Exactly how do you compare a large, roughly spherical mass to "the size of Alaska"?
This is not the first time this type of analogy is made... like in Armageddon the President is told that the rock is the "size of Texas". The president understands this as opposed to something specified in square kilometers.
I envision just a simple projection... if you dug down the rock halfway in Alaska/ Texas the borders of the rock and the state would roughly coincide. Actuyally I think it is a pretty useful measure - I immediately get some intuitive understanding for how big it would be
Your arguments are very valid in theory but they are somewhat academic in nature.
The case in point is that the US has shown much stronger GDP growth than say Europe and Japan for the last 10 - 20 years.
Of couse if this development had coincided with extreme opposite developments in terms of environment and/ or income distribution then the average American could actually have gotten worse off than his foreign counterparts. While such scenarios are easy enough to illustrate with five people in a room, they simply don't translate into something very realistic when applied to the entire economy.
There _has_ been some increasing inequalities in US income distribution in the last few years but that simply cannot eat away a total average growth of several percent. This argument is especially true when the strong growth happens year after year as it has in the US for quite some time now. If every year your cake is a chunk bigger than the year before one has to make really dramatic and urealistic changes in the cutting policy if most people are to get less cake.
There are great success stories of introductions of alien species, but also many examples of disasters.
For example, in New Zealand rabbits were accidantally introduced and reproduced like, well, rabbits. To counter this problem ferrets were brought in on purpouse. The ferrets, however, prefered to feast on the natural bird life. Now NZ have plenty of both rabbits and ferrets, but many bird species are extinct or threatened.
So methinks that one should be exteremly careful before one brings in new plants or animals to an environment.
Finding a very thin layer of irridium in the rocks laid down at the very end of the Permian would be compelling evidence.
An irridum layer is (an almost) sufficient condition to prove an impact, because some asteroids contain lots of irridium, but Earth's surface normally does not.
However, it is not a necessary condition, because not all asteroids contain lots of irridium.
So yes, it would be compelling evidence, but we cannot rule out an impact if this evidence is not found.
OK, I'm supposed to be working, but everyone likes to blame politicians and the tech bosses. Why do you guys never consider the fact that its technology itself that is helping to drive you out of jobs?
The problem with this argument is that thechnology has improved more and more over hundreds of years but unemployment has not been growing correspondingly; today unemployment is only (5-6%) which is not particularly high by historical standards.
Every time we get an economic recession everybody predicts that technology/foreigners (it used to be the Japanese, now it is the Chinese and Indians) will make everyone jobless and that everything will be misery.
Rather the combination of technology and outsourcing is leading to steady increases in standrads of living; the US has shown GDP growth of around 3% for a long time.
In fact, we are little better off today than the population before the enlightenment, who had serious problems with superstition, general fear of the unknown, etc. superstition is still a non-negligible factor in the lives of many today, even if outwardly sniggered at.
but most of all we tend to cling to a set of believes without ever questioning them! as my prime example I often use the phases of the moon, which nicely demonstrated my own "illusion of knowledge" which I had acquired during my childhood and never questioned.
ask yourself how the shadow on the moon is produced while it goes through one "monthly" cycle and how the sun and the earth are involved.
I will bet that more than half of you will actually have a wrong model of what is going on!
I think another issue here is that many of science's answers are rather complex and not always the answers people want to hear. Even if science by now has been able to explain almost everything we see around us many of the answers are very complicated. If you take the time to study any one area you will find the scientific answers to be right, but it is impossible to study everything in detail and understand it all.
Religions tend to provide much simpler answers and actively discourage the believers from questioning those. Many people seem to be perfectly satisfied with this.
Compared to a car, a house seems like a very easy environment for batteries - no worries about weight, and much less concern about space. How about using the solar to preheat water and save power to your water heater? You could even use a really simple 'battery' like a motor that lifts a heavy weight or pumps water into a tower, then the weight turns the motor as a generator at night time. Or maybe a flywheel (whereas safety concerns hamper their application in cars). I don't know, it just seems like there should be some fairly easy way to store energy for a house.
I think generally speaking batteries and flywheels are expensive and a pain to maintain. Of course it can be done but the question is at what expense. The cost of making your house solar may not be primarily about the cells but about the battery or flywheel or whatever.
