One thing that surprises me is that with all this QT running without X windows underneath is that it isn't giving people ideas about a better desktop GUI.
In what regard is running Qt without X windows a "better desktop GUI"? Qt/Embedded doesn't run 99% of the UNIX GUI applications, it can't be used for remote access to compute servers, there is only a single implementation of it (from Troll Tech), it requires more memory and CPU, it only gives me a single toolkit, and every commercial software vendor has to spend $2000+ per developer.
I mean, a lot of effort has gone into a super-efficient X-less QT that requires minimal hardware to run well.
Qt/Embedded on the Zaurus uses a 200MHz ARM with 64Mbytes of RAM; that is not "minimal". If you look at its memory usage, it's upwards of a dozen megabytes. X11 clients run on 8bit microprocessors with 64kbytes of RAM, and X11 servers run on machines with less than 1Mbyte of RAM. The notion that Qt/Embedded is "super efficient" is some marketing fiction not grounded in reality.
Let me put it this way: if Qt/Embedded is so "super efficient", where are those savings supposed to come from concretely and specifically?
X windows reminds me of the space shuttle. It's big and old and we know it won't last forever, but we hide our heads in the sand and we don't want to hear about it. Well, that's a really stupid attitude, especially since there is such an inviting alternative.
You are confusing XFree86 and the X11 protocol. At some point, we should probably throw out XFree86, which has become a pretty messy and big codebase (even though you can compile it into very compact and efficient servers), but there is no reason to get rid of the X11 protocol--nobody has yet come up with anything better.
After screwing over almost every company they ever worked with people don't want to work with them anymore? Gee, I wonder what the reason might be. And just look at Microsoft's profit margin and stock price--those poor people people at Microsoft--competitors have been so rough on them.
As for IBM, I think it was Microsoft that dropped the ball on PPC support--NT for PPC had no applications to speak of and was essentially useless. And Intel didn't fail with the i860 to screw Microsoft, they just screwed up.
Not so. All it takes is a little planning to create great multimode pathways.
Right now, they aren't permitted where people walk in most places. And that makes sense: people don't want 20mph vehicles weaving through 4mph pedestrians.
I've used thesI've used these in cities like Ottawa and Vancouver to walk, skate and ride,
Well, I don't know about Ottawa or Vancouver, but car-free zones in Europe generally still keep bicycles and pedestrians apart. Such zones are created by having pedestrians take over most of the street, with narrow paths for bicycles. Skates, if they are regulated, are generally not permitted at all.
I think that the 'angry' responses are from people who would buy one if they could easily afford one
That is exactly what people who are critiquing the Segway are saying. They aren't saying it angrily, they are saying it by way of explanation. For $500, I'd buy one, for $5000, no way. I could pay $5000 for it, but there are other things that are a lot more fun that I can get for that kind of money.
much like linux users who put down macs, while secretly drooling over one.
You are as wrong on that one as on the Segway. The price difference between a Mac and a Linux PC isn't large enough to make that factor into most people's buying decisions. Sorry, but the reality is that people use Linux because they want to.
Look - the Segway is an attempt to alleviate the total unmitigated disaster that is modern automotive traffic.
Yes, it just happens to be a really, really lousy attempt.
There are no quick fixes. Any road infrastructure that is dominated by 1 ton chunks of speeding metal is not going to permit alternative transportation to co-exist; the road and transportation infrastructure itself needs to be fixed. Putting additional chunks of speeding metal onto the sidewalks will only serve to scare away pedestrians even further.
- "they'll kill people on sidewalks".. amazing, this argument. It's a total non-starter. Anyone on rollerblades or a bike is much more of a danger.
That's why rollerblades and bikes are not permitted on sidewalks in most places.
I'm sorry for the rant, but frankly the blank-faced pessimism disgusts me. Where is your sense of wonder, Slashdot? Don't be like those fucking lemmings who close the case on new technology before it's even been tried.
