At this juncture, computers are still too expensive and teachers too unfamiliar with computers to make them useful.
Good software and educational content could go a long way toward helping students. Imagine if all students had the benefit of the best, most informative, most entertaining teachers in the country. Imagine if monitoring software could pinpoint when a student was having a bad day or was not understanding a particular lesson and alert the teacher of the need for extra personal attention. Computers could leverage and augment the best teachers to provide a better education for all.
Give it a decade or two and then see what really cheap computers and tech-marinated teachers can do.
Emulators like this are one reason why I am not so worried about retaining access to files in obsolete formats. As long as you carefully transfer old files and their corresponding applications to new storage media, you can hope that a emulator like this will give you access to otherwise lost data.
Its not a perfect solution -- emulators don't support special hardware or obsolete storage equipment and not every machine gets an emulator.
Morphine and other opiates are bad because they depress the entire central nervous system -- they deaden everthing. Yet this is also a good quality for treating certain patient cases mentioned by the article. The problem with a blowfish analgesic is that it will alleviate physical pain, but do nothing for the psychological pain of terminal illness. Whereas morphine will make you forget your troubles, blowfish medicine will leave you clearheaded to consider your fate.
Otherwise, blowfish medicine might do wonders for pain associated with surgery and trama. And, its nonaddictive nature might help doctors be less stingy with painkillers. Unfortunately, there remains the issue of whether managed care will cover the costs for mere pain control.
Why no herb garden?
on
Eating in Space
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I'm surprised that none of the astronauts has snuck a small herb garden on board. Some fresh basil, chives, or parsley would surely enliven the food. You could probably grow these plants in a dirt-free medium by stuffing damp cloth fragments into a sock and keeping it damp. You could then velcro the planter near a window and let it grow.
The plants might grow strangely in zero-G, but I'm sure the leaves would still taste OK.
Re:No refrigeration?
on
Eating in Space
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I wouldn't have thought keeping things cold was that big a challenge in space.
Temperature control is actually quite a problem so the ISS has a number of features to keep temperatures regulated. Overall, space in LEO is cold (averaging 0 F). The problem is that it is far too hot on the sunny side (250 F) and far too cold on the shady side (-250 F). Therefore the ISS is extremely well insulated to maintain an even temperature across the entire inside. But this insulation leads to other problems -- heat builds up from all the equipment. Thus, the ISS has a giant radiator to dump excess heat into space.
Doesn't matter if its cheap, if its slow, its useless.
Very good point! The read access time and read-speed of the WORM needs to be sufficiently high to compete with HD-storage. Write speeds can be much much slower if the system uses another form of memory for caching (e.g., a 10 GB HD in front of a 1000 GB WORM).
To really enjoy this train wifi, we need a LAN Game protocol designed for publically used WiFi locations. This would let people publish a list of which games they might like to play and support connectinons to others. Any LAN-playable game would need some type of plugin that provides information about how to connect to other (i.e., a Chess app would only let one other person connect, an MMORG would define which scenarios different people want to play, etc.) That way the person in car 2 could find a game buddy in car 4 without any prearrangements with that person.
I see only two problems. The first is security. Depending on who programs the protocol, it could end up with exploits. Also, the games might provide a channel for exploits if someone uses a hacked copy of Doom to insinuate themselves into another rider's laptop. The second problem would be playability when the person in car 3 decides to use the 5 hour journey to download the latest Linux distro.
1984 is not that old, the Mac and IBM PC were already out, for heaven's sake! 1984 is long after real classics like the Kim-1, Sinclair ZX80, and Apple II appeared. The real golden age of microcomputing was when you could fit the entire OS, basic interpreter and maybe a game or two into 8 K of RAM. Back then, a budding nerd could easily understand what every single chip and instruction did.
Yes, but you can write umpteen times on a hard drive, which would mean WORM media would have to be at least a hundred times cheaper than WMRM media for it to be "cheap enough".