The point with hybrid cars is that they already have a hefty set of batteries; that is how they recapture energy when you slow down. It is a relatively small step to attach some solar cells and have the batteries recharge during the day. A friend of mine in Southern California does this very thing and his "gas mileage" is amazing.
You could always electrolyze water and store the hydrogen and oxygen in tanks. The tanks of gas become your battery and a power cell can be used to generate electricity on demand.
I am not denying that this is possible, but it has to be acknowledged that now the main cost driver of your system is probably not in the solar cells but in this oxygen/ hydrogen separation, storage and electricity generation system. Which illustrates my main point which is that good solar cells are not by themselves sufficient to enable this form of a solution (although of course they are a great step).
Solar cell technology seems to be getting more and more advanced. When will the time come when we are able to use it to effectively power a complete house?
Key issues here are not only power generation, but how do you store the energy? Most solar energy is generated during the day, but we need a lot of energy in the evening to cook dinner, watch TV and maybe heat the house in the winter. One could of course envision enormous batteries but this seems unfeasible and it is not even clear that this would be environmentally friendly. Another option is to cable out the energy to the grid during the day, and then buy it back at night - but this may take new infrastructure.
I think a more interesting application (at least in the short term) is for hybrid cars. These already have a substantial battery systems so it is a small matter to plug in solar cells.
Isn't there enough mass here to affect the tides?
2.9 miles long and 1.5 miles wide is quite a bit of area, especially if it's condensed.
Quick order of magnitude calculation: Radius ~10^3 times smaller than moon -> ~10^9 times smaller mass than moon if comparable material.
Also closest distance is 4 times greater than moon and gravity scales as distance squared so the tidal affects of this thing ought to be of the order 10^-10 times as strong as those from the moon - in other words impossible to notice.
I really disagree with the argument "it is too expensive/ their coding techniques suck, so I have the right to take it".
If you find that everyone else are selling expensive and poor products, then you are in an excellent position to start making better/ cheaper alternatives, no? And if you find this impossible, then maybe everyone else is not so bad after all.
When Ira Flatow asked him what would happen if the probe did not find anything and that Einstein might be wrong, he "hemmed and hawwed" a lot and said that wouldn't be the case - that Einstein was right. He also mentioned that the data would go to a physicist and then be released to the public.
It's not that I'm wearing a tin-foil hat (well maybe), but science is based on conducting experiments in the open and openly sharing data with an unbiased view and procedure, even if it means that Einstein might be wrong.
While I completely agree that the data should be made public eventually, the scientific community has had many bad experiences when incomplete and poorly analyzed data has made it into the public and caused sensationalist headlines. Take for example preliminary asteroid observations. Not only does this cause unnecessary worry but it also makes the involved astronomers look bad, as journalists and the public in general does not understand the difference between "modified based on additional data" and "the first data was wrong".
There are critics of Einstein that are academically serious and not off their rocker like some zero point/tesla fanatics. There have been critics of Einstein ever since he released his theories. You don't hear much about them as they are all heaped into one group and astrocized.
I am not saying that Einstein was wrong (not in the sense that Newton was wrong either), but that true science is keeping an open mind, rather than cower to the politically favorable theory of the moment.
Well, I guess there are two issues here.
1. Those who claim that the theory of relativity is wrong in general. Those people ARE off their rockers and academically unsound, considering that all experiments to date have validated the theory. And for sure, they have never suggested any new interesting experiements and predicted outcomes that Einstein's equations didn't.
2. Many if not most serious modern physicists suspect that there may be scales of time, mass and distance where the theory or relativity breaks down (e.g., at the center of black holes), just as with your analogy of Newton's theory. It is possible but unlikely that this probe will measure such deviations. However, this does not really constitute "criticism" in our everyday sense of the world. Indeed, most scientists probably view Einstein as the greatest physicist of all time.
you dumbass.. that's like saying Newton was wasting his time coming up with his theories.. I mean who knew there'd be any practical applications of figuring out the laws of physics
They had built the pyramids and horse & buggy just fine without Newton.?
While I completely agree with your sentiment towards the original poster, I think it has to be conceded that no scientist can see any practical application coming out of this for a long time.
That being said, I think just increasing our knowledge of the universe is a valuable endeavor in itself. We are very impressed when we realize that such and such ancient culture could predict astronomical phenomena (even if the exercise was not very useful to them). I think it is amazing to live in a time when many of life's deepest mysteries are being solved.
