Oh joy, I can play Neverwinter Nights what, 6 months after it came out on Linux? What about the games I'm playing right now, like Time of Defiance, Earth and Beyond, Battlefield 1942, and within a week, the C&C Generals MP Beta?
At work, I work. Our custom applications are all based on Windows, I use them, and we deal, because I have no other choice. However, when I get home, I want to have fun, and I can do that far better on my Windows PC than I can my Linux box. I can install any new game I want and be playing it within minutes on what (for me at least) is a rock-solid Windows XP desktop. Until I can go into a store and buy any game I desire and play it on my Linux box just as easily as I can with my Windows box, my XP system will remain my primary PC, and Linux will sit over on my other desk.
Basically, the anti-matter/matter reaction is the most efficent mass to energy conversion there is. Take something like a nuclear warhead - the actual 'core' of the warhead isn't all that big, roughly the size of a basketball, depending on the KT rating of the device. The massive energy output is derived from an extremely inefficent conversion of that into energy. If I remember my science correctly, only about 1-3% of the core is converted into energy, the rest is spread as radioactive material.
Anti-matter/matter is a 100% conversion of matter into energy, and unlike a nuclear explosion where the only way to get energy out of a core is by a massive, simultanious event, you can in theory feed a controlled amount of anti-matter into a suitable 'reactor', and produce a controlled reaction. Due to the near perfect mass/energy conversion, you can generate a lot of power from a very small amount of fuel, meaning things like fueling spaceships become a lot more practicle since you don't have to lug around thousands of tons of chemical fuel everywhere you go.
Of course, a few hundred atoms of anti-matter isn't much, and won't generate much energy. In time though, research like this will hopefully lead to the ability to generate large amount of anti-matter, allowing us access to a very powerful form of stored energy to do all sorts of cool things - one of the first I'm sure will be anti-matter weapons.:(
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Oh joy, I can play Neverwinter Nights what, 6 months after it came out on Linux? What about the games I'm playing right now, like Time of Defiance, Earth and Beyond, Battlefield 1942, and within a week, the C&C Generals MP Beta? At work, I work. Our custom applications are all based on Windows, I use them, and we deal, because I have no other choice. However, when I get home, I want to have fun, and I can do that far better on my Windows PC than I can my Linux box. I can install any new game I want and be playing it within minutes on what (for me at least) is a rock-solid Windows XP desktop. Until I can go into a store and buy any game I desire and play it on my Linux box just as easily as I can with my Windows box, my XP system will remain my primary PC, and Linux will sit over on my other desk.
Basically, the anti-matter/matter reaction is the most efficent mass to energy conversion there is. Take something like a nuclear warhead - the actual 'core' of the warhead isn't all that big, roughly the size of a basketball, depending on the KT rating of the device. The massive energy output is derived from an extremely inefficent conversion of that into energy. If I remember my science correctly, only about 1-3% of the core is converted into energy, the rest is spread as radioactive material.
:(
Anti-matter/matter is a 100% conversion of matter into energy, and unlike a nuclear explosion where the only way to get energy out of a core is by a massive, simultanious event, you can in theory feed a controlled amount of anti-matter into a suitable 'reactor', and produce a controlled reaction. Due to the near perfect mass/energy conversion, you can generate a lot of power from a very small amount of fuel, meaning things like fueling spaceships become a lot more practicle since you don't have to lug around thousands of tons of chemical fuel everywhere you go.
Of course, a few hundred atoms of anti-matter isn't much, and won't generate much energy. In time though, research like this will hopefully lead to the ability to generate large amount of anti-matter, allowing us access to a very powerful form of stored energy to do all sorts of cool things - one of the first I'm sure will be anti-matter weapons.