One funny thing about me... When posting online I spread lies and FUD for knee jerk reactions because I don't know if all I've read was factual or not, and I enjoy making bold statements if only to get replies.:)
I find the discussion and arguement far more valuable than my limitted opinion. I don't know everything. I probably don't know anything about this topic, but I have my opinions and some of them are almost right.
P.S. Actually I think oil is a far more valuable resource when used for plastics. What would happen if we used up all the oil driving shit around and could no longer manufacture plastics? Eventually we will use up all the oil buried deep within this planet. I just hope we collectively understand that and work to use our limitted resources in the most efficient ways so we don't end up throwing them out with the trash or burn them up in smoke. For example I'm finding typing on this keyboard is worth far more than the gas I burned last week to transport me between work and home. They both cost me about the same, but this keyboard hasn't dumped a bunch of crap in the atmosphere and is still here and usable today.
Plastics are great uses of oil and a worthy cause to drill in select areas. But how many lives would you say its worth? 10? 1000? How about 500,000? The US thinks its worth many more lives than that, but I disagree. Life is worth more than anything. - that's a period
I wasn't talking about running out of oil. The price of bread is based on oil. How do you think we'll ship bread to every store in the country when the price of oil rises say $1 a gallon. How much do you think the price would go up if we couldn't get cheap oil from overseas? Its all based on supply and demand, right? When supply is low Americans freak out and demand rises. I'm not taking pot shots at the oil companies. When did I name one oil company? I'm just hypothesizing what might happen if we no longer had access to our precious oil.
I don't want to bash oil companies. I want to help solve the problem that is our dependance on oil. But why do you seem so intent on protecting oil companies? What's so good about oil? It seems to cause a lot of problems for some easy gain. You dig up some black liquid that provide the power to run engines. Great. If you learn about electromagnetic energy you'll find that electricity actually can provide a LOT more power than oil. So what else is so great about oil, besides all the money companies can make off it (since its basicly free if you can afford to dig it up). Its a limitted resource. Its temporary and you better get used to that fact.
Just how many fuzzy animals have the oil companies hurt compared to Microsoft? But I guess all that is ok, because it was for the greater good of keeping our gas prices low. I don't care about oil or oil companies. I care about life and little fuzzy animals. I think they are cute and harmless, usually. And I'd love that they weren't injured by our carelessness. If that means we have to find alternative sources of energy so be it. I care about having energy, but I don't care where it comes from, and nothing's wrong with electricity.
That being said there are MANY forms of alternative energy sources. You can get energy from the sun, sea, and air directly, from marijuana and many other plants, and probably eventually from matter itself (in a clean way). The only reason EVERYONE uses oil as their primary energy source is because they stereotype anyone opposed to the stuff as "zealots" and "environmentalists". An environmentalist is simply someone who cares about their environment. If you don't care about your environment maybe you should seek professional psychological assistance, because it would be my guess that there are a great many things you don't care about. Our environment is our home, our backyard, and our children and their children's playground. We've only got one planet so lets try not to mess it up, ok.
I'm worried that the continued use of oil to power almost all our transportation systems is wrecking havock on our environment. I don't see any catastrophic effects today, but that doesn't mean we aren't causing damage. And what I'm worried about is my children or their children not having a green planet filled with life. We've already killed off roaming buffalo, fished the sea, and affected the migratory patterns of nearly every animal still alive today. When you run over a squirrel do you blame the squirrel?
Let's develope more mass transit systems that run on electricity. Let's cut back on the use of oil. Don't get rid of oil completely, just don't rely on it for our survival. What would happen if we no longer had access to oil from other countries? Our whole economy would collapse. Because we're stupidly dependant on a non renewable resource. Let's be dependant on the Sun and the Moon, if anything, at least they'll still be here tomorrow.
Criminals no longer have the freedoms granted to every American by the constitution. So they don't get the same protection from personal injury, I guess. I don't understand where you get the idea that America is some righteous or just country, unless you pay attention to its propoganda. Its actions prove differently. Personally I think all Americans should be subject to the risks of torture, rape, and death they inflict on their criminals. In fact they are, they just don't know it. Because the truth is everyone in America is a criminal by their own legal system. They are in the process of declaring all humans illegal and criminal on one account or another. But if you have money you don't have to worry about those laws, they're just for the poor. Heh, infect truth... whatever.
