Seriously, IBM was at the top of the PC world in the mid-80s when they tried to act god-like.
They introduced the PS/2 and with it MCA. They even had the gall to threaten all clone manufacturers with retroactive licensing fees. They wanted the PC world for themselves, but clone makers stuck to their guns.
With so many alternatives, consumers voted with their pocketbooks, clone makers fought back, and IBM permanantly lost their lead in the PC marketplace.
Why does Microsoft think this won't be another PS/2, a death-knell for a company who thinks itself to be impervious?
Apple's products have come closer to price parity with PCs every year, and OSX could gain incredible momentum, given the proper influence. Now more than ever distributions like Mandrake and Redhat are making Linux a usable alternative for the x86 platform. I personally believe this could be more than just a bust for MS, in the current climate it could be a critical error.
Re:According to my calculations...
on
Unmaking The Game
·
· Score: 1
It's not illegal.
But don't worry, they'll get theirs.
As soon as word gets around that Plat is worthless, it will be 1929 all over again.
And you know, on 't3H intarW3b', things like that get around fast.
LCDs still have one serious problem that CRTs havn't had for years.
For the most part, LCDs have brightness levels and contrast leves out of sync with CRTs.
TFTs are much brighter than CRTs, yet are typically lower contrast. This makes the images a bit more washed out ( even on a well-configured display ), and it means more eyestrain for the user.
When your job depends on your being able to keep your eyes glued to the screen, eyestrain is the enemy. Quality CRTs are the best solution, for now.
I just saw the latest Apex model at Wal-Mart for $65. This isn't the year 2000. Apex and other commodity manufacturers seem to find new ways to make DVD even cheaper.
VHS NEVER got this cheap before it took off. It's a forgone conclusion that the public is going to grab DVD like wildfire. And Walmart and other "normal folk" outlets are largely responsible for this mass acceptance.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if VHS started dissappearing in as soon as 2 years. Circuit City has already stopped selling VHS tapes as of this year. The prices are steadily coming down on easy DVD recording, and once that happens it's curtains for VHS.
You know, when you offer all three "Porkys" movies for sale at your retail outlets, you really can't hold up your saintly banner all that well.
Wal-Mart is all about not pissing off parents by carrying this game. But of course there's nothing wrong with hiding this gem on you $9.96 rack. It's all money to Wal-Mart. They just stand to lose lots with a game that provides an all-new low.
MP3 is what it is because it was in the right place at the right time.
Winamp was free, and the codecs were cheap. Things slowed up a bit when Fraunhofer started charging bigger bucks for their overnight-successful codec, but the community responded. Winamp developed their own decoder, and kept their software free. Lame emerged as a HQ free alternative, and the rest is history.
OGG could NEVER HOPE TO HAVE THAT KIND OF DREAMWORLD SUCCESS. It is a product that is too late and pretty much serves little purpose.
True audio buffs encode their CDs with lossless codes like MonkeyAudio, and everyone else uses MP3 because they really don't have the multi-thousand dollar system required to tell the difference between maximum quality OGG and 320k Lame / Fraunhofer encoded MP3.
Hardcore OGG users don't exist to these companies. You're not even a blip on the radar. They would rather promote MP3-alternatives that actually have big-company backing, like WMA and MP3Pro.
You want OGG support? I see dozens of posters here bitching, but I don't see a single one of you saying you're going to email these folks about your concerns. Either you all KNOW THE TRUTH and won't bother, or you fools actually think Creative trolls Slashdot...
Agreed, the Archos has always been in limbo in my book.
Lots of storage...but...
It's slightly larger than "palmable" size. I fiddled with a friend's jukebox, and it never quite felt comfy in my hand.
It's way too heavy for a pocket. It puts my Visor to shame in terms of weight, and my Visor is the bleeding edge of weight that I can carry in my pocket without it bumping around and feeling weird.
And, as everyone already knows, for such exceptional capacity the Archos is damned slow. Anyone who wants to use it as portable storage better have some time to kill, it will take you 15 minutes to copy a CD ISO onto that thing.
Apple brought us a palmable, lightweight drive with a fast transfer speed. OF COURSE ITS EXPENSIVE.
