The penalty was a suspension. The school has every right to refuse access to anyone, on any grounds -- although, if they wish to pursue that path, it should be recognized that those funding the school also have every right to simply keep their money.
If they were trying to fine the students, or jail them, or even just imposing community service, then I would also consider their actions insufficient to warrant such punishment -- speech of any sort should never be sufficient justification for legal repercussions. The proposed repercussions aren't legal, however; the school is simply refusing service to a pair of unruly customers. If you're going to prosecute the school for something, I suggest starting with the way they coerce funds out of everyone in the surrounding area. That's the real crime.
This isn't a copyright issue. The actual situation involves patents, and is much more clear-cut: one person/group writes codec software which can decode (and possibly encode) media from/into a particular format. They wish to distribute this software to end-users. Some third party who claims a monopoly on the format itself, but who didn't actually write the software or have a contract with those who did, steps in and threatens force to prevent the software's distribution.
I agree with your stance on copyright, but the issue here isn't about redistributing data received contrary to someone else's contract, which is at least a gray area (though I'd argue that only the person who agreed to the contract should be liable for the breach). This is about people distributing their own software, which just happens to do something that an unrelated party was granted a patent on.
Perhaps they meant 500x more efficient, as in (90% wasted)/500 = (0.18% wasted), or 99.82% efficient? It still seems like a lot, but at least it wouldn't contradict the laws of thermodynamics.
I know that a lot of conservative/libertartian thinkers like to believe that Supreme Court caselaw has absolutely no say on what is and isn't constitutional, but come on. You're just saying, "Constitutional is what I say it is," and ignoring legal authority on the matter.
The Constitution is (supposedly) an agreement between the people and the government, which includes the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. None of these aspects of the government have any power or authority beyond what the people give them, as mediated by the Constitution. In particular, the Supreme Court's powers are derived from the Constitution. It is perfectly reasonable for the Supreme Court to strike down a act of the legislature or the executive branch as un-Constitutional, since the government can always refuse to use a power it may or may not have been granted. However, to allow the Supreme Court to become the final arbiter of what is Constitutional is the height of irresponsibility. It would permit the government to determine the extent of its own authority, removing any trace of the founding principle that a just government derives its authority from the will of the people and not simply from its own power.
It is the people themselves who are in a position to judge the Constitutionality of the government's actions, as they are the sole source of the government's claim to authority. It is meaningless for the government to endorse its own behavior.
People around here react rather negatively to the idea that a voluntary but fixed contract can be altered at will by a large organization in a better bargaining position. The Constitution is involuntary, and is presented by an even larger organization, with its own enforcement arm, which arrogates to itself the right to interpret the meaning of the document in its own courts. Why can't people see that this is a far worse situation?
The interstate commerce clause and the 14th Amendment pretty much cover each and every one of those.
How do any of those items involve the act of interstate commerce, trade between people in different states? How does the 14th Amendment relate to any of this? I've already pointed out elsewhere that affirmative action is not "equal protection under the laws"; the rest don't even come close.
nor shall any State... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws
"[E]qual protection of the laws" means that states cannot make laws with irrelevant distinctions (especially race, age, class, wealth, etc.), and that enforcement of the laws cannot depend on who violated them or was harmed by such violations. It has nothing to do with closing "socioeconomic divides"; if anything, laws which give preferential treatment to any particular group, even in an attempt to make up for past injustice, run contrary to the 14th amendment by failing to hold all individuals equal under the law.
Way to miss the point. I didn't mean to imply that you were being hypocritical, not performing your duty as you yourself defined it. The point was that you don't get to define what duty is for everyone else, which would be the only reason to involve the federal government. You don't need a law to do your own duty, and other people don't need laws to do what they believe to be their duties. You only need a law if you intend to hold others to your own personal view of duty, which is not what government is for.
A consequence of group theory. You simply don't notice the vast majority of cases where people are clearly acting out of rational self-interest, because those cases are uninteresting. Those actions which draw attention are more likely to be difficult to predict.
Anyway, proper economics doesn't attempt to predict individual behavior with any degree of confidence. It is a basic economic principle that people's current preferences, which determine their future choices, are an internal and unobservable variable. One can only observe past preferences, and even then only to the extent that they have been revealed through action. Behavioral predictions presume a particular value scale as well as non-interference; any attempt to control the outcome turns it into a contest of wills with chaotic results, invalidating the prediction.
It is the purpose of the Federal government to "promote the general welfare."