You can write upteen times to a harddrive, but most people don't. Most of the files on my harddrive have only been written once. Files such as system files (except preferences), application executables, digital camera images, copies of old documents, music files tend to be written once. Moreover, most of the files that have been written multiple times (e.g. working documents, images that I am editing) get written a few times for a few days and then sit unwritten for years. I'd bet that a petabyte WORM drive with a little as 10 gigabytes of hard drive as cache (cached files would be copied to WORM once the file is unchanging for a 1 week) would work extremely well and have far less than 2 copies per megabyte on the WORM side.
Thus, the break-even cost ratio point for WORM-based operations might be only a factor of two or three. WORM media does not need to be hundred of times cheaper.
Rewritable storage is only needed if storage space is expensive. If WORM media were spacious enough and cheap enough, it could be used for almost all secondary storage applications except swap space and some rewrite-intensive applications (like video editting). As a side benefit, one would have the ultimate in file archiving -- every version of the file would be retained in WORM media. Many forms of malware would be easily undone by rolling back software, files, etc.
Why spend extra money for a rewritable storage system if WORM is cheap enough?
Because most computer peripherals use either 5 VDC or 12 VDC, why not have a small array of 5V and 12V jacks in the back of PCs? That way, your peripherals can be powered by the PC and automatically turned off when you shut down your machine. This solution would let you dump a bunch of wall-warts and probably be more energy efficient too.
I guess you didnt RTFA did you. Go look at the f***ing equation he came up with *******. It accounts for famliy size and age range.
Actually, I did RTFA and read it more closely than the AC did. The article clearly states that the variable "Age range" refers to the accessibility of the game, not the ages of the members of a potential customer family. There is no "Family size" variable, only a "number of people" variable that refers to the number of players the game supports.
The most telling statements that prove that the formula is family-independent is the fact that they come up with a single simple score for cards of exactly 0.98 and assert a specific ranking for a set of games. Because these statements are unconditionalized, we know that the scores are independent of family composition. If they had said, cards get a score of X if the family is of this size and age composition or cards have a score range of X to Y depending on family, then we would know that the formula was a function of properties of individual families.
It's too bad that their formula didn't make use of family-specific variables because then Mr. Eldridge would give people a reason to come to his shops. If he had a little calculator/self-test/application that let a family answer a few questions and then provide a personalized set of game recommendations, he would encourage people to come to his shop. Instead, he is looking for the "perfect family game" This quixotic quest assumes that all families are alike so that one game can be #1 for everyone.
A better solution might be to use a high-res digital camera that takes snapshots of the actual kitchen table, extracts changes in the scene, and transmits that.
This would be superior to the RFID appoach because it allows the inclusion of ordinary and arbitrary objects. If you receive a greeting card from a loved-one, you place it on the table to show that you appreciated it. In contrast, the RFID approach requires someone to both tag any new object and create a simulacra of it for display on the other end. Rather than people creating a symbolic language from the default icons in the system (e.g., the default coffee cup, cigarette pack, etc.), the high-res image fragments could include very personal items such as the actual greeting card, a favorite coffee cup, or a meaningful momento.
Image differencing and extraction would reduce the bandwidth requirements to below that required for videoconferencing. Even if a high-res (5 megapixel) imager is used, the image extraction algorithms would work to only transmit image fragments of objects that changed but stayed in place for some time. Thus, it might transmit a single snapshot of your bowl of cereal in the morning, but not any images from when you quickly opened and closed the kitchen cabinets.
It's events like this that make one realize how hostile space really is and how primitive our tools are. We are really still in the calamity-prone early stages of an age of space exploration that is not unlike the often hazardous voyages of discovery in the 15th to 17th centuries.
It seems to me that space exploration will only succeed once it becomes so cheap or reliable to send stuff out, that nobody worries about the loss of intruments or even whole spacecraft.
The provided formula purports to compute the quality of family games, but fails to include variables related to the specific family. Al the vairables are properties of the game. The perfect family game for a young family is different from the perfect game for a family with old children. Some very enjoyable games might be totally unsuitable if they require 4 players and the family has a single child.
PFG = f(Game, Family) so that different games would have different ranking for different families.