I don't want these overpriced things taking over the sidewalks. It's bad enough that cars have taken over the roads.
We already know what to do about cars and how to improve transportation: create pedestrian zones, create bicycle lanes, improve public transportation, and improve train service. When there is decent coverage by quality public transportation, people use it. In most places in the US, your choice is a dirty, rickety bus that goes roughly from where you aren't to roughly where you don't want to go. No wonder people stick with the car. And no gadget is going to fix that.
For only $5000 you can get a motorized scooter that allows you to roll where you once walked! That is truly revolutionary, unless you count the bicycle, rollerskates, rollerblades, skateboards, wheelchairs, non-motorized scooters...Aww forget it, I give up!
Except for wheelchairs, none of those vehicles have any right being around where people walk.
You are basically saying "If you parade your black skin around in public, you don't have any reasonable expectation of privacy, and people should be able to just discriminate against you."
The problem in this case is not with the fact that one's meal preference is public, the problem is that the US government potentially uses it to subject people to extra hassles at airports. That's discrimination. And, in fact, my "reasonable expectation" is that if I type my meal preference into Expedia, the flight crew knows it, and the guy sitting next to me on the plane knows it; nobody else has any justification to correlate what I eat with who I am.
It may be costly, it may be time consuming, but the only way a society that wants to be free and open can do passenger screening is by applying non-discrimination uniformly. And, yes, this means more luggage screening. But the alternative in which some people are waved through security because they are of the appropriate racial, ethnic, and religious background, and others are subjected to interrogations will tear a society apart. Do that for a few years, and you will be creating terrorists at home as second class citizens become more and more resentful.
So, I, as a consumer, end up seeing a lot of $10 charges on my credit card statement, but they only statistically correspond do my charges. If they add up to more than I thought I spent, then the company will tell me that I just got "unlucky"? My data sample won't be big enough to prove with reasonable probability that the company cheated me.
Nobody needs to patent that--my current bank already does that kind of random charging (I leave it up to interpretation whether that's deliberate or accidental). But at least, if I scream enough at them, then can at least in principle track down the payment.
We have a good solution for micropayments: digital cash. The merchants should be able to reduce their transaction costs as much as they like by batching their deposits. An even simpler solution is what PayPal and c2it did/does: they keep an on-line running total an only charge the credit card once. It seems to me that if we need anything else, it's a marketing problem, not a technological problem.
If this thing cost under $1000, it would be a fun gadget, like expensive skis (I realize everybody's threshold for "fun gadgets" is different). But at the cost of a decent motorscooter, small motorcycle, top-of-the-line electric bicycle, or very upscale bicycle, it just doesn't make much sense. I mean, paying large amounts of money to go around at 12mph??? You can't even talk yourself into saying that "it's good for you" because it provides no opportunity for exercise--walking is healthier and less dangerous.
There is a tipping point, and regardless of where it is, it's folly to keep approaching it without SOME sort of cleanup scheme.
Just like CO2 emissions and global warming... unfortunately, procrastination is a way of life, not just in college, but also for big, real-world problems.
The only reason to get a KVM these days is to be able to fiddle with the BIOS. After the OS has been loaded, I can connect to it over the network easily anyway. Serial port BIOSes are one solution, but they still require a network-to-serial-port interface, as well as a serial port.
So, are there any BIOSes that can be accessed via HTTP or TELNET? That's perhaps more important to me than more local functionality.
I think this sure beats BIOS upgrades and OS installs via floppies--if they do it right. Imagine being able to just point the BIOS at an IP address in order to download the initial disk image via HTTP, or being able to use the BIOS to partition the disk and copy an initial disk image from a USB drive. Right now, trying to do the equivalent by, say, booting a Linux rescue disk can be hard--most Linux rescue disks still don't know how to deal with USB devices, and network boots are a pain to set up and don't (generally) work through firewalls or HTTP. This is particularly nice for lightweight portable devices that may not have much in the way of drives or interfaces, but they will have networking and possibly USB.
