Altruism is selfless concern for the welfare of others. I guess they don't count the artists who made the content they are enjoying for free, or in the long run the sad truth that they are slowly destroying said content. Rather than promoting the fear of legalities for file sharing, perhaps we should promote the fact that by using art for free you are only aiding to the downfall and cheapening of such art. You can argue fair use and copyrights notions all you want, it doesn't matter, if someone isn't paid for making art you will see less of it and less quality of it, guaranteed. By file sharing you are fulfilling a want for art and not paying for it. It doesn't matter if the artist never would have sold a single copy, if you had not been able to get the free art you probably would have purchased art from somewhere else, thus promoting the market for such art, and the teaching, learning, and advancement of technologies in such art. Sure if everything was free art would still exist, but you are kidding yourself if you think it would be even close to the quantity and quality it is now. The problem is the effects of sharing and the destruction of art is benign on the small scale, but on a large scale is malignant. People can't relate to this and thus share.
I am indie dev, I pay Paypal about 4%, and use Amazon for hosting and pay them about 2% of sales for download bandwidth, total cost 6%. Once my store is setup I have never touched it again, that was 5 years ago, adding a new product takes about 5 minutes, refunds are about 1 a week if that, those take about 5 minutes to process. So the extra 24% is a total waste if you look at it cost wise.
So with the above data you think I would be totally against Apple taking 30%, but I am not, the costs of payment processing and downloads are irrelevant, what matters is marketing. If it is at all like the iPhone app store, then I will gladly pay 30% for that focused of a market, the selling power in the app store is in a league of its own, nothing else even comes close to it.
i don't know how much aluminum is in a 727, but i would guess a lot, i do know it is a very energy intensive process to mine and refine aluminum, more so than many other materials. might it be 'greener' to recycle the aluminum and use brand new materials for the house? greenwash from many angles...
Food Inc I watched it last year and made the switch to eating about 95% organic ever since. I tell people we are in the FOOD MATRIX right now, everyone is, when I go to a normal grocery store now all I see are the green 1 and 0s of the matrix code on the isle shelves, except instead of 1s and 0s they are processed corn, soy, and wheat lol. If people only knew, or cared to know. Watch this movie and you will know some of it, its sad, but you can help change it. Sadly it takes a long time as the mass market of buying is the uneducated, and getting this message to them is very hard.
option 1: keep the name, potentially start a giant movement against your company where parents of your main demographic will no longer shell out money for your games and boycott you for a while, perhaps losing you millions.
option 2: change the name and be a spineless shell of a company, where anyone recognizing this will give 2 shits about it and still buy your games anyway.
if it were a small company with only this product or a few and where production and art values were stronger they would easily keep the name, it would actually be a good bit of fortune i think. but with EA having 1000's of games on every platform and IP in the world, it could effect many of their games sales from the potential fallout across the board. its the right move for them, no matter what you think.
"What I *am* saying is that the "pirated app" numbers don't translate directly to anything else - not lost revenue, not even potential lost customers - some people pirate stuff just because they can, without even bothering to check first to see if it's something they might want."
100% FALSE - Think of it this way, by getting art for free you are fulfilling a want, it doesn't matter if you would have never paid for it, never buy another game, music, or movie. By simply doing it you are stealing from someone else who you would have otherwise paid for entertainment in some form. In a generalized sense by pirating anything you are stealing from the entire art community on some level. You can sugar coat it however you want, you can come with all kind of examples and stories, excuses and reasons, it doesn't matter, its stealing plain and simple. Hell even the act of pirating is stealing, yes even if you never open it or want it, or immediately delete it, if pirating didn't exist you would use a fraction of that time on entertainment, it all adds up.
Andriod users like free stuff, its easy to hack Andriod, its an open platform, therefore it attracts all those who think all software should be free, weather its authors believe so or not. Do some searching about iPhone vs. Andriod conversion rates, software sales, piracy. I remember reading an article about a #1 selling iPhone app developer making Andriod versions of their games, full sales data released, they had the #1 Andriod game and made 1/20th of what they make on the iPhone. Piracy rates on iPhone are 5-50%, on Andriod is more like 95%.