The U.S. has laws governing polution, working conditions, benefits, etc. When American investors take their money and invest in overseas operations that aren't bound by those rules, people in both countries suffer. Locals lose jobs, and the country that takes on the work continues its policies instead of making the lives of workers better.
All economic theory, and all empirical data, show that when two regions trade, both benefit. (If the opposite were true, why not put up tariffs between the states and counties in the US?).
Of course, the benefit is true for the country in the aggregate, not necessarily for specific industries. It is therefore understandable that special interests such as American IT workers are negative to trade.
However, it is completely hypocritcial to claim that tariffs and other regulations are in the interests of those in the developing world!! And of course, during trade negotiations we never hear the Indians and Chinese beg us to impose more tariffs or to get more regulations. This is a cause completely driven by the leftist movement in the west.
Improved wages and environment legislation will follow the growth in the developing world just as it has here. For them to legislate the same standards as ours when their economies only produce 1/20th as much is an invitation for economic disaster, just on par with printing more money.
"multi-planet" species? We can't handle one planet
I am sure we all agree that things aren't handled too well on earth. However, your argument goes one step further by saying that we should stay away from other planets, in order not to spoil them also.
I disagree with that view, because it assumes that pristine planets have value in themselves. IMHO other planets are just a bunch of rocks in space - they are valuable only when we enjoy them. If we stay away from Mars until a big rock falls onto our heads then Mars will be preserved in its original form. But what is the value of that if no one will ever see it?
I recently bought an XM receiver online for cheap. Here they sell one for $30, after mail-in rebate. May be tough to complete it before Dec 31, but it is a good deal:
Commercial airlines have an accident rate of 0.06 crashes per million hours of flying whereas the Northrop Grumman Global Hawk UAV used by the US military has 1600 crashes per million hours of flying
This is not a fair comparison. Military UAVs fly around in hostile areas, and what is more they are basically designed and priced to be expendible. Also keep in mind that today's passenger planes are fully capable of flying and landing on auto-pilot.
I think we will get pilotless flights eventually, but it may take 50 years.
1. Military transports will be first. There are already discussions about this; it would be a realitvely simple matter to modify the plane - the tricky part is negotiating rights for flying through airspace and landing at international airports.
2. If the military is doing it, why shouldn't commercial freight transports like FedEx be allowed?
3. When this has been working for a number of years - it will be tempting to let a few peole ride along. The military may get permission to let someone sit in on urgent matters. Freight flights will follow.
4. Eventually, some airline will get the permission to fly pilotless passenger lines. Most travellers will be skeptical at first, but as time passes and it becomes clear that the pilotless flights are both safer and cheaper - most people will be persuaded...
I thought that light is a visual thing. How does one "eavesdrop" on light?
"Eavesdrop" is just a metaphor for "measuring without the knowledge of the intended recipient".
If you send radio waves (a form of light) for example, then anyone can measure those waves.
However, there are quantum communication systems, where the information is destroyed when listened to. Then it is impossible to "eavesdrop", because the intended recipient will immediately notice.
Yes, but in such a world would we really have a need for money anymore?
Yes. Currently, only about a small portion (I think less than 20%) of the economy is manufacturing. Even if we no longer need to use money on that 20%, we still need it for food, services, energy, real estate...
But I think people will be willing to pay for designs, just like people pay for the design and service of software (the "production" is costless). Of course, for many common products there may be open source alternatives...
If, in the future, copying physical objects is nearly as easy as copying information on a computer, will corporations lobby to pass laws that make it illegal to do so? In other words, will I be arrested one day for making a copy of my friend's
I don't see what new laws need to be passed. It IS illegal to build a perfect copy of a Ferrari.
Remember that the products still have to be designed. We could perhaps expect a development like in software, where companies sell the right to copy the latest model with all the features (~MS Office). On the other hand, there may also be free alternatives of high quality (~StarOffice).
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly how do you compare a large, roughly spherical mass to "the size of Alaska"?
This is not the first time this type of analogy is made... like in Armageddon the President is told that the rock is the "size of Texas". The president understands this as opposed to something specified in square kilometers.
I envision just a simple projection... if you dug down the rock halfway in Alaska/ Texas the borders of the rock and the state would roughly coincide. Actuyally I think it is a pretty useful measure - I immediately get some intuitive understanding for how big it would be
Tor
Your arguments are very valid in theory but they are somewhat academic in nature.
