The Gemesis process does have inclusions that tend to produce defects and coloring. However, diamond made by Chemical Vapor Deposition is better than what you dig up - the only way to tell it apart is because it's too perfect.
When the flying brains created the giant infosphere that indexed all the information in the universe, and was then to destroy the universe to prevent any new information from being created. But who's going to sneak into google on a flying scooter?
I find it hard to believe that trained professionals couldn't figure out how to read other formats for cookies. Or find out where the cookies go. As a previous poster said, gimme a break... Heaven forbid they take my computer. They'd have to figure out what cryptic command starts the desktop, and which of 3 browsers (Firefox, Konqueror, Lynx) I was using. After all that, they'd find out I've got no cookies except for about 5 sites:)
Call me paranoid, but I think that the police like MSIE because they know that if push comes to shove, that MS will gladly cooperate and help in exchange for certain 'favors' likely involving no use of non-MS products or the dropping of the next antitrust lawsuit. On the other hand, FOSS developers are far less likely to agree (and will never, ever give the government backdoors to their software).
In other words, it's easier to manipulate one fat, greedy corporation than millions of individuals.
There have been several articles recently that the RIAA thinks that $1 per song is not enough, and they are considering forcing Apple to either raise the price or not sell songs from them. They probably want it to cost $6 per song, on par with a $12/CD that's got 2 tracks you like...
The reason that the internet will destroy the RIAA is because it makes them obsolete much as the airplane made the battleship obsolete and steam made animals obsolete. The RIAA was originally formed to unify the 14-something different standards for recording information on LPs. Now it represents the recording studios who you used to need to record music, the media companies you used to need to get any exposure, and the meatspace retail stores you used to need to sell your music. Home recording devices have been around for a while. Now, the Internet makes unnecessary and replaces the marketing, advertizing, and distributing functions of the RIAA. You can record your own music and distribute it over the internet. Charge a reasonable price, offer free sample tracks, create a website. Eventually, bands will realize that they don't need any middleman taking a cut to sell their music to people.
The RIAA knows that all their power over your music will be destroyed by this, and they're thrashing at anyone they can trying to stop it. Nothing's working.
"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives." -- Abba Eban
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." -- H L Mencken
"To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt." -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Sadly, the RIAA continues to defy reality and believe that suing its customers will bring them back (damn, how many times you gotta BOMB people to make 'em stop HATING you?) when people are faced with an alternative source of music (illegal or not) that is more convenient, better suited to getting them what they want, and cheaper (either free or $1.00 a song).
Unfortunately, I doubt that even the RIAA is so stupid or stupefyingly myopic that they can't see this, so I conclude that it's not about money. They want to be able to control you. They want control what you can listen to. They want to be able to stop anything new they can't pimp to enrich themselves.
They are scared to death of the internet. They hate the idea that I can could pay $12-14 for 12-14 tracks of music that I know I like, as opposed to 2 good songs and 12 pieces of filler because that would force them to put out the effort to create more good music. They hate the idea of something that can be replicated with no physical effort, because those who make money off pressing CDs will be destroyed by it if they don't adapt. They are scared of change, and intent on pulling as many people down as they can.
There's no question that the RIAA will be destroyed by the Internet. The only question is how many people with will take down with them.
Extracting hydrogen from water will destroy life on earth? Not likely. There are 1.53 quintillion liters of water on earth. The heat of formation of water is -15.8MJ/liter. Earth's oceans have 2.42*10^25 joules of energy locked up in them. At the rate humans are using energy, it would take us 383 thousand YEARS to use up earth's oceans as a power medium if every bit of energy we used were used to electrolyze water, and the waste water were launched into space...
Then again, the exact same amount of water comes out of a fuel cell as goes in, so the above is a moot point...
Most of your ideas sound good, but I have a few reservations about underground power+data. Running power and data lines underground sounds good, but maintainence is a PITA compared to overhead wires because of the problem getting to buried, sealed pipes vs climbing a tower (for example, if you wanted to upgrade the data line). Bizzarely, there have also been cases where morons have tried to dig up copper and sell it... However, I certainly think we should have some data lines buried to allow communication in an emergency.
