I should also add the more commonly discussed points that internet relationships differ from 'real' ones in many ways. Most important among these differences are the factors that reduce (or eliminate entirely) the consequences of deleterious behavior. So, for just on example, the anonymity the web offers means we can say and do what we like to others and disregard the consequences. And even if we lose what friendships we may have made, we have instant access to millions of other people online so we can always make new friends. This latter point is even possible in 'real' life, in big cities, but it is absolutely impossible in small communities (such as those in which we evolved). Ostracization means very little online or in a city like Los Angeles, but if you got exiled from your tribe as a hunter-gather, you were likely to become a lion's breakfast in pretty short order.
I don't think it's fair to blame just the internet. There are a lot of forces in modern society that are disolving traditional social networks. I'd say most of them have their basis in technology though. I'm an anthropologist, and while it isn't my area of expertise my (somewhat informed) intuition is that the explanation here is that technology along with infrastructure and support systems have reduced the dependency that individuals used to have on one another for survival.
Taking an extreme example, it is now quite possible to live in a room by yourself and never really talk to anyone, never go anywhere, never really interact with people at all - assuming you order your food in. But even to a lesser extreme things like Wal Mart and supermarkets provide the means for people to survive without being dependent on any other individual person. Whether you're buying dinner or a new car, you're interaction is going to be with someone whom you could just as easily never see again. Instead, we're just dependent on 'the system'.
Looking outside of developed countries, there hundreds of examples of societies and cultures where there isn't a supermarket on every corner, in which case you really have to build relationships and get along with people, whether it's with Mr Baker or Mr Farmer or whatever, in order to survive. And in those places, I can tell you from plenty of field experience, people often genuinely have many more close friends and are much closer to their extended families than we are in the west. In such cultures, people genuinely feel connected to others - not just the people they are very close to, but their neighbors, their communities, their tribes, and their fellow citizens in general. It's probably an important thing to bear in mind, especially since we seem to be dropping bombs on a lot of these sorts of folks these days.
From an evolutionary perspective, situations of social interdependency are a more 'natural' state. I'm not sure if they are 'better' in every way, but they are probably healthier in a strict psychological sense.
There has to be some sort of balance between making the interface intuitive and making it efficient. All GUIs fall somewhere along the spectrum. The thing to remember is where intuitive comes from: abstraction is intuitive when it closely resembles the structure of our real (physical) world experiences. This is true for lots of things besides just computer interfaces - things like language that are built upon abstract relationships between symbols, and their structures are inherently built on our evolved framework of physical and behavioral structures (Chomsky et al).
So here's the deal: an ideal inferface will basically have a structure (i.e.: a logical framework of relationships) closely resembling the real world, but will operate at a speed unhindered by real-world mechanics like intertia, momentum, and spatial constraints. The existing folder+desktop system has been a natural, maybe even unconcscious, evolution towards precisely such a model.
Personally, I think as long as we're missing a dimension - if we're in 2D instead of 3D - then we're not going to have a completely intuitive interface. The problem, though, is that true 3D still isn't really available. We just have 2D emulation of 3D on computer monitors.
So these kinds of fancy 3D interfaces that have physics engines, collision detection, and all that stuff are sort of wasted in my mind until we have a really immersive 3D display system. I feel exactly the same way about FPS games. I'm a gamer, but I'm crushed that VR never took off. There's just no true feeling of immersion if you're stuck staring at your zillion-polygon virtual world through a tiny 19" porthole.
Wear, yes. Discoloration, not necessarily. I have seen a few guitars that get so much use that the lacquer on the neck is worn away, but I've never seen any guitar with the lacquer worn through under the strumming forearm (the area around or under a pick-guard doesn't count - picks go right through lacquer, which is the whole point of having a guard).
The discoloration comes from pigment aging. It has nothing to do with wear or skin contact, since the pigment on your average guitar is sitting under 7 layers of lacquer that are in total over 1mm thick.
So what you're saying would be like claiming that handling a bottle of milk enough will turn the milk yellow due to wear and skin contact. Um, no. The discoloration occurs for entirely unrelated reasons. Assuming he cleans it once in a while so we're not just talking about a residue build-up, your guitarist's Les Paul must use a pigment that doesn't maintain its brilliance.