Yes, in specific ways, all of which are enumerated in the Constitution. Many of the items on the GGP's list are not Constitutional.
The following are internal government affairs or enumerated powers, and perfectly Constitutional:
not firing linguists
ending an immoral war
reforming the tax code
The following are not within the purview of the federal government:
healthcare
investing in science and research
funding for charter schools
affirmative action
education (including sex education)
The last point, "reducing the incidence and unfairness of the death penalty," is too broadly worded to properly categorize. For the most part specific criminal penalties, including the death penalty, fall under state jurisdiction.
It is our duty as citizens to protect each other from outside threats, and our duty as humans not to let the poor among us die in the streets.
I have no problem with that, but what does it have to do with the federal government? It seems to me that, rather than defining and carrying out your own duty, you only wish to coerce others into performing what you unilaterally declare to be their duty toward you, or in support of your goals. Government is not a legitimate tool with which to enforce your personal views onto others--no matter how popular those views might be.
There's only one man in the Bible to complain about the expectation that he was his brother's keeper.
Yes, but Cain's sins were jealousy and murder, not indifference. There is nothing to suggest that Cain was ever expected to act as his brother's keeper; his non sequitur response was merely a futile attempt to avoid the question.
Seriously, where are people getting the idea that I'm some kind of pacifist? I only advised against teaching kids to rely on political means to achieve their goals. Politics equal aggression: initiation of coercion against non-aggressors. I have absolutely no problem with the use of proportional levels of coercion in self-defense against other people's acts of aggression.
The "Libertarian" Party is a pro-government, pro-aggression organization. It may not be as bad as the others, but it's still on the wrong side. Any political party necessarily supports the use of force against non-aggressors to get its way, otherwise it wouldn't be seeking a place in the government to begin with.
I'm not advocating ignorance of politics, or disinterest, but the article measures political interest as involvement in the political process -- joining a political party, voting, and generally doing what one can to take control over other people's lives. So far as I'm concerned this is something kids should be exposed to as little as possible, and never in a positive light.
I'm hardly a pacifist. By "peaceful solutions" I mean ones that don't involve initiating aggression. Acceptance and support for aggressive actions is the primary, and perhaps sole, distinction between voluntary/economic means and political means. I have no problem whatsoever with employing proportional levels of coercion in self-defense.
"Average" can be mean, median, or mode. You are correct using the mean; the GP is correct using the median. For a continuous variable in a population, e.g. "average intelligence", the median is the most sensible interpretation. If you're told that you are in the top 1% on an intelligence test it means that no more than 1% of the population scored above you, not that your score was in the upper 1% of the range.
Furthermore, driving is a **PRIVILEGE** granted by the governments who own the roads...
That would be an excellent argument if the government actually paid for the roads out of its own resources, as opposed to tax money stolen from private citizens. The government doesn't rightfully own anything; everything it has it stole from others. Only the rightful owner can set conditions on the use of its property. Not being the rightful owner, the government has no standing to dictate terms.
No, no, the rule for collective intelligence is as follows: for any case of collective decision-making, the effective IQ of a group is equal to the IQ of the smartest person in the group, divided by the size of the group.
Of course, that's all after-the-fact explanation by competent SF writers. Lucas just didn't know that "parsec" was a measure of distance at the time.
Sure, but if you look at it that way they're all after-the-fact. You're free to prefer some other explanation, but this is the one given by the official novels.
In the Star Wars universe FTL travel is accomplished with the help of a "hyperdrive." Essentially it moves the ship through higher dimensions such that the normal physical laws don't apply, while keeping the ship and its contents isolated from the effects.
A warp engine (from Star Trek) doesn't involve higher dimensions; it creates a bubble-universe (a "warp shell") around the ship. The warp shell negates mass, allowing whatever lies inside it to accelerate to superluminal velocities in real space.
Kessel is actually a planet where "glitterstim" (an heavily controlled drug with mind-enhancing powers) is mined. The Kessel Run is a smuggling route from Kessel back to the standard trade routes. The direct path leads through the Maw, a deadly cluster of black holes; all but the most suicidal or desperate keep their distance.
The rest is much as you described -- once, while being chased by Imperial ships, Han takes the Falcon through the Maw to escape. Much to his surprise, he discovers that not only did he make the trip in record time, but in record distance as well -- less than twelve parsecs -- due to proximity to the black holes.