While hardening cell phone towers against damage and power loss is certainly possible, the question is "at what cost." The added expense of hardening the structure of a cell tower to withstand a category 5 hurricane. The generator and fuel to run it through a power outage that may last weeks would be rather expensive (anyone know exactly how much power a cell mast uses?). You would also have to harden all the landlines it connects to that run out of the probable disaster area. This all costs money, and for a problem that takes down service for 2 weeks in several years, cell phones companies just aren't willing to pay. I'm not saying it's right, but that's the problem: Money.
Researchers have been developing anti-fog technology for years, but each approach has its drawbacks. Some stores carry special anti-fog sprays that help reduce fogging on the inside of car windows, but the sprays must be constantly reapplied to remain effective. Glass containing titanium dioxide also shows promise for reduced fogging, but the method only works in the presence of ultraviolet (UV) light, researchers say.
"Our coatings have the potential to provide the first permanent solution to the fogging problem," says study leader Michael Rubner, Ph.D., a materials science researcher at MIT in Cambridge, Mass. "They remain stable over long periods, don't require light to be activated and can be applied to virtually any surface." Coated glass appears clearer and allows more light to pass through than untreated glass while maintaining the same smooth texture, he says.
The group created the ADNRs by compressing the carbon-60 molecules to 20 GPa, which is nearly 200 times atmospheric pressure...
Unless I'm very much mistaken, atmospheric pressure is ~101.3 kilopascals, which makes this more like 200 thousand times atmospheric pressure. I'm a little suprised that slipped by the editors of a site called 'physicsweb.org'...
Carbon is the most electronegative element with a valence of 4. Electronegativity increases on the periodic table going right and up, and it is a measure of how strongly an atom holds onto electrons. This means that carbon can form four extremely strong atomic bonds with other carbon atoms. Because the bonds are strong, they will make a structure extremely hard if the bonds are arranged into inflexible shapes. Repeating triangles make diamond. Hexagons and Pentagons folding back on each other make buckminsterfullerene (buckyballs). Hexagons rolled into cylinders make nanotubes. The fact that it can make 4 bonds allows all these repeating shapes (polymers) to come about.
Carbon is the only element that has these properties (valence 4, high electronegativity) that allow it to form the structures it does. Under extreme pressure and temperature, it's believed that silicon could be coaxed into some kind of polymerization. I remember reading once that a research group managed to polymerize pure nitrogen under megabars of pressure and thousands of degrees F. The result had 3 times the energy density of TNT, and violently decomposed when the pressure was let off - can anyone elaborate or corroborate?
Initially, it'll be the same point as the original manned missions to the moon: Proving that we have a bigger collective dick that the Soviets / Chinese while happenning to also do some science on the side. After that, our government and NASA will return to their usual psychotically-risk-averse stupor.
We desperately need to get some competition going on in space exploration or nothing's going to get done. Come on China...
I'm not being funny. The electronegativity of elements increases to the right and toward the top of the periodic table. The most electronegative element with a valence of 4 is Carbon. So the bonds in long chains of Carbon atoms will hold onto each other more forcefully than any other atomic bond. The strong bond is also the reason that Carbon has such an incredibly high melting point, and forms the hardest substance there is (Diamond).
I remember reading a few years ago about a new sonar-like system being tested by the military to locate snipers. A soldier would carry a microphone, recording the sounds as he went. When a gun was test fired, the information was fed into a computer which computationally tracked the motion of the sound waves through a test course back to the point of origin.
It's a very promising system (Someone shoots at you, your eyepiece HUD immediately tells you where he is), but it was totally impractical. IIRC, they needed to have a prebuilt 3-d model of the test range for the program to backtrace the bullet. It also took the simulation hours to backtrace one bullet when run on a supercomputer. The computing power will soon be no problem. The hard part will be to generate a sufficiently accurate 3-d model of downtown Baghdad...
It sounds as if some of the things they are researching here (preprocessing input/output) might have some application. Don't know what became of that sound-backtrace project, though.
What was the US support of the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan in the 1980's other than sponsoring terrorism against the Soviets? It's only 'terrorism' if you are the target.
Defining what competition is? I thought everyone agreed that is was multiple providers trying to sell you the same good or service - Am I wrong? If the government doesn't enforce competition in an industry, the nearly inevitable end result is a monopoly or oligopoly that locks out competition and provides bad service to customers. See America at the start of the 20th century, Microsoft, or (more relevant to this article) the TelCo monopolies for ample examples.