"All that being said, I'll agree that Blu-Ray is likely the last (or the second to last) optical media standard that will ever hit mainstream status."
Doubtful, I don't know how much storage is required for a holographic two hour presentation, but I would guess a hell of a lot more than 50GB. Physical media has always been a magnitudes faster than downloading for consumers, technology pushes both every year and will for the foreseeable future, until we can download a lifelike experience in a matter of seconds, we will have physical media. Since we don't even have close to the technology to even display it yet, the death of physical media is many years or perhaps decades away.
If that were true don't you think one of the over 100 teams who spent millions of their own money would have done that? Its easy to get 100mpg when you gloss over all of the details and rules, but the X-Prize setup many tests to ensure the car actually got 100mpg in many scenarios. Your alleged PM 100mpg car may not even be true.
"While it isn't terribly hard to build a vehicle that will propel itself 100 miles on only a gallon of gas, the X Prize rules call for a car that can carry four adults and sip gas while traversing all kinds of terrain and negotiating real-world traffic. And the car builder must demonstrate that the vehicle can be profitably offered for sale in volumes of 10,000 units in a form that meets federal crash safety and emissions requirements. If this weren't enough, the competition really is a race, because the money goes to the fastest car that can do all of these things."
For a 50 mile range a carrier pigeons bandwidth would be 1.9TB per hour. Or 527MB/s or 4.2Gbit/s which is about the same speed as a dedicated OC-96 connection or a Infiniband DDR 1X.
average pigeon flying speed * maximum data it can carry given the current memory technology
"Their average flying speed over moderate distances is around 80 km/h (50 mph),[citation needed] but speeds of up to 125 km/h (75 mph) have been observed" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homing_pigeon
Weight of SD Card Weight (Approximate): 0.07 oz make it 0.05oz taking off the plastic enclosure and metal contacts.
1.5oz / 0.05oz = 30 SD memory chips
30 chips * 64GB = The pigeon can carry 1.9TB theoretically.
Previously: In September 2009, a South African IT company, based in Durban, pitted an 11-month-old bird armed with a data packed 4GB memory stick against the ADSL service from the country's biggest internet service provider, Telkom. The pigeon named Winston took an hour and eight minutes to carry the data 80 km (50 miles). Including downloading, it took two hours, six minutes, and 57 seconds for the data to arrive, the same amount of time it took to transfer 4% of the data over the ADSL. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homing_pigeon
So true, you get used to your situation and always want more. I think the reason is quite simple, most people earn more slowly over time, which gives you plenty of time to absorb the changes of making more, until eventually your life doesn't even resemble the one you had five years ago. You look at your life in the present and say, if I only made double what I make now I could truly have everything I need and not work and be very happy, but the sad truth is in 5 years you probably will be making quite a bit more, maybe double, have much nicer things, but will have gotten them slowly and be used to them, and say the exact same thing!
Rather than wanting double now, what if you spent half of what you do now, and then you would have double now, but no one wants to do that, you worked way too hard and earned your luxuries. Its not a bad thing, its just the way it is, maybe it will provide some peace simply realizing it?
"The creator still has their creation, and they are completely unharmed."
False. When you copy a song, artwork, program, game, or porno you are destroying the very thing which you want. That art has to be made by someone, and it cost money to live, by not paying for art you are depriving the artists of the means to make their art. The problem people have today is in a digital world the fraction they are stealing is so small it seems trivial, but it adds up just the same.
"Who is being harmed in this case, and how?"
It doesn't matter if the creator is never selling their art, if you copy it, you are still hurting creators who are selling their art by displacing your need for that type of art from art that is for sale which would support someone, to art that isn't for sale that you stole. It can never be measured, its on a worldwide scale, happens every nanosecond of the day, and will billions of people.
