have to remember all flags.
The laser will kill parabolic arc "exploding" missiles long before they reach the target, unless they are heavy in cinetic energy.
:-)
A very strong laser that is not fixed and that is auto movil (either ground, underwater or sky/space) and with a perfect and near speedlight aiming skill will make them obsolete. The only way to avoid it would be to have the missile surface perfectly reflexive in the entire surface.
Of course, there will be other other weapons we just haven't though of, but not the "this will explode" missiles we are used to. Cinetic bombs will be terrible, and some of them would be unstopable. For example, send a 5 km asteroid in the direction of your enemy and NOT 20 X-Wing star fighters or even a "Death Star".
Future wars will look like (of course, automated with some strategy left for human "confirmation") something we can even grasp, just a cavemen couldn't have imagined a laser, a guided missile or a nuke.
The laser will be the first weapon to reshape defense strategies, obsoleting all the missile threats creates do far.
The explosive charges will still be used, but not as missiles. You'll just try to infiltrate the bomb into the enemy by other means (troyan horse, terrorist cells, etc).
Just my futuristic point of view though. Need need not agree (I do find your opinion interesting, even if I disagree
At least that's my impression.
High level vs. Low level is not related to the fact that a language has a compiler or not. A low language level is bound to some hardware architecture. A high level language should not in principle.
(A) If you see CS more as a way to solve generic problems then you'll like to teach a high level language. (B) If you see it more like a hardware/software problem solving, then you'd like to teach a low level language.
Which is best depends on what are doing. (A) is more akin to a real abstract science (you may not care how memory segments are referenced, or if a particular machine uses 64 bit or 32 bit registers) and (B) is would be a more practical aproach that would allow some more thing to be done with the actual hardware in use today.
If I knew I'd live 400 years, I'd certainly learn a high level language first. But that depends, because you can abstract the hardware specifics in low level languages to some part of the program (but then again, why should you care? ).
of all sciences. Believe it or not, CS means nothing unless you know some other science (but it can also glue other things, like information management, which is not a science but actual data).
If recursion and looping were not equivalent, there would be operations which you could not do without one or the other approach
:-).
Yes, but I though loop was a subset of recursion, not a different beast. I only learned recursion when loops where not good enough for doing what I needed (ie: I just _couldn't_ find a way to accomplish the task
Thanks for insight!
Oh thanks! (It sounded like a place to buy the book) I'll try and see if I can get along with it (I don't like math much though I adore logic), it seems more akin to what I need ... (ie: I know to how to program, but not how to make good programs. Every tome i need to add unexpected features or when I review my old stupid ugly code, I am reminded of that fact :-)
Recursion and loops are mathematically equivalent
Isn't looping a subset of recursion, or a limited way of recursion?
A loop is like a recursion in which you declare all function variables as globals, you can't pass arguments (can't declare anything local). And with no return functionality?
Looping is a very special case of recursion, isn't it. I am not a good programer for sure, but after fully grasping recursion I wonder why do we need loops at all. Maybe only to save some stack memory in special cases, but loops should be teached well after recursion, and only as a practical convenience or short cut.
:) (neither do I studied CS or CE). But any science should force you to study CS or at least advanced programing. It's a shame to see Economists using paper writen math in publications and not programs, or even Excel spreadshits for complex stuff which should have been a program really.
I'm not good at math, but will definetly take a look at this book
We want it for free :( ... though many of the critics are ineed covered in the book: naming of variables, abstracting and not hardcoding stuff, making it readable, making it generic, wrapping code, etc.
"It's something like do as I do (though I am not saying it explicitly every 5 seconds)".
It's a tax in the same sense food is a tax on living. You can't get away without food as well as you can't get away from MS software. Is it theoretically posible to get rid of the MS tax? Yes. Is it in practice possible to get away from the MS tax? Very rarely, depending on what you do.
For instance, you'll pay a huge penalty if not using Office or even Windows. And because of that, many applications run only under Windows when they could easily be ported to other plataforms.
Why does that happen? Because they reached a state of Monopoly (90% market share?) and also because they abuse that position. Maybe because they did everything right. Maybe because they know how to leverage their products. Maybe because they where lucky. Why is not the real problem. The tax is the problem.
As a side note, I tryed to buy mi notebook without Windows and failed miseraly. It's an IBM notebook. The fact that you can _sometimes_ get a tax refund doesn't it make it less of tax.
No, they don't need to fix the unsolvable. They need to fix the problem from the root. And we already know what's the root of all evil :)
Microsoft is where taxes are collected from all the other industries. The problem is Microsoft doesn't redistribute those taxes to either the goverment or the final users. They keep it all to themselves. This is as true as [insert favourite example].
On the good side-effects, the US is better off every time MS sells software to foreing countries. So the net effect depends on how much MS hurts your economy by making US companies inefficient (higher costs) in relation of how much "taxes" they collect from abroad.
The problem MS sees is that if the "foreign taxes" get low, then the US should better end the monopoly ASAP. So MS NEEDS TO BUY POLITICIANS to FUD foreign countries representatives. If the rest of the world gets rid of the MS tax, so must the US. They can't let that happen. It would be their end.
Also note MS can't create ANY jobs in Peru. What they actually do is take the dollars away from their economy and back to the US banks. They need to keep 15000 employees just as IRS needs employees. No good for Peru, no love Peru, just FUD.
Who said the lasers would be fixed to a ship? They could as well have wings, deflector shields, feet or anti-gravity. If you want conventional spread damage it's fine, as long as laser doesn't catch them before reaching the target. They should be undetectable for this to happen (or troyan horses). :)
Just a side note to my other post.
I really don't know why in this case the market isn't a perfect judge of the true value of this project.
It doesn't work well for two reasons:
1 - Market price reflects value when you can exclude people from using it if they don't pay a price. In any other case it means free-riding. This is why taxes are not optional (though the problem with taxes is you don't get to choose what public goods you do fund).
2 - Distributed development and a lack of a formal structure in the organizations: "Hey, pay me some money, i promse to keep working on this project!" is not good enough. There must be some way to make sure where the money goes and that it's used for that porpuse. This may not look like a problem but it is. For example, people are bidding to open the sources to Blender. But what happens if they don't reach the 100k limit? Donations are not good enough in the sense that companies try not to donate but prefer to fund (meaning the developer just can't do whatever he likes with the money).
That's about it. The misconceptions about the "market and it's benefits" are so widespread, but not their limitations. So I felt like posting my view (which is by no means different than what an economist will tell you)
It's funny. I see startwars and future sci-fi movies all using rockets or short lasers and stuff. The future will probably be an automated battlefield where the weapons are only lasers. It'll look more like a rave party than anything else. This is just a small step in that direction.
You may say rockets will be always there. But what would would a rocket be if a laser can bring it down in miliseconds, just after leaving a launcher bay. And automated targeting system in this era will probably have 100% precision and near lightspeed rotators.
The only other weapon i can think may be effective are balistics (sending 1 gram of something at near lightspeed towards a target).
Everything else will be "historical movies". I say funny, because when I see sci-fi (like ST or SW) it always looks to me like a historic movies with sci-fi look and feel (like a theme or skin).