Or hire a professional sys admin for less than $150k and have him write a perl script to merge both the world wide DNS maps with those of the alternate root servers and continue operations with a working complete dns map, without the greedy ICANN board controlling any of it, else it get fucked up again.
Want a route around ICANN? How about DNS? Try freenet! No domain registration required. Free anonymous encrypted worldwide data storage, what more could you ask for?
Because that would be illegal, to use GPL'ed code for commercial use and not release the source. But I'd love to see Microsoft write their own OS from scratch the way GNU did.;)
But isn't almost all of this common sense? I'm sure I heard this all before in my high school economics class, and that wasn't even the AP course. You must certainly know that the bank doesn't put your money into a locked box. And Interest rates are created by the government which affects all of us. And the net change in Interest rate is actually a lot higher than the government preaches because banks have the effect of creating money, which they can't do stupidly or they'd cause a panic, which has happened before. But what gets me is money is based off your labor, not gold or whatever. This means that the extra money a bank lends is backed up by the economy, the collective labor and product of the people. And most "labor" is actually done by machines which are operated by people.
So, if we could all accept that we must work (operate or build machines and automated factories) we could do away with money and get a LOT more accomplished. Imagine the inefficiency in our lives caused by money, paying taxes, managing cash, bills, etc., let alone Enron and bad management, qualifying for loans, insurance requirements, late fees, fines... y'know its really sad when you think about it. We hide behind contracts to cover our own asses instead of helping our neighbor. All because we're selfish and wouldn't work if we didn't get shiney things. I say let's work and let everyone have shiney things built by automated factories. If you can automate one you can automate a million or 6 billion! I'm finding more and more that the shiney things I want to have are the tools I need to get my work done (computers). Tools I almost know how to build myself and love to work on. I guess it all comes down to if you could live in a world without money would you work for free? Or would you even want to live in such a world? Lets make work and education interesting and fun!
Can you show me some evidence to back up your claim that the local monopoly on the one information road into your home would or could exist, or how it could be more damanging than a national or global monopoly. This is why I think wireless will replace the internet as we know it. People will solve these problems for themselves and leave the legislators drooling retardedly on their laws. The biggest problem for wireless that I can see is a routing protocol that could handle a single global network, mostly because I don't know that much about modern routing protocols.
Yeah, I'm a moron. Its all my fault. I'm sorry I voted for bush and wrote all that crappy linux and BSD code. And the war. Well, you're right, afghanistan started that. It was all a huge setup by the Taliban I'm sure. But why didn't they use some of the billions bush gave them for the war on drugs? They could have bought their own 747's and flown them straight up our asses for all Bush cared. Bin Laden, Al Queda, the Taliban, muslim, islam, it's all the same thing to you, isn't it? As long as you have your job and your home and $1/gallon gas you're happy, you don't care.
Guess what? I've got that same high paying job, home, cheap gas. But I do care. I care about people I'll never meet. I'm affraid my cheap gas and SUV is going to cost many of them their lives and more importantly their quality of life. If you lived in poverty for a hundred years maybe you'd understand what I'm talking about.
Pop Quiz. How much did the price of oil drop after we started bombing afghanistan? And more importantly why.
Actually the idea that "people are sheep" is not a neutral statement. Intelligent creatures would not be capable of being herded up, instead moving together in one direction because it is the right direciton to go (each individual would choose that for themselves). But sheep allow themselves to be herded because the individuals do not think about which direction they want to go. Instead they follow the other sheep. And in our situation the sheep are herded by corporate media presented primarily over TV. Imagine what the US would be like if only movie industry quality educational material was broadcast over 600 channels. Then I bet they'd understand why relating them to sheep has negative connotations.
I must be living in a fantasy world. A software company that makes popular games yet it can't sustain itself. Microsoft, the monopoly that can't be broken up. Bush, the president who didn't get elected. And this whole War on Terror to score a few extra gallons of oil.
I bought and paid for every Loki game. I thought they would have been around forever. Their games were easy to install, web updating, and without all that copy protection bs you find on M$. And very often they cost much less than the new copy on the store shelves. Loki sold most their titles for around $30-$50. If you only bought when they had specials you would have paid around $30 per game. Now why is my favorite game company going out of business? Probably bad management, but I prefer to blame the public. Yes, I blame you. If you love linux, or use linux and didn't fork over any cash for loki games or worse yet, pirated them, then its all your fault. And now I won't get my Deus-Ex for Linux. Bastard. I knew this was going to happen.
assuming we were not humans but some other largely benevolent race.....
