I hunt and peck, and I honestly don't see the problem. I can type at around 50-60wpm, slightly more if it's from memory.
I can hunt and peck somewhat well without looking at the keyboard, and the only real reason I look at the keyboard is to not to find keys but so that I don't accidentally hit nearby ones.
The problem I assume is micro-meteorites, and probably other hazards, which the tanks were not designed for. This is however unlikely so there is little need to worry about it.
There are other challenges: refitting them in space with airlocks or the mentioned "tether" systems. Providing power (solar panels), recycling and other necessary systems. These would all have to be flown and fitted, keeping in mind that the design must be new since present systems and the tanks were not designed to work together. A large part of the cost of a space station is the guts of the modules and not the skin and these still need to be sent up, as does food for the construction staff.
In general all these modifications are the problem, the tanks were not designed to be taken apart and alterations only help weaken their structural stability (no reinforcement around areas that will become stressed, etc.). In addition, all this needs to be done in EVA suits and in cramped space which may not even be possible. The main problem isn't any single modification but the sheer number of them and that together their cost (in man-hours/EVAs) and risk is excessive. This could also be done on the ground however that adds extra weight and complexity to the tanks (and after Columbia I doubt anyone wants the later).
In summary, you can dump a fuel tank into orbit for free however all you have is a fuel tank. Making it into a space station is a somewhat more complicated problem. Sure it may be practical however there are good reasons for why it's not a "great" solution.
Your post reminded me of Brave New World, and I guess a similar system could be used in the Feed world. Of course then the whole thing would be exactly like Brave New World and thus a rip off.
I wonder how the Russians and the Chinese peacefully joined this New World Order, I guess I'll read the book. It might be amusing.
That's basically what I think whenever I try to imagine a society with either mass telepaths or neural links. Although I'm not sure about the rest of the series as I haven't read it Asimov basically had non-talking telepaths in Forward the Foundation, which made me feel fuzzy on the inside.
In general every single change had dozens of consequences, if you can connect neural feeds then the societies knowledge of the brain (and science in general) is rather high needs to be taken into account, for example supper geniuses. There are indeed ways of getting around this (science being controlled by corporations, a sudden discovery in one field, alien technology or whatever) however then imho you slowly become less and less tied into reality.
So everything would be a monopoly then?
You see if there is any chance of competition then companies need those "free thinking" individuals to compete. Since we are in a global market place they also need to compete with other countries.
If the US suddenly became a static non-innovative nation then unless we withdrew from the global market place (both import and export) the Russians and Chinese would within a few decades decimate US corporations.
Re:The future sucks, it always does
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Wouldn't SF writers write about the horrible outside that those trying to get out may potentially find?
Same thing with CPUs (and video cards, and probably everything else) in some cases: the low end cpu is the same as the high end except for a multiplier lock. Then again in other cases the low end cpus ARE worse ie: they don't pass the rquired factory tests to be at a higher clock rate.
Wait, WHY do we need humans to bring back rocks?
For the cost of sending a manned mission to bring back x amount of rock, you can send an unmanned mission and bring back 40x amount of rock.
But it will be Leisure Time, robots will do all the work and the masses will sit at home and drink beer. Well they'll probably do a bit more than that seeing as each person could be an emperor in essence.
Try reading the article again and look at the analogies he used, k?
See it never said all programs need to be dumbed down but rather that if you want the dumbed down version it should be very easy to access it. IE: If you don't want to deal with all the extra complicated crap you don't have to.
As the camera example illustrated: your camera may have 20 million options however usually there is an easy to access "auto" mode if all you need is to take a quick picture. If I want to snap a picture of the blackboard because I came late to my review section I sure as hell don't want to spend 5 minutes setting the camera for "indoor" use.
Not to mention it took place back when there was a lot less information about the disease (electroshock therapy doesn't help with schizophrenia, it helps with depression though). Not to mention the late diagnosis of the disease in Nash.
Today there are supposedly a decent number of treatments for the disease.
You can blame the Air Force for part of that problem.
As long as the people making it aim for it to be affordable and aren't given insane objectives by an outside agency it's possible.
Also keep in mind that technology has advanced in the last few decades.
In two years commonly available we'll probably be able to meet those requirements. However, I see them as still being the high end. In other words: most users will not have anything close to it. Why spend $2000+ on a computer when $500 at Wal-mart gets you one which does the same thing? Many people now a-days don't need computer newer than 2 years, well maybe to run Windows XP but that's it. Linux here I come.
I can build a computer form used parts for under $200 + OS which will do everything the "average" user need: word processing, web, some games, etc.
