I completely agree. Though, this problem exists in the USA as well. At the university I recently graduated from, we had a monthly download limit of 1.5GB, and an upload limit of equal size. Go over the limit, and you're reduced to a 56k connection. Go over more than once, and you're cut off for the semester. Keep doing it once reinstated, and no more connection for you.
As a grad student, I frequenctly played UT2004 every evening due to the short rounds. Under this model, I'd get one play a month, aside from the great deal of time it would take just to start a game. Yeah, that's some solid value there...Here's an idea - don't publish crap.
I bought UT2004 because it's a fantastic game. The same with SM's Pirates!, Splinter Cell, NWN, etc. So many games are either simply technology demonstrations or are rushed out the door devoid of gameplay, elements of fun, or depth of story that it's rediculous. But then again, we've heard all of this before around here. I try to tell the gaming industry this by speaking with my wallet, but apparently that's not getting the message across...
Only to be thwarted by? From TFA, "The subsidiary of Carnival Corp. was investigating whether the weapon was successful in warding off the pirates, he said. The ship's captain also changed its course, shifted into high speed and headed out into the open sea to elude the pirates, who were in two small boats, he said. He had no further details."
I'm sure it certainly contributed, but they're not even sure it actually was the reason why the pirates weren't able to catch them.
There was a game company a while ago called The Logic Factory that had released a turn based strategy game called Ascendancy, and followed with a rather artistic RTS called The Tone Rebellion. When I purchased Tone Rebellion, I received the game soundtrack free of charge, since I had registered my copy of Ascendancy.
Having never owned a game soundtrack before, my original thought was, "Wow, that's useless." This soundtrack, however, turned out to be one of the best relaxation/study CD's that I have. While Tone was rather unique at the time for having so much effort being put into the musical score, many game makers spend a great deal of time and money to create good (and sometimes excellent) music to go with the game. I know I've owned more than one game that I wished I had the soundtrack. This sounds like it's really worth checking out.
I just find it funny that it costs at least 0.99 USD to purchase a three-and-a-half minute song, but only 1.99 USD to download an episode of a TV show, which has cast and crew to pay, filming, sets, etc. Combine this with the fact that the RIAA wants even more money for a single track...pretty amazing.
I suppose compared to purchasing a box set of a show that may cost up to 60 USD, at least TV episode downloading seems to offer some sort of significant price break from purchasing the actual high-quality non-DRM'd media from a store (new or used), and provides the a la carte option. The only question that I have regarding the a la carte option for TV shows is, wouldn't there be a much greater demand to own an entire season of a show than there would be to own an entire CD? After all, on a CD it's not as if Track 11 of an album doesn't make sense if you didn't listen to Track 9 or 10.
Not to be nit-picky, but lightning rods actually prevent lightning from striking. Metal spikes, which are what people commonly think of as lighning rods, attract lightning. This was actually the original design by Franklin. Tesla realized the design flaw and came up with the design used today that prevents lightning from striking.
While I think you're joking you have a point that I'd like to respond to. My mom and my aunt grew up in NYC, and they played outside all the time. Besides, doing things that don't involve technology doesn't always mean frolocking with bunnies. A set of building blocks could suffice as well.
I don't understand this notion of, "We need to have our kids using computers from birth to better prepare them for the future." I didn't use a computer until middle school, then just for word processing. That certainly didn't hinder me from my current position as a PhD. student in engineering.
Think about it, many of us didn't have all of these technological toys when we were little, and we seemed to adapt just fine. Computer usage isn't some sort of esoteric skill that requires years of training to master. It's not like you're trying to levitate cars with your mind.
Perhaps if children were exposed to life outside of the digital babysitter they would develop their imaginations more, and become more creative, healthier (mentally and physically) people. Maybe if more kids ran around outside more often, child obesity wouldn't be so prevelent in our society.
Overall, as with most things a balance is what is necessary. Sure I had my Atari when I was a kid, but I was only allowed to play with it for a certain amount of time. Just as TV was limited. The same can be done with a computer, especially if your child doesn't have all of these technological wonders in their bedroom. Show your child all that the world has to offer and what the imagination can do with it.
