1. The web site is signing up people who might never have availed themselves of the settlement benefits. This increases the net chunk paid out in cash.
2. The web site will have the effect (just as they say) of reducing the portion that is given to the schools.
Keep in mind that the part given to the schools can and probably will be in the form of software. Typically this will be at nearly full retail value even though the software has been heavily discounted on the open market. Additionally this form of payment is used to reduce the stock that is sitting in the warehouse's and is moving slowly or not at all.
If I had to guess at the real cost of $1,000,000 in settlement in goods I would go with a figure in the neighborhood of 300,000 to 400,000. And to be honest I'm thinking that is a very conservative range.
On the flip side, Microsoft is in the business of making money. If the reasoning was just as they claim then this action would cost them more money by stopping people from submitting claims that will not be validated and instead submitting the hard way. Granted only a small percentage but I think any of us would consider even a small percentage of hundreds of millions to be, noticable.
Of course you can always chalk this action up to Microsoft's aboveboard and altruistic streak...
I was having real trouble thinking about this until you mentioned that spacetime itself is moving/accelerating. Then it clicked into place.
When you drop that bit of line into the EH (event horizon) you're fine and dandy to that point. But every elementary particle that crosses that threshold is gone. I would suggest that pulling the line back up would be just as easy as letting it down. But it would be cleanly cut with a very exact curvature. At least that is my guess... Since any sublightspeed communication is not going to happen across the point where spacetime itself exceeds lightspeed the forces that would hold/connect particles inside the boundary to one outside the boundary would be cleanly severed.
Would I be right in guessing that the movement of spacetime towards a black hole is a true phenomena for any gravitational source? Hmmm, That also clicks into place references to rotating black holes and even the possibility of a naked singularity... Nope, still can't see a naked singularity, quite. Depends on some interesting answers.
Is spacetime moving because of gravity or is gravity the result of spacetime moving?
If you have two black holes orbiting each other such that the EH's intersect there is a plane where the gravity of the holes counteracts each other and a volume on either side of that plane where spacetime will be moving much less than light speed (if gravity is the cause and not the effect).
Now to access these areas you will need another large mass that can slow the in fall of spacetime and produce an entryway, talk about a balancing act... Exceed the maneuvering capability of the mass in the direction of either hole and It's a long drop.
Now as to a naked singularity. I would have to know what happens when one black hole enters the EH of another.
Wheeee! Now I'm wondering if you can get eddies in spacetime.
I better quit now, having way to much fun but it's eating up the work day and they might have a hard time paying me for this much fun.
And plenty of otherthings to think about. Such as if spacetime is moving, in relation to what?
Other questions occur, might be silly but... Where does spacetime come from? Is a coordinate system inexhaustable? Where does it go?
" There is no way you could build a space elevator out of a black hole. It's not possible - not for material science reasons, or practical reasons, or anything - it is simply not possible to build *anything* that could cross the event horizon of a black hole. The intermolecular forces required would be infinite - literally, infinite. Unbounded. "
My understanding (and flawed it probably is), is that the event horizon and the singularity are quite different things. I'll agree what you state is likely true in reference to the singularity but as for the event horizon I must disagree.
Please correct me if I'm wrong but the event horizon (EH from now on) is simply that boundary where the escape velocity exceeds the speed of light. And for a large enough black hole (perhaps a local group sized one), one where the region of the EH had sufficiently low tidal stress's to allow materials we know about to exist, then you could indeed move something through the EH. After all we don't need to approach or exceed any escape velocity to move to a higher orbit. And the energy requirement although huge is not by any means infinite.
Once again, that is my understanding and it wouldn't be the first time I've been in error...
Thought experiment: Your orbiting a black hole where the orbital velocity is 99.9% of light speed. (The previously mentioned really really big black hole so tidal forces aren't tearing anything apart.) You extend a line toward the black hole and another equally away from the black hole (space elevator style) So the whole thing is still orbiting at your point. Now the lower end gets to the EH... it's still traveling at 99.9% of light speed. It's still orbiting at the center point of the entire structure. Meanwhile the rest of the universe has aged a bit more than you...