Heffner tested his attack against 30 router models and found that about half were vulnerable. Here's his chart of which are and aren't subject to attack. ("Successful" in the far right column means that the router was successfully hacked.)
Vendor Model H/W Version F/W Version Successful ActionTec MI424-WR Rev. C 4.0.16.1.56.0.10.11.6 YES ActionTec MI424-WR Rev. D 4.0.16.1.56.0.10.11.6 YES ActionTec GT704-WG N/A 3.20.3.3.5.0.9.2.9 YES ActionTec GT701-WG E 3.60.2.0.6.3 YES Asus WL-520gU N/A N/A YES Belkin F5D7230-4 2000 4.05.03 YES Belkin F5D7230-4 6000 N/A NO Belkin F5D7234-4 N/A 5.00.12 NO Belkin F5D8233-4v3 3000 3.01.10 NO Belkin F5D6231-4 1 2.00.002 NO D-Link DI-524 C1 3.23 NO D-Link DI-624 N/A 2.50DDM NO D-Link DIR-628 A2 1.22NA NO D-Link DIR-320 A1 1 NO D-Link DIR-655 A1 1.30EA NO DD-WRT N/A N/A v24 YES Dell TrueMobile 2300 N/A 5.1.1.6 YES Linksys BEFW11S4 1 1.37.2 YES Linksys BEFSR41 4.3 2.00.02 YES Linksys WRT54G3G-ST N/A N/A YES Linksys WRT54G2 N/A N/A NO Linksys WRT160N 1.1 1.02.2 YES Linksys WRT54G 3 3.03.9 YES Linksys WRT54G 5 1.00.4 NO Linksys WRT54GL N/A N/A YES Netgear WGR614 9 N/A NO Netgear WNR834B 2 2.1.13_2.1.13NA NO OpenWRT N/A N/A Kamikaze r16206 YES PFSense N/A N/A 1.2.3-RC3 YES Thomson ST585 6sl 6.2.2.29.2 YES
I think what the OP meant by that wild west statement is how ridiculous selling apps on Android is, it has less to do with market size and more to do with its customers and the platform. Anyone who looks into developing for the Android market will find the same result, its mostly a waste of time. Google's buying experience is sub-par, many countries and currencies are not supported, you have to provide first level support, the return policy is ridiculous (24-48 hours no questions asked), and probably the biggest nail in the metal Android space coffin is piracy is very rampant and easier to use than the Android store, making sales of apps a joke. Big time iphone devs have ported their top tier games to Android and publicly reported their sales, they are abysmal. Google has made some changes for the better recently, but mostly the Android store is still a joke compared to the iPhone App Store.
what i dont understand is even if topkill doesn't work, which it didn't, why not keep it going until the next method is ready. wouldnt you rather have 19,000 barrels of mud coming out instead of oil? the next capping solution won't be ready for 5-7 days, thats 100,000 barrels of oil!
It would seem to me we have a lot more to lose by auto manufacturers implement software security than to gain. Its hard enough as it is for repair shops to work on engines and electronics without adding security, which would make repairs even more proprietary and expensive. With almost nothing to gain, if someone wants to disable your brakes they can (gasp) damage your brake line without even opening your car door! Mess with your tires, exhaust, gas, etc. There are many more ways to mess with your car externally than via the software port. And yet somehow the earth keeps rotating.
Any company that has the resources to make a manned space flight will have no problem either pulling the correct strings to get licensing, or simply finding their own island to do so.
At a savings of $4.7 million ($4750*1000 lbs) per launch seems like a no brainer. It will pay for itself in 105 launches (500M/4.7M), even with only 1 launch a week that is 2 years time. The benefits in safety, fuel, ease of use, are just staggering. We need a Space-Cannon-X-Prize yesterday!