And a final thought on, "what you want your kid to be when he/she grows up." - that decision should ultimately be left up to your child once they're old enough to make it, not one that should be forced on them from birth. I've seen many a miserable engineer and computer scientist for just that reason.
Would that be because that's all they'd know? Perhaps that's not the best solution...Besides, even if office life will likely still suck in the future why make there childhood an equal hell?
In situations like that, typically it is either the poor liscenced engineer(s) who signed off on it, or the engineers who designed it. Rarely is it the company in general who made the system. Cases like that I would imagine would be treated similar to train or subway crashes though, since automated highways are in effect a very large subway/train. But yes, a legal mess would ensue (doesn't it always?).
The thing is that the amount of devices and money put into this would make the vehicle well out of range for the average customer.
That's the main reason why automated vehicles/highway's aren't all ready in use. I work in the field of vehicle automation, and many of the major hurdles regarding the functionality have been crossed. One good website to go to is here.
To give you an idea, a fully instrumented vehicle capable of doing autonomous driving costs about $100,000. Similar to one of those new-fangled fuel cell cars. This doesn't include the cost of infrastructure, as you can't exactly equip all civilian vehicles with military grade GPS. The California PATH program actually uses cow magnets embedded in the highway (VERY expensive to do).
By the way, the main reason for automating highways is so that you can fit A LOT more cars on the road, and optimise the vehicle positions based on who is getting on and off where, and you can avoid traffic hold-ups from things like somebody tapping their brakes a mile up the road (called the "Slinky effect"). They found that the overwhelming majority of people would rather have the ability to own a car and use it whenever they want to on an automated highway rather than develop a really good public transportation system.
As for accident avoidance, many of the automated highway people (such as myself) are working on accident avoidance, since that is cruicial to automated highways being able to function. I'm not really sure how MS factors into my research, but I don't think that it will be good. Besides, their software will require a great deal of additional hardware, such as steer-by-wire, brake-by-wire, etc. (all ready well under development and will be in stores by around 2010). But I digress...
Liquid metal cooling is used in reactors because of the *extreme temperatures*, not just because it's more efficient. The metal (usually Sodium, but sometimes lead) is maintained in a molten state as it passes through the reactor and on back to the heat exchanger.
Recently (as in the past 1-2 years) there has also been work done on using liquid lithium traveling through a wick for use in space based reactors, where you don't have gravity around to help you out. The research seemed rather promising from the results that I saw. And I agree, the use of liquid metal to cool your CPU, combined with the comparison of your CPU to a nuclear reactor is rather absurd.
What's with all of the ads today? First the Alienware "article", followed by this one?
Why do non-conformists all dress the same? Life is full of paradox's and inconsistensies, but that doesn't mean that nothing exists. Before I continue, I would just like to mention that I don't believe creationism should be taught in schools, but that they should point out that evolution is a theory (see my above comment).
Just because you have the ability to talk in circles doens't mean that you've disproven the existance of God, or anything like that. Ever think that certain things are beyond the full understanding of the human mind?
For instance, our brains are optimized to predict the performance of second order systems, since much of what we encounter in nature can be approximated as such (like the trajectory of a rock flying through the air). Systems that exhibit behavior higher than second order, or exhibit enough non-linearities that they can no longer be approximated as linear, are extremely difficult, if not impossible, for our minds to predict.
Likewise, it is extremely difficult to visualize things of greater than three-four dimensions. Actually, it is impossible for at least 99.9% of the population of visualize things in greater than 4 dimensions. While we use mathematics to represent n-dimensional systems, this math is by no means perfect (as it assumes linearity).
My point of all of this is perhaps we can't come up with a perfect explanation of things because some things are above the state of our minds. Perhaps things will become clearer as we evolve, but for now I hold my religious beliefs as a very good approximation of what is true, much like a linear approximation is a good approximation of many dynamic systems. While it is always possible to excite the nonlinearities and drive that description to a point of instability, it is still a very good approximation.