Ethics and public policty really can't handle this type of knowledge on who can get what disease after exposure to common environmental factors or habits. Current health policy standards and EPA guidelines assume that "all people are created equal." Thus, the EPA sets carcinogen levels to create a less than one-in-a-million chance of getting cancer. But what happens now that we know that we are not all created equal -- instead of everyone having a one-in-a-million chance, we have 999,999 people with no chance of cancer and 1 genetically identifiable person per million with a 100% chance of cancer.
The existence of distinct genetic susceptabilities to high-fat foods, smoking, carcinogens, medications, etc. makes it hard to create uniform regulations for food, medicine, and occupational conditions.
The Helios Solar Airplane probably could have flown around the world. But with a cruising speed of only about 40 km/hr it would have taken 1000 hours (41 days). Such a long duration flight is fine for an unmanned aircraft, but poses severe challenges for manned flight. Carrying weeks worth of food, water, and oxygen represents additional payload that such a vehicle can ill afford. Onboard recycling/extraction systems could reduce the need for consumables, but they add weight also.
But without a person in the cockpit, the venture won't get much media attention. And without media attention, the project won't attract much sponsorship...... SIGH!
I would assume that the pilot would fly a zigziag course. During the day, they would fly westward to stay in the sun as long as possible. During the night, they would fly eastward to meet the dawn as soon as possible.
I also wonder if they might choose a route that flies over the upwelling of air at the equatorial convergence zone. It might be rough, but those air currents could help them stay aloft during the night.
Computer viruses are two-stage viruses
on
20 Years of Virii
·
· Score: 1
First the virus infects the human host with the desire to write the software for the virus. Then the software virus infects multiple computers and multiplies. Then another person sees the power/attention garnered by the virus and is themselves infected. And so the cycle goes -- infecting both humans and computers.
There is much irony in advocating the use of paper at the grand opening on the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina. After all, we lost the first library at Alexandria due to the flammability and single-point vulnerability of paper-based libraries. I don't think that Eco thought too much about the real purpose of a library and how mineral memory serves that purpose better than does vegetal memory.
A library is intended to provide a robust safe-keeping storage function for human knowledge. The ever-decreasing cost of hard disks mean that more people can now maintain their own personal libraries. And if you use a fairly simple common denominator format and transfer/translate old documents, then you can maintain digital copies of works indefinitely. These personal libraries are distributed and that makes them much more robust to both calamity and government censorship. At the very least it is much easier to reconstruct a destroyed digital library than a destroyed paper library. Had the old library of Alexandria been on the web back then, we would still have it now.
A library also provides a selection/filtering process -- helping patrons to find what they are looking for in the literal stacks of library. Although a logical organization scheme (such as LC or Dewey), card catalogs (online or paper) and talented librarians can help people find what they are looking for, these schemes are terribly limited. If your chosen paper book is checked out, you are out of luck. If you seek obscure information, you are faced with a laborious process of trying to find books that might include a small mention of your topic. Even if you want a good piece of literature, you can have a hard time finding someone with "your taste" in literature to provide a recommendation. In contrast, digital libraries never run out of copies, have fine-grain search capabilities, and offer collaborative filtering options (like Amazon's people who bought X, also bought Y).
I can only hope that professional librarians are more forward thinking than Eco is.
The presumption that paper is better for extended reading is increasingly less valid. Since a got a large LCD display a few years ago, I find that I seldom print pages anymore. I still like and buy some physical books (fewer than before), but I miss the features afforded by accessing stuff in a digital format. Paper still has higher resolution and physical portability, but this relative advantage is waning.
I'm sure that paper vs. clay arguments raged in the early days of paper. Paper was flimsy, flammable, and cheap. Clay was solid, serene, and worthy of keeping. A similar set of arguments now embroils the screen vs. paper debate.
In a few decades, I'd bet that most people will consider paper an anachronism -- hardcopy being too inflexible, bulky, and expensive to use in everyday life. Better screens and from-birth exposure to the advantages of virtual access will lower people's nostalgia for and use of paper. Paper will never go away (after all, we still carve stone tablets) but paper will be marginalized. The percentage of content read on the screen will only increase.