Since the free market is driven by greed and self-interest, one or a few people/companies who are better at being greedy and self-interested (Which is not necissarily a bad thing) will naturally rise to the top and keep themselves there by outcompeting everyone else. But once they're on top, they lock others out and with no further incentive to do things well, settle for between mediocre and downright bad. Competition is what keeps the quality of service up for everyone. Since it's something that everyone wants and that private companies loathe (their purpose is to get as much marketshare as possible, right?), we need the government to create/enforce it.
If the government doesn't impose competition, your friendly local broadband monopoly will rape you without lubrication for crummy DSL or cable service. If the government makes providers compete, Comcast, Speakeasy, Verizon, and SBC will be all be tripping over themselves trying to provide the services and features you want at the price you want.
Economics is about properly mixing and balancing opposing forces: Neither pure communism nor pure capitalism works. Too little or too much government regulation is bad. Prices naturally equalize to where the producer gets enough profit and the consumer gets a good enough deal. The job of the government, and one of the major choices of a society, is how to handle these mixes.
Really? Then why did my econ book last semester define the free market as one theoretically driven exclusively by self-interest, while also pointing out that there is no such thing as a true free market because someone needs to enforce rules? Neither a pure free market nor a command economy (Capitalism & Communism respectively) works - we need both mixed together.
BTW, learn more about english grammar and punctuation.
The problem is that power lines are not shielded, and so will throw off an enormous amount of RF interference if you run broadband over them. Radio amateurs are already raising hell over BPL before it's even been test deployed for this reason. And yes, radio is still important. It's often the only means of communication with disaster areas where everything else is powerless or destroyed.
I'm not sure about this, but I don't believe it's possible to have much more than a 10:1 disparity between down/up stream speeds because otherwise you can't send TCP ACK packets fast enough to keep more data coming. Thus, you'll never see 1.5/128 because you'd never get the advertised downstream speed. Again, take this with a grain of salt - Can someone confirm?
Um, you've got to make your mind up -- in a free market, the government doesn't intervene at all. What you want is a mixed economy, where the government intervenes to correct market failures (in this case, monopolies).
I suppose I can expect the usual comparisions of US broadband access to other countries. Despite having lost count of how many times this has been gone over and beat to death, the same uninformed posts still show up either praising or bashing US broadband penetration/quality. If US access compares favorably, the other country's system is probably being intentionally mismanaged because the US does have a difficult job facing it: A vast network of POTS and old copper, ugly monopolies, and enormous rural areas to reach. If US access compares poorly, it's usually against a small and densely populated nation that has few areas with less with 150 people/sq mile. Either way, I think the USA is doing fairly well. On to the article:
The FCC overstates broadband penetration rates.
All retarded bureaucracies overstate their achievements - don't you read Dilbert?
The FCC defines "high-speed" as 200 kilobits per second
More BS to inflate the numbers -- see above. Personally, I don't view anything slower than 768/256 as broadband.
The United States remains 16th in the world in broadband penetration per capita. The United States also ranks 16th in terms of broadband growth rates, suggesting our world ranking won't improve any time soon. On a per megabit basis, U.S. consumers pay 10 to 25 times more than broadband users in Japan.
Seeing as Japan's land is all densely populated, it won't cost much to run fiber, copper, or WiFi to everyone. The US has a much more dispersed population to reach.
Despite FCC claims, digital divide persists and is growing wider. Broadband adoption is largely dependent on socio-economic status. In addition, broadband penetration in urban and suburban in areas is double that of rural areas.
People with little money to spare don't spend it on faster internet access, and companies are more willing to run broadband where it's economical. No duh - next?
The FCC ignores the lack of competition in the broadband market. Cable and DSL providers control almost 98 percent of the residential and small-business broadband market. Yet the FCC recently eliminated "open access" requirements for DSL companies to lease their lines, rules that fostered the only true competition in the broadband market.
Mmmm... don't even want to go there. As usual, Washington whores itself out to the biggest campaign donator. This will happen as long as money is considered a form of speech.
There is nothing anyone can do about having to cover a large expanse of rural areas. The only thing we can do is force corruption out of government and reign in the monopolies, allowing competition to benefit everyone. Until then, we will see broadband access intentionally mismanaged to benefit monopolies.