Also: what about laptops?
Cable does has limits, while they can be overcome by adding more lines, etc. it would also cost more money.
In other words: the company could give everyone much more theoretical bandwidth but without upgrading their infrastructure the few Kazza whores would cause everyone else to have 56k.
Creating new drugs is expensive, the R&D is high, then you get the costs of FDA approval (necessary trials, etc.). This is doubly so now that a single lawsuit for a single drug can kill a company.
So without patents what incentive will there be for companies to research new drugs? The maybe 6 months you get to sell it for before someone makes a cheaper alternative since copying costs a lot less?
Yeah they're suing African countries but at the same time without them the drug would never exist in the first place. There are already drugs which are never sold because they would not be profitable (few people have the disorder).
Those of us who place our faith in the Googlebot may be surprised to learn that the big search engines crawl less than 1 percent of the known Web. Beneath the surface layer of company sites, blogs and porn lies another, hidden Web. The "deep Web" is the great lode of databases, flight schedules, library catalogs, classified ads, patent filings, genetic research data and another 90-odd terabytes of data that never find their way onto a typical search results page. There already are numerous immense databases to store medical and genomic data, and the linking between them is only now becoming usable. There is a reason there re so many of them and that so much effort has been put into methods for displaying their data.
I don't want to have the data spit at me because it's useless, a waste of time when there are better, faster, more robust, and nicer interfaces I could use.
It's probably the same with half the other stuff they want to search: there already are good methods of searching it for those who know where to look . Not only that but the existing methods provide data specific information which an automated search engine cannot do and without which the data is useless to those people who actually use it. And those who don't need to look don't have a need for the data. Do YOU really need a 300 page list of A,T,C and Gs?
Rough caculations put it at over ten thousand for me. You can either convert 700mb to bits, dividing by a cd-rom's area and taking the root (gace around 18k for me) or by looking at actual dot size:
300 dpi => 84.67 m
4000 dpi => 6.35 m (Wikipedia)
cd-rom: pit size seems to be around 1~2 m which gives a dpi of 10 to 20 thousand.
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I hunt and peck, and I honestly don't see the problem. I can type at around 50-60wpm, slightly more if it's from memory. I can hunt and peck somewhat well without looking at the keyboard, and the only real reason I look at the keyboard is to not to find keys but so that I don't accidentally hit nearby ones.
The problem I assume is micro-meteorites, and probably other hazards, which the tanks were not designed for. This is however unlikely so there is little need to worry about it.
There are other challenges: refitting them in space with airlocks or the mentioned "tether" systems. Providing power (solar panels), recycling and other necessary systems. These would all have to be flown and fitted, keeping in mind that the design must be new since present systems and the tanks were not designed to work together. A large part of the cost of a space station is the guts of the modules and not the skin and these still need to be sent up, as does food for the construction staff.
In general all these modifications are the problem, the tanks were not designed to be taken apart and alterations only help weaken their structural stability (no reinforcement around areas that will become stressed, etc.). In addition, all this needs to be done in EVA suits and in cramped space which may not even be possible. The main problem isn't any single modification but the sheer number of them and that together their cost (in man-hours/EVAs) and risk is excessive. This could also be done on the ground however that adds extra weight and complexity to the tanks (and after Columbia I doubt anyone wants the later).
In summary, you can dump a fuel tank into orbit for free however all you have is a fuel tank. Making it into a space station is a somewhat more complicated problem. Sure it may be practical however there are good reasons for why it's not a "great" solution.
Your post reminded me of Brave New World, and I guess a similar system could be used in the Feed world. Of course then the whole thing would be exactly like Brave New World and thus a rip off.
I wonder how the Russians and the Chinese peacefully joined this New World Order, I guess I'll read the book. It might be amusing.
That's basically what I think whenever I try to imagine a society with either mass telepaths or neural links. Although I'm not sure about the rest of the series as I haven't read it Asimov basically had non-talking telepaths in Forward the Foundation, which made me feel fuzzy on the inside.
In general every single change had dozens of consequences, if you can connect neural feeds then the societies knowledge of the brain (and science in general) is rather high needs to be taken into account, for example supper geniuses. There are indeed ways of getting around this (science being controlled by corporations, a sudden discovery in one field, alien technology or whatever) however then imho you slowly become less and less tied into reality.
So everything would be a monopoly then? You see if there is any chance of competition then companies need those "free thinking" individuals to compete. Since we are in a global market place they also need to compete with other countries. If the US suddenly became a static non-innovative nation then unless we withdrew from the global market place (both import and export) the Russians and Chinese would within a few decades decimate US corporations.