Why not use a booster to ensure the best data rate.? An number of vendors offer a range of fixed directional antennas and repeaters and phone booster antennas.
Unless you are driving in a car or reading email as you walk, "mobile" users are stationary during actual use (a car-top cellphone antenna might be the answer for truly mobile use). For semi-mobile use, a little stand and a Yagi antenna would help improve transmission/reception to the local cell tower. A simple signal strength app would help you point the antenna (for extra credit it could even help you find a tower in an adjacent, less used cell for access to more slots). For boosted use in a hotel room, cafe, or client office, a directional antenna or repeater would be quite useful.
Major detail... Venus's day is 225 earth days long. It is spinning far too slowly to support a space elevator that relies on a geosynchronous orbit at the top.
Very good point! How about a spinning space elevator . It consists of an orbiting spinning tether. Both ends of the tether dip into the atmosphere and nearly touch the ground at one or more landing points along the equator. While the center of mass of the tether is orbiting at what ever required velocity, the tether is counterrotating with a tip velocity that compensates for the orbital velocity. Thus, the tip of the tether becomes nearly stationary as it touches down at the landing point(s). As a side benefit, the tip of the tether furthest from the ground is moving at nearly twice the velocity of the orbiting tether mass and can sling payloads into interplanetary orbits.
Yes and no. Desalination by reverse osmosis or distillation would remove the caffeine (and many other pharmaceutical byproducts) from sea water when making drinking water. But the concentrated salt water dumped out of the desalination plant would still contain these pollutants.
Standard treatment plants used for making drinking water from freshwater would probably NOT remove caffeine or other pharmaceuticals. At best, the chlorination/oxygenation/UV purification process might degrade the pharma chemicals. At worst, these purification processes might convert the pharma chemicals into even more toxic analogs of the chemicals.
Slashdot Mirror
At this juncture, computers are still too expensive and teachers too unfamiliar with computers to make them useful.
Good software and educational content could go a long way toward helping students. Imagine if all students had the benefit of the best, most informative, most entertaining teachers in the country. Imagine if monitoring software could pinpoint when a student was having a bad day or was not understanding a particular lesson and alert the teacher of the need for extra personal attention. Computers could leverage and augment the best teachers to provide a better education for all.
Give it a decade or two and then see what really cheap computers and tech-marinated teachers can do.
Emulators like this are one reason why I am not so worried about retaining access to files in obsolete formats. As long as you carefully transfer old files and their corresponding applications to new storage media, you can hope that a emulator like this will give you access to otherwise lost data.
Its not a perfect solution -- emulators don't support special hardware or obsolete storage equipment and not every machine gets an emulator.
Morphine and other opiates are bad because they depress the entire central nervous system -- they deaden everthing. Yet this is also a good quality for treating certain patient cases mentioned by the article. The problem with a blowfish analgesic is that it will alleviate physical pain, but do nothing for the psychological pain of terminal illness. Whereas morphine will make you forget your troubles, blowfish medicine will leave you clearheaded to consider your fate.
Otherwise, blowfish medicine might do wonders for pain associated with surgery and trama. And, its nonaddictive nature might help doctors be less stingy with painkillers. Unfortunately, there remains the issue of whether managed care will cover the costs for mere pain control.
I'm surprised that none of the astronauts has snuck a small herb garden on board. Some fresh basil, chives, or parsley would surely enliven the food. You could probably grow these plants in a dirt-free medium by stuffing damp cloth fragments into a sock and keeping it damp. You could then velcro the planter near a window and let it grow.
The plants might grow strangely in zero-G, but I'm sure the leaves would still taste OK.
I wouldn't have thought keeping things cold was that big a challenge in space.
Temperature control is actually quite a problem so the ISS has a number of features to keep temperatures regulated. Overall, space in LEO is cold (averaging 0 F). The problem is that it is far too hot on the sunny side (250 F) and far too cold on the shady side (-250 F). Therefore the ISS is extremely well insulated to maintain an even temperature across the entire inside. But this insulation leads to other problems -- heat builds up from all the equipment. Thus, the ISS has a giant radiator to dump excess heat into space.