Funny thing though, if that truely is a 2.5" drive, I cannot imagine why it's so much more expensive than an Archos. Forget competiting with Apple, your hard drive size determines what market you compete in.
From occasional obvservation, I have come to the conclusion that Divx requires AT LEAST %50 more CPU power than MPEG2 software decoding.
Now, mind you, these number are not at all easy to come by because most people don't use the same quality levels as a standard MPEG2 DVD.
Most people use a slightly lower resolution, this will definitely save you some CPU cycles decoding the video.
Another thing most people don't think about is that the actual video data used to describe the scene is directly related to the processing power required to decode the scene. Finer detail reflective of a true MPEG2 stream will use a lot more processing power than your standard "movie on a disk" Divx encode.
If you use dual-pass, you can approach MPEG2 quality @ 720x480 at approximately 2mbit. Accomplishing the same at 1Mbit is a great acheivement.
You people seemed to have missed the major point of this codec, and that is we finally have a code capable of delivering TV over DSL, or other low-bandwidth LANs like 802.11b. There are movements in place to create real-time encoders from MPEG2, and this is where the REAL market acceptance will be.
Thats again, a tough figure. People have enough trouble doing taxes. Imagine anyone quantifying the time and money they spent whiling away on a whinsical dream that somehow turned into a useful invention.
What about the patents that never make any money?
There are thousands of patents whose owners are hell-bent on bringing the product to fruition themselves ( but never quite seem to succeed ), or who charge way more for the license / royalties than any reasonable partner is willing to pay. These would never become public-domain if the time limit were removed.
What about people who end up with very poor royalty deals in manufacturing the invention? IT might take years for them to recover %30, and by then the manufacturer could have made millions.
The concept of a time-limited patent is most beneficial to society. It means that the patent is GUARANTEED to only be active for a certain amount of time. Inventors are not allowed to "wait and see", lest they lose the jump on others and not get the patent. I agree that this term should be shortened, especially in this day and age, as today technologies are long-dead by the time patents run out.
The US laws do not apply where it could inconvenience any US company.
It's quite true. For being part of the "global economy", its amazing that every US citizen thinks the USA is the center of the universe. Not true anymore.
Of course the tobacco companies went down. Of course it costs them marketshare in the US.
IN THE US
But nobody told the US public that foriegn sales of American brands had eclipsed domestic sales years ago, and that those sales and their effects would go untouched
The politicians get a new source of income that most Americans approve of, and the Tobacco companies get to concentrate on overseas expansion without EVER having to worry about being sued again.
Learn well. US laws are around to serve business first, and everything else last. Even in Microsoft's case this is apparent. Who cares what the device is 'capable of', thats the standard industry outcry, but it has only gained weight as information has become the commodity of choice. Gotta protect the information, or you lose your little throne and walk among the plebes.
I've got a friend who discovered the reason why half-a-dozen channels are now running "Law And Order" re-runs. It's simply so he can record and watch every single episode in it's 10+ years on his TiVo.
He makes a big deal of it when I'm over and I actually switch over to live TV , even sports:) And a few weeks back when his TiVo's hard disk crashed, it felt like a funeral.
I guess I just don't understand. I don't watch much TV, and I still think of commercials as being the perfect time to grab a snack. I have a VCR. I never use it. I think the same would go for a TiVo.
2001 was not %100 done by hand. Those nifty computer consoles with the concentric circles were actually video rendered by computers at some university. The planets and other displays, of course, were all hand-drawn and looked spactacular.
The computer display, IMHO, was meant to display the centrality and dependence of human beings on their tools. In the first part of the movie, the apes command the tools. In the second part, man comes to depend on his tools. Hence, the pilots just sitting there staring at the computer screen while the whole moon shuttle trip takes place. The final chapter of the film shows an attempt by the tool to command the man, and the battle that ensues.
Kubrick was a genius.
Somebody please TELL ME why this damn thing is even mentioned?
Auto-gyros have been aound for years, but they have been limited to mainly the enthusiast market and thus are usually small 1 or 2 seater open-cockpit craft. They are propelled by a small propeller engine and a large helicopter-like wing on top turns as air is forced upon it, producing lift.