The case in point is that the US has shown much stronger GDP growth than say Europe and Japan for the last 10 - 20 years.
Of couse if this development had coincided with extreme opposite developments in terms of environment and/ or income distribution then the average American could actually have gotten worse off than his foreign counterparts. While such scenarios are easy enough to illustrate with five people in a room, they simply don't translate into something very realistic when applied to the entire economy.
There _has_ been some increasing inequalities in US income distribution in the last few years but that simply cannot eat away a total average growth of several percent. This argument is especially true when the strong growth happens year after year as it has in the US for quite some time now. If every year your cake is a chunk bigger than the year before one has to make really dramatic and urealistic changes in the cutting policy if most people are to get less cake.
Tor
There are great success stories of introductions of alien species, but also many examples of disasters.
For example, in New Zealand rabbits were accidantally introduced and reproduced like, well, rabbits. To counter this problem ferrets were brought in on purpouse. The ferrets, however, prefered to feast on the natural bird life. Now NZ have plenty of both rabbits and ferrets, but many bird species are extinct or threatened.
So methinks that one should be exteremly careful before one brings in new plants or animals to an environment.
Tor
Finding a very thin layer of irridium in the rocks laid down at the very end of the Permian would be compelling evidence.
An irridum layer is (an almost) sufficient condition to prove an impact, because some asteroids contain lots of irridium, but Earth's surface normally does not.
However, it is not a necessary condition, because not all asteroids contain lots of irridium.
So yes, it would be compelling evidence, but we cannot rule out an impact if this evidence is not found.
Tor
OK, I'm supposed to be working, but everyone likes to blame politicians and the tech bosses. Why do you guys never consider the fact that its technology itself that is helping to drive you out of jobs?
The problem with this argument is that thechnology has improved more and more over hundreds of years but unemployment has not been growing correspondingly; today unemployment is only (5-6%) which is not particularly high by historical standards.
Every time we get an economic recession everybody predicts that technology/foreigners (it used to be the Japanese, now it is the Chinese and Indians) will make everyone jobless and that everything will be misery.
Rather the combination of technology and outsourcing is leading to steady increases in standrads of living; the US has shown GDP growth of around 3% for a long time.
Tor
In fact, we are little better off today than the population before the enlightenment, who had serious problems with superstition, general fear of the unknown, etc. superstition is still a non-negligible factor in the lives of many today, even if outwardly sniggered at. but most of all we tend to cling to a set of believes without ever questioning them! as my prime example I often use the phases of the moon, which nicely demonstrated my own "illusion of knowledge" which I had acquired during my childhood and never questioned.
ask yourself how the shadow on the moon is produced while it goes through one "monthly" cycle and how the sun and the earth are involved.
I will bet that more than half of you will actually have a wrong model of what is going on!
I think another issue here is that many of science's answers are rather complex and not always the answers people want to hear. Even if science by now has been able to explain almost everything we see around us many of the answers are very complicated. If you take the time to study any one area you will find the scientific answers to be right, but it is impossible to study everything in detail and understand it all.
Religions tend to provide much simpler answers and actively discourage the believers from questioning those. Many people seem to be perfectly satisfied with this.
Tor
Compared to a car, a house seems like a very easy environment for batteries - no worries about weight, and much less concern about space. How about using the solar to preheat water and save power to your water heater? You could even use a really simple 'battery' like a motor that lifts a heavy weight or pumps water into a tower, then the weight turns the motor as a generator at night time. Or maybe a flywheel (whereas safety concerns hamper their application in cars). I don't know, it just seems like there should be some fairly easy way to store energy for a house.
I think generally speaking batteries and flywheels are expensive and a pain to maintain. Of course it can be done but the question is at what expense. The cost of making your house solar may not be primarily about the cells but about the battery or flywheel or whatever.
The point with hybrid cars is that they already have a hefty set of batteries; that is how they recapture energy when you slow down. It is a relatively small step to attach some solar cells and have the batteries recharge during the day. A friend of mine in Southern California does this very thing and his "gas mileage" is amazing.
Tor
You could always electrolyze water and store the hydrogen and oxygen in tanks. The tanks of gas become your battery and a power cell can be used to generate electricity on demand.