Basics about Kessel, the Kessel Run, and the surrounding region of space can be found in The Han Solo Trilogy, Book #2, "The Hutt Gambit". The record-setting run itself occurs in Book #3 of the same series, "Rebel Dawn".
Would you trust a study funded by the tobacco industry which showed cigarettes to be harmless?
Of course not. That's the problem -- publicly-funded research is presumed to be impartial, when in practice the bias is just more deeply buried under layers of politics.
Would you trust a government-funded study showing cigarettes to be dangerous? It's just as much in the government's interests to promote regulation as it is in the tobacco industry's interests to make their product appear safe.
That only makes sense if you think the idea would reasonably have remained a trade secret -- no leaks, no independent discovery -- for the full twenty years it would otherwise remain locked up under a patent. There might be a handful of times in all of history where that was the case; the rest of the time we'd be much better off with a mere trade secret.
That's a really good idea, although personally I'd organize a co-op to do it rather than make it part of the city government. As far as the network itself, the only thing I'd change is this:
There would be 4 actual optical fibers to each home and business..., so it would be possible for "light up" providers to offer only one type of service, and customers could get their phone, TV, and internet, from different providers if they so choose.
Why not just make the city's local network one big LAN, such that individual subscribers can communicate with one another freely? Then, if you want Internet service you just sign up with an ISP and send your traffic to their Internet gateway -- no need to rewire anything or run multiple lines. You'd get your TV channels off a streaming server; they could even use multicast. VoIP would work in the obvious way. (Why allocate an entire fiber just for telephone service?)
It seems to me like this would scale a lot better than using a separate fiber for each service provider.
Personally, I'd like to know why the citizens that supported this referendum didn't just form a private co-op. What is the advantage of having the city government install and manage the network?
Other than participation being voluntary, a co-op is structured in much the same way as a municipal government. As a separate organization the co-op would be on a level playing field with TDS for permits and the like, and thus wouldn't be vulnerable to this sort of legal attack. As I understand it the plan was to partition the funding for this project such that tax money wouldn't be involved (even if it failed), so the start-up funds should still be available.
You know, in a way you're right. Given unregulated capitalism as a starting point, there are always people like you who have no tolerance for the mess and disorder inherent in individual liberty, and who would choose to impose regulations to make everything neat and clean and "optimal" according to their own personal views. Basic freedoms are violated, these violations are inscribed into the law, and the system becomes regulated pseudo-capitalism. Then -- and this is the critical part -- having endorsed the use of force to achieve your own ends, you have no legitimate argument with which to oppose the corporations when they inevitably gain control over the regulatory agencies. End result: corporatism.
Corporatism is a system where corporations have power over the government and use it as a proxy to support their own ends by force (via regulations). Creating and endorsing regulation is but the first step on the road from economic freedom to corporatism.
Neither freedom nor efficiency are natural states. Any social organization will decay over time into despotism and conflict unless its members work to reinforce its basic principles and resist decay. It's no surprise to me that capitalism can decay into corporatism (or worse) over time. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with capitalism; it just means that, like anything else worthwhile, it requires an active and coordinated effort to maintain.
The devices I've seen (Ronja) spread the beam out quite a bit, making it a fairly wide cylinder rather than a line. Atmospheric attenuation and sunlight are issues, but a spider web probably wouldn't block enough of the beam to make a difference. I would assume that other FSO equipment employs a similar principle.
This is interesting technology, but I'm not sure the examples in the article were thought through all that well.
Imagine Amazon.com being fully 3D. We could walk through a 3D space where you have all the books lined up, and you could walk right up to a book.
That might make sense if you were just browsing, although there are a lot of ways to sift through books which don't map well to inanimate shelves. What if you know which book you want, though? Do you look up the title, author, publisher, etc. in a digital representation of a manual card catalog, and then spend at least a couple minutes walking over to the indicated location? (Just how many books does Amazon sell, anyway? How many miles of shelves would it take to hold them all?) That seems like a lot more work than using the much-derided keyboard & screen we have already.
Virtual shoppers might be able to take books off their shelves and read a sample, or even ask other virtual customers for recommendations.
You can already read samples on a regular screen, and most of the people I know who don't care to read off a 2D computer screen wouldn't be much happier with the immersive 3D equivalent; they want to actually experience the book's weight, texture, and smell. Recommendations, in turn, are more valuable when you can correlate what everyone has said about the item whether or not they happen to be hanging around at that exact moment. In a purely interactive system there probably wouldn't be anyone around to ask most of the time.