Assisted-power takeoff is also an old concept with auto-gyros, where the wing is powered by the engine to allow for short takeoffs ( similar to Harrier short takeoffs ). Obvously if you're going to attempt a vehicle capable of VTOL you incur the added weight and power requirements of a stabilizizing tail and fan, something a pure auto-gyro doesn't require.
Obviously, this thing is nothing more than a helicopter with the ability to cut-off the rotor engine and tilt the rotors. Can you really take the unpowered wing of an auto-gyro and meld it with a heavy, inefficient helicopter and expect good results?
Re:We've seen this before
on
XBox Released
·
· Score: 1
So you're saying this had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with Sony's super-massive whiz-bang HYPE MACHINE.
You know, the kind of hype that could cause console buyers to hesitate on purchasing a new platform a WHOLE YEAR before Sony brought any goods to market. That kinda hype.
For those of you who never bothered to notice, the Dreamcast's graphics were definitely on-par with PS2. Were it not for some overhyped Emotion Engine 75 million poly / sec bullshit, not to mention a the few Playstation-only developers responsible for MAKING the system ( *cough* Square *cough* ), we would probably see the Dreamcast selling today.
If you want to rip on Microsoft, think about it for a moment. Microsoft is simply a newcomer to the hype arena, and Sony is stitting on top of the throne.
Yeah, those highend Dell screns are something else. I remember networking one a student brought in, and despite the incredibly high resolution it was crisper than my 17" Iiyama Visonmaster Pro + G400 MAX @ 1024x768.
My next monitor WILL be a flatpanel, but only if they make screens like these widely avaliable.
I know that powerline networking has been avaliable in the past, but now that embedding network connectivity into a device is so trivial its the next logical step. Why bathe your house in more RF and use up the spectrum when your devices have to be plugged into the wall anyway?
Obviously this goes along the line to EASE OF USE. No extra cables, when you plug in the power cable you're also hooking into the network! No need to make sure your Bluetooth devices are within range or are being blocked by walls.
All we need now is a networking protocol as easy to setup as IPX.
Yes, a space infarstructure would be necessary to see any benefit from extra-terrestrial mining. So appropriately they should start thinking about it now while materials are not yet depleted on Earth
The only problem with your plan is that each ship will have to be single-use. This is the same reason why the Apollo program was so goddamed expensive...single-serve rocket, single-server lunar module, single-serve command module.
I suppose it could work. But engineering a machine that won't burn up in the atmosphere is no simple, cheap task. And have you checked out how expensive and time-consuming an operation it was to raise that Russian submarine out of the drink? Consider the size of the operation required to salvage a continuous, useful quantity of ore from the ocean depths where it crashed down.
I'm just thinking of this from an economics perspective. I have no particular love for capitalism, however most people won't let it go without a fight, and we've seen what happens when the world market takes a massive dump. And raw materials that are too expensive are just as bad as no raw materials at all... either will cause growth to halt and capitalism to fail.
Well, lets be realistic here. Man is not all-powerful. He cannot make Gold from Lead, atleast not in quantity.
This is the same reason why we still make the majority of our mass-market polymers from petroleum products rather then synthesizing them from scratch...it can be done, but its not nearly worth it.
When you ask why we continue to plunder the universe, the answer is simple: We have to. Not only is it much easier for our entrenched manufacturing infarstructure to work with RAW materials rather then reclaming processed materials, but we also NEED MORE.
Our population is still growing, and even taking that out of the picture the world is still industrializing at an unstoppable rate. Every time another entity builds a car or a road or a skyscraper that material is removed PERMANTLY from the cycle.
That is to say, once you have reached a certain level of industrialization, you won't falter back. When industrial equipment reaches the end of it's lifespan, you will replace it with something equivalant if not better.
In the future, RECLAMATION will not be the solution. It will be a necessity. In a closed system like the material-depleted Earth of the future, only outside forces can have a positive affect on the system...an influx of material will be necessary if growth and capitalism want to survive.
Kim Stanley Robinson created what has to be the most complete viewpoint on extra-terrestrial mining and the colonization of Mars / solar system.