Two, regarding the wider scope of Intellegent Design, why does that necessarily have to conflict with the established theory of evolution? This is like saying that a particular statue could not have possibly been carved by ancient man, because it is clear that it was in fact carved with a stone tool. Can't the ID folks consider the possibility that evolution is the tool God used to create us? Evolution does not disprove the existence of God.
Exactly. As a rather religious person myself, I have never really had a problem with evolution. I also could never understand why people take the bible exactly to the word. Heck, even for the creation of the world story, ever think that "7 days" is just a means of classifying a process of events? Besides, what exactly did God base his day on? If I were a being that existed eternally, I think I would have a rather different notion of the passage of time. A day isn't even the same on other planets, let alone before they all existed. I think that it's pretty good that the Bible got the order right, though, seeing as how the the author of Genesis wasn't looking at the fossil record.
Likewise, I don't think that accepting evolution precludes the existance of God. I don't understand why there are so many scientists that have the attitude of, "Well, since science gives us explanations of things there is no God." Just because we know the mechanism behind something, doesn't mean we know the "why" behind it. The two are not mutually exclusive, nor does one set of beliefs hinder the other. Just look at Louis Pasteur.
So yes, I think that by looking at theories (yes, it is still a theory) such as evolution, it provides a wonderful way to look at how exactly God guided the creation of things. That's just my personal belief, and anyone is of course entitled to their own. Of course, I DO think that it should be pointed out to students that evolution is still a theory. A pretty darn good theory, but a theory nonetheless. Leave matters of faith to your parents/church to teach you and your own brain to evaluate all of the options.
I'll second that. I myself am a grad student in mechanical engineering, and I run nearly all of my MATLAB/SIMULINK simulations on a PIII running Windows 2000. In fact, I do do MOST of my work on a PIII. With a little RAM (384MB as well) they work fine.
This discussion reminds me of a conversation that I had with my cousin a while back. She's a secretary, and bought a $2000+ home computer because she wanted something fast, even though she's only doing simple word processing and net surfing.
As good as companies like Dell are, they've done a fantastic job of convincing people that you need the newest and fastest of everything. That anything else is lame, and you're either a social deviant or living in the 1970's if you don't have a P4 EE machine.
Of course, with the world on the downward side of the oil availability slope, I imagine that we will start seeing a shift towards more efficient technology in every aspect of our lives, not just in computers.
15% of the players reported playing on average 21 hours per week. That's a part-time job! With the advent of selling property online for cash, one wonders if playing MMOG's will become a part-time job...
Though I question the accuracy of some of the statistics, since it's nearly impossible to play for 156 hours per week as that would only allow for 12 hours of sleep per week.
One strategy for making them involves packaging individual atoms on a chip so that laser beams can read quantum data.
I wonder if reading the state on one QC will inadvertently change the state on a QC somewhere else in the world. Of course, a worst case scenario would be if someone were trying to get there pR0n real fast and made that alien ships QC navigational system fail...
In this months Popular Science, they were running a brief article in the "What's New" section (sorry, not available online) that talked about a company using the technology in the "bed-of-nails" nano-battery to make materials that could be made either extremely hydrophobic or hydrophilic with the flick of a switch. This has the potential of making rather efficient mechanical systems by increasing the effectiveness of lubricants a great deal. Interesting that it's also being used to make batteries.
I find it amusing that despite the indutry push for practical IMAX quality in the home, with controllers that have 35 buttons (you know, twelve isn't enough!), Atari games still sell quite well. My friend works at a GameStop, and he says the 80 Classic Game collection is a big seller among all generations, and it's ranked as 222 on amazon. Have they ever stopped to wonder why this is so???
"He said that 500,000 movies are being downloaded every day around the world, although he wasn't sure how many of those are illegal." Of those "illegal" downloads, how many of them, if prevented, would have actually translated into sales? Just because somebody downloads a movie or song with a P2P program, doesn't mean that they would have otherwise bought it.