Another example of the same are surfboards. They start out bright white, but after a few months in the sun they're yellow. That has nothing to do with wear and skin contact (which I guarantee you is more intense on a surfboard than on any laptop), again because of a lacquer coating. The discoloration happens because the foam yellows with UV exposure.
Well I have a white guitar that is coming on 15 years old, and it certainly isn't yellowing. The secret? Lacquer. The underlying paint is probably titantium dioxide based, which stays brilliant white practically forever (as in artist's oil paint, titanium white permanence = 5). Lacquered objects, like my guitar, can take a beating and just be cleaned in any of the usual ways. There are lots of other ways to coat things these days, like powder-coatings (baked on) and anodizing/plating, especially if you're coating metal (a wooden guitar is harder). Sounds to me like Apple either just didn't bother to put a decent coating on, or used a white pigment (maybe like zinc dioxide?) that yellows with exposure.
I hate to be trite, but the Internet will only "be for all" when it is free. By the same token, water and electricity are not "for all" any more than phones, computers, and dentistry are. When our society commits to providing basic services like the Internet (and water and electricity) in the same way it provides schools and roads - via government - only THEN will these things really "be for all."
Until then, these things are just like everything else: available only to those can afford them, and that leaves far, far, far too many people behind.
OK, I can't resist. I'll answer all of your questions, since we all know that the only really stupid question is the one that isn't asked:
How much responsibility falls on Apple to encourage its contractors and subcontractors to significantly exceed statutory labor guidelines or governmental requirements in host countries?
Full responsibility. Period. That is, if you believe there is any basis whatsoever to universal inalienable human rights. The reason is simply that the slope is too slippery. Would it be OK to open an Apple or Nike factory in a country where the local law allows child slavery? Would it be OK for Nike to buy products from other companies who use slaves? No? Then why is it OK to operate in a country where ANY human rights violations are acceptable (such as indentured servitude, which is what labor without regulation usually defaults to, and which is why the employees in TFA are employed at 1/5 the average wage and 1/15 the liveable wage of their area). That is the slippery slope. There is only one ethical solution: apply ALL of your home standards to foreign operations - working hours, paid leave, medical benefits, health and safety conditions, environmental conditions, etc, the only reasonable exception being absolute salaary which can be tied to official cost of living figures published by the host country's government or a reputable source such as the UN or even The Economist's surveys. Clearly this is not what takes place in practice. Multinational corporations don't just move operations overseas because the local economy's cost of living is lower; those savings would not be significant enough. No, they move overseas because they save not just on worker wages, but on every other costly provision of human decency that the citizens of our country demand and which are protected and enforced by our governments as basic human rights.
No one has to work at a Foxconn plant making iPods. No one. And if it's viewed as the best alternative by individual workers who choose to work there, then it's probably, well, the best alternative. (Arguments about how people have no choice, or assertions about how people may be "persuaded" to stay in the employ of such a company once "hired" are likely to not be very persuasive to me...
The point you are missing here is that the workers in this situation are victims. In the 18th Century, a black slave in America had two options: work for food or die. There is no choice in that situation. That is why we call it slavery, and that is why those who perpetuate slavery are criminals. Fast forward to modern China, and you have the same options: work for $0.13/hour 16 hours a day or starve. When cirumstances perpetuate such victimization of innocent people, we call the crime by two names: extorsion when comitted by an individual or group, and tyranny when committed by a government.
Who cares if there are more female than male workers? What possible bearing does this have on the situation?
Perhaps you're not familiar with the history of human rights in any country. Historically, women have always had fewer rights than men, and continue to be victimized (see above) to a greater degree. The Declaration of Independence, for example, says that "all men are created equal." Except slaves. And Native Americans. And women. Women in the United States, for example, weren't allowed to vote or attend most universities until well into the 20th Century. And today women still make less than 75 cents for every dollar earned by men in comparable jobs (ref. US Census Bureau, 2003).