Doesn't matter if its cheap, if its slow, its useless. Very good point! The read access time and read-speed of the WORM needs to be sufficiently high to compete with HD-storage. Write speeds can be much much slower if the system uses another form of memory for caching (e.g., a 10 GB HD in front of a 1000 GB WORM).
To really enjoy this train wifi, we need a LAN Game protocol designed for publically used WiFi locations. This would let people publish a list of which games they might like to play and support connectinons to others. Any LAN-playable game would need some type of plugin that provides information about how to connect to other (i.e., a Chess app would only let one other person connect, an MMORG would define which scenarios different people want to play, etc.) That way the person in car 2 could find a game buddy in car 4 without any prearrangements with that person.
I see only two problems. The first is security. Depending on who programs the protocol, it could end up with exploits. Also, the games might provide a channel for exploits if someone uses a hacked copy of Doom to insinuate themselves into another rider's laptop. The second problem would be playability when the person in car 3 decides to use the 5 hour journey to download the latest Linux distro.
1984 is not that old, the Mac and IBM PC were already out, for heaven's sake! 1984 is long after real classics like the Kim-1, Sinclair ZX80, and Apple II appeared. The real golden age of microcomputing was when you could fit the entire OS, basic interpreter and maybe a game or two into 8 K of RAM. Back then, a budding nerd could easily understand what every single chip and instruction did.
Real men use PEEK, POKE, and GOTO!
Yes, but you can write umpteen times on a hard drive, which would mean WORM media would have to be at least a hundred times cheaper than WMRM media for it to be "cheap enough".
You can write upteen times to a harddrive, but most people don't. Most of the files on my harddrive have only been written once. Files such as system files (except preferences), application executables, digital camera images, copies of old documents, music files tend to be written once. Moreover, most of the files that have been written multiple times (e.g. working documents, images that I am editing) get written a few times for a few days and then sit unwritten for years. I'd bet that a petabyte WORM drive with a little as 10 gigabytes of hard drive as cache (cached files would be copied to WORM once the file is unchanging for a 1 week) would work extremely well and have far less than 2 copies per megabyte on the WORM side.
Thus, the break-even cost ratio point for WORM-based operations might be only a factor of two or three. WORM media does not need to be hundred of times cheaper.
Rewritable storage is only needed if storage space is expensive. If WORM media were spacious enough and cheap enough, it could be used for almost all secondary storage applications except swap space and some rewrite-intensive applications (like video editting). As a side benefit, one would have the ultimate in file archiving -- every version of the file would be retained in WORM media. Many forms of malware would be easily undone by rolling back software, files, etc.
Why spend extra money for a rewritable storage system if WORM is cheap enough?
Because most computer peripherals use either 5 VDC or 12 VDC, why not have a small array of 5V and 12V jacks in the back of PCs? That way, your peripherals can be powered by the PC and automatically turned off when you shut down your machine. This solution would let you dump a bunch of wall-warts and probably be more energy efficient too.
I guess you didnt RTFA did you. Go look at the f***ing equation he came up with *******. It accounts for famliy size and age range.
Actually, I did RTFA and read it more closely than the AC did. The article clearly states that the variable "Age range" refers to the accessibility of the game, not the ages of the members of a potential customer family. There is no "Family size" variable, only a "number of people" variable that refers to the number of players the game supports.
The most telling statements that prove that the formula is family-independent is the fact that they come up with a single simple score for cards of exactly 0.98 and assert a specific ranking for a set of games. Because these statements are unconditionalized, we know that the scores are independent of family composition. If they had said, cards get a score of X if the family is of this size and age composition or cards have a score range of X to Y depending on family, then we would know that the formula was a function of properties of individual families.