I don't know about manually modifying the init scripts; I'll just have to take your word for it. But I do know that you can just as easily use a text editor on/etc/ to configure Mandrake as Drakconf - I've never seen it overwrite things based on a second database. And I've never had problems dropping in updated versions of programs, either from RPMs or from source, either.
In the end, I prefer some things to be automated. Not all things, not nothing. I like that one command will update the entire system, one more will restart the firewall, etc. For me, Mandrake is enough automation but not so much as to interfere with me doing things my way.
As for security, setting the security level to "higher" during setup, denying all but 4 or 5 inbound ports (web, ftp, ssh, p2p forwarding), and running regular security checks and tripwires is probably enough for most home server/gateway setups like mine. If I ever start getting more traffic, I'll step up security.
'Cause I had a monitor sitting around and the computer I used as a server has a builtin video card. Indeed, I do most maintainence/web writing from my desktop via an SSH terminal. On occasion, it can be useful to have remote GUI display though.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh - the bizzare thing is that Brainiac must be part of the universe he wants to destroy or he couldn't interact with it :/
The Gemesis process does have inclusions that tend to produce defects and coloring. However, diamond made by Chemical Vapor Deposition is better than what you dig up - the only way to tell it apart is because it's too perfect.
Here's more info on Apollo and Gemesis.
When the flying brains created the giant infosphere that indexed all the information in the universe, and was then to destroy the universe to prevent any new information from being created. But who's going to sneak into google on a flying scooter?
I find it hard to believe that trained professionals couldn't figure out how to read other formats for cookies. Or find out where the cookies go. As a previous poster said, gimme a break... Heaven forbid they take my computer. They'd have to figure out what cryptic command starts the desktop, and which of 3 browsers (Firefox, Konqueror, Lynx) I was using. After all that, they'd find out I've got no cookies except for about 5 sites :)
Call me paranoid, but I think that the police like MSIE because they know that if push comes to shove, that MS will gladly cooperate and help in exchange for certain 'favors' likely involving no use of non-MS products or the dropping of the next antitrust lawsuit. On the other hand, FOSS developers are far less likely to agree (and will never, ever give the government backdoors to their software).
In other words, it's easier to manipulate one fat, greedy corporation than millions of individuals.
There have been several articles recently that the RIAA thinks that $1 per song is not enough, and they are considering forcing Apple to either raise the price or not sell songs from them. They probably want it to cost $6 per song, on par with a $12/CD that's got 2 tracks you like...
The reason that the internet will destroy the RIAA is because it makes them obsolete much as the airplane made the battleship obsolete and steam made animals obsolete. The RIAA was originally formed to unify the 14-something different standards for recording information on LPs. Now it represents the recording studios who you used to need to record music, the media companies you used to need to get any exposure, and the meatspace retail stores you used to need to sell your music. Home recording devices have been around for a while. Now, the Internet makes unnecessary and replaces the marketing, advertizing, and distributing functions of the RIAA. You can record your own music and distribute it over the internet. Charge a reasonable price, offer free sample tracks, create a website. Eventually, bands will realize that they don't need any middleman taking a cut to sell their music to people.
The RIAA knows that all their power over your music will be destroyed by this, and they're thrashing at anyone they can trying to stop it. Nothing's working.
Sadly, the RIAA continues to defy reality and believe that suing its customers will bring them back (damn, how many times you gotta BOMB people to make 'em stop HATING you?) when people are faced with an alternative source of music (illegal or not) that is more convenient, better suited to getting them what they want, and cheaper (either free or $1.00 a song).
Unfortunately, I doubt that even the RIAA is so stupid or stupefyingly myopic that they can't see this, so I conclude that it's not about money. They want to be able to control you. They want control what you can listen to. They want to be able to stop anything new they can't pimp to enrich themselves.
They are scared to death of the internet. They hate the idea that I can could pay $12-14 for 12-14 tracks of music that I know I like, as opposed to 2 good songs and 12 pieces of filler because that would force them to put out the effort to create more good music. They hate the idea of something that can be replicated with no physical effort, because those who make money off pressing CDs will be destroyed by it if they don't adapt. They are scared of change, and intent on pulling as many people down as they can.