As for the quote "Students learn to repeat the program's motto: 'If you don't pay for it, you've stolen it.'", does this mean that people benefitting from charitable orgaizations are all thieves? From the MPAA's standpoint, all of those people in Calcutta stole from Mother Theresa. What a world...
"Georgia Tech physics professor Uzi Landman said he expects it will be five to 10 years before nanoscale "parts" are common in electronic devices; perhaps five to eight years for medical uses. "
This prediction seems similar to the claims made by the MEMS (Micro-electrical Mechanical Systems) researchs a few years ago. There is a huge jump between something working in a laboratory, and placing it on the manufacturing line. The two major obstacles facing the manufacturing end (facing the researchers as well, for that matter)for nano-tech are similar to MEMS, as they are the precurser for nano-tech.
For one thing, assembling things at the "nano", or even the "micro" level, is that unless you are making a crystal, things move around quite a bit from where you want them. Even with crystals, it must either be a single crystal or defect free - rather difficult to do.
The other major problem is testing and debugging a design. The MEMS researchers both at my current university and where I went for undergrad were consistently plauged by the fact that there is no feasible way to debug thier designs. This is why they're still working out basic gears and motors.
On the subject of nano-probes, while this does seem likely to occur in a couple of years given its relative simplicity, the search for a bio-compatible crystalline substance that does not dissolve and can be easily manipulated at the atomic level I don't believe has been accomplished.
One final point, while they may be assembled at -455 degrees F, they will be operating at room temperature where atomic vibrations, movements, and the like will be highly prevalent. I'm curious to see how this is dealt with.
All in all, while I think that this technology will be introduced into the mainstream well within our lifetime, 5-10 years seems rather short term.
Slashdot Mirror
I completely agree. Though, this problem exists in the USA as well. At the university I recently graduated from, we had a monthly download limit of 1.5GB, and an upload limit of equal size. Go over the limit, and you're reduced to a 56k connection. Go over more than once, and you're cut off for the semester. Keep doing it once reinstated, and no more connection for you.
As a grad student, I frequenctly played UT2004 every evening due to the short rounds. Under this model, I'd get one play a month, aside from the great deal of time it would take just to start a game. Yeah, that's some solid value there...Here's an idea - don't publish crap.
I bought UT2004 because it's a fantastic game. The same with SM's Pirates!, Splinter Cell, NWN, etc. So many games are either simply technology demonstrations or are rushed out the door devoid of gameplay, elements of fun, or depth of story that it's rediculous. But then again, we've heard all of this before around here. I try to tell the gaming industry this by speaking with my wallet, but apparently that's not getting the message across...
Only to be thwarted by? From TFA, "The subsidiary of Carnival Corp. was investigating whether the weapon was successful in warding off the pirates, he said. The ship's captain also changed its course, shifted into high speed and headed out into the open sea to elude the pirates, who were in two small boats, he said. He had no further details."
I'm sure it certainly contributed, but they're not even sure it actually was the reason why the pirates weren't able to catch them.
There was a game company a while ago called The Logic Factory that had released a turn based strategy game called Ascendancy, and followed with a rather artistic RTS called The Tone Rebellion. When I purchased Tone Rebellion, I received the game soundtrack free of charge, since I had registered my copy of Ascendancy.
Having never owned a game soundtrack before, my original thought was, "Wow, that's useless." This soundtrack, however, turned out to be one of the best relaxation/study CD's that I have. While Tone was rather unique at the time for having so much effort being put into the musical score, many game makers spend a great deal of time and money to create good (and sometimes excellent) music to go with the game. I know I've owned more than one game that I wished I had the soundtrack. This sounds like it's really worth checking out.
I just find it funny that it costs at least 0.99 USD to purchase a three-and-a-half minute song, but only 1.99 USD to download an episode of a TV show, which has cast and crew to pay, filming, sets, etc. Combine this with the fact that the RIAA wants even more money for a single track...pretty amazing.