Slashdot Mirror
The penalty was a suspension. The school has every right to refuse access to anyone, on any grounds -- although, if they wish to pursue that path, it should be recognized that those funding the school also have every right to simply keep their money.
If they were trying to fine the students, or jail them, or even just imposing community service, then I would also consider their actions insufficient to warrant such punishment -- speech of any sort should never be sufficient justification for legal repercussions. The proposed repercussions aren't legal, however; the school is simply refusing service to a pair of unruly customers. If you're going to prosecute the school for something, I suggest starting with the way they coerce funds out of everyone in the surrounding area. That's the real crime.
This isn't a copyright issue. The actual situation involves patents, and is much more clear-cut: one person/group writes codec software which can decode (and possibly encode) media from/into a particular format. They wish to distribute this software to end-users. Some third party who claims a monopoly on the format itself, but who didn't actually write the software or have a contract with those who did, steps in and threatens force to prevent the software's distribution.
I agree with your stance on copyright, but the issue here isn't about redistributing data received contrary to someone else's contract, which is at least a gray area (though I'd argue that only the person who agreed to the contract should be liable for the breach). This is about people distributing their own software, which just happens to do something that an unrelated party was granted a patent on.
Perhaps they meant 500x more efficient, as in (90% wasted)/500 = (0.18% wasted), or 99.82% efficient? It still seems like a lot, but at least it wouldn't contradict the laws of thermodynamics.
I know that a lot of conservative/libertartian thinkers like to believe that Supreme Court caselaw has absolutely no say on what is and isn't constitutional, but come on. You're just saying, "Constitutional is what I say it is," and ignoring legal authority on the matter.
The Constitution is (supposedly) an agreement between the people and the government, which includes the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. None of these aspects of the government have any power or authority beyond what the people give them, as mediated by the Constitution. In particular, the Supreme Court's powers are derived from the Constitution. It is perfectly reasonable for the Supreme Court to strike down a act of the legislature or the executive branch as un-Constitutional, since the government can always refuse to use a power it may or may not have been granted. However, to allow the Supreme Court to become the final arbiter of what is Constitutional is the height of irresponsibility. It would permit the government to determine the extent of its own authority, removing any trace of the founding principle that a just government derives its authority from the will of the people and not simply from its own power.
It is the people themselves who are in a position to judge the Constitutionality of the government's actions, as they are the sole source of the government's claim to authority. It is meaningless for the government to endorse its own behavior.
People around here react rather negatively to the idea that a voluntary but fixed contract can be altered at will by a large organization in a better bargaining position. The Constitution is involuntary, and is presented by an even larger organization, with its own enforcement arm, which arrogates to itself the right to interpret the meaning of the document in its own courts. Why can't people see that this is a far worse situation?
The interstate commerce clause and the 14th Amendment pretty much cover each and every one of those.
How do any of those items involve the act of interstate commerce, trade between people in different states? How does the 14th Amendment relate to any of this? I've already pointed out elsewhere that affirmative action is not "equal protection under the laws"; the rest don't even come close.
nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws
"[E]qual protection of the laws" means that states cannot make laws with irrelevant distinctions (especially race, age, class, wealth, etc.), and that enforcement of the laws cannot depend on who violated them or was harmed by such violations. It has nothing to do with closing "socioeconomic divides"; if anything, laws which give preferential treatment to any particular group, even in an attempt to make up for past injustice, run contrary to the 14th amendment by failing to hold all individuals equal under the law.
Way to miss the point. I didn't mean to imply that you were being hypocritical, not performing your duty as you yourself defined it. The point was that you don't get to define what duty is for everyone else, which would be the only reason to involve the federal government. You don't need a law to do your own duty, and other people don't need laws to do what they believe to be their duties. You only need a law if you intend to hold others to your own personal view of duty, which is not what government is for.
A consequence of group theory. You simply don't notice the vast majority of cases where people are clearly acting out of rational self-interest, because those cases are uninteresting. Those actions which draw attention are more likely to be difficult to predict.
Anyway, proper economics doesn't attempt to predict individual behavior with any degree of confidence. It is a basic economic principle that people's current preferences, which determine their future choices, are an internal and unobservable variable. One can only observe past preferences, and even then only to the extent that they have been revealed through action. Behavioral predictions presume a particular value scale as well as non-interference; any attempt to control the outcome turns it into a contest of wills with chaotic results, invalidating the prediction.
It is the purpose of the Federal government to "promote the general welfare."