I am not denying that this is possible, but it has to be acknowledged that now the main cost driver of your system is probably not in the solar cells but in this oxygen/ hydrogen separation, storage and electricity generation system. Which illustrates my main point which is that good solar cells are not by themselves sufficient to enable this form of a solution (although of course they are a great step).
Tor
Solar cell technology seems to be getting more and more advanced. When will the time come when we are able to use it to effectively power a complete house?
Key issues here are not only power generation, but how do you store the energy? Most solar energy is generated during the day, but we need a lot of energy in the evening to cook dinner, watch TV and maybe heat the house in the winter. One could of course envision enormous batteries but this seems unfeasible and it is not even clear that this would be environmentally friendly. Another option is to cable out the energy to the grid during the day, and then buy it back at night - but this may take new infrastructure.
I think a more interesting application (at least in the short term) is for hybrid cars. These already have a substantial battery systems so it is a small matter to plug in solar cells.
Tor
Isn't there enough mass here to affect the tides? 2.9 miles long and 1.5 miles wide is quite a bit of area, especially if it's condensed.
Quick order of magnitude calculation: Radius ~10^3 times smaller than moon -> ~10^9 times smaller mass than moon if comparable material.
Also closest distance is 4 times greater than moon and gravity scales as distance squared so the tidal affects of this thing ought to be of the order 10^-10 times as strong as those from the moon - in other words impossible to notice.
Tor
I really disagree with the argument "it is too expensive/ their coding techniques suck, so I have the right to take it".
If you find that everyone else are selling expensive and poor products, then you are in an excellent position to start making better/ cheaper alternatives, no? And if you find this impossible, then maybe everyone else is not so bad after all.
Tor
Oh the irony of that post being here on slashdot.
On a Saturday night.
Tor
in the growing body of evidence to support my thesis that most people really dont give a crap about anything past their next meal.
Methabolism came first, brains only much later. Computer passwords only much later.
Tor
When Ira Flatow asked him what would happen if the probe did not find anything and that Einstein might be wrong, he "hemmed and hawwed" a lot and said that wouldn't be the case - that Einstein was right. He also mentioned that the data would go to a physicist and then be released to the public.
It's not that I'm wearing a tin-foil hat (well maybe), but science is based on conducting experiments in the open and openly sharing data with an unbiased view and procedure, even if it means that Einstein might be wrong.
While I completely agree that the data should be made public eventually, the scientific community has had many bad experiences when incomplete and poorly analyzed data has made it into the public and caused sensationalist headlines. Take for example preliminary asteroid observations. Not only does this cause unnecessary worry but it also makes the involved astronomers look bad, as journalists and the public in general does not understand the difference between "modified based on additional data" and "the first data was wrong".
There are critics of Einstein that are academically serious and not off their rocker like some zero point/tesla fanatics. There have been critics of Einstein ever since he released his theories. You don't hear much about them as they are all heaped into one group and astrocized.
I am not saying that Einstein was wrong (not in the sense that Newton was wrong either), but that true science is keeping an open mind, rather than cower to the politically favorable theory of the moment.
Well, I guess there are two issues here.
1. Those who claim that the theory of relativity is wrong in general. Those people ARE off their rockers and academically unsound, considering that all experiments to date have validated the theory. And for sure, they have never suggested any new interesting experiements and predicted outcomes that Einstein's equations didn't.
2. Many if not most serious modern physicists suspect that there may be scales of time, mass and distance where the theory or relativity breaks down (e.g., at the center of black holes), just as with your analogy of Newton's theory. It is possible but unlikely that this probe will measure such deviations. However, this does not really constitute "criticism" in our everyday sense of the world. Indeed, most scientists probably view Einstein as the greatest physicist of all time.
Tor
you dumbass .. that's like saying Newton was wasting his time coming up with his theories .. I mean who knew there'd be any practical applications of figuring out the laws of physics
They had built the pyramids and horse & buggy just fine without Newton.?
While I completely agree with your sentiment towards the original poster, I think it has to be conceded that no scientist can see any practical application coming out of this for a long time.
That being said, I think just increasing our knowledge of the universe is a valuable endeavor in itself. We are very impressed when we realize that such and such ancient culture could predict astronomical phenomena (even if the exercise was not very useful to them). I think it is amazing to live in a time when many of life's deepest mysteries are being solved.