Yeah, I see your point. But some of us I think want to help, or else we wouldn't have open source software. Let's just hope its the GNU guys that discover that dimensional portal thingy. Now how do you get a programmer to solve physics problems... hrmmmm... I seriously doubt the human race is intelligent enough to master the mathematics required to successfully and acurately travel by folding space, much less prove the theories behind it or design any functional equipment. But they did make a nuke... so there is potential. I don't know a lot about the theories behind superstrings, but from what I've heard that math is far beyond calculus, or at least calculus in 11 and 24 dimensions, or something like that. It sounded hard, heard about Physicists forgetting where they lived after working on the problems overnight. But I think its very similar to nuclear physics or electromagnetics. In fact superstrings was originally called The Theory of Everything, or the big T.O.E. It was Einsteins last theory, trying to unite the 4 forces of nature, electromagnetic, weak and strong nuclear, and gravity. If understood thoroughly it could do for space-folding what the theory of relativity did for our nuclear capability. Imagine for instance a caveman discovers a magnetic rock and finds that by moving this rock a certain direction near a wire, he happened to find on the ground, he gets shocked by the electrons the moving mangetic field caused to move in the wire. Then he puts on rubber gloves, charges up the wire and runs around shocking all his cavefriends. Similarly, I bet learning how to use superstrings is a lot easier than solving/proving the equation.
Anyway I totally agree and wanted to add that these systems are also based on very specific operating conditions. Including electromagnetic fields and other forms of RF. No matter how secure and stable the OS, your hardware could fail at any given moment. KISS, yes, but always plan for the worst and develope fault-tolerant/redundant systems. Never trust a single system or OS for any mission critical service. Also I find its best to just use cheap PC hardware since you can't expect better uptime from the more expensive proprietary stuff and it can't get much more modular than racked PCs.
(keep in mind I know nothing about the condition aboard a ship, I know Sun make special cases designed for this)
So what you're saying is you think China would attack the US if they suddenly found the secret to Superstrings and designed and built a worm hole generator or space-folding machine that could offer them immediate transportation to anyplace in our little 4 dimensional universe? And the Vietnam war shouldn't have been stopped because we would have won? Who wins a War? Doesn't anyone care about peace and prosperity? Instantaneous transportation would solve all the distribution problems anyone has on earth as well as the space program's problems getting to other planets, galaxies, etc. I bet we could solve superstrings and design the hardware before we could ever travel across our galaxy physically, even if we launched today. But what I fear is that there are many more people like you who would horde that kind of technology and use it to eliminate part of the human race. For what gain? Money?!?!
Perhaps if you had to physically sign a license agreement for each CD you bought maybe we wouldn't even need DRM. The problem isn't that the consumer accidently copies copyrighted works. Its that they aren't aware that their CDs are copyrighted and should not be copied. And those implied licenses like the kind on software that say you agree to the license by installing the app, with little to no mention of the details of the license in their easy click-through installations, are the same things that confuse consumers. They don't know what they are agreeing to, so they don't know when they break the law. This is like posting a police officer in every home because we know that some Americans break the laws they haven't read, in their own home.
My dad installed a dual-boot windows 98se RedHat linux system yesterday, after building the computer, with no prior computer knowledge and a couple hours of phone support with me. He might have trouble with ls and cd right now, but he's starting to understand a filesystem/directory structure. I bet in a year or two he'll be writing encrypted email on linux, now his primary business OS, and maintaining a secure business. He's also converting his winmodem over to external serial modems and setting up another dual-boot linux system for dial-up web access at both his home and business, upgrading staroffice 5.2 to OpenOffice 641C on all platforms (windows and linux) for MS compatibility, and this time around its costing him less than $1000 for the latest technology, 1.6+Ghz system, G-Force 2, etc. I'm very proud of my dad. But he's no exception, he's just like all the other "computer illiterate" people out there. They're not computer illiterate(sp?), they just need a little help to get them started and lots of encouragement. That's all.