I suppose compared to purchasing a box set of a show that may cost up to 60 USD, at least TV episode downloading seems to offer some sort of significant price break from purchasing the actual high-quality non-DRM'd media from a store (new or used), and provides the a la carte option. The only question that I have regarding the a la carte option for TV shows is, wouldn't there be a much greater demand to own an entire season of a show than there would be to own an entire CD? After all, on a CD it's not as if Track 11 of an album doesn't make sense if you didn't listen to Track 9 or 10.
I also wonder if the concentration of the urine is a factor. What shade of yellow are they looking for?
I bet they yelled uri-ka! when they developed it.
Not to be nit-picky, but lightning rods actually prevent lightning from striking. Metal spikes, which are what people commonly think of as lighning rods, attract lightning. This was actually the original design by Franklin. Tesla realized the design flaw and came up with the design used today that prevents lightning from striking.
See article.
But yeah...Frankenstein indeed. One wonders if they were inspired by such things. After all, science fiction does tend to become science fact.
While I think you're joking you have a point that I'd like to respond to. My mom and my aunt grew up in NYC, and they played outside all the time. Besides, doing things that don't involve technology doesn't always mean frolocking with bunnies. A set of building blocks could suffice as well.
I don't understand this notion of, "We need to have our kids using computers from birth to better prepare them for the future." I didn't use a computer until middle school, then just for word processing. That certainly didn't hinder me from my current position as a PhD. student in engineering.
Think about it, many of us didn't have all of these technological toys when we were little, and we seemed to adapt just fine. Computer usage isn't some sort of esoteric skill that requires years of training to master. It's not like you're trying to levitate cars with your mind.
Perhaps if children were exposed to life outside of the digital babysitter they would develop their imaginations more, and become more creative, healthier (mentally and physically) people. Maybe if more kids ran around outside more often, child obesity wouldn't be so prevelent in our society.
Overall, as with most things a balance is what is necessary. Sure I had my Atari when I was a kid, but I was only allowed to play with it for a certain amount of time. Just as TV was limited. The same can be done with a computer, especially if your child doesn't have all of these technological wonders in their bedroom. Show your child all that the world has to offer and what the imagination can do with it.
And a final thought on, "what you want your kid to be when he/she grows up." - that decision should ultimately be left up to your child once they're old enough to make it, not one that should be forced on them from birth. I've seen many a miserable engineer and computer scientist for just that reason.
Would that be because that's all they'd know? Perhaps that's not the best solution...Besides, even if office life will likely still suck in the future why make there childhood an equal hell?
Maybe they should just check the tracking number...
honeymonkey, n: pet name used by Bill Gates' mistress
ex. "How much cash has my little honeymonkey brought me today?"
But since I'm posting on this thread anyway, I wonder what the actresses will feel about that...
From 1+million horny teenagers, quite a bit...
In situations like that, typically it is either the poor liscenced engineer(s) who signed off on it, or the engineers who designed it. Rarely is it the company in general who made the system. Cases like that I would imagine would be treated similar to train or subway crashes though, since automated highways are in effect a very large subway/train. But yes, a legal mess would ensue (doesn't it always?).
The thing is that the amount of devices and money put into this would make the vehicle well out of range for the average customer.
That's the main reason why automated vehicles/highway's aren't all ready in use. I work in the field of vehicle automation, and many of the major hurdles regarding the functionality have been crossed. One good website to go to is here.
To give you an idea, a fully instrumented vehicle capable of doing autonomous driving costs about $100,000. Similar to one of those new-fangled fuel cell cars. This doesn't include the cost of infrastructure, as you can't exactly equip all civilian vehicles with military grade GPS. The California PATH program actually uses cow magnets embedded in the highway (VERY expensive to do).
By the way, the main reason for automating highways is so that you can fit A LOT more cars on the road, and optimise the vehicle positions based on who is getting on and off where, and you can avoid traffic hold-ups from things like somebody tapping their brakes a mile up the road (called the "Slinky effect"). They found that the overwhelming majority of people would rather have the ability to own a car and use it whenever they want to on an automated highway rather than develop a really good public transportation system.