As for the singularity, you're likely correct, but you really can't know. The rules change when you get close and at the point of the singularity, well, we've really no idea. It's literally out of our universe and we have no idea what the rules are on the other side, and that's assuming there is another side or even that there is only a single other side...
Another thought experiment: What would it look like for an object that repeatedly moved back and forth through the EH. BTW every read any Frederik Pohl? Been a few decades myself but might be time to revisit some of his novels.
Granted. A bit more time would probably be a good idea, and especially while in the atmosphere. However the portion of the trip inside a noticeable atmosphere is a tiny fraction (1/600th).
Once you're outside the atmosphere there are no outstanding reasons for not moving faster. That is why I mentioned magnetic drive/coupling instead of any physical connection. And of course carbon nanotubes can be configured to carry power, it should also be relatively simple to configure part of the elevator as a track for a magnetic linear accelerator. No inefficient rocket power required (although to be honest I'm not sure what the efficiency of a linear accelerator is).
As long as you have access to a constant power supply it's useful to have a constant acceleration/deceleration an if you do so your midpoint velocity will be impressive and your time for the trip will be much shorter. 6 hours may or may not be a reasonable figure, I would have to do way more math than I'm currently willing to do to figure that out. For instance I wouldn't want to go very fast inside the atmosphere for the obvious reasons. Outside I would like to maintain a decent apparent weight for the passengers as well as constantly reducing it so it will match the environment at the terminus station when they dock. So the midpoint turnaround and switch from acceleration to deceleration wouldn't be anywhere near the middle. The actual numbers would be interesting though... *chuckle* The acceleration numbers would make an interesting compound curve.
Keep in mind that even though we are using an elevator we still must pump in the energy needed to move the mass into orbit, it's just this is a much more efficient method.
Hmmm... I read some pulp sci fi recently that had a very good example of magnetic transfer/acceleration/deceleration etc... Ah... I remember "The Duke of Uranium" by John Barnes Not exactly the best read but worth it for some interesting tech ideas.
Last but not least, I do want to thank you for an interesting discussion. I find real thinking to be a rare pleasure these days and I do enjoy it.
I shall have to agree with some others on this. Although it's a public place, I've not desire to be constantly monitored.
I do however understand and agree that there needs to be an ability to monitor "after the fact".
My personal idea for a reasonable compromise is to have devices in place that continuously monitor public spaces but that require the authorities to get permission to access (physically access would be wise I think). I suggest that such permission only be available for crimes that have been reported and that any transgressions that are observed but not directly applicable to the crime being investigated be out of bounds.
*grin* Yes indeed. I was actually trying to minimize the apparent complexity while still providing a reasonable explanation.
The inside of a spinning structure can provide a very odd and confusing appearance to simple physics. However, if you back up a little so your frame of reference is at rest to the spinning globe what your describing starts to make sense to people.
The track of an ascending elevator car follows a nicely curved path out from the surface to geosynchronous orbit. Even though from the perspective of the elevator they are just rising vertically they are actually slowly moving from a point that is moving around a circle at 1000 miles an hour (very roughly) at a radius of 4000 miles to a point that is moving around a circle of 26000 miles at 6800 miles an hour. The point that was 26000 miles above you has traveled 40,000 miles while you moved toward it and you have traveled most of that extra distance as well. So if you move something out in such a manner you can see that there is always a horizontal component that results in the leaning you're describing. (Be happy were not dealing with much in the way vectors away from the orbital path, that gets squirrelly fast.) (For interesting fun and games, play catch with a gyroscope that is up to speed...)
That also should answer the questions of another poster about how this all relates to escape velocity, it's not escape velocity but the concept should be apparent. It is however a change in orbit from a supported orbit, such as you referred to and which describes any resting mass on the surface unless it's at the poles, to an unsupported geosynchronous orbit.
Now if we want to address this in more detail (yep I'm going to avoid as much of the math as I can, I'm very rusty...) we would have to address this horizontal component. Perhaps something as simple as an ion thruster on the elevator car that supplies the necessary vector to balance things out.