Yes, in specific ways, all of which are enumerated in the Constitution. Many of the items on the GGP's list are not Constitutional.
The following are internal government affairs or enumerated powers, and perfectly Constitutional:
The following are not within the purview of the federal government:
The last point, "reducing the incidence and unfairness of the death penalty," is too broadly worded to properly categorize. For the most part specific criminal penalties, including the death penalty, fall under state jurisdiction.
It is our duty as citizens to protect each other from outside threats, and our duty as humans not to let the poor among us die in the streets.
I have no problem with that, but what does it have to do with the federal government? It seems to me that, rather than defining and carrying out your own duty, you only wish to coerce others into performing what you unilaterally declare to be their duty toward you, or in support of your goals. Government is not a legitimate tool with which to enforce your personal views onto others--no matter how popular those views might be.
There's only one man in the Bible to complain about the expectation that he was his brother's keeper.
Yes, but Cain's sins were jealousy and murder, not indifference. There is nothing to suggest that Cain was ever expected to act as his brother's keeper; his non sequitur response was merely a futile attempt to avoid the question.
Seriously, where are people getting the idea that I'm some kind of pacifist? I only advised against teaching kids to rely on political means to achieve their goals. Politics equal aggression: initiation of coercion against non-aggressors. I have absolutely no problem with the use of proportional levels of coercion in self-defense against other people's acts of aggression.
The "Libertarian" Party is a pro-government, pro-aggression organization. It may not be as bad as the others, but it's still on the wrong side. Any political party necessarily supports the use of force against non-aggressors to get its way, otherwise it wouldn't be seeking a place in the government to begin with.
I'm not advocating ignorance of politics, or disinterest, but the article measures political interest as involvement in the political process -- joining a political party, voting, and generally doing what one can to take control over other people's lives. So far as I'm concerned this is something kids should be exposed to as little as possible, and never in a positive light.
I'm hardly a pacifist. By "peaceful solutions" I mean ones that don't involve initiating aggression. Acceptance and support for aggressive actions is the primary, and perhaps sole, distinction between voluntary/economic means and political means. I have no problem whatsoever with employing proportional levels of coercion in self-defense.
"Average" can be mean, median, or mode. You are correct using the mean; the GP is correct using the median. For a continuous variable in a population, e.g. "average intelligence", the median is the most sensible interpretation. If you're told that you are in the top 1% on an intelligence test it means that no more than 1% of the population scored above you, not that your score was in the upper 1% of the range.
Furthermore, driving is a **PRIVILEGE** granted by the governments who own the roads...
That would be an excellent argument if the government actually paid for the roads out of its own resources, as opposed to tax money stolen from private citizens. The government doesn't rightfully own anything; everything it has it stole from others. Only the rightful owner can set conditions on the use of its property. Not being the rightful owner, the government has no standing to dictate terms.
Umm.. how exactly is kids being interested in politics a good thing?
Exactly. Shouldn't we be teaching kids to avoid conflict, rather than create it? To seek peaceful solutions, and not rely on coercion?
No, no, the rule for collective intelligence is as follows: for any case of collective decision-making, the effective IQ of a group is equal to the IQ of the smartest person in the group, divided by the size of the group.
Of course, that's all after-the-fact explanation by competent SF writers. Lucas just didn't know that "parsec" was a measure of distance at the time.
Sure, but if you look at it that way they're all after-the-fact. You're free to prefer some other explanation, but this is the one given by the official novels.
In the Star Wars universe FTL travel is accomplished with the help of a "hyperdrive." Essentially it moves the ship through higher dimensions such that the normal physical laws don't apply, while keeping the ship and its contents isolated from the effects.
A warp engine (from Star Trek) doesn't involve higher dimensions; it creates a bubble-universe (a "warp shell") around the ship. The warp shell negates mass, allowing whatever lies inside it to accelerate to superluminal velocities in real space.
Kessel is actually a planet where "glitterstim" (an heavily controlled drug with mind-enhancing powers) is mined. The Kessel Run is a smuggling route from Kessel back to the standard trade routes. The direct path leads through the Maw, a deadly cluster of black holes; all but the most suicidal or desperate keep their distance.
The rest is much as you described -- once, while being chased by Imperial ships, Han takes the Falcon through the Maw to escape. Much to his surprise, he discovers that not only did he make the trip in record time, but in record distance as well -- less than twelve parsecs -- due to proximity to the black holes.