As for accident avoidance, many of the automated highway people (such as myself) are working on accident avoidance, since that is cruicial to automated highways being able to function. I'm not really sure how MS factors into my research, but I don't think that it will be good. Besides, their software will require a great deal of additional hardware, such as steer-by-wire, brake-by-wire, etc. (all ready well under development and will be in stores by around 2010). But I digress...
Liquid metal cooling is used in reactors because of the *extreme temperatures*, not just because it's more efficient. The metal (usually Sodium, but sometimes lead) is maintained in a molten state as it passes through the reactor and on back to the heat exchanger.
Recently (as in the past 1-2 years) there has also been work done on using liquid lithium traveling through a wick for use in space based reactors, where you don't have gravity around to help you out. The research seemed rather promising from the results that I saw. And I agree, the use of liquid metal to cool your CPU, combined with the comparison of your CPU to a nuclear reactor is rather absurd.
What's with all of the ads today? First the Alienware "article", followed by this one?
Why do non-conformists all dress the same? Life is full of paradox's and inconsistensies, but that doesn't mean that nothing exists. Before I continue, I would just like to mention that I don't believe creationism should be taught in schools, but that they should point out that evolution is a theory (see my above comment).
Just because you have the ability to talk in circles doens't mean that you've disproven the existance of God, or anything like that. Ever think that certain things are beyond the full understanding of the human mind?
For instance, our brains are optimized to predict the performance of second order systems, since much of what we encounter in nature can be approximated as such (like the trajectory of a rock flying through the air). Systems that exhibit behavior higher than second order, or exhibit enough non-linearities that they can no longer be approximated as linear, are extremely difficult, if not impossible, for our minds to predict.
Likewise, it is extremely difficult to visualize things of greater than three-four dimensions. Actually, it is impossible for at least 99.9% of the population of visualize things in greater than 4 dimensions. While we use mathematics to represent n-dimensional systems, this math is by no means perfect (as it assumes linearity).
My point of all of this is perhaps we can't come up with a perfect explanation of things because some things are above the state of our minds. Perhaps things will become clearer as we evolve, but for now I hold my religious beliefs as a very good approximation of what is true, much like a linear approximation is a good approximation of many dynamic systems. While it is always possible to excite the nonlinearities and drive that description to a point of instability, it is still a very good approximation.
Two, regarding the wider scope of Intellegent Design, why does that necessarily have to conflict with the established theory of evolution? This is like saying that a particular statue could not have possibly been carved by ancient man, because it is clear that it was in fact carved with a stone tool. Can't the ID folks consider the possibility that evolution is the tool God used to create us? Evolution does not disprove the existence of God.
Exactly. As a rather religious person myself, I have never really had a problem with evolution. I also could never understand why people take the bible exactly to the word. Heck, even for the creation of the world story, ever think that "7 days" is just a means of classifying a process of events? Besides, what exactly did God base his day on? If I were a being that existed eternally, I think I would have a rather different notion of the passage of time. A day isn't even the same on other planets, let alone before they all existed. I think that it's pretty good that the Bible got the order right, though, seeing as how the the author of Genesis wasn't looking at the fossil record.
Likewise, I don't think that accepting evolution precludes the existance of God. I don't understand why there are so many scientists that have the attitude of, "Well, since science gives us explanations of things there is no God." Just because we know the mechanism behind something, doesn't mean we know the "why" behind it. The two are not mutually exclusive, nor does one set of beliefs hinder the other. Just look at Louis Pasteur.
So yes, I think that by looking at theories (yes, it is still a theory) such as evolution, it provides a wonderful way to look at how exactly God guided the creation of things. That's just my personal belief, and anyone is of course entitled to their own. Of course, I DO think that it should be pointed out to students that evolution is still a theory. A pretty darn good theory, but a theory nonetheless. Leave matters of faith to your parents/church to teach you and your own brain to evaluate all of the options.