If they do it wrong, however, it might be a nightmare of DRM, spyware, and commercial apps sitting in weird disk partitions. That, we definitely don't need. I don't want my machine reporting to Phoenix every time I boot, for example.
I hope, however, that Phoenix will be cut out of the loop. Something like the Linux BIOS or OpenFirmware make a whole lot more sense to me as the basis for this.
that a part of this was because as the pressure increases your metabolism speeds up
Primarily, you use up your air at depth faster because at higher pressure, there are fewer lungfulls of air in your tank. If it were just for the oxygen, you could hold each breath longer, but you also need to eliminate carbon dioxide. So, overall, you use the oxygen that's in your tank less efficiently at depth. The way to fix that is with rebreathers, which remove the CO2.
Hence the (ahem, very dangerous...) practice of diving deep to clear a hangover - you shouldn't dive with a hangover for lots of reasons, but I know dive-masters who go deep with a hangover. 5 or 10 minutes at 30 metres and they're just taken the equivalent of an hour or two's recovery (or they're in such deep shit that the hangover is no longer a major concern).
Hangover is caused by acetaldehyde. I suspect that if diving helps it, it may be because it's exhaled faster. Higher oxygen concentrations don't seem like a very plausible way of speeding up its normal elimination (which is via oxidation through ALDH).
If true, this would explain quicker healing at pressure - whereas the explanation about "dissolving more oxygen" sounds rather dubious to me...
Increased O2 availability is the correct reason for the benefits of hyperbaric treatment for many diseases (for "the bends", it is elimination of bubbles).
If you want to speed up your metabolism, the best way is to exercise. However, the benefits of that are more long term.
Folks, it's platypuses and viruses. "Platypus" is derived from Greek, and "virus" is derived from a fourth declension noun, whose nominative plural in Latin ends in "-us", not "-i".
It's nice when companies happen to be successful with Linux-based products or GNU-based products. But commercial success (or even widespread acceptance in the marketplace) have little relevance to the central goals of free software. So, basically, to many open source software developers, it basically doesn't matter whether Linux companies are profitable or not.
I'm glad you got the problem fixed. I hope you reported your bad experience to Apple though. Like any company they of course have the idiots on the front line.
I don't think he was an "idiot", he just stated Apple policy. And if you re-read my original posting, you'll see that I didn't even complain about Apple, I merely gave it as an example that you shouldn't expect them to support Linux on an iBook--their ability to support non-Apple products is very limited, just like PC vendors. The "bad experience" I keep having is not with Apple (which I think sells better-than-average systems at a better-than-average price) but with Apple zealots like you, who take any mention of Apple that isn't positively glowing as a cause for a personal jihad.
No matter how many variations they come out with, Palm OS 4 and Palm OS 5 still are pretty limited: you only get 16Mbytes of memory, a lot of application code runs in emulation, there are lots of places where things are essentially 16bit, and the window system is pretty primitive.
Palms are nice for scheduling and TODO lists. But for that, a $90 Zire is good enough, and it's also small and light. I wouldn't buy anything more high-end at this point, until Palm OS 6 comes out.
Getting effective technical support requires some attention on the user's part. Calling up and bitching about how it doesn't work (which is what I suspect you did) and calling up and asking where to find the appropriate settings (which I suspect the parent poster did) are two very different things.
I didn't have a problem with "settings".
I called up and said: "I'm having a problem with my Macintosh Powerbook. It used to connect to my access point, but it stopped working a few days ago. All my other machines still work, so I know the AP is fine. It doesn't even see the network, and reinstalling the OS didn't help either. I think it may be a hardware problem. Could I send it in under my service contract so that you can take a look at it?".
The tech report representative responded: "Before you send it in, there are some things we need to check. Could you please open the AirPort setup utility; we need to check your access point.".
I said: "I am using a [brand X] access point; the AirPort utility won't work with that, will it?"