Another point for people to get a grasp on is that it's not exactly a ride to the penthouse of an apt. complex. Hmmm, lets see for a trip of 22,000 miles in a reasonable amount of time and considering most of it is outside any noticeable atmosphere an average speed of several thousand miles an hour should be no problem. (I'm guessing that an actual physical contact with the elevator wouldn't be necessary, magnetic would be my choice.)
Ok, back to dealing with the imbalance that would cause your "lean". Fair warning, lots of guess's, assumptions, and downright neighborhood arithmetic coming...*GRIN* So you should be able to make the trip in 6'ish hours. That means a change in orbital velocity from 1000 miles and hour to 6800 miles an hour gives you very roughly about 1000 miles/hour change per hour which works out to the neighborhood of.012 m/s/s acceleration needed to counter the "lean". Lets see, drag out the old number of 20,000 kg elevator and that's 240 newtons. Now a quickie check of the net for ion thrusters gives us... Ok, Boeing has a deep space thruster that supplies 165 millinewtons. It's 25 cm, their 13 cm unit is 18 millinewtons. If it keeps scaling that nicely 240 newtons would be on the order of a 3 meter thruster grid. *chuckle* (pulling it out whole cloth now) Although I expect there are better or more efficient alternatives...
Ok, enough of this, I've work to do... I have enjoyed the thinkfest though..
The elevator would be build from geostationary orbit. An asteroid isn't required as a counterbalance but it does make things more convenient.
Without an asteroid you would need to send a foot of cable away from earth for every foot you send toward earth. With a counterbalance you get to stay MUCH closer to the balance point (geostationary orbit) which has many conveniences.
When you send up an elevator and it gets closer and closer to the balance point the mass on the other side (counterbalance) has to be adjusted to match, either the entire thing could be winched in (bad method in my mind) the small amount needed to maintain the systems balance or some mass in the counterweight would need to be moved around to do so (my personal favorite).
For example if you've a 20,000 kilogram elevator and it moves up the cable 10,000 meters then a counterbalance that was (for example only) 20,000,000 kilogram's would have to move 10 meters toward the balance point to maintain the status quo. Or you could move 100,000 liters of water from a tank in the bottom of the counterbalance to a tank at the top which would be 2000 meters above the bottom tank. Please keep in mind that these numbers are examples, the real numbers for such a facility would be a bit more impressive and the real mechanisms would be more complicated.
The counterweight is also the most logical place to put the terminus facilities as that's the handiest real-estate in the area and even has significant apparent gravity. So since you have mass at/in the counterweight that moves around (us and/or equipment and supplies) then you would need to constantly rebalance anyway.
Actually I would suggest some liquid movement tanks high and low on the counterweight to maintain the balance without actually having to shorten the cable/distance to the balance point. Or you could have some type of elevator/freight system moving large plugs/masses of rock up and down to do the job. Better yet, both, having a dual system (or even ternary) would make sense considering the importance of balancing the system...*GRIN* I would do a great deal of work making it as foolproof as possible cause goodness knows we keep making the fools.
My first thought was to say "No offense but...." But then I thought... Your going to take offense at anything at odds with your statements. And *grin* any comment that starts that way is just foolish.
So, feel free to take offense.
I like sun hardware, I like the os. I work with their apps full time.
But... they aren't the second coming of the cpu.
I've an ongoing (Months) memory leak issue with one application. I've other problems with differing libraries on different box's that make their own apps not reliable. I've seen box's down and out as the Ethernet interface goes bonkers and since it's on the MB it's "have the engineers in" to fix it. I've another box right now that has crashed due to memory going bad.
Sun isn't all knowing, or all seeing, or the end all of computing. They are however good machines that are designed with high reliability and high volume in mind. I personally don't think they are the best servers/os around, the ones I prefer take a lot more configuration and installation and additions to get to where sun is out of the box but in my opinion can be made significantly better. But from a package (one stop solution) point of view I do think they are the best.
So many people argue pro and con on the subject of blame. Is mankind to blame for recent changes?