Your final thoughts are more reasonable, but still revealing: you place full blame on the Chinese government, and present multinational corporations as innocent bystanders. They are not. They are party to grotesque violations of basic human rights, and in some instances actively collude to perpetuate the situation by influencing foreign governments. Once again, if there was a country where slavery was legal, would it be OK
I am completely ignorant about programming - the closest thing I've ever done to it is Excel formulas and a couple of tags for things like italics in slashdot posts!
My question is, is there really no 'best' or 'most logical' way to deliver instructions to a computer? In other words, is it actually impossible to deduce a single, optimal programming language from the finite (and relatively small, if I understand it) number of different basic functions a computer is capable of performing?
I mean, obviously computers are the most complex of all machines. But they still only actually do a small handful of different basic tasks. I guess I'm just surprised, in principle, that there isn't a logically ideal language for giving a computer instructions on what to do and when to do it. I vaguely understand the difference between assembly languages and higher-level languages, but again I'm surprised there isn't a logically optimal higher-level language that translates into assembly wth maximum efficiency and accuracy, which then translates into actual instructions with similarly maximum efficiency and accuracy.
My guess is that as different record companies and consortiums launch their p2p services, we're going to see mounting pressure for the consolidation of these companies into massive conglomerates, a la the telecom industry. Then once there's only one record company left in the world, a single p2p service will be all that is available and (like with telecom customers) we the users will then assume the classic position: on all fours and ready to take it with a smile.
I'm not sure I really see the value of this information. Sure, some crackheads end up on Fark.com for showing their ID to the teller while robbing a bank, but the real pedaphiles and terrorists of the world don't do regular google searches for "how to build a bomb" and "kiddie porn" from the computers in their homes. To think there will be any significant amount of useful data collected in this fashion is, well, fairly retarded in my opinion.
I can see this data being useful retroactively for things like criminal profiling and possibly being valuable for targeted marketing analysis, but not for catching child molesters and terrorists.
I'm sure I'll get busted up for posting this as I have in the past, but as a non-programming person I hope that one day there will be software tools available, either for purchase or for free, that facilitate the straightforward creation of games so that the medium becomes more accessible to idiots/illiterates like myself.
Before you start calling me a lazy a-hole, take the analogy of the GUI. GUIs are what made computers of ANY kind a tool usable by anyone. Prior to GUI, idiots like me struggled with command-line interfaces, and creating something like King's Quest was completely beyond imagining. Obviously you can argue that it takes some artistry out of the equation, and that's valid, but the tradeoff of accessibility has a huge upside to it. It's like painting. A few centuries ago if you wanted to paint at all you had to make your own paints, canvas, brushes, frames, thinners - everything. I happen to know how to do all those things, but far more often I buy ready-made tools for the task so I can devote as much of my (little) free time to the creative expression of painting as possible. Obviously painting is a lot more accessible to people now than it was 500 years ago.
Fast-forward to today, and I like to think we're seeing the beginning of a similar development stage for gaming. Today, many of the most popular games have cutting-edge technology - that is usually a big part of their appeal: better graphics. But we may one day hit the wall of photorealism with graphics, just as we've hit a wall with 7-channel surround sound: when new games come out now, they do not ALL have unique proprietary audio engines - a musician records the music and sounds, and they simply get dropped into wherever they need to go.
Maybe one day it will be the same for graphics, networking, and other code. Maybe one day there will be engines and editors freely available that will let anyone sit down and just get creative, without having to be a programmer in order to use the tools needed to express that creativity.
For me, I see this as a philosophy underlying ALL tools: ultimately, a tool should be an effortless extension of human will, no different than your arms or legs or fingers and toes. Tools that unleash the human imagination with the least possible resistance are, in my opinion, an ideal towards which we should strive. Indeed we are striving towards that, even if it is not always consciously. Again, the personal computer - thanks to GUIs - is the best example I can think of.