I'd love to see the "industry" whole heartedly adopt MPEG-4, build tons of technology around it, and spend billions to promote it only to find in a couple years everyone migrates to an open source codec that offers a better user experience. I guess you can lead a horse to water, but... they'll still be a horse.
Re:I hope MPEG-4 fails
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Bandwidth is cheap. You can now use air to transmit your data at 10Mbps. That's right now. And technology is ever increasing in performance and the rate it increases in performance, meaning we'll have 100Mbps next year, 1000Mbps the year after, etc. Also we can transmit the same 10Mbps over standard phone copper technology. Technology is not only creating new capabilities using new hardware, but also adding new capabilities to the hardware we've already purchased. Furthermore the cost in bandwidth you are talking about is merely the corporations sitting on the cable we've already paid for, milking out every last cent they can from the poor dumn public, like they always do. You'll NEVER have real broadband up and down in a capitalist country, unless you're rich. Face the facts that are right in from of your face. We have the capability to lay a cat 5 network across the country and switch it at gigabit speeds. Why don't we do this? I don't know, cuz we're stupid? Tomorrow it'll be cheaper, but so will modems and phone lines. Guess what you'll be getting...;)
Oh, PS, I posted the parent. Also shouldn't Microsoft in turn be certified from Intel and AMD to show that they QA their software to be relatively stable on that hardware? It almost seems like this whole process is backwards. You NEVER hear Linux guys telling hardware guys what to do unless they find a bug in the hardware while comparing it to its specs.
Actually AOL is more like TV than WalMart. One goes to WalMart to shop, looking for advertisements and product information. One goes to AOL to get on the internet, chat, read email, and seek out information, not have it advertised to them like they're an idiot. Its true that most AOL users are not complete morons. They know who the president is, have been known to vote and remember email addresses and websites and probably can read. However from what I've read here, I don't use AOL, it sounds like AOL is become more like TV and pop culture than a real ISP. If that's the case, then yes, knock people because the ISP they choose. Just as much as you knock people for watching TV. Sometimes I think making fun of people is the only way you'll ever get them to learn, or at least think for themselves.
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One funny thing about me... When posting online I spread lies and FUD for knee jerk reactions because I don't know if all I've read was factual or not, and I enjoy making bold statements if only to get replies.
I find the discussion and arguement far more valuable than my limitted opinion. I don't know everything. I probably don't know anything about this topic, but I have my opinions and some of them are almost right.
P.S. Actually I think oil is a far more valuable resource when used for plastics. What would happen if we used up all the oil driving shit around and could no longer manufacture plastics? Eventually we will use up all the oil buried deep within this planet. I just hope we collectively understand that and work to use our limitted resources in the most efficient ways so we don't end up throwing them out with the trash or burn them up in smoke. For example I'm finding typing on this keyboard is worth far more than the gas I burned last week to transport me between work and home. They both cost me about the same, but this keyboard hasn't dumped a bunch of crap in the atmosphere and is still here and usable today.
Plastics are great uses of oil and a worthy cause to drill in select areas. But how many lives would you say its worth? 10? 1000? How about 500,000? The US thinks its worth many more lives than that, but I disagree. Life is worth more than anything. - that's a period
I wasn't talking about running out of oil. The price of bread is based on oil. How do you think we'll ship bread to every store in the country when the price of oil rises say $1 a gallon. How much do you think the price would go up if we couldn't get cheap oil from overseas? Its all based on supply and demand, right? When supply is low Americans freak out and demand rises. I'm not taking pot shots at the oil companies. When did I name one oil company? I'm just hypothesizing what might happen if we no longer had access to our precious oil.
I don't want to bash oil companies. I want to help solve the problem that is our dependance on oil. But why do you seem so intent on protecting oil companies? What's so good about oil? It seems to cause a lot of problems for some easy gain. You dig up some black liquid that provide the power to run engines. Great. If you learn about electromagnetic energy you'll find that electricity actually can provide a LOT more power than oil. So what else is so great about oil, besides all the money companies can make off it (since its basicly free if you can afford to dig it up). Its a limitted resource. Its temporary and you better get used to that fact.
Just how many fuzzy animals have the oil companies hurt compared to Microsoft? But I guess all that is ok, because it was for the greater good of keeping our gas prices low. I don't care about oil or oil companies. I care about life and little fuzzy animals. I think they are cute and harmless, usually. And I'd love that they weren't injured by our carelessness. If that means we have to find alternative sources of energy so be it. I care about having energy, but I don't care where it comes from, and nothing's wrong with electricity.