Who cares!
I've no interest in what caused it except in that it may help us in dealing with the changes. If it's mankind's fault, if mankind is a contributing factor, or if it's simply a natural cycle we still don't understand doesn't matter.
What matters is to work on understanding what is happening (if anything, although I think that is rapidly becoming a statistically moot question) and then move on to what may be accomplished to deal with it.
If your in a burning house, it's not a big deal if it was caused by a meltdown of a coffeepot or the built-in smoke detector shorted out. What matters is putting the fire out or getting out of the house.
Point: Microsoft owns the servers that msn runs on. Point: Microsoft does impose a fee for using this in the form of banner ads. Point: Alternative clients avoid this fee.
Reasonsed soulution: 1. Microsoft should introduce a fee based method of avoiding the banner ads payable to them via individual subscriptions or via a license fee paid by the client developer. 2. Microsoft should publish a protocol that includes the delivery of it's ad based fee. 3. Third party client programmers should be required to support the ad based network fee if they do not pay a license fee. This includes a mechanizm of inserting a subscriptions key to avoid the ad fee.
That takes care of the "network" fee. Then third party programmers can move on to making the best interfaces out there.
Obdisclaimer: I'm a trillian pro user myself. I've a small number of family and friends scattered over all the IM networks and the convenience of ONE client for all of them far outweighs other considerations. Personally, I've no objection to ad based usage fee's, but it would be nice to have an option of paying a fee to opt out of this.
I suspect the most useful part of a moon colony would be as the support infrastructure for orbital stations, factories and laboratories.
The moon has the gravity we need as well a MUCH reduced cost of getting back and forth to orbit. Additionally the moon has the raw materials to support much of the construction of same.
Shipping it all up from the bottom of earth's gravity well and through our atmosphere is going to be energy intinsive until such time as an orbital elevator(s) can and are built.
I suspect that will be a tad expensive even in comparison to establishing lunar facilities for some time to come.
Some recent research has shown that it's possible to produce shock waves that cancel out that of a "sonic boom" in a similar fashion to how noise cancellation systems work. A tad difference is scale though...;-)
Ward
Slashdot Mirror
1. The web site is signing up people who might never have availed themselves of the settlement benefits. This increases the net chunk paid out in cash.
2. The web site will have the effect (just as they say) of reducing the portion that is given to the schools.
Keep in mind that the part given to the schools can and probably will be in the form of software. Typically this will be at nearly full retail value even though the software has been heavily discounted on the open market. Additionally this form of payment is used to reduce the stock that is sitting in the warehouse's and is moving slowly or not at all.
If I had to guess at the real cost of $1,000,000 in settlement in goods I would go with a figure in the neighborhood of 300,000 to 400,000. And to be honest I'm thinking that is a very conservative range.
On the flip side, Microsoft is in the business of making money. If the reasoning was just as they claim then this action would cost them more money by stopping people from submitting claims that will not be validated and instead submitting the hard way. Granted only a small percentage but I think any of us would consider even a small percentage of hundreds of millions to be, noticable.
Of course you can always chalk this action up to Microsoft's aboveboard and altruistic streak...
Wheeeee!
I'm having way to much fun with this. Thank you.
I was having real trouble thinking about this until you mentioned that spacetime itself is moving/accelerating. Then it clicked into place.
When you drop that bit of line into the EH (event horizon) you're fine and dandy to that point. But every elementary particle that crosses that threshold is gone. I would suggest that pulling the line back up would be just as easy as letting it down. But it would be cleanly cut with a very exact curvature. At least that is my guess... Since any sublightspeed communication is not going to happen across the point where spacetime itself exceeds lightspeed the forces that would hold/connect particles inside the boundary to one outside the boundary would be cleanly severed.
Would I be right in guessing that the movement of spacetime towards a black hole is a true phenomena for any gravitational source? Hmmm, That also clicks into place references to rotating black holes and even the possibility of a naked singularity... Nope, still can't see a naked singularity, quite. Depends on some interesting answers.