To get back to a more relevant example, I used the mission editor of Operation Flashpoint several years ago, which is a GUI. To get things to actually work sometimes required editing the scripts by hand, but for the most part it worked really well. Since then I've often wondered how long it would be before we got to the point of having not just a mission editor for one game, but a game editor. Obviously the progression of technology is the wrench in the works, as I mentioned, which is why "Shoot-Em-Up Construction Kit" for the C64 was short-lived. But the idea was there. Maybe when we get to photo-realistic graphics just as we've long since gotten to totally 'realistic' sound, these sorts of toolkits will finally emerge - and maybe even open source and free for everyone.
I am no chemist, but I thought that with enough energy it is usually possible to break up compounds into their constituent elements. Is energy in short supply on the moon? Seems like solar and possibly nuclear energy from the moon's deuterium should be able to supply lots of energy. Am I completely retarded here? Probably...
That's a pretty big leap, in my opinion. I honestly don't mean to be a troll, but the shuttle has more or less proven to be a dangerously unreliable machine. So saying that a single successful flight will, ergo, guarantee subsequent successful flights is a bit like playing Russian roulette and figuring everything will be fine in the future as long as there's no bullet in the chamber this time. It just isn't very sensible.
Maybe it's just the wording, but it seems to me that it would be better to say something like, "despite the very high risk of catastrophic failure involved, NASA will attempt to continue to fly the space shuttle in order to maintain the ISS," since that would at least be honest and accurate.
I thought the last 2 US presidential elections were evidence of much more recent human-chimp interbreeding. Did I miss a meeting or something? Maybe it was orangs...
I think one thing that separates books from DVDs and CDs is that books are their own content delivery system.
With DVDs and CDs (ie: video and music) you need a hardware system to access the content. With a book, the hardware is in the pages and the binding. So when we're talking about e-books, we're talking about changing the playback hardware, not just the distribution channel for the content.
This is important because for music and video the internet (file sharing) has only really altered the distribution channel for content, not the playback hardware.
I think e-books have not taken off because the market likes the existing playback hardware: paper pages and binding. I don't think that is likely to change as long as prices for books remain affordable. Unless the point of production of the playback hardware shifts to the end-user (ie: a home book-binding color laser printer or something like that), this is likely to remain so. And even if such devices were possible, people would probably still buy 'the real thing'. After all, there have been home cappucino machines for a long time, yet Starbucks is booming. These are probably the main reasons why books and bookstores have been a booming business since the inception of the internet, and not the other way around.
The situation may be different in places where books (and Starbucks) are not affordable, like in - say - Bangladesh. And this electronic resource will be wonderful for serving those communities. But giving such markets access to books electronically doesn't constitute any loss of sales since they aren't buyers in any case.
For all of these reasons, I suspect this resource is going to be a fantastic research tool, but I doubt it is going to be a paradigm change so much as a subtle shift for the distribution of the written word.
Your personal annecdote is good evidence in support of the idea that this resource would be used primarily as a research tool and not as a mechanism to displace the existing market for traditional boks.
Obviously studies will need to rule out other environmental factors. But assuming these seven employees don't all live in the same apartment snorting lines of plutonium powder, my guess is the math is going to point to those towers.
That of course means a hell of a lot of other rooftop towers are going to be coming down across the nation in pretty short order.
Slashdot Mirror
Can I be your friend?
I should also add the more commonly discussed points that internet relationships differ from 'real' ones in many ways. Most important among these differences are the factors that reduce (or eliminate entirely) the consequences of deleterious behavior. So, for just on example, the anonymity the web offers means we can say and do what we like to others and disregard the consequences. And even if we lose what friendships we may have made, we have instant access to millions of other people online so we can always make new friends. This latter point is even possible in 'real' life, in big cities, but it is absolutely impossible in small communities (such as those in which we evolved). Ostracization means very little online or in a city like Los Angeles, but if you got exiled from your tribe as a hunter-gather, you were likely to become a lion's breakfast in pretty short order.
Taking an extreme example, it is now quite possible to live in a room by yourself and never really talk to anyone, never go anywhere, never really interact with people at all - assuming you order your food in. But even to a lesser extreme things like Wal Mart and supermarkets provide the means for people to survive without being dependent on any other individual person. Whether you're buying dinner or a new car, you're interaction is going to be with someone whom you could just as easily never see again. Instead, we're just dependent on 'the system'.