That being said there are MANY forms of alternative energy sources. You can get energy from the sun, sea, and air directly, from marijuana and many other plants, and probably eventually from matter itself (in a clean way). The only reason EVERYONE uses oil as their primary energy source is because they stereotype anyone opposed to the stuff as "zealots" and "environmentalists". An environmentalist is simply someone who cares about their environment. If you don't care about your environment maybe you should seek professional psychological assistance, because it would be my guess that there are a great many things you don't care about. Our environment is our home, our backyard, and our children and their children's playground. We've only got one planet so lets try not to mess it up, ok.
I'm worried that the continued use of oil to power almost all our transportation systems is wrecking havock on our environment. I don't see any catastrophic effects today, but that doesn't mean we aren't causing damage. And what I'm worried about is my children or their children not having a green planet filled with life. We've already killed off roaming buffalo, fished the sea, and affected the migratory patterns of nearly every animal still alive today. When you run over a squirrel do you blame the squirrel?
Let's develope more mass transit systems that run on electricity. Let's cut back on the use of oil. Don't get rid of oil completely, just don't rely on it for our survival. What would happen if we no longer had access to oil from other countries? Our whole economy would collapse. Because we're stupidly dependant on a non renewable resource. Let's be dependant on the Sun and the Moon, if anything, at least they'll still be here tomorrow.
Criminals no longer have the freedoms granted to every American by the constitution. So they don't get the same protection from personal injury, I guess. I don't understand where you get the idea that America is some righteous or just country, unless you pay attention to its propoganda. Its actions prove differently. Personally I think all Americans should be subject to the risks of torture, rape, and death they inflict on their criminals. In fact they are, they just don't know it. Because the truth is everyone in America is a criminal by their own legal system. They are in the process of declaring all humans illegal and criminal on one account or another. But if you have money you don't have to worry about those laws, they're just for the poor. Heh, infect truth... whatever.
Or hire a professional sys admin for less than $150k and have him write a perl script to merge both the world wide DNS maps with those of the alternate root servers and continue operations with a working complete dns map, without the greedy ICANN board controlling any of it, else it get fucked up again.
Want a route around ICANN? How about DNS? Try freenet! No domain registration required. Free anonymous encrypted worldwide data storage, what more could you ask for?
Do you mean no one working for RedHat eats food?
Because that would be illegal, to use GPL'ed code for commercial use and not release the source. But I'd love to see Microsoft write their own OS from scratch the way GNU did.
But isn't almost all of this common sense? I'm sure I heard this all before in my high school economics class, and that wasn't even the AP course. You must certainly know that the bank doesn't put your money into a locked box. And Interest rates are created by the government which affects all of us. And the net change in Interest rate is actually a lot higher than the government preaches because banks have the effect of creating money, which they can't do stupidly or they'd cause a panic, which has happened before. But what gets me is money is based off your labor, not gold or whatever. This means that the extra money a bank lends is backed up by the economy, the collective labor and product of the people. And most "labor" is actually done by machines which are operated by people.
So, if we could all accept that we must work (operate or build machines and automated factories) we could do away with money and get a LOT more accomplished. Imagine the inefficiency in our lives caused by money, paying taxes, managing cash, bills, etc., let alone Enron and bad management, qualifying for loans, insurance requirements, late fees, fines... y'know its really sad when you think about it. We hide behind contracts to cover our own asses instead of helping our neighbor. All because we're selfish and wouldn't work if we didn't get shiney things. I say let's work and let everyone have shiney things built by automated factories. If you can automate one you can automate a million or 6 billion! I'm finding more and more that the shiney things I want to have are the tools I need to get my work done (computers). Tools I almost know how to build myself and love to work on. I guess it all comes down to if you could live in a world without money would you work for free? Or would you even want to live in such a world? Lets make work and education interesting and fun!
Can you show me some evidence to back up your claim that the local monopoly on the one information road into your home would or could exist, or how it could be more damanging than a national or global monopoly. This is why I think wireless will replace the internet as we know it. People will solve these problems for themselves and leave the legislators drooling retardedly on their laws. The biggest problem for wireless that I can see is a routing protocol that could handle a single global network, mostly because I don't know that much about modern routing protocols.