Is spacetime moving because of gravity or is gravity the result of spacetime moving?
If you have two black holes orbiting each other such that the EH's intersect there is a plane where the gravity of the holes counteracts each other and a volume on either side of that plane where spacetime will be moving much less than light speed (if gravity is the cause and not the effect).
Now to access these areas you will need another large mass that can slow the in fall of spacetime and produce an entryway, talk about a balancing act... Exceed the maneuvering capability of the mass in the direction of either hole and It's a long drop.
Now as to a naked singularity. I would have to know what happens when one black hole enters the EH of another.
Wheeee! Now I'm wondering if you can get eddies in spacetime.
I better quit now, having way to much fun but it's eating up the work day and they might have a hard time paying me for this much fun.
And plenty of otherthings to think about. Such as if spacetime is moving, in relation to what?
Other questions occur, might be silly but... Where does spacetime come from? Is a coordinate system inexhaustable? Where does it go?
Thank you once again.
Something you said interests me.
"
There is no way you could build a space elevator out of a black hole. It's not possible - not for material science reasons, or practical reasons, or anything - it is simply not possible to build *anything* that could cross the event horizon of a black hole. The intermolecular forces required would be infinite - literally, infinite. Unbounded.
"
My understanding (and flawed it probably is), is that the event horizon and the singularity are quite different things. I'll agree what you state is likely true in reference to the singularity but as for the event horizon I must disagree.
Please correct me if I'm wrong but the event horizon (EH from now on) is simply that boundary where the escape velocity exceeds the speed of light. And for a large enough black hole (perhaps a local group sized one), one where the region of the EH had sufficiently low tidal stress's to allow materials we know about to exist, then you could indeed move something through the EH. After all we don't need to approach or exceed any escape velocity to move to a higher orbit. And the energy requirement although huge is not by any means infinite.
Once again, that is my understanding and it wouldn't be the first time I've been in error...
Thought experiment: Your orbiting a black hole where the orbital velocity is 99.9% of light speed. (The previously mentioned really really big black hole so tidal forces aren't tearing anything apart.) You extend a line toward the black hole and another equally away from the black hole (space elevator style) So the whole thing is still orbiting at your point. Now the lower end gets to the EH... it's still traveling at 99.9% of light speed. It's still orbiting at the center point of the entire structure. Meanwhile the rest of the universe has aged a bit more than you...
As for the singularity, you're likely correct, but you really can't know. The rules change when you get close and at the point of the singularity, well, we've really no idea. It's literally out of our universe and we have no idea what the rules are on the other side, and that's assuming there is another side or even that there is only a single other side...
Another thought experiment: What would it look like for an object that repeatedly moved back and forth through the EH. BTW every read any Frederik Pohl? Been a few decades myself but might be time to revisit some of his novels.
Granted. A bit more time would probably be a good idea, and especially while in the atmosphere. However the portion of the trip inside a noticeable atmosphere is a tiny fraction (1/600th).
Once you're outside the atmosphere there are no outstanding reasons for not moving faster. That is why I mentioned magnetic drive/coupling instead of any physical connection. And of course carbon nanotubes can be configured to carry power, it should also be relatively simple to configure part of the elevator as a track for a magnetic linear accelerator. No inefficient rocket power required (although to be honest I'm not sure what the efficiency of a linear accelerator is).
As long as you have access to a constant power supply it's useful to have a constant acceleration/deceleration an if you do so your midpoint velocity will be impressive and your time for the trip will be much shorter. 6 hours may or may not be a reasonable figure, I would have to do way more math than I'm currently willing to do to figure that out. For instance I wouldn't want to go very fast inside the atmosphere for the obvious reasons. Outside I would like to maintain a decent apparent weight for the passengers as well as constantly reducing it so it will match the environment at the terminus station when they dock. So the midpoint turnaround and switch from acceleration to deceleration wouldn't be anywhere near the middle. The actual numbers would be interesting though... *chuckle* The acceleration numbers would make an interesting compound curve.
Keep in mind that even though we are using an elevator we still must pump in the energy needed to move the mass into orbit, it's just this is a much more efficient method.