Everything from initial funding to ROI is discussed, and in the tradition of great SciFi writers its all grounded firmly in scientific theory. The story of course is a nice bonus:)
Thats funny, I was always under the impression that it takes energy to move objects. Despite the high energy concentration of petroleum I doubt it would be at all feasable cost-wise to lift it off Mars and transport it to Earth.
Thats as stupid as using more energy to manufacture a solar panel than it will create in it's lifetime...oh, shit.
LIVING is a health hazard.
* Practicing Hypoctite Verification Scan *
You got kids?
I don't suppose you enabled parental blocking on your cable box or the V-chip on your TV? Its a shame the ideas kids get from shows like Jackass, Survivor and.. CNN. Wow, how'd that get there?
Real life = Real rough. But its all we got.
The author of this article is nuts.
For most of those people who have high-speed access at work, including myself, I find dialup a useless novelty. When I was without DSL this summer I decided not to bother going back out, buying a modem and dealing with the slow downloads.
Luckily the ISP industry has a HUMONGUS potential market: recent college graduates! The vast majority of them have been spoiled with 4 years on the fat pipe, and are hungry for more.
Its not only the science of the environment but the science of history that has magically appeared in the last century. Never before have we been so interested in reaching more than qualatative conclusions about the past, and in this last century the huge push for recordkeeping and measurement has left us with more numbers than we can handle.
We've barely had accurate thermometers and weather measuring methods for two centuries, and we barely have a century of accurate records. Who are we to define trends of a chaotic system based on 30 years of human action?
Global Warming, Pollution...they won't destroy the earth, but it sure as hell could kill humans ( or atleast lower their overall quality of life ). Can't have that now, can we?
You might find an even greater challenege awaiting you when you try to play mp3s on that pissy 486, unless its a 100-133 MHz monster.
'go faster stripes' won't help you here.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, IBM was at the top of the PC world in the mid-80s when they tried to act god-like.
They introduced the PS/2 and with it MCA. They even had the gall to threaten all clone manufacturers with retroactive licensing fees. They wanted the PC world for themselves, but clone makers stuck to their guns.
With so many alternatives, consumers voted with their pocketbooks, clone makers fought back, and IBM permanantly lost their lead in the PC marketplace.
Why does Microsoft think this won't be another PS/2, a death-knell for a company who thinks itself to be impervious?
Apple's products have come closer to price parity with PCs every year, and OSX could gain incredible momentum, given the proper influence. Now more than ever distributions like Mandrake and Redhat are making Linux a usable alternative for the x86 platform. I personally believe this could be more than just a bust for MS, in the current climate it could be a critical error.
It's not illegal.
But don't worry, they'll get theirs.
As soon as word gets around that Plat is worthless, it will be 1929 all over again.
And you know, on 't3H intarW3b', things like that get around fast.
LCDs still have one serious problem that CRTs havn't had for years. For the most part, LCDs have brightness levels and contrast leves out of sync with CRTs. TFTs are much brighter than CRTs, yet are typically lower contrast. This makes the images a bit more washed out ( even on a well-configured display ), and it means more eyestrain for the user. When your job depends on your being able to keep your eyes glued to the screen, eyestrain is the enemy. Quality CRTs are the best solution, for now.
$99?
I just saw the latest Apex model at Wal-Mart for $65. This isn't the year 2000. Apex and other commodity manufacturers seem to find new ways to make DVD even cheaper.
VHS NEVER got this cheap before it took off. It's a forgone conclusion that the public is going to grab DVD like wildfire. And Walmart and other "normal folk" outlets are largely responsible for this mass acceptance.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if VHS started dissappearing in as soon as 2 years. Circuit City has already stopped selling VHS tapes as of this year. The prices are steadily coming down on easy DVD recording, and once that happens it's curtains for VHS.
You know, when you offer all three "Porkys" movies for sale at your retail outlets, you really can't hold up your saintly banner all that well.
a rc h_constraint=4096&search_query=porkys
Wal-Mart is all about not pissing off parents by carrying this game. But of course there's nothing wrong with hiding this gem on you $9.96 rack. It's all money to Wal-Mart. They just stand to lose lots with a game that provides an all-new low.