I could understand the point of high end hardware, or at least have a shred of belief that it actually _might_ be better when things were all analog, but as soon as it goes digital what is the point? A $90 bluray player is going to output THE EXACT SAME audio and video bits as a $5000 bluray player. People spend way too much time and money on things they _think_ are better, rather than things they _know_ are better, I guess its a lot easier to do the former though than finding trusted sources of reviews who do blind testing.
Only a few are good, but patch #3 is the best design, five shuttles, and each star represents a lost crew member. An excellent design. Its clean and stylish and represents several ideas.
You can download all the music you will ever listen to in one day from torrents. New movies come out every day and watching the same ones over is boring, downloading a HD movie or even a 1GB DVD rip still takes a while and is a pain for only one viewing. We reached the limits of the human ear a long time ago with mass produced audio technology. Movies aren't even close, we still need: better color and contrast, more resolution, 3D, holographic, sensual, etc. There are 100 years of more upgrades for movies to go through, which will drag the consumer through new formats and technologies which requires upgrading on all fronts, and money to be spent and made. With music this vanished with the CD 20 years ago. Eventually download speeds will catch up with current formats, but by the time that happens there will be a new format, for example for 3d, which will be huge and simply easier to buy or rent than download.
Moves: View Once, Large Download, Technological reasons to upgrade. Music: Listen Forever, Small Download, No reason to upgrade ever again with the invention of the CD.
Why did not they not test a RAID with an Intel and OCZ drive with different controllers so you can actually compare if buying this $3000 SSD is better than buying $3000 normal SSDs and creating your own RAID array? Perhaps the garbage collection issue? Still it would be good to see.
Slashdot Mirror
Altruism is selfless concern for the welfare of others. I guess they don't count the artists who made the content they are enjoying for free, or in the long run the sad truth that they are slowly destroying said content. Rather than promoting the fear of legalities for file sharing, perhaps we should promote the fact that by using art for free you are only aiding to the downfall and cheapening of such art. You can argue fair use and copyrights notions all you want, it doesn't matter, if someone isn't paid for making art you will see less of it and less quality of it, guaranteed. By file sharing you are fulfilling a want for art and not paying for it. It doesn't matter if the artist never would have sold a single copy, if you had not been able to get the free art you probably would have purchased art from somewhere else, thus promoting the market for such art, and the teaching, learning, and advancement of technologies in such art. Sure if everything was free art would still exist, but you are kidding yourself if you think it would be even close to the quantity and quality it is now. The problem is the effects of sharing and the destruction of art is benign on the small scale, but on a large scale is malignant. People can't relate to this and thus share.
What is happening to him is why super heroes wear a mask...
I am indie dev, I pay Paypal about 4%, and use Amazon for hosting and pay them about 2% of sales for download bandwidth, total cost 6%. Once my store is setup I have never touched it again, that was 5 years ago, adding a new product takes about 5 minutes, refunds are about 1 a week if that, those take about 5 minutes to process. So the extra 24% is a total waste if you look at it cost wise.
So with the above data you think I would be totally against Apple taking 30%, but I am not, the costs of payment processing and downloads are irrelevant, what matters is marketing. If it is at all like the iPhone app store, then I will gladly pay 30% for that focused of a market, the selling power in the app store is in a league of its own, nothing else even comes close to it.
i don't know how much aluminum is in a 727, but i would guess a lot, i do know it is a very energy intensive process to mine and refine aluminum, more so than many other materials. might it be 'greener' to recycle the aluminum and use brand new materials for the house? greenwash from many angles...