The tech support person responded: "I'm sorry, but we do not provide support for connecting to non-Apple access point."
I said: "But this Macintosh used to be able to connect, and all the other laptops still work. It stands to reason that it's a hardware problem with the Macintosh rather than anything else."
The tech report representative said: "Sorry. But you could take it in to an Apple dealer yourself and if it also doesn't work with an AirPort access point, then we will try to repair it under our service contract."
By the way, whatever happened? Was it actually a hardware problem? Did you eventually get the settings straight and you now just use this story as good FUD? Or are you really clueless and just trolling?
The Macintosh went in for some other repairs that coincidentally involved replacing the entire top part of the machine (which, I gather, contains the antenna) and it works now fairly well (the range is still pretty poor, however).
The settings are right there, and are quite straightforward.
Yes, it is, and I didn't want support for configuring the Mac. As I said, it was working fine with the AP for months until, one day, for no good reason, it stopped working.
I think it should be fairly obvious why he got helped and you didn't.
Perhaps it's related to the fact that he didn't have a hardware problem and I probably did.
Now, if you have a suggestion for how I could have gotten "more effective" technical support, please feel free to tell me, because I don't see it.
They also said they can transport six people. Now, let's say it's 200kg per person (includes luggage, that's a low estimate); we are still talking about $400000 per person per launch. That's still not what I would call suitable for tourism.
HLS' elevator requires 1-5 years of development (realistically 2 years) and six years to construct. If it drops freight rates to LEO from $10,000/kg to $200/kg, it's a bargain. It would still be a bargain if it only dropped rates from $1300 to $200.
Great! So, the market should be able to pay for that if there is demand. $14b (or however much it costs) is something Gates or Dell could pay for out of their personal fortunes. No need for the government to get involved.
Read the other posting. Apple hardware "supports" 802.11b, but Apple technical support did not authorize return under my service contract when my Apple laptop stopped working with my non-Apple AP.
The laptops connect, without any difficulty, to any WAP that supports those standards.
That's why, when my Mac stopped working with my AP, the same AP that works with Linux and Windows, it looked like a hardware problem with the Mac.
It's called IEEE 802.11b, or 802.11g
There is no such standard as 802.11g yet--it's only a draft standard.
But believe me...Apple has no problem with you using a non-Airport Access point...
Of course, they "don't have a problem" with it, they just don't provide support for those configurations. That meant that when my built-in WiFi card stopped connecting to a non-Apple AP, they said "there is nothing we can do to diagnose it, and, no, you can't send it in under your maintenance contract".
why? Because a lot of their customers (think: education, business) have an established wireless network with another vendor....
So do I, which is why I ran into this problem with Apple support in the first place. I eventually fixed it by exchanging one non-Apple AP with another.
Whether Apple's policy reasonable or not is debatable. However, don't expect Apple to do anything for you or your hardware if you only run Linux on your iBook: their tech support will require that they talk you through diagnostic procecures under MacOS before they authorize you to send the iBook in.
What kind of battery life are you getting on the P2040? Could you put up a page with the XF86Config file and other configuration information at http://www.linux-laptop.net/?
OK, so it's even worse then: 5% of 500 million is then in the range of what you pay for a regular rocket launch, then. So, what's the advantage of the space elevator?
Slashdot Mirror
In what regard is running Qt without X windows a "better desktop GUI"? Qt/Embedded doesn't run 99% of the UNIX GUI applications, it can't be used for remote access to compute servers, there is only a single implementation of it (from Troll Tech), it requires more memory and CPU, it only gives me a single toolkit, and every commercial software vendor has to spend $2000+ per developer.
I mean, a lot of effort has gone into a super-efficient X-less QT that requires minimal hardware to run well.