Wouldn't SF writers write about the horrible outside that those trying to get out may potentially find?
Same thing with CPUs (and video cards, and probably everything else) in some cases: the low end cpu is the same as the high end except for a multiplier lock. Then again in other cases the low end cpus ARE worse ie: they don't pass the rquired factory tests to be at a higher clock rate.
Wait, WHY do we need humans to bring back rocks? For the cost of sending a manned mission to bring back x amount of rock, you can send an unmanned mission and bring back 40x amount of rock.
I was thinking the same thing when I saw it.
But it will be Leisure Time, robots will do all the work and the masses will sit at home and drink beer. Well they'll probably do a bit more than that seeing as each person could be an emperor in essence.
Try reading the article again and look at the analogies he used, k?
See it never said all programs need to be dumbed down but rather that if you want the dumbed down version it should be very easy to access it. IE: If you don't want to deal with all the extra complicated crap you don't have to.
As the camera example illustrated: your camera may have 20 million options however usually there is an easy to access "auto" mode if all you need is to take a quick picture. If I want to snap a picture of the blackboard because I came late to my review section I sure as hell don't want to spend 5 minutes setting the camera for "indoor" use.
Don't spread myths, last I checked all humans do not live in one giant city.
http://www.beyondweird.com/nuclearwar/s73p912.htm
Not to mention it took place back when there was a lot less information about the disease (electroshock therapy doesn't help with schizophrenia, it helps with depression though). Not to mention the late diagnosis of the disease in Nash. Today there are supposedly a decent number of treatments for the disease.
I love how you forgot that the same thing was doen during the Civil War and WW2.
You can blame the Air Force for part of that problem. As long as the people making it aim for it to be affordable and aren't given insane objectives by an outside agency it's possible. Also keep in mind that technology has advanced in the last few decades.
In two years commonly available we'll probably be able to meet those requirements. However, I see them as still being the high end. In other words: most users will not have anything close to it. Why spend $2000+ on a computer when $500 at Wal-mart gets you one which does the same thing? Many people now a-days don't need computer newer than 2 years, well maybe to run Windows XP but that's it. Linux here I come. I can build a computer form used parts for under $200 + OS which will do everything the "average" user need: word processing, web, some games, etc. Also: what about laptops?
Firebird loads up as fast as IE for me.
Cable does has limits, while they can be overcome by adding more lines, etc. it would also cost more money. In other words: the company could give everyone much more theoretical bandwidth but without upgrading their infrastructure the few Kazza whores would cause everyone else to have 56k.
Creating new drugs is expensive, the R&D is high, then you get the costs of FDA approval (necessary trials, etc.). This is doubly so now that a single lawsuit for a single drug can kill a company. So without patents what incentive will there be for companies to research new drugs? The maybe 6 months you get to sell it for before someone makes a cheaper alternative since copying costs a lot less? Yeah they're suing African countries but at the same time without them the drug would never exist in the first place. There are already drugs which are never sold because they would not be profitable (few people have the disorder).
And how many users do you think would use root by default? You can use restricted accounts on WinXP but no one does...
Those of us who place our faith in the Googlebot may be surprised to learn that the big search engines crawl less than 1 percent of the known Web. Beneath the surface layer of company sites, blogs and porn lies another, hidden Web. The "deep Web" is the great lode of databases, flight schedules, library catalogs, classified ads, patent filings, genetic research data and another 90-odd terabytes of data that never find their way onto a typical search results page. There already are numerous immense databases to store medical and genomic data, and the linking between them is only now becoming usable. There is a reason there re so many of them and that so much effort has been put into methods for displaying their data. I don't want to have the data spit at me because it's useless, a waste of time when there are better, faster, more robust, and nicer interfaces I could use. It's probably the same with half the other stuff they want to search: there already are good methods of searching it for those who know where to look . Not only that but the existing methods provide data specific information which an automated search engine cannot do and without which the data is useless to those people who actually use it. And those who don't need to look don't have a need for the data. Do YOU really need a 300 page list of A,T,C and Gs?
Rough caculations put it at over ten thousand for me. You can either convert 700mb to bits, dividing by a cd-rom's area and taking the root (gace around 18k for me) or by looking at actual dot size: 300 dpi => 84.67 m 4000 dpi => 6.35 m (Wikipedia) cd-rom: pit size seems to be around 1~2 m which gives a dpi of 10 to 20 thousand.
...the article mentions that...read it.