Looking outside of developed countries, there hundreds of examples of societies and cultures where there isn't a supermarket on every corner, in which case you really have to build relationships and get along with people, whether it's with Mr Baker or Mr Farmer or whatever, in order to survive. And in those places, I can tell you from plenty of field experience, people often genuinely have many more close friends and are much closer to their extended families than we are in the west. In such cultures, people genuinely feel connected to others - not just the people they are very close to, but their neighbors, their communities, their tribes, and their fellow citizens in general. It's probably an important thing to bear in mind, especially since we seem to be dropping bombs on a lot of these sorts of folks these days.
From an evolutionary perspective, situations of social interdependency are a more 'natural' state. I'm not sure if they are 'better' in every way, but they are probably healthier in a strict psychological sense.
So here's the deal: an ideal inferface will basically have a structure (i.e.: a logical framework of relationships) closely resembling the real world, but will operate at a speed unhindered by real-world mechanics like intertia, momentum, and spatial constraints. The existing folder+desktop system has been a natural, maybe even unconcscious, evolution towards precisely such a model.
Personally, I think as long as we're missing a dimension - if we're in 2D instead of 3D - then we're not going to have a completely intuitive interface. The problem, though, is that true 3D still isn't really available. We just have 2D emulation of 3D on computer monitors.
So these kinds of fancy 3D interfaces that have physics engines, collision detection, and all that stuff are sort of wasted in my mind until we have a really immersive 3D display system. I feel exactly the same way about FPS games. I'm a gamer, but I'm crushed that VR never took off. There's just no true feeling of immersion if you're stuck staring at your zillion-polygon virtual world through a tiny 19" porthole.
Carbon sequestration comes to mind.
The discoloration comes from pigment aging. It has nothing to do with wear or skin contact, since the pigment on your average guitar is sitting under 7 layers of lacquer that are in total over 1mm thick.
So what you're saying would be like claiming that handling a bottle of milk enough will turn the milk yellow due to wear and skin contact. Um, no. The discoloration occurs for entirely unrelated reasons. Assuming he cleans it once in a while so we're not just talking about a residue build-up, your guitarist's Les Paul must use a pigment that doesn't maintain its brilliance.
Another example of the same are surfboards. They start out bright white, but after a few months in the sun they're yellow. That has nothing to do with wear and skin contact (which I guarantee you is more intense on a surfboard than on any laptop), again because of a lacquer coating. The discoloration happens because the foam yellows with UV exposure.
Well I have a white guitar that is coming on 15 years old, and it certainly isn't yellowing. The secret? Lacquer. The underlying paint is probably titantium dioxide based, which stays brilliant white practically forever (as in artist's oil paint, titanium white permanence = 5). Lacquered objects, like my guitar, can take a beating and just be cleaned in any of the usual ways. There are lots of other ways to coat things these days, like powder-coatings (baked on) and anodizing/plating, especially if you're coating metal (a wooden guitar is harder). Sounds to me like Apple either just didn't bother to put a decent coating on, or used a white pigment (maybe like zinc dioxide?) that yellows with exposure.
I believe that's why we have private schools.
Until then, these things are just like everything else: available only to those can afford them, and that leaves far, far, far too many people behind.
How much responsibility falls on Apple to encourage its contractors and subcontractors to significantly exceed statutory labor guidelines or governmental requirements in host countries?
Full responsibility. Period. That is, if you believe there is any basis whatsoever to universal inalienable human rights. The reason is simply that the slope is too slippery. Would it be OK to open an Apple or Nike factory in a country where the local law allows child slavery? Would it be OK for Nike to buy products from other companies who use slaves? No? Then why is it OK to operate in a country where ANY human rights violations are acceptable (such as indentured servitude, which is what labor without regulation usually defaults to, and which is why the employees in TFA are employed at 1/5 the average wage and 1/15 the liveable wage of their area). That is the slippery slope. There is only one ethical solution: apply ALL of your home standards to foreign operations - working hours, paid leave, medical benefits, health and safety conditions, environmental conditions, etc, the only reasonable exception being absolute salaary which can be tied to official cost of living figures published by the host country's government or a reputable source such as the UN or even The Economist's surveys. Clearly this is not what takes place in practice. Multinational corporations don't just move operations overseas because the local economy's cost of living is lower; those savings would not be significant enough. No, they move overseas because they save not just on worker wages, but on every other costly provision of human decency that the citizens of our country demand and which are protected and enforced by our governments as basic human rights.