Tor
The U.S. has laws governing polution, working conditions, benefits, etc. When American investors take their money and invest in overseas operations that aren't bound by those rules, people in both countries suffer. Locals lose jobs, and the country that takes on the work continues its policies instead of making the lives of workers better.
All economic theory, and all empirical data, show that when two regions trade, both benefit. (If the opposite were true, why not put up tariffs between the states and counties in the US?).
Of course, the benefit is true for the country in the aggregate, not necessarily for specific industries. It is therefore understandable that special interests such as American IT workers are negative to trade.
However, it is completely hypocritcial to claim that tariffs and other regulations are in the interests of those in the developing world!! And of course, during trade negotiations we never hear the Indians and Chinese beg us to impose more tariffs or to get more regulations. This is a cause completely driven by the leftist movement in the west.
Improved wages and environment legislation will follow the growth in the developing world just as it has here. For them to legislate the same standards as ours when their economies only produce 1/20th as much is an invitation for economic disaster, just on par with printing more money.
Tor
"multi-planet" species? We can't handle one planet
I am sure we all agree that things aren't handled too well on earth. However, your argument goes one step further by saying that we should stay away from other planets, in order not to spoil them also.
I disagree with that view, because it assumes that pristine planets have value in themselves. IMHO other planets are just a bunch of rocks in space - they are valuable only when we enjoy them. If we stay away from Mars until a big rock falls onto our heads then Mars will be preserved in its original form. But what is the value of that if no one will ever see it?
Tor
Someone is going to lose a finger within the first week it is out on the market.
Oh - cut off finger. Yes a device capable of such dangerous acts be kept away from consumers at all costs.
Better to stick with good ol' knives.
Tor
I recently bought an XM receiver online for cheap. Here they sell one for $30, after mail-in rebate. May be tough to complete it before Dec 31, but it is a good deal:
Link to offer
No, I am not affiliated with these people in anyway, just happy with the deal I got.
Tor
Commercial airlines have an accident rate of 0.06 crashes per million hours of flying whereas the Northrop Grumman Global Hawk UAV used by the US military has 1600 crashes per million hours of flying
This is not a fair comparison. Military UAVs fly around in hostile areas, and what is more they are basically designed and priced to be expendible. Also keep in mind that today's passenger planes are fully capable of flying and landing on auto-pilot.
I think we will get pilotless flights eventually, but it may take 50 years.
1. Military transports will be first. There are already discussions about this; it would be a realitvely simple matter to modify the plane - the tricky part is negotiating rights for flying through airspace and landing at international airports.
2. If the military is doing it, why shouldn't commercial freight transports like FedEx be allowed?
3. When this has been working for a number of years - it will be tempting to let a few peole ride along. The military may get permission to let someone sit in on urgent matters. Freight flights will follow.
4. Eventually, some airline will get the permission to fly pilotless passenger lines. Most travellers will be skeptical at first, but as time passes and it becomes clear that the pilotless flights are both safer and cheaper - most people will be persuaded...
Tor
Bandwith may be OK, but the latency must be horrible. I don't think I'll sign up for Counterstrike using this method... /Tor
I thought that light is a visual thing. How does one "eavesdrop" on light?
"Eavesdrop" is just a metaphor for "measuring without the knowledge of the intended recipient".
If you send radio waves (a form of light) for example, then anyone can measure those waves.
However, there are quantum communication systems, where the information is destroyed when listened to. Then it is impossible to "eavesdrop", because the intended recipient will immediately notice.
Tor
Yes, but in such a world would we really have a need for money anymore?
Yes. Currently, only about a small portion (I think less than 20%) of the economy is manufacturing. Even if we no longer need to use money on that 20%, we still need it for food, services, energy, real estate...
But I think people will be willing to pay for designs, just like people pay for the design and service of software (the "production" is costless). Of course, for many common products there may be open source alternatives...
Tor
If, in the future, copying physical objects is nearly as easy as copying information on a computer, will corporations lobby to pass laws that make it illegal to do so? In other words, will I be arrested one day for making a copy of my friend's
I don't see what new laws need to be passed. It IS illegal to build a perfect copy of a Ferrari.
Remember that the products still have to be designed. We could perhaps expect a development like in software, where companies sell the right to copy the latest model with all the features (~MS Office). On the other hand, there may also be free alternatives of high quality (~StarOffice).
Tor
If you really believe that these are unavoidable profecies, then what is the point in protesting?
Tor