It's too bad that their formula didn't make use of family-specific variables because then Mr. Eldridge would give people a reason to come to his shops. If he had a little calculator/self-test/application that let a family answer a few questions and then provide a personalized set of game recommendations, he would encourage people to come to his shop. Instead, he is looking for the "perfect family game" This quixotic quest assumes that all families are alike so that one game can be #1 for everyone.
A better solution might be to use a high-res digital camera that takes snapshots of the actual kitchen table, extracts changes in the scene, and transmits that.
This would be superior to the RFID appoach because it allows the inclusion of ordinary and arbitrary objects. If you receive a greeting card from a loved-one, you place it on the table to show that you appreciated it. In contrast, the RFID approach requires someone to both tag any new object and create a simulacra of it for display on the other end. Rather than people creating a symbolic language from the default icons in the system (e.g., the default coffee cup, cigarette pack, etc.), the high-res image fragments could include very personal items such as the actual greeting card, a favorite coffee cup, or a meaningful momento.
Image differencing and extraction would reduce the bandwidth requirements to below that required for videoconferencing. Even if a high-res (5 megapixel) imager is used, the image extraction algorithms would work to only transmit image fragments of objects that changed but stayed in place for some time. Thus, it might transmit a single snapshot of your bowl of cereal in the morning, but not any images from when you quickly opened and closed the kitchen cabinets.
It's events like this that make one realize how hostile space really is and how primitive our tools are. We are really still in the calamity-prone early stages of an age of space exploration that is not unlike the often hazardous voyages of discovery in the 15th to 17th centuries.
It seems to me that space exploration will only succeed once it becomes so cheap or reliable to send stuff out, that nobody worries about the loss of intruments or even whole spacecraft.
The provided formula purports to compute the quality of family games, but fails to include variables related to the specific family. Al the vairables are properties of the game. The perfect family game for a young family is different from the perfect game for a family with old children. Some very enjoyable games might be totally unsuitable if they require 4 players and the family has a single child.
PFG = f(Game, Family) so that different games would have different ranking for different families.
Ethics and public policty really can't handle this type of knowledge on who can get what disease after exposure to common environmental factors or habits. Current health policy standards and EPA guidelines assume that "all people are created equal." Thus, the EPA sets carcinogen levels to create a less than one-in-a-million chance of getting cancer. But what happens now that we know that we are not all created equal -- instead of everyone having a one-in-a-million chance, we have 999,999 people with no chance of cancer and 1 genetically identifiable person per million with a 100% chance of cancer.
The existence of distinct genetic susceptabilities to high-fat foods, smoking, carcinogens, medications, etc. makes it hard to create uniform regulations for food, medicine, and occupational conditions.
The Helios Solar Airplane probably could have flown around the world. But with a cruising speed of only about 40 km/hr it would have taken 1000 hours (41 days). Such a long duration flight is fine for an unmanned aircraft, but poses severe challenges for manned flight. Carrying weeks worth of food, water, and oxygen represents additional payload that such a vehicle can ill afford. Onboard recycling/extraction systems could reduce the need for consumables, but they add weight also.
..... SIGH!
But without a person in the cockpit, the venture won't get much media attention. And without media attention, the project won't attract much sponsorship.
I would assume that the pilot would fly a zigziag course. During the day, they would fly westward to stay in the sun as long as possible. During the night, they would fly eastward to meet the dawn as soon as possible.
I also wonder if they might choose a route that flies over the upwelling of air at the equatorial convergence zone. It might be rough, but those air currents could help them stay aloft during the night.
First the virus infects the human host with the desire to write the software for the virus. Then the software virus infects multiple computers and multiplies. Then another person sees the power/attention garnered by the virus and is themselves infected. And so the cycle goes -- infecting both humans and computers.
There is much irony in advocating the use of paper at the grand opening on the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina. After all, we lost the first library at Alexandria due to the flammability and single-point vulnerability of paper-based libraries. I don't think that Eco thought too much about the real purpose of a library and how mineral memory serves that purpose better than does vegetal memory.