Yeah, I'm a moron. Its all my fault. I'm sorry I voted for bush and wrote all that crappy linux and BSD code. And the war. Well, you're right, afghanistan started that. It was all a huge setup by the Taliban I'm sure. But why didn't they use some of the billions bush gave them for the war on drugs? They could have bought their own 747's and flown them straight up our asses for all Bush cared. Bin Laden, Al Queda, the Taliban, muslim, islam, it's all the same thing to you, isn't it? As long as you have your job and your home and $1/gallon gas you're happy, you don't care.
Guess what? I've got that same high paying job, home, cheap gas. But I do care. I care about people I'll never meet. I'm affraid my cheap gas and SUV is going to cost many of them their lives and more importantly their quality of life. If you lived in poverty for a hundred years maybe you'd understand what I'm talking about.
Pop Quiz. How much did the price of oil drop after we started bombing afghanistan? And more importantly why.
Actually the idea that "people are sheep" is not a neutral statement. Intelligent creatures would not be capable of being herded up, instead moving together in one direction because it is the right direciton to go (each individual would choose that for themselves). But sheep allow themselves to be herded because the individuals do not think about which direction they want to go. Instead they follow the other sheep. And in our situation the sheep are herded by corporate media presented primarily over TV. Imagine what the US would be like if only movie industry quality educational material was broadcast over 600 channels. Then I bet they'd understand why relating them to sheep has negative connotations.
I must be living in a fantasy world. A software company that makes popular games yet it can't sustain itself. Microsoft, the monopoly that can't be broken up. Bush, the president who didn't get elected. And this whole War on Terror to score a few extra gallons of oil.
I bought and paid for every Loki game. I thought they would have been around forever. Their games were easy to install, web updating, and without all that copy protection bs you find on M$. And very often they cost much less than the new copy on the store shelves. Loki sold most their titles for around $30-$50. If you only bought when they had specials you would have paid around $30 per game. Now why is my favorite game company going out of business? Probably bad management, but I prefer to blame the public. Yes, I blame you. If you love linux, or use linux and didn't fork over any cash for loki games or worse yet, pirated them, then its all your fault. And now I won't get my Deus-Ex for Linux. Bastard. I knew this was going to happen.
assuming we were not humans but some other largely benevolent race.....
Yeah, I see your point. But some of us I think want to help, or else we wouldn't have open source software. Let's just hope its the GNU guys that discover that dimensional portal thingy. Now how do you get a programmer to solve physics problems... hrmmmm... I seriously doubt the human race is intelligent enough to master the mathematics required to successfully and acurately travel by folding space, much less prove the theories behind it or design any functional equipment. But they did make a nuke... so there is potential. I don't know a lot about the theories behind superstrings, but from what I've heard that math is far beyond calculus, or at least calculus in 11 and 24 dimensions, or something like that. It sounded hard, heard about Physicists forgetting where they lived after working on the problems overnight. But I think its very similar to nuclear physics or electromagnetics. In fact superstrings was originally called The Theory of Everything, or the big T.O.E. It was Einsteins last theory, trying to unite the 4 forces of nature, electromagnetic, weak and strong nuclear, and gravity. If understood thoroughly it could do for space-folding what the theory of relativity did for our nuclear capability. Imagine for instance a caveman discovers a magnetic rock and finds that by moving this rock a certain direction near a wire, he happened to find on the ground, he gets shocked by the electrons the moving mangetic field caused to move in the wire. Then he puts on rubber gloves, charges up the wire and runs around shocking all his cavefriends. Similarly, I bet learning how to use superstrings is a lot easier than solving/proving the equation.
I think you meant DIVX ;-)
Anyway I totally agree and wanted to add that these systems are also based on very specific operating conditions. Including electromagnetic fields and other forms of RF. No matter how secure and stable the OS, your hardware could fail at any given moment. KISS, yes, but always plan for the worst and develope fault-tolerant/redundant systems. Never trust a single system or OS for any mission critical service. Also I find its best to just use cheap PC hardware since you can't expect better uptime from the more expensive proprietary stuff and it can't get much more modular than racked PCs.