Hmmm... I read some pulp sci fi recently that had a very good example of magnetic transfer/acceleration/deceleration etc... Ah... I remember "The Duke of Uranium" by John Barnes Not exactly the best read but worth it for some interesting tech ideas.
Last but not least, I do want to thank you for an interesting discussion. I find real thinking to be a rare pleasure these days and I do enjoy it.
I shall have to agree with some others on this. Although it's a public place, I've not desire to be constantly monitored.
I do however understand and agree that there needs to be an ability to monitor "after the fact".
My personal idea for a reasonable compromise is to have devices in place that continuously monitor public spaces but that require the authorities to get permission to access (physically access would be wise I think). I suggest that such permission only be available for crimes that have been reported and that any transgressions that are observed but not directly applicable to the crime being investigated be out of bounds.
The power to run these is in effect as long as there's enough light for you to see the results.
*grin* Yes indeed. I was actually trying to minimize the apparent complexity while still providing a reasonable explanation.
The inside of a spinning structure can provide a very odd and confusing appearance to simple physics. However, if you back up a little so your frame of reference is at rest to the spinning globe what your describing starts to make sense to people.
The track of an ascending elevator car follows a nicely curved path out from the surface to geosynchronous orbit. Even though from the perspective of the elevator they are just rising vertically they are actually slowly moving from a point that is moving around a circle at 1000 miles an hour (very roughly) at a radius of 4000 miles to a point that is moving around a circle of 26000 miles at 6800 miles an hour. The point that was 26000 miles above you has traveled 40,000 miles while you moved toward it and you have traveled most of that extra distance as well. So if you move something out in such a manner you can see that there is always a horizontal component that results in the leaning you're describing. (Be happy were not dealing with much in the way vectors away from the orbital path, that gets squirrelly fast.) (For interesting fun and games, play catch with a gyroscope that is up to speed...)
That also should answer the questions of another poster about how this all relates to escape velocity, it's not escape velocity but the concept should be apparent. It is however a change in orbit from a supported orbit, such as you referred to and which describes any resting mass on the surface unless it's at the poles, to an unsupported geosynchronous orbit.
Now if we want to address this in more detail (yep I'm going to avoid as much of the math as I can, I'm very rusty...) we would have to address this horizontal component. Perhaps something as simple as an ion thruster on the elevator car that supplies the necessary vector to balance things out.
Another point for people to get a grasp on is that it's not exactly a ride to the penthouse of an apt. complex. Hmmm, lets see for a trip of 22,000 miles in a reasonable amount of time and considering most of it is outside any noticeable atmosphere an average speed of several thousand miles an hour should be no problem. (I'm guessing that an actual physical contact with the elevator wouldn't be necessary, magnetic would be my choice.)
Ok, back to dealing with the imbalance that would cause your "lean". Fair warning, lots of guess's, assumptions, and downright neighborhood arithmetic coming...*GRIN* So you should be able to make the trip in 6'ish hours. That means a change in orbital velocity from 1000 miles and hour to 6800 miles an hour gives you very roughly about 1000 miles/hour change per hour which works out to the neighborhood of
Ok, enough of this, I've work to do... I have enjoyed the thinkfest though..
The elevator would be build from geostationary orbit. An asteroid isn't required as a counterbalance but it does make things more convenient.
Without an asteroid you would need to send a foot of cable away from earth for every foot you send toward earth. With a counterbalance you get to stay MUCH closer to the balance point (geostationary orbit) which has many conveniences.
When you send up an elevator and it gets closer and closer to the balance point the mass on the other side (counterbalance) has to be adjusted to match, either the entire thing could be winched in (bad method in my mind) the small amount needed to maintain the systems balance or some mass in the counterweight would need to be moved around to do so (my personal favorite).
For example if you've a 20,000 kilogram elevator and it moves up the cable 10,000 meters then a counterbalance that was (for example only) 20,000,000 kilogram's would have to move 10 meters toward the balance point to maintain the status quo. Or you could move 100,000 liters of water from a tank in the bottom of the counterbalance to a tank at the top which would be 2000 meters above the bottom tank. Please keep in mind that these numbers are examples, the real numbers for such a facility would be a bit more impressive and the real mechanisms would be more complicated.