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/search-ng.gsp?se
MP3 is what it is because it was in the right place at the right time.
Winamp was free, and the codecs were cheap. Things slowed up a bit when Fraunhofer started charging bigger bucks for their overnight-successful codec, but the community responded. Winamp developed their own decoder, and kept their software free. Lame emerged as a HQ free alternative, and the rest is history.
OGG could NEVER HOPE TO HAVE THAT KIND OF DREAMWORLD SUCCESS. It is a product that is too late and pretty much serves little purpose.
True audio buffs encode their CDs with lossless codes like MonkeyAudio, and everyone else uses MP3 because they really don't have the multi-thousand dollar system required to tell the difference between maximum quality OGG and 320k Lame / Fraunhofer encoded MP3.
Hardcore OGG users don't exist to these companies. You're not even a blip on the radar. They would rather promote MP3-alternatives that actually have big-company backing, like WMA and MP3Pro.
You want OGG support? I see dozens of posters here bitching, but I don't see a single one of you saying you're going to email these folks about your concerns. Either you all KNOW THE TRUTH and won't bother, or you fools actually think Creative trolls Slashdot...
Agreed, the Archos has always been in limbo in my book.
Lots of storage...but...
It's slightly larger than "palmable" size. I fiddled with a friend's jukebox, and it never quite felt comfy in my hand.
It's way too heavy for a pocket. It puts my Visor to shame in terms of weight, and my Visor is the bleeding edge of weight that I can carry in my pocket without it bumping around and feeling weird.
And, as everyone already knows, for such exceptional capacity the Archos is damned slow. Anyone who wants to use it as portable storage better have some time to kill, it will take you 15 minutes to copy a CD ISO onto that thing.
Apple brought us a palmable, lightweight drive with a fast transfer speed. OF COURSE ITS EXPENSIVE.
Funny thing though, if that truely is a 2.5" drive, I cannot imagine why it's so much more expensive than an Archos. Forget competiting with Apple, your hard drive size determines what market you compete in.
From occasional obvservation, I have come to the conclusion that Divx requires AT LEAST %50 more CPU power than MPEG2 software decoding.
Now, mind you, these number are not at all easy to come by because most people don't use the same quality levels as a standard MPEG2 DVD.
Most people use a slightly lower resolution, this will definitely save you some CPU cycles decoding the video.
Another thing most people don't think about is that the actual video data used to describe the scene is directly related to the processing power required to decode the scene. Finer detail reflective of a true MPEG2 stream will use a lot more processing power than your standard "movie on a disk" Divx encode.
If you use dual-pass, you can approach MPEG2 quality @ 720x480 at approximately 2mbit. Accomplishing the same at 1Mbit is a great acheivement.
You people seemed to have missed the major point of this codec, and that is we finally have a code capable of delivering TV over DSL, or other low-bandwidth LANs like 802.11b. There are movements in place to create real-time encoders from MPEG2, and this is where the REAL market acceptance will be.
Thats again, a tough figure. People have enough trouble doing taxes. Imagine anyone quantifying the time and money they spent whiling away on a whinsical dream that somehow turned into a useful invention.
What about the patents that never make any money?
There are thousands of patents whose owners are hell-bent on bringing the product to fruition themselves ( but never quite seem to succeed ), or who charge way more for the license / royalties than any reasonable partner is willing to pay. These would never become public-domain if the time limit were removed.
What about people who end up with very poor royalty deals in manufacturing the invention? IT might take years for them to recover %30, and by then the manufacturer could have made millions.
The concept of a time-limited patent is most beneficial to society. It means that the patent is GUARANTEED to only be active for a certain amount of time. Inventors are not allowed to "wait and see", lest they lose the jump on others and not get the patent. I agree that this term should be shortened, especially in this day and age, as today technologies are long-dead by the time patents run out.
The US laws do not apply where it could inconvenience any US company.
It's quite true. For being part of the "global economy", its amazing that every US citizen thinks the USA is the center of the universe. Not true anymore.
Of course the tobacco companies went down. Of course it costs them marketshare in the US.