There's no question that the RIAA will be destroyed by the Internet. The only question is how many people with will take down with them.
Extracting hydrogen from water will destroy life on earth? Not likely. There are 1.53 quintillion liters of water on earth. The heat of formation of water is -15.8MJ/liter. Earth's oceans have 2.42*10^25 joules of energy locked up in them. At the rate humans are using energy, it would take us 383 thousand YEARS to use up earth's oceans as a power medium if every bit of energy we used were used to electrolyze water, and the waste water were launched into space...
Then again, the exact same amount of water comes out of a fuel cell as goes in, so the above is a moot point...
Most of your ideas sound good, but I have a few reservations about underground power+data. Running power and data lines underground sounds good, but maintainence is a PITA compared to overhead wires because of the problem getting to buried, sealed pipes vs climbing a tower (for example, if you wanted to upgrade the data line). Bizzarely, there have also been cases where morons have tried to dig up copper and sell it... However, I certainly think we should have some data lines buried to allow communication in an emergency.
While hardening cell phone towers against damage and power loss is certainly possible, the question is "at what cost." The added expense of hardening the structure of a cell tower to withstand a category 5 hurricane. The generator and fuel to run it through a power outage that may last weeks would be rather expensive (anyone know exactly how much power a cell mast uses?). You would also have to harden all the landlines it connects to that run out of the probable disaster area. This all costs money, and for a problem that takes down service for 2 weeks in several years, cell phones companies just aren't willing to pay. I'm not saying it's right, but that's the problem: Money.
Ack - you're right. I kept thinking polymer was the wrong word, but couldn't think of the correct one... Teach me to post after midnight =)
Carbon is the most electronegative element with a valence of 4. Electronegativity increases on the periodic table going right and up, and it is a measure of how strongly an atom holds onto electrons. This means that carbon can form four extremely strong atomic bonds with other carbon atoms. Because the bonds are strong, they will make a structure extremely hard if the bonds are arranged into inflexible shapes. Repeating triangles make diamond. Hexagons and Pentagons folding back on each other make buckminsterfullerene (buckyballs). Hexagons rolled into cylinders make nanotubes. The fact that it can make 4 bonds allows all these repeating shapes (polymers) to come about.
Carbon is the only element that has these properties (valence 4, high electronegativity) that allow it to form the structures it does. Under extreme pressure and temperature, it's believed that silicon could be coaxed into some kind of polymerization. I remember reading once that a research group managed to polymerize pure nitrogen under megabars of pressure and thousands of degrees F. The result had 3 times the energy density of TNT, and violently decomposed when the pressure was let off - can anyone elaborate or corroborate?
Anyway, hope this helps!
Initially, it'll be the same point as the original manned missions to the moon: Proving that we have a bigger collective dick that the Soviets / Chinese while happenning to also do some science on the side. After that, our government and NASA will return to their usual psychotically-risk-averse stupor.
We desperately need to get some competition going on in space exploration or nothing's going to get done. Come on China...
I'm not being funny. The electronegativity of elements increases to the right and toward the top of the periodic table. The most electronegative element with a valence of 4 is Carbon. So the bonds in long chains of Carbon atoms will hold onto each other more forcefully than any other atomic bond. The strong bond is also the reason that Carbon has such an incredibly high melting point, and forms the hardest substance there is (Diamond).
I remember reading a few years ago about a new sonar-like system being tested by the military to locate snipers. A soldier would carry a microphone, recording the sounds as he went. When a gun was test fired, the information was fed into a computer which computationally tracked the motion of the sound waves through a test course back to the point of origin.
It's a very promising system (Someone shoots at you, your eyepiece HUD immediately tells you where he is), but it was totally impractical. IIRC, they needed to have a prebuilt 3-d model of the test range for the program to backtrace the bullet. It also took the simulation hours to backtrace one bullet when run on a supercomputer. The computing power will soon be no problem. The hard part will be to generate a sufficiently accurate 3-d model of downtown Baghdad...
It sounds as if some of the things they are researching here (preprocessing input/output) might have some application. Don't know what became of that sound-backtrace project, though.
What was the US support of the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan in the 1980's other than sponsoring terrorism against the Soviets? It's only 'terrorism' if you are the target.
The carbon-carbon bond in graphite sheets is the strongest possible atomic bond. Nothing *can* be stronger than a defectless nanotube.