Qt/Embedded on the Zaurus uses a 200MHz ARM with 64Mbytes of RAM; that is not "minimal". If you look at its memory usage, it's upwards of a dozen megabytes. X11 clients run on 8bit microprocessors with 64kbytes of RAM, and X11 servers run on machines with less than 1Mbyte of RAM. The notion that Qt/Embedded is "super efficient" is some marketing fiction not grounded in reality.
Let me put it this way: if Qt/Embedded is so "super efficient", where are those savings supposed to come from concretely and specifically?
X windows reminds me of the space shuttle. It's big and old and we know it won't last forever, but we hide our heads in the sand and we don't want to hear about it. Well, that's a really stupid attitude, especially since there is such an inviting alternative.
You are confusing XFree86 and the X11 protocol. At some point, we should probably throw out XFree86, which has become a pretty messy and big codebase (even though you can compile it into very compact and efficient servers), but there is no reason to get rid of the X11 protocol--nobody has yet come up with anything better.
As for IBM, I think it was Microsoft that dropped the ball on PPC support--NT for PPC had no applications to speak of and was essentially useless. And Intel didn't fail with the i860 to screw Microsoft, they just screwed up.
Well, first, you probably violated traffic laws with that. Second, even if you didn't run into anybody, it is damned annoying for pedestrians.
Right now, they aren't permitted where people walk in most places. And that makes sense: people don't want 20mph vehicles weaving through 4mph pedestrians.
I've used thesI've used these in cities like Ottawa and Vancouver to walk, skate and ride,
Well, I don't know about Ottawa or Vancouver, but car-free zones in Europe generally still keep bicycles and pedestrians apart. Such zones are created by having pedestrians take over most of the street, with narrow paths for bicycles. Skates, if they are regulated, are generally not permitted at all.
That is exactly what people who are critiquing the Segway are saying. They aren't saying it angrily, they are saying it by way of explanation. For $500, I'd buy one, for $5000, no way. I could pay $5000 for it, but there are other things that are a lot more fun that I can get for that kind of money.
much like linux users who put down macs, while secretly drooling over one.
You are as wrong on that one as on the Segway. The price difference between a Mac and a Linux PC isn't large enough to make that factor into most people's buying decisions. Sorry, but the reality is that people use Linux because they want to.
Yes, it just happens to be a really, really lousy attempt.
There are no quick fixes. Any road infrastructure that is dominated by 1 ton chunks of speeding metal is not going to permit alternative transportation to co-exist; the road and transportation infrastructure itself needs to be fixed. Putting additional chunks of speeding metal onto the sidewalks will only serve to scare away pedestrians even further.
- "they'll kill people on sidewalks".. amazing, this argument. It's a total non-starter. Anyone on rollerblades or a bike is much more of a danger.
That's why rollerblades and bikes are not permitted on sidewalks in most places.
I'm sorry for the rant, but frankly the blank-faced pessimism disgusts me. Where is your sense of wonder, Slashdot? Don't be like those fucking lemmings who close the case on new technology before it's even been tried.
I don't want these overpriced things taking over the sidewalks. It's bad enough that cars have taken over the roads.
We already know what to do about cars and how to improve transportation: create pedestrian zones, create bicycle lanes, improve public transportation, and improve train service. When there is decent coverage by quality public transportation, people use it. In most places in the US, your choice is a dirty, rickety bus that goes roughly from where you aren't to roughly where you don't want to go. No wonder people stick with the car. And no gadget is going to fix that.
Except for wheelchairs, none of those vehicles have any right being around where people walk.
The problem in this case is not with the fact that one's meal preference is public, the problem is that the US government potentially uses it to subject people to extra hassles at airports. That's discrimination. And, in fact, my "reasonable expectation" is that if I type my meal preference into Expedia, the flight crew knows it, and the guy sitting next to me on the plane knows it; nobody else has any justification to correlate what I eat with who I am.
It may be costly, it may be time consuming, but the only way a society that wants to be free and open can do passenger screening is by applying non-discrimination uniformly. And, yes, this means more luggage screening. But the alternative in which some people are waved through security because they are of the appropriate racial, ethnic, and religious background, and others are subjected to interrogations will tear a society apart. Do that for a few years, and you will be creating terrorists at home as second class citizens become more and more resentful.