No one has to work at a Foxconn plant making iPods. No one. And if it's viewed as the best alternative by individual workers who choose to work there, then it's probably, well, the best alternative. (Arguments about how people have no choice, or assertions about how people may be "persuaded" to stay in the employ of such a company once "hired" are likely to not be very persuasive to me...
The point you are missing here is that the workers in this situation are victims. In the 18th Century, a black slave in America had two options: work for food or die. There is no choice in that situation. That is why we call it slavery, and that is why those who perpetuate slavery are criminals. Fast forward to modern China, and you have the same options: work for $0.13/hour 16 hours a day or starve. When cirumstances perpetuate such victimization of innocent people, we call the crime by two names: extorsion when comitted by an individual or group, and tyranny when committed by a government.
Who cares if there are more female than male workers? What possible bearing does this have on the situation?
Perhaps you're not familiar with the history of human rights in any country. Historically, women have always had fewer rights than men, and continue to be victimized (see above) to a greater degree. The Declaration of Independence, for example, says that "all men are created equal." Except slaves. And Native Americans. And women. Women in the United States, for example, weren't allowed to vote or attend most universities until well into the 20th Century. And today women still make less than 75 cents for every dollar earned by men in comparable jobs (ref. US Census Bureau, 2003).
Your final thoughts are more reasonable, but still revealing: you place full blame on the Chinese government, and present multinational corporations as innocent bystanders. They are not. They are party to grotesque violations of basic human rights, and in some instances actively collude to perpetuate the situation by influencing foreign governments. Once again, if there was a country where slavery was legal, would it be OK
My question is, is there really no 'best' or 'most logical' way to deliver instructions to a computer? In other words, is it actually impossible to deduce a single, optimal programming language from the finite (and relatively small, if I understand it) number of different basic functions a computer is capable of performing?
I mean, obviously computers are the most complex of all machines. But they still only actually do a small handful of different basic tasks. I guess I'm just surprised, in principle, that there isn't a logically ideal language for giving a computer instructions on what to do and when to do it. I vaguely understand the difference between assembly languages and higher-level languages, but again I'm surprised there isn't a logically optimal higher-level language that translates into assembly wth maximum efficiency and accuracy, which then translates into actual instructions with similarly maximum efficiency and accuracy.
I know, I'm retarded about this stuff.
My guess is that as different record companies and consortiums launch their p2p services, we're going to see mounting pressure for the consolidation of these companies into massive conglomerates, a la the telecom industry. Then once there's only one record company left in the world, a single p2p service will be all that is available and (like with telecom customers) we the users will then assume the classic position: on all fours and ready to take it with a smile.
I can see this data being useful retroactively for things like criminal profiling and possibly being valuable for targeted marketing analysis, but not for catching child molesters and terrorists.
Before you start calling me a lazy a-hole, take the analogy of the GUI. GUIs are what made computers of ANY kind a tool usable by anyone. Prior to GUI, idiots like me struggled with command-line interfaces, and creating something like King's Quest was completely beyond imagining. Obviously you can argue that it takes some artistry out of the equation, and that's valid, but the tradeoff of accessibility has a huge upside to it. It's like painting. A few centuries ago if you wanted to paint at all you had to make your own paints, canvas, brushes, frames, thinners - everything. I happen to know how to do all those things, but far more often I buy ready-made tools for the task so I can devote as much of my (little) free time to the creative expression of painting as possible. Obviously painting is a lot more accessible to people now than it was 500 years ago.