Defining what competition is? I thought everyone agreed that is was multiple providers trying to sell you the same good or service - Am I wrong? If the government doesn't enforce competition in an industry, the nearly inevitable end result is a monopoly or oligopoly that locks out competition and provides bad service to customers. See America at the start of the 20th century, Microsoft, or (more relevant to this article) the TelCo monopolies for ample examples.
Since the free market is driven by greed and self-interest, one or a few people/companies who are better at being greedy and self-interested (Which is not necissarily a bad thing) will naturally rise to the top and keep themselves there by outcompeting everyone else. But once they're on top, they lock others out and with no further incentive to do things well, settle for between mediocre and downright bad. Competition is what keeps the quality of service up for everyone. Since it's something that everyone wants and that private companies loathe (their purpose is to get as much marketshare as possible, right?), we need the government to create/enforce it.
If the government doesn't impose competition, your friendly local broadband monopoly will rape you without lubrication for crummy DSL or cable service. If the government makes providers compete, Comcast, Speakeasy, Verizon, and SBC will be all be tripping over themselves trying to provide the services and features you want at the price you want.
Economics is about properly mixing and balancing opposing forces: Neither pure communism nor pure capitalism works. Too little or too much government regulation is bad. Prices naturally equalize to where the producer gets enough profit and the consumer gets a good enough deal. The job of the government, and one of the major choices of a society, is how to handle these mixes.
Really? Then why did my econ book last semester define the free market as one theoretically driven exclusively by self-interest, while also pointing out that there is no such thing as a true free market because someone needs to enforce rules? Neither a pure free market nor a command economy (Capitalism & Communism respectively) works - we need both mixed together.
BTW, learn more about english grammar and punctuation.
The problem is that power lines are not shielded, and so will throw off an enormous amount of RF interference if you run broadband over them. Radio amateurs are already raising hell over BPL before it's even been test deployed for this reason. And yes, radio is still important. It's often the only means of communication with disaster areas where everything else is powerless or destroyed.
I'm not sure about this, but I don't believe it's possible to have much more than a 10:1 disparity between down/up stream speeds because otherwise you can't send TCP ACK packets fast enough to keep more data coming. Thus, you'll never see 1.5/128 because you'd never get the advertised downstream speed. Again, take this with a grain of salt - Can someone confirm?
Um, you've got to make your mind up -- in a free market, the government doesn't intervene at all. What you want is a mixed economy, where the government intervenes to correct market failures (in this case, monopolies).
All retarded bureaucracies overstate their achievements - don't you read Dilbert?
More BS to inflate the numbers -- see above. Personally, I don't view anything slower than 768/256 as broadband.
Seeing as Japan's land is all densely populated, it won't cost much to run fiber, copper, or WiFi to everyone. The US has a much more dispersed population to reach.
People with little money to spare don't spend it on faster internet access, and companies are more willing to run broadband where it's economical. No duh - next?
Mmmm... don't even want to go there. As usual, Washington whores itself out to the biggest campaign donator. This will happen as long as money is considered a form of speech.
There is nothing anyone can do about having to cover a large expanse of rural areas. The only thing we can do is force corruption out of government and reign in the monopolies, allowing competition to benefit everyone. Until then, we will see broadband access intentionally mismanaged to benefit monopolies.
I don't know about manually modifying the init scripts; I'll just have to take your word for it. But I do know that you can just as easily use a text editor on /etc/ to configure Mandrake as Drakconf - I've never seen it overwrite things based on a second database. And I've never had problems dropping in updated versions of programs, either from RPMs or from source, either.
In the end, I prefer some things to be automated. Not all things, not nothing. I like that one command will update the entire system, one more will restart the firewall, etc. For me, Mandrake is enough automation but not so much as to interfere with me doing things my way.
As for security, setting the security level to "higher" during setup, denying all but 4 or 5 inbound ports (web, ftp, ssh, p2p forwarding), and running regular security checks and tripwires is probably enough for most home server/gateway setups like mine. If I ever start getting more traffic, I'll step up security.
'Cause I had a monitor sitting around and the computer I used as a server has a builtin video card. Indeed, I do most maintainence/web writing from my desktop via an SSH terminal. On occasion, it can be useful to have remote GUI display though.