Nobody needs to patent that--my current bank already does that kind of random charging (I leave it up to interpretation whether that's deliberate or accidental). But at least, if I scream enough at them, then can at least in principle track down the payment.
We have a good solution for micropayments: digital cash. The merchants should be able to reduce their transaction costs as much as they like by batching their deposits. An even simpler solution is what PayPal and c2it did/does: they keep an on-line running total an only charge the credit card once. It seems to me that if we need anything else, it's a marketing problem, not a technological problem.
If this thing cost under $1000, it would be a fun gadget, like expensive skis (I realize everybody's threshold for "fun gadgets" is different). But at the cost of a decent motorscooter, small motorcycle, top-of-the-line electric bicycle, or very upscale bicycle, it just doesn't make much sense. I mean, paying large amounts of money to go around at 12mph??? You can't even talk yourself into saying that "it's good for you" because it provides no opportunity for exercise--walking is healthier and less dangerous.
Just like CO2 emissions and global warming... unfortunately, procrastination is a way of life, not just in college, but also for big, real-world problems.
So, are there any BIOSes that can be accessed via HTTP or TELNET? That's perhaps more important to me than more local functionality.
If they do it wrong, however, it might be a nightmare of DRM, spyware, and commercial apps sitting in weird disk partitions. That, we definitely don't need. I don't want my machine reporting to Phoenix every time I boot, for example.
I hope, however, that Phoenix will be cut out of the loop. Something like the Linux BIOS or OpenFirmware make a whole lot more sense to me as the basis for this.
Primarily, you use up your air at depth faster because at higher pressure, there are fewer lungfulls of air in your tank. If it were just for the oxygen, you could hold each breath longer, but you also need to eliminate carbon dioxide. So, overall, you use the oxygen that's in your tank less efficiently at depth. The way to fix that is with rebreathers, which remove the CO2.
Hence the (ahem, very dangerous...) practice of diving deep to clear a hangover - you shouldn't dive with a hangover for lots of reasons, but I know dive-masters who go deep with a hangover. 5 or 10 minutes at 30 metres and they're just taken the equivalent of an hour or two's recovery (or they're in such deep shit that the hangover is no longer a major concern).
Hangover is caused by acetaldehyde. I suspect that if diving helps it, it may be because it's exhaled faster. Higher oxygen concentrations don't seem like a very plausible way of speeding up its normal elimination (which is via oxidation through ALDH).
If true, this would explain quicker healing at pressure - whereas the explanation about "dissolving more oxygen" sounds rather dubious to me...
Increased O2 availability is the correct reason for the benefits of hyperbaric treatment for many diseases (for "the bends", it is elimination of bubbles).
If you want to speed up your metabolism, the best way is to exercise. However, the benefits of that are more long term.
Folks, it's platypuses and viruses. "Platypus" is derived from Greek, and "virus" is derived from a fourth declension noun, whose nominative plural in Latin ends in "-us", not "-i".
It's nice when companies happen to be successful with Linux-based products or GNU-based products. But commercial success (or even widespread acceptance in the marketplace) have little relevance to the central goals of free software. So, basically, to many open source software developers, it basically doesn't matter whether Linux companies are profitable or not.
I don't think he was an "idiot", he just stated Apple policy. And if you re-read my original posting, you'll see that I didn't even complain about Apple, I merely gave it as an example that you shouldn't expect them to support Linux on an iBook--their ability to support non-Apple products is very limited, just like PC vendors. The "bad experience" I keep having is not with Apple (which I think sells better-than-average systems at a better-than-average price) but with Apple zealots like you, who take any mention of Apple that isn't positively glowing as a cause for a personal jihad.