IN THE US
But nobody told the US public that foriegn sales of American brands had eclipsed domestic sales years ago, and that those sales and their effects would go untouched
The politicians get a new source of income that most Americans approve of, and the Tobacco companies get to concentrate on overseas expansion without EVER having to worry about being sued again.
Learn well. US laws are around to serve business first, and everything else last. Even in Microsoft's case this is apparent. Who cares what the device is 'capable of', thats the standard industry outcry, but it has only gained weight as information has become the commodity of choice. Gotta protect the information, or you lose your little throne and walk among the plebes.
First you love it, then you come to depend on it.
I've got a friend who discovered the reason why half-a-dozen channels are now running "Law And Order" re-runs. It's simply so he can record and watch every single episode in it's 10+ years on his TiVo.
He makes a big deal of it when I'm over and I actually switch over to live TV , even sports :) And a few weeks back when his TiVo's hard disk crashed, it felt like a funeral.
I guess I just don't understand. I don't watch much TV, and I still think of commercials as being the perfect time to grab a snack. I have a VCR. I never use it. I think the same would go for a TiVo.
Not a chance. The minimum antenna length for a standard dipole antenna is wavelength / 2
The wavelength for a 100MHz bus is
1 / 100E6 * 3E8 m/s = 3 meters.
YOU are not likely even TWO meters tall. Now, you tell me theres a trace on your motherboard running at 100MHz thats long enough to act as an antenna.
2001 was not %100 done by hand. Those nifty computer consoles with the concentric circles were actually video rendered by computers at some university. The planets and other displays, of course, were all hand-drawn and looked spactacular. The computer display, IMHO, was meant to display the centrality and dependence of human beings on their tools. In the first part of the movie, the apes command the tools. In the second part, man comes to depend on his tools. Hence, the pilots just sitting there staring at the computer screen while the whole moon shuttle trip takes place. The final chapter of the film shows an attempt by the tool to command the man, and the battle that ensues. Kubrick was a genius.
Somebody please TELL ME why this damn thing is even mentioned?
Auto-gyros have been aound for years, but they have been limited to mainly the enthusiast market and thus are usually small 1 or 2 seater open-cockpit craft. They are propelled by a small propeller engine and a large helicopter-like wing on top turns as air is forced upon it, producing lift.
Assisted-power takeoff is also an old concept with auto-gyros, where the wing is powered by the engine to allow for short takeoffs ( similar to Harrier short takeoffs ). Obvously if you're going to attempt a vehicle capable of VTOL you incur the added weight and power requirements of a stabilizizing tail and fan, something a pure auto-gyro doesn't require.
Obviously, this thing is nothing more than a helicopter with the ability to cut-off the rotor engine and tilt the rotors. Can you really take the unpowered wing of an auto-gyro and meld it with a heavy, inefficient helicopter and expect good results?
So you're saying this had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with Sony's super-massive whiz-bang HYPE MACHINE.
You know, the kind of hype that could cause console buyers to hesitate on purchasing a new platform a WHOLE YEAR before Sony brought any goods to market. That kinda hype.
For those of you who never bothered to notice, the Dreamcast's graphics were definitely on-par with PS2. Were it not for some overhyped Emotion Engine 75 million poly / sec bullshit, not to mention a the few Playstation-only developers responsible for MAKING the system ( *cough* Square *cough* ), we would probably see the Dreamcast selling today.
If you want to rip on Microsoft, think about it for a moment. Microsoft is simply a newcomer to the hype arena, and Sony is stitting on top of the throne.
Yeah, those highend Dell screns are something else. I remember networking one a student brought in, and despite the incredibly high resolution it was crisper than my 17" Iiyama Visonmaster Pro + G400 MAX @ 1024x768.
My next monitor WILL be a flatpanel, but only if they make screens like these widely avaliable.
Well, this is certinaly possible with the development of Bluetooth.
However, why bother with wireless when all your appliances are WIRED TO AC in the first place?
Tom's COMDEX Report on Netgear
I know that powerline networking has been avaliable in the past, but now that embedding network connectivity into a device is so trivial its the next logical step. Why bathe your house in more RF and use up the spectrum when your devices have to be plugged into the wall anyway?