The counterweight is also the most logical place to put the terminus facilities as that's the handiest real-estate in the area and even has significant apparent gravity. So since you have mass at/in the counterweight that moves around (us and/or equipment and supplies) then you would need to constantly rebalance anyway.
Actually I would suggest some liquid movement tanks high and low on the counterweight to maintain the balance without actually having to shorten the cable/distance to the balance point. Or you could have some type of elevator/freight system moving large plugs/masses of rock up and down to do the job. Better yet, both, having a dual system (or even ternary) would make sense considering the importance of balancing the system...*GRIN* I would do a great deal of work making it as foolproof as possible cause goodness knows we keep making the fools.
Well, enough on this, time to go home.
My first thought was to say "No offense but...." But then I thought... Your going to take offense at anything at odds with your statements. And *grin* any comment that starts that way is just foolish.
So, feel free to take offense.
I like sun hardware, I like the os. I work with their apps full time.
But... they aren't the second coming of the cpu.
I've an ongoing (Months) memory leak issue with one application. I've other problems with differing libraries on different box's that make their own apps not reliable. I've seen box's down and out as the Ethernet interface goes bonkers and since it's on the MB it's "have the engineers in" to fix it. I've another box right now that has crashed due to memory going bad.
Sun isn't all knowing, or all seeing, or the end all of computing. They are however good machines that are designed with high reliability and high volume in mind. I personally don't think they are the best servers/os around, the ones I prefer take a lot more configuration and installation and additions to get to where sun is out of the box but in my opinion can be made significantly better. But from a package (one stop solution) point of view I do think they are the best.
Ok I'm finished...
So many people argue pro and con on the subject of blame. Is mankind to blame for recent changes?
Who cares!
I've no interest in what caused it except in that it may help us in dealing with the changes. If it's mankind's fault, if mankind is a contributing factor, or if it's simply a natural cycle we still don't understand doesn't matter.
What matters is to work on understanding what is happening (if anything, although I think that is rapidly becoming a statistically moot question) and then move on to what may be accomplished to deal with it.
If your in a burning house, it's not a big deal if it was caused by a meltdown of a coffeepot or the built-in smoke detector shorted out. What matters is putting the fire out or getting out of the house.
Point: Microsoft owns the servers that msn runs on.
Point: Microsoft does impose a fee for using this in the form of banner ads.
Point: Alternative clients avoid this fee.
Reasonsed soulution:
1. Microsoft should introduce a fee based method of avoiding the banner ads payable to them via individual subscriptions or via a license fee paid by the client developer.
2. Microsoft should publish a protocol that includes the delivery of it's ad based fee.
3. Third party client programmers should be required to support the ad based network fee if they do not pay a license fee. This includes a mechanizm of inserting a subscriptions key to avoid the ad fee.
That takes care of the "network" fee. Then third party programmers can move on to making the best interfaces out there.
Obdisclaimer: I'm a trillian pro user myself. I've a small number of family and friends scattered over all the IM networks and the convenience of ONE client for all of them far outweighs other considerations. Personally, I've no objection to ad based usage fee's, but it would be nice to have an option of paying a fee to opt out of this.
I suspect the most useful part of a moon colony would be as the support infrastructure for orbital stations, factories and laboratories.
The moon has the gravity we need as well a MUCH reduced cost of getting back and forth to orbit. Additionally the moon has the raw materials to support much of the construction of same.
Shipping it all up from the bottom of earth's gravity well and through our atmosphere is going to be energy intinsive until such time as an orbital elevator(s) can and are built.
I suspect that will be a tad expensive even in comparison to establishing lunar facilities for some time to come.
Ward
Some recent research has shown that it's possible to produce shock waves that cancel out that of a "sonic boom" in a similar fashion to how noise cancellation systems work. A tad difference is scale though... ;-)
Ward