A library is intended to provide a robust safe-keeping storage function for human knowledge. The ever-decreasing cost of hard disks mean that more people can now maintain their own personal libraries. And if you use a fairly simple common denominator format and transfer/translate old documents, then you can maintain digital copies of works indefinitely. These personal libraries are distributed and that makes them much more robust to both calamity and government censorship. At the very least it is much easier to reconstruct a destroyed digital library than a destroyed paper library. Had the old library of Alexandria been on the web back then, we would still have it now.
A library also provides a selection/filtering process -- helping patrons to find what they are looking for in the literal stacks of library. Although a logical organization scheme (such as LC or Dewey), card catalogs (online or paper) and talented librarians can help people find what they are looking for, these schemes are terribly limited. If your chosen paper book is checked out, you are out of luck. If you seek obscure information, you are faced with a laborious process of trying to find books that might include a small mention of your topic. Even if you want a good piece of literature, you can have a hard time finding someone with "your taste" in literature to provide a recommendation. In contrast, digital libraries never run out of copies, have fine-grain search capabilities, and offer collaborative filtering options (like Amazon's people who bought X, also bought Y).
I can only hope that professional librarians are more forward thinking than Eco is.
The presumption that paper is better for extended reading is increasingly less valid. Since a got a large LCD display a few years ago, I find that I seldom print pages anymore. I still like and buy some physical books (fewer than before), but I miss the features afforded by accessing stuff in a digital format. Paper still has higher resolution and physical portability, but this relative advantage is waning.
I'm sure that paper vs. clay arguments raged in the early days of paper. Paper was flimsy, flammable, and cheap. Clay was solid, serene, and worthy of keeping. A similar set of arguments now embroils the screen vs. paper debate.
In a few decades, I'd bet that most people will consider paper an anachronism -- hardcopy being too inflexible, bulky, and expensive to use in everyday life. Better screens and from-birth exposure to the advantages of virtual access will lower people's nostalgia for and use of paper. Paper will never go away (after all, we still carve stone tablets) but paper will be marginalized. The percentage of content read on the screen will only increase.
Why not use a booster to ensure the best data rate.? An number of vendors offer a range of fixed directional antennas and repeaters and phone booster antennas.
Unless you are driving in a car or reading email as you walk, "mobile" users are stationary during actual use (a car-top cellphone antenna might be the answer for truly mobile use). For semi-mobile use, a little stand and a Yagi antenna would help improve transmission/reception to the local cell tower. A simple signal strength app would help you point the antenna (for extra credit it could even help you find a tower in an adjacent, less used cell for access to more slots). For boosted use in a hotel room, cafe, or client office, a directional antenna or repeater would be quite useful.
Major detail... Venus's day is 225 earth days long. It is spinning far too slowly to support a space elevator that relies on a geosynchronous orbit at the top.
Very good point! How about a spinning space elevator . It consists of an orbiting spinning tether. Both ends of the tether dip into the atmosphere and nearly touch the ground at one or more landing points along the equator. While the center of mass of the tether is orbiting at what ever required velocity, the tether is counterrotating with a tip velocity that compensates for the orbital velocity. Thus, the tip of the tether becomes nearly stationary as it touches down at the landing point(s). As a side benefit, the tip of the tether furthest from the ground is moving at nearly twice the velocity of the orbiting tether mass and can sling payloads into interplanetary orbits.
Would a desalination plant remove the caffine?
Yes and no. Desalination by reverse osmosis or distillation would remove the caffeine (and many other pharmaceutical byproducts) from sea water when making drinking water. But the concentrated salt water dumped out of the desalination plant would still contain these pollutants.
Standard treatment plants used for making drinking water from freshwater would probably NOT remove caffeine or other pharmaceuticals. At best, the chlorination/oxygenation/UV purification process might degrade the pharma chemicals. At worst, these purification processes might convert the pharma chemicals into even more toxic analogs of the chemicals.
Assuming these things are adopted, I see a few countermeasures to avoid being "read" by scammers or govt officials.
1. tin foil armband over the device to block reception/transmission of RFID bits.
2. removable bracelet with multiple dummy chips that confuses scanners with too many hits.
3. Scanner detector device that beeps when an RFID reader is in the neighborhood.