Obviously this goes along the line to EASE OF USE. No extra cables, when you plug in the power cable you're also hooking into the network! No need to make sure your Bluetooth devices are within range or are being blocked by walls.
All we need now is a networking protocol as easy to setup as IPX.
Yes, a space infarstructure would be necessary to see any benefit from extra-terrestrial mining. So appropriately they should start thinking about it now while materials are not yet depleted on Earth
The only problem with your plan is that each ship will have to be single-use. This is the same reason why the Apollo program was so goddamed expensive...single-serve rocket, single-server lunar module, single-serve command module.
I suppose it could work. But engineering a machine that won't burn up in the atmosphere is no simple, cheap task. And have you checked out how expensive and time-consuming an operation it was to raise that Russian submarine out of the drink? Consider the size of the operation required to salvage a continuous, useful quantity of ore from the ocean depths where it crashed down.
I'm just thinking of this from an economics perspective. I have no particular love for capitalism, however most people won't let it go without a fight, and we've seen what happens when the world market takes a massive dump. And raw materials that are too expensive are just as bad as no raw materials at all ... either will cause growth to halt and capitalism to fail.
Well, lets be realistic here. Man is not all-powerful. He cannot make Gold from Lead, atleast not in quantity.
This is the same reason why we still make the majority of our mass-market polymers from petroleum products rather then synthesizing them from scratch...it can be done, but its not nearly worth it.
When you ask why we continue to plunder the universe, the answer is simple: We have to. Not only is it much easier for our entrenched manufacturing infarstructure to work with RAW materials rather then reclaming processed materials, but we also NEED MORE.
Our population is still growing, and even taking that out of the picture the world is still industrializing at an unstoppable rate. Every time another entity builds a car or a road or a skyscraper that material is removed PERMANTLY from the cycle.
That is to say, once you have reached a certain level of industrialization, you won't falter back. When industrial equipment reaches the end of it's lifespan, you will replace it with something equivalant if not better.
In the future, RECLAMATION will not be the solution. It will be a necessity. In a closed system like the material-depleted Earth of the future, only outside forces can have a positive affect on the system...an influx of material will be necessary if growth and capitalism want to survive.
Kim Stanley Robinson created what has to be the most complete viewpoint on extra-terrestrial mining and the colonization of Mars / solar system. Everything from initial funding to ROI is discussed, and in the tradition of great SciFi writers its all grounded firmly in scientific theory. The story of course is a nice bonus :)
Hahahahahaha
Thats funny, I was always under the impression that it takes energy to move objects. Despite the high energy concentration of petroleum I doubt it would be at all feasable cost-wise to lift it off Mars and transport it to Earth.
Thats as stupid as using more energy to manufacture a solar panel than it will create in it's lifetime...oh, shit.
LIVING is a health hazard. * Practicing Hypoctite Verification Scan * You got kids? I don't suppose you enabled parental blocking on your cable box or the V-chip on your TV? Its a shame the ideas kids get from shows like Jackass, Survivor and .. CNN. Wow, how'd that get there?
Real life = Real rough. But its all we got.
The author of this article is nuts. For most of those people who have high-speed access at work, including myself, I find dialup a useless novelty. When I was without DSL this summer I decided not to bother going back out, buying a modem and dealing with the slow downloads. Luckily the ISP industry has a HUMONGUS potential market: recent college graduates! The vast majority of them have been spoiled with 4 years on the fat pipe, and are hungry for more.
Its not only the science of the environment but the science of history that has magically appeared in the last century. Never before have we been so interested in reaching more than qualatative conclusions about the past, and in this last century the huge push for recordkeeping and measurement has left us with more numbers than we can handle. We've barely had accurate thermometers and weather measuring methods for two centuries, and we barely have a century of accurate records. Who are we to define trends of a chaotic system based on 30 years of human action? Global Warming, Pollution...they won't destroy the earth, but it sure as hell could kill humans ( or atleast lower their overall quality of life ). Can't have that now, can we?
You might find an even greater challenege awaiting you when you try to play mp3s on that pissy 486, unless its a 100-133 MHz monster. 'go faster stripes' won't help you here.