I'll second that. I myself am a grad student in mechanical engineering, and I run nearly all of my MATLAB/SIMULINK simulations on a PIII running Windows 2000. In fact, I do do MOST of my work on a PIII. With a little RAM (384MB as well) they work fine.
This discussion reminds me of a conversation that I had with my cousin a while back. She's a secretary, and bought a $2000+ home computer because she wanted something fast, even though she's only doing simple word processing and net surfing.
As good as companies like Dell are, they've done a fantastic job of convincing people that you need the newest and fastest of everything. That anything else is lame, and you're either a social deviant or living in the 1970's if you don't have a P4 EE machine.
Of course, with the world on the downward side of the oil availability slope, I imagine that we will start seeing a shift towards more efficient technology in every aspect of our lives, not just in computers.
15% of the players reported playing on average 21 hours per week. That's a part-time job! With the advent of selling property online for cash, one wonders if playing MMOG's will become a part-time job...
Though I question the accuracy of some of the statistics, since it's nearly impossible to play for 156 hours per week as that would only allow for 12 hours of sleep per week.
One strategy for making them involves packaging individual atoms on a chip so that laser beams can read quantum data.
I wonder if reading the state on one QC will inadvertently change the state on a QC somewhere else in the world. Of course, a worst case scenario would be if someone were trying to get there pR0n real fast and made that alien ships QC navigational system fail...
"which relays the readings to a server in the UK by mobile phone". I wonder if they have to pay roaming charges.
In this months Popular Science, they were running a brief article in the "What's New" section (sorry, not available online) that talked about a company using the technology in the "bed-of-nails" nano-battery to make materials that could be made either extremely hydrophobic or hydrophilic with the flick of a switch. This has the potential of making rather efficient mechanical systems by increasing the effectiveness of lubricants a great deal. Interesting that it's also being used to make batteries.
I find it amusing that despite the indutry push for practical IMAX quality in the home, with controllers that have 35 buttons (you know, twelve isn't enough!), Atari games still sell quite well. My friend works at a GameStop, and he says the 80 Classic Game collection is a big seller among all generations, and it's ranked as 222 on amazon. Have they ever stopped to wonder why this is so???
"He said that 500,000 movies are being downloaded every day around the world, although he wasn't sure how many of those are illegal." Of those "illegal" downloads, how many of them, if prevented, would have actually translated into sales? Just because somebody downloads a movie or song with a P2P program, doesn't mean that they would have otherwise bought it.
As for the quote "Students learn to repeat the program's motto: 'If you don't pay for it, you've stolen it.'", does this mean that people benefitting from charitable orgaizations are all thieves? From the MPAA's standpoint, all of those people in Calcutta stole from Mother Theresa. What a world...
"Georgia Tech physics professor Uzi Landman said he expects it will be five to 10 years before nanoscale "parts" are common in electronic devices; perhaps five to eight years for medical uses. " This prediction seems similar to the claims made by the MEMS (Micro-electrical Mechanical Systems) researchs a few years ago. There is a huge jump between something working in a laboratory, and placing it on the manufacturing line. The two major obstacles facing the manufacturing end (facing the researchers as well, for that matter)for nano-tech are similar to MEMS, as they are the precurser for nano-tech. For one thing, assembling things at the "nano", or even the "micro" level, is that unless you are making a crystal, things move around quite a bit from where you want them. Even with crystals, it must either be a single crystal or defect free - rather difficult to do. The other major problem is testing and debugging a design. The MEMS researchers both at my current university and where I went for undergrad were consistently plauged by the fact that there is no feasible way to debug thier designs. This is why they're still working out basic gears and motors. On the subject of nano-probes, while this does seem likely to occur in a couple of years given its relative simplicity, the search for a bio-compatible crystalline substance that does not dissolve and can be easily manipulated at the atomic level I don't believe has been accomplished. One final point, while they may be assembled at -455 degrees F, they will be operating at room temperature where atomic vibrations, movements, and the like will be highly prevalent. I'm curious to see how this is dealt with. All in all, while I think that this technology will be introduced into the mainstream well within our lifetime, 5-10 years seems rather short term.