Palms are nice for scheduling and TODO lists. But for that, a $90 Zire is good enough, and it's also small and light. I wouldn't buy anything more high-end at this point, until Palm OS 6 comes out.
I didn't have a problem with "settings".
I called up and said: "I'm having a problem with my Macintosh Powerbook. It used to connect to my access point, but it stopped working a few days ago. All my other machines still work, so I know the AP is fine. It doesn't even see the network, and reinstalling the OS didn't help either. I think it may be a hardware problem. Could I send it in under my service contract so that you can take a look at it?".
The tech report representative responded: "Before you send it in, there are some things we need to check. Could you please open the AirPort setup utility; we need to check your access point.".
I said: "I am using a [brand X] access point; the AirPort utility won't work with that, will it?"
The tech support person responded: "I'm sorry, but we do not provide support for connecting to non-Apple access point."
I said: "But this Macintosh used to be able to connect, and all the other laptops still work. It stands to reason that it's a hardware problem with the Macintosh rather than anything else."
The tech report representative said: "Sorry. But you could take it in to an Apple dealer yourself and if it also doesn't work with an AirPort access point, then we will try to repair it under our service contract."
By the way, whatever happened? Was it actually a hardware problem? Did you eventually get the settings straight and you now just use this story as good FUD? Or are you really clueless and just trolling?
The Macintosh went in for some other repairs that coincidentally involved replacing the entire top part of the machine (which, I gather, contains the antenna) and it works now fairly well (the range is still pretty poor, however).
The settings are right there, and are quite straightforward.
Yes, it is, and I didn't want support for configuring the Mac. As I said, it was working fine with the AP for months until, one day, for no good reason, it stopped working.
I think it should be fairly obvious why he got helped and you didn't.
Perhaps it's related to the fact that he didn't have a hardware problem and I probably did.
Now, if you have a suggestion for how I could have gotten "more effective" technical support, please feel free to tell me, because I don't see it.
I can multiply, really: that should have been $40000 per person per launch.
They also said they can transport six people. Now, let's say it's 200kg per person (includes luggage, that's a low estimate); we are still talking about $400000 per person per launch. That's still not what I would call suitable for tourism.
HLS' elevator requires 1-5 years of development (realistically 2 years) and six years to construct. If it drops freight rates to LEO from $10,000/kg to $200/kg, it's a bargain. It would still be a bargain if it only dropped rates from $1300 to $200.
Great! So, the market should be able to pay for that if there is demand. $14b (or however much it costs) is something Gates or Dell could pay for out of their personal fortunes. No need for the government to get involved.
Read the other posting. Apple hardware "supports" 802.11b, but Apple technical support did not authorize return under my service contract when my Apple laptop stopped working with my non-Apple AP.
The laptops connect, without any difficulty, to any WAP that supports those standards.
That's why, when my Mac stopped working with my AP, the same AP that works with Linux and Windows, it looked like a hardware problem with the Mac.
It's called IEEE 802.11b, or 802.11g
There is no such standard as 802.11g yet--it's only a draft standard.
Of course, they "don't have a problem" with it, they just don't provide support for those configurations. That meant that when my built-in WiFi card stopped connecting to a non-Apple AP, they said "there is nothing we can do to diagnose it, and, no, you can't send it in under your maintenance contract".
why? Because a lot of their customers (think: education, business) have an established wireless network with another vendor....
So do I, which is why I ran into this problem with Apple support in the first place. I eventually fixed it by exchanging one non-Apple AP with another.
Whether Apple's policy reasonable or not is debatable. However, don't expect Apple to do anything for you or your hardware if you only run Linux on your iBook: their tech support will require that they talk you through diagnostic procecures under MacOS before they authorize you to send the iBook in.
What kind of battery life are you getting on the P2040? Could you put up a page with the XF86Config file and other configuration information at http://www.linux-laptop.net/?
OK, so it's even worse then: 5% of 500 million is then in the range of what you pay for a regular rocket launch, then. So, what's the advantage of the space elevator?