(keep in mind I know nothing about the condition aboard a ship, I know Sun make special cases designed for this)
So what you're saying is you think China would attack the US if they suddenly found the secret to Superstrings and designed and built a worm hole generator or space-folding machine that could offer them immediate transportation to anyplace in our little 4 dimensional universe? And the Vietnam war shouldn't have been stopped because we would have won? Who wins a War? Doesn't anyone care about peace and prosperity? Instantaneous transportation would solve all the distribution problems anyone has on earth as well as the space program's problems getting to other planets, galaxies, etc. I bet we could solve superstrings and design the hardware before we could ever travel across our galaxy physically, even if we launched today. But what I fear is that there are many more people like you who would horde that kind of technology and use it to eliminate part of the human race. For what gain? Money?!?!
Perhaps if you had to physically sign a license agreement for each CD you bought maybe we wouldn't even need DRM. The problem isn't that the consumer accidently copies copyrighted works. Its that they aren't aware that their CDs are copyrighted and should not be copied. And those implied licenses like the kind on software that say you agree to the license by installing the app, with little to no mention of the details of the license in their easy click-through installations, are the same things that confuse consumers. They don't know what they are agreeing to, so they don't know when they break the law. This is like posting a police officer in every home because we know that some Americans break the laws they haven't read, in their own home.
My dad installed a dual-boot windows 98se RedHat linux system yesterday, after building the computer, with no prior computer knowledge and a couple hours of phone support with me. He might have trouble with ls and cd right now, but he's starting to understand a filesystem/directory structure. I bet in a year or two he'll be writing encrypted email on linux, now his primary business OS, and maintaining a secure business. He's also converting his winmodem over to external serial modems and setting up another dual-boot linux system for dial-up web access at both his home and business, upgrading staroffice 5.2 to OpenOffice 641C on all platforms (windows and linux) for MS compatibility, and this time around its costing him less than $1000 for the latest technology, 1.6+Ghz system, G-Force 2, etc. I'm very proud of my dad. But he's no exception, he's just like all the other "computer illiterate" people out there. They're not computer illiterate(sp?), they just need a little help to get them started and lots of encouragement. That's all.
I'd love to see the "industry" whole heartedly adopt MPEG-4, build tons of technology around it, and spend billions to promote it only to find in a couple years everyone migrates to an open source codec that offers a better user experience. I guess you can lead a horse to water, but... they'll still be a horse.
Bandwidth is cheap. You can now use air to transmit your data at 10Mbps. That's right now. And technology is ever increasing in performance and the rate it increases in performance, meaning we'll have 100Mbps next year, 1000Mbps the year after, etc. Also we can transmit the same 10Mbps over standard phone copper technology. Technology is not only creating new capabilities using new hardware, but also adding new capabilities to the hardware we've already purchased. Furthermore the cost in bandwidth you are talking about is merely the corporations sitting on the cable we've already paid for, milking out every last cent they can from the poor dumn public, like they always do. You'll NEVER have real broadband up and down in a capitalist country, unless you're rich. Face the facts that are right in from of your face. We have the capability to lay a cat 5 network across the country and switch it at gigabit speeds. Why don't we do this? I don't know, cuz we're stupid? Tomorrow it'll be cheaper, but so will modems and phone lines. Guess what you'll be getting...
Oh, PS, I posted the parent. Also shouldn't Microsoft in turn be certified from Intel and AMD to show that they QA their software to be relatively stable on that hardware? It almost seems like this whole process is backwards. You NEVER hear Linux guys telling hardware guys what to do unless they find a bug in the hardware while comparing it to its specs.
I've seen this before. mplayer is awesome! I've never seen a movie via ascii art before! Just wish I could get it to work... I'm so lazy.
You should publish your list of companies and let us comment on them.
Actually AOL is more like TV than WalMart. One goes to WalMart to shop, looking for advertisements and product information. One goes to AOL to get on the internet, chat, read email, and seek out information, not have it advertised to them like they're an idiot. Its true that most AOL users are not complete morons. They know who the president is, have been known to vote and remember email addresses and websites and probably can read. However from what I've read here, I don't use AOL, it sounds like AOL is become more like TV and pop culture than a real ISP. If that's the case, then yes, knock people because the ISP they choose. Just as much as you knock people for watching TV. Sometimes I think making fun of people is the only way you'll ever get them to learn, or at least think for themselves.