Food Inc I watched it last year and made the switch to eating about 95% organic ever since. I tell people we are in the FOOD MATRIX right now, everyone is, when I go to a normal grocery store now all I see are the green 1 and 0s of the matrix code on the isle shelves, except instead of 1s and 0s they are processed corn, soy, and wheat lol. If people only knew, or cared to know. Watch this movie and you will know some of it, its sad, but you can help change it. Sadly it takes a long time as the mass market of buying is the uneducated, and getting this message to them is very hard.
option 1: keep the name, potentially start a giant movement against your company where parents of your main demographic will no longer shell out money for your games and boycott you for a while, perhaps losing you millions.
option 2: change the name and be a spineless shell of a company, where anyone recognizing this will give 2 shits about it and still buy your games anyway.
if it were a small company with only this product or a few and where production and art values were stronger they would easily keep the name, it would actually be a good bit of fortune i think. but with EA having 1000's of games on every platform and IP in the world, it could effect many of their games sales from the potential fallout across the board. its the right move for them, no matter what you think.
"What I *am* saying is that the "pirated app" numbers don't translate directly to anything else - not lost revenue, not even potential lost customers - some people pirate stuff just because they can, without even bothering to check first to see if it's something they might want."
100% FALSE - Think of it this way, by getting art for free you are fulfilling a want, it doesn't matter if you would have never paid for it, never buy another game, music, or movie. By simply doing it you are stealing from someone else who you would have otherwise paid for entertainment in some form. In a generalized sense by pirating anything you are stealing from the entire art community on some level. You can sugar coat it however you want, you can come with all kind of examples and stories, excuses and reasons, it doesn't matter, its stealing plain and simple. Hell even the act of pirating is stealing, yes even if you never open it or want it, or immediately delete it, if pirating didn't exist you would use a fraction of that time on entertainment, it all adds up.
Your answer is already in the article. Basically LEGO will not allow their bricks to be simplified to simple 6 sided cubes.
"LEGO is uncompromising about how those need to look."
Andriod users like free stuff, its easy to hack Andriod, its an open platform, therefore it attracts all those who think all software should be free, weather its authors believe so or not. Do some searching about iPhone vs. Andriod conversion rates, software sales, piracy. I remember reading an article about a #1 selling iPhone app developer making Andriod versions of their games, full sales data released, they had the #1 Andriod game and made 1/20th of what they make on the iPhone. Piracy rates on iPhone are 5-50%, on Andriod is more like 95%.
"All that being said, I'll agree that Blu-Ray is likely the last (or the second to last) optical media standard that will ever hit mainstream status."
Doubtful, I don't know how much storage is required for a holographic two hour presentation, but I would guess a hell of a lot more than 50GB. Physical media has always been a magnitudes faster than downloading for consumers, technology pushes both every year and will for the foreseeable future, until we can download a lifelike experience in a matter of seconds, we will have physical media. Since we don't even have close to the technology to even display it yet, the death of physical media is many years or perhaps decades away.
If that were true don't you think one of the over 100 teams who spent millions of their own money would have done that? Its easy to get 100mpg when you gloss over all of the details and rules, but the X-Prize setup many tests to ensure the car actually got 100mpg in many scenarios. Your alleged PM 100mpg car may not even be true.
"While it isn't terribly hard to build a vehicle that will propel itself 100 miles on only a gallon of gas, the X Prize rules call for a car that can carry four adults and sip gas while traversing all kinds of terrain and negotiating real-world traffic. And the car builder must demonstrate that the vehicle can be profitably offered for sale in volumes of 10,000 units in a form that meets federal crash safety and emissions requirements. If this weren't enough, the competition really is a race, because the money goes to the fastest car that can do all of these things."
http://www.xprize.org/news/automotive-x-prize-seeks-100-mpg-car
For a 50 mile range a carrier pigeons bandwidth would be 1.9TB per hour. Or 527MB/s or 4.2Gbit/s which is about the same speed as a dedicated OC-96 connection or a Infiniband DDR 1X.
average pigeon flying speed * maximum data it can carry given the current memory technology
Memory:
64GB SD card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139183
"Their average flying speed over moderate distances is around 80 km/h (50 mph),[citation needed] but speeds of up to 125 km/h (75 mph) have been observed"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homing_pigeon
"Well, the link below says 5-10% of the pigeon's weight, or 30-50 grams (1-1.7oz)."
http://interbug.com/pigeon/technology/homing_pigeon_with_gps.pdf
Weight of SD Card
Weight (Approximate): 0.07 oz
make it 0.05oz taking off the plastic enclosure and metal contacts.