Basics about Kessel, the Kessel Run, and the surrounding region of space can be found in The Han Solo Trilogy, Book #2, "The Hutt Gambit". The record-setting run itself occurs in Book #3 of the same series, "Rebel Dawn".
Would you trust a study funded by the tobacco industry which showed cigarettes to be harmless?
Of course not. That's the problem -- publicly-funded research is presumed to be impartial, when in practice the bias is just more deeply buried under layers of politics.
Would you trust a government-funded study showing cigarettes to be dangerous? It's just as much in the government's interests to promote regulation as it is in the tobacco industry's interests to make their product appear safe.
That only makes sense if you think the idea would reasonably have remained a trade secret -- no leaks, no independent discovery -- for the full twenty years it would otherwise remain locked up under a patent. There might be a handful of times in all of history where that was the case; the rest of the time we'd be much better off with a mere trade secret.
That's a really good idea, although personally I'd organize a co-op to do it rather than make it part of the city government. As far as the network itself, the only thing I'd change is this:
There would be 4 actual optical fibers to each home and business..., so it would be possible for "light up" providers to offer only one type of service, and customers could get their phone, TV, and internet, from different providers if they so choose.
Why not just make the city's local network one big LAN, such that individual subscribers can communicate with one another freely? Then, if you want Internet service you just sign up with an ISP and send your traffic to their Internet gateway -- no need to rewire anything or run multiple lines. You'd get your TV channels off a streaming server; they could even use multicast. VoIP would work in the obvious way. (Why allocate an entire fiber just for telephone service?)
It seems to me like this would scale a lot better than using a separate fiber for each service provider.
Personally, I'd like to know why the citizens that supported this referendum didn't just form a private co-op. What is the advantage of having the city government install and manage the network?
Other than participation being voluntary, a co-op is structured in much the same way as a municipal government. As a separate organization the co-op would be on a level playing field with TDS for permits and the like, and thus wouldn't be vulnerable to this sort of legal attack. As I understand it the plan was to partition the funding for this project such that tax money wouldn't be involved (even if it failed), so the start-up funds should still be available.
Unregulated capitalism LEADS to corporatism.
You know, in a way you're right. Given unregulated capitalism as a starting point, there are always people like you who have no tolerance for the mess and disorder inherent in individual liberty, and who would choose to impose regulations to make everything neat and clean and "optimal" according to their own personal views. Basic freedoms are violated, these violations are inscribed into the law, and the system becomes regulated pseudo-capitalism. Then -- and this is the critical part -- having endorsed the use of force to achieve your own ends, you have no legitimate argument with which to oppose the corporations when they inevitably gain control over the regulatory agencies. End result: corporatism.
Corporatism is a system where corporations have power over the government and use it as a proxy to support their own ends by force (via regulations). Creating and endorsing regulation is but the first step on the road from economic freedom to corporatism.
Neither freedom nor efficiency are natural states. Any social organization will decay over time into despotism and conflict unless its members work to reinforce its basic principles and resist decay. It's no surprise to me that capitalism can decay into corporatism (or worse) over time. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with capitalism; it just means that, like anything else worthwhile, it requires an active and coordinated effort to maintain.
The devices I've seen (Ronja) spread the beam out quite a bit, making it a fairly wide cylinder rather than a line. Atmospheric attenuation and sunlight are issues, but a spider web probably wouldn't block enough of the beam to make a difference. I would assume that other FSO equipment employs a similar principle.
This is interesting technology, but I'm not sure the examples in the article were thought through all that well.
Imagine Amazon.com being fully 3D. We could walk through a 3D space where you have all the books lined up, and you could walk right up to a book.
That might make sense if you were just browsing, although there are a lot of ways to sift through books which don't map well to inanimate shelves. What if you know which book you want, though? Do you look up the title, author, publisher, etc. in a digital representation of a manual card catalog, and then spend at least a couple minutes walking over to the indicated location? (Just how many books does Amazon sell, anyway? How many miles of shelves would it take to hold them all?) That seems like a lot more work than using the much-derided keyboard & screen we have already.
Virtual shoppers might be able to take books off their shelves and read a sample, or even ask other virtual customers for recommendations.
You can already read samples on a regular screen, and most of the people I know who don't care to read off a 2D computer screen wouldn't be much happier with the immersive 3D equivalent; they want to actually experience the book's weight, texture, and smell. Recommendations, in turn, are more valuable when you can correlate what everyone has said about the item whether or not they happen to be hanging around at that exact moment. In a purely interactive system there probably wouldn't be anyone around to ask most of the time.