Fast-forward to today, and I like to think we're seeing the beginning of a similar development stage for gaming. Today, many of the most popular games have cutting-edge technology - that is usually a big part of their appeal: better graphics. But we may one day hit the wall of photorealism with graphics, just as we've hit a wall with 7-channel surround sound: when new games come out now, they do not ALL have unique proprietary audio engines - a musician records the music and sounds, and they simply get dropped into wherever they need to go.
Maybe one day it will be the same for graphics, networking, and other code. Maybe one day there will be engines and editors freely available that will let anyone sit down and just get creative, without having to be a programmer in order to use the tools needed to express that creativity.
For me, I see this as a philosophy underlying ALL tools: ultimately, a tool should be an effortless extension of human will, no different than your arms or legs or fingers and toes. Tools that unleash the human imagination with the least possible resistance are, in my opinion, an ideal towards which we should strive. Indeed we are striving towards that, even if it is not always consciously. Again, the personal computer - thanks to GUIs - is the best example I can think of.
To get back to a more relevant example, I used the mission editor of Operation Flashpoint several years ago, which is a GUI. To get things to actually work sometimes required editing the scripts by hand, but for the most part it worked really well. Since then I've often wondered how long it would be before we got to the point of having not just a mission editor for one game, but a game editor. Obviously the progression of technology is the wrench in the works, as I mentioned, which is why "Shoot-Em-Up Construction Kit" for the C64 was short-lived. But the idea was there. Maybe when we get to photo-realistic graphics just as we've long since gotten to totally 'realistic' sound, these sorts of toolkits will finally emerge - and maybe even open source and free for everyone.
I am no chemist, but I thought that with enough energy it is usually possible to break up compounds into their constituent elements. Is energy in short supply on the moon? Seems like solar and possibly nuclear energy from the moon's deuterium should be able to supply lots of energy. Am I completely retarded here? Probably...
That's a pretty big leap, in my opinion. I honestly don't mean to be a troll, but the shuttle has more or less proven to be a dangerously unreliable machine. So saying that a single successful flight will, ergo, guarantee subsequent successful flights is a bit like playing Russian roulette and figuring everything will be fine in the future as long as there's no bullet in the chamber this time. It just isn't very sensible.
Maybe it's just the wording, but it seems to me that it would be better to say something like, "despite the very high risk of catastrophic failure involved, NASA will attempt to continue to fly the space shuttle in order to maintain the ISS," since that would at least be honest and accurate.
I thought the last 2 US presidential elections were evidence of much more recent human-chimp interbreeding. Did I miss a meeting or something? Maybe it was orangs...
With DVDs and CDs (ie: video and music) you need a hardware system to access the content. With a book, the hardware is in the pages and the binding. So when we're talking about e-books, we're talking about changing the playback hardware, not just the distribution channel for the content.
This is important because for music and video the internet (file sharing) has only really altered the distribution channel for content, not the playback hardware.
I think e-books have not taken off because the market likes the existing playback hardware: paper pages and binding. I don't think that is likely to change as long as prices for books remain affordable. Unless the point of production of the playback hardware shifts to the end-user (ie: a home book-binding color laser printer or something like that), this is likely to remain so. And even if such devices were possible, people would probably still buy 'the real thing'. After all, there have been home cappucino machines for a long time, yet Starbucks is booming. These are probably the main reasons why books and bookstores have been a booming business since the inception of the internet, and not the other way around.
The situation may be different in places where books (and Starbucks) are not affordable, like in - say - Bangladesh. And this electronic resource will be wonderful for serving those communities. But giving such markets access to books electronically doesn't constitute any loss of sales since they aren't buyers in any case.
For all of these reasons, I suspect this resource is going to be a fantastic research tool, but I doubt it is going to be a paradigm change so much as a subtle shift for the distribution of the written word.
Your personal annecdote is good evidence in support of the idea that this resource would be used primarily as a research tool and not as a mechanism to displace the existing market for traditional boks.
That of course means a hell of a lot of other rooftop towers are going to be coming down across the nation in pretty short order.
All your votes are belong to us.
What ogre modded this down? It's funny, people. Laugh.
Any chance we could do this with my long distance phone service?
It's clear these types of errors have a profound affect on you.