1.5oz / 0.05oz = 30 SD memory chips
30 chips * 64GB = The pigeon can carry 1.9TB theoretically.
Previously:
In September 2009, a South African IT company, based in Durban, pitted an 11-month-old bird armed with a data packed 4GB memory stick against the ADSL service from the country's biggest internet service provider, Telkom. The pigeon named Winston took an hour and eight minutes to carry the data 80 km (50 miles). Including downloading, it took two hours, six minutes, and 57 seconds for the data to arrive, the same amount of time it took to transfer 4% of the data over the ADSL.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homing_pigeon
So true, you get used to your situation and always want more. I think the reason is quite simple, most people earn more slowly over time, which gives you plenty of time to absorb the changes of making more, until eventually your life doesn't even resemble the one you had five years ago. You look at your life in the present and say, if I only made double what I make now I could truly have everything I need and not work and be very happy, but the sad truth is in 5 years you probably will be making quite a bit more, maybe double, have much nicer things, but will have gotten them slowly and be used to them, and say the exact same thing!
Rather than wanting double now, what if you spent half of what you do now, and then you would have double now, but no one wants to do that, you worked way too hard and earned your luxuries. Its not a bad thing, its just the way it is, maybe it will provide some peace simply realizing it?
"The creator still has their creation, and they are completely unharmed."
False. When you copy a song, artwork, program, game, or porno you are destroying the very thing which you want. That art has to be made by someone, and it cost money to live, by not paying for art you are depriving the artists of the means to make their art. The problem people have today is in a digital world the fraction they are stealing is so small it seems trivial, but it adds up just the same.
"Who is being harmed in this case, and how?"
It doesn't matter if the creator is never selling their art, if you copy it, you are still hurting creators who are selling their art by displacing your need for that type of art from art that is for sale which would support someone, to art that isn't for sale that you stole. It can never be measured, its on a worldwide scale, happens every nanosecond of the day, and will billions of people.
The important info
Heffner tested his attack against 30 router models and found that about half were vulnerable. Here's his chart of which are and aren't subject to attack. ("Successful" in the far right column means that the router was successfully hacked.)
Vendor Model H/W Version F/W Version Successful
ActionTec MI424-WR Rev. C 4.0.16.1.56.0.10.11.6 YES
ActionTec MI424-WR Rev. D 4.0.16.1.56.0.10.11.6 YES
ActionTec GT704-WG N/A 3.20.3.3.5.0.9.2.9 YES
ActionTec GT701-WG E 3.60.2.0.6.3 YES
Asus WL-520gU N/A N/A YES
Belkin F5D7230-4 2000 4.05.03 YES
Belkin F5D7230-4 6000 N/A NO
Belkin F5D7234-4 N/A 5.00.12 NO
Belkin F5D8233-4v3 3000 3.01.10 NO
Belkin F5D6231-4 1 2.00.002 NO
D-Link DI-524 C1 3.23 NO
D-Link DI-624 N/A 2.50DDM NO
D-Link DIR-628 A2 1.22NA NO
D-Link DIR-320 A1 1 NO
D-Link DIR-655 A1 1.30EA NO
DD-WRT N/A N/A v24 YES
Dell TrueMobile 2300 N/A 5.1.1.6 YES
Linksys BEFW11S4 1 1.37.2 YES
Linksys BEFSR41 4.3 2.00.02 YES
Linksys WRT54G3G-ST N/A N/A YES
Linksys WRT54G2 N/A N/A NO
Linksys WRT160N 1.1 1.02.2 YES
Linksys WRT54G 3 3.03.9 YES
Linksys WRT54G 5 1.00.4 NO
Linksys WRT54GL N/A N/A YES
Netgear WGR614 9 N/A NO
Netgear WNR834B 2 2.1.13_2.1.13NA NO
OpenWRT N/A N/A Kamikaze r16206 YES
PFSense N/A N/A 1.2.3-RC3 YES
Thomson ST585 6sl 6.2.2.29.2 YES
from http://blogs.forbes.com/firewall/2010/07/13/millions-of-home-routers-vulnerable-to-web-hack/
I think what the OP meant by that wild west statement is how ridiculous selling apps on Android is, it has less to do with market size and more to do with its customers and the platform. Anyone who looks into developing for the Android market will find the same result, its mostly a waste of time. Google's buying experience is sub-par, many countries and currencies are not supported, you have to provide first level support, the return policy is ridiculous (24-48 hours no questions asked), and probably the biggest nail in the metal Android space coffin is piracy is very rampant and easier to use than the Android store, making sales of apps a joke. Big time iphone devs have ported their top tier games to Android and publicly reported their sales, they are abysmal. Google has made some changes for the better recently, but mostly the Android store is still a joke compared to the iPhone App Store.
what i dont understand is even if topkill doesn't work, which it didn't, why not keep it going until the next method is ready. wouldnt you rather have 19,000 barrels of mud coming out instead of oil? the next capping solution won't be ready for 5-7 days, thats 100,000 barrels of oil!
It would seem to me we have a lot more to lose by auto manufacturers implement software security than to gain. Its hard enough as it is for repair shops to work on engines and electronics without adding security, which would make repairs even more proprietary and expensive. With almost nothing to gain, if someone wants to disable your brakes they can (gasp) damage your brake line without even opening your car door! Mess with your tires, exhaust, gas, etc. There are many more ways to mess with your car externally than via the software port. And yet somehow the earth keeps rotating.
Include a free wireless HD video receiver and suddenly it is every ones new living room gadget to hook up to their HDTV.
Any company that has the resources to make a manned space flight will have no problem either pulling the correct strings to get licensing, or simply finding their own island to do so.
At a savings of $4.7 million ($4750*1000 lbs) per launch seems like a no brainer. It will pay for itself in 105 launches (500M/4.7M), even with only 1 launch a week that is 2 years time. The benefits in safety, fuel, ease of use, are just staggering. We need a Space-Cannon-X-Prize yesterday!
I could understand the point of high end hardware, or at least have a shred of belief that it actually _might_ be better when things were all analog, but as soon as it goes digital what is the point? A $90 bluray player is going to output THE EXACT SAME audio and video bits as a $5000 bluray player. People spend way too much time and money on things they _think_ are better, rather than things they _know_ are better, I guess its a lot easier to do the former though than finding trusted sources of reviews who do blind testing.
Only a few are good, but patch #3 is the best design, five shuttles, and each star represents a lost crew member. An excellent design. Its clean and stylish and represents several ideas.
You can download all the music you will ever listen to in one day from torrents. New movies come out every day and watching the same ones over is boring, downloading a HD movie or even a 1GB DVD rip still takes a while and is a pain for only one viewing. We reached the limits of the human ear a long time ago with mass produced audio technology. Movies aren't even close, we still need: better color and contrast, more resolution, 3D, holographic, sensual, etc. There are 100 years of more upgrades for movies to go through, which will drag the consumer through new formats and technologies which requires upgrading on all fronts, and money to be spent and made. With music this vanished with the CD 20 years ago. Eventually download speeds will catch up with current formats, but by the time that happens there will be a new format, for example for 3d, which will be huge and simply easier to buy or rent than download.
Moves: View Once, Large Download, Technological reasons to upgrade.
Music: Listen Forever, Small Download, No reason to upgrade ever again with the invention of the CD.
It's pretty simple.
Why did not they not test a RAID with an Intel and OCZ drive with different controllers so you can actually compare if buying this $3000 SSD is better than buying $3000 normal SSDs and creating your own RAID array? Perhaps the garbage collection